by Laura Peers
Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford
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When we think of warm clothing in the early Red River Settlement, what comes to mind is probably capots, coats made from Hudson’s Bay Company blankets. Few people are aware that families in Red River spun and wove their own cloth, some of it from bison “wool” or hair. Although there are many archival references to cloth production in the Settlement, I have never been able to see an example of this native industry; there are no samples of such cloth in the Manitoba Museum. Perhaps the readers of Manitoba History might be able to assist?
The making of homespun cloth was a major part of the domestic economy across eastern North America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Linen, linseywoolsey (a linen-wool mix), and homespun wool were used to produce everything from kitchen towels and diapers to suits. Home textile production was so central that it became a metaphor for independent, self-sufficient pioneer life: we still refer to “homespun talent.”
In Red River, things were different: home production of cloth might have been seen initially as a threat to the Hudson’s Bay Company’s monopoly and profits. The creation of Red River as a settlement, however, and the arrival of Selkirk’s Irish and Highland Scots settlers (some of whom were weavers) beginning in 1811, opened the way for cloth production. By the early 1820s, the Buffalo Wool Company’s records include an inventory of “Buffalo Wool Cloth”: 191 yards fine cloth, unfulled; 292 yds coarse cloth, unfulled; 72 yds coarse cloth, fulled; 63 yds fine cloth, fulled (HBCA F.34/1, Buffalo Wool Company, fo.12).
The Church Missionary Society was also determined to teach spinning and weaving to its Aboriginal and Métis converts in Red River as a way of assimilating them to “civilized” habits, and of offering them a means of independence from hunting and trading. In 1833, Reverend Cockran claimed that fifteen girls in his school were learning to spin and that he had purchased buffalo hair “which, when wove, makes tolerably good cloth” (A77, Cockran to Secretaries, 25 July 1833). By 1844, Cockran could report that “Several of the Indian women spin wool and a good deal of home made cloth has this year been manufactured...” (CMS Reel A78, Report of Indian Settlement Red River, 1 August 1844). Flax was grown for several years, but deemed unsuitable to the climate.
Although J. J. Hargrave claimed, in his memoir of Red River life in 1871, that “the weaving of “Red River cloth”… [was one of the]…most common exercises of domestic manufacture,” in fact, the process fell off, probably due to its labour-intensive nature. It was simply easier to purchase cloth imported by the Company than to produce it at home.
But where did those hundreds of yards of cloth listed in the Buffalo Wool Company records go? Did all the cloth produced for home use eventually get used up? Why have no examples of Red River cloth ever been donated to the Manitoba Museum? Does anyone have any samples of this cloth, perhaps as garments, shawls or blankets that might yield clues about this vanished industry? If you do, please contact Laura Peers at laura.peers@prm.ox.ac.uk.
Page revised: 15 February 2015
