Recollections by Daryl Minnabarriet on his great-grandfather’s second mariage

Daryl Minnabarriet is the only child of Louis Joseph “Joe” Minnabarriet (1911-1981) and Florence Marie Minnabarriet (née Lafleur, 1923-2001). Daryl’s father is the fourth of six children of Louis Joseph Antoine Globe Minaberriet (1868-1941) and his wife Nancy Frances (1877-1970), who was of N’lakapamux and Nez Perce descent, from P’ukaist.

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“It was custom in those days for European people to come and hook up with Native women. They didn’t have access to white women because they were back in Eastern Canada or back in the old country. That’s how things happened. My great-grandfather [Louis Joseph Antoine Claude Minnabarriet] being Basque French, took a Native woman. They were called “country wives”. They didn’t marry them. It was a common law situation. Of course, they had children. That’s where my grandfather came from, a product of that type of situation. Back in those days, if they had an opportunity to marry a white woman, they would do it. So my grandfather became rather wealthy, had a successful ranching operation, found gold on his own property, of all things, and became rather wealthy. They ran into that kind of a situation, they would go back to their country of origin. That’s what my great-grandfather did. We have newspaper articles showing that he left. Before he left though, he had found another Basque French lady, a lot younger than him, married her and had children from her, at the Basque Ranch north of Spences Bridge. I’m not quite sure how my native grandmother [Nancy Frances] coexisted with a white woman. That concept of bigamy or polygamy existed, but it was kind of common for white people to do that kind of thing. It has always irritated me that my great-grandfather could just up and walk away and leave his Native wife and child. I don’t like that, for a man to do that. It was commonplace to do that, it was accepted. As a society today, we frown on that kind of thing, but in those days, it was kind of accepted practice. I don’t like that kind of thing but I can’t change anything. It is what it is so I have to try to swallow that. But I will say one thing in defence of my great-grandfather. He was a man of the times and he sent my grandfather [Louis Joseph Antoine Globe] off to trade school. He became a carpenter and a blacksmith. He didn’t just leave him high and dry without a backup plan. So he knew that my grandfather could exist on it, to fall back on a trade. There’s a barn at Basque Ranch that’s standing, that was built by my grandfather. It should be listed in historic places in BC. The foundation is starting to deteriorate and I’m getting kind of worried that it might fall down, but it’s still there. You look upon the workmanship of that barn, it’s a large barn, very well built to stand the test of time, so I knew he was a good carpenter. It’s a testament to his talent.”