You are on page 1of 400

DECENTRING THE RENAISSANCE:

CANADA AND EUROPE IN MULTIDISCIPLINARY


P E R S P E C T I V E , 1500-1700

Edited by Germaine Warkentin and Carolyn Podruchny

In 1497, explorers from the confident world of Renaissance Europe


sailed, under Captain Giovanni Caboto, into what are now Canadian
waters. This significant encounter brought into contact two worlds
equally ignorant of each other and set in motion a number of events
that culminated in the birth of a new nation. The Renaissance, ordi-
narily thought of as an entirely European-centred phenomenon is
'decentred' in these eighteen innovative essays. They explore not only
how the European Renaissance helped form Canada, but also, more sig-
nificantly, how the experience of Canada touched the Renaissance and
those who first came to the shores of North America.
Representing a range of disciplines, including literature, biology,
history, linguistics, and anthropology, this volume rethinks traditional
notions of Canada and of the Renaissance. The essays examine both the
interaction between the two worlds as well as the ways that this interac-
tion has traditionally been interpreted. As distinct from the rapid trans-
formation of South and Central America, the focus is on the slower
northern experience, questioning the European monopoly on history,
politics, and science, as well as the misrepresentation of Canada's
Aboriginal peoples. Originally presented at a 1996 conference at the
Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, University of Toronto,
these essays provide a wealth of new information and a variety of new
perspectives on the collision of the Old World with the New.

GF.RMAINE WARKENTIN is Professor Emeritus of English, University of


Toronto.
CAROLYN PODRUCHNY is an assistant professor of American studies and
history at Western Michigan University.
This page intentionally left blank
Decentring the
Renaissance
Canada and Europe in
Multidisciplinary Perspective,
1500-1700

EDITED BY

Germaine Warkentin
Carolyn Podruchny

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS


Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2001
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada

ISBN 08020-4327-5 (cloth)


ISBN 0-8020-8149-5 (paper)

Printed on acid-free paper

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Main entry under title:


Decentring the Renaissance : Canada and Europe in multidisciplinary
perspective, 1500-1700
Based on papers presented at a conference held at Victoria College,
University of Toronto, in Mar. 1996.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8020-4327-5 (bound) ISBN 0-8020-8149-5 (pkb.)
i. Canada - Discovery and exploration - Congresses. 2. America -
Discovery and exploration - Congresses. 3. Indians of North America -
First contact with Europeans - Canada - Congresses. 4. Canada -
Civilization - European influences - Congresses. 5. Europe - Civilization -
Canadian influences - Congresses. 6. Europe - Civilization - 17''' century -
Congresses. 7. Canada - Civilization - To 1763 - Congresses. 8. Renaissance
Congresses. I. Warkentin, Germaine, 1933- . II. Prodruchny, Carolyn.
K:3O5.r>437 2001 971.01 (12001-930728-4
1-1030.1)437 2001

Illustrations on the part-title pages and the cover are used with the permission of the
Canadian Museum of Civilization, images numbers 82000-7483, 82000-7484, 82000-
7485.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing pro-
gram of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and Social
Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activ-
ities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Develop-
ment Program (BPIDP).
Contents

Illustrations ix
Preface xi

Introduction: 'Other Land Existing' 3


Germaine Warkentin and Carolyn Podruchny

Part I: Methods
Polarities, Hybridities: What Strategies for Decentring? 19
Natalie Zemon Davis
Inclusive and Exclusive Perceptions of Difference: Native and
Euro-Based Concepts of Time, History, and Change 33
Deborah Doxtator
Plunder or Harmony? On Merging European and Native Views of
Early Contact 48
Toby Morantz
Memoria as the Place of Fabrication of the New World 68
Giles Therien

Part II: Mentalites / Debwewin


The Sixteenth-Century French Vision of Empire: The Other Side of
Self-Determination 87
Olive Patricia Dickason
vi Contents

The Mentality of the Men behind Sixteenth-Century Spanish Voyages to


Terranova no
Selma Huxley Barkham
Relocating Terra Firma: William Vaughan's Newfoundland 125
Anne Lake Prescott
Images of English Origins in Newfoundland and Roanoke 141
Mary C. Fuller
From the Good Savage to the Degenerate Indian: The Amerindian in
the Accounts of Travel to America 159
Real Ouellet with Mylene Tremblay

Part III: Translatiofide


Few, Uncooperative, and 111 Informed? The Roman Catholic Clergy in
French and British North America, 1610-1658 173
Luca Codignola
Canada in Seventeenth-Century Jesuit Thought: Backwater or
Opportunity? 186
Peter A. Goddard
'A New Loreto in New France': Pierre-Joseph-Marie Chaumonot, SJ, and
the Holy House of Loreto 200
Andre Sanfafon

Part IV: Decentring at Work


The Delights of Nature in This New World: A Seventeenth-Century
Canadian View of the Environment 223
Lynn Berry
The Beginning of French Exploration out of the St Lawrence Valley:
Motives, Methods, and Changing Attitudes towards Native People 236
Conrad E. Heidenreich
The Earliest European Encounters with Iroquoian Languages 252
Wallace Chafe
Decentring Icons of History: Exploring the Archaeology of the
Frobisher Voyages and Early European-Inuit Contact 262
Reginald Auger, William W. Fitzhugh, Lynda Gullason, Anne Henshaw,
Donald Hogarth, and Dosia Laeyendecker
Contents vii

Sir William Phips and the Decentring of Empire in Northeastern North


America, 1690-1694 287
Emerson W. Baker and John G. Reid

Part V: Afterword
Amerindians and the Horizon of Modernity 305
Denys Deldge and Jean-Philippe Warren

Works Cited 319


Contributors 355
Index 361
This page intentionally left blank
Illustrations

1 The plan of Hochelaga, from Giovanni Ramusio's Italian edition of


Jacques Carder's Voyages (1556) 11
2 A Huguenot column asserting French rights to 'vacant land' in
Florida (1591) 100
3 Innu tents beside a Basque dwelling, Strait of Belle Isle 123
4 William Vaughan's Newfoundland: Captain John Mason's map from
Vaughan's Cambrensium Caroleia (1625) 129
5 Champlain's explorations, 1603-15 240
6 The Frobisher site research area: (i) Baffin Land in relation to
England and (ii) the location of Kodlunarn Island and
Kamaiyuk 263
7 Aerial photograph of Kodlunarn Island 268
8 Ship's trench (1577 mine); excavation of the deposit left by the 1578
Frobisher expedition 269
9 Industrial area of Kodlunarn Island 270
10 Sod house at the Inuit site of Kamaiyuk 272

The fragments of sixteenth-century stove tile reproduced on the cover


and part-title pages are from the Frobisher site, Kodlunarn Island.
Restored at the Laboratoire de conservation de 1'Universite Laval.
This page intentionally left blank
T

Decent-ring the Renaissance brings together a selection of papers first pre-


sented at a conference on the subject of Canada in the Renaissance,
held at Victoria College, University of Toronto, in March 1996. All the
papers were circulated in draft form before the conference, as well as
heavily revised afterwards, and the result is a set of carefully thought-out
essays that attempt new ways of framing the study of history and culture
in 'the north part of America.'
The editors would like to express their gratitude to the Centre for
Reformation and Renaissance Studies at Victoria College and the Cana-
dian Studies Program, University College, both of the University of
Toronto, which undertook co-sponsorship of a conference in a field
which at first sight seemed remote from their respective spheres of
activity. Additional sponsors to whom we are grateful were the Centre
for Rupert's Land Studies at the University of Winnipeg, First Nations
House at the University of Toronto, and the Canadian Society for
Renaissance Studies / Societe Canadienne d'Etudes de la Renaissance.
We would also like to thank those institutions and departments
that supported the conference with funding: the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada, the British Council, the
Netherlands Association for Canadian Studies, the Italian Cultural
Institute, Glendon College of York University, and Victoria University in
the University of Toronto. Within the University of Toronto proper, we
wish to express our gratitude for funding to the Office of the President
and Provost, the Vice-President for Research and International Rela-
tions, the Connaught Fund, the Dean of Arts and Science, the Canadian
Studies Program of University College, and the Departments of English,
French, Italian, Geography, and History.
We would also like to thank the more than 125 attendees who sus-
xii Preface

tained the vigorous discussion that characterized the 1996 conference,


many of them either by chairing sessions or by contributing papers
(some of which have already been published elsewhere). The graduate
student assistants organized by the Centre for Reformation and Renais-
sance Studies played an essential role in creating the outstandingly col-
legial atmosphere of the conference. We are particularly grateful to the
editorial board (originally the organizing committee for the confer-
ence), the members of which gave constant support during the editing
process. We would like to express our thanks to the external evaluators
of the resulting manuscript for their contributions to its final version.
Finally, we would like to thank Dominique O'Neill, Genevieve Zubrzy-
cki, and Glenn Gavin, who translated papers from the original French. For
assistance with illustrations we owe a debt to Caroline Marchand and Louis
Campeau of the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa, Michel Brise-
bois of the National Library of Canada, and members of the Cartography
Lab of York University, Toronto. For assistance in finding difficult-to-
obtain texts we are grateful to Jane Lynch of Inter-Library Loan, Robarts
Library, University of Toronto, and David Brown of EJ. Pratt Library,
Victoria University in the University of Toronto. John Warkentin, Rene
Fossett, and John D. Nichols gave special advice, and Ingrid Smith typed
several of the papers and prepared the final manuscript.

A Note on the Text

The papers that follow range widely through the documents and litera-
ture of the period 1500-1700, besides including much modern literary,
historical, and scientific material. We have systematized this varying
material as follows: citations from manuscript and unpublished material
are located in the notes that appear at the end of each essay; references
to printed material appear as author-date citations in the text. All pub-
lished sources cited in the text appear at the end of the volume in the
extensive list of works cited, which is intended to be a helpful contribu-
tion to further work in the area. To that end, in the works cited and the
in-text citations we have generally included the original date of publica-
tion in square brackets, in addition to the modern edition being
referred to. The exceptions are Christopher Columbus, Jacques Cartier,
Richard Hakluyt, and Samuel de Champlain, where the textual record is
complicated and established modern editions have been cited, and well-
known poets such as Donne, Drayton, and Yeats. In referring to early
printed material all citations have been compared with the original
texts; the use of i/j and u/v has been regularized and intensive italiciza-
tion ignored.
DECENTRING THE RENAISSANCE
Canada and Europe in Multidisciplinary Perspective,
1500-1700
This page intentionally left blank
Introduction:
'Other Land Existing'
Germaine Warkentin and Carolyn Podruchny

In the traditional story outlining the founding of the Confederacy, the Onon-
daga word for nation is tsyakauhwetsya'atta'shu', or 'earth, land be one,'
implying that, in order to be a nation, a group of people must fundamentally
share the same land. The term for nations outside the Confederacy of shared
lands is thihotiohwentayatenyo, literally 'other land existing.'
Deborah Doxtator

In 1994, excavating Martin Frobisher's 1577 establishment on Kodlu-


narn Island (in Frobisher Bay on the southeast coast of Baffin Island),
archaeologists found among the detritus of that failed mining enter-
prise over 20,000 fragments of sixteenth-century stove tile. 'When recon-
structed,' they write, 'these fragments exhibit stamped impressions
showing scenes of classical mythology; two of them bear a date of 1561,
which fixes their time of manufacture. Some of the same tiles have also
been recovered from excavations at contemporary Inuit sites, and oral
tradition ... makes reference to Inuit grinding them into powder in
order to polish their brass ornaments' (see Auger et al., below, 275). In
contemplating the questions raised by Europe's historic movement out-
ward into 'new worlds,' how do we go about relating these two state-
ments to each other? On one hand there is the material evidence -
fractured, needing careful reconstruction - of the artistry of European
Renaissance tile-makers whose names are long lost to us. On the other is
oral history, reporting the renowned ingenuity in practical matters of
the Inuit of the Canadian north - their names also unknown - who
transformed this unexpected material from far away into something
that would serve their own artistic needs. Indeed, though the Romano-
4 Germaine Warkentin and Carolyn Podruchny

