PRELUDE TO RED RIVER: A SOCIAL PORTRAIT OF THE GREAT LAKES METIS

This paper examines the scope and significance of Indian-White marriage in the Upper Great Lakes region during the 18th and early 19th centuries. It concludes that by the 1820's, a sizeable population of Metis, inhabiting a growing network of towns and villages, had established themselves as economic middlemen, intercultural brokers, and interpreters linking tribal peoples and Angloamerican patrons interested in the fur trade. It also suggests that Great Lakes M6tis artfully amalgamated elements of dissimilar cultures and belief systems and were in the process of developing a group consciousness and identity akin to that which flowered several decades later in the upper Red River valley of Canada.