After the War of 1812, the Nolin family began to expand their connections and influence westward beyond the family’s home at Sault Ste. Marie in the Upper Great Lakes.
Louis Nolin, the eldest son of Jean Baptiste and Marie Angelique, moved westward to the Red River settlement, where he became an interpreter for Lord Selkirk and the Hudson’s Bay Company. This was a crucial role, as the Red River area was a center of growing tension between the Métis, European settlers, and fur trade companies.
Louis Nolin was present during the famous 1816 Victory of Frog Plain, also known as the Battle of Seven Oaks, where the Métis led by Cuthbert Grant defeated Selkirk’s troops in a decisive battle that affirmed a distinct Métis identity in the region.
Following his brother Louis’s lead, Augustin Nolin also joined the HBC as a trader and travelled westward. In 1819, their parents, Jean Baptiste and Marie Angelique, along with their other siblings, followed the Nolin sons westward from their family’s original home in the Upper Great Lakes.
After moving west, the Nolin family initially settled in Pembina, North Dakota, where Jean Baptiste continued trading. However, in 1823, the HBC closed its post in Pembina, prompting the Nolins and many other Métis families to move further north along the Red River.
The Nolins quickly became key figures in the Métis community on the Red River.
Louis, Augustin, and their brother Joseph Nolin, for example, were all involved in important treaty negotiations, with Louis serving as an interpreter for the Peguis-Selkirk Treaty in 1817, and Augustin and Joseph later playing key roles in the negotiations for Treaty 3 in 1873.
Their sisters, Marguerite and Angelique, also quickly contributed to Métis life in Red River by establishing the first girls’ school in the Red River Settlement in 1829. There, they educated many young Métis women, including Josephte Siveright, the future mother of Métis leader and martyr Elzear Goulet.
Through their collective involvement and integration into the Métis community at Red River, the Nolin family continued deepening their roots throughout the Métis Homeland and contributing to their lasting legacy within the Métis Nation.