Nicholas Curchin Peterson Vrooman has written widely on Native American music of North Dakota. In 1992, Smithsonian Folkways released a CD entitled Plains Chippewa/Métis Music from Turtle Mountain (SF 40411), which Vrooman recorded and produced. This essay is derived from the notes he wrote to accompany that CD and subsequently revised for publication in American Musical Traditions.
The Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation in North Dakota is a symbolic—as well as the actual geographic—heart of the North American continent. It is part of the Canadian—United States border region that gave birth to an indigenous American culture evolving from marriages between Indians and Europeans, "marriage à la façon du pays—"after the custom of the country." The way of life born of such unions was the foundation of the fur trade and the development of the West from 1670 to 1885; its culmination was the formation of the Canadian province of Manitoba. Manitoba was initially a métis, or mixed-blood, nation—the only native nation that resulted from the reconfiguration of North America. It was led by the school-teacher-politician-prophet and now legendary culture hero, Louis Riel.
The tribes of the Plains held the last frontier against Manifest Destiny, the belief held by many people in the United States during the nineteenth century that the country was destined to expand westward to the Pacific Ocean. The Chippewa and Cree of the Plains were the westernmost of the Woodland Indians, who followed the fur trade from its beginnings to its height and demise. These tribes experienced generations of trade with the Europeans, golden eras, wars, and near extinction. By the time of the buffalo's decline, they knew their fate and their place in history. Chippewa and Cree people, mixing European blood and culture with their own, became a transitional force in the cataclysmic change inflicted upon this land.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the fur trade of North America centered around the Northern Plains area. Many French and British fur traders married Indian women of the territory to form trade partnerships as well as for the comforts of family. The children of these unions became a strong and separate society, neither Indian nor European. They held an "in between" position economically, as the middlemen in commerce. They came to realize that racially and culturally they were also "in between" people; their customs and beliefs were neither Indian nor European, but an amalgam of both. Their new culture gave rise to a new language, called Metchif, that was wholly its own, comprised mostly of French nouns and Chippewa/Cree verbs.
On the British side of the mixing it was initially Orkney Islanders of Viking heritage, and later Highland Celts, refugees from the Scottish Clearances following the Battle of Culloden in 1746. For the French, many of the early fur trade workers hailed from France's Celtic provinces of Brittany and Normandy. They became the Creole du Canada of Quebec. These European groups, along with the aboriginal tribes, would pervasively commingle following the mid-eighteenth century, creating and sharing the common customs and language we now call Métis.
The Turtle Mountain Reservation is a contemporary microcosm of the cultures that comprised fur trade society. From their stories we hear of the strength and fortitude of the offspring of those early marriages—we learn that they loved their way of life, and had the best of both worlds. Their children married within their kind, and so their customs were perpetuated. With them came an old-belief Catholicism, large families, French chansons, fairy tales, superstitions, celebrations, dance, foodways, and a full gamut of folklife, blending native with European. The main elements transferred from the shared English/French Celtic heritage was fiddling and jigging. All this together was the Metchif way. The strength of these traditions in contemporary Turtle Mountain life is a testament to the love that was born of those first and subsequent marriages between Indian and European peoples.
Today on the Turtle Mountains one can hear ancient a cappella (unaccompanied) chansons telling of King Louis, Napoleon, and the common soldiers of the French army. Musicians perform religious songs that are moral tales for the young, songs of married life, songs for holidays, and drinking songs. Many of these are basically unchanged from the time they were brought to the Northern Plains from France in the mid-eighteenth century. There are also songs and fiddle tunes that come from the fur-trade era, composed by fur traders in the traditional French ballad and Celtic fiddle styles; songs and tunes about heroes like Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont; and songs about other events great and small: buffalo hunts and battles, loves and loves lost. All of these together tell of Métis life and the heritage and history of these people.
The cultural region of the Métis reaches from Sault St. Marie, Michigan, to Choteau, Montana, across both sides of the United States—Canada border. The Northern Plains states and Prairie provinces are where the Métis cultural identity coalesced and came to political and national unity. Today the
Métis of this area hold more tightly to traditional aspects of their folklife because they are a cohesive population within a vast rural geographic area, where their many isolated communities reinforce the retention of their culture.
