Settlers 3 cart
Métis cart brigade travelling on the prairies. It is designed to help those who are not specialists in Métis history gain an understanding of the state of the argument over land claims. In short, the issue of Métis land dispersal is controversial and is the focus of an impressive historiographical debate.
Although Sprague and Flanagan remain the central combatants in this historiographical battle, significant research has been conducted by many other scholars, most notably Gerhard Ens and Nicole St-Onge. Macdonald and the Canadian government successfully kept them from obtaining title to the land they were to receive under terms of the Manitoba Act of 1870. On the other hand, Sprague, a historian retained by the Manitoba Métis Federation to undertake research into Métis land claims, argues that through a process of formal and informal discouragement, the Métis were victims of a deliberate conspiracy in which John A. Flanagan, a University of Calgary political scientist and a historical consultant for the federal Department of Justice, believes that the federal government fulfilled the land provisions of the Manitoba Act. For two scholars in particular, Douglas Sprague and Thomas Flanagan, the Métis dispersal has become a subject of bitter dispute. With native political organizations and the governments of Canada and Manitoba embroiled in an on-going court battle, various scholars have received generous financial support to investigate Métis land claims in Manitoba. In the last two decades, a virtual “explosion in Métis scholarship” has emerged to determine why this large scale migration occurred. Instead, the period from 1870 to 1890 saw the widespread dispersal of the Métis from Red River. However, as most students and scholars of Métis history are aware, very little of this land and scrip remained in Métis hands by the late 1870s. Additional legislation of 1874 granted $160 scrip, redeemable in Dominion lands, to all Métis heads of families. Subsection 32(5) guaranteed allotments of land to commute the rights of hay and common in the outer two miles that accompanied many of the old river lots. Section 31 set aside 1.4 million acres of land for distribution among the children of Métis heads of families residing in the province, while section 32 guaranteed all old settlers, Métis or white, “peaceable possession” of the lots they occupied in the Red River settlement prior to 15 July, 1870. Please direct all inquiries to Manitoba Act or 1870 provided substantial land grants to the Métis at Red River.
We make it available here as a free, public service. This article was published originally in Manitoba History by the Manitoba Historical Society on the above date. History Department, University of Manitoba Important to hear and inspiring to know.Manitoba History: The Historiography of Métis Land Dispersal, 1870-1890 Each has a story to tell of their family’s new beginnings in a new land with new people. Other antique ornaments given to the Society are also displayed. Each year we have displayed it on the sand pine Christmas Tree we erect at the Hallstrom House. The gift she gave us had been clipped to her sand pine tree Christmas Tree in Fort Drum and was a precious gift to share with us. That was the only road that went inland to Fort Drum from the coastal area and that was at Quay (Winter Beach). They came by oxen cart with their belongings from Fort Drum to Quay (Winter Beach) along the Fort Drum/Quay Road. Smeltzer was one of the charter members of the Indian River County Historical Society and gave the Historical Society a special Christmas gift one year.Īs a girl, she and her family came from Fort Drum to settle in what was then southern Brevard County. The Helseth Family gave the original land before 1905 when we were part of Brevard County and has burials from some of the earliest family in south county. This is one of the earliest cemeteries in the county. Her father is buried in the Oslo Cemetery just south of the South Relief Canal on Old Dixie Highway. This candle holding clip was gifted to the Indian River Historical Society by Thelma Smith Smeltzer and is added to the annual sand pine Christmas Tree in the Hallstrom House.