Métis Kinship in Northwestern Ontario: A Tale of Two Families

Julia Grummitt

In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Métis communities emerged across a region of North America known as the historic North-West. These communities were formed by Indigenous descendants of the fur trade – the children of European fur traders and Indigenous women – who over generations of endogamy (intermarriage) developed a distinct identity as Métis with a shared culture, political consciousness, and way of life.

Kinship provided the foundation upon which distinct Métis communities grew. Bonds between parents, children, spouses, godparents and friends were the social and economic structure that facilitated trade, ensured survival, and established a distinctly Métis identity. As Métis travelled throughout their homeland – the lands and waterways of the historic North-West, which stretched well beyond the borders of present-day Manitoba – they lived out kinship on a daily basis. They worked together in the fur trade, raised their families alongside each other, and travelled to hunt, trade, and visit relatives. When Canadian colonization encroached on their lands, Métis families united to defend their rights and their freedom.

The experience of two Métis families living between Lake Winnipeg and Lake Superior in the early nineteenth century provides a clear example of the close relationships that gave rise to Métis communities across their homeland. The Morrisseau and McPherson families, who were part of the Métis community that predominantly developed in what is now Northwestern Ontario, first met in the 1830s. Over the next several decades, they nurtured the kind of intergenerational bonds that allowed Métis communities to emerge and endure.

Northwestern Ontario was once the centre of a vast fur trading world. The region’s waterways included Rainy Lake, Rainy River, Lake of the Woods and, further north, the English and Albany rivers. This fur trade “highway” connected northeastern fur trading depots with western fur rich lands. Métis traders regularly travelled through the area to transport goods and supplies, stopping at the trading posts where Métis families like the Morrisseaus and McPhersons lived and worked. For most of the nineteenth century, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) administered the region’s trade as the Lac La Pluie District, and Métis employees and their wives and children frequently moved between the district’s posts.

Métis trader Antoine Morrisseau was in the region by the late 1820s, steering boats on the Albany River for the HBC. Revered by his colleagues as one of “the best men” on the river, Antoine worked alongside other Métis traders like Jacob Daniel. In 1828, Jacob’s daughter Mary married Antoine at St. Andrew’s Parish in the Red River Settlement. The couple spent the first decade of their married life travelling between Fort Alexander, where Mary and their children spent much of the year, and Lac Seul, where Antoine worked. By 1837, the Morrisseaus were living year-round at Lac Seul, while also spending time at Osnaburgh House, a post about 175 kilometres northeast.

At Fort Alexander, Lac Seul, and Osnaburgh, the Morrisseaus lived in the company of other Métis families, including the McPhersons, who arrived in the area in the late 1830s. George McPherson, the son of a fur trader and a First Nations woman named Ikwesens, was born in the North-West in 1814 to a typical fur trade family. He grew up travelling the “highway” of rivers connecting Montreal to Abitibi and James Bay. At the age of 17, George joined the HBC putting his knowledge of both Indigenous and European languages to work as an interpreter. By the 1830s, George worked up and down the Albany and made regular stops at Lac Seul and Osnaburgh House.

There is no doubt George and Antoine Morrisseau would have been familiar with one another during this period, if not already good friends. Their friendship was solidified when George was put in charge of Osnaburgh in 1843, and he and his “halfbreed” wife Isabella moved to the post from Martin Falls on the Albany River with their children. There, Isabella lived and worked alongside Mary (Daniel) Morrisseau, who had given birth to twin boys, Jacob and Jonathan, at Osnaburgh the year before. George and Isabella’s daughter Margaret was only a year older than Mary and Antoine’s daughter Matilda. The two girls were probably friends and playmates.

Osnaburgh House was an important part of the HBC’s network. In the early 1800s, it was one of the places where the company built the York boats used to move furs and supplies on the Albany and other northern rivers. With fewer than 20 employees and their families spending the winter months at the post, the Morrisseaus and McPhersons formed a close-knit community of care and support. In the summer, Métis traders like Antoine and Jacob Daniel paddled and portaged to the supply depot at Fort Albany on James Bay to deliver furs and collect goods. Métis women and children remained at the post, making clothing and repairing supplies. Mary and Isabella likely fished and gathered berries together, while teaching their children how to live off the land. In late summer and early fall, the Osnaburgh families prepared for winter: collecting firewood, repairing and setting fishing nets, harvesting potatoes and other crops, and trading with First Nations for wild rice. When the snow fell, their social world shrank as frozen rivers and lakes made travel difficult and outside visitors scarce. The Morrisseau and McPherson children probably played together during the long winter evenings while their parents talked by the fire.

