Who was Curtbert Grant?
Not much is recorded about Cuthbert Grant in mainstream Canadian
history books, yet he is the man who must be credited as the
founder to the Métis nation in the west.
Cuthbert Grant, the son of a prominent Nor’Wester by the
same name, was born at Fort Tremblante in 1793. Fort Tremblante was
on the east side of the Red an Assiniboine Rivers, in what is now
The Forks in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Cuthbert Grants Father died during
one of his fur-trading expeditions to the North West in 1799, Thus
leaving Cuthbert, his older brother James, and three sisters,
Margaret, Josephte, and Mary alone.
Cuthbert and James were made the protégés of William McGillivray
of the North West Company in Montreal. McGillivray was the most
powerful man in the fur trade, and was a family friend of the
Grants. The children moved to Montreal in 1801, and the boys
baptized in the Presbyterian Church like their father had wished.
They were then sent back to Scotland to be educated in the way of
the British. Cuthbert returned to Montreal when he was sixteen
years old.
In 1812, Cuthbert was set up as a clerk of the North West
Company, and was appointed to a position in the Red River district.
When he made the long journey back to the Red River of his
childhood, he did so in luxury. Travelling by canoe, as was the
custom of the “bourgeois” of the fur trade, Grant was
wearing his frock coat, beaver hat, breeches and polished boots. He
took with him all the luxuries that a man of his station required:
robe, tent, travelling desk, preserved foods and good wines.
He was welcomed back by both his mother’s people and the
“bourgeois” of the North West Company. His fist
position was that of factor for a small trading operation on the
Qu’Appelle River, but he was obviously meant for much better
things; he was seen by the North West Company officials as the man
who could train and develop a Métis military force capable of
pushing the Hudson Bay Company out of the West.
Grant’s physical ability and the quickness of his actions
quickly earned him the respect of the Métis people that were in his
command and of the Indians, who named him Wappeston, meaning the
white ermine. A renowned hunter, horseman, and warrior, Grant was
recognized as the leader of the Métis buffalo hunters. During the
fur trade war that followed in 1814, Grant was to become infamous
as the man responsible for the deaths of the settlers at Seven
Oaks.
Cuthbert Grant went on to fame as the founder of Grantown (now
Saint Francois-Xavier), a small village a few miles west of
Winnipeg. He went on to become the Hudson’s Bay
Company’s warden of the Plains after the merger of 1821, and,
later, was appointed to the Council of Assiniboia, the
Hudson’s Bay Company’s governing body in Rupert’s
Land.
In the late 1860’s, Grant lost his position of power and
status among the Métis to a fundamental Métis politician, Jean
Louis Riel, father of the famous Louis Riel. Grant’s loyalty
to the Hudson’s Bay Company during the free trade struggles
of the 1840s made him unpopular with the Métis, and he drifted into
political darkness. A wealthy but lonely man, Grant died in 1854 at
the age of 61.