Familial Foes? French-Sioux Families and Plains Métis Brigades in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

On July 13 and 14, 1851, in presentday North Dakota, a protracted battle occurred between a large band of Sioux warriors and a Metis bisonhunting brigade from St. Francois Xavier parish in the Red River Settlement, situated to the northeast in British territory.1 Th e Metis had ventured deep into contested MetisSioux territory from their home at the confl uence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers in search of the large herds that were the basis of both their livelihood and their lifestyle. During the Battle of Grand Coteau, sixtyseven Metis hunters, plus numerous women and children, burdened with two hundred carts, successfully resisted as many as two thousand Sioux assailants. Th is battle, a defi ning moment in Plains Metis history immortalized in songs and stories by the victors, showed Metis mastery of the plains and the bison hunts to Northern Plains tribes and whites residing in the Midwest.2 Th is battle is also oft en used as evidence of a perceived long history of hostility between the Sioux Indians and Plains Metis.3 However, another dimension or point of conversion must be considered in the relations between the nineteenthcentury Sioux and Plains Metis populations. Researchers looking at the history of northern North American FrenchIndian families have placed great focus on the northern Plains Metis population. Visible, powerful, and organized, this population led a highly distinctive mobile lifestyle. Plains Metis proudly called themselves “La Nation.”4 Partly obscured by this concerted research focus on the Plains Metis are other contemporaneous populations of FrenchIndian descent. For example, on the very eastern edge of the plains in the Upper Mississippi basin dwelt a relatively large number of families of French and Sioux ancestry. Like the Plains Metis, the Up-