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“Going in Between”: The Impact of European Technology on the Work Patterns of the West Main Cree of Northern Ontario

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Peter J. George  and
Richard J. Preston
Peter J. George
Affiliation:
Professor of Economics and Professor of Anthropology, and principal investigators in the Research Program for Technology Assessment in Subarctic Ontario (TASO), at McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada L8S 4M4.
Richard J. Preston
Affiliation:
Professor of Economics and Professor of Anthropology, and principal investigators in the Research Program for Technology Assessment in Subarctic Ontario (TASO), at McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada L8S 4M4.
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Abstract

The West Main Cree of northern Ontario adapted readily but selectively to the European technologies and institutions made available by the fur trade. Yet some basic cultural and psychological differences regarding the accumulation of wealth, attitudes to work, and dependence on relief and government transfers complicated Indian-European relations. In a rational attempt to compromise among today's complex choices, the Cree have abandoned their traditional bush pursuits for village life and wage employment, with hunting and trapping reduced to part-time or recreational activities.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-Sixth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , June 1987 , pp. 447 - 460
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1987

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References

They wish to acknowledge the generous financial support of the Donner (Canadian) Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the helpful comments of David Counts and Wayne Lewchuk.Google Scholar

1 Berger, Thomas R., Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland: The Report of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry (Toronto, 1977) brought the phrase to public notice.Google Scholar A good introduction to many of these issues is Dacks, Gurston, A Choice of Futures: Politics in the Canadian North (Toronto, 1981).Google Scholar

2 See, especially, McManus, John C., “An Economic Analysis of Indian Behavior in the North American Fur Trade,” this JOURNAL, 32 (03 1972), pp. 36–53;Google Scholar some relevant material is contained in Demsetz, Harold, “Toward a Theory of Property Rights,” American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, 57 (1967), pp. 347–60;Google ScholarAlchian, Armen and Demsetz, H., “The Property Rights Paradigm,” this JOURNAL, 33 (03 1973), pp. 16–27;Google Scholar and Baden, John, Stroup, Richard, and Thurman, Walter, “Myths, Admonitions and Rationality: The American Indian as Resource Manager,” Economic Inquiry, 19 (1981), pp. 132–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The problem was first raised and analyzed by anthropologists, however.

3 See inter alia, Ray, Arthur J., Indians in the Fur Trade: Their Role as Hunters, Trappers and Middlemen in the Lands Southwest of Hudson Bay, 1660–1870 (Toronto, 1974);Google ScholarRay, Arthur J. and Freeman, Donald B., “Give Us Good Measure”: An Economic Analysis of Relations between the Indians and the Hudson's Bay Company before 1763 (Toronto, 1978);Google Scholar and Francis, Daniel and Morantz, Toby, Partners in Furs: A History of the Fur Trade in Eastern James Bay 1600–1870 (Montreal, 1983).Google Scholar

4 Among the most relevant ethnohistories for northern Ontario are Dunning, Robert W., Social and Economic Change among the Northern Ojibwa (Toronto, 1959);Google Scholar and Bishop, Charles A., The Northern Ojibwa and the Fur Trade: An Historical and Ecological Study (Toronto, 1974).Google Scholar A good, brief survey is Rogers, Edward S., “Cultural Adaptations: The Northern Ojibwa of the Boreal Forest 1670–1980,” in Steegmann, A. Theodore, ed., Boreal Forest Adaptations: The Northern Algonkians (New York, 1983), pp. 85–142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For Algonkian peoples in northern Quebec and Labrador, see Rogers, Edward S., The Hunting Group-Hunting Territory Complex among the Mistassini Indians, National Museum of Man, Bulletin 195 (Ottawa, 1963);Google Scholar and The Quest for Food and Furs: The Mistassini Cree, 1953–54, National Museum of Man, Ethnology 5 (Ottawa, 1973);Google ScholarTanner, Adrian, Bringing Home Animals: Religious Ideology and Mode of Production of the Mistassini Cree (London, 1979);Google ScholarSpeck, Frank G., Naskapi: The Savage Hunters of the Labrador Peninsula (Norman, 1935);Google ScholarHenriksen, Georg, Hunters in the Barrens: The Naskapi on the Edge of the White Man's World (St. John's, 1973);Google Scholar and Leacock, Eleanor, The Montagnais “Hunting Territory” and the Fur Trade, Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association, No. 78 (Menasha, 1954).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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7 Ibid., p. 90.

