Metis? Dauphinais, Canada to Minn.?

Question:

Metis? Dauphinais, Canada to Minn.?

Hmmm. Alerted to Metis experience... and happy to ask for help there. Clem/ Clemenceau Dauphinais is said to have been born ca 1839 at Trois Rivieres, Quebec. Some clues make me wonder if that is accurate. He might have worked in a logging? town before moving to St Paul, where he married. His wife's family (Perry/Perret) are known to have been at the Selkirk colony.. siblings of hers married probable Metis also.
I wonder if he is linked to the Francois Dauphine who I have a photo of, as he was a member of Riel's Red River council and was in that photo with Riel. Clem's eldest son was named Frank.. Clem died in Anoka co, Minn.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: In the 1830s there was a terrible economy in Quebec. We'd probably call it a depression today...they just called it no work, no food and desperation. Trois Rivieres is due north of Vermont and at the time, the lumber fields of St. Albans were hiring a huge number of Quebecois to clear the lands. I have several in my own family from Trois Rivieres who went down there to work. From there, the lumber companies opening up in the Great Lakes areas went in recruiting them to move west. They paid for their relocation and took the entire family (a lesson well learned 150 years earlier when the French brought over men and no women...then had a hard time keeping the men in check and keep them from going AWOL).

Those living in Trois Rivieres wouldn't have been Metis, but they could have intermarried or had cousins who had gone west a generation or 4 earlier and intermarried with the First Nations.

Louis was my GGG's cousin through his mother, a Tessier. There was a 2 generation gap between her and the migration out of Quebec. In that case, her grandfather was a voyageur who set out to make his money hunting/trapping. The rest of the family stayed in Joliette. One lone member of a generation migrating was pretty common. It's when they took the wife and kids that it was a permanent move. The lone man is likely to have found his "Indian princess" and fathered a generation of Metis. I also have several lines in my family from the UP of Michigan and the Georgian bay area of Ontario who were Metis, that coming from young men who set out to explore or fight in wars and they stayed where they were and married Native women.

In the case of the Red River Metis, their heritage is well-documented. I'd suggest you start at this link: http://www.redriverdescendantsreunion.or...