ABSTRACT

One midsummer’s day in 1817 on Mackinac Island, a small group of people came together to celebrate the marriage of island resident Josette Laframboise and the commandant of Fort Mackinac, Captain Benjamin K. Pierce. The group had gathered in the large, two-story Market Street home of Elizabeth Bertrand Mitchell, one of the island’s most prominent and successful residents. Mitchell was métis – mixed French and Ottawa blood. She and her husband David, a British army surgeon, had become successful through the fur trade, the island’s main business. Related to the Ottawa and Chippewa, French, and British groups in the Mackinac region, Elizabeth Mitchell and her family were described by their friend Elizabeth Baird as ‘prominent, interesting, aristocratic, and wealthy’ (Baird, 1998, p. 15). Mitchell hosted quite an aristocratic group for the marriage of her friend Madeline Laframboise’s daughter. But the ceremony that joined the American garrison with the family and friends of Miss Laframboise was more than just an elite gathering of Mackinac Island society. It also represented the diversity of the community living together at Mackinac.