"By a Union of Effort We Effect a Great Deal:" The English-Speaking Métis and the Anglican Mission at St. Andrew's Parish, Red River

by Robert Coutts, Parks Canada, Winnipeg

Established by a small group of Selkirk Scots near the forks of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, the Red River Colony saw dramatic growth after 1823 when large numbers of English and French-speaking Métis peoples began to arrive in the settlement. In the first decades after their arrival these families were confronted with the fundamental problem of defining the colony's relationship with the fur trade as well as with the missionaries who had arrived in the colony less than a decade after its founding.

The early years of the settlement – the period most associated with the Selkirk colonists – had left a record of uncertainty and confusion. The Battle of Seven Oaks, the emergence of the Métis as the "New Nation," and the monopoly of the Hudson's Bay Company after 1821, contributed to this ambiguity. With Selkirk's death in 1820, the appointment of Chief Factor Donald MacKenzie as Colony Governor in 1824, and the transfer ten years later of the Selkirk estate -- the huge Assiniboia land grant -- to the Company, the colony became more closely linked to the fortunes of the fur trade. [1] The end of the Selkirk era further underscored the HBC's nominal control over the government and organization of the settlement. [2]

The uncertainty of the situation resulted in a lack of confidence in the governing structure of the young colony. Governor Simpson, writing to Andrew Colvile, described the circumstances in Red River:

Take the Colony all in all, and it is certainly an extraordinary place, the Great folks would cut each other's throats if they could with safety; there is nothing like a social feeling among them and the best friends today are the bitterest enemies tomorrow. Among the lower orders it is much the same, they have a certain feeling of pride, independence and equality among them which is subversive of good order in Society: they are opposed to each other in little factions and every man in the Colony looks to his arms along for safety and protection.... [3]

It was the Métis challenge in Red River to help establish the social institutions that would resolve the difficulties that faced the population. Although the traditions of the trading post remained strong, they had to fit comfortably into a new set of customs and norms which were to be partly determined by the company and the churches.

The financial means of the Métis families who migrated to the lower settlement after 1826 varied. The retired company officers who were British-born, along with their Native wives and children, usually possessed sufficient savings to establish a credible farming operation on their land grant. Others were not so fortunate. Many Native-born heads of families lacked the capital necessary to begin farming and ended up living off the charity of relatives and the Church. As well, an Orkney or Scottish-born male possessed other natural advantageous -- greater familiarity with the English language, with the structure and working of local government, and with at least the rudimentary techniques of agriculture. [4] Those former company servants who had spent their natural life in the trading post environment knew little of farming. The kind of agriculture which existed in the fur trade, especially in the early period at some bayside factories, functioned at a minimal level and was intended only to augment the supply of overseas provisions.

The Métis began arriving in larger numbers in Red River after 1823 and many of the English-speaking families took up land grants north of the Selkirk lots on the west side of the Red beyond Point Douglas. At Frog Plain, and by the end of the decade at the Grand Rapids, these settlers established small-riverlot farms, the latter settlement forming the nucleus of William Cockran's mission at the lower settlement. Statistics from Cockran's school roll in 1830 provide a racial breakdown of people at the Rapids. Ninety-six children, both male and female, were registered at the Grand Rapids School that year. Forty per cent of the fathers were listed as Orkney, while 39% were listed as Métis. There were also eight "English" fathers (retired company officers), four Indian fathers, two Canadians, one American and one Norwegian in the parish. [5] Of the mothers listed by Cockran, 62% were Indian while 35% were Métis. [6] Five years later, in 1835, in his "State of Religion" report to the CMS, Cockran listed 102 families in the Grand Rapids parish with only forty-three headed by European-born (Orkney, Scottish and English) males. [7] In his comments to the Secretaries of the CMS in London, Cockran described the Métis heads of families and their offspring as being too easily pulled by the "immorality" of their Native heritage. As for those European-born males who had settled at the Rapids, the missionary believed them to have led licentious and intemperate lives. The transgressions of thirty or forty years, he remarked, could not be overcome overnight. [8] Cockran argued that the traders "conscience must be quickened" through long years of patient prayer and devotion. [9]

While the missionary promoted agriculture as the means to salvation, the Métis families at the Rapids engaged in a mixed economy of farming, hunting, fishing and trapping for the company. It was a regimen necessary for survival. Settlers were reluctant to expand their farms in the absence of significant external markets. Although the Company purchased grain from the colonists, it was not enough to create a healthy agricultural economy. Without cash the settler was unable to purchase the European goods necessary for life in the settlement. Red River had no small scale manufacturing and was dependent upon the yearly HBC shipment from England for much of its clothing, manufactured goods, certain foodstuffs, seed and tools. Consequently, settlers at the Rapids were forced to diversify their interests in order to earn a living, usually adjusting their activities on a seasonal basis.

In this way the traditions of the fur post survived amid the realities of a country where, for most, participation in a variety of activities was an essential fact of life. Rather than indicating some inherent strain within the Métis community between "civilization" and the "traditions of the chase," as the missionaries believed (and which came to be echoed in traditional historiography), the mixed economy of the settlement was an accepted and natural economic response. It was only the Church, and those settlers not part of the fur trade tradition, who felt that this particular economic lifestyle posed a threat to the survival of the community.

In their attempts to establish an Anglo-Christian agricultural settlement in the lower parishes, Cockran and Jones grew frustrated with what they felt was a lack of response to the teachings of the Church. Cockran referred to his parishioners as "principally composed of the seed of the adulterer and the whore," [10] while Jones judged the people at the Rapids to be "excessively ignorant." [11] The English-speaking Métis families, according to the Church, lacked an evangelical zeal. The expectation by the missionaries that their message would create a "quickened" religious response throughout the community proved erroneous as many of the Métis families at the Rapids were largely apathetic toward Christian admonitions, at least in the period before 1850. "The people seem...drowsy at the time of service, apparently unacquainted with the prize that was now put into their heads," wrote Cockran in his journal in 1829. [12] Half-empty Churches greeted the missionaries during the season between May and October when the young men were working the company boat brigades that operated between Red River, Norway House, York Factory and the English River district. While the retired British born heads of families in the community were, to a degree, influenced by Church sanctions, the response of their mixed-blood families was varied and uneven. [13] Economic factors, the tradition of the fur trade post, the pattern of kinship networks, and the new experiences in the settlement all contributed to shaping the attitudes of the new community at the Rapids.

The nature of family life in the settlement evolved after the initial period of consolidation. Kinship ties originating in the trading post environment continued to play an important role within the community. Those who had established their small riverlot farms at the Rapids in the early years were quick to assist the families that came later, a practice that derived from the lack of economic opportunity in Red River. Unable to establish themselves as British gentlemen farmers, English-speaking Métis families employed traditional kinship methods to provide a mechanism for mutual community support. [14] William Cockran commented upon this behaviour in a letter to the Secretaries:

If I find any in want, the first time I meet anyone who has been successful, I tell the tale of pity, and then will say, we must not let this or that man starve...He or she will say I will give so and so, and...thus by a union of effort we effect a great deal. [15]

Although the missionaries in Red River were critical of much of the behaviour of their Métis parishioners, they nevertheless documented changes in personal habits and family life within the community. To a limited degree social custom did change in the direction encouraged by the missionary. Cockran, though of course a much biased observer, noted the decline of "unrestrained sensuality," "whoring" and "seducing [of] each other's women." [16] By 1838 the clergyman could boast to the Society that his congregation was "regular and attentive and generally speaking endeavour to lead a Christian life." [17] Cockran's success at the Rapids was not simply the result of the influence of the gospel. The missionary's personal style had much to do with this process. Stubbornly aggressive, anti-company, and at odds with his elitist colleagues at the Forks, he gained a reputation as being unpretentious and straight-forward. By promoting and practicing a kind of agrarian, muscular Christianity, Cockran enjoyed a good deal of popularity with his congregation at the Rapids. His physical abilities and stature were respected by many. One non-believer admitted to Cockran that, "I am afraid of you, but not of God. You have a strong arm if you grow properly angry you could break my bones." [18] If the missionary's homespun style gained him a measure of respect within the community, it did little to endear him with the increasingly affected elite at Red River. Arriving at one of Mrs. Simpson's dinner parties at Lower Fort Garry perched atop a cow, Cockran was viewed by this class with a degree of bemused contempt. The missionary's low social background was ridiculed by the gentlemen of the fur trade. Describing one of Cockran's sermons at the Rapids, Donald Ross commented to James Hargrave that the missionary spun "out his long yarns as usual murdering the King's English most unmercifully in the flights of pulpit eloquence." [19] Cockran's unpopularity with the nabobs of Red River only increased his acceptance at the Rapids and in no small way helped promote the CMS at that settlement.

