ROSS, SALLY (Sarah), Okanagan Indian and housewife; b. c. 1798 in the Columbia River area, daughter of an Okanagan Indian chief; m. c. 1812 presumably by Indian rites to Alexander Ross*, and on 24 Dec. 1828 she was baptized and married to Ross “by Banns with mutual consent” in the Anglican Upper Church (later St John’s Church), Red River Settlement (Man.); they had at least 12 children; d. 26 Feb. 1884 in Winnipeg, Man.

Sally Ross was born into a peaceful tribe of Okanagan hunters and fishermen. Her simple life within the tribe was profoundly affected by the impact of three fur-trading companies upon the area. Sally probably met her future husband, Alexander Ross, soon after his arrival in the Columbia region as a clerk with the Pacific Fur Company at Fort Okanagan (Wash.) in 1811. Two years later that company was bought out by the North West Company, which, in turn, amalgamated with the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821. Ross worked for each of these firms in succession until 1825 when, as one of several “expensive clerks with large families,” he was transferred by Governor George Simpson* to Red River. Ross set off with his eldest son, leaving Sally to follow with the other four children. She left Spokane House (near Spokane, Wash.) with the HBC express on 19 Sept. 1825 and ascended the Columbia River via Boat Encampment (B.C.) to Jasper House (Alta) where she wintered with her children. In May she left with the brigade going east, riding where practicable with one child secured behind her, another on the front on her saddle, and the two others on a second horse. She reached the Red River Settlement in the summer of 1826, the year of a disastrous flood, and with the four children spent the winter at Pembina (N. Dak.) where Alexander had business interests. The following year she proceeded to the Red River Settlement where she was to live for the next 57 years.

Alexander was, in turn, a merchant, a substantial farmer, and, by 1836, a councillor and the sheriff of Assiniboia. The Ross home on the Red River, Colony Gardens, a white, roughcast, two-storey stone building, was noted for its hospitality; “constantly thronged by visitors,” it was a landmark in the settlement. According to Robert Clouston, who visited the settlement in 1843, Sally seldom appeared in public except in church, but she was a central figure in her large bustling household, and in her later years was known to the whole Red River community as “Granny Ross.”

In his great “wilderness trilogy” of histories of the west, published between 1849 and 1856, Alexander Ross stressed the dependence of the fur-trader upon his Indian wife, the “tenderness existing between them,” the protection afforded by her “vigilance,” and the charm which “her smiles” added to his existence. He wrote more personally of his own grief and anxiety when he was forced to leave his family for Red River in 1825. Illiterate herself, Sally may well have contributed much of the detailed information on Indian tribal life which was included in his first two books. When Alexander died in October 1856, he left the substantial portion of his estate to his wife and commended the younger children to her care. Although Sally was “destitute in the accomplishments of etiquette,” her affection and her tender-hearted anxiety for all the children’s welfare were unfailing and they remained loyal to their Indian mother. James* became a lawyer, schoolmaster, journalist, and, in 1869–70, an associate of Louis Riel; Henrietta married John Black, the prominent Manitoba Presbyterian minister. Only one of Sally’s children survived her, a daughter Mary who married the Reverend George Flett.

Sally Ross carried much of her Indian culture with her to Red River; there her concern for family relationships harmonized with that of the numerous Scots. Like many other Indian women, only now being studied by historians, Sally was a link between Indian tribal life, the mixed-bloods, and the new white communities of traders. She became a devout Christian, the centre of a lively and intelligent household, and she was one of the women who contributed to the shaping of Manitoba society.

Laurenda Daniells

PABC, Add. mss 345. PAM, HBCA, A.36/11: ff.214–15, will of Alexander Ross, 25 June 1856; E.5/1–11; MG 2, C14; MG 7, B7. J. W. Bond, Minnesota and its resources to which are appended campfire sketches or notes of a trip from StPaul to Pembina and Selkirk settlement on the Red River of the north (New York, 1853). Canadian North-West (Oliver). Documents relating to the North West Company, ed. W. S. Wallace (Toronto, 1934). A. [E. S.] Martin, The Hudson’s Bay Company’s land tenures and the occupation of Assiniboia by Lord Selkirk’s settlers, with a list of grantees under the Earl and the company (London, 1898). Alexander Ross, Adventures of the first settlers on the Oregon or Columbia River: being a narrative of the expedition fitted out by John Jacob Astor, to establish thePacific Fur Company; with an account of some Indian tribes on the coast of the Pacific (London, 1849; repr. Ann Arbor, Mich., 1966); The fur hunters of the far west; a narrative of adventures in the Oregon and Rocky Mountains (2v., London, 1855); “Letters of a pioneer,” ed. George Bryce, HSSM Trans., 63 (1903); Red River Settlement. Manitoba Daily Free Press, 1872–74, 27 Feb. 1884. Nor’Wester, 1859–69, especially 25 June 1862. W. J. Healy, Women of Red River: being a book written from the recollections of women surviving from the Red River era (Winnipeg, 1923). Sylvia Van Kirk, “‘Women in between’: Indian women in fur trade society in western Canada,” CHA Hist. papers, 1977: 30–46.

Cite This Article

Laurenda Daniells, “ROSS, SALLY (Sarah),” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 11, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed October 8, 2024, https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/ross_sally_11E.html.

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Permalink:   https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/ross_sally_11E.html
Author of Article:   Laurenda Daniells
Title of Article:   ROSS, SALLY (Sarah)
Publication Name:   Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 11
Publisher:   University of Toronto/Université Laval
Year of publication:   1982
Year of revision:   1982
Access Date:   October 8, 2024