“Muskrat French”: Origins of a Culture, a Language, and a People

Abstract

“Muskrat French”: Origins of a Culture, a Language, and a People by James LaForest Nearly every year, usually in late winter or early spring, the media pick up on a story about a Detroit River region culinary tradition: the eating of muskrat as a Lenten custom. Generally the stories focus on the area of Monroe (part of an area known as Frenchtown) and other downriver Detroit communities that observe the custom. The tradition is explained in two ways: either that the early French Canadian trappers lived off muskrat, learning from the Indians that it was edible, or that Father Gabriel Richard, pastor of St. Anne’s parish in Detroit from 1802-1832, granted a special dispensation to the local habitants to eat muskrat during Lent. The media stories then continue with a description of the meal itself, the taste of the meat, and assurances that it is both safe and legal.1 Historians of the Detroit River region have provided more in-depth research on the topic. Ralph Naveaux, former director of the Monroe County Historical Museums and member of the Michigan Commission for the Bicentennial of the War of 1812, described the eating of muskrat in the context of a much broader regional French Canadian cuisine that emanated from the métis (mixed aboriginal American and European French) culture of the fur trade areas.2 Dennis Au, Historic Preservation Officer of the city of Evansville, Indiana, has also written extensively on Michigan’s French Canadian culture. According to Au, it was media coverage of the annual muskrat dinners in 1988 that precipitated a ban on the public sale of muskrat meat once it reached officials at the Archdiocese of Detroit and the Department of Agriculture. The Archbishop, appalled by the thought of muskrat as meat, declared the 1 John Holusha, “Wyandotte Journal; Where the Muskrat is a Delicacy for Lent,” New York Times, April 1, 1988; “What’s for Dinner? In Michigan, it’s Muskrat,” USA Today, March 1, 2013; “Muskrat Love: A Lenten Friday Night for Some Michiganders,” Catholic News Service, March 8, 2007; “You Haven’t Lived Here Until . . . You Eat Muskrat,” Detroit Free Press, November 25, 2012. 2 Ralph Naveaux, “Remnants of ‘Mushrat French’ Cuisine in Monroe County, Michigan,” Repast (Spring 2007): 3-6. THE MICHIGAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 40:2 (FALL 2014): 87-100 @ 2014 Central Michigan University. ISSN 0890-1686 All Rights Reserved 88 The Michigan Historical Review legendary dispensation void. What followed these actions was a groundswell of support for the local custom and ultimately a reversal of the decisions. 3 These Lenten muskrat dinners are part of a much broader regional culture, the “Muskrat French,” also known as “Mushrat French.” This term, as Marcel Beneteau notes, refers both to a living culture and to the French dialect that was widespread in the area from the eighteenth century onward and is still spoken in areas around Lake St. Clair.4 Though these accounts point to who the Muskrat French were (Detroit River region French Canadians), it is less established when this term came into being, and why, and how it has been used over time. They forged a unique regional culture better understood by its origins, development, and experience rather than by just one element of its cuisine, albeit unique. In order to better understand the development of the term “Muskrat French” and their culture, it is necessary to examine how the early French Canadians of Detroit and the Pays d’en Haut (Great Lakes Upper Country) were viewed by the British and Anglo American officials who began dominating the region in the late eighteenth century. In 1764 British General Thomas Gage referred to the French of Detroit as “a People . . . as wild as the Country they go in, or the (Indian) People they deal with, and are far more vicious and wicked.” He wrote that the French were “vagabonds” and “a terrible set of people who stick at nothing true or false . . . roving in the Desarts [sic] and seating themselves among the Indians,” living with “different Tribes, moving from one to another as fancy leads them.”5 Another opinion of Detroit’s French populace comes from the journals of Jonathan Carver, a Massachusetts...