1 n. & adj. — Fur trade, historical
of or referring to someone of mixed Aboriginal and British ancestry.
Type: 1. Origin — Country-born has been used in Canada to describe people of mixed British and Aboriginal ancestry, particularly in the Red River settlement, Manitoba. In almost all cases, the father would be a British man working for the Hudson's Bay Company. This meaning is different from the US meaning 'slave born in American colonies or in the United States' (DAE, s.v. "country-born") and has apparently developed independently in Manitoba (see the 1973 quotation), hence Type 1 - Origin. If there was a relation between the American meaning and the Canadian one, the meaning would be Type 3 - Semantic Change in Canadian English, but we have no evidence for such connection. The indigenous settlements' close trading connections to the Hudson's Bay Company encouraged the spread of the term not just within Canada but also among the missionaries who returned to Europe with news from the colonies.
The derogatory and historical terms mixed-blood and half-breed were in use at the time, when racial discrimination was openly endorsed and pervasive. According to Foster (1973: 2-4), country-born was yet another concept to distinguish between people of different ethnic ancestries. Country-born was thus used to delineate the children of British descent from the mainly francophone Métis (see also Métis). As the country-born had partially British heritage, they were often raised Protestant and some were even encouraged to become clergymen by the Anglican missionaries, particularly the Church Missionary Society (Foster 1973: 109-110). The distinction between Catholic and Protestant, however, is not completely fixed, as it is known that country-born was also used regardless of religious affiliations.
See also COD-2, s.v. "country-born", which is marked "Cdn hist."
See also: country marriage country wife half-breed offensive, derogatory, historical home-guard (Indian) mixed-blood offensive, derogatory, historical Métis Road Allowance People
2 n. — Newfoundland, historical, rare
a native-born inhabitant of Newfoundland.
Type: 1. Origin — This meaning is documented in DNE, s.v. "country n", which we report below. It is unclear whether it represents an independent development (Type 1. Origin) or Semantic Change (Type 3). The former is quite likely as the meaning of the term is transparent 'born in the country/on the country-side' > country-born, especially so prior to 1949, until which Newfoundland was a quite independent British colony of long standing.