Child rearing in the Rapids community was one area of family life that came under scrutiny by the missionaries. Attitudes toward children tended to reflect the influences of both the trading post tradition and the settlement. Anglican missionaries often condemned Native males for treating their wives as little more than beasts of burden, while at the same time allowing their children a virtual free reign. Family practices in Rupert's Land represented the antithesis of Victorian custom. In 19th century England women (or at least those of the upper class) were considered virtuous and delicate creatures while children were viewed as simply unrestrained little people much in need of discipline. In his journal Cockran moralized upon the state of family life in the settlement:

The greatest part of the children here seem to be altogether their own masters -- do every day what is most agreeable; eat when they please, waste what they please, sleep when, where and how they please...from their infancy they go astray, and because their parents neglect to use the rod...they are never brought back. It is viewed as cruel and tyrannical to chastise children....I am sorry to say, that may of the parents of my congregation follow this method with their families...there are only a few, a very few, who will command their children. [20]

The extent to which the Métis children of British-born fathers at the Rapids were taken from the old environment of the trading post and exposed to "civilizing" influences depended upon the initiative of individual fathers. [21] Many of their sons, especially when they grew older, aspired to assimilate into their father's world. The case of James Ross, the son of Red River patriarch Alexander Ross serves as an example. [22] Alexander Ross was one of the leading principal settlers within the Red River community. Married to an Indian woman, he was determined that his mixed-blood offspring be exposed to all the civilizing benefits the settlement had to offer. James Ross was such an outstanding pupil of Bishop Anderson's at the Red River Academy that he was sent to further his education at the University of Toronto in 1853 where he won a number of scholarships and prizes. In the resistance of 1869-70, while a supporter of the Canadian cause, Ross participated in Louis Riel's provisional government in the hopes of avoiding the bloodshed of a war between "brothers and kindred." [23] Criticized by both sides, he suffered the ignobility of being passed over for a position in the administration of Governor Archibald in favour of the newly arriving Canadians. While Ross' dual racial heritage did not preclude his membership in the social and political elite of old Red River in the years before 1870, after this date he was excluded from participation in the new Anglo-Protestant order that had begun to transform the West.

In their move from the fur trade post to the settlement at the Rapids, Métis families were ultimately selective in their adaptation to new customs and practices. Behaviour which had earlier proven disruptive was for the most part dispensed with, while functional and enjoyable practices were maintained, even in the face of heavy censure from the Church. This, in part, explains the often times contradictory nature of Cockran's observations of the English-speaking Métis community in his parish. The missionary alternately criticized and praised the behaviour of his parishioners who adopted some customs from the British example but maintained others derived from their Native heritage. Such an accommodation was not without purpose. Family life, marriage practices, child rearing and, most importantly, economic activity, reflected the particular adaptation of mixed-blood culture to the physical, economic and social realities of Red River society.

A strong and vibrant community life developed in the early years at the Rapids. Kinship bonds established in the days of the fur trade post were strengthened, helping to facilitate social and community interaction. Cooperative activities in farming, hunting and building were common, and families increasingly sough each other's company for such social events as weddings and baptisms. [24] Cockran disapproved of much of this behaviour. He cautioned his parishioners against holding dances and parties at weddings, and noted in his journal that these celebrations, lasting two or three days, might involve upwards of one-hundred people. [25] What particularly disturbed the missionary was that the guests were often away from their farms for an extended period of time, an absence that Cockran viewed as reflective of a general indifference to agriculture in the community. [26] Despite the missionary's opinion, however, social and communal ties played a major role in the regular performance of daily duties within the parish.

If traditional kinship networks helped to minimize social conflict within the parish (at least among those with little material wealth), they did less to hide a hierarchical structure in Red River that was based largely upon social standing and material wealth. At the top of the hierarchy were the "principal settlers." [27] Made up primarily of Scottish-born former HBC officers who had retired with their mixed-blood families to Red River, these individuals possessed considerable material wealth (as well as management experience and literacy skills) from their days in the fur trade. This gave them the capital to invest in the land and implements needed to run a moderately successful farm at the Rapids. It also placed them on a par with the highest class in Red River, the company squirearchy. If widowed or single, the principle settlers became eligible to marry the few available European women in the settlement, a union which unquestionably raised the status of a retired fur trader. Retired officers such as Andrew Linklater, James Sutherland and Donald Gunn, settled with their mixed-blood families near the Rapids in the first decade after the union of the two competing fur companies. In Red River's developing social structure the principal settlers aspired to be British "gentlemen." To accomplish this goal, however, their families' Native heritage had to be downplayed. Education was considered the key in gaining their children's entry into Red River's upper class. To have their mixed-blood offspring achieve a station in life comparable with themselves was considered by these former traders to be a paramount importance. [28]

Who were the principal settlers and former company engagés who settled at the Rapids? James Sutherland, for example, was a principal settler who claimed lots 96 and 97 on the west side of the river in the lower part of the parish. [29] Sutherland was originally from Ronaldshay in the Orkney Islands and joined the Hudson's Bay Company in 1797. He served for many years at Cumberland House and in 1821 he was made Chief Factor in charge of the Swan River district. [30] Sutherland retired to the settlement in 1827. His long-time country marriage to Jane Flett, a Native woman, was sanctioned by the Anglican clergy in 1828 and she eventually bore a total of seven children. [31] By 1835 Sutherland could boast twenty-five acres under cultivation, making him one of the most successful farmers in the district. [32] According to the 1835 Red River census, Sutherland owned eighteen head of cattle, five horses and three carts, material assets which put him among the elite of landowners at the Rapids. [33] Characteristically, he placed considerable emphasis upon the education of his Métis children. [34] His daughter Sally was once described by John West as "one of the best informed and most improved half-caste" women he had seen. [35] While Sutherland shared many of the attitudes of his race and class, it seems he remained faithful to his Native wife Jane. Writing to his brother in 1838, he commented on the changing nature of marriage practices in the settlement:

We have now here some rich old fellows that have acquired large fortunes in the service, have got married to European females and cut a dash, have introduced a system of extravagance into the place that is followed by all that can afford it. [36]

Sutherland, like Alexander Ross, was considered one of Red River's original "patriarchs." He died in 1844 at the age of sixty-seven. In contrast, William Spence, a Métis former labourer with the HBC, moved to Red River in 1823 at the age of 17. [37] Later, with his wife Anne and five children he settled on a portion of lot 94 at the Rapids. [38] According to census data, Spence did not appear to engage in any type of farming. [39] He had no land under cultivation, except for perhaps a small garden plot, and did not own any farm implements. The two head of cattle Spence possessed suggests that he might have freighted or participated in the annual buffalo hunt. As well, he could have tripped with the company, perhaps working on the Red River-York Factory boat brigades. Spence's children attended Cockran's school at the Rapids.

In 1835 James Sutherland had the greatest number of acres under cultivation at the Rapids. William Spence, on the other hand, was one of about five or six landowners in the parish who chose not to till the soil at all. By 1840 Spence, while increasing his livestock, had cultivated only a little over one acre. [40] This varying commitment to agriculture suggests that economic life within the parish was never homogeneous; in fact it was the economic gulf between the principal settlers and the rest of the population that helped polarize society within the lower settlement. Historian Irene Spry has argued that there were two fundamental divisions within Red River, both of them economic. The first was between the former officers of the HBC and their mixed-blood families, and those residents who at one time worked as company tripmen and labourers. This division in many instances paralleled the second: the gulf between those in Red River who were primarily farmers and those who were primarily hunters. [41] Economic standing within the community dictated social status, one's role in the political process, as well as access to superior education. In turn, education helped perpetuate, if not enhance, class divisions with the settlement. So while the acculturated sons and daughters of former company officers shared a racial heritage with the larger Métis community, they nonetheless enjoyed a level of status and opportunity in keeping with their superior economic position.

It is useful then to view the social hierarchy at St. Andrew's within the context of class relations. Such a model presumes the vertical ordering of classes and the existence of superior and inferior social and economic statuses which remain largely permanent and which see little cross-over between groups. There must be a degree of consciousness within each class, though this consciousness may fluctuate between benign awareness and militant solidarity. Moreover, a class-based society is marked by the social isolation of particular classes and the lack of closer contacts between individuals at different levels. In traditional Marxist theory classes are defined by their relationship to the means of production (the purchase and sale of labour), as well as their role in the social organization of labour. Although a class analysis is traditionally applied to the forces of production operating within a mature capitalist society, a comparable model might also be applied to pre-industrial agrarian societies, or to dynamic cultures in the process of blending a variety of economic strategies. [42] All societies exhibit elements of stratification based upon individual functions and skills, kinship ties, or material wealth, and agrarian and mixed resource-based communities can also demonstrate the varying relationship of individuals to the means of production.

