Metis Pioneers

Marie Rose Delorme Smith and Isabella Clark Hardisty Lougheed. Two remarkable Metis women's lives during the prairie west's transition from the fur trade. In Metis Pioneers, Doris Jeanne MacKinnon compares the survival strategies of two Metis women born during the fur trade-one from the French-speaking free trade tradition and one from the English-speaking Hudson's Bay Company tradition-who settled in southern Alberta as the fur trade transitioned to a sedentary agricultural and industrial economy. MacKinnon provides rare insight into their lives, demonstrating the contributions Metis women made to the building of the prairie west. This is a compelling tale of two women's acts of quiet resistance in the final days of the British Empire.