Tidbits to Know

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• With the decline of the buffalo on the plains in the 1870s and following the Red River Insurrection of 1869-1870, many families from the Red River colony dispersed to join their relatives in Saskatchewan and in Alberta at St. Albert, Lesser Slave Lake and Lac La Biche, where they hoped to escape the intervention of the Dominion government and invasion of new settlers from the East. Their lifestyle reflected where they chose to settle. In the Peace Country, they adopted a lifestyle of their Cree relatives, hunting moose, fishing, trapping, trading, and working off and on for the HBC as river-men, freighters, guides, carpenters and laborers
  
  
• The Métis women formed an indispensable work force, making clothing, beaded moccasins, snowshoes, and doing silk embroidery, fancy work they learned from the Sisters, which could be sold or traded to the HBC
  
  
• In the Peace Country, by the 1870s there were several communities of mixed-bloods living around Lesser Slave Lake, Dunvegan, Peace River Crossing, Spirit River, Flying Shot Lake, Saskatoon Lake, and Fort St. John. A later group of Métis entered the Peace Country and northeastern Alberta following the Riel uprising of 1885
  
  
• The Métis mostly took on the work that the French Canadian voyageurs had engaged in; they became canoemen, boatmen, labourers around the posts, as well as interpreters, hunters and guides
  
  
• As the Michif language moves towards the Eastern part of Canada it picks up influences from the Ojibwa language

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