With the collapse of the HBC monopoly in the 1840s the Métis of Red River became increasingly involved in the buffalo robe trade, a process that historian Gerhard Ens has described as "proto-industrial" and the beginning of the transformation of Métis strategies away from what he has called the traditional peasant economy of Red River. [43] However, employing European models to describe the economy in Red River as "peasant" (outside of perhaps the Scottish Kildonan settlers who pursued an almost exclusive farming livelihood) is problematic. The Métis were in fact involved in a variety of economic strategies, including hunting, fishing, freighting and other contract work, as well as agriculture and animal husbandry. Though clergymen such as William Cockran tended to view their Métis parishioners as peasants, the reality of nineteenth century life in Red River -- a poor climate, isolation from potential agricultural markets, and the need to exploit a variety of resources -- belied these European views of an idyllic peasant-based agricultural society. Ens' use of the term "traditional" to describe Métis life in Red River prior to the 1840s would suggest a long period of adaptation. However, the Métis only began arriving in Red River in any numbers by the 1820s and the economy of the settlement over the next generation was never static; it constantly evolved and adapted to new circumstances in the decades before mid-century. [44] But as the economy of St. Andrew's evolved throughout the 1830s and 1840s the parish tended to become an increasingly class divided society with the existence of superior and inferior social statuses based upon economic choices. While gentlemen farmers and buffalo hunters and tripmen might be seen as occupying opposite ends of this hierarchy, the economic elite of the settlement also contained a number of successful freighters who had accumulated significant wealth through their economic activities, though there were fewer of these types of individuals at St. Andrew's than there were in some of the French-speaking parishes. Census records for the parish indicate that between 1831 and 1849 there appeared to be very little change in the wealth of individual settlers, suggesting .a strong degree of permanence within each class. [45] In terms of agricultural holdings those farmers who were "poor" in 1831 tended to remain so throughout the historic period. Despite the economic separation of groups in St. Andrew's, these differences were mitigated to an extent by racial and kinship ties.

Though one might be hesitant to claim the existence of a class consciousness within the parish, there was certainly a degree of class awareness. The hierarchical traditions of the fur trade -- the separation of officers and servants -- helped maintain a sense of group identity among those who later retired to the parish. As tripman and hunters rarely rose in the Company's service, there was little belief within this group that any real economic opportunity existed, the type of belief that might moderate one's awareness of their position in the economic hierarchy. In the history of the community at St. Andrew's it was the free trade crisis of the 1840s which best illustrated this awareness. The expressed opposition of Métis to the HBC monopoly during this period demonstrated shared concerns based upon mutual economic interests. The presence of the Church at St. Andrew's, however, served to promote the bonds of community within the parish. The performance of marriages, baptisms, funerals and other liturgical duties, helped regulate the community and strengthen existing kinship ties. The Church provided a mechanism for community action, such as the raising of money and materials for the construction of the Church building itself, or the management of parish affairs. It also served as a focal point for social life within the community. As a gathering place within the settlement, the Sunday and Tuesday services or Wednesday evening prayer meetings provided an opportunity for social interaction. [46] This interaction helped blur social and economic divisions within the parish through the promotion of a wider sense of community. Efforts by the local clergy to build community solidarity could not hide the fact that by the 1840s the economic situation in the lower community had begun to deteriorate. The years of relative prosperity that followed the flood of 1826 soon gave way to a period of drought, early frosts, and crop failure. The situation was made worse by diseases such as scarlet fever which ravaged the settlement at various times during the decade. [47] Their impact in the community is evident in the parish burial records. In 1846, for instance, the records show that at St. Andrew's most deaths occurred in children under two years of age. [48] While infant deaths were quite common for the whole of the historic period, random sampling from later decades (1864, 1870 and 1884) show that infant mortality reached a peak in the lower community during the 1840s. [49]

Yet, St. Andrew's was not alone in experiencing problems during this period as crop failures throughout the settlement, coupled with declining wage labour opportunities with the HBC, threatened the economic livelihood of Red River's Métis population. During the previous decade the people of the Rapids settlement enjoyed a mixed economy which more or less satisfied their material and community needs while effectively meeting the economic demands of the settlement. However, the great buffalo herds that had once been in close proximity to Red River had now moved further west and after 1840 many in Red River either traveled great distances from the settlement in pursuit of the new buffalo robe trade (and to eventually establish wintering or hivernant communities on the plains), or came to rely more heavily upon agriculture. At the same time the HBC attempted to restrict the number of Métis working on a seasonal basis with the company, especially those who were also engaged in free trade. Turning to agriculture, the population as St. Andrew's soon discovered that the continuing practice of sub-dividing riverlots among offspring had resulted in overcrowding and unprofitable farmsteads. In 1854, William Cockran recognized the problem and led a group of settlers to new lots at Portage La Prairie on the Assiniboine River. Not all, however, were willing to abandon their friends, families, and churches along the Red River and opportunities diminished for the younger generation of St. Andrew's settlers.

Changing racial sensibilities by the middle of the century, particularly among the Anglican clergy of the lower settlement, posed another challenge to the English Métis of St. Andrew's. Though highly critical of Métis lifestyles, William Cockran endeavoured to build a sense of community among his parishioners. The Archdeacon's successors, however, exhibited little sympathy with his attempts to establish a viable agricultural settlement at the Rapids, and missionaries such as Robert James viewed their new Métis parishioners with suspicion. [56] On his journey from York Factory to Red River, James commented that:

The men who brought us to Red River were nearly all members of my own future congregation at the Rapids...Only one or two showed any regard for us, others robbed our scanty provisions and generally they acted without affection. The first two days they were all intoxicated and this with their subsequent conduct induced us to regard them as nearly all "heathens." [55]

The departure of Bishop Anderson, the death of William Cockran in 1865, and the arrival of Bishop Machray that same year, signaled the end of the old Anglican mission in Red River. The new Church, preoccupied with making Red River "British" awaited the imminent arrival of Ontarian farmers and entrepreneurs to the west. The greater affluence these groups were bound to bring to the country would increase the wealth and prestige of the Anglican Church and succeed in removing the community from the traditional influences of the fur trade.

Red River's economic problems were further aggravated by the severe drought which occurred throughout the 1860s. [56] As well, grasshoppers infested the settlement and a scarlet fever outbreak in 1864 carried off a large number of the population. [57] The settlement's crops were destroyed each year between 1862 and 1865 and again in 1868. [58] The latter year also witnessed the absence of small game near the settlement, the failure of the buffalo hunt (an almost regular occurrence by this date), and the collapse of the fisheries. The settlement sought relief in the form of food and clothing from Canada. At St. Andrew's the Rev. J.P. Gardiner organized relief committees to gather and distribute badly needed seed wheat, foodstuffs and clothing. [59] The settlement's economic woes helped precipitate an increase in the calls for the annexation of Red River to Canada. Earlier, in 1857, Captain William Kennedy, a resident of St. Andrew's and an embittered ex-employee of the Hudson's Bay Company, organized meetings throughout the parish to agitate for political change. He succeeded in interesting not only a number of leading Kildonan and St. Andrew's settlers, but also James Hunter, the incumbent at St. Andrew's Church. [60] In a letter dated April 8, 1857, Hunter described to the Church Missionary Society the general discontent which existed with the company's administration in the settlement. "The fact is," he wrote, "the people are tired of the present government and are anxious for any change that will open up the country to colonization...[The] people have suffered so long from the company that they are now determined to make a great struggle for emancipation." [61] By 1869 a land rush was imminent. Settlers and surveyors arriving from Ontario proceeded to stake out claims that implicitly challenge the traditions, assumptions and geography of the old colony.

The Anglican clergy preached the benefits of the coming Protestant-Canadian order in Red River to the English-speaking Métis of the lower parishes. Disaffected and disenchanted after years of unpopular company rule, the Métis had endured failed harvests, a depletion of wild game in the region, as well as disease. Some now expressed cautious optimism regarding their future in a Canadian Red River. However, like James Sinclair, many of St. Andrew's Métis population were sympathetic with Louis Riel's attempts to establish a provisional government to help avoid bloodshed in the transition from Hudson's Bay Company rule. As a result, the local Anglican clergy, who opposed Riel and believed the resistance to be the result of a "popish plot" orchestrated to increase Roman Catholic influence in Red River, lost some of their authority among those English Métis concerned with land rights within the settlement,. [62] The antipathy was mutual. Robert Machray, the new Anglican Bishop, had little confidence that the "new" west could be built upon a group whom he considered poor and ignorant. For Machray, the energies of the Church would best be devoted towards preparations for its new parishioners; the white, Anglo-Protestant Canadian farmers and entrepreneurs from Ontario. [63] And while Bishop Machray privately opposed Riel's Provisional Government, labeling it a "perfect abomination" in a letter to Sir John Young, [64] he publicly counseled moderation. At St. Andrew's, Rev. J.P. Gardiner, a vociferous critic of Riel and the Métis, later urged caution after receiving a threat on his life. Gardiner refused to organize his parishioners at St. Andrew's or to collect arms to re-capture the Upper Fort which was controlled by Riel and his supporters. [65] Initially, at least, support for the Provisional Government existed among the people of the lower settlement. In a letter to Thomas Bunn, Donald Gunn suggested that it was "advisable to respond to the call made by our French fellow colonists," and at a meeting held at St. Andrew's Church on February 12, 1870 Thomas Sinclair and Edward Hay were elected as parish delegates to Riel's Provisional Government. [66]

