A unique class of records was produced in course of the fur trade business. These are of particular importance for people of Métis ancestry, as a great many Métis trace their origins to marriages between European fur traders and the Aboriginal people with whom they traded or who helped them survive in “unsettled” territory.
Most of the surviving, relevant fur traderecords are found in the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives. The HBCA’s vast collection includes a wide range of sources of genealogical information such as employee wills, mission church registers, post journals, employee expense accounts and local censuses.
One of the most valuable sources is the series that includes the wills of HBCA employees. Some of the wills are dated as early as 1763. (See page XXX, for a discussion of the value of wills as an information source.)
These are filed alphabetically in most cases and, in others, there are indexes, so finding the relevant document is not difficult.
In my personal examination of these wills, I found five that provided Aboriginal names for wives or children. There were also many other wills that pertained to mixed-blood families that did not say so explicitly. Used in combination with other records, these can be excellent evidence. Unfortunately, only a small proportion of the total workforce ever wrote a will or filed it with the company (mostly officers).
The next most valuable records are the scattered birth, marriage and death registers; marriage contracts; school records and post censuses (including the Indian population settled around the post) that were generally filed in the “miscellaneous records” series for each post. Where these exist, they can be extremely helpful. These records, as they are original and usually contain primary information, should be considered very reliable and accurate.
Officers’ and servant’s contracts can also provide helpful information, as they often include birth dates and birth locations. Since these are original business papers, created in the course of regular commercial activities by people who had good reason to know, and kept in proper custody, with no motive for misrepresentation, these records are generally considered very reliable and accurate.
Another set of useful records are the lists of servants, some of which provide the home parish of each employee (“Rupert’s Land” or “Hudson Bay” generally indicates a person with Aboriginal heritage) and birth date. These are also helpful in tracking the movements of employees from one posting to another. This information allows you to identify other records that might be helpful. These are nearly as reliable as the contracts, but since the information was not provided directly by the individual, they are slightly more prone to error.
Post journals are excellent sources for information about the day-to-day activities of the employees at any given post, but rarely provide personal information. Mention is sometimes made of specific Aboriginal individuals, however usually it would only be the main representative of the group and the spelling of his name can vary a great deal from instance to instance, even in the same post journal.
The Anglican, Roman Catholic and Methodist churches also established missions throughout Hudson’s Bay Company territory. Many of their records of baptisms, marriages and burials can be found in the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives
(as well as in other repositories). (See page XXX for a discussion of the value of church records as evidence.)
Oral history tapes also exist for a number of former HBC employees. These interviews were conducted in the years 1958 to 1963, 1984 and 1988. (Again, see page XXX for discussions of the use of oral history information as genealogical evidence.)
Finally, many fur traders kept written journals of their careers and travels during their employment in the fur trade. A few of these have been published. These accounts provide excellent information about the trader in question, but also often about other traders and their families with whom the subject interacted. The personal biographical information can be considered primary and thus quite reliable. Information about others is mostly secondary, but still valuable. The Hudson’s Bay Company Archives holds over a dozen of these journals in manuscript form and, through a joint publishing agreement with the Champlain Society, a few have been published.
Each set of fur trade records has its own problems. The ones that provide the best genealogical information (wills, BMD registers, censuses) are very few and incomplete. Conversely, the “business” records are so massive that it takes a lot of searching to find the rare helpful piece of information.
Also, records vary across class and time period. The records are excellent for officers and their families and moderately good for long-term servants, but very poor for temporary employees or those not officially employed, such as coureurs du bois, trappers, guides and the like. And a great deal more information can be learned about recent employees (twentieth century) compared with those of the early years (seventeenth and eighteenth century).
Most HBCA records can be borrowed on microfilm through the inter-institutional loan system to any participating library, archive or research centre. However time and persistence is required to search them.
SeeChapter 3 for more detailed information on the holdings of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and other institutions that hold fur trade records.
The records of the federal government department responsible for Aboriginal people are a valuable resource for anyone researching Aboriginal history and genealogy.
A great deal of patience is required to conduct research in these records since they are not filed or indexed by name, but rather by band, agency/field office or district. Relevant records can be scattered throughout many sub-departments and agencies. Because of the amount of information and lack of indexing, it is almost always necessary to identify the relevant band before beginning research in these records.
