Métis Women in History: Marie Rose Delorme Smith: A Life Too Remarkable to Forget
October is Women's History Month, and we're continuing our celebration of remarkable Métis women whose lives helped shape Canadian history.
Our second story is about Marie Rose Delorme Smith, a woman who lived through nearly a century of extraordinary change on the Canadian Prairies.
She raised seventeen children, managed a ranch, operated businesses, practised traditional healing and eventually became a writer.
And her story began with a marriage that she had very little say in.
A childhood on the Prairies
Marie Rose Delorme was born in 1861 in Saint François-Xavier, in the Red River Settlement, now part of Manitoba.
She grew up in a Métis family whose livelihood was closely connected to the buffalo hunt and the fur trade. As a child, she travelled with her family across the western plains, experiencing a way of life that was already beginning to change.
She attended school with the Grey Nuns in Saint Boniface, where she learned to read and write in French and English. She also spoke Cree and likely Michif.
Her education would prove particularly valuable many decades later, when she began recording her memories of Métis life.
A marriage at sixteen
In 1877, when Marie Rose was just sixteen, her mother arranged her marriage to Charles "Charlie" Smith, a fur trader nearly twenty years her senior.
According to historical accounts, the marriage arrangement involved a payment of $50.
Marie Rose later described the experience in words that leave little doubt about how she remembered it:
"I might as well say I was sold."
It's a startling statement, particularly coming from a woman who would go on to accomplish so much.
The couple eventually settled in southern Alberta, where they established the Jughandle Ranch near Pincher Creek.
Over the following years, Marie Rose gave birth to seventeen children.
Seventeen!
But raising a large family was only one part of her responsibilities.
More than a rancher's wife
Marie Rose was an accomplished businesswoman.
She played a central role in managing the family's ranch, particularly during her husband's frequent absences. She understood the demands of ranching, handled business responsibilities and helped keep the operation running.
She was also skilled in traditional Métis crafts, including working with leather and producing useful goods.
Her knowledge of traditional medicines and healing practices made her a valued midwife and medicine woman in her community.
When Charlie died in 1914, Marie Rose faced the challenge of supporting her family and rebuilding its finances.
She established a boarding house in Pincher Creek and acquired another homestead.
At a time when women's economic opportunities were limited, particularly for Indigenous women, Marie Rose demonstrated remarkable independence and resourcefulness.
The woman who preserved a disappearing world
Perhaps Marie Rose's most important contribution to history came later in her life.
By the 1930s, with many of her children grown, she began writing about her experiences.
She had witnessed enormous changes.
The buffalo herds that had sustained Métis families were gone. The fur trade economy had given way to farming and ranching. Settlements had grown into towns, railways crossed the Prairies, and the traditional way of life she had known as a child was disappearing.
Marie Rose wanted to preserve those memories.
She wrote about buffalo hunting, trading expeditions, homesteading and everyday life on the Prairies.
Importantly, she also recorded the experiences of Métis women, whose voices were rarely represented in historical accounts of the Canadian West.
Although her memoirs were never published in their entirety during her lifetime, some of her writing appeared in periodicals, including Canadian Cattleman.
Her accounts have since become valuable historical records.
A complicated Métis identity
There is another aspect of Marie Rose's life worth remembering.
Although she was proud of many of her Métis skills and traditions, she lived during a period when openly identifying as Métis could bring discrimination and social exclusion.
Historical research suggests that, in her later years, she often presented herself publicly as Mary Smith rather than Marie Rose Delorme.
Some aspects of her Métis heritage were preserved within the family, while others were not passed down to subsequent generations.
Her experience reflects the difficult choices faced by many Métis families during that period.
It also reminds us that cultural identity is not always a simple matter, particularly when society pressures people to conceal parts of who they are.
A legacy finally recognized
Marie Rose Delorme Smith died in 1960, having lived for 98 years.
She had witnessed the transformation of the Canadian West, from the era of buffalo hunting and the fur trade to the modern Prairies.
In 2022, the Government of Canada officially designated her a Person of National Historic Significance, recognizing her contributions as a Métis rancher, homesteader, medicine woman and author.
But perhaps her greatest legacy lies in the stories she left behind.
Without women like Marie Rose, much of what we know about the everyday experiences of Métis families, particularly Métis women, might have been lost.
She lived through history, helped shape it, and then made sure future generations would have a record of what she had seen.
And that is a remarkable legacy indeed.
Photo: Charles Smith, Marie Rose Smith, and daughter, Mary Ann, southern Alberta, circa 1890s.
© Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections / University of Calgary / CU1103968 / Cadzow, Daniel