It is clear that the population at St. Andrew's vacillated over the course of the ten month protest. On the one hand they hoped to fulfill an important role in the settlement after its annexation to Canada. To an extent they listened to the counsel of their clergy and some of the principle settlers and mistrusted Riel, critical of the Métis leader's refusal to admit constitutional authority into the territory. Many in the parish, while sympathetic to the goals of the Resistance, nevertheless opposed the tactics of Riel and his followers. In February of 1870 a large group of armed men from the lower settlement, encouraged by Canadian Party leader John Christian Schultz, prepared to march on Riel at the upper fort to force the release of prisoners taken by the Métis leader. The poorly led counter-insurrection never materialized, however. Riel released the prisoners on his own accord, thus removing the objective of the march, and the men quietly dispersed. Frits Pannekoek has suggested that it was the lack of firm leadership among the English Métis of Red River, or from the Anglican Church and the retired fur trade elite, that prevented open opposition to Riel and the eruption of sectarian violence among the Métis groups in Red River. [67] But if they were divided by language and religion, the Métis in the settlement remained essentially united, not only by their shared experiences of life in Red River, but by a common heritage forged in the days of the buffalo hunt and the fur trade. As John Tait, a resident of St. Andrew's, so eloquently said at a public meeting in the parish in 1869: "[The French-speaking Métis] were born and brought up among us, ate with us, slept with us, hunted with us, traded with us, and are our own flesh and blood....Gentlemen, I for one cannot fight them. I will not imbrue my hands with their blood." [68]

What is less clear in the events surrounding the Resistance of 1869-70 is the degree to which differences in attitude toward Canadian annexation among St. Andrew's families paralleled economic inequalities within the parish. Historian D.N. Sprague has maintained that because the Resistance represented a quest for property rights on behalf of the unofficial owners of riverlot properties, those English-speaking Métis who were secure in their title and status were inclined to support the Canadian party in Red River, while the persons who took up arms on the side of the insurgents were likely to be hunters and tripmen without title. [69] In this sense, then, the internal tensions generated by the Resistance represented more a struggle between Red River's economic classes than it did racial strife. Ultimately, the English-speaking settlers who supported annexation and the mixed-bloods' loss of "corporate" rights in 1869-70, largely those who were land-secure, unwittingly believed they could maintain their status in the face of the Protestant, Ontarian immigration that was to come after 1870. [70]

In the years following the events of 1869-70 the Manitoba land question became the single most contentious issue to face the new Canadian administration. Section 31 of the Manitoba Act promised "one million four hundred thousand acres...for the benefit of the families of Halfbreed residents," This acreage (given in the form of $160 worth of scrip that could be used to purchase Dominion land) was to be initially divided amongst the children of Métis heads of families. The legislation, however, was changed in 1874 to also include the parents of these Métis children. As well, the descendants of the original Selkirk settlers were offered approximately 140 acres of land per head. But through mismanagement, a lack of knowledge of Red River or, as some have argued, a deliberate attempt by the federal government to allow speculators to disenfranchise the Manitoba Métis in favour of incoming Canadian settlement, only a portion of the grant, estimated at less than 600,000 acres in 1882, was ever allotted. [71] The rest ended up in the hands of speculators and Eastern Canadian squatters who were attempting to turn Red River into an Anglo-Ontarian settlement.

Early in 1871 the new Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba, Adams G. Archibald, proposed to the Dominion government that local legislation be framed in order to administer Section 32 of the Act, that part of the law which insured that land already occupied would not be jeopardized by the transfer. The federal government rejected Archibald's proposal. Instead, Ottawa considered the whole of the province to be Dominion land and in effect made no distinction between occupied parish lots and the open territory outside the settlement belt. [72] This interpretation had serious ramifications for the Métis parishes along the Red and Assiniboine, including St. Andrew's. New legislation was used to bar anyone who had not made sufficient "improvements" to their land which might include a minimum number of cultivated acres, or the existence of an acceptable dwelling. [73] The result of the legislation was to drive from the colony those settlers the government felt were indifferent farmers, or those who cultivated only a few acres while engaged in other types of economic activity. Gerhard Ens has argued, however, that government negligence in the administration of the Manitoba Act had little to do with the dispersal of the Manitoba Métis. Rather, he suggests, it was the collapse of the HBC monopoly in the 1840s and the development of a new "proto-industrial" Métis economy based largely on the exploitation of the buffalo robe trade in the western interior that led to the abandonment of agriculture, the creation of hivernant communities on the plains, and eventually to emigration from Red River. [74] Other historians, most notably Diane Payment and D.N. Sprague, maintain that the Red River Métis were driven from their lands by government dispossession, the violence of the troops sent to control the settlement, and the racism of incoming Ontario settlers. According to Sprague's research, approximately 1,200 families in Manitoba lost all chance of obtaining patent on their land because they could not meet the government's stipulation for ownership. [75] While the "pull" of the buffalo robe trade provided economic alternatives for some Red River Métis after 1850, it was the "push" of dispossession that ultimately changed Red River from a Native settlement to an Anglo-Canadian province of the new dominion. In the decade following the Resistance many French-speaking Métis left Red River and moved permanently to traditional wintering quarters at Batoche, St. Laurent and the Qu'Appelle valley. If some of the old settlers remained in St. Andrew's, a significant number of the English Métis of the parish did leave Red River, ending up at new settlements at Grand Rapids (at the northwest end of Lake Winnipeg), Prince Albert and Fort Edmonton. [76]

In anticipation of the railway's arrival in Manitoba lots in St. Andrew's and other parishes in Red River were bought up by speculators hoping to turn a quick profit when land hungry immigrants began arriving in the new province. As early as 1871 it was decided to extend a rail line from Fort William through the village of Selkirk and northwest to the Lake Manitoba Narrows. Geological and engineering considerations dictated that the line cross the Red River at Selkirk. The banks were more stable at this point and the area was less prone to the flooding which frequently occurred at Winnipeg. In 1883 a Selkirk spur to the Pembina Branch connected the town with Winnipeg and the American border. A line had also been constructed eastward from Selkirk to meet up with a section of the main CPR line out of the Lakehead. While Selkirk had long lobbied with the Federal government to become the railway depot in Manitoba, it was decided in 1881 to build the main line south, closer to the forty-ninth parallel. Accordingly, the CPR chose to have its line cross the Red River at Winnipeg and proceeded to construct its railway engine houses, roundhouses and, most importantly, a bridge at that location. Eventually in 1907 the line running west from the Manitoba-Ontario border was straightened and Selkirk and the former east side of St. Andrew's parish was left off the main line altogether.

In the years following the Resistance, those Métis who remained in St. Andrew's hoped to play a major role in the opening of the settlement to Canada. In 1870 the population of the province was about 12,000, of whom approximately one-half were French-speaking Métis, one-third English-speaking Métis, and less than one-sixth European or Canadian by origin. [77] During the next decade British and Canadian immigration to the new province continued at a moderate enough level that the influence of the old English Métis families (at least those who had a secure land base within the community) remained somewhat stable. In the latter part of the 1870s, however, immigration took a dramatic upswing. Although John Norquay, a Métis from St. Andrew's, became Manitoba premier in 1878, his administration was powerless to stop an assault on the established Métis power base. The traditional mixed-blood alliance in Red River was crumbling. In the electoral re-organization of 1879 the English-speaking Métis were left in control of only one seat in the twenty-four seat legislature -- Norquay's riding at St. Andrew's. They were soon swamped by the flood of immigration to the province after 1883. By 1886 the population of Manitoba had increased dramatically to 109,000. [78] According to census reports, the Métis, both French and English-speaking, now accounted for only 7% of this population.

Where the Métis had traditionally viewed themselves as a separate "New Nation," those English-speaking Métis that remained at St. Andrew's after 1870 increasingly reflected an Anglo-Protestant world view. The influence in the community before 1850 of the old mixed-blood families and the white patriarchs such as Alexander Ross and James Sutherland, along with a commonality of language and religion with the incoming settlers, led the English Métis to believe that they could exercise some power and influence in the new province. Ultimately, they were mistaken. And while the French-speaking Métis took pride in their Native roots, many of their English-speaking counterparts sought to purge themselves of their Aboriginal heritage, choosing instead to be viewed as Anglo-Protestants settling the frontier. This view has subsequently tended to permeate the community and in some ways has influenced the way it has viewed its own history. [79]In 1948, for example, when a provincial government plaque commemorating the career of Premier John Norquay mentioned that he was a "Halfbreed," his descendents threatened legal action and commissioned a genealogy "proving" him to be of English and Welsh lineage, this despite the fact that their illustrious ancestor was widely known to be of Métis heritage and had once declared his pride in his Aboriginal blood. [80] For those at St. Andrew's who had grown uneasy with their Native heritage in the face of marginalization by non-Native immigrants, it had become sadly necessary to try and place themselves solidly within the "civilizing" tradition of post-1870 settlement in western Canada. "Triumph over adversity" in the Whig tradition had become as much the creed of many of the old families of the lower community as it was for Canadian immigrants and their descendants on the prairies.

St. Andrew's and the Built Environment

In the nineteenth century St. Andrew's parish reflected the collective character of its Native origins. A commonality of language, religion, family ties and economic strategies was characteristic of life within the parish, as were the unique building customs of its European and mixed blood residents; customs which reflected both the certainties of climate and geography and the realities of social and economic divisions within the community. Architecture can reveal a great deal about how members of a community lived and interacted with their environment. It also provides a physical clue as to how the community was organized and stratified; it can identify both the elite and the underclass and show how each lived. Those forms of architecture that often survive from an earlier period, such as the stone churches and houses that dot the river edge in St. Andrew's, as opposed to those that have not survived, such as the tents and log houses of Aboriginal and Métis peoples, can often influence our view of the past and bias what we might consider typical of life in the settlement. The stylistic origins of the whole range of architectural types, however, the methods and materials that were employed and the adaptation of building to the local environment, can provide clues to what it would have been like to live in St. Andrew's a century and a half ago.

