Shedding light on our often unacknowledged Métis presence.

Last summer, I manned a genealogical tent at Fort Point as part of a celebration of the early presence of the French on Nova Scotia's South Shore. In preparation for the event I boned up on the 17th-century history of LaHave and vicinity. Source after source, both English and French, mentioned the existence of Métis families at LaHave and what is today the town of Lunenburg. But often, there is little acknowledgement of the presence of Métis in the Maritimes. Why haven't we been told more about this union of Aboriginals and Europeans in our heritage?

Look at some of the Frenchmen who married native women. Philippe Mius d'Entremont was a feudal lord, the first Baron of Pobomcoup (Pubnico). From his union with a Mi'kmaq woman, Marie, came the Mius or Meuse family. Philippe d'Entremont II married Thérèse d'Abbadie, herself the Métisse daughter of Saint-Castin, one of the most remarkable figures in the history of Acadie.

Also in the 17th-century, the eldest son of the redoubtable Nicolas Denys, whose interests stretched from Cape Breton to the Restigouche, married Anne Par(tar)abego, a New Brunswick native woman. Richard Denys de Fronsac, based sometimes on the Miramichi, had a son Nicolas by this marriage, and he in turn married another Mi'kmaq woman and had three children.

It is reasonable that numerous other, less exalted, Frenchmen who reached Acadie before there were many French women in the colony formed alliances, formal or otherwise, with native women. In due course, Métis progeny would have resulted. Many probably lived the culture of their maternal kinsfolk, advantageous during the deportations of 1755-62 for those Acadians who could seek refuge among the Mi'kmaq.

Without trying too hard, I found several instances in the 1881 federal census returns of a married Mi'kmaq and European with children. This indicates that intermarriage continued into the British colonial period and then into the era of Canadian confederation.

The heritage possibilities in the census records can be demonstrated by the case of a Guysborough county family. The 66-year-old father, James, was listed as "African" in origin, while his wife, Martha, 64, was "German." One son named Thomas, 37, was married to Susan, also 37, a "Micmac," and they had four "African" children. Thomas's younger brother, John, 35, married the "French" Josephine, 35, and had an "African" child. This was in the 1871 census record.

Behold the same people 10 years later. James has aged 18 years in just 10, and is recorded as being 84; Martha aged 20 years in the interval. Thomas, at 50, is "African," and Susan, at 50, "Indian," but their children are now all listed as being "Indian" rather than "African." The brother John has died, leaving Josephine, 45, with two "French" children.

If you take the time to work out the proportions of European, native and black ancestry of the younger generation, you will discover that Thomas's children were more Indian than either African or European, while John's children were more French than either African or German. Yet, conventional wisdom has it that ethic origin was supposedly that of the father's male parent. It would be a fascinating exercise to trace the modern descendants of this particular family to see what heritage they believe themselves to have. Do they know and acknowledge the shades in their past?

I personally have a small trace of native ancestry and a putative dash of African, along with more than 96 per cent of European bloodlines. I suspect that, like the Guysborough family, many people in the Maritimes have a native heritage that they know little about.

To read more about population mythology, whereby people are unaware of or gloss over the existence of ethnic or ?religious elements in a population group, read Elizabeth Shown Mills' article "Ethnicity and the Southern Genealogist: Myths and Misconceptions, Resources and Opportunities," in the book, Generations and Change: Genealogical Perspectives in Social History, edited by Robert M. Taylor, Jr., and Ralph S. Crandall (Mason, GA, 1986), pages 89-108.