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9 Francis and Morantz, Partners in Furs, passim; Ray and Freeman, “Give Us Good Measure”, chap. 14;Google ScholarLong, John, “Shaganash” (Ph.D. dissertation, O.I.S.E., Toronto, 1986), pp. 54–55.Google Scholar

10 Anderson, James W., Fur Trader's Story (Toronto, 1961).Google Scholar

11 Ibid.

12 As late as the winter of 1938–39, a man trying to reach Attawapiskat for food for himself and his family collapsed and froze to death only 8 miles from the post. John J. Honigmann, “Field Notes, 1947–48; 1955; 1956,” Anthropology Archives of the Smithsonian Institution.Google Scholar

13 The Attawapiskat Cree in 1947–48 were found to have a per capita income of $133 per year, most of which (65 percent) still came from trapping. Family allowances accounted for 26 percent, and the remainder came from various sources, including wages and treaty payments. See Honigmann, , Foodways in a Muskeg Community (Ottawa, 1961), pp. 128–35.Google Scholar The Cree sense of wealth is made clear in a dream recorded in 1955 by Honigmann: “I dream of 2 bears, very fat. I bring meat and fat to my wife, father, and brother. Very much we enjoy it when we eat it. And we make grease and sell the skins, two for $40. I am extremely rich. I have money and flour.” (Italics added). Honigmann, “Field Notes.”Google Scholar

14 Even today a “poor” person may make some useful handicraft and sell it to someone who has cash on hand, asking and getting perhaps double what a person who is well off would ask for the same item. Market price, if the item were sold at a store, would be centered roughly between these prices. Preston, Richard J., “Field Notes, 1963–84,” in author's possession.Google Scholar

15 Changing ideas of work and work ethics are the subject of Rodgers, Danie T., The Work Ethic in Industrial America 1850–1920 (Chicago, 1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Attitudes and patterns of work are the subject of Hobsbawm, E. J., “Custom, Wages, and Work-Load in Nineteenth-Century Industry,” in Briggs, A. and Saville, J., eds., Essays in Labour History (London, 1960), pp. 113–39;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Thompson, E. P., “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” Past and Present, 38 (1957), pp. 56–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Francis and Morantz, Partners in Furs, pp. 128, 170.Google Scholar

17 Helm, June, Rogers, Edward S., and Smith, James G. E., “Intercultural Relations and Cultural Change in the Shield and Mackenzie Borderlands,” in Subarctic, vol. 6, pp. 146–57;Google ScholarKrech, Sheperd H. III, “Introduction,” in Krech, Sheperd H., ed., The Subarctic Fur Trade: Native Social and Economic Adaptations (Vancouver, 1984), pp. ix–xix;Google ScholarBishop, Charles A., “The First Century: Adaptive Changes among the Western James Bay Cree between the Early Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries,” in Krech, , ed., The Subarctic Fur Trade, pp. 21–53.Google Scholar

18 Morantz, Toby, An Ethnohistoric Study of Eastern James Bay Cree Social Organization, 1700–1850, National Museum of Man, Mercury Series in Ethnology, No. 88 (Ottawa, 1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also see Ray and Freeman, “Give Us Good Measure,” chap. 7; and Francis and Morantz, Partners in Furs, pp. 41–46.Google Scholar

19 Hudson's Bay Company post personnel may have found themselves vulnerable to similar criticism. See, for example, George Simpson's complaints about many of the Company's factors and traders, in Williams, Glyndwr, ed., Hudson's Bay Miscellany 1670–1870, Publications of the Hudson's Bay Record Society, 30 (Winnipeg, 1975).Google Scholar

20 This view is held by most of the researchers of the region. It is, however, disputed by some who claim that there arose within the hunters as well as the Company families a generally held “Colonial (Dependency) Ethic,” including a radical shift from traditional caribou hunting to trapping of beaver and other fur-bearing animals for trade and—to a variable and uncertain extent—causing people to change their work relations towards a more individuated set of hunting strategies and towards animals that were not of much food value. See Leacock, The Monragnais “Hunting Territory”;Google Scholar and Murphy, Robert F. and Steward, Julian H., “Tappers and Trappers: Parallel Process in Acculturation,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, 4 (1956), pp. 335–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Honigmann, John J., “Incentives to Work in a Canadian Indian Community,” Human Organization, 8 (1949), p. 25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Honigmann depicts a defeatist ethic, where people try less hard when they are hard up, perhaps looking to fate, God, or the European to give or take. This may be related to the migration to the south of the more self-reliant people, and the psychology of the more passive people who know that the more able have deserted them. In marked contrast the men and some women of the Company families continued to work punctual, long, and very disciplined hours. By this disciplined loyalty they maintained a sense of civilized status, and some economic “subsidylike” advantages, including housing near the post. Honigmann, “Field Notes.”