The history of building and architectural style in St. Andrew's, and throughout Red River, prior to 1870 reflected the realities of climate and technology in the region, as well as the availability of building materials. From the bark covered lodges of the Ojibwa who traveled throughout the parish, to the wood and stone houses and public buildings of the fur traders, missionaries, merchants, farmers and hunters who occupied the district after 1829, the form and function of settlement architecture demonstrated a practical response to the environment of the pre-industrial west. Building materials, construction technologies and weather all figured into the building styles that evolved in the settlement. Although often derivative of earlier architectural forms -- Western Ojibwa lodges, for instance, were largely patterned after their antecedents of the Lake Superior region, and the large limestone houses of the parish mimicked the manor houses of eighteenth century Scotland -- these styles evolved into vernacular forms that were in many ways unique to the to the colony that originated at the Forks of the Red and Assiniboine. Aboriginal peoples, primarily Cree and Ojibwa, were seasonal inhabitants of St. Andrew's parish throughout the nineteenth century, and their dwellings, both before and after contact with Europeans, reflected a practical response to environmental factors within the region as well as an adaptative exploitation of available resources. While some of the Ojibwa peoples who had migrated to the Red River region in the late eighteenth century camped and travelled within the settlement, others settled along with Cree peoples within St. Peter's parish at the northern end of the settlement. By the 1840s many of these "Christian" Indians (as they were known within Red River) had constructed log houses there under the direction of Church of England clergy. Those who moved throughout the settlement and the adjacent plains and woodlands on a seasonal basis engaged in such activities as buffalo hunting, fur trading, maple sugaring, and the supply of provisions and country made articles to local settlers and to HBC personnel at Lower Fort Garry. [81] Residing for brief periods of time in and around the settlement, the Ojibwa of the Red River area employed a style of lodge construction that differed from the hide covered tipis of traditional plains groups. Examples of this form of lodge construction show up in the early nineteenth century paintings of Peter Rindisbacher and the 1850s photographs of H.L. Hime. Called cabandawan, these domed-shaped structures were formed by saplings driven into the ground in a circular or elliptical pattern and then bent over and bound together at the top. Large sheets of water-resistant birch rind were then used to cover the frame and woven rush mats were often laid around the base of the lodge. [82] Several layers of bark could be separated with moss for insulation during the winter months. The entrance to the lodge was usually covered with a flap of hide or matting, and a hole in the top allowed smoke to escape. Although most of these structures housed only one family, some of the larger elliptical-shaped lodges might be inhabited by several families. The Ojibwa also used conical-shaped shelters called wigwassikanikag which were described in 1804 by Peter Grant of the North West Company and consisted of:

slender long poles, erected in the form of a cone and covered with the rind of the birch tree. The general diameter of the base is about fifteen feet, the fire place exactly in the middle, and the remainder of the area, with the exception of a small place for the hearth, is carefully covered with the branches of the pine or cedar tree, over which some bear skins and old blankets are spread, for sitting and sleeping. A small aperture is left in which a bear skin is hung in lieu of a door, and a space is left open at the top, which answers the purpose of window and chimney. [83]

A variety of other structures were used by Aboriginal peoples in the St. Andrew's and Red River district, including the temporary fur bough lean-to favoured by hunters in wooded areas during the winter months, and ceremonial structures that included the sweatlodge, a domed-shaped shelter with willow branches and buffalo hide cover, the cylindrical shaking-tent, and the large midewiwin ceremonial structures of the Lake Winnipeg area.

The style of log construction that became common in the Red River area in the nineteenth century derived from the architectural styles of the fur trade that were brought to the west by traders from New France. Known variously as "poteaux sur sole" or "piece sur piece," and later as the "Hudson Bay Style" or more commonly as "Red River frame," this particular style evolved from the "maison en columbage" of New France, popular in that colony between about 1680 and the late eighteenth century. Its European ancestor was the medieval half-timbered houses found throughout France which employed closely spaced wooden timbers on a sill plate, the intervening spaces being filled with stone rubble and mortar. []In New France the rubble infill was often replaced by horizontal timbers that were mortised into the evenly spaced upright posts using a tongue-and-groove method. [84] When voyageurs and traders from the French colony began their first incursions into the territories west of Lake Superior in the early eighteenth century they brought this architectural form with them. Log construction and the use of local materials was employed in almost all building projects from this period and characterized the form and style of the residences, stores and warehouses that remained an enduring feature of fort architecture in the early days of the fur trade.

Despite the end of the French Regime in Canada in 1759 traders from Montreal continued to ply the lakes and rivers of the prairie and parkland, constructing their fur trade posts in the home territories of the Aboriginal peoples of what is now Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Organized into the North West Company later in the century, and headquartered in Montreal, the wooden "columbage" style of building was quickly consolidated by the peripatetic representatives of that fur trading company. With the union of the North West and Hudson's Bay companies in 1821 this style of log construction was used by fur traders at their posts from Labrador to Vancouver Island and was sometimes known as the "Hudson's Bay style."

When the Kildonan and Métis settlers arrived at the forks of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers they quickly adopted the construction style and technique that had become prevalent throughout the fur trade. The Red River frame style came to characterize the bulk of construction in the various parishes of the colony, including St. Andrew's. The use of log construction in Red River, as opposed to the relatively small number of later stone houses and churches, provides an interesting illustration of socio-economic differences in the colony. Red River frame tended to be the building style of choice among the settlement's lower and middle orders and represented an affordable and functional adaptation to the environment for farmers, hunters and traders (and those who pursued some combination of these activities). Stone houses, on the other hand, were costlier and more labour intensive, and were generally built by the wealthier members of Red River society such as the retired Chief Factors of the Hudson's Bay Company or the small elite of entrepreneurs who resided in the settlement. As St. Andrew's was home to a small elite of well to do retired traders the parish boasted a number of these substantial structures. Their builders, keenly aware of their privileged position in local society, constructed stone houses and churches as monuments to their wealth and prosperity and a handful of these stone buildings, such as Kennedy House, Twin Oaks, Hay House, and St. Andrew's Church and Rectory remain in the parish today. [85]

Red River Frame architecture, though simple in design and layout and devoid of stylistic embellishment, was nonetheless ideally suited to the environment of southern Manitoba. The four walls of the structure were formed by long vertical uprights, spaced from one to one-and-a-half metres apart, and joined by shorter horizontal logs. The squared vertical members were connected by mortise and tenon joints to a sill plate that rested upon a fieldstone foundation and to a top plate horizontal log. Tongues were then cut into the ends of the shorter horizontal logs that would form the wall and these were slid into grooves that had been chiseled into the vertical posts. In this manner the horizontal logs were built up to form a sturdy wall. Spaces between the logs were filled with mud and thatch while hay or split shingles were used for the roof. Roof styles were usually of the plain gabled design, but occasionally a hip roof with dormer windows could be seen on the houses of the better off residents of Red River. Few nails were used in the construction of a Red River frame house or outbuilding, as the use of tenoned logs and wooden pegs allowed for the expansion and contraction of the wood according to the extremes of temperature that characterized the climate of the valley. [86] This style of construction also facilitated some variation in size among Red River buildings. Although most houses were small, a few larger structures, such as the Grey Nun's convent built in 1846 near the forks, or the John Inkster house constructed in 1853, were quite large by comparison. Vertical posts spaced at regular intervals also allowed for the enlargement of an original structure. The short horizontal logs could be removed and, unlike a structure composed of single continuous logs, an addition could easily be added.

Red River frame was used for more than just house construction in the settlement and was the preferred method of building for barns and other farm outbuildings as well as for many of the early churches and schools in St. Andrew's and throughout Red River. Barns, granaries, byres and storage buildings were an essential part of most parish riverlot farms. Of generally rougher construction than many of the houses in the colony, these buildings were constructed hastily and often with materials from other structures. Local settlers often moved their farm outbuildings, dis-assembling a structure piece by piece for re-assembly at some new location. Two of the more significant building types in the settlement in the period before 1870 were the handful of wind and water mills that dotted the parish. Constructed for the most part in the Red River frame style, these mills were used to grind the grain supplied by local farmers. Many of the early paintings and sketches of the settlement depict wind and water mills and travelers to Red River often remarked upon them. Unfortunately, none of these uniquely constructed mills remain extant.

Public buildings such as churches and schools were an important part of community life in the parish and greater care was usually taken in their construction. The first church built in Red River was the Roman Catholic church of St. Boniface, begun in 1818 on the east side of the river at the forks by the Oblate fathers Provencher and Dumoulin. St. John's, constructed two years later on the west side of the river by John West of the Anglican Church Missionary Society, was the first Protestant mission in the west. Both these buildings employed Red River frame construction and were characterized by small wooden bell towers and steeples. Wood remained the primary building material for subsequent churches and schools within the settlement until the 1840s when many Red River churches were rebuilt with limestone. The first church at St. Andrew's (or the Grand Rapids as it was initially called) was built in 1832 with stout oak logs and was pulled down seventeen years later, in 1849, for the much larger stone edifice that still stands north of Winnipeg along River Road.

