Swiss museum exhibit features 1820s Métis saddle alongside modern beaded items

A Métis saddle from the early 1800s is at the centre of an exhibit that opened last month at a Swiss museum, along with contemporary beadwork created by other Red River Métis artists. 

Earlier this year, David Heinrichs visited the saddle at the Cantonal Museum of Archaeology and History in Lausanne, Switzerland, when he was delivering the piece he made for the exhibit, called Autobiography of a Métis saddle.

"When we walked into the room where [the saddle] was, I got chills in a way that I wasn't expecting," said Heinrichs. 

"It wasn't until that evening when I was back at the hotel that I was kind of reflecting on why I was more emotional than I normally am, and I realized … [the saddle] was so far from home. It's been potentially 200 years since a Métis person has interacted with that piece and seen it." 

How the saddle made its way to Switzerland is unknown but it is believed to have been given or sold to a Swiss settler in the Red River settlement in the early 1800s. 

At that time Europeans were being recruited to move to the settlement.

"The Earl of Selkirk had an agent working for him recruiting Swiss settlers who I must say … had no idea what they were getting into," said Sherry Farrell–Racette, a Métis art specialist from the University of Regina who worked on the exhibit.

Swiss settlers landed in York Factory, Man. in the early 1820s, and in a few years most of them had left, mostly travelling south to the United States. 

"[The saddle] was collected in 1820, so it's really old … there's a lot of wool fabric on it, and the moths had kind of a heyday," said Farrell–Racette. 

The saddle is one of the oldest examples of a Métis pad saddle and it's likely the best preserved. 

"There's actually only three of them that I'm aware of that are in that particular style, and it's really exciting because it has … so much provenance," said Farrell–Racette. 

She said the others are in museums in St. Louis, Mo., and New York. 

What makes this saddle unique is the materials used and the design. 

"The early First Nations saddles tended to be chunks of buffalo hide … and [they] also had larger saddles that were made out of wood that were quite structural," said Farrell–Racette.