DCHP-2

country-born country born, Country-born, Country Born, Country-Born DCHP-2 (August 2016)

• 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  

  • 1829  Mr. Walton, the country-born assistant, is very usefully employed in the mission. On Lord's Days, he preaches in Malabar, on the mission premises; 
  • 1857  (1858)  From that period the Society has maintained an increasing establishment of missionaries, catechists, and schoolmasters. They have at the present time-- 13 Missionary stations. 11 English clergymen. 3 Native clergymen. 19 Country-born and native teachers. 
  • 1857  (1968)  A Hudson's Bay Company clerk, James Simpson, country born, who entered the service of the Company in 1844, but is not mentioned in Company records after 1860. 
  • 1923  They each sent four boys and girls to school, and when these eight children in as many pairs of boots walked into school one frosty morning, clattering over the floor, in a manner so different from that of the country-born moccasin-wearing pupils, it created quite a diversion which was followed by a long and careful scrutiny of each other's physiognomy. 
  • 1973  The term "Country-born" offers a solution to this problem in terminology. Originating among the British-born residents of Red River, possibly as a polite affectation, the term is not entirely satisfactory as its use suggests social class connotations. Apparently the term had particular reference to the mixed-blood children of British-born officers. Nevertheless, as the term defines a community distinct from the Métis, as it would have been recognized and understood by the community it designated, and as the term avoids the confusion in meaning and the pejorative sense associated with "Halfbreed", "Country-born" appears to be adequate to describe the second mixed-blood community in Red River. "Country-born," in short, signifies the English-speaking mixed bloods of the Red River Settlement. 
  • 1975  The second mixed-blood element in Red River, settled to the north of the Métis and further down the Red River, was the one we may call the country-born. 
  • 1983  Horden reiterated his lament that there was not another Thomas Vincent nor a second John Mackay, and set out his own racial theories. He felt that in the mission field, as in the fur trade, there should be little difference in the salaries of Europeans and Natives "as all have to live alike." He claimed his Native staff were really as efficient as Europeans: "in some respects they are inferior, but their deficiencies are more than counterbalanced by other qualities not so well developed in Europeans." He objected to the Society's use of the term "Country Born." The distinction between Country Born clergy, like Vincent and his contemporary John Sanders, and seemingly purer Native clergy gave the impression that there was a caste feeling between the two. Sanders was "not a pure Indian" and Vincent was "not a pure white" but there was, even between them, a difference of "degree." Though Horden himself referred to Vincent's parents as "half caste", he recommended the terms Indian and Country Born be abolished in favour of the all-inclusive Native category. 
  • 1985  Bishop John Horden of Moose Factory considered Vincent "a first class native," and he objected to the term country born being used to describe such clergymen -- "tending as it does to create a caste feeling." Though Horden himself used the expression half caste in his private correspondence, he felt the Church Missionary Society's almanac should not emphasize racial distinctions among indigenous clergy, all of whom ought to be considered "native." 
  • 1985  Frits Pannekoek contends that the country-born (as he terms the English-speaking mixed-bloods) and the métis of Red River Settlement "were at odds years before the [Riel] resistance, and the origins of that hatred lay in the nature of Red River society." 
  • 1991  A second group, the Country-Born, grew from the "Home Guard Cree", mixed bloods so named because of their physical and cultural attachment to the Hudson's Bay Company trading posts. The Hudson's Bay Company was very much a product of the European class and power structure of its time. This ideology promoted the "urban" skills of the trading post, rather than the "rural" skills of the plains and forests. Provision was made by the British officers of the Hudson's Bay Company so that children resulting from their alliances with native women received a formal education either in Canada or perhaps even in the "old country". 
  • 2000  The "country-born," the prairie offspring of Native-British marriages, like Ontario's Pauline Johnson and others at Six Nations, had incentives to downplay or deny their non-European heritage. In contrast, the Métis, stigmatized as Native, Catholic, and French in provinces that were increasingly Anglo-centric and Protestant, had every reason to declare themselves a new nation.
  • 2007  While they likely did not consider the matter in 1882-83, the Russian Jews helped to create in Manitoba, along with First Nations people, Metis, Country-born, descendants of the Selkirk Settlers, French Canadians, Icelanders, Mennonites, and English-speaking settlers from Ontario and Great Britain, a multi-ethnic and multi-national society in the 1880s, and became one of the earliest and integral components of what became Winnipeg's multi-cultural mosaic. 
  • 2013  It is also important to point out that there has been an aversion to the use of the term "half-breed," which resulted in the invention of terms for the Half-breeds from the English-speaking parishes of the Red River Settlement, including "country-born" and "mixed-blood." 

• 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.

  • 1857  (1999)  1857 MOUNTAIN 3-5 This shore is inhabited by fishermen of the English and Irish race who have either themselves come out to settle, or have been born in the country; these last are called 'Shumachs' or 'the country-born'. . the 'country-born,' and the non-residents.