Lower Fort Garry, constructed by the HBC on the west bank of the Red River north of the rapids in the early 1830s, fulfilled a major role in the economy and society of St. Andrew's parish and the variety of construction styles employed by the company there, including wood, stone and rubble construction, represented a number of fur trade building traditions. While larger stone buildings such as the Warehouse, Big House and the Saleshop/Fur Loft, which were built in the 1830s, are still standing, many of the later buildings used by the company in and around the lower fort were built with logs and few of these buildings have survived. The buildings of the industrial area near the creek, such as the distillery-brewery, the malt barn, the "red store", and other smaller buildings were constructed of log and set upon a field stone foundation. Similarly, the buildings associated with the HBC farm located just beyond the fort's north wall were also of log construction, such as the stableman's house, cattle byres and barns. The original Farm Manager's house and forge were also built of logs in the Red River frame style. A number of rubble-fill, or "columbage" style buildings are also present at Lower Fort Garry and include the Men's House, the annex to the Big House, a stable that no longer stands, and possibly the malt barn that was located south of the fort near the creek. The essential design of these particular buildings was similar to Red River frame but rather than employing logs as horizontal members, loose stone and mortar was placed between the regularly spaced wooden uprights. The exterior wall was then lathed and stuccoed. All the rubble-filled buildings at the fort were erected in a twenty year period between 1840 and the 1860. Rubble-fill (or columbage pierroté) was a Canadien design and building technique that derived from the half-timbered houses of medieval France. Although no documentation exists which might prove the case, it is likely that they were built by the stonemason Belonie Gibeault from Montreal who worked for the Hudson's Bay Company in the Lower Red River district throughout the period.

Unlike other forms of construction in the prairie west before 1870, Red River frame was an accessible building technique that required few specialized skills on behalf of the builder. For this reason most frame buildings in the parish and the surrounding area were assembled by the owner himself with the help of two or three neighbours. The labour intensive part of the operation involved the cutting of the logs for the posts, sills and horizontal members, the planing of the rough timbers, and the cutting of tongues in the horizontal pieces, as well as the grooves in the upright posts which received them. Once this work was complete the actual building could be assembled in a few days by a crew of two or three men. Chinking the logs with mud and thatch, constructing the interior partitions and making the wood floor and clay fireplace might take another week or so. The wood necessary for the construction of log structures was abundant in the parish before 1840 when the Red River, and the small creeks which flowed into it, were bordered by thick stands of poplar, maple, elm and oak. As settlement expanded at St. Andrew's the demand for wood increased and local residents were forced to travel greater distances in order to collect the large logs that were required for fuel and construction purposes. Wooding sites favoured by local settlers included "the pines" east of the Red in the Bird's Hill area, and along the shores of Lake Winnipeg. Large oak logs were favoured for the construction of the exterior framing of a log building and pine was used for the interior flooring. Pine and sometimes cedar were used to make roofing shingles and poplar wood was employed in the construction of interior partitions. Finishing materials, such as hay for thatch and mud for chinking the cracks in the logs, the making of roughcast plaster and the construction of fireplaces, was available along the banks of the river. Lime for whitewashing was obtained by burning limestone from riverbank deposits in specially dug pits. Tools used in the construction of Red River frame buildings were rudimentary. Chisels, simple planes, axes and adzes were the only implements required and as these were frequently in short supply they were often loaned out by local settlers to their neighbours. While some of these tools were handmade within the settlement, others were purchased from the nearby Hudson's Bay Company stores at lower fort.

In keeping with the design simplicity of most Red River architecture, the interior of a typical house in the parish was fairly basic. Partitioned into one, two or three rooms by interior walls of poplar wood, lath work and plaster, these cottages presented a comfortable, if unpretentious, accommodation. One contemporary account described the interior of a typical home:

Inside is but a single room, well whitewashed ... and exceptionally tidy; a bed occupies one corner, a sort of couch another, a rung ladder leads up to loose boards overhead which form an attic, a trap door in the middle of the room opens to a small hole in the ground where milk and butter are kept cool; from the beam is suspended a hammock, used as a cradle for the baby, shelves singularly hung hold a scanty stock of plates, knives and forks; two windows on either side, covered with mosquito netting, admit the light, and a modicum of air; chests and boxes supply the place of seats with here and there a keg by way of an easy-chair. An open fireplace of whitewashed clay gives sign of cheer and warmth in the long winter. [87]

Larger log houses had a second story, a greater number of rooms heated by Carron stoves rather than a central fireplace, a better quality of furniture (including pieces ordered from England) and perhaps even area carpets to cover the bare wood floors. Summer kitchens often adjoined the main house or were located close by.

The extremes of climate in the Red River valley, especially the long, cold winters, presented serious problems for the residents of St. Andrew's parish. The style of construction used by the settlers, however, helped to alleviate some of these difficulties. Wood walls were able to "breathe" and provided reasonably good insulation against the elements. Logs were chinked with a combination of mud and straw, or sometimes buffalo hair, a mixture that could expand and contract with the temperature and which helped to insulate the structure. Some larger log buildings were also sided with weatherboard which gave them further protection against the cold, and in other instances roughcast, or stucco, was applied to exterior wood surfaces. Interior walls might be panelled with wood, or covered with a lime plaster that was manufactured in the parish. Describing homes in the Red River settlement Alexander Ross noted that "the generality of the people use thatch roofs, which are light, watertight, and durable." As straw is a good insulator, and later prairie farmers often banked their houses with straw to ward off the cold, Red River frame houses were probably reasonably warm in winter. Althought oak and occasionally cedar shingles were used, cedar was hard to come by in Red River and oak warped in the summer heat and had to be replaced every twelve to fifteen years. The small number of windows and doors in the average home served to keep out the summer heat and the winter cold. Window glass was imported from England and was often packed in barrels of molasses in order to survive the rough journey aboard the York boats that traveled between Hudson Bay and the settlement. Cellars were usually dug and were accessed through a trap door in the floor, and while a handful of homes in the parish might have had full basements -- which provided further insulation against the cold -- most had only partial cellars that served as a cold storage area in summer for vegetables, meat and dairy products. Despite these protections against the winter cold, surviving the elements in Red River required a great deal of energy from area settlers. Buffalo robes and thick wool blanket bed covers could be found in almost every St. Andrew's home in the 19th century. Fireplaces and stoves were used to heat the homes and though some of the more affluent in the settlement used stone to construct their fireplaces, most log homes had fireplaces comprised of a frame of willow or poplar branches mudded with a mixture of clay, water, and straw that was kneaded into a paste and baked hard by the fire in the hearth. Metal stoves were also popular and had to be imported from Britain or, later, from the United States. Stoves made by the Carron Company of Scotland were shipped to York Factory in pieces where they were assembled and fired and then shipped south to the Red River Settlement. Stoves were usually centrally located inside the home, either in the front hallway of the larger structures, or against an interior partition. When the temperature reached minus twenty or thirty celsius, as it often did in the settlement during the depths of winter, the stoves and fireplaces were kept constantly burning. Gathering wood for fuel was an essential part of life in the parish. Each fall residents had to travel some distance to the various wooding sites on Lake Winnipeg or east of the Red River where two or three days were needed to chop and stack the wood for transport back to the settlement. The firewood was hauled home on oxen-pulled sleds or on Red River carts. A large quantity of wood was needed to heat the average home through the winter months, and settlers were often forced to return to "the pines" one or more times during winter to replenish their depleted supplies.

If St. Andrew's settlers lived a somewhat precarious existence in the initial decades after the founding of the parish, a fact reflected in the rudimentary style of their architecture, by the mid-nineteenth century, and the growth of a commercial and ecclesiastical elite within the parish, the nature of construction began to change. For a number of the area's more prominent citizens, or at least those who considered themselves the elite of the settlement, the style, size and architectural sophistication of their residences, churches and forts provided outward signs of their privileged position within local society. The creation of a "little Britain in the wilderness," a goal close to the hearts of the "aristocracy" of Red River -- active and retired Hudson's Bay Company Chief Factors and Chief Traders, the Anglican clergy, and the major Métis and European traders and entrepreneurs -- was partly reflected in the scale, materials and design of their homes and public buildings. [88]

The design of these larger buildings drew heavily upon the architectural traditions of the fur trade and its French and Scottish ancestries. In the west the nature of architectural design and the choice of building materials reflected the ethnic origins of a Euro-Canadian fur trade tradition as represented by the Scots and Orcadians of the HBC and the Canadiens, Scots and Métis of the North West Company. It was the manor houses of Scotland and the stone cottages of old Quebec that provided the basic design for similar buildings in Red River. The design of the typical manor house in eighteenth century Scotland was characterized by a symmetrical plan and facade where windows were regularly spaced about a central door. The "laird's house", or the kind of house built by small Scottish landowners, was characterized by its modest size, symmetrical design, and hipped roof, and was widely adopted throughout Britain by clergymen, merchants and master craftsmen. As many of these types of people formed the bulk of early immigration to Western Canada, the "laird's house" design was brought to Red River. The simplicity of the early external design and facade was continued in the interior where a central hallway and staircase divided the ground floor into two main rooms. Bedrooms were located on the second floor, while a third floor attic was usually used for storage. Large fireplaces might be located at either end of the building. [89]

Stone construction in St. Andrew's and throughout Red River in the nineteenth century also derived from the building traditons of Quebec which, in turn, had evolved from the centuries-old traditions of Norman architecture. Though variations on a basic design existed throughout the different regions of Quebec, domestic structures were usually characterized by a common oblong shape, steep pitched roofs, low white-washed walls and small dormer windows. The construction of stone buildings in Red River -- whether of Scottish or French design -- was usually carried out by skilled stonemasons and the ethnicity of the individual mason had much to do with the ultimate form and layout of a particular structure. Thus, the Big House at Lower Fort Garry, constructed by Pierre LeBlanc from Quebec, mimics the symmetrical fenestration, sweeping balcony, and pavilion or bellcast style hipped roof that was common to the stone houses of French Canada. [90] Conversely, the large stone Warehouse, built at the lower fort in the late 1830s, or the Rectory at St. Andrew's, built in the 1850s, both constructed under the direction of Scottish stonemason Duncan McRae, reflect the simple manor house design of the laird's house.

