Gabriel Dumont's Chair at the Camrose and District Centennial Museum
Gabriel Dumont's Chair at the Camrose and District Centennial Museum
By Lianne McTavish
By Lianne McTavish
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It is Tuesday September 21, 2021, and I am flipping through the hand-written accession records at the Camrose and District Centennial Museum. Like other museums across Canada, this museum officially opened in 1967, supported by government funding meant to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Canadian Confederation. Initial displays in this Albertan museum featured the material items used by nineteenth-century settlers to the region, especially those of the local Norwegian population, as well as a restaged pioneer kitchen, and exhibitions about pioneer life. In western Canada, pioneers were (and still are) often portrayed as hardy immigrants who overcame obstacles to claim and settle the land, contributing to the development of towns and cities.
I am not, however, focusing on pioneers or their stories. Along with other members of the “Unsettling Pioneer Museums in Alberta” research team, I am looking for signs of Indigenous peoples and Indigenous material cultures within the museum’s records and collections. There are over 100 binders filled with printed accession sheets at the museum in Camrose, and I am methodically making my way through them with such goals in mind.
“What?” I shout, when I see the following page from the 1973 binder.
An accession record from the Camrose and District Centennial Museum, Camrose, AB.
The hand-written text reads: “This chair once belonged to the famous buffalo hunter and warrior Gabriel Dumont. Descendants of his living in the Duhamel area gave it to Mr. Ross who then gave it to the museum. Gabriel Dumont was Louis Riel’s lieutenant in the Riel Rebellion 1870.” Above that text, it says “donated by Helen B. Ross for J. Alex Ross.” A different and presumably later hand has added that the “chair came out of his brother Pascal’s house.”
I leap up from my desk, looking for Deb. Deb Trout is a longstanding volunteer at the Camrose and District Centennial Museum and, as far as I can tell, she knows everything about the museum. If this Métis leader’s chair is in the museum, she will know where to find it.
As expected, Deb finds the chair almost immediately. It was on display in another building, called the Old Timer’s Hut, an historic structure that was used by the army during World War II and then leased to the Old Timer’s Association, devoted to maintaining and creating pioneer heritage. The chair has been stored within a pioneer framework, no longer identified with Indigenous culture.
A late-nineteenth century chair (likely belonged to Duhamel community resident Gabriel Dumont) at the Camrose and District Centennial Museum, Camrose, AB.
Once Deb brings the chair into the main museum building, we gather around it with excitement. At the same time, we know little about the item. Subsequent research casts doubt on the assertion that the chair once belonged to the famed Gabriel Dumont. First of all, he already has an authenticated chair at the museum in Indian Head in Saskatchewan. Of course, the existence of more than one chair is possible. Secondly, the Métis leader did not have a son named Pascal. Thirdly, there was another Gabriel Dumont with a son named Pascal who lived in the Duhamel area near Camrose, and he is the more likely source of the chair. This man, François Gabriel Dumont, was Gabriel Dumont’s first cousin.
According to Lawrence Barkwell, Coordinator of Metis Heritage and History Research at the Louis Riel Institute, François was born at Old Fort Edmonton in 1825, the son of Gabriel Dumont Sr. and Suzanne Lucier. François led an annual assembly of buffalo hunters during the southern hunting treks. He was the founder of what was to become the Laboucane Settlement, later known as Duhamel Settlement, located between the modern cities of Wetaskiwin and Camrose. Like his cousin, François was a leader in his community.
We undertook additional research on this settlement and the families there to locate various forms of Métis material culture in the collections in Camrose. Other members of the research team, including Skye Haggerty, worked to interpret and display this material culture within the museum. The chair is now featured in the display case she curated in the main museum building.
Use the link below to hear the team talk about the chair and the display of Métis Material Culture.
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