Throughout the fur trade era, Métis employees of the Hudson’s Bay Company and North West Company—such as Thomas Favill, Nicholas Chatelain, William Sinclair, William McKay, Bte. Jourdain, and Joseph Guimond—held numerous and diverse occupations in the Rainy Lake region.
Métis workers often served as versatile jacks-of-all-trades alongside non-Métis apprentices, post-masters, and clerks.
Diverse Métis occupations included fishery operations, net making, hunting, cutting cord-wood, squaring lumber, constructing houses and store-rooms, making kegs, building canoes, and harvesting grain and vegetables.
As seen with Métis across west central North America, Métis individuals in the Rainy Lake region often took on the role of interpreters, having often grown up speaking multiple European and Indigenous languages.
At Lac la Pluie (the French name for Rainy Lake), for example, between 1825-1826 three of the identified interpreters—which included Nicholas Chatelain—were documented as Métis. Chatelain, in particular, was a renowned Métis Hudson’s Bay Company interpreter at Lac la Pluie:
“Nicholas Chatelin [sic] / a Half-Breed / Interpreter is an acquisition to the Post – Speaks the Saulteux Language well and is feared by the Natives, and is perfectly acquainted with the Geographical part of the Country, more particularly to the North [?] of Lac La Pluie, in that he is a man that ought not to be lost sight of.”
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