Songs Upon the Rivers: The Buried History of the French-Speaking Canadiens and Métis from the Great Lakes and the Mississippi across to the Pacific. This item is unavailable.Songs Upon the Rivers: The Buried History of the French-Speaking Canadiens and Métis from the Great Lakes and the Mississippi across to the Pacific

Before the Davie Crockets, the Daniel Boones and Jim Bridgers, the French had pushed far west and north establishing trade and kin networks across the continent. They founded settlements that would become great cities such as Detroit, Saint Louis, and New Orleans, but their history has been largely buried or relegated to local lore or confined to Quebec. In this seminal work, Foxcurran, Bouchard, and Malette Scrutinize primary sources and uncover the alliances, organic links and métissage, or mixing, between early French settlers and voyageurs and the indigenous nations. It began with the founding of New France by Samuel de Champlain in the early 1600s and continued well into the 19th century long after France was no longer a force in North America. The authors' keen and accessible story telling, combined with vintage maps, forgotten documents (such as the little known writings of Alexis de Tocqueville), and old photos or paintings propel the account of the peoples engendered and still thriving, their French lingua franca, and their ways of life back into the heart of the narrative of North American history where they belong. Songs Upon the Rivers also challenges historical orthodoxies regarding the Canadien Métis. These descendants of the French with mixed ancestry developed a hybrid culture with close kinship ties with indigenous peoples across the continent. They kept their French songs and language, which effectively made French the lingua franca of the American and Canadian West well into the 19th century.

Dr. Michel Bouchard is Chair and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Northern British Columbia, Canada. He was born in northern Alberta and grew up in a French-speaking community that was in the shadow of the historical fur economy. His research on ethnicity and nationalism took him from his small town to the city of Narva in Estonia, located on the border with Russia, and deep into the territories of northern Russia. He has examined both contemporary identity as well as the historical origins of nationhood in the medieval period. His recent research has been examining the history of the French-speaking populations of western Canada and British Columbia in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Robert Foxcurran is an independent historian who grew up in up in a military family, including several years each in France and Japan. He holds undergraduate degrees in French and Japanese studies and a Masters in Business Economics and Business History. He worked for 30 years at Boeing. Author of NATO: A Business History (Boeing, 1986) and "Les Canadiens: Resettlement of the Metis into the Backcountry of the Pacific Northwes" in, Columbia: Quarterly of the Washington State Historical Society (Fall 2012).

Sébastien Malette is an Assistant Professor of law at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He holds a PhD from the University of Victoria (BC) and did Postdoc studies at the University of Melbourne. He has specialized on Métis and French-Canadian heritage with ties and friendships within indigenous communities in different parts of North America. He is an expert in Aboriginal Law with a focus on access to justice, Indigenous legal traditions, relational politics and worldviews. His work also focuses on ostracized Métis or "mixed-Heritage" Indigenous communities, their histories and resilience. Sébastien Malette lives in Gatineau, Québec, Canada.