Jean Baptiste Wilkie was a Métis warrior, buffalo hunter and chief from the Pembina area. He was one of the Metis buffalo hunters who fed the Scots Selkirk Settlers during their first six years in Canada. In the mid-1820s he was operating a large horse ranch along the Red River in what is now St. Vital, Manitoba. He moved his operations to Pembina in the 1840s, and later appears on the Pembina Annuity Roll first for We-ke-ge-ke-gzick's Band then for Chief Little Shell's Band. Wilkie's father, Alexander, was of Scottish origin and his mother was a Chippewa named Mezhekamkijkok. He married Amable Elise Azure, the daughter of Pierre Azure and Margaret Assiniboine. Many of his descendants currently reside in present-day North Dakota, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Montana.
Family
Jean Baptiste Wilkie had several children:
Jean Baptiste Jr. - first married Marie Laframboise and then Isabelle Patenude
Judith - She and her husband Pierre Berger led 25 Métis families into central Montana in 1879 to search for bison.
Augustine - was married to Marie Paquin
Alexander - was married to Louise Gariepy
Marie Catherine - was married to Michel Gladu
Madeleine - married to Gabriel Dumont, a leader of the 1885 Metis Uprising. She nursed the wounded during the resistance and later crossed into the United States from Canada. She died from consumption and injuries from a fall from a buggy in Lewistown, Montana in October 1885.
On June 15, 1840, Chief Wilkie led 1,630 hunters in a buffalo hunt. A council was held to elect the leaders of the hunt, and ten captains were named. Wilkie was elected to be the most senior captain. Wilkie was also leader of the hunt in 1848 when the group clashed with the Sioux at the Battle of O’Brien’s Coulée near Olga, North Dakota and again in 1853 when he met Isaac Stevens of the US Pacific Railroad Surveys near Devil's Lake, North Dakota. Many Native Americans stopped at his house in the village of St. Joseph . In 1861, several Sioux and Chippewa opened fire on each other. Red Bear, the brother of a Chippewa chief, was among those killed. In the 1860s, Chief Wilkie made peace between the Métis and the Dakota, who had been enemies for many generations. Wilkie and Peter Grant traveled to Washington and met with U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, who provided them with ammunition. Wilkie and several other men went into a Dakota village and asked to meet with the chief. The meeting started off tense, and the Dakota warriors were said to have been so angry that they slashed the cloth covering the lodge. After smoking the ceremonial pipe, an agreement was made. Later, the Métis and Dakota met at Grand Coteau in order to trade and get to know each other. It was said that out of the hundred that came, none left with the same horse they brought.