Two types of pay lists form the most valuable records prior to 1951: treaty annuity pay lists and interest distribution pay lists. Treaty annuity pay lists begin in 1850 and include only those bands that participated in treaties. Interest distribution pay lists begin in 1856 and include only members of bands that had funds held in trust by the government (these include most bands in Ontario and Eastern Canada, but not all). The early lists give only the names of the heads of families (or their representatives) who collected the payments, with the number of men, women, boys and girls noted for each family. Thus, in many cases, only the male heads of households are ever listed by name.
Starting about 1893, the treaty annuity lists and interest distribution lists began including the names of all members of a band. Some lists also include further details such as birth dates and relationships between family members. To locate treaty annuity pay lists, you must know the number of the treaty to which the band adhered. Interest distribution lists are listed by band name or agency.
These lists are generally available up to and including 1909 only. Because of the federal privacy act (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, PIPEDA), you need special permission to view more recent lists.
Band membership lists may also be found, but again you may have to make a special request for access to the records if they are more recent than 1910 or so.
Enfranchisement lists from 1920 to 1945 are open to the public. These lists record the names and former band affiliation of Status Indians who lost their status and became enfranchised. Status could be lost when a woman married a White or non-status man. A Status Indian person can also choose to become non-status in order to purchase reserve lands or gain the right to vote in federal elections. Individual case files for enfranchised individuals can be searched for by name in the online Government of Canada inventory
Starting in 1951, a list of all registered Status Indians has been kept and regularly updated. It is called the Indian Register. The Indian Register includes the person’s name, vital events, familial relationships, religion and band membership. A paper copy with information up to 1984 is available at Library and Archives Canada, but access is restricted due to privacy laws, so you must get special permission. Generally, this requires proof of your relationship to the person mentioned.
Special censuses of Aboriginal communities were also taken by Indian Agents starting in 1871. In most cases, the detailed enumerations that listed every household, or even every individual, were not kept. Only the summary reports were retained. However, some did survive and can be found in the government records.
For areas now called Ontario and Quebec, there were also very early “censuses,” which were actually lists of Aboriginal people receiving “presents.” These lists mostly cover the 1830s to 1860s.
The government has also produced a name index to Aboriginal soldiers who fought in World War I. This index identifies the unit name with which the soldier served and provides references to the government’s case files.
Finally, Indian Land Records can be useful, as sales of reserve lands to the government and leases to non-natives were often the result of status women marrying non-Aboriginals or unregistered Aboriginals. These relationships are frequently recorded.
The records created by the government are considered official records. In most cases, surviving records are originals, created at the time of the event and maintained under proper custody. So, these records are generally considered reliable. However, they have many of the same limitations of other European-created records—namely, the cultural bias involved in their collection and lack of familiarity with the languages of the people whose names and personal information they were recording (thus odd and inconsistent spellings of names, among other errors).
Uneven survival of the records is also an issue. Records that exist for some bands may not exist for others or they may be filed differently and thus be difficult to locate. Also, because the government dealt with Aboriginal people mostly at the band level, many records do not record individual band members’ names, only the names of leaders, or of “heads of households.” Finally, these records
generally deal only with Status Indians or members of recognized bands. Thus, a great many people of Métis ancestry will not find their ancestors mentioned at all.
Most of these records are available on microfilm and can be borrowed through the inter-institutional loan system.
See Chapter 5 for detailed information about the holdings of Library and Archives Canada.
Although this guide focuses on the records of Aboriginal people in Central and Eastern Canada, many Métis people from the western provinces moved to Ontario and Quebec, so I am including a discussion of the most important genealogical record for Métis people from the western provinces: scrip records created by the federal Department of the Interior.
Following Confederation and the subsequent joining of Manitoba and parts of the then Northwest Territories (now known as Saskatchewan and Alberta), the government of Canada sought to extinguish any rights that people of mixed Aboriginal and European ancestry might have had to the land. They did this by offering “scrip”: certificates entitling the bearer to either a certain amount of land or the equivalent value in money.
Scrip was allotted to Métis heads of families and children of Métis heads of families who were residents of Manitoba/Northwest Territories in July 1870, and then later extended to 1885 for those living in the Northwest Territories (now Saskatchewan and Alberta).
There are two major sets of genealogically valuable scrip records: Manitoba Scrip claims (1870–1886) and Northwest Half-breed Scrip claims (1885–1906). The affidavits and applications give the dates and places of birth of heads of families and names of their parents, spouse and children. The records give the dates and places of birth of children of “half-breeds” and the names of their spouses and parents and whether they were “Indians” or “half-breeds.”