Christian culture of Europe has throughout its history been outward-


moving; during the long history of that movement it has repeatedly
met with forces that transformed it, the most obvious case being what
used to be called 'the fall of the Roman empire,' in which Vandals and
Visigoths took up what they chose from a fragmenting classical civil-
ization to - as it were - polish their own brass ornaments. This has been
no less the case with the further movement of Romano-Christian cul-
ture that led to the Renaissance's 'Age of Discovery,' in which Martin
Frobisher played out his role.
It is just such an experience of historical transformation - not only
among the Inuit, but among those who, like the tiles, stayed behind in a
new land - that the essays in this volume address. In 1993, introducing
an anthology of Canadian exploration literature between 1660 and
1860, Germaine Warkentin wrote, 'the real experience of discovery, the
anthropologists tell us, was when Europeans who thought their society
perfect and complete suddenly encountered the unrecognizable
"other" represented by nations beyond their ken, and were forced to re-
interpret themselves in the light cast by this "new world"' (Warkentin
1993, xxi). Decentring the Renaissance takes us beyond this insight, which,
though true within its limits, still situates all agency- and all the capacity
for reflection - among the Europeans. In the present volume, the
regard of a team of scholars is cast, insofar as is possible, on the interac-
tion between those two worlds and on the ways we attempt to interpret
it. The framework is provided by the Renaissance - whether cultural
movement or historical period - which in Northern Europe extended
well into the seventeenth century, though scholars often find it more
useful to describe those latter years as 'Early Modern.' The authors of
the essays collected here inhabit, like the people they study, positions on
multiple and intersecting peripheries. In focusing on the specifically
northern, and indeed Canadian, aspects of the encounter, they are
exploring well beyond the emphasis on Spain that necessarily character-
izes much analysis of the discovery of the Americas - for example, in
such influential studies as J.H. Elliott's The Old World and the New, 1492-
1650 (1970). And though the Europeans among their subjects were
shaped by the culture of the Renaissance, they nevertheless lived and
acted in its long, Early Modern aftermath.
The Renaissance as a historiographical concept, so the influential
Canadian scholar Wallace Ferguson observed over fifty years ago, is based
on three basic ideas: 'that the Renaissance began in Italy and later spread
across the Alps, altering its character somewhat in each country it
Introduction: 'Other Land Existing' 5

entered; that the revival of antiquity was everywhere a dominant factor;


and finally, that it marked the end of medieval civilization and the dawn
of the modern era' (Ferguson 1948, 253). The Renaissance -when thus
defined - is at one and the same time a period, a cultural model stressing
centre-periphery relations, and a historical process. But, in defining it as
he did, Ferguson was also pointing out the extent to which the northern
countries of Europe - both receivers and disseminators of this powerful
modernizing force - could not be absorbed in the great synthesis of the
period; 'the Northern Renaissance,' he observed pointedly, 'had no
Burckhardt,' nor could it have had one. The confident program of
Renaissance humanism, with its core sense of a rebirth of antique culture
after a period of darkness, was by its very nature entropic, and the frag-
ments of stove tile from the Frobisher expedition, their scenes from clas-
sical mythology buried for four hundred years in an Arctic miners'
trench, are eloquent testimonies to a process in which diffusion ulti-
mately became transformation, as the periphery of a great European
movement encountered the periphery of a world unknown to it. Ironi-
cally, it was in precisely the kind of task prized by the humanistic philol-
ogy of the Renaissance - the editing of Jose de Acosta's Historia natural y
moral de las Indias (1590) - that Edmundo O'Gorman during the 1950s
began to inquire into the way in which Europeans had invented the very
idea that America needed to be 'discovered' (O'Gorman 1961).
Scholars to the south of Canada have devoted much study to this phe-
nomenon, as we can see in the writings of Stephen Greenblatt, Anthony
Pagden, and Walter D. Mignolo - to cite only a few of those writing in
English - particularly during the commemoration of the Columbus
quincentenary in 1992.' Prompted in part by the 1992 commemoration,
scholars of exploration history, mapping, and neo-colonialism have con-
tinued to re-evaluate the field (Kicza 2000), but Canada has played only
a small role in their writings. The reason is apparent in William
Fitzhugh's observation that 'cultural comparisons between Europe,
Asia, and the Americas have almost exclusively been theories of the mid-
latitude regions ... promoted by scholars versed in temperate and tropi-
cal region data' (Fitzhugh 1996, 95); and as a product of the Northern
Renaissance, Canada does not fit easily into an 'Americas'-centred pat-
tern of interpretation, which necessarily places a strong emphasis on the
role of Spain. Writing of American beginnings in the movement out-
ward from Iberia, the geographer Donald Meinig observes:

American beginnings of course involved more than Iberia, and to the


6 Germaine Warkentin and Carolyn Podruchny

north we can see a vaguely similar pattern where Cabot's voyage from
Bristol in 1497 and the English and French enterprise that followed can be
regarded as an overseas thrust by these peoples beyond their centuries-old
Celtic frontiers. Viewed more closely ... the actual patterns fail to sustain so
simple a relationship, or indeed any close similarities to Iberia ... The long
delays and difficulties in getting anything firmly under way in the New
World from this part of the Old hardly represent an explosive expansion
but rather contrast starkly with the Iberian conquest of half the Americas in
half a century. (Meinig 1986, 4)

It is with the result of this stark contrast - an experience northern


rather than equatorial, slow and frustrating rather than swift and deci-
sive, French and English rather than Hispanic - that we are concerned
here.
The conference that led to these essays was initiated at the Centre for
Reformation and Renaissance Studies (CRRS) at Victoria University in
the University of Toronto. The only centre of its kind in Canada, CRRS
cares for a fine collection of early Erasmiana and related books, and fos-
ters research on Erasmus and on the Northern Renaissance. Its man-
date stretches from the birth of Petrarch in 1304 to the death of Milton
in 1674, beginning at the very inception of Renaissance humanism yet at
the latter end situating its projects firmly in the Early Modern period. In
1996, conscious of the generosity with which its European focus had
been supported by Canadian institutions, CRRS, in collaboration with
the Canadian Studies Program at University College and other support-
ers, organized a conference to initiate the commemoration of the quin-
centenary of Giovanni Caboto's 1497 voyage to Canada. On that voyage,
a sailor from the Italian centre of Renaissance culture, sailing under an
English flag, travelled into what are now Canadian waters, thus bringing
into documented contact two worlds that were equally ignorant of each
other. The purpose of our conference, to frame 'Canada in the Renais-
sance' as a possible field of study, was innovative, though not inconceiv-
able if we keep in mind that overlap between Renaissance and Early
Modern, and particularly the way in which it affects the historiography
of the northern latitudes.
It was clear from the beginning that there was little point in producing
yet another book of essays on early Canada, a field well traversed in
histories of New France and Newfoundland by figures such as Marcel
Trudel, W.J. Eccles, Gillian Cell, and Gordon Handcock. Instead, we
wanted to create a volume on early Canada that would bring together
Introduction: 'Other Land Existing' 7

disparate geographical areas and provide a framework in which to look


for organizing principles for this particular time and place. As postcolo-
nial investigators in other fields have done, we would make our subject
the meeting of Old World and New; yet, by 'decentring the Renaissance,'
we would look not solely into the impact on Canada of people shaped by
the European Renaissance and Early Modern periods, but to the impact
of Canada on them. We also wanted to consider, if we could, the ways in
which the Native peoples of early Canada responded to the Renaissance
and to the Early Modern Europeans who came to their shores. There was
a need for our initiative: scholars in different fields working on Canadian
topics in the period 1500-1700 ceaselessly cited each other, yet had never
met as a group in the same place, and we believed that the opportunity
offered by the Cabot quincentenary to provide a framework for dialogue
among them should not be missed. Accordingly, participants were
invited to consider the ways in which Canada during the Renaissance and
Early Modern periods was not only an arena of European operations, but
an authentic historical scene responding to forces from within and with-
out. We imagined bringing together students of Italian humanism with
those in Native studies, researchers of the Bristol trade with those work-
ing on Jesuit learning, students of French economic policy with those of
Mohawk culture, and scholars of the English court with those of the
Huron language. Our own outreach could not, in the end, stretch as
far as the plains cultures of western Canada or the aristocracies of the
northwest coast, which during the same period were sharing with Native
peoples to the east the territory of what is now Canada. Nevertheless, the
result was an invigorating multidisciplinary exercise, in which historians,
natural scientists, literary critics, archaeologists, and sociologists all
found themselves to some extent 'decentred.'
What is it to decentre one's understanding of a problem? The term
seems to have originated with Jacques Derrida, though like much else in
his writings it has developed a life of its own. In an essay first published
in 1972 he pointed out that what he termed the 'classic' way of erasing
any difference between signifier and signified was by 'reducing or de-
riving the signifier, that is to say, ultimately in submitting the sign to
thought.' With this he contrasted its alternative, which 'consists in put-
ting into question the system in which the preceding reduction func-
tioned: first and foremost the opposition between the sensible and the
intelligible' (Derrida 1972, 251). That is, in reducing the 'other' to our
own categories so as to understand it, we engage in an act of erasure in
which our cultural perspective is asserted as the only point of reference.
8 Germaine Warkentin and Carolyn Podruchny

To decentre, on the other hand, is to put the categories themselves


under scrutiny, to make them available for critical thought, and, in
stressing the 'opposition between the sensible and the intelligible,' to
make us aware of the ways in which thought constructs what we describe
as experience. Derrida was hardly innocent about the long history of the
critique of categories, but he proposed his contrast between centred
and decentred approaches in a particularly radical way. Using a specifi-
cally colonial example, he argued that 'ethnology could have been born
as a science only at the moment when a decentering had come about: at
the moment when European culture - and, in consequence, the history
of metaphysics and its concepts - had been dislocated, driven from its
locus, and forced to stop considering itself as the culture of reference'
(Derrida 1972, 251).
Whatever its philosophical status, Derrida's argument has proved to
have significant political and ethical resonance in a globalizing epoch in
which understanding how cultures construct their particular realities
has become profoundly important. It is not easy to decentre - to dislo-
cate - a powerful culture, particularly for those who stand outside it and
may urgently need to assert an alternative perspective. The narrative of
Europe's long movement outward from its Romano-Christian centre is
full of episodes such as the finding of the stove tiles on Kodlunarn, but
usually recounted from a stricdy European point of view, one stressing
the scandal of ruined artefacts, the ignorance of the 'primitive' peoples
who recycled them, or the untrustworthiness of oral evidence as
opposed to the solid testimony of document or material object. Michel
de Certeau, in his discussion of the Protestant Jean de Lery's visit to Bra-
zil in 1557, points out the extent to which, for Lery, the New World's
'marvels - the visible marks of alterity - are used not to posit other
truths or another discourse, but ... to found a language upon its opera-
tive capacity for bringing this foreign exteriority back to "sameness"'
(Certeau [1975] 1988, 227).
Yet it was also in the Renaissance and Early Modern period that the
universalizing concept of 'Christendom' began to be slowly re-imagined
as a historically and geographically delimited 'Europe' (Burke 1998,
214), and the very envisioning of these new limits necessitated some
articulation of what might lie beyond them. In part this new conception
arose in the 'rivoluzione Acostiana' described by Giuliano Gliozzi; it was
the Jesuit theologian and missionary Jose de Acosta who began to move
away from the universally accepted view that humans had all descended
from Adam, and towards a recognition of racial differences (Gliozzi
Introduction: 'Other Land Existing' 9

!976, 371-443)- In the ensuing centuries, negotiating those differences


- whether by diplomacy, conquest, theorizing about natural rights, or
outright renovation of the colonial project - has become a major theme
of the history of cultures. Yet Michael Ryan has pointed out how very
slow this process of negotiation was; 'why,' he asks, 'did the new worlds
in Asia, Africa and America make so little difference to contemporar-
ies?' (Ryan 1981, 521). The rapidity of change in Hispanic America,
as described by Donald Meinig, was not mirrored in Europe's own
slow pace towards the new forms of knowledge that, Anthony Grafton
argues, began to emerge with La Peyrere and Hobbes only in the mid-
seventeenth century. Nevertheless, 'in this encyclopedic culture, where
at every turn books pressed on objects, the new world of unpredicted,
unaccommodating fact rubbed against the old one of traditional,
canonical texts' (Grafton, Shelford, and Siraisi 1992, 228). The culture
of modernity was slouching towards birth, its gaze, as Yeats reminds us,
'blank and pitiless as the sun.'2
Canadian academic culture has generally conceived itself as a product
of that new knowledge field of unpredicted, unaccommodating fact,
with its concomitant empirical mindset. Is there an advantage in
attempting to rethink some of its questions about Canada in terms of
the world-view in which they originally came to birth? Two arguments
favour such an enterprise. First, the contribution of Canadian scholars,
working independently or in teams, to the study of the European
Renaissance and the Early Modern period has been out of all propor-
tion to their numbers. The work of Wallace Ferguson is only one exam-
ple. This prominence may be because of the survival here and there in
Canadian higher education of the fields - Latin, philology, paleography
- that arose in the Renaissance revival of antiquity. This survival has
made possible international projects like the Collected Works of Eras-
mus in English and the Records of Early English Drama, both situ-
ated in Toronto, and the editions of sixteenth-century indices of
prohibited books emanating from the Centre d'etudes de la Renais-
sance in Sherbrooke, Quebec. All three focus on recognized Renais-
sance topics. But in Quebec there has been a series of major projects in
which figures such as Real Ouellet and Denys Delage have begun to
turn the themes of Renaissance and Early Modern historiography -
whether period, model, or process - on the history of our own country,3
acknowledging the need to study the results of the shaping of early Can-
ada by men and women who were living in and affected by a period of
aggressive intellectual, economic, and territorial transformation.
1O Germaine Warkentin and Carolyn Podruchny

The second argument stems from the history of Canada itself, where
the much weaker effect of both the Enlightenment of eighteenth-
century Europe and the revolutionary fervour of the period 1776-1848
has meant that certain features of that slow and tentative early cultural
formation remain in place. Themes of obedience and deference still
play a role in the analysis of Canadian cultural politics, and Canada is
sometimes described as a country that has not yet had its revolution. The
great economic historian Harold Innis observed that 'fundamentally,
the civilization of North America is the civilization of Europe.' Though
one of Innis's aims in The Fur Trade in Canadawas 'to show the effects of
a vast new land area on European civilization' (Innis 1956, 385), it was
with the deep resemblance he saw between the two that he began.
Thus Canada has been in the past, and remains today, peculiarly vul-
nerable to the centre-periphery model exemplified by the Renaissance.
Either its chattering classes struggle interminably with the problem of
'Canadian identity' or - as in Innis's staple theory or the related work of
Donald Creighton in The Commercial Empire of the St Lawrence, 1760-1850
(!937) ~ tropes of imperial outreach, long severed from their Renais-
sance and Early Modern context, are domesticated in the great valley of
the St Lawrence River, or preserved with animosity on the Western prai-
ries.4 Despite this vulnerability, the formation of Canadian theories
about ourselves (a richly paradoxical subject) has generally ignored as a
shaping force the specifically cultural significance of the period 1400-
1700 on perceptions of the country. The famous depiction of Hochelaga
with which Ramusio illustrated his text of Carder (figure i) is topo-
graphically correct (Larouche 1992, 130-40) but, as Andre Corboz has
shown, it also has its precedent in the Italian tradition of ideal town
plans.5 And when the explorers Radisson and Groseilliers participated
in diplomatic negotiations at a 'Feast of the Dead' near Lake Superior
in 1660, it was to Renaissance court progresses that Radisson compared
the ceremonies he witnessed (Warkentin 1996). Possibly we have not
paused often enough to attempt the act of historical imagination invited
by such comparisons: envisioning Canada through the eyes of the peo-
ple of the Renaissance who came here from France, England, Spain,
Portugal, and Italy between 1497 and about 1700, and for whom Renais-
sance court display (to take only one example) was a familiar mode of
public discourse.
Indeed, it is only recently that we have attempted to do so from the
point of view of the Native peoples who were living here when the Euro-
peans arrived, inhabiting the same historical epoch but with very differ-
Introduction: 'Other Land Existing' 11

i The plan of Hochelaga, from Giovanni Ramusio's Italian edition of Jacques


Carder's Voyages (1556). National Library of Canada, 6159 Rg 1563.

