A Métis wife's tale: Race, womanhood, and adaptation to settler colonialism in the diaries of Mary Hobart Williams

• Main Author: Schnurr, Rachael
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: DigitalCommons@EMU 2021
• Subjects: fur trade; Menominee; Native American; United States; War of 1812; Wisconsin; History; Native American Studies; Women's History; Green Bay; anishina*
• Online Access: https://commons.emich.edu/theses/1087; https://commons.emich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2464&context=theses

As the War of 1812 drew to a stalemate, the American government began the process of state formation in the "Old Northwest," which put political, economic, and cultural pressures on the indigenous population. Among the Anishinaabeg, Menominee, Ho-Chunk, and other Native inhabitants, however, were fifty-three communities of mixed ancestry produced by the fur trade: the Great Lakes Metis. This project looks at the ways the Metis of Green Bay adapted to the pressures of settler colonialism through the nineteenth century. In particular, it uses the diaries of a French-Menominee woman named Mary Hobart Williams to identify examples of "survivance, "or the continued presence of indigenous peoples on the land in ways that defy cliched formulas. Williams remained stable and solvent on her own land until her death in the 1880s. She did this by adapting her labor, adding to her kinship network, and using literacy to control her world.