Stone construction was used for more than the Hudson's Bay Company forts or the houses of the elite in Red River, and also characterized public buildings in the colony, such as the numerous stone churches that were built after 1830. These included St. Boniface Cathedral and the Anglican churches of St. Andrew's, St. Paul's, St. John's, St. Peter's and St. Clement's, as well as Kildonan Presbyterian north of the Forks and the Little Britain Presbyterian church constructed in 1874 on lots 123 and 124 near Lower Fort Garry in St. Andrew's parish. At St. Boniface, Bishop Provencher's first log church was replaced by a large stone cathedral designed by Jérome Demers, a colleague of Thomas Baillairgé, the great Quebecois church architect. The church was destroyed by a fire in 1860 and a second stone cathedral was constructed under the direction of Mgr. Taché. This second cathedral was influenced by the neo-Classical style which marked the detailing of the pilasters and pillars of the cupola and verandah, the pediments of the dormers, the rounded windows of the porch, and the regularity of the fenestration. It was replaced by a larger cathedral in 1908 which burned in a spectacular fire in 1968.

Most Anglican churches in Red River in the nineteenth century were characterized by the Gothic Revival style. Pointed windows and doorways were employed in a simple, box-like form of cut limestone that did not differ substantially from the wood churches that marked the early years of the settlement. The first stone Anglican church in the settlement, the Upper Church (consecrated as St. John's Cathedral in 1853 by Bishop David Anderson) was erected north of the Forks in 1834 under the direction of the Rev. David Jones. St. John's was not built in the Gothic Revival style, having rounded or arched windows. It was constructed by the stonemason Pierre LeBlanc who had directed much of the early building at Lower Fort Garry. Foundation problems and a severe flood in 1852 led to the demolition of the first stone St. John's Church and its replacement by a larger structure begun in 1862. (The present church dates from 1926.) Later stone churches, such as the Middle Church or St. Paul's built in the 1840s, and St. Andrew's completed in 1849, were long rectangular buildings with a high tower and belfry and Gothic Revival detailing in the windows and crenellated towers. The Hebridean mason, Duncan McRae, supervised the building of these two churches, along with a number of other church buildings in Red River, including St. Peter's, the later St. John's Church, and Kildonan Presbyterian. This latter building was patterned after the traditional Scottish Kirk but integrated a number of Gothic Revival details in its construction. Without the large east window that characterized most Anglican churches in the settlement it was, according to one Red River historian, "plain, even to severity". (For a discussion of the architecture of St. Andrew's Church see above 47-49)

The limestone used in the construction of houses, churches and fort buildings in St. Andrew's was quarried from areas along the riverbank. Many of the richer areas of limestone in the lower settlement were located along the lower Red River where large outcroppings of the easily worked stone punctuated the forested riverbank between Lower Fort Garry and Netley Marsh. Other sources of limestone occurred at Stony Mountain and along the shores of Lake Winnipeg. Quarrying the stone was a arduous, time-consuming and expensive task. Describing the quarrying operations for the stone used in the building of St. Andrew's Church, Rev. William Cockran wrote in 1845:

The rock is covered with gravel and clay to the depth of 8 feet which has to be wheeled off before it can be worked. And after all our expense and labour, there is only one strata about 3 feet thick above water....The second strata is under water everytime the North wind blows, consequently we shall be able to work it occasionally....The rock must be blasted with powder which [costs] 1/6 per lb., and our wages and other implements are also expensive from the high cost of Iron and Steel. [91]

Limestone was often quarried in the spring and then transported to the building site where it was worked, or shaped, by the masons. Stone from the riverbank was obtained with the use of a windlass which lifted the rough cut slabs onto Red River carts which were pulled by oxen to the top of the bank and transported to the building site. Here limestone was also burned in deep pits to produce the slake lime that would be used as mortar. After working the stone and producing the mortar the masons began the painstaking task of setting the limestone blocks. Depending upon available labour, this was a slow process; the walls at Lower Fort Garry took almost ten years to build. While much of the actual construction of a stone wall or building employed either rough cut or partially worked stone blocks, some of the more decorative features such as the smoothly-shaped stone lintels and arches of the parish churches were far more labour intensive.

Today, the area along River Road in old St. Andrew's parish boasts many fine examples of the stone built architectural tradition of Red River. St. Andrew's Church and Rectory, Twin Oaks, the former Miss Davis' School (all three national historic sites), along with Little Britain Church, Kennedy House built by William Kennedy at the rapids in 1866, Hay House, the remains of Scott house, and the stone buildings of Lower Fort Garry, all stand as stone symbols and reminders of life in the parish in the nineteenth century. However, it is the hundreds of log buildings of the parish's early settlers -- the houses, barns and outbuildings of those Red River farmers, hunters and tripmen who settled the riverlots of the lower settlement, almost all of which have disappeared -- that better describe parish life in the decades after its founding. It is the names of Kennedy, Davis, Cockran, and Scott that survive today in St. Andrew's, at least through association with their extant stone houses. The memories of such individuals as Andrew and Margaret Spence, who inhabited lot number thirteen, or the family of John and Elizabeth Tait on lot fifty-six, have faded, however, as their nineteenth century log houses disappeared and the old riverlots became increasingly obscured by modern development in the parish. Sadly, with them went many of the tangible reminders of an early mixed Métis and European community in Manitoba's past.

Endnotes

V. "By a Union of Effort We Effect a Great Deal:" The Mission and the Community

1 John Foster, "The Country-Born in the Red River Settlement," 91.

2 Archer Martin, The Hudson's Bay Company's Land Tenures (London, William Clowes Ltd., 1898), 223.

3 PAM, HBCA, D.4, George Simpson to Andrew Colvile, May 20, 1822.

4 John Foster, "The Country-Born in the Red River Settlement," 131.

5 PAM, CMSA, A77, William Cockran to Secretaries, July 29, 1830.

6 Ibid

7 Ibid, "Report of the State of Religion... August 10, 1835.

8 PAM, CMSA, A77, William Cockran to Secretaries, July 29, 1830.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid, A78, Journal of William Cockran, November 15, 1838.

11 Ibid, A77, Journal of David Jones, January 28, 1828.

12 Ibid, A77, Journal of William Cockran, May 15, 1829.

13 John Foster, "The Country-Born in the Red River Settlement," 153.

14 Ibid, 161.

15 PAM, CMSA, A77, William Cockran to Secretaries July 30, 1833. While Cockran's comment would seem to indicate that the Church served as a broker in the provision of community assistance, no doubt the practice was carried on privately between Halfbreed families at the Rapids.

16 Ibid., July 25, 1833.

17 Ibid., August 3, 1838.

18 Ibid., A78, August 7, 1840.

19 PAM, MG1, D.20, Donald Ross Papers, Donald Ross to James Hargrave, March 12, 1835.

20 PAM, CMSA, A77, Journal of William Cockran, August 2, 1832. According to the 1835 census families at the Rapids had a mean average of 4.5 children. The average number of children per household in Red River increased until 1843. Due to such factors as disease and occasional food shortages this average declined between 1843 and 1849. See Frits Pannekoek, "A Probe Into the Demographic Structure of Nineteenth Century Red River" in L. H. Thomas, (ed.), Essays on Western History (Edmonton, The University of Alberta Press, 1976, 92.

21 Sylvia Van Kirk, Many Tender Ties, 106.

22 Sylvia Van Kirk, "What if Mama was an Indian, The Cultural Ambivalence of the Alexander Ross Family" in J. Foster, (ed.), The Developing West (Edmonton, University of Alberta Press, 1983), 125-35.

23 Ibid.

24 John Foster, "The Country-Born in the Red River Settlement," 184.

25 PAM, CMSA, A77, Journal of William Cockran, April 5, 1833.

26 Ibid.

27 John Foster, "The Country-Born in the Red River Settlement," 184.

28 See James Sutherland to John Sutherland, August 10, 1842, as quoted in John Foster, "The Country-Born in the Red River Settlement," 185.

29 D.N. Sprague and R.P. Frye, The Geneology of the First Métis Nation (Winnipeg, Pemmican Publications, 1983). See Table 2 "Family Size, Personal Property, and Geographical Location and Land Owners, 1835," n.p.