ent ideas of its history. The gulf between modern Canadians of aboriginal
descent and those of European origin is notoriously unbridged. One of
the most important essays comes from the late Deborah Doxtator, who,
from the dual perspective of a Mohawk of the Tyendinaga reserve and a
professor of English at York University in Toronto, considers the phe-
nomenon of European historiography as it rewrites, but cannot change,
the historiography of peoples unwillingly caught in the project of expan-
sion. It was in reading works such as Olive Dickason's The Myth of the Sav-
age and the Beginnings of French Colonialism in theAmericas (1984; translated
as Le Mythe du Sauvage, 1993) and Denys Delage's L^e Pays renverse (1985,
translated as The Bitter Feast, 1993) that many of us first recognized the
need to pose about Canada and its peoples at the time of contact the
question that Edmundo O'Gorman had posed about the Americas three
decades ago - 'whether or not the idea that America was "discovered" was
acceptable as a satisfactory way of explaining its appearance on the his-
torical scene of Western culture' (O'Gorman 1961, 45).
12 Germaine Warkentin and Carolyn Podruchny

Complicating this situation is the fact that Canadians whose ancestors


came from Europe created French and English cultures that in recent
years have gazed across an ever-widening gap (one narrowed here, we
hope, by the participation of both French- and English-speaking schol-
ars). And within English and French cultures, though particularly in
English Canada, people from many other nations, quite a number of
which are postcolonial in character, are playing an increasingly influen-
tial role. The structure within which these roles are acted out submits no
more easily to the centre-periphery model afforded by Renaissance and
Early Modern outreach than it does to the 'frontier thesis' of the Ameri-
can historian Frederick Jackson Turner (much disputed even in the
United States). In actuality, R. Cole Harris argues, Canada has been by
nature an accumulating body of associated cultural centres (Harris
1982). Seen in this way, modern Canada - despite the intense domination
of an eastern-centred merchant-industrial complex since the i88os, and
another from south of the border today - assumes a pattern of regional
islands of development not unlike the situation on the outer periphery of
Romano-Christian culture. To take Harris's argument a step further,
modern Canada also uncannily resembles the underlying pattern of
Native habitation before contact: a widespread group of active and highly
differentiated societies linked by lengthy trading networks. Among the
'other lands existing' here, in the north part of America at the end of the
twentieth century, has Derrida's 'dislocation' become 'relocation'? In
such a situation, Canada's long history as a northern nation, plunged into
modern history from a position on the edge of the Northern Renais-
sance, becomes theoretically very challenging indeed.
These challenges are addressed very frankly in the four essays that
begin our volume and survey some possible methods and problems in
decentring the Renaissance. Natalie Zemon Davis, from the vantage
point of a scholar saturated in the history of the period yet profoundly
aware of the need to question cultures of reference, thoughtfully con-
siders the variety of possible strategies that might be available for such a
decentring. Deborah Doxtator then presents the countervailing issues
that are raised by her saturation in a Native, and specifically Mohawk,
historiography. Writing from the standpoint of an anthropologist who
has closely investigated Native-European contact in Early Modern Can-
ada, Toby Morantz sharply questions whether any rapprochement of
methods is even possible. Gilles Therien in his turn examines the stub-
born slowness with which Renaissance cultural memory actually oper-
ated in early Canada. The Jesuits, he reminds us, were trained by and in
Introduction: 'Other Land Existing' 13

the Renaissance, and they represented modernity in their time, but for
them metissage, the weaving of contrary truths into a new fabric, was
impossible - though some of the Native people Therien discusses found
a diplomatic way around the problem in conducting their own affairs.
'The notion of mentality,' Therien shrewdly observes, 'is not in itself
without confusion,' a complexity we have suggested with a double title for
section two: the Ojibwa word for mentalites would probably be 'debwewin,'
'the truth.' Here, we examine four case histories - two including exam-
ples from further south - that suggest the various and paradoxical ways in
which Renaissance and Early Modern mentalites operated in the setting of
early Canada. Olive Dickason considers the by no means simple history of
the French vision of empire, comparing events in Canada, Brazil, and
Florida. Selma Barkham complicates our understanding of 'contact' by
describing a situation in which Europeans and Native people seem to
have engaged in little conflict, in part because of the values that the Euro-
peans - the Basques she has studied so closely- brought with them. Anne
Lake Prescott continues this investigation of values and objectives by
looking at the mental universe of the English poet and essayist William
Vaughan, who, though he probably never visited Newfoundland, was cer-
tain he could write with authority about it. Mary Fuller also has something
to say about Vaughan, as she compares the differing notions of settle-
ment that shaped sixteenth-century visions of Virginia and Newfound-
land. Concluding this section, Real Ouellet and Mylene Tremblay look at
how two important rhetorical topoi of exploration writing, those of the
Good Savage and the Degenerate Indian, actually evolved in French writ-
ing about the new world.
In section 3, Translatio fide, one of the great themes of early writing
about Canada - the translation of a universalizing faith to a distant and,
to many Europeans, unappealing region of empire — is put under the
microscope, with unexpected results. Luca Codignola re-examines the
image of the religious orders in the history of New France, provides sur-
prising statistics on their small numbers, and shows with what difficulty
the missions in New France were developed in the context of Jesuit mis-
sions worldwide. Peter Goddard considers some of the reasons why the
accepted picture of the divine imperative to send missionaries to Can-
ada needs re-evaluation. Andre Sanfacon studies the painstaking repli-
cation of Italy's Holy House of Loreto at Notre Dame de Lorette in New
France, bringing the resources of Church history, material culture, and
gender studies to bear on the actual operation of the translatio fide in the
lives of both Jesuits and Hurons.
14 Germaine Warkentin and Carolyn Podruchny

The fourth section, Decentring at Work, looks in close detail at inter-


actions between the New World, as it was represented by 'the north
part of America,' and the evolving experience of those who explored or
settled here. In the field of natural history, Lynn Berry analyses the
example of cultural hybridization represented by Pierre Boucher's His-
toire veritable et naturelle. Conrad Heidenreich revises our view of Cham-
plain's debt to Native knowledge of the territory, and Wallace Chafe
inquires into the ways the first North American linguists recorded the
encounter between their French and the Stadaconan and Huron lan-
guages of the Natives they met with. Two essays in this section also
decentre the volume as a whole. The magisterial report on the archaeol-
ogy of the Frobisher expedition from members of the Meta Incognita
project focuses the techniques of the sciences, rather than those of the
humanities, on Native-European interaction. Finally, Emerson W.
Baker and John G. Reid take up the topic of the limits of empire in the
Americas themselves, specifically the ways in which Acadian and
Wabanaki influences were central to imperial dynamics on the north-
east coast of North America at the end of the Early Modern period.
In their reflective Afterword to the volume, Denys Delage and Jean-
Philippe Warren not only survey the revisionist results of these studies but
remind us of Ferguson's insistence that the Renaissance marked the end
of medieval civilization and the dawn of the modern era. 'Modernity'
brought with it a dual heritage: the intellectual resources of the objecti-
fying mentality along with unparalleled economic aggression. The
authors also warn us against what we might call the 'cultural pastoral' of
modernity, of 'misrepresenting Native peoples as capable of living only
in a mythical culture' and awarding to Western society 'the exclusive
monopoly over history, politics, and sciences' (Delage and Warren,
below, 316). This demand brings into sharp focus the epistemological
dilemma pointed out by Toby Morantz: can we ever really decentre our
understandings and resolve the representational problem of'other lands
existing'? Yet as Delage and Warren suggest, to fail in the work of decen-
tring may be to force contemporary Native peoples - to say nothing of
their Early Modern ancestors - to submit to our own culture of reference.
Perhaps, as Gesa Mackenthun has recently written, 'even an incom-
plete attempt to reconstruct history is preferable to totalizing or aestheti-
cizing silence and otherness' (Mackenthun 1997, 17). In attempting such
a reconstruction, we might take our cue from the Renaissance itself,
when the literary genre of pastoral, with its lovesick shepherds and shep-
herdesses and its wisely debating elders, functioned not as a Never-Never
Introduction: 'Other Land Existing' 15

Land, but as a mirror holding up an image of ordinary experience,


sharply addressing the problems of the age and - in its more extreme
form of pastoral satire - seeking to resolve them. As the variety offered by
Natalie Davis's four strategies suggests, decentring can never be a final
condition successfully achieved; it is, as Derrida recognized, a 'function,'
an activity constantly in process, a condition of the mind as it apprehends
experience. And its work neither can nor should come to a conclusion. If,
at the outer periphery of the historical 'rebirth' of learning we call the
Renaissance, some commentators saw - or feared that they saw - disloca-
tion, fragmentation, and the expiry of a great cultural movement, here in
the north part of America we have been at work for several centuries at
the task of relocation.
Decentring the Renaissance represents the collaborative effort of more
than two dozen scholars - Native, French- and English-Canadian,
Italian, British, and American - to relocate ourselves by reopening
O'Gorman's great question about the invention of America from the
special perspective of those living at the point where Northern Renais-
sance and Native America encountered each other. The result is an
exceptional gathering of new material, and of familiar material sharply
questioned from fresh vantage points. The extensive list of printed pri-
mary and secondary sources that completes our volume, compiled at the
urging of participants in the conference from the scholarship cited in
the papers, suggests how much work on Canada in the Renaissance and
Early Modern periods is being conducted in disciplines that would not
otherwise have come into contact with each other. This list will, further-
more, provide a useful tool for the scholars of the future who flocked to
the original conference and — in the spirit of the Renaissance itself —
challenged our thinking at every point.
Deborah Doxtator, whose calm reflections on Native and Euro-
Canadian concepts of time electrified all those present in 1996, will, to
our sorrow, not participate in that work of the future; she died of cancel-
shortly after her essay was submitted. Our volume is dedicated to her
memory.

NOTES

1 See Greenblatt 1990, 1991, 1993; Pagden 1987, 1993, 1995; Mignolo 1995.
2 William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming' (1921); Yeats 1950, 210-11, 11. 22,
15
l6 Germaine Warkentin and Carolyn Podruchny

3 SeeChamplain [1604] 1993; Charlevoix [1744] 1994; Sagard [1632] 1998;


other important studies published in Quebec are Ferland 1992; Lintvelt,
Ouellet, and Hermans 1994; Therien 1995; Turgeon, Ouellet, and Delage
1996; Pioffet 1997; and Viau 1997.
4 For some modern complexities of this trope, see Heintzman 1994.
5 Ramusio [1556] 1565, Corboz 1980, Larouche 1992, (from Patricia O'Grady,
personal communication).
PARTI
Methods
This page intentionally left blank
Polarities, Hybridities:
What Strategies for Decentring?
Natalie Zemon Davis

'The Renaissance,' when it first became a term organizing cultural


research and classroom teaching so many decades ago, was unsettling to
much academic practice. Pursuing 'Renaissance' inevitably led the
scholar and student across boundaries of discipline, and this at a time
when increasing professionalization was working in the opposite direc-
tion. The Renaissance was described, to be sure, as originating in Italy,
but as a movement it could not be contained within the national bor-
ders that framed so much scholarly discourse in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth century. When Eugenie Droz founded the periodical
Humanisme et Renaissance (now the Bibliotheque d'humanisme et renaissance]
in Paris in 1934, its contents were initially limited to France, but its cov-
erage of fields - from economics to painting - was as innovative as the
five-year-old Annales of Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch. When I took
Leona Gabel's 'Renaissance and Reformation' course at Smith College
in 1947, we all felt we were in the vanguard, well beyond any ordinary
course in English history. We read Renaissance News, just then founded
and ancestor of Renaissance Quarterly, and thought it had much more to
tell us than, say, the American Historical Review.
Some decentring of the Renaissance had already begun, with the
appearance of Charles Homer Haskins's Renaissance of the Twelfth Century
(1927) and the growing interest in the Northern Renaissance and Eras-
mus. The sixties and seventies saw yet stronger displacement of the term
'Renaissance,' as those of us interested in social history began to wonder
whether peasants had a Renaissance, whether artisans had a Renaissance,
and finally, with Joan Kelly in the 19705, whether women had a Renais-
sance (Kelly 1977). Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie in his Peasants of the
Languedoc, cleverly stretched the term to include demography: a 'Renais-
2O Natalie Zemon Davis

sance Malthusienne,' a rebirth of population that triggered the agricul-


tural expansion of the early sixteenth century (Le Roy Ladurie 1966,139-
328). In my own practice, I simply stopped using 'Renaissance' as the
name for a whole period, preferring the neutral label 'sixteenth century'
or the somewhat problematic 'Early Modern.' 'Renaissance' I reserved
for matters close to the core of the humanist program - education, liter-
acy, rhetoric, the arts of political and personal fashioning - and then
explored the various ways in which artisans and women were involved in
such cultural activities. A shoemaker and a barber-surgeon might both
seek the products of the printing press, but only the barber-surgeon
would care about new and correct translations of Galen.
With the end of colonial empires, the emergence of postcolonial soci-
eties, and the claims for status of indigenous peoples and First Nations,
there has been a seismic shift, one that jolts European perspectives even
more than the relocation through considerations of class and gender.
Those maps that were the triumph of Renaissance scientific cartography
began to seem examples of European colonization of space. Those dic-
tionaries in which lists of unrecognizable words faced their Spanish or
English or French translations began to seem a European restriction
of meaning. What for Geoffroy Atkinson in his 1927 bibliography of
Renaissance travel literature represented straightforward 'new knowl-
edge' became for John Elliott, in his 1970 The Old World and the New,
information that was very difficult for European travellers to record and
even more difficult for European readers to comprehend and assim-
ilate. For Mary Louise Pratt in her Imperial Eyes (1992), the work of
European naturalists naming and classifying in Mexico, Brazil, the
Caribbean, North America, and elsewhere eventually constituted 'a new
form of... planetary consciousness among Europeans ... One by one the
planet's life forms were to be drawn out of the tangled threads of their
life surroundings and rewoven into European-based patterns of global
unity and order' (Pratt 1992, 29, 31).
With such understandings, historians of the society and culture of
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe have been trying to find new
ways to tell their story. This means that non-European peoples and
European colonization are a regular rather than an exceptional part of
our inquiry (I now open my undergraduate French history course with
Jacques Cartier on the St Lawrence and end it with the Baron de Lahon-
tan in Acadia and the Code Noir, the 1685 code for slavery in the Carib-
bean). It also means that we seek strategies, scholarly and expository, to
relativize European claims to invariance and universality and to disturb
What Strategies for Decentring? 21

