Métis in the United States
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 Paul Kane's oil painting Half-Breeds Running Buffalo, depicting a Métis buffalo hunt on the prairies of Dakota in June 1846. |
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The Métis in the United States are a Métis people in the United States, who trace their descent to Native Americans and white settlers. Those identifying as Métis in the U.S. are fewer in number than the Métis in Canada.
The Métis have developed as an ethnic group from the descendants of indigenous women who married French (and later Scottish) fur trappers and traders during the 18th and 19th centuries at the height of the fur trade. At the time, the border did not exist between Canada and the British colonies as much of the area was undeveloped. Traders and trappers easily moved back and forth through the area.
The Métis in Canada have a specific, unique culture. Most are found among the Michif-speaking peoples of the Red River region in modern Manitoba. In the United States, Métis live in Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin,Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana.
In the broadest sense, the term métis was applied to people of mixed indigenous and French ancestry in French colonies; it means mixture. In this article it is also used to discuss mixed-race people who descend from the united culture created by the intermarriage of various French and British fur traders from the Atlantic Coast through the Great Lakes area and to the Rocky Mountains, and women of various Algonquian, Cree and other Native American groups during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. But this use excludes mixed-race people born of unions in other settings or more recently than about 1870.
Métis (/meɪˈtiː/; Canadian French: [meˈtsɪs]; Michif: [mɪˈtʃɪf]) is the French term for "mixed-blood." The word is a cognate of the Spanish word mestizo and the Portuguese word mestiço.
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