In Her Words

In 1877, a 16-year-old M.tis girl named Marie Rose Delorme was “given” in marriage to the white fur trader (and future rancher) Charlie Smith for $50. In her own words, much later — for Delorme Smith became a record keeper and chronicler in the last decades of her nearly 100-years-long life — she would reveal, “I might as well say I was sold.” The purchaser was a Norwegian close to 20 years her senior. 

Delorme Smith was convent-educated and spoke French, English, Cree and likely Michif. Her fur-trading grandfather had been a leader in the Red River community and her uncles served with Louis Riel’s army. The family followed a traditional lifestyle, crossing and recrossing the plains, “following the treaties.” Later, Delorme Smith and her carousing husband were ranchers near Pincher Creek, Alta., where he often invited the neighbourhood in to drink.

She describes laying her children across a bed like sardines, to protect them from the drunks crashing around in their one-room log house. She tried replacing the liquor in the barrels with a mixture of water, mustard, red pepper and salts, but “they drank it all and never knew the difference.” Instructed through the church and the somewhat-alien culture of the Europeans to obey her husband, she believed he was “the boss.”