a single orderly narrative of successful European expansion. In doing


so, I like to think we act both in the spirit of the Huron sage who said
courteously to Father Brebeuf that 'each country has its own way of
doing things' (Jesuit Relations [1610-1791] 1896-1901 [hereafter JR] 8:
118; my translation) and of the Bordelais sage Michel de Montaigne,
who thought the French had something to learn from the example of
the Brazilians (Montaigne [1580] 1962, 200-13).
Let us now consider four strategies for cultural and geographic
decentring. The first strategy is the oldest and most widespread: describ-
ing European attitudes and images of non-European peoples and show-
ing them to be projections of European anxieties or elaborations from
European categories of hierarchy or the pastoral. This is the exploration
of the European gaze, the European regard, and it helps us position the
'universal' observer, to locate him (and occasionally her) in a precise
cultural space. Sometimes the observers help us with this task when they
tell their readers what they are reminded of back home. So the Protes-
tant Jean de Lery, after describing the ceremonial eating of prisoners by
the Tupinamba of Brazil, recalled French Catholics who ate Protestant
hearts during the massacres of August 1572 (Lery [1578] 1990, 132).'
Examining the European gaze has brought us ample fruits, as we see
by Olive Dickason's remarkable and beautifully illustrated Myth of the
Savage (1984). From such studies, we have learned to connect the image
of the old savage woman with breasts hanging to her waist to the fear of
the European witch (Bucher 1977, 46-7, 184-9), to connect Father Le
Jeune's picture of the Montagnais of the Canadian woodlands with the
picture of disorderly peasants in the French countryside, targets of a
'civilizing' mission. David Quint has gone even farther along the path of
European projection onto the New World; he claims that Montaigne
simply made up the song of the Brazilian prisoner, sung to his captor
before his death: 'These muscles, ... this flesh and these veins are your
own ... You do not recognize that the substance of your ancestors' limbs
is still contained in them. Savor them well; you will find in them the
taste of your own flesh.' The Tupi song, Quint maintains, was really
Montaigne's dirge for French society, devouring itself in the wars of reli-
gion (cited in Quint 1995, 175).
A danger of the gaze strategy is that it may lead us to a static or self-
enclosed notion of European mentalities. An image of 'savagery' gets
projected on to the indigenous peoples of the American continents and
reproduces itself in every generation of European writers. Claire Farago,
in introducing an important collection on the visual arts, Refraining the
22 Natalie Zemon Davis

Renaissance (Farago 1995, 1-20), urges a more dynamic approach: what,


she asks, does European awareness of the arts in Latin America and
Africa contribute to European concepts of its own arts? Denys Delage
has documented a host of changes, from food and clothing to vocabu-
lary and military techniques, brought about among the French by con-
tact with the Amerindians (Delage 1992).
Let me suggest an example of such a transformation in regard to
European ideas of gift presentation. In their earliest voyages across the
Adantic, the French had already decided what would constitute appro-
priate objects for gifting. In 1504 in Honfleur, Captain Gonneville
loaded the hold of the Espoir with textiles - hardy linen and woollens,
along with a few fancier pieces for someone more important - and espe-
cially hardware: axes and other tools, knives, combs, mirrors, and glass
beads. Verrazano had a similar collection of textiles, small metal goods,
mirrors, and beads when he and his French crew voyaged up the coast
of North America twenty years later. Jacques Carder and his men had
garments rather than textiles in their hold: some of them were used to
clothe the Iroquoians whom they seized to take back to France. Espe-
cially, the Frenchmen distributed combs, knives, axes, rings, and glass
beads - what the captain referred to as 'works of small value,' 'little
goods,' 'little presents' (petitz presens de pen de valleur), which the Iro-
quoians received (according to the donor) with dancing and shouts of
joy (Cartier 1924, 53, 55, 60, 121, 151; my translation).
Perhaps these early explorers had been advised by Portuguese naviga-
tors or had heard stories from fishermen about what gifts they should
take to the peoples of the American woodlands. But let us focus here on
the European meaning of such gifts, especially of the knife (the agoheda,
as it is called in Carder's French-Iroquoian glossary; the taxe miri, the
'little knives,' as they are called in Lery's French-Tupinamba dialogue)
and other small metal goods (Carder 1924, 81; Lery [1578] 1990, 180).
In a dedication of 1514 to his friend Pieter Gillis, Erasmus writes,
'Friends of the commonplace and homespun sort, my open-hearted
Pieter, have their idea of relationship, like their whole lives, attached to
material things; and if ever they have to face a separation, they favour a
frequent exchange of rings, knives, caps, and other tokens of the kind,
for fear that their affection may cool when intercourse is interrupted or
actually die away.' Erasmus goes on to say that since the friendship
between Gillis and himself is built on 'a meeting of minds and the enjoy-
ment of studies in common,' Erasmus's gift of a book is much more
appropriate (Erasmus [1514] 1976, 3: 43-4).
What Strategies for Decentring? 23

Small objects like knives served as tokens of important relationships in


the Europe of the sixteenth century, tokens that sustained trust. Small
metal gifts could also be used to maintain good will in a community, as
when the Sire Gilles de Gouberville distributed pins and needles to the
women and girls in his rural Norman parish on the day of his name saint
(Gouberville [1549-62] 1993-4, 2:119, 211, 293, 371). Moreover, small
metal objects were useful to Europeans. Every man outside the nobility
had a knife of some size on his belt (the nobleman, of course, had his
sword); every working woman had pins and needles on her sleeve.
On the other side of the Atlantic, this European perspective changed:
small useful objects that had considerable meaning as a sign of a friend-
ship and community in Europe became no longer the token, but the
substance of gift exchange and barter with the peoples of the Americas.
The latter were not friends and neighbours, but strangers and 'savages.'
They responded to the distribution of gifts with what seemed to Europe-
ans an excessive delight, and the European discourse of 'little value' and
'little worth' began. Jean de Lery among the Tupinamba provides a later
sixteenth-century example:

One day when I was in a village, my moussacat (he who had received me into
his house) entreated me to show him evetything I had in my caramemo, that
is, in my leather sack. He had brought to me a fine big earthen vessel in
which I arranged all my effects. Marvelling at the sight, he immediately
called the other savages and said to them: 'I pray you, my friends, consider
what a personage I have in my house for since he has so many riches, must
he not be a great lord?' And yet, as I said, laughing with a companion of
mine who was there with me, what this savage held in such high esteem was
in sum five or six knives with different kinds of handles, and as many combs,
mirrors, and other small objects that would not have been worth two
testoons in Paris ... They love above all those who show liberality; since I
wanted to exalt myself even more than he had done, I gave him freely and
publicly, in front of everyone, the biggest and handsomest of my knives,
which he set as much store by as might someone in our France who had just
received a golden chain worth a hundred crowns. (Lery [1578] 1990, 169)

Lery's response to the Brazilians, retold later when he was a Reformed


pastor, would have been unlikely or unacceptable in France. In the
gift-mode his jeering at the expansive gratitude of recipients would
have been rude. If anything, in France, the common complaint was that
people were not grateful enough. In the exchange-mode in France,
24 Natalie Zemon Davis

misleading a buyer or barterer about the quality or value of goods was


reproved by the laws of the moral economy. The weights were supposed
to be true, the wine not watered, the bread composed of the advertised
mixture of flours.
Thus, in regard to the 'savages,' the customary giving of useful signs of
a relationship became the deceptive bestowal of goods the European
believed overvalued, an attitude unabashedly reported in travel ac-
counts. Can we speculate that this had some effect on European attitudes
towards exchange more generally? Certainly, it reinforced the smugness
with which Europeans thought they could take advantage of the indige-
nous peoples of Europe's New World. Was it perhaps also a factor in the
long-term erosion of Europe's own moral economy? 'Let the buyer be-
ware' was an ancient admonition; 'let the seller push for as much profit
as he or she can' may have come in part from these transactions along
the St Lawrence and Brazil's Guanabara Bay.
One of the limits of the gaze strategy in 'decentring the Renaissance'
- even in this more dynamic version - is that it puts all the attention on
the Europeans and what they think. The indigenous peoples remain
characters and fantasies in European plots. A second strategy, more the
work of ethnographers and social historians, has been to privilege both
Amerindians and Europeans as actors and reactors, constructing their
relations primarily in terms of the polarity of domination and resis-
tance. All of us are grateful for Bruce Trigger's grounded and dynamic
portraits of Native-newcomer interaction (Trigger 1985; [1976] 1987).
Interestingly enough, a focus on women and gender has been a primary
stimulus to studies that dethrone Europeans and give agency to indige-
nous peoples, from Eleanor Leacock's pioneering analysis of the Jesuit
program for remaking the woodlands family on a hierarchical model
and the resistance to it from Montagnais women (Leacock 1980) to
Carol Devens's Countering Colonization: Native American Women and Great
Lakes Missions (1992). Describing the Peruvian Andes in the sixteenth
and seventeenth century, Irene Silverblatt has shown how the Andean
curanderas, known as 'witches' in Inquisition records, both healed their
neighbours and worshipped an amaru figure, a bearded serpent, whom
the Inquisitors called a devil. As Silverblatt explains, 'sporting a blazing
beard, the symbol of European manhood, this amaru embodied some of
the diabolic powers of... [the] Spanish oppressors. But he also embod-
ied the powers of Andean serpents-in-springs: the eruptive energies
unleashed by severe social imbalance. "Amaru" charged revolt, even rev-
olution, in the Andes' (Silverblatt 1994, 267-8). Indeed Tupuc Amarus
What Strategies for Decentring? 25

was the name of the last Inca king who had resisted the Spanish, and his
name would be taken again in subsequent revolts.
In seventeenth-century Quebec, the Ursuline Marie de 1'Incarnation
has left us a picture of another kind of resisting woman. A Wendat
(Huron), 'one of the oldest and most notable of [her] nation,' rose up at
a village assembly to explain why her people were dying of a new disease:

It's the Black Robes who are making us die by their spells. Listen to me, I
will prove it by reasons that you will recognize as true. They set themselves
up in a village where everyone is feeling fine; no sooner are they there but
everyone dies except for three or four people. They move to another place,
and the same thing happens. They visit cabins in other villages, and only
those where they have not entered are exempt from death and illness.
Don't you see that when they move their lips in what they call prayer, spells
are coming out of their mouths? It's the same when they read their books.
They have big pieces of wood in their cabins [guns, Marie explains
parenthetically] by which they make noise and send their magic every-
where. If they are not promptly put to death, they will end up ruining the
country, and no one will be left, young or old.

'When she stopped speaking,' Marie concluded, 'everyone agreed that


this was true' (Guyart [1626-72] 1971, no. 50, 117-18; my translation).
Marie de 1'Incarnation's account is all the more remarkable since it
was written against her grain, her own preference being so strong
for women converts who used their native tongue to speak on behalf of
a woodlands Christianity.
Resistance could even explode in the course of gift exchange, inter-
rupting its polite conventions by unexpected denunciation. Carder
reported such a move by the sons of lord Donnacona, Taignoagny and
Domagaya, whom he had taken back to France with him for a year. After
they returned, the young men initially told their father they had been
well treated in France, but soon they cooled towards Carder and his
men. The sons tried to detach the three children whom Donnacona had
presented to the Frenchmen and to keep young women away from the
French ships. To prevent Carder from proceeding up the St Lawrence
to the town of Hochelaga, Taignoagny and Domagaya mounted an elab-
orate performance, with advice from the spirit world against the trip.
Failing in that, they moved to more direct assault when the French
returned from their voyage. Iroquoians came to the boats bearing eels
and fish, and Carder then gave them knives, beads, and 'other little
26 Natalie Zemon Davis

things' (aultres menues choses). Whereupon Taignoagny and Domagaya


began to harangue the Iroquoians, telling them that 'what we were giv-
ing them was not worth anything [sahauty quahonquey] and that they
could just as well get axes as knives for what they were giving us' (Carder
1924, 187-8) .2 So the sons of the Agouhanna turned their year in France
against the men in the big wooden boats.
As rich as have been the yields from the strategy of domination and
resistance, it, too, has its limits. The beacons of polarity leave obscure
many other kinds of transaction and intention, the many ways in which
actors learn from each other and share a common if not always a peace-
able language, the role of go-betweens and intermediaries - in short, what
Richard White has called 'the middle ground,' the accumulated practices
of Amerindians and Europeans in dealing with each other diplomatically,
violently, in anger, and in friendship (White 1991, x-xi, 50-3).
Our third strategy for decentring the Renaissance, then, is to describe
that middle ground, or what we might better call the associated pro-
cesses of exchange and mixture. Homi Bhabha has used the term
'hybridity' for this process, trying to free the term from its racial conno-
tation. English discourse in India quoted or incorporated Indian views,
and, in so doing, undermined or softened the grounds of its own
authority. Indians participated in English ventures and used English
writings, but took them in quite different directions, creating a 'third
space,' an 'in-between space,' from which to look at the world (Bhabha
!Q94> 37-8, 102-22; 1995, 337-8). Some Caribbean writers have recently
used the word creolite to describe past and present interactions in their
islands - indeed, celebrating it in Eloge de la Creolite (Bernabe, Chamoi-
seau, Confiant 1989). I've also suggested the term metissage culturel for
this type of interaction (Davis i995a).
Whatever term we use, this third strategy puts certain forms of inquiry
in the foreground. It focuses our attention on the women and men who
participate in multiple worlds, either temporarily, moving back and
forth, or more permanently through marriage or union. Pierre-Esprit
Radisson is an example: Provencal by birth, servant of France and then
of England, explorer among Algonquian peoples, captive and adoptive
son among the Mohawk. The mixture and strains in his writing have
been analysed by Germaine Warkentin (Warkentin 1996). Jennifer S.H.
Brown and Sylvia Van Kirk have described the marriages of European
men and Amerindian women in different parts of Canada (Brown 1980;
Van Kirk 1980). Rolena Adorno has gone on to examine some remark-
able children from such families: Mexican and Peruvian historians of
What Strategies for Decentring? 27

mixed parentage in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.