During the seasons the McPhersons and Morrisseaus spent at Osnaburgh, they bore witness to painful moments in each other’s lives. In the fall of 1844, one of George and Isabella’s children passed away. “A Boy of mine Died this morning,” George wrote in the post journal on October 22. George’s good friend Antoine was there for him in his time of grief. “Morriseau [sic] buried the child,” George explained.[1] The simple statement shows the deep connection between the two men.

George’s loss might have been softened by the arrival of another child the following year, named George for his father. Three years later, however, tragedy struck again. In March of 1847, Isabella died “after a short and painful illness.”[2] Once again, Antoine supported George and the entire McPherson family. He spent a day crafting Isabella’s coffin. As George wrote in the post journal: “Morriseau [sic] made the coffin for my wife’s corps[e], the other men are doing small jobs about the Fort.” Mary and the other Métis women at the post probably washed and dressed Isabella for a simple service, held three days later, attended by everyone at the post. Time brought changes for both families. Antoine and Mary Morrisseau returned to Lac Seul in 1848. George and the McPherson children, including three-year-old George Jr., remained at Osnaburgh for the next decade. George remarried in the late 1850s: his second wife, Margaret Adhemar, had grown up at Osnaburgh and was the daughter of another “Halfbreed” employee who worked there. In 1858, George Sr. was made postmaster at Rat Portage and the McPhersons moved southwest to Lake of the Woods, where several Métis families were already living. Among the friends who greeted the McPhersons when they arrived were Antoine and Mary’s son Michel Morrisseau, who had been a boy at Osnaburgh in the 1840s. Now working for the HBC, Michel had recently started a family of his own.

George McPherson’s Family at Northwest Angle, 1872. Seated: George McPherson Sr. and his wife Margaret Adhemar. Back row, left to right: Margaret McPherson, George McPherson Jr. and Sophia Morrisseau. This portrait was taken by governent surveyors around the time of George and Sophia’s marriage. Credit: Library and Archives Canada/C-079642.

As the families continued to live alongside each other, their connections deepened. In 1872, George McPherson Jr. married Michel Morrisseau’s daughter Sophia. A photograph was taken in front of the McPhersons’ home at Northwest Angle on Lake of the Woods around the time of George Jr. and Sophia’s marriage. It shows George Sr. sitting beside his second wife Margaret Adhemar. George Jr. and Sophia Morrisseau stand behind them, alongside George Jr.’s sister Margaret. The photograph gives a glimpse of the families’ connections going back nearly 50 years and more than 400 kilometers away.

For George McPherson Sr., his surviving son’s marriage to the granddaughter of one of his oldest friends – a man who supported him through the loss of a child and a spouse 30 years earlier – must have been cause for celebration. It affirmed even more the intergenerational bond between the families.

The McPherson and Morrisseau connections remained strong. For decades, George and Sophia were recorded living near relatives from both families, including the families of Sophia’s siblings, Joseph and Mary, and her uncle Jonathan, one of the Morrisseau twins born at Osnaburgh in 1842. The families also intermarried in later generations: in 1931, George and Sophia’s grandson William married Flora, the great-granddaughter of Jonathan Morrisseau. In 1943, another grandson, Walter, married the great-granddaughter of Sophia’s sister Mary.

These were just some of the connections that created strong foundations for the Northwestern Ontario Métis Community, as both families also shared kinship with other Métis families in the region. Kinship across many generations, like that of the Morrisseaus and McPhersons, allowed distinct Métis communities to emerge and flourish throughout the historic North-West.

Julia Grummitt is an Historian with Know History, where she specializes in Canadian and Indigenous history. She holds a PhD in History from Princeton University.

[1] Osnaburgh House Post Journal, 1844-1845, Osnaburgh House Post Journals, B.155/a/56, HBCA. October 22, 1844. (fol. 8d)

[2] Osnaburgh House Post Journal, 1846-1847, Osnaburgh House Post Journal, B.155/a/58, HBCA. March 9, 1847. (fol. 14d)