Buffalo and Deer - Sustainers of Life

Hunting Methods - Métis Hunters

Métis man with Red River cart Glenbow Archives Calgary, Canada NA-239-21

From the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, the Métis (people of French-Native ancestry) and Half-breeds (people of British-Native ancestry) worked as fur traders, freighters, farmers and buffalo hunters for the fur trading companies in Canada and the United States.

Métis flag

In the early 1840s, some Métis and Half-breeds found their source of income greatly jeopardized when European demand for beaver pelts declined. Many saw a new opportunity in the buffalo hunt. They joined Métis hunters, who supplied the trading posts with pemmican, and met the new demand for dried buffalo tongue (a delicacy in eastern Canada and the United States), fashionable buffalo robes and buffalo hides, which were used to make conveyor belts for factories in the eastern part of the country.

Buffalo Meat Drying, White Horse Plains, Red River by William Armstrong (1822-1914) National Archives of Canada C-010502

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Introduction | Hunting Methods | Products of Life | Buffalo and Deer Imagery | Buffalo Ritual | Decimation of the Buffalo and Deer | Re-emergence of the Buffalo | Transition to Cattle ranching

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