She shows them to be 'ethnographers of their own cultural hybridiza-
tion.' In their claims for rightful status for indigenous peoples, their
works have interesting similarities to contemporary Morisco writings in
Spain (Adorno 1994,400-1).
What can we learn, for example, from the turbulent life of people
such as the Montagnais Pastedechouan? Skilled in French and Latin
from his five years in Angers, he served as an interpreter for the English,
and a teacher of Montagnais and composer of a dictionary for the
French. He then moved from the side of the Jesuit Le Jeune to that of
his own brother, the celebrated shaman Carigouan, changed from one
troubled marriage to the next, and finally perished of starvation in the
woods. Should we see Pastedechouan, as has one commentator (Grass-
man 1966), as merely 'an early victim of French-Indian cultural conflict
... a tragic example of one aspect of the European impact on Indian cul-
ture'? Or should we view him rather as a seventeenth-century man with
multiple and contradictory resources, striving to find his way of being in
the world in a coercive setting - as serious and significant in his efforts
as, say, Uriel da Costa, the Portuguese converse who found his way back
to the Jewishness of his ancestors in Amsterdam, lived there in torment
and conflict with rabbinical Judaism, and ended up a suicide?
In pursuing our strategy of mixture and exchange, we can examine
not only individual lives but also cultural patterns and practices that
incorporate diverse elements. In the example from the Peruvian Andes,
the healing woman's amaru had a Spanish beard to add fuel to its power.
Silverblatt also describes a group of virgin women who sustained secretly
the worship of the gods and goddesses of their ayullus - that is, their
local polities. Their virginity had perhaps some sanction from earlier
Inca tradition, but it surely received its impetus from the imported Mar-
ian Christianity of the Spanish. Indeed, the special name given these vir-
gins of the Andes was Maria (Silverblatt 1994, 268-70).
In Canada, the religious expressiveness of Catherine (Kateri) Tekak-
witha, daughter of a Mohawk warrior and his Algonquin enemy-wife, is
another example of improvised 'hybridity.' Her vow of perpetual virgin-
ity before her Jesuit confessor in 1679 took a Catholic motif and wove it
into the ascetic style and women's sociability of the woodlands. At the
time of her death a year later, she had drawn around her a group of
other women determined not to marry, 'Catherine's Sisters,' who car-
ried on their tasks together in the woods, talked of God and their spiri-
tual adventures, and disciplined their shoulders with rods (Cholenec
28 Natalie Zemon Davis

[1696] 1940, 239-335). Here was a form of women's communal life with-
out the Catholic enclosure of the Ursulines and without the sexuality of
the longhouse (Shoemaker 1995, 61-6).
Gift exchange and barter also can be examined in terms of the cre-
ation of a middle ground and system of common practices. In 1623,
according to Gabriel Sagard's description of the Huron, they lacked the
wariness that Taignoagny and Domagaya had urged upon the St
Lawrence Iroquoians a century before. To show how gallant they are,
[the Huron] do not willingly bargain and will be satisfied with what one
gives them honestly and reasonably, despising the ways of our mer-
chants, who will bargain for an hour about the sale of a beaver skin'
(Sagard [1632] 1990, 22O, my translation). Not many years later, with the
increase in French settlement and fur traders, the Amerindians had
become familiar with an exchange system different from both their fes-
tive and neighbourly gifts to each other and from the formal donations
of their diplomacy. Now when the Algonquins assembled with their bea-
ver pelts at Tadoussac, they refused to trade with the first French boats
that arrived, waiting for other merchants to see who would give them
the best exchange (Ray and Freeman 1978, 20).
On the French side, we also see the adaptation of certain Amerindian
styles. In France, a would-be recipient could ask for a gift, but, in princi-
ple, a donor was not to specify to a recipient what precise return was
expected on a gift. That would be a form of bribery. In Canada, as we
know, the presentation of wampum belts and furs as part of diplomacy
or for reparation for bloodshed was always accompanied by requests for
specific outcomes, phrased with the high rhetorical skills of the wood-
lands. So the tall Kiotseaeton, orator for the Mohawk, Keepers of the
Eastern Door, presented wampum belts at a 1645 peacemaking assembly
with Algonquin, Montagnais, Attikamegue, and French, whom he in-
vited to visit the Iroquois. As Marie de 1'Incarnation relates, he said

'I have seen people perish in these bubbling waters. This [wampum belt] is
to appease them.' And with his hands he stopped the torrents and subdued
them into tranquillity.
'And this one is to calm the great lake of Saint Louis and render it as
smooth as ice, and appease the anger of the winds, the tempests and
waters' ... And attaching the present to the arm of a Frenchman, he drew
him straight to the middle of the stage to show that our canoes could go to
their ports without difficulty.
Then, opening the trail by land ... he cut down trees, broke off branches,
What Strategies for Decentring? 29

pushed back forests, and filled valleys with earth. 'There! The whole trail is
clean and smooth.' And he lowered himself to the ground to flatten all the
countryside ... and see if there was any stone or piece of wood that could
hinder walking. 'Now you'll be able to see the smoke in our villages all the
way from Quebec.' (Guyart [1626-72] 1971, no. 92, 256; my translation)3

The Jesuits, deeply appreciative of eloquence wherever they heard it,


began to follow the Amerindian practice in their own diplomacy -
though not always with as much skill and indirection: 'We give you this
present to signify to the Onondaga elders that if they want the Jesuit
Fathers to come back, they'll bring your daughters to the Ursuline
mothers' (LeJournaldesjesuites [1871] 1893, 244; my translation).4
Finally, in our exchange-and-mixture strategy, we can follow the
objects themselves. For instance, wampum belts have multiple meanings
for the Iroquoians: they not only carry messages, but are also connected
with healing and peacemaking and with luminous power and goodness.
As they move to Europeans in North America, they have other meanings
- diplomatic, economic, and religious - and still others as they cross the
ocean and are displayed in a cabinet of curiosity (Helms 1994, 370-7).5
Thomas Cummins has published a study of Mexican pictorial manu-
scripts that were made initially to record tribute and then used as evi-
dence to determine outcomes before Spanish-Mexican courts (Cummins
1995)- With the treaty messages of the wampum beads and the pictorial
system of the Mexican painter, we have examples of Europeans accepting
non-European systems of evidence. Possibly we have, too, the incorpora-
tion of European forms of storytelling and linear representation into the
non-European artefact.
The field opened by the strategy of exchange and hybridity is a vast
one. With it, have we exhausted our strategies for decentring the Renais-
sance? I think not, for the gaze, polarities, and mixtures still do not
address the question of how to place European and Amerindian cul-
tures, of how to frame them historically in relation to each other. In the
early modern period, a frequent European view was that Amerindian
peoples represented an earlier stage of European society itself. This was
a relatively benign response, more respectful of Amerindian potentiality
than the view that found it permanently childlike or 'savage.' Well into
the nineteenth century, commentators still viewed the Amerindian past
this way, and into our own time such a construction is carried on in
evolutionary ethnography.
But why take such a position, asks Johannes Fabian in Time and the Other
30 Natalie Zemon Davis

(1983). Isn't this yet another example of colonial mentality? Further-


more, evolutionary stage theory is a poor predictor of the actual turn of
events. What is proposed instead is to look at cultures in contact with each
other in terms of absolute simultaneity, radical contemporaneity. In prac-
tice, this means a strategy of symmetrical comparative analysis, of under-
standing societies, where relevant, in terms of like or parallel efforts
towards similar goals, rather than in terms of one society doing an earlier
version of what the other society knows how to do better. Thus, Walter
Mignolo, in an important book, The Darker Side of the Renaissance (1995),
compares two sets of narratives - the writings of Peter Martyr with the
Mexican picto-ideographic codices, the Historia general de las Cosas de
Nueva Espana of the Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagun with the Maya
Books ofChilam Balam- and finds them alike 'in their respect and love for
human intelligence and wisdom, and for the acquisition and transmis-
sion of knowledge to the young' (Mignolo 1995, 216). Nonetheless, he
asserts that they differ in important ways: Martyr and Sahagun working to
spread western literacy and reconfigure and use the European classical
tradition; the Mexican and Mayan texts working to preserve Amerindian
memories while reformulating their own classical tradition.
Mignolo calls his interpretive move a decolonizing of modernity. I
tried to do something similar earlier in this essay when I suggested a
comparison between Pastedechouan's trajectory and that of Uriel da
Costa, between Tekakwitha's sisters and the Ursuline sisters. Elsewhere
I've suggested that we can compare the developments in fifteenth- and
sixteenth-century Europe in diplomacy and its rhetoric with those going
on at the same time in the Eastern woodlands: the latter are not to be
assessed as a primitive version of the former, but as two simultaneous
political and cultural events (Davis 1994, 249-56; Davis I995b, 123-8).
Such an approach, if you will, circles back to an eighteenth-century
universalism insofar as it seeks for signs of the common in human expe-
rience; but it diverges from this universalism by insisting at the same
time on the existence of strong and concrete cultural difference and the
importance of divergent context. It also does not set up European Man
as the universal model. Such an approach leaves many problems
unsolved: for instance, how do we evaluate differences in technology
and in means of communication within the frame of 'absolute simulta-
neity'? Yet, as a thought experiment, it clears the mind. Never again
need we believe that an overawed Montagnais standing in stunned
admiration of a godlike Father Le Jeune with his writing tablet (as pic-
tured in the film Black Robe) is the only way to imagine Amerindian
What Strategies for Decentring? 31

encounters with literacy. We could just as well picture Amerindian mak-


ers and users of mnemonic and recording devices - memory sticks and
wampum belts - swapping data with the Jesuit about techniques and
tools. Literacy would still make a difference, but its impact would be on
a complex society of trained adults, not on primitives (Wogan 1994;
Boone and Mignolo 1994; Mignolo 1995, ch. 3-4; Warkentin 1999).
These four strategies for decentring the Renaissance are not pro-
posed as mutually exclusive. Nor are they offered in an evolutionary
scheme: the gaze the simplest, the symmetrical comparative analysis the
most complex. All are difficult: the first three require difficult research
strategies and analysis; the last is more of a thought experiment, a way to
approach one's evidence. Limiting oneself wholly to a single approach -
doing everything in the register of mixture and exchange, for example -
would risk neglecting the register of deep conflict, the moments when
cleavage and polarity are the order of the day. We make our choices, but
try not to forget the other perspectives.
Readers may be feeling a little dizzy after all this decentring. If we
decentre and decentre, where will we have a place to stand? What will
our final narrative look like? How will it cohere? What will be its overall
story, if it is not simply European triumph, or colonial resistance and
ultimately freedom? I think we can stand wherever we are as scholars
and locate ourselves historically, identifying our own place and what
shadow or light it casts upon our endeavour. And perhaps we can take a
leaf from the three Caribbean writers of Eloge de la Creolite. Our history,
they said, is African, Indian, Carib, Chinese, European. It is not made of
a single strand, but is a braid, 'une tresse d'histoires' (Bernabe, Chamoi-
seau, Confiant 1989, 26). What the braided histories of the decentred
Renaissance will be like, we do not fully know yet. But that they will
include on equal terms the many peoples that make up that past will be
the source of their strength.