Very few people in the United States are aware of the Métis because our government has never recognized them in an official way as a legitimate cultural group. In Canada, the Métis have a little more recognition, coming from the historic fact that the Métis created one of their provinces. But even there they are considered nonstatus Indians with no government-borne responsibilities. For the most part, Métis live on farms and ranches, in communities of their own, or in neighborhoods within larger communities, often called Buckskin and Moccasin Flats, or Breedtowns.
The Turtle Mountains in North Dakota hold the only reservation for Métis in the United States, and that is only because of the goodwill of the Pembina Chippewa (for whom the reservation was created), who allowed them to come when the United States government disowned the Métis. They were accepted on the reservation by their Pembina Chippewa cousins as a way of dealing with a massive political and refugee problem after the Métis' unsuccessful attempt at national independence between 1870 and 1885. At that time the territories of the Northern Plains were up for grabs, pitting Canada and the United States against each other, and both against the Métis and Indians. To this day the people are called Turtle Mountain Chippewa—a government-invented name.
The Columbian Quincentenary offers us an opportunity to reassess our idea of American cultural identity so that it more fully reflects the contributions of America's aboriginal peoples and more accurately portrays historic processes. The Métis people of the Northern Great Plains offer us a profound example, in blood and culture, of the meaning that those events 500 years ago had for the people of North and South America. That song of change, first sung a half millennium ago on the eastern shores of this hemisphere, still lives. It can perhaps best be heard today at the center of this continent by the descendants of those who lived the epic drama of humanity coming face to face with itself, and merging to become, actually and figuratively, a new people.
The music of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa is a record of being for the Turtle Mountain people and a story for all others to know. From the time these songs and tunes were first created until today, they have been the primary music heard on the reservation. The music is memorable and jubilant; it shows how the love of music has evolved to take in contemporary forms. This is why it has survived over generations.
There is a wealth of material that gives a sense of the evolution, significance, and vitality of the Turtle Mountain people. Their music is up-close music, made for homes, families, neighbors, and communities. It is performed repeatedly in the cycles of yearly activities. The music represents wonderfully the diversity of this group of people. On the reservation there are special distinctions concerning how it all came together, but, by the ties of history and the structure of reservation life, indeed, it is all together.
By listening to the voices, the presentation and the lyrics, and by envisioning the way performance is integrated into daily life, the listener can begin to feel and understand the intensity, joie de vivre, romance, and history that are all part of the substance of Turtle Mountain existence. When you hear these songs and tunes, remember that the music is being played in kitchens, at weddings, New Year's, reservation bars, and daily celebrations. This is music at home with itself. People need vitality and creativity to survive on the margins of a dominant society. Musical traditions help fulfill the spirit for Turtle Mountain people in spite of the disadvantages of reservation life.
The music is an expression of the vigor, vision, love, and passion of Turtle Mountain life. It blends the ancient with the contemporary, the West with the East, and the red with the white. But more, it's just plain, good music. From the heartbeat sound of the Pembina Chippewa drum to the exploding bass of the rock and roll, this music takes its place with the best of America's cultural heritage.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blackwell, Lawrence; Dorian, Leah; and Prefontaine, Darren. (2001). Métis Legacy: A Métis Historiography and Annotated Bibliography. Winnipeg: Pemmican Publications.
Brown, Jennifer S. H. (1980). Strangers in Blood: Fur Trade Company Families in Indian Country. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
Howard, Joseph Kinsey. (1994). Strange Empire: A Narrative of the Northwest. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1952. Reprint, with new introduction by Nicholas Vrooman. St. Paul,: MN: Historical Society Press, 1994.
Sealey, D. Bruce, and Lussier, Antoines. (1975). The Métis: Canada's Forgotten People. Winnipeg: Pemmican Publications.
Van Kirk, Sylvia. (1980). Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur-Trade Society, 1670-1870. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Vrooman, Nicholas Curchin Peterson. (1992). Medicine Fiddle: How a Tune Was Played and the Metchif Came to Be. Bismarck: North Dakota Humanities Council.
——. (1991). "Buffalo Voices." North Dakota Quarterly 59(4): 113-121.
