Obsessions and musings

Lest you think I've forgotten about Julius Rutabega - I have not. I have been researching like crazy, fascinated by not only my family but the whole history that surrounds them. I have been madly checking out books about colonial Ceylon, the Hudson's Bay Company, the Red River settlement and rebellion, life in 18th century England...not to mention doing a great deal of genealogical research.

I have become particularly fascinated by the mixed-race women of fur trade Canada who were among my distant grandmothers. According to books I've read, in the early days of the fur trade, European women were not only absent but banned from much of fur trade territory. So men married Indian women, partly for companionship but also because in Indian culture, marriages were a normal part of forming allegiances. Either party could leave the marriage at any time, so women could just go back to their tribe, without prejudice, with their children, should their European husband die or move on. These women were highly valued for their skills as translators, liaisons, and their ability to provide shoes. The European men simply could not master the art of making moccasins and snowshoes, and for years relied entirely on native women for this task. The official position of the HBC until 1806 was to prohibit local marriages and even the presence of native women in the forts; in their letters back to headquarters, the traders kept trying to explain - You don't understand, we need them to make shoes. Seriously, we totally suck at making the shoes.

The first generation of mixed-race daughters were highly prized as wives, retaining the practical and language skills of their mothers while acquiring some European learning, religion and outlook. Lady Strathcona, for example. Even daughters of low-level company men were sought after by the company's officers as wives.

But then, the first white wives began to arrive, along with clergy. Hysterically small-minded clergy maintained that these wives - some of them the highest-ranking ladies of the forts - were no more than concubines, because the marriages were conducted à la façon du pays rather than in churches (which were of course non-existant at the time). Unlike their mothers, they lacked the independence that came from solid survival skills and tribal ties. Many of these women were suddenly in a precarious position.

Some men took the opportunity to be scoundrels, and deserted their wives, even taking their children back to Britain. Others married their wives in church ceremonies. Still others, though, refused to give in. They said, I have been living with this woman as my wife for 30 years. We have raised numerous children together, and buried and grieved for others. To "marry" her in a church ceremony now would suggest that we weren't married all along, which is insulting to both of us. So - bugger off. Many working-class Bay men were Scottish Presbyterian, a denomination with its own independent streak when it came to marriage, requiring nothing more than two consenting parties and a witness.

I find this dynamic fascinating, for many reasons too long to go into here. Class, race, gender. Decency and selfishness. The missed opportunities of history. I want to reach through the pages of the book and strangle some of these clergymen and company officials, and their self-righteous wives too.

Thanks to the internet, I can see an affidavit in the Canadian National Archives from my earliest mixed-race ancestress, born around 1805, signing on the dotted line with an "X." What was Nancy's world like, this "washerwoman" and self-described "half-breed," daughter of a Scottish father and a Cree mother, baptized and married to a Scotsman in the eyes of the church at windy York Factory in 1828?