NOTES

l In describing the desperation to which he, his fellow passengers, and the crew
were reduced on the return voyage from Brazil to France because of lack of pro-
visions, Lery mentioned the cannibalism by a Protestant family of Sancerre dur-
ing the seige of that Reformed town in 1574 (212). The 'brutal action' of the
'savages' he compared to the brutality of Catholics, the 'denaturing' of his
European shipmates to the denatured behaviour of Protestants.
32 Natalie Zemon Davis

2 'Les deulx meschans que [nous] avyons apportez leur disoient et donnoyent a
entendre que ce que nous leur baillons ne vailloit riens, et qu'ilz auroyent aus-
sitost des hachotz comme des couteaulx pour ce qu'ilz nous bailloyent.' And
'Cela ne vault rien, Sahauty quahonquey' (187-8; my translations).
3 Even in the mediated French version presented by Marie de 1'Incarnation and
in the Jesuit and other reports she is recording, one can get some sense of the
power and drama of the original version.
4 The contrast between Amerindian and Jesuit eloquence in the course of gift
bestowal is evident in the Jesuits'journal, where quotations are recorded from
both sides; see for example LeJournal [1871] 1893, 193-226.
5 See Trudy C. Nicks and Ruth Phillips, 'Decolonizing the Wampums: Living
History from Dead Letters.' Paper presented at the conference 'Decentring
the Renaissance: Canada and Europe in Multidisciplinary Perspective, 1350-
1700,' Victoria University in the University of Toronto, 7-10 March 1996.
Inclusive and Exclusive Perceptions of
Difference: Native and Euro-Based
Concepts of Time, History, and Change
Deborah Doxtator

In 1558, confronted by the differences in the ways Native peoples and


Europeans perceived and structured their respective societies, Renais-
sance travel writer Andre Thevet asserted that the indigenous popula-
tions of North America, unlike Europeans, had neither religion, civility,
nor books, and lived like 'beasts without reason' (Thevet [1558] 1878,
134-6). In 1603, writing of the Native groups he encountered, Samuel
de Champlain remarked that since each person 'prayed in his heart just
as he liked,' they in effect had 'no law among them and do not know
what it is to worship God and pray to Him, living as they do like brute
beasts' (Champlain 1922-36, 6: 52). In contrast, Native groups, although
not always conciliatory, nonetheless sought out ways to incorporate
Europeans into existing political and ideological structures, inviting
Champlain, Jesuit missionaries, and others to come to live with them
and to participate in their way of life (Dickason 1992, 103, 107). A funda-
mental element of Rotinonhsyonni1 diplomacy was the political neces-
sity to achieve integrations so that, at least ideologically, Europeans and
Iroquoians could perceive themselves to be brothers, one and the same
people (Jesuit Relations [1610-1791] 1896-1901 [hereafter JR] 27: 253-
61). When Jacques Cartier encountered the Montagnais-Naskapi in
1534, he remarked on their ease of manners in their coming 'freely on
board our vessels as if they had been Frenchmen' (Cartier 1924, 76).
It wasn't that Renaissance explorers and observers did not see that
Native groups had organized customs, languages, and beliefs. Nor were
they unaware that indigenous information and knowledge were valuable
to their survival on the continent and even had real parallels with their
own intellectual traditions.2 It was that sixteenth-century Europeans saw
themselves as separate from and superior to peoples who were not
34 Deborah Doxtator

Christian and capitalist (Dickason 1979, 182, 200-1). This separation of


Native ideologies, forms of government, and religious beliefs from
European ones, by virtue of their supposed 'inferiority,' was essential to
the Europeans' taking possession of the 'new' world. Europeans per-
ceived that indigenous North American beliefs and ways of seeing were
incompatible with their own social, political, and religious systems. Mis-
sionization went hand in hand with economic expansion: Champlain
refused to sanction French trade with Native groups unless they also
accepted missionaries (Dickason 1992, 127). Missionaries were necessary
to replace Native religions, languages, and customs with Roman Cathol-
icism and French culture (Grant 1984, 31).
In the twentieth century, writing about the 'Renaissance' in Canada,
as well as the writing of North American history in general, seems also to
be troubled by the idea that Native perceptions of history are not com-
patible with Euro-based ideas of history and change. Although both
Native and non-Native historians have made attempts since the early
nineteenth century to write histories that integrate Native and non-
Native ideas of time, place, and history, the history of Canada remains
firmly based in European, not indigenous, ways of seeing the past. By
this I mean that although both Native perspectives and voices have been
incorporated, the history of Canada remains firmly based in European
deeds and actions (Trigger 1985, 48-9). Indigenous participation is at
best viewed as marginal to the telling of Canadian history. As it stands
now, tens of thousands of years of history in North America are deemed
to be largely unknowable, the province not of history but of archaeol-
ogy. 'Real' history does not begin until Europeans arrive (Trigger 1985,
4-5; Petrone 1990, 35-70). The writings of nineteenth-century Native
historians such as David Cusick ([1827] 1848) or George Copway (1847;
1850) are more often viewed as sources of history than as themselves his-
toriographic. The legacy of past definitions of difference as separate
and exclusionary, instead of as interconnecting and inclusive, requiring
incorporation into a whole, may have helped to obscure points of possi-
ble rapprochement between two different ways of ordering knowledge
and conceptualizing the past.
One fundamental point of separation between the two ways of con-
ceptualizing the past has been the idea that Native people have 'myth'
but not history. In 1541 the Franciscan friar Motolinia, who had written
a history of New Spain, complained that most Aztec histories did not tell
'the truth' since they were mixed with 'dreams, illusions and supersti-
tions' (Boone I994b, 50). The seventeenth-century Jesuits, in recording
Native and Euro-Based Concepts of Time, History, and Change 35

the stories and customs of the Huron and others, did so in order to
better debunk them as 'superstition' and fallacies (Grant 1984, 32, 34).
Laurie Anne Whitt has argued that, even into the twentieth century,
'the dominant knowledge system of the West' has often viewed indige-
nous knowledge systems as '"tainted" with a normative and spiritual
component' that renders them 'mere superstition, the very antithesis of
knowledge' (Whitt 1995, 236).
Recent scholarship about South American indigenous history has
begun to question assumptions that 'pre-literate societies' lack historical
consciousness. As Terence Turner argues, the structuralist idea that
indigenous societies see themselves as having 'static social systems,' with
'myth' but not 'history,' needs revision (Turner ig88a, 195-6). Yet the
perception of the basis and structures of 'history' among indigenous
peoples does differ dramatically from Euro-based concepts. Indigenous
conceptualizations of history are not the same as those that came out of
a European tradition. Turner argues that European history is based on a
tradition that stems from Thucydides' emphasis upon retelling events in
a chronological sequence as part of one universal history, but that other
kinds of history order events as episodes, not strictly connected to one
another in a set chronology (Turner I988b, 249-50). Alcida Ramos fur-
ther argues that the separation of myth from history is part of a process
of compartmentalization that is unnecessary in indigenous thought
but essential to European-based ideas of rationalism and empiricism
(Ramos 1988, 229).
However, European-based histories are just as informed by their own
cultural myths and symbols as are indigenous oral traditions — albeit per-
haps less overtly. The twentieth-century assumption that historians must
not make direct reference to their own myths is in itself a kind of cul-
tural belief system. As Turner points out, cultural myth is usually com-
patible with, mutually informing of, and complementary to, narrative
forms of history (Turner ig88b, 237). Narrative histories written now,
like the accounts constructed in the time of first contact between Native
peoples and Europeans, reflect differing cultural systems. Does this then
mean that they are incompatible with one another?
Centuries of syncretic adaptation of European-based ideologies and
structures to Native knowledge systems by Native peoples would indicate
otherwise. Renaissance explorers such as Champlain relied heavily upon
Montagnais and Huron conceptual maps and geopolitical interpreta-
tions of their territories to make their own maps. In an essay elsewhere
in this volume, Conrad Heidenreich argues that Champlain was success-
36 Deborah Doxtator

ful largely because he undertook to accept and incorporate Native tech-


nologies, outlooks, and ways of living. Germaine Warkentin has pointed
out that some Renaissance Europeans such as Pierre-Esprit Radisson
were able to form a synthesis of Native and European meaning since
Native rituals and customs had many parallels within French court
culture (Warkentin 1996, 67)
Although seventeenth-century North American history has been writ-
ten within the tradition of Thucydides' idea of the historical narrative,
many of the actual intellectual forms operating during this time period
were in fact enmeshed with Native intellectual constructs. Initially, trea-
ties and diplomacy with Native groups in the Northeast took Native, not
European, forms. Even though they sought to manipulate the process to
their own gain, British and French officials learned and used the requi-
site Native protocols and metaphoric rhetoric that were based in Native
religious and cultural conceptualizations of trade and military alliances
(Foster 1984). Colonial documents bear testimony to the influence of
Native names and languages, and Native concepts of seeing North
America and living within it; yet the effects of colonial powers on Native
cultures and their perceived cultural structures are usually central to the
writing of this history, rather than the other way around (Druke 1987,
29-30). Life in seventeenth-century Canada was in many ways broadly
bicultural, or at least syncretic, with both sides incorporating Native and
non-Native ways of thinking and being. Why is this not reflected in the
way that its history is written? Why is it that attempts to incorporate
Native versions of seventeenth-century events by attending to Native oral
traditions and stories have proved to be so frustrating to scholars who
seek to write within the western tradition of historical writing?
Do Native conceptualizations of history, focused as they are on epi-
sodes, clash fundamentally with western notions of time as made up of
separate segments joined in a strict chronological sequence? Elsewhere
in this volume Toby Morantz draws together for discussion several con-
cerns that historians have regarding the incorporation of Native oral tra-
ditions into western historical narratives. One of central and enduring
difficulty was the problem of separating current Native perceptions of
the past from those of the Native people living at the time. Although
Euro-based concepts of history can accept the idea that history is rewrit-
ten over time and that perspectives of the past change (White 1986,
488), it cannot accept the degree of temporal continuity and unity
underlying Native concepts of history. Just as categories of what is 'myth'
and what is empirically determined 'historical observation' must appear
Native and Euro-Based Concepts of Time, History, and Change 37

separate and distinct, so must the perspectives of groups of people sepa-


rated by certain predetermined blocks of time. Clearly in the academic
world there must be a gulf between the past and the present. David
Lowenthal, in The Past Is a Foreign Country, explains that, since the
Renaissance, distance between the past and present in western thought
has been a useful cultural tool to legitimize change (Lowenthal 1985, 9,
77. 79, 233, 235). In discussing Australian colonial history, Paul Carter
applies the term 'imperial history' to history that 'pays attention to
events unfolding in time alone,' because such history seeks not so much
to explain as to legitimate (Carter 1995, 375-6). Critics such as Derek
Walcott have discerned that, as a result, 'amnesia is the true history of
the New World' (Walcott 1995, 372). That the past is distinct, differenti-
ated, and, thus, separate from the present has worked to create a mental
gulf between the past and the present within contemporary mainstream
North American societies.
Native concepts of history find no gulf between different segments of
time. Each time is different, but it does not mean that there is an impen-
etrable wall because of that difference. In a Seneca story that explains
the origins of stories about the past, an old man from the world of the
ancients comes to visit a boy who is hunting birds. He explains that the
boy must come back to the same place by a large rock every night to
hear the stories. Every night the boy returns and brings with him more
and more people to listen until there is a great crowd. Ostensibly, some
of the people have arrived at different times but they are nonetheless all
part of the assembled crowd. The man who tells the stories explains that
he and others like him have 'remained at home in the world that was'
but can visit the world that is. There is little if any actual physical dis-
tance between the two worlds of what is and what was. They are different
and distinct, yet rather than being separated by a gulf, they are in
essence part of the same incorporated universe (Hewitt 1918, 680-1).
Throughout this paper I have interspersed references to the 'seven-
teenth century' and the 'nineteenth and twentieth centuries,' not
because I am unaware that events and people are different during
these time periods, but because the continuities across time are essen-
tial to understand the 'Renaissance' in the twentieth century. Western
societies based on European concepts also stress continuities, but in
different ways and for different purposes. The most obvious example is
the subtitle of this collection of essays: there, the word 'Canada' refers
to a nation that did not really come into being in the sense discussed
here until 1949, when Newfoundland joined the Canada begun in 1867.
38 Deborah Doxtator

'Canada' did not exist during the Renaissance, yet no one has any diffi-
culty discussing this topic since the continuities seem apparent and use-
ful for organizing discussion.
Although Rotinonhsyonni concepts of time present no gulf between
time periods, they do not imply a static lack of change any more than
Euro-based concepts do. In fact in Rotinonhsyonni thought there is con-
tinual movement, not stasis. The creation story itself emphasizes this
continual movement. For a while there is movement towards enlarging
life (Spring) by Sapling, the elder brother of twins. This is followed by
movement for a time back towards contraction (Winter), brought about
by Flint, the younger of the twins. Although this cyclical movement is
balanced, it is not productive of stasis. Each seasonal cycle is never
exactly the same, and the overall result of varied repetition of cycles is
the gradual growth, layering, and development of the earth - a contin-
ual state of change and transformation brought about by balanced
forces interacting with one another.
This Rotinonhsyonni idea that change is the product of repeated
activities consolidating and subsuming interrelated structures is ex-
plained in a discussion of social change given by Cayuga linguist and
ritualist Reg Henry:

At the beginning ... when the Creator created this earth, somebody had
to be responsible for the environment, for this earth, to keep it going, so
he created a man to do this ... Later on he as looking at this man, seeing
how he was doing ... in time, he seemed lost, had his head down and the
Creator said, well, it seems like I'll have to get a companion for this man
and see if that helps. Needless to say it did perk up the man quite a bit.
They seemed to be getting on well, so the Creator said now I can officially
put you together as man and wife; they give birth to children, a lot of
children, and everything went well... there was sort of a large population of
Indians then. Later on ... Creator was looking down and there was
something wrong with these people. They were wandering around aimlessly,
not really organized in what they were doing.
And the Creator said, what I will do is give them clans. And since all their
lives revolved around the woods, the clans were based on animals in the
woods. So then they can start to organize and do for each other what was to
be done ... so that was the beginning.3

As the story continues, things go on until a need for further organiza-


tion arises at the Six Nations Confederacy level. Subsequently the Great
Native and Euro-Based Concepts of Time, History, and Change 39