22 Honigmann, “Incentives to Work”; “Field Notes.”Google Scholar

23 Honigmann, “Incentives to Work.” The definition of appropriate incentives continues to be a problem. Economic incentives appear to be playing a more significant role, and a higher intrinsic value of wage work is evident, especially among the younger generation.Google Scholar

24 Company families are in a difficult spot, maintaining their standards in wage work, but no longer much associated with the Company, and not a part of the official, federally subsidized Band job creation, or eligible for subsidized housing, education, health services, and the like. Preston, “Field Notes”; Blythe, Jennifer M., Bnzinski, Peggy Martin, and Preston, Sarah, “‘I Was Never Idle’; Women and Work in Moosonee and Moose Factory,” TASO Research Report, No. 21 (Hamilton, 1985).Google Scholar

25 Honigmann, “Incentives to Work,” pp. 23–28, and “Interpersonal Relations and Ideology in a Northern Canadian Community,” Social Forces, 35 (1957), pp. 368–69.Google Scholar

26 Honigmann, “Field Notes.”Google Scholar

27 Trudeau, Jean O.M.I., “Culture Change among the Swampy Cree Indians of Winisk, Ontario,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Catholic University, Washington, 1966), chap. 3.Google Scholar Indeed, most of the criticisms of wage labor were voiced by good trappers who had lived well on the traplines, and who also were among the best of the Indian workers on the base (Honigmann, John J., “Incentives to Work in a Canadian Indian Community,” Human Organization, 8 (1949), p. 25). Real incomes from employment must have been significantly higher than from trapping, since even the best Cree trappers chose wage work.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Trudeau “Culture Change,” pp. 92–93.Google Scholar

29 Bone, Robert M. and Green, Milford B., “Jobs and Access—A Northern Dilemma,” Journal of Canadian Studies, 18 (1983), pp. 90–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Although the entire coastal lowlands area is divided into registered traplines, Cree use of the land is concentrated along the coast and in the river and stream drainage basins adjacent to the major Indian villages. Indeed, during the winter of 1983–84, many Cree trappers who qualified for special assistance under the provincial Resources Development Program did not fly into their winter camps, because construction jobs were available in their villages. See Province of Ontario, Ministry of Natural Resources, Moosonee District Background Information (Toronto, 1985), p. 110 and maps nos. 18 and 19.Google Scholar

31 There are many examples: Mines at Coppermine and Pond Inlet in the Arctic and at Rabbit Lake in northern Saskatchewan have employed Inuit and Chipewyan Indians respectively on rotating work schedules. See Hobart, Charles W., “Impacts of Industrial Employment on Hunting and Trapping among Canadian Inuit,” in Freeman, Milton M. R., ed., Proceedings First International Symposium on Renewable Resources and the Economy of the North (Ottawa, 1981), pp. 202–18.Google Scholar The Detour Lake Gold Mine, located 200 kilometres southeast of Moosonee and Moose Factory and opened in 1983, employs several Cree laborers on a rotation basis, flying them to Moosonee for the break.

32 See, inter alia, Rusic, Ignatius E.La, et al. , Negotiating a Way of Life (Ottawa, 1979);Google ScholarScott, Cohn, “Modes of Production and Guaranteed Annual Income in James Bay Cree Society,” (M.A. thesis, McGill University, 1979);Google Scholar and Feit, Harvey A., “Protecting Indigenous Hunters: The Social and Environmental Protection Regime in the James Bay and Northern Quebec Land Claims Agreement,” in Geisler, Charles C., et al. , Indian SIA: The Social Impact Assessment of Rapid Resource Development on Native Peoples (Ann Arbor, 1982), pp. 290–321;Google Scholar and Feit, , “The Future of Hunters within Nation States: Anthropology and the James Bay Cree,” in Leacock, Eleanor and Lee, Richard B., eds., Politics and History in Band Societies (Cambridge, England, 1982), pp. 373–417.Google Scholar

33 The Globe and Mail, 25 August 1986, p. A7.Google Scholar