The Métis are descendants of 17th-century French voyageurs and/or 18th-century
Scottish and Irish trappers and Native American women. As almost all settlements in
New France included interracial marriages, conducted either according to “the customs of
that country” or according to Quebecois tradition, many of those who trace their ancestry
to that colonial period are “of mixed blood.” Many French Canadians who immigrated to
the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries to work in the lumber camps also married
Native American or Métis spouses.
Métis communities in Canada have a stronger sense of a distinctive ethnic grouping
than do those in the United States, perhaps because Métis Louis Riel led an 1869
rebellion in what is now Manitoba and a second in 1885 in what is now Saskatchewan
and has been memorialized in folk ballads. Michif or Mechif are the terms used more
often in the United States for those of mixed ancestry. Individuals in the United States
may define themselves as Métis, Michif, or Mechif, French, or French Canadian, or as
Native American. Aunt Jane Godreau, interviewed by folkorist Richard M.Dorson in
Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in the 1940s, for example, was French Canadian and Ojibwa (Dorson 1948). Her repertoire of anecdotes, legends, and jokes about “half breeds” and
Dorson’s comment that she lived in one of the “half breed” villages along the shores of
Lake Superior suggest that she could have been defined as Métis or Michif, although she
was either self-identified or identified by Dorson as a canadienne in his Bloodstoppers
and Bearwalkers (1952).
Filmmaker Michael Loukinen and his consultants found that the fiddlers they
documented in the 1991 ethnographic film Medicine Fiddler defined themselves
ethnically in all of these ways. Although the focus of the film is on Native American and
Métis incorporation of a European instrument and musical styles into blended but
distinctive repertoires, the French or French Canadian strands emerge through the
accompanying booklet edited by folklorist James Leary (Leary 1992). Fiddlers define an
older style of playing as “the old furtrading way” since it was the French voyageursv who
first introduced fiddles and step dancing to native peoples at trading posts and weddings.
French Canadians continued the traditions in lumber camps and taverns. The fiddlers also
recognized specific tunes, such as “Red River Jig” and “White Fish on the Rapids,” as
French contributions.