Law (the Great Peace) and the introduction of the Four Ceremonies
further organizes the connections of mankind to the natural world and
to the Creator (Hewitt 1928, 558, 570; Wallace 1946, 5, 7). In this narra-
tive, like many other Rotinonhsyonni representations of history, cyclical
patterns continue their accumulative effect until change occurs as a
result of those very patterns. No level of organization actually disap-
pears: each is incorporated within institutions with larger and larger
spatial contexts. History is an additive process, building upon what has
gone before in a kind of consciously constructed continuity.
In the creation story, the descendants of Odendoonniha and Awen-
haniyonda, the first man and first woman, follow repeatedly the instruc-
tions of De'haen'hiyawa'kho - 'Sky Grasper' or the 'Creator' or 'he who
finished our bodies' - until there are a great many people on the earth
and it becomes apparent that an uneasy 'unfinished' situation has
arisen in their relationships with one another: 'There was, as it were,
absolute silence; they had no ceremony which they should have been
performing, also no business that they should have been attending to;
everything was just neglected, all was silent; they traveled about with
their ohwachira [families]; it was so that one would think they only
went about standing in different places' (Hewitt 1928, 558). Then
De'haen'hiyawa'kho or 'Sky-Grasper' returns and establishes the Four
Ceremonies (the Great Feather Dance, the Skin Dance, the personal
chants, and the Betting Game). Added to and incorporated with the
earlier idea of families travelling about is the idea of organized group
activities centred on the change in seasons. To the initial idea of differ-
ence is added the idea that two things differing 'among themselves'
bring contentment to the mind when they have reciprocal responsibili-
ties to one another. The new pattern of the four ceremonies incorpo-
rates and centres on the concept of complementary differences between
groups of people, between men and women, and between winter and
spring. In adding the four ceremonies, nothing is lost or taken away: all
is incorporated within the next addition, and differences actually func-
tion not to separate but to unify groups (Hewitt 1928, 605-7).
The mysterious young man Ho'nigo'heowa'nen,' or 'His-Mind-Is-
Great,' then introduces the idea of clans. Taking the ideas of family, dif-
ference, and reciprocal relationship among different groups, he creates
groups of families or clans, separating them into two moieties that have
reciprocal relations to one another. He recreates a 'middle' line
between the two groups of clans. In so doing, he creates reciprocal rela-
tionships between the groups; these join everyone together into a whole
4O Deborah Doxtator

and yet keep them spatially distinct and separate from one another
(Hewitt 1928, 605-7). Society is organized on the idea of unified differ-
ence on many different levels from the family to the moiety. Reciprocal
relationships among family members are not repudiated by the larger
clan moiety structure but rather are subsumed by it. Change, in this con-
ceptualization of time and history, is not replacement, but incorpora-
tion and subsuming the structures of the past. Continuity without
separating gaps is central to this view of history.
The type of story discussed here is only one of the many different
kinds of historical narratives that form part of Native conceptualizations
of history. They provide the elements of how the world is structured;
others tell of actual living people, movements, and interactions. In
Native perceptions of history as continually moving continuities, oral
traditions are ideally suited to recording and recounting these histories.
During the diplomacy of the seventeenth century, Rotinonhsyonni and
other Native peoples used councils to recount and continually update
histories of interactions between nations (Druke 1987, 37-9). Knowl-
edge was stored in symbolic form using images on wampum belts, birch-
bark, and fur pelt drawings, utilizing images that evoked concepts
rather than reproducing spoken language. Richard Preston, as part of
his work with Cree elders, has outlined two different kinds of Cree sto-
ries that make up their conceptualization of history: atiukan, or mythic
stories about the creation of the world, and tipachimun, or stories of
actual human beings in their everyday life (Preston 1975, 292).
Historians have been most interested in the latter kind of oral narra-
tives. In her essay in this volume, Toby Morantz invokes Elizabeth
Tonkin's admonition to scholars to not pick out the currants and ignore
the cake in their quest to find useful 'evidence' to corroborate their own
culturally based perspectives (Tonkin 1992, 6). Without distortion of
information it's not possible simply to pick out the types of historical
narrative that look the most like Euro-based ideas of empirical, compart-
mentalized descriptions of actual events and include them as 'another
perspective' in chronological Euro-focused histories. In any case,
detailed accounts of events in the Renaissance period from the point
of view of Native peoples are nearly non-existent in the seventeenth-
century European record (Trigger 1985, 125). In part this may be
because seventeenth-century chroniclers could not see beyond their
own cultures and the supposed 'lack' of organized law, government, his-
tory, and culture of Native groups. For example, Champlain concludes
his lengthy description of Huron customs with the dismissive phrase
Native and Euro-Based Concepts of Time, History, and Change 41

'this is all I have been able to learn about their brutish beliefs' (Cham-
plain 1922-36, 4:52). Radisson, for all his empathy, in the end saw the
customs and ideas that he so carefully described as 'fabulous beleafes of
those poore People' (Warkentin 1996, 59). Even the observant and cul-
turally curious Moravians, who, like the Jesuits, learned Native lan-
guages, did not think it necessary to give more than passing reference to
the 'Cayuga archives.' These 'pictures hanging in the trees' describing
war exploits on the way to Onondaga were not seen as real history
(Beauchamp 1916, 41).
Further, seventeenth-century record keepers failed to recognize that
wampum belts and pictographs were valid kinds of recording systems. In
the minutes of innumerable council meetings with Native nations, only
passing mention is made of wampum belts, and although the writer may
indicate that these belts were hung up during a speech, they are almost
never described in any detail or given much consideration in the written
record. For instance, in records of seventeenth-century treaties made
with John Livingston, the British Secretary for Indian Affairs, references
to wampum are more concerned with quantity than in the patterns or
intellectual imagery of the belts and strings. Frequent reference is made
to 'a fathom of wampum' or 'a hank of wampum.' In 1683 at a treaty
negotiation between the governor of New York and the Oneida, the
record describes 'a belt 12 deep'; at the record of an Albany conference
in 1704, the point is made that there were 'seven hands of wampum'
(Leder 1956, 36, 39, 91, 197). Furthermore, in mid-eighteenth-century
treaties with the Iroquois, kept by Sir William Johnson, the British
Indian commissioner in the colony of New York, strings of wampum or
wampum belts are mentioned but never described in terms of their pat-
terns or intellectual imagery.4 Thus, any attempt to include Native-
authored material in non-Native histories of the Renaissance period
in North America is by necessity based on nineteenth- and twentieth-
century oral traditions.
To try to distil from Native oral traditions narratives describing events
that happened in the seventeenth century, or in other words to convert
Native knowledge into something closer to what western historians con-
sider knowledge, is to distort the information that these narratives con-
tain. Usually this is a very difficult task in any case, as oral traditions do
not normally contain conveniently dated signposts. In about 1825 David
Cusick, a Tuscarora historian, attempted to write a chronological Six
Nations history up to the arrival of Columbus in North America, based
on nineteenth-century oral tradition. As he stated in his preface, it was
42 Deborah Doxtator

'impossible for [him] to compose the work without much difficulty'


(Cusick [1827] 1848, [9]). The resulting history, although organized
chronologically from the beginning of the world to the arrival of Colum-
bus, is still much more focused on cultural structures than on the
English calendar. The work requires the reader to be literate enough
about Rotinonhsyonni culture to understand the allusions to 'stone-
coats,' 'lake serpents,' 'flying heads,' or the 'tree of peace.' Even though
Cusick organizes his history into three different kinds of narratives - the
first mythic, the second 'legend and folklore,' and the third a 'history'
of events - textual references to Rotinonhsyonni mythological/cultural
symbols and metaphors occur throughout all three sections (Cusick
[1827] 1848, 14, 16,24).
Cusick places Rotinonhsyonni cultural content within a loose chrono-
logical framework that becomes increasingly more precise about loca-
tion and place names as it begins to approach narrative history. This
connection between the narrative and metaphors mentioned above,
and specific places on the Great Lakes and on the Hudson, Mohawk,
Susquehanna, and Ohio River watersheds, overshadows the occasional
chronological reference to 'perhaps about two thousand two hundred
years before the Columbus discovered the Americas' (Cusick [1827]
1848,25).
The matrix of Rotinonhsyonni cultural identity has always been rooted
in place and territory. In Mohawk the word for clan, otara, means land,
clay, and earth. When one asks an individual what clan they belong to
(oh nisen'taroten'), one is literally asking 'What is the outline or contour
of your clay?' (Hewitt 1888). In seventeenth-century Rotinonhsyonni
thought, an individual without a clan and a land base to which to belong
was socially dead. As a nineteenth-century Native related, 'Our Ancestors
has certain Marks, each Tribe [clan] had a certain Boundary or Line they
called their own, of the Land the Great Spirit gave them' (Hough 1861,
278; see also Grassmann 1969, 651). For a nation not to have people orga-
nized into communities with which to maintain control over territories
was to be no longer a people. Seneca and Mohawk clans carried out the
so-called mourning wars of the 16308 and i66os to obtain people from
other Native and European nations to fill the clans attacked by a series of
devastating small-pox epidemics (Richter 1992, 145). Political indepen-
dence required that the population be connected to particular land
bases. Each of the Five and then Six Nations called themselves names that
describe their seventeenth-century territories. For instance, the Seneca
called themselves Nundawaona1 or 'Great Hill People,' the Cayuga Gueng-
Native and Euro-Based Concepts of Time, History, and Change 43

wehonior 'People of the Mucky Land,' and the Mohawk, Kahnye'kehaka or


'People of the Place of the Flint' (Brodhead 1853, 83). In the traditional
story outlining the founding of the Confederacy, the Onondaga word for
nation is tsyakauhwetsya'atta'shu', or 'earth, land be one,' implying that, in
order to be a nation, a group of people must fundamentally share the
same land. The term for nations outside the Confederacy of shared lands
is thihotiohwentayatenyo, literally 'other land existing' (Gibson 1992, 109,
426).
Seventeenth-century Europeans were also very interested in describ-
ing land in their accounts, but as part of the process of mapping
resources, not in defining social relationships. The stories connected
with place names and their relevance to Native intellectual concepts
were not recorded in the seventeenth-century European record. In fact,
European missionaries, traders, politicians, and cartographers often
gave locations English or French names, obscuring the history con-
tained within the Native place names. Even the names by which we as
Native peoples discuss ourselves and are discussed in the written dis-
course are not our own: Huron, Iroquois, Algonquian, Montagnais are
words derived from English or French approximations, often of names
our enemies called us. The fundamental importance of Native lan-
guages to understanding Native history has been recognized by contem-
porary scholars (Brown and Vibert 1996, xiii), but very little of this
essential information enters into general discussion. Would anyone
attempt to write a history of the Renaissance in Ojibwa or Mohawk or
Oneida and expect to enter into discussion with other scholars?
In a sense, Native cultures with their particular conceptualization of
difference solved this problem of communication across different cul-
tures a long time ago. One of the strengths of a 'writing' system without
words is that it can confer concepts and information without the partici-
pants having to share the same spoken language. Elizabeth Hill Boone
questions the idea that indigenous cultures in North America did not
have 'true writing,' pointing out that phonetical 'visual speech' (that is,
alphabetical writing) is not superior to other forms of visual communi-
cation. Spatial, mathematical, and aesthetic concepts cannot adequately
be conveyed by alphabetical text since there are some forms of thinking
that can not be easily or precisely described by the inscribed spoken
word (Boone I994a, 3-4, 9-13). During the Renaissance the printing
press was invented in Europe. This revolutionized the written word by
separating painting and drawing from visual representations of lan-
guage. Drawings and illustrations became subordinate to mechanical
44 Deborah Doxtator

inscription, or, as some have argued, the 'taming' of the voice (Mignolo
1994,293-4).
Still, European culture did have many other forms of record keeping
than the written or printed word. In the early period of mapping North
America, Native and European ideas were not incompatible. Renais-
sance cartographers reworked Native descriptions and maps that, like
oral traditions, set out cosmologies, histories, and politics in a record of
landmarks and landscapes. Early European maps were not precisely
drafted on mathematical grids of scale and, with their illustrations mak-
ing reference to classical myth, resembled Native maps and conceptual-
izations of the landscape that incorporated mythological, religious,
historical, and political information (Brotherston 1992, 82). The differ-
ence, of course, was that although map making was a collaborative pro-
cess, it was never acknowledged by Europeans as such.
Again, the perception of difference as necessitating separation, and
the necessity of European superiority to further their goal of coloniza-
tion, coloured Renaissance Europeans' dealings with Native intellectual
contributions to European records and constructions of knowledge
about North America. The legacy of these ideas continues to influence
contemporary ideas about the incompatibility of Native and Euro-based
concepts of history.
Jacques Derrida has challenged the fallacy that written text can ever
stand alone or that oral and written script are mutually exclusive (Broth-
erston 1992, 42). Euro-based history is based upon its own mythologies,
icons, and metaphors just as much as Native history. It also bends time
to emphasize certain culturally important continuities but finds it diffi-
cult to accept Native continuities that stress different versions and struc-
tures of history. In Native world-views, such as the Rotinonhsyonni one
briefly alluded to above, difference is inclusive in that relationships and
interactions exist because of difference, not its absence.
Native concepts of forming and transferring knowledge are based on
kinds of concrete conceptual thinking that individualize or 'personal-
ize' knowledge. These are not, as Champlain thought, just a case that
each 'prayfsj in his heart as he thought good' (Champlain 1922-36,
1:117). How a person knows something is very important to its credibil-
ity to others. To speak from personal experience, as Robin Ridington
writes, is to know with authority a complete but small part of the whole
world (Ridington 1990, xv). In the Rotinonhsyonni conceptual world, to
know something one must interact directly with a world that incorpo-
rates rather than separates out the mythic. Reality is experienced in an
Native and Euro-Based Concepts of Time, History, and Change 45

individualized, personalized way that is bounded by shared collective


conventions. One's personalized experience of the mythic or spiritual is
shaped by the collectively determined practices surrounding rituals and
specialized interpretations of dreams (Shimony 1961, 30, 173). The
descriptive, visual nature of the languages, the evocative power of the
multiple meanings of concrete metaphors, and the means of recording
knowledge (such as wampum belts) all support this kind of concrete,
experientially based knowledge. To explain or discuss using metaphors
requires one to think in ways that emphasize multiple meanings in par-
allel, and not in ways that focus on separate, distinct segments linked
together in a linear chain. As a concrete, spatial way of explaining
change and how the world works, successful metaphors must also inte-
grate their varied expressions in a variety of contexts.
In the seventeenth century, the Rotinonhsyonni people often
referred to their leaders, territories, and social units such as clans by the
same name. For instance, the leader of a prominent Oneida wolf clan
village was known simply as 'the wolf (Jameson 1909, 144). The royaner
(Six Nations Confederacy chief) clan titles themselves incorporated
more than just reference to a single individual, since the title could
refer to an individual, to the clan, or to an entire group of people and
their lands. In the condolence ritual conducted by Captain John Dese-
rontyou at Lachine in the 17908, the narrative signifying the Tyendinaga
Mohawks begins 'I, the Tekarihoken.'' By this he meant the Mohawk's
leading clan from which the Confederacy chief title descended, the
Mohawk people themselves incorporated within this leading title, the
land to which they belonged, and all the previous holders of this tide —
four separate meanings and contexts, individually encapsulated within
one another and all without any idea of contradiction or confusion
(Deserontyou [1782] 1926, 139-40). Each meaning is different but not
unconnected to or separate from the rest.
Native and European-based histories have not developed in isolation
from one another. Toby Morantz remarks on the dissatisfaction of treat-
ing Native history both as a separate 'parallel' version of history and as a
source of information relevant to western ideas of history. Currently,
Native knowledge systems interact with the writing of Canadian history
from a position of marginalized opposition to a dominant narrative.
Although it is essential that Native writing both speak to and understand
colonization and issues of power and subjugation, it is just as important
that Native intellectual traditions be more carefully understood for what
they are, and not for what European-based conceptualizations have
46 Deborah Doxtator

