Strangers in Blood: Fur Trade Company Families in Indian Country

by Jennifer S.H. Brown

For two centuries (1670-1870), English, Scottish, and Canadian fur traders voyaged the myriad waterways of Rupert's Land, the vast territory charted to the Hudson's Bay Company and later splintered among five Canadian provinces and four American states. The knowledge and support of northern Native peoples were critical to the newcomer's survival and success. With acquaintance and alliance came intermarriage, and the unions of European traders and Native women generated thousands of descendants. Jennifer Brown's Strangers in Blood is the first work to look systematically at these parents and their children. Brown focuses on Hudson's Bay Company officers and North West Company wintering partners and clerks-those whose relationships are best known from post journals, correspondence, accounts, and wills. The durability of such families varied greatly. Settlers, missionaries, European women, and sometimes the courts challenged fur trade marriages. Some officers' Scottish and Canadian relatives dismissed Native wives and "Indian" progeny as illegitimate. Traders who took these ties seriously were obliged to defend them, to leave wills recognizing their wives and children, and to secure their legal and social status-to prove that they were kin, not "strangers in blood." Brown illustrates that the lives and identities of these children were shaped by factors far more complex than "blood." Sons and daughters diverged along paths affected by gender. Some descendants became Métis and espoused Métis nationhood under Louis Riel. Others rejected or were never offered that course-they passed into white or Indian communities or, in some instances, identified themselves (without prejudice) as "half breeds." The fur trade did not coalesce into a single society. Rather, like Rupert's Land, it splintered, and the historical consequences have been with us ever since.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Canada, Native American

292 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

Reviews

[Marion Lougheed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative and highly readable study of the social reality of family and kinship, alongside the colonial and non-colonial endeavours of early French and British people in what was later to become Canada. We don't get much Indigenous perspective (but then, it's explicitly about the fur traders), although Brown does incorporate as much what we would now call Metis perspective as the historical record allows.

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strangers in Blood is one of first books to fully investigate the family relationships of French, Scottish and British (male) fur traders who came to North America and, from the 17th through 19th centuries, entered into relationships with Native women. Jennifer Brown researched a slew of primary sources, and secondary sources, to get deep into the details of these relationships.

In this fascinating study, Brown shows how and why those early fur trade marriages or alliances took place and how they were viewed by Indians (as far as is possible), fur trade companies, and the participants themselves. Many of the fur-trade wives and children probably returned to the women's families; these are hard to fully document for lack of written records. But Brown is able to document a wide spectrum of ways fathers of mixed-race children provided for them and for their mothers, and how these patterns changed through the generations, particularly toward the mid-19th century as the fur trade declined and racial stratification in white society increased. She shows how the status of mixed-race women, in particular, tended to decline, not only in comparison with their mothers and grandmothers, but also in comparison with their brothers, as society became more "British." I couldn't help but conclude that the girls who were ignored by their European fathers and taken in by their Indian relatives had it better than their counterparts in the white world.

I wish that high school as well as university students were required to read this type of "social history." This one in particular simply shatters the type of black-and-white thinking that is taking such a toll on our society. I recommend this book for anyone interested in American or Canadian history; in race or gender, family studies and the like.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Now dated (and pre Richard White Middle Ground) but an excellent overview of the British fur trading companies' practices in dealing with the personal lives of their male Trader employees and families. The book is broken into 2 eras: pre and post 1821 when the companies merged, and further by company: Hudson Bay and North West.

I will add more once i've completed my actual assignment!

[Jgnat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an important book and I'm so glad I took a day to browse through the introduction and check on some family names from the index. This is now housed in the heritage section at the Edmonton Public Library.

[Heather Pundt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good overview on the subject and easy to read. Sadly it didn't answer as many questions about the NW experience as I was hoping, but a great source all the same.