30 E.E. Rich, The Hudson's Bay Company, 1670-1870, Volume II, 315.

31 PAM, MG7, B4-1, M274, St. Andrew's Parish Records, Register of Marriages, 1835-1910.

32 PAM, MG2, B2, Red River Census, 1835.

33 Ibid.

34 Sylvia Van Kirk, Many Tender Ties, 106.

35 John West, The Substance of a Journal, 136.

36 James Sutherland to John Sutherland August 7, 1838 as quoted in Sylvia Van Kirk, Many Tender Ties, 200.

37 D.N. Sprague and R.P. Frye, The Geneology of the First Métis Nation, Table 3, "Contract Employees of the HBC Recruited From or Retired to the Red River Colony, 1821-1870," n.p.

38 PAM, MG2, B2, Red River Census, 1835.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid., 1843.

41 Irene M. Spry, The Métis and Mixed-Bloods of Rupert's Land before 1870," in Jacqueline Peterson and Jennifer Brown, (eds.), The New Peoples:Being and Becoming Métis in North America (Winnipeg, University of Manitoba Press, 1985), 112. 42 Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Social Classes in Agrarian Societies (New York, Anchor Press, 1975), 40-52.

43 See Gerhard Ens, Homeland to Hinterland, 28-56, 93-122.

44 Frits Pannekoek, Review of Homeland to Hinterland: The Changing Worlds of the Red River Métis, H-Canada@msu.edu, September, 1997.

45 A total of sixteen censuses where taken in Red River before 1870. Censuses that included the Rapids and later St. Andrew's were carried out in 1831, 1832, 1833, 1835, 1838, 1840,1843, 1846, 1847, and 1849. Only a partial census has survived from 1856.

46 PAM, CMSA, A78, William Cockran to the Secretaries, October 25, 1836.

47 Ibid., Journal of William Cockran, September 2, 1842.

48 Ibid., MG7, B4-1, M274, St. Andrew's Parish Records, Register of Burials, 1846-87. This fact corresponds to the decline in the number of children per household in Red River in the 1840s. See Frits Pannekoek, "A Probe into the Demographic Structure of Nineteenth Century Red River," p. 82.

49 Ibid., while the age of death has been recorded for registered burials in the parish, a simple statistical average of these ages will not shed light on trends occurring within the community. Moreover, the limited number of yearly entries (47 in 1846) does not allow for a conclusive computation. A quick scan of the data, however, reveals that 22 of the 47 deaths recorded in 1846 occurred in infants two years of age and under.

50 Frits Pannekoek, "The Churches and the Social Structure in the Red River Area, 1818 - 1870," 192.

51 Ibid, 193-94.

52 PAM, CMSA, A78, Robert James to Rev. Davies, August 7, 1847.

53 Ibid.

54 Ibid., A92, Journal of James Hunter, March 29, 1864.

55 In his journal for October 1864, St. Andrew's resident Samuel Taylor wrote: "The Scarlet Fever is all through the Settlement now this while back." PAM, MG2, C13, Journal of Samuel Taylor, October, 1864.

56 Gerald Friesen, The Canadian Prairies, 116.

57 PAM, CMSA, A98, Journal of J.P. Gardiner, n.d.

58 F.A. Peake, "The Achievements and Frustrations of James Hunter," Journal of the Canadian Church Historical Society, Volume 19, 1977, 158.

59 Ibid., A91, James Hunter to the Secretaries, April 8, 1857.

60 See, for instance, the writings of Rev. Gardiner at St. Andrew's who wrote to the CMS in 1870 that "there is little doubt now that the instigation of the Rebellion was intended to make this a Roman Catholic colony." PAM, CMSA, A99, J.P. Gardiner to the Secretaries, November 30, 1870.

61 Ibid. See for example, Bishop Machray's contention in a letter to Sir John Young that the "1,400,000 acres [to be given] to the Half-breed part of the community is a most dangerous provision," in W.L. Morton, (ed.), Alexander Begg's Red River Journal (Toronto, The Champlain Society, 1956), 559.

62 Ibid, 558.

63 Ibid, 108. It should also be noted that the Christian Indians at St. Peter's and the handful living at St. Andrew's opposed Riel's government, primarily due to the influence of John Shultz and Colonel John Dennis. See Ibid, 101.

64 PAM, MG3, B1-2, Thomas Bunn Papers, Donald Gunn to Thomas Bunn, February 11, 1870.

65 See Frits Pannekoek, A Snug Little Flock, 181-187.

66 As quoted in Gerald Friesen, "River Road," in River Road, Essays on Manitoba and Prairie History (Winnipeg: The University of Manitoba Press, 1996) 8.

67 D.N. Sprague and P.R. Mailhot, "Persistent Settlers: The Dispersal and Resettlement of the Red River Métis, 1870-1885," Canadian Ethnic Studies, Vol. XVII, No. 2, 1985, 2-3.

68 The term "corporate rights" has been used to describe rights other than those expressed by simply land or religion. The concerns of the Métis in 1869-70 went beyond these individual rights. They demanded the right to a kind of "collectivety of culture" as defined by language, faith, kinship networks, education and the socialization of parish and neighbourhood.

In the years following the events of 1869-70 the Manitoba land question became the single most contentious issue to face the new Canadian administration. Section 31 of the Manitoba Act promised "one million four hundred thousand acres...for the benefit of the families of Halfbreed residents," This acreage (given in the form of $160 worth of scrip that could be used to purchase Dominion land) was to be initially divided amongst the children of Métis heads of families. The legislation, however, was changed in 1874 to also include the parents of these Métis children. As well, the descendants of the original Selkirk settlers were offered approximately 140 acres of land per head. But through mismanagement, or a deliberate attempt by the federal government to allow speculators to disenfranchise the Manitoba Métis in favour of incoming Canadian settlement, only a portion of the grant, estimated at less than 600,000 acres in 1882, was ever allotted. The rest ended up in the hands of speculators and Eastern Canadian squatters who were attempting to turn Red River into an Anglo-Ontarian settlement. Early in 1871 the new Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba, Adams G. Archibald, proposed to the Dominion government that local legislation be framed in order to administer Section 32 of the Act, that part of the law which insured that land already occupied would not be jeopardized by the transfer. The federal government rejected Archibald's proposal. Instead, Ottawa considered the whole of the province to be Dominion land and in effect made no distinction between occupied parish lots and the open territory outside the settlement belt. This interpretation had serious ramifications for the Métis parishes along the Red and Assiniboine, including St. Andrew's. New legislation was used to bar anyone who had not made sufficient "improvements" to their land which might include a minimum number of cultivated acres, or the existence of an acceptable dwelling. The result of the legislation was to drive from the colony those settlers the government felt were indifferent farmers, or those who cultivated only a few acres while engaged in other types of economic activity. Gerhard Ens has argued, however, that it was the collapse of the HBC monopoly in the 1840s and the development of a new "proto-industrial" Métis economy based largely on the exploitation of the buffalo robe trade in the western interior that led to the abandonment of agriculture, the creation of hivernant communities on the plains, and eventually to emigration from Red River. [] But historians, including Diane Payment and D.N. Sprague, maintain that the Red River Métis were driven from their lands by government dispossession, the violence of the troops sent to control the settlement, and the racism of incoming Ontario settlers. Approximately 1,200 families in Manitoba lost all chance of obtaining patent on their land because they could not meet the government's stipulation for ownership. []And while the "pull" of the buffalo robe trade may have provided economic alternatives for some Red River Métis after 1850, it was the "push" of dispossession that ultimately changed Red River from a Native settlement to an Anglo-Canadian province of the new dominion.

69 PAM, MG2, B3, District of Assiniboia, Census of Manitoba, 1870.

70 Gerald Friesen, The Canadian Prairies, 202.

71 See for example, Beyond the Gates of Lower Fort Garry (Municipality of St. Andrew's, 1982) a local history of the parish and municipality.

72 Gerald Friesen, "River Road," 11.

73 Laura Peers, The Ojibwa of Western Canada, 1780 to 1870 (Winnipeg, University of Manitoba Press, 1994) 123-139.

74 Ibid, 182.

75 Peter Grant, "The Saulteaux Indians about 1804." Volume II in Les Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest, ed. L.R.Masson (New York, Antiquarian Press, 1960) 329, as quoted in Laura Peers, Aboriginal People and Lower Fort Garry (Winnipeg, Parks Canada, 1995) 33.

76 David Butterfield, Architectural Heritage of the Selkirk and District Planning Area (Winnipeg, Historic Resources Branch, Manitoba Department of Culture, Heritage and Citizenship, 1988)18-19.

77 For a discussion of the influence of architectural style on historic commemoration see Robert Coutts, "Stone Symbols of Dominance: The River Road Parkway and the Bias of Architectural Commemoration," NeWest Review, August, 1986.

78 David Butterfield, Architectural Heritage of the Selkirk and District Planning Area, 19-20.

79 S.H. Scudder, The Winnipeg Country, as quoted in Ibid, 21.

80 Ibid, 29

81 Ibid, 29-32.

82 George Ingram, "The Big House, Lower Fort Garry," in Canadian Historic Sites, Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History, No. 4, (Ottawa, National Historic Sites Service, 1970) 114.

83 PAM, CMSA, A78, William Cockran to Secretaries, October, 1845.