I did my research paper on First Nations wives and I wanted to know how they were perceived in those days. My goal was to research a topic, that would tell me how the First Nations women and wives were observed by the settlers. I needed to know what was true and what wasn’t. Were they seen as equals? Were they just seen as a survival tool in the “New World”? How did they help or hinder the settlers? Did the settlers look at them as “wife material”?
The documents I have read; revealed that the First Nations women were either looked at as slaves, prostitutes or less than that or they were seen as strong, independent leaders. So as I continued my learning and research on this topic, I continued to discover more and more information I never knew.
I then discovered, that most of the information was on the “mixed-blood” women. These women were seen as desirable not only for their attractiveness but also for their knowledge of the land. They were perceived as a survival tactic, to keep these settlers alive on this harsh terrain and devastating climates. The ladies of this world made choices, these choices created new lives for them and their children. It was frowned upon, to take a wife and then leave her after you got what you needed. At one point it was illegal for some traders, working for companies to even take a First Nations wife. Although this did happen often because they couldn’t keep away from them.
In one incident, there was a certain leader who took a Indigenous wife and then later abandoned her, for his cousin. After leaving his wife and children behind, he then married her off to one of his fur traders from the Company.
http://nickjordan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Voices-of-the-Grandmothers.pdf