Because of the large amount of genealogical information contained in these affidavits and applications, these records are extremely valuable. As official government records containing testimony that was sworn by oath, these are very credible. In addition, the original records (or a microfilm copy) are available and have been kept in proper custody throughout their history. The people making the affidavits and applications had first-hand knowledge of most of the information to which they testified.
Most of the affidavits and applications are available in digital form online through the website of Library and Archives Canada. The microfilmed records are also available through inter-library loan.
There are also many supplementary records that are not online, including scrip registers, receipts and correspondence, involved with administering the collection and investigation of claims and distribution of land and money scrip. Sometimes during investigations the applications and affidavits were removed from the departmental files and placed in separate case files, so some records will take more work to find.
The correspondence and administrative records of governments in Canada (colonial, federal and provincial) include vast amounts of information about Aboriginal people. Topics include the development and administration of reserves, social service provisions, individual requests for assistance, and legal disputes. All of these records may identify particular individuals and their relationships with others.
To assess the credibility of information contained in these records you need to know who created the documents and why. Generally, genealogical information contained in these records is likely to be reasonably accurate.
The main drawback of these records is their large amount and lack of index. This means a great deal of time and effort is required to use these records.
See Section V (** add pages) for detailed information about the holdings of federal and provincial government archives.
In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many historians and anthropologists studied the history and cultures of Aboriginal groups. Their published studies and their original research notes can be very helpful to researchers looking for information about their Aboriginal ancestors. Genealogical charts prepared by anthropologists and historians provide very reliable information about the generations then living, and perhaps for a generation or two earlier. Much earlier information is weaker, but might still be useful.
Published studies can be found in anthropological and historical journals. Unpublished research notes can often be found in the archives of universities and museums. The published material is easier to find, but the original notes can be much more helpful.
One excellent example of these records is the Lyman Draper collection at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin (copies at Library and Archives Canada). Draper was a historian who visited the Six Nations people in
Brantford and the Bay of Quinte and gathered huge quantities of documents and notes in preparation for a book about Mohawk Chief Joseph Brant (also known as Thayendinaga) and his family. The book was never published, but his collection has been used by many researchers.
Private papers of individuals who visited, worked with or had business dealings with Aboriginal people can also be helpful for researchers. These records vary widely from the private papers of government officials, which may include a great amount of official or quasi-official records, to the personal diaries and letters of travellers. Their potential is enormous, but so is the effort required to locate and examine them. A few examples will illustrate the possibilities:
The papers of Rev. John Strachan: The Rev. John Strachan was the first Bishop of Toronto as well as a member of the Executive and Legislative Councils of Upper Canada. During his long career he was very involved with Aboriginal people, both as a government representative and as a leader in the church. Among his papers are many references to Aboriginal people, including education records for missions in Manitowaning on Manitoulin Island and Sault Ste. Marie in the 1830s and 1840s (Archives of Ontario).
The Haldimand Papers: Sir Frederick Haldimand was Governor of the Province of Quebec (which then included the present provinces of Ontario and Quebec) at the time of the American Revolution. His papers contain much Six Nations material pertaining to their participation in the American Revolution and ensuing settlement in Upper Canada (Originals in the British Library, copies at Library and Archives Canada and the Archives of Ontario).
The E[dwin] Tappan Adney fonds: E. Tappan Adney was an ethnologist who spent much of his life studying and advocating for the Maliseet people of Nova Scotia. His papers include many documents pertaining to Maliseet culture, treaties and court cases involving Aboriginal rights (Originals at the Peabody Museum, Massachusetts; microfilmed copies at the Harriet Irving Library, University of New Brunswick).
Over a dozen former employees of the Hudson’s Bay Company wrote and published accounts of their careers in the fur trade. Several more left unpublished manuscripts in the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives’ collection. Independent traders and employees of other companies, such as the North West Company, have also left accounts of their lives. These accounts are extremely valuable for historians and may offer assistance to people tracing Métis genealogy. As contemporary accounts from first-hand experience, they have a certain level of credibility. However, you should watch for personal biases.
See Chapter 9 for a selection of these.
In genealogical research there is so much variation from place to place as to the types of records that are available that to find all the relevant records you know the area well. This is probably even truer for Aboriginal research. Anyone new to research in a particular region should try to visit every library, government and religious archive, cultural centre and band office in the region before concluding the search.
Repositories that are known to have significant collections of resources that may be helpful for Métis research are listed in Chapter 8 on websites
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