Métis Red River Cart in Niverville Becomes Focus as both an Educational Tool and a Tourist Attraction

We have previously reported on this blog about the unrolling of a Métis Red River Cart that took place in Niverville on Canada Day, July 1, 2022, when the cart was rolled out on to its permanent placement under a timber frame adjacent to the Niverville Arena with a Ceremony that was chaired by Niverville Mayor Myron Dyck.  A special and comprehensive report on that event can be viewed here.

Since that time until today (August, 2023), the town has been making gradual improvements on this site which need to be brought to the attention of the people living in the Town of Niverville and Vicinity so that they can make other friends and relatives aware of the opportunity to take a personal visit to the site to be both informed about our local history, plus increase the awareness of this site as a tourist attraction.

The immediate area surrounding the cart has now been fenced in to create a park-like effect to separate it from the adjacent parking lot, and also to create space for a garden with plantings by Niverville Community in Bloom that features plants and shrubbery that were used by the Métis. Some of these plants were for medicinal purposes, a knowledge that they shared with the earliest Mennonite immigrants who were desperately in need of natural medicines in treating illnesses and sicknesses along with other hardships that they encountered.

Standing back at a distance along Centre Street in Niverville, one should take notice that there is now a plaque inside of the timber frame which gives valuable information and insight in three different columns, including 1. The Cart in Niverville History, 2. Anatomy of a Red River Cart, and 3. Métis and Manitoba.  All together, they speak of the triple M connection between the Métis, the Mennonites and Manitoba. 

So let us take a closer look at the message in each one of those three columns.

The Cart in Niverville History

The Red River Cart is a symbol of the significant roles the Métis and their carts played in our history.  In 1874, it was the Métis that transported the baggage of the first Mennonite settlers as well as children and the elderly from the confluence of the Rat and Red Rivers, where they had arrived by river steamer (the "International") to the four new Shantz Immigration Sheds.

The "International"

These sheds, also erected by Métis men, stood just south of what is now Niverville.  Once settlement centres had been chosen, Métis carts again moved many Mennonites and their personal effects to their new homesteads.  These all lay within the 8 townships that, in 1873, the Canadian Government had set aside for a Mennonite East Reserve (now RM of Hanover).  This land was a part of the territory of Treaty No. 1 that was signed two years earlier in 1871.

Anatomy of a Red River Cart

Made entirely of wood with no metal parts, the cart was perfected by Métis cart-makers around 1801 and used by them in the Canadian West, until the train made it obsolete.  Different woods were used for different parts of the cart: the hub was elm, the wheels, axle, shafts and floorboards oak or ash, and the basket spindles birch or diamond willow.  The 5 1/2 foot wheel with its 12 spokes angled precisely 6-7 degrees was dished to create greater stability on hilly ground, even with a 400 kg. load.  The screech of the axles could be heard for miles as brigades with dozens of carts moved along the Crow Wing Trail from Pembina to Fort Garry, running through what today is Niverville.  This historically accurate replica was crafted in 2021 by Métis master cart-builder Armand Jerome and his wife Kelly of Oakbank.

Métis and Manitoba

From 1670 to 1870, the fur trade under the Hudson's Bay Company dominated what was known as Rupert's Land (part of which is today's Province of Manitoba).  Upon the transfer of Rupert's Land to Canada in 1870, the Métis people, at the time the majority of the new province's population, negotiated the Manitoba Act to address their concerns with the federal government.  This Act, given royal assent on May 12, 1870, created the so-called "postage stamp" Province of Manitoba on July 15.

A promise, in 1871, to the new Province of B. C. of a transcontinental railway link to the rest of Canada resulted in the construction of the Pembina Branch of the CPR.  In 1874, CPR contractor Joseph Whitehead chose the point at which the proposed track intersected with the Crow Wing Trail to be the site of a train station where Niverville is located today.