After the North West Company (NWC) and Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) merged in 1821, many longtime Métis employees chose to branch out on their own, working independently as “freemen.”
As astute businesspeople, these Métis freemen recognized the continued demand for their labour as hired “jobbers” and could demand competitive wages for their work.
This was certainly the case in the Upper Great Lakes region, where demand for Métis freemen jobbers, like Henry Sayer and Michel Labatte, for transport and other vital tasks outstripped supply, causing labour costs to increase to the point that post manager William Nourse devoted most of his 1835 report on the St. Mary’s District to the subject, saying in part:
“With regard to the expenses incurred for occasional day labourers I am persuaded a saving might be easily effected granting that the Freemen would be dispensed with for the transport.”
As the ‘halfbreed freemen’ gained greater autonomy, government authorities took increasingly drastic measures to control and suppress their community, ultimately resulting in the exclusion of Métis from the Robinson-Huron Treaty and subsequent displacement from their Métis River Lots on the St. Mary’s River.
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