assumed they have been and always will be. As Alcida Ramos reflects, 'to
insist on dividing "primitive" from "historical" societies is to add to the
intellectual apparatus of domination, to build a sort of indigenist Orien-
talism' (Ramos 1988, 230).
Native intellectual traditions and Euro-based traditions need not
operate in isolation because they are deemed mutually unintelligible to
each other. If one looks at the Renaissance, it is possible to conclude
that Europeans and Native peoples successfully communicated ideas
and concepts across cultures. In the twentieth century, Louis Owens,
writing about Native literatures, has observed that Native concepts of
identity and of the essential dialogic nature of the world coincide with
many of the tenets of western postmodern theory (Owens 1992, 6-12).
Yet the discourse surrounding the history and interaction between cul-
tures remains founded on oppression, bounded by ideas of a 'domi-
nant' and 'subordinate' narrative. Ironically, this continued focus on
the 'dominance' of the colonizer often serves to support the inequality
being repudiated in the first place. If the primary basis for denying the
equal compatibility of two knowledge systems is that Native concepts are
different from western history's culturally determined categories, then
perhaps the categories of history need to be re-examined, revised, and
enlarged. Rather than trying to fit Native information into Euro-based
structures of history, perhaps the interrelationships between Native and
European histories need to be more closely examined. How could two
groups of people have lived together for 500 years and not have influ-
enced one another's thinking or have communicated with one another?
Is the ambivalence of the Renaissance writer who painstakingly de-
scribes Native ideas and customs only to dismiss them as unimportant
and uninfluential to his own thinking, part of the contemporary prob-
lem of perceiving how Native intellectual concepts relate to the writing
of history in North America?
Although not an intellectual impossibility, a true synthesis of tradi-
tions does not appear to have been historically sought out by either side.
On the Native side, nations such as the Mohawk articulated the ideal of
peaceful coexistence and non-interference with one another in the Kah-
swentha (Two Row Wampum), a seventeenth-century agreement made
with the Dutch traders to ensure that neither side interfered with the
other's customs (Ratelle 1992). This did not mean that there was no
relationship between the two peoples. In fact the opposite was intended:
it meant that the two would interact as equals. The European mythology
of Native inferiority and the idea of 'primitivism' underlay nineteenth-
Native and Euro-Based Concepts of Time, History, and Change 47

and twentieth-century assimilation policies designed to get rid of the


separating 'differences.' They functioned to preclude European accep-
tance of Native intellectual concepts as equal to their own (Berkhofer
1978,24,29-30).
The writing of the history of the Renaissance in Canada and North
America is the intellectual product of interactions between Native and
European peoples, yet, except for the story of the relationship between
the two based on colonization, one rarely knows that. European and
Native concepts of history, time, and change are not the same. Further-
more the differences, once perceived, are not sufficient to explain why
it appears as if Native concepts have been excluded, marginalized, and
deemed unimportant to the writing of the history of the North Ameri-
can continent in general. If the reasons are primarily political and
ideological, then perhaps it is to the ending of marginalization of indig-
enous knowledge systems that postcolonial debates will ultimately lead.

NOTES

1 This is the Mohawk word for Iroquois. Unless otherwise stated, all terms will
be in Mohawk.
2 Missionaries made good use of points of convergence in Native and European
ideas in order to explain their faith and persuade people to convert; see
Grant 1984.
3 Sam Cronk, 'Reg Henry's Cultural Discussion at Cayuga Language Class, May
*5 199°> Six Nations, Ontario.' Recorded by Sam Cronk (unpublished manu-
script).
4 Johnson 1921-65, 3: 782-91; 4: 466-9, 'three strings,' 'A bunch of black
Wampum'; 471, 'A Belt.'
5 Each of these words is in the language of the nation naming itself; the
spellings are mine, not Brodhead's.
Plunder or Harmony?
On Merging European and
Native Views of Early Contact
Toby Morantz

Contact, direct face-to-face contact, between the Cree of James Bay and
Europeans happened in the spring of 1611 somewhere near the mouth
of the Rupert River. This was during Henry Hudson's voyage of discov-
ery from England, which had begun the previous summer. A Cree man
visited the ship while it was ice-bound. On their return voyage, the crew
mutinied, and Hudson, his son, and others were set adrift in a small
boat to perish. Nevertheless, an account of this first recorded meeting
was left by a member of the crew, Abacuk Pricket. In Pricket's version,
the Cree visitor to the ship gratefully ('thankefully') receives from Hud-
son 'a knife, a looking-glass and buttons,' returning the next day with
two caribou skins and two beaver skins. The Cree man presented Hud-
son with the beaver skins in exchange for the items he had received the
previous day. Pricket relates, 'then the master shewed him an hatchet,
for which hee would have given the master one of his deere skinnes, but
our master would have them both, and so hee had, although not will-
ingly' (Asher 1860, 114).
The Cree oral account provides us with a different view of this meet-
ing. Rather than the Native visitors to the ship (in this account, a hus-
band and wife) being grateful or delighted with the exchange (or
greedy), it is the English who sound thrilled (or greedy) and the Cree
amused. This story was originally told to anthropologist Colin Scott in
1979 at Wemindji, James Bay, by Geordie Georgekish:

Their jackets were made of fur from animals that he trapped. So people on
the ship gave them some other clothes to wear. 'Take your clothes off they
were told, and they understood what they were told. Tut these clothes on'
they were told. (Narrator's aside: I guess they took their clothes off where
On Merging European and Native Views of Early Contact 49

nobody could see them. There must have been a small room where they
could undress.) So the woman, whose pants were made of muskrat fur,
removed her pants. And they went home wearing the clothes that the
people from the ship had given them. (Scott 1983, 230)'

Although these two versions of first contact in James Bay are recogniz-
able as describing the same encounter, it is apparent each brings to the
fore a different perspective.
The English account emphasizes the Cree's delight with things the
English would consider trifling items, while the Cree narration men-
tions nothing of such goods. Instead, it highlights their amusement with
the English desire for their clothes, no doubt trifling items, as well, for
the Cree. On the surface, then, there is a paradoxical concordance
between these western and non-western versions of an event that is
important in North American history. However, much like the icebergs
that Hudson must have encountered, only a small fraction of the Cree
story is apparent to the western-trained mind; most of the messages and
lessons to be conveyed remain submerged, and consequently out of our
view.
The Cree of eastern James Bay are Algonquian speakers who have
occupied this territory for several thousand years. Upon its creation in
1670, the Hudson's Bay Company began to establish fur trade posts in
Cree territory, locating them at favoured Native meeting places. Today,
the Cree are settled in nine villages on these same meeting sites. Before
adopting village life, the Cree lived in small extended family groups,
hunting, trapping, and fishing (Francis and Morantz 1983). It was within
these family settings, around the campfire, that the elders would tell sto-
ries that encompassed their knowledge of Cree cosmology, history, and
values. Can this oral tradition be used to construct a unified history of
the relations of these two groups? Will academic historians ever be able
to write the history of the first encounters (or any other encounters)
between the Cree and the new arrivals that conveys, in the telling of
such events, the intent, substance, and lessons intrinsic to both the Cree
and Euro-Canadians? Can there be a single history that reflects both
perspectives? The one draws on a rich, ancient oral tradition, and the
other on an equally rich, relatively ancient recorded one, but each is
embedded in radically different cultural contexts. This paper explores
whether there is enough common ground between the two to create a
single narrative that adequately reflects the actions, judgments, feelings,
convictions, values, and ideas of both sets of actors. History, we are told,
5O Toby Morantz

has become more democratic, more challenging of single narratives,


and more receptive to including diverse accounts (Appleby, Hunt, and
Jacob 1994, 293). The interest of such historians in integrating oral text
with the written stems from the expectation that histories and or ethno-
histories produced today will call on all sources, with some privileging of
the Native views of history (Trigger 1982, 7).
Yet whereas most of the papers in this volume celebrate new insights
and new perspectives on the early encounters - as well they should - this
one, alas, sounds a note of caution about how self-congratulatory aca-
demic historians can be in believing they have the means to unravel the
Native past. I do not mean to suggest that historians discard oral tradi-
tion, but rather that historians need to think carefully of what distor-
tions they might be creating in absorbing oral text into a new written
historical narrative.
The concern with the 'Native voice' is relatively recent in the field of
ethnohistory. This subfield, wed of anthropology and history in the late
19505, pioneered the rescuing of Native peoples from their place in the
background, restoring them to centre stage in the unfolding histories
of Canada and the United States. Histories of the fur trade began to
locate the Native hunters and their families exactly where they were in
the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century developments of the trade:
squarely in the forefront, making decisions about alliances, the standard
of exchange, the location of posts, the routes that were used, the com-
modities that were traded, and so on (Ray 1974; Bishop 1974; Francis
and Morantz 1983). Important as this contribution to history was, it
began to occur to ethnohistorians that this writing-m of Native actors
was not sufficient. The changing focus highlighted the fact that these
ethnohistories did not account for the motivations behind the actions of
Native peoples or for these people's values or perceptions of events.
Native peoples were totally submerged in the western narrative, form,
and themes.
Writing in 1974, Raymond Fogelson drew attention to the ethnocen-
trism in ethnohistoric writings, and remarked that 'native interpretation
of critical events and significant historical personages are un- or under-
represented in ethnohistorical research' (Fogelson 1974, 106). Such
concerns obviously were fundamental to Bruce Trigger's thinking. In his
Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660, first published
in 1976, he presented a Huron-centred history based on chronicles left
by the Jesuits and early French explorers, and on the archaeological
record. Such an ethnohistory was far ahead of its time in its attempt to
On Merging European and Native Views of Early Contact 51

impute motive and explain action. Using an interpretive framework


predicated on rationalism and an analysis based on decision-making by
interest groups, Trigger crafted a highly credible, fascinating, and ele-
gant narrative, depicting not only seventeenth-century Huron life but
the choices and strategies the Huron forged in turbulent times as they
confronted the French and the Huron's Iroquois adversaries. Neverthe-
less, even though Trigger's study, in directing his interest and analysis to
individual Huron and French actors, was light years ahead of Eric Wolfs
Europe and the People without History (1982), today it would likely fall prey
to Stephen Hugh-Jones's criticism of the latter, more global history.
Hugh-Jones commented that Wolf 'aims to give back history to those
who have been denied it but the history he provides is doubly our own;
not only is it dominated by our European world, it is also seen through
our western eyes' (Hughjones 1989, 53). Trigger anticipated such criti-
cisms in his preface to the 1987 second edition of The Children ofAataen-
tsic and welcomed the new insights that would add to an understanding
of Huron culture (Trigger [1976] 1987, xxx). He accepted that there
were costs as well as benefits in privileging the rationalist approach and
that he might have downplayed 'the culturally specific factors that
shaped the Huron way of life' (xxii). Others, working with societies not
caught up in events as cataclysmic as those facing the Huron, discovered
a rich and substantial extant oral tradition that they hoped would pro-
vide these 'culturally specific factors.' The value of oral tradition for Afri-
can history had already been strikingly demonstrated by Jan Vansina in
1965, and anthropologists working in North America began exploring
its use and applicability to the ethnohistories they were developing.
My introduction to Cree oral tradition came originally from 'Cree
Way,'2 a curriculum development project at Rupert House (Waskaga-
nish), and later from the field notes of a number of anthropologists
whose reports were on deposit at the former Museum of Man (now the
Canadian Museum of Civilization). The stories collected by this project
cover a variety of themes, from hardships on the land to the Natives of
long ago, from confrontations with enemies to the mountainous land of
the caribou, but mostly they are of a mix of human and non-human
characters, of trickster figures, of malevolent spirits or beings. These sto-
ries often contain detailed portrayals of the social setting, often mirror-
ing contemporary Cree life and a recurring theme of supernatural
power - or 'medicine,' as it is sometimes called - that could be used to
good or evil ends (see Bauer 1973, i).
With this collection from the Cree Way project on hand, I was certain
52 Toby Morantz

I would be able to correct, partially, the European biases of my earlier


histories, based, as they were, only on the journals and correspondence
books of the Hudson's Bay Company. I published a paper in 1984 on the
blending of oral and recorded history (Morantz 1984), full of hope that
the evidence from the two types of histories could be merged to pro-
duce a history informed by both English and Cree perceptions. I have
never written such a volume. Moreover, I know I never can.
I am now sceptical about ever achieving a kind of blended, universal
history that does justice to both cultural traditions. I question whether
using both the written texts of the Europeans and the oral texts of
Native peoples will yield anything but a low-level understanding. Will it
ever approximate for the Native peoples the quality of insights into per-
ception, motivation, and interests that Canadian historians can generate
for the European conduct in a given Native territory? I question our
ability to turn oral tradition into historical text, as we know it, and at the
same time capture the Native perception of events and their signifi-
cance. Instead, I suggest that the production of histories, such as those
attempting to reflect first meetings and early contact, can adequately be
met only by not wrenching each history from its cultural habitat; the
alternative, as I see it, is to produce different accounts according to the
cultural expertise of the writers.

Different Histories

Western history today is undergoing change as historians attempt to


find some acceptable balance between postmodern critiques, which are
based on the concept of relativism, and the more traditional western
science-based model of objective truth or knowledge, an issue that took
hold in the 19708 and 19805. The latter model is criticized by Joyce
Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, authors of Telling the Truth
about History (1994, 217), for producing histories that always involve
power, are exclusionary, and portray only partial points of