Margaret L. Clarke, Editor Box 65, Mirror, Alberta
During my research of the fur trade employees of Brandon House, Souris River Post and the early Qu'Appelle posts, I came across many families who later formed part of Red River. Among them was John Lyons, who Glen Eker's research showed to be a descendant of a family of independent Jewish traders out of Montreal. He based his claim on the 1881 Red River census which gave Hebrew as the ethnicity of John and his wife and children. In the 1870 census, John's father was given as Robert Lyons.
As interesting as that is, his family connections around Brandon House and the marriages of his children in the diverse world of Red River are my focus here. The marriage of John Lyons (son of Robert Lyons) and Margaret Kipling (daughter of John Kipling, Englishman), discussed in "Using Canadian Census Records to Trace Ethnic Origin and Family Relationships: The Case of Hebrew Ancestry in a Canadian Metis Family" by Glen Eker (Generations Vol. 20, No. 2, June 1995) is one of the many relationships formed between families of co-workers. (For those interested in this family, that article includes a chart which shows the marriages of the grandchildren as well.)
My research shows that John Lyons was employed at Brandon House from 1797 to 1810, while his brother-in-law, John Ram Kipling was there from 1804 on. John Kipling, father of John Ram and Margaret, who only appears one or two years in Brandon, is recorded as having a relationship with Hannah an Indian. (John Kipling Family Chart, Charles D. Denney Papers, Glenbow Archives, Calgary, Alberta.) The marriage of John Lyons and Margaret Kipling is recorded by Anglican church records as being on 18 December, 1827. (St. Johns' Marriages, 1820-1835 #142.) The baptisms of three of their children, Mary, Jane and Thomas, were recorded at the same time, (St. John's Baptisms, Mary, #604, pg. 89; Jane, #605, pg. 89; Thomas, #606, pg. 89) showing that their births and the relationship predated that time.
Charles Denney developed a family chart from his research on this family, which included the following children and spouses:
Sophia, b. 1807, m. Francois St. Denis (b. 1796)
John b. 1811, m. Margaret Gibson m. 7 Dec. 1837
Nancy b. 1815, m. Magnus Birston m. 3 Mar. 1830
James b. 1817, m. Catherine Cook m.12 Mar. 1836
Jane b. 1822, d. 24 April 1834, buried St. Johns
Thomas b. 1825, m. Charlotte Pruden m. 18 Dec. 1846
Mary Ann bapt. 19 Dec. 1827, m. Charles Cook 5 Mar. 1836
Charlotte bapt. 15 July 1828, m. George Calder 24 Mar. 1843
Miles b. 1830, d. 6 Aug. 1841
Henry b. 1832, m. Mary Stevens m. 17 October 1852.
("The Family of John Lyons and Margaret Kipling" Family Chart #172.000, Charles D. Denney Papers, Glenbow Archives, Calgary.)
John Lyons' career with the Hudson's Bay Company ended in August 1816 when he was dismissed for refusing to accompany James Inkster on a trip to the Indian Elbow on the Upper Assiniboine. In the spring of 1818, then a "Freeman", he joined others in establishing the short-lived "Birsay Village" on the Assiniboine River near present-day St. Francois Xavier. (Barry Kaye, "Birsay Village on the Assiniboine" The Beaver, Winter, 1981, p. 18) This group included other former employees of Brandon House, including Humphrey Favel, Thomas Favel and Magnus Spence, who appears to have been the leader.
An interesting side issue to the story of this family is the way the census's in Red River recorded their ethnic origins and religions. Glen Eker demonstrated the changes by year in a table in his article.
Year
Ethnic Origin
Religion
1870
English Metis
Protestant
French Metis
Catholic
1881
English
Church of England
Scottish
Church of England
French
Catholic
Hebrew
Church of England
1891
not listed
Church of England
not listed
Catholic
1901
Cree English Breed
Church of England
Cree Scotch Breed
Church of England
He also included a paragraph discussing his understanding and use of the changes in information recorded in the census.
"The census records from 1870 to 1901 reveals the common ancestry and mixed ethnic origins of these related groups of families. The families share a common English, Scotch, Indian and Hebrew ancestry with one branch having French ancestry. The census records also show how the ethnic origin of an individual may change from census to census depending on what information the individual gives to the enumerator or what information the enumerator chooses to record. For example, Wm. Lyons ethnic origin changes from English Metis in 1870, to Hebrew in 1881, to Cree English Breed in 1901. These changes, however, allow the researcher to discover information about an individual or family that may not be previously known." (p.14)
I was very happy to see someone commenting on the changing ethnic origin categories for the same individuals for the different years of the Red River Census. These changes would seem to reflect the change in dominant society values toward ethnic minorities.
The Newsletter has officially moved its publishing address. We can now be found at 4611 50th Avenue, Mirror, Alberta.
P.O. Box 65, Mirror, Alberta T0B 3C0.
Email: mclarke@ccinet.ab.ca.
We are in the process of creating a WWW page for the Newsletter. It should be up and running by the next issue. Submissions of good links are welcome. The decision was made to move in that direction when a new reader said she had heard of us through the internet.
