Like many other Métis communities, the Métis of the Upper Great Lakes relied on the bounty of their surrounding waterways for sustenance and survival.
Many Métis were known as skilled fishermen, who used their expertise to feed their families and generate economic prosperity for their Métis communities.
An article in the Ann Arbour Register from October 12, 1893, for example, celebrates Métis fishermen on Georgian Bay, who were “skilled hunters and know many curious habits of the creatures they pursue.”
The article highlights the Métis community’s distinctive and ‘Queer methods’ of fishing, involving the use of a decoy fish, where the decoy was not used for bait:
“They cut a hole in the ice, build a hut over the hole and let down a decoy through the ice—fooling innocent creatures of the deep lakes.”
The article further describes these unique Métis methods of fishing, saying:
"The half breed takes out of his kit a queer looking stick, painted and shaped roughly to look like a fish, he avers, though it would hardly be breaking the second commandment to worship it, for it is the likeness of nothing in the heavens above, or on the earth beneath, on in the water under the earth; but if the fish think it is the main object is accomplished.”
It also describes the masterful skill with which Métis fishermen maneuvered their decoys to lure their catch:
“The [Métis decoy] is provided with tin fins and tail and is weighted with lead most heavily at the head. The string is attached nearer the head than the tail, upon the back, and the skill with which these fishermen make the queer thing shoot about in a triangle under their feet, through a hole in the ice, is truly remarkable.”
Fishing remains an important way of life for many Métis throughout the Upper Great Lakes, with many Métis harvesters using these same distinctive fishing methods to this day.
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‘Decoying Fish’, Ann Arbour Register, October 12, 1893