The term
mixed-blood in the
United States is most often employed for individuals of mixed
European and
Native American ancestry. Some of the most prominent in the 19th century were mixed-blood or mixed-race descendants of
fur traders and Native American women along the northern frontier. The fur traders tended to be men of social standing, and they often married or had relationships with daughters of Native American chiefs, consolidating social standing on both sides. They formed the upper tier of what was for years in the 18th and 19th centuries a two-tier society at settlements at
trading posts, with other Europeans, American Indians and mixed-blood or
Métis workers below them. Mixed-blood is also used occasionally in
Canadian accounts to refer to the nineteenth century
Anglo-Métis population rather than Métis, which referred to people of
First Nations and
French descent.