Negotiations with Rupert's Land Record Society continue. It would result in a broader readership and a slight change in focus, to include other areas in the history of the fur trade. Any comments on the viability of such a merger from those who know both organizations would be welcome.
Happy Summer to everyone.
[I mentioned a new book on the Metis in the Pacific NorthWest in a previous edition. The next are a few quotes from Children of the Fur Trade: Forgotten Metis of the Pacific Northwest, by John C. Jackson, published by Mountain Press Publishing Co., 1301 S. Third Street W., P.O. Box 2399, Missoula, Montana.]
"In the absence of distinct cultural artifacts, the western Metis must be distinguished by their biological peculiarity. To refute the embarrassment of the late nineteenth-century racism, present scholarship has attempted to shift away from the obvious biological baseline and emphasize the less controversial abstraction of cultural definition. But discretion does injustice to the very human, truly passionate, and proud relationships that these men and women found in each other, which were confirmed in their children. As herdsmen and hunters, they would have found no embarrassment in personal genetics: that was a fact of life. As true children of love, the Pacific Northwest Metis took a full measure of pride in their lineage." (p. 52)
"In November 1824, Alexander Ross finally inherited command of the fifty-five hunters, including two Americans, seventeen Canadians, five half-bloods from east of the mountains, twelve Iroquois, two Abenaki, two Nipissing, one Saulteur (Ojibwa), two Cree, one Chinook, two Spokane, two Kutenai, three Flatheads, two Kalispell, one Palouse, and a Snake Indian slave. Twenty-five of the trappers were married, some with sons old enough to carry a gun. In addition, there were sixty-four Metis children. The brigade trailed away from Flathead Post packing their outfits on horses, or dragging travois like a band of Indians. (citing Spalding, Alexander Ross, p. 208-9)
[One of the individuals for whom he developed a fairly extensive biography was Tom McKay, son of Alexander McKay of the North West Company. The following has been compiled from the chapter on him in the book.]
Tom McKay was the son of Alexander McKay of the North West Company who accompanied Alexander Mckenzie on his trip to the Pacific, and was with him at Bella Coola. His mother, Marguerite Wadin was the daughter of Jean Etienne Wadin and an Ojibwa woman. Alexander was killed when the ship, the Tonquin, was blown up by coastal natives in 1811. Marguerite then married Dr. John McLoughlin, son of Chief Factor John McLoughlin. Tom's connections to his stepfather proved to be beneficial several times in his early fur trade career.
Previous to 1815, Tom had been employed by the North West Company in the Pacific Northwest. John Jackson tells how he came to be involved in the Red River Pemmican War in these words:
"When Tom's engagement expired in 1815m he crossed the Rocky Mountains with the [N.W.C.] Fort William express to visit his mother at the Lake Superior depot. Madame McKay and his sisters were now living under the care of Dr. John McLoughlin. While he was at Fort William, Tom fell under the influence of Nor'westers who were outraged by the colony of displaced Scots that the Earl of Selkirk had settled at the Forks of the Red and Assiniboine rivers. The Nor'westers saw that the Hudson's Bay Company intended to cut them off from the Indian-manufactured pemmican that was essential to their over-extended transportation system.
The Nor'westers resorted to a tactic as cynically conceived as the Earl's sly humanitarianism. McKay and several other young clerks were to use their mixed blood history to convince the mostly Metis Red River freemen to resist the appropriation of their homeland. Riding behind a presumptious standard that symbolized a new sense of Metis identity, a mixed blood war party met the colony governor and his followers near the forks. In the resulting melee, McKay was seen killing a man who had fallen to his knees and was begging to surrender. . . . .
A Montreal grand jury found sufficient evidence to indict the young man for murder. With an embarrassing prosecution looming, McKay was shipped out of the country. ( "Certificate of Indictments found at Montreal No. 3, The King vs Thomas McKay, for the murder of Captain Rogers, 19 June 1816," British Columbia Provincial Archives, Selkirk Papers microfilm, 4554.)
Tom returned to the Oregon country, a fugitive from justice and exile at the ripe age of nineteen. (Ross Cox, a former associate in the West, met McKay returning to the interior on 15 July 1817. He was then identified with such Nor'wester cutthroats as Samuel Black and Peter Skene Ogden, also exiled to the West for their excesses in the Athabasca country.)" (pp. 70-71)
Jackson further commented on Thomas Mckay's fur trade career as follows:
"Tom McKay grasped that his career expectations in the Hudson's Bay Company were limited. The North American-born officers in the Pacific Northwest were either descended from United Empire Loyalist families, like John McLouglin and Peter Skene Ogden, or drawn from prior military service to Empire like Pierre Pambrun and William Kittson. Governor Simpson preferred to pack his field management with British or European-born men who were dependent upon him and very much aware that they were on extended foreign service." (p. 80)
He concludes:
"Native born and environmentally conditioned, Thomas McKay was as much of an institutional man as the Orgeon country was likely to see in a mixed blood. Like Jacco Findlay or Nicholas Montour, he began to his career with important connections but unlike them, managed to stay close to the action through his step-father, Chief Factor McLoughlin. But in the final reckoning, Tom McKay was still a marginal man."(p.81)