# John Cunningham (voyageur)

John Patrick Daniel Cunningham (16 February 1817 – 12 October 1870) was a Canadian voyageur, postmaster, and clerk.

## Early life

John Cunningham was born in Île-à-la-Crosse, Saskatchewan, on 16 February 1817, as the eldest son of Patrick Cunningham, a postmaster from Sligo, Ireland, who had become a voyageur at Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), and of Nancy Anne Bruce, a native of Louisiana. He was only baptized on 27 August 1826, at the age of 9.
During his childhood, the Cunningham family traveled to several destinations, such as Fort Chipewyan in 1823–26, Fort Churchill in 1826–27, the Islands of Lake District in 1827–29, and Fort Severn in 1931, where his father drown in the River Severn, thus windowing his wife, who took her family to Red River of the North in Old Kildonan.

## Multiple marriages

On 1 June 1833, the 16-year-old Cunningham was employed by the HBC, who sent him back to the Lake District, so that he could start his journey as an apprentice labourer in a familiar setting, and his three years there were followed by another four years of apprenticeship at Fort Assiniboine, from 1836 until 1940. In the 1840s, Cunningham worked as a voyageur, like his father, and also as an interpreter in the journal of Reverend Robert Rundle (1811–1896). On 28 February 1841, at Rocky Mountain House, the 24-year-old Cunningham married Margaret Mondion, whose origins are uncertain, though she may have come from the White Horse Plains area in Manitoba. However, she died in Vancouver, Washington, in 1845, the year in which John returned to the Red River.
In the following year, Cunningham returned to the Saskatchewan district, where on 15 September 1846, he married Rosalie L'hirondelle at Lac Ste. Anne, Alberta, and the couple only had one child, Catherine, born on 18 December 1847, who died in the following month, as pointed out in Rundle's Journal on 24 January 1848, ironically the last time he is mentioned there. Three months later, on 8 April, their second child was born, Samuel, and they had a further eight children, John (1851–1904), James (1854–1940), Albert (1856–1925), Nancy (1859–1918), Edward (1862–1920), Daniel (1864–1935), Rachel (1866–1881), Alfred (1868–1931), and Henry (1869–1955).

## Later life

After a hiatus of seven years, Cunningham reappeared in 1855, aged 38, when he was hired as an interpreter by the HBC, being in charge at Lac Ste Anne in 1857–58, and then becoming a postmaster and clerk at Fort Edmonton, a position that he held for a decade, from 1858 until his retirement in 1868. In the autumn of 1866, Cunningham led a group that had 15 mixed-blood traders to a camp of Bloods, whose head chief had sent a messenger to Fort Edmonton requesting a trading party, but their journey was halted by a group of Blackfoot warriors who had previously attacked Fort Pitt, and one of its chiefs, the towering Big Swan, forced his way through the crowd and delivered a heated speech criticizing the traders. Recognizing the hostility toward his group, Cunningham began repacking the 30 Red River carts that he had brought, but he was shoved aside by Big Swan, who led his warriors to loot the traders' carts; however, the pillaging was stopped by Chief Crowfoot, who then, defying several warrior chiefs, provided an escort which allowed Cunningham to safely return to Fort Edmonton with his empty carts.
In addition to his sons, he also raised a certain John Grace Matheson, who was still a young boy when Cunningham spotted him wandering in a camp to escape the tedium of school and farm, and since he was a strong young man, with no ties to hold him, he brought him to St. Anne, where he was quickly accepted as a family member. His wife, a faith devotee, strove to influence her children and Matheson to become a priest, and she succeeded with her second son Edward, who was educated at Ottawa University and ordained by Bishop Grandin in Alberta in 1890. When he returned, he had forgotten his boyhood admiration of John Grace, so he referred to him by the term "cousin".

## Death and legacy

Cunningham died in Paint Creek House, Alberta, on 12 October 1870, at the age of 53, during the smallpox epidemic of 1870. His youngest son Henry went on to become a founding member of the Métis Association of Alberta.