Hunting buffalo on the southern plains of Manitoba. File:PaulKane-BuffaloHunt-ROM.jpg. (2020, March 12). Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository. Retrieved 05:19, July 2, 2020 from https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:PaulKane-BuffaloHunt-ROM.jpg&oldid=403620793.
"In the 1790’s the “Freemen” Voyageurs began to transform into Plains Buffalo Hunters. They adopted the Plains tribal horse culture. And they added their new invention, the Red River Carts.
"They adopted the Plains tribes’ staple diet: pemmican. Robert Kennicott, an American naturalist and herpetologist said: “Pemmican is supposed by the ...world outside to consist of pounded meat and grease; ...from experience on the subject, I am authorized to state that hair, sticks, bark, spruce leaves (needles), stones, sand, etc., enter into its composition, often quite largely.”
Jean Teillet, 2019.
Source: Teillet, J. (2019). The North-West is Our Mother: The Story of Louis Riel’s People (p.33). Published by Patrick Crean Editions, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. Reference to Morrison, J. (1996) The Robinson Treaties of 1850: A Case Study, 7, Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Treaty and Land Research Section, 1996. Retrieved June 22, 2020 from https://www.harpercollins.ca/9781443450140/the-north-west-is-our-mother/
They also incorporated dried blueberries, saskatoons, chokecherries, etc., into pemmican when available.
Nakota (Assiniboine) hunting buffalo hunting on horseback in the southern plains of Manitoba, ca. 1851-56 by Paul Kane. Courtesy National Gallery of Canada. Source: Russel Harper, J. (2008, May 22). Paul Kane. The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved July 1, 2020 from https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/paul-kane
“While textual representations of the past from the 19th and early 20th centuries generally omitted reference to Aboriginal peoples, the presence of First Nations people in the colony was extensively documented in visual representations, especially the remarkable collection of paintings of Red River life by the artists Peter Rindisbacher in the 1820s and Paul Kane in the 1840s. Long before the collection of oral histories by archives and historical societies, both Rindisbacher and Kane recorded the material culture, economy and lifeways of Plains First Nations cultures through numerous visual representations, as well as Kane’s writings.
"In addition to the First Nations, the Métis comprised a major Indigenous people documented by these observers and prominent throughout Red River history. Often descended from Québecois voyageurs and First Nations women, the Métis by the late 18th century developed a distinctive culture and a language known as Michif, and had begun to settle the areas of Pembina and Red River by the early 1800s. Prior to settling in the Red River region the Métis were closely associated with service with the Montreal-based companies in the fur trade, in particular, the North West Company. After the amalgamation of the HBC and NWC in 1821, many Métis based at Red River continued to work for the company on fur brigades and hunting for provisioning its posts.”
Lyle Dick, President of the Canadian Historical Association, 2013
Source: Dick, L. (2013, winter). Red River’s Vernacular Historians. Manitoba History, No. 71 (P.4). Manitoba Historical Society. Retrieved June 28, 2020 from http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/mb_history/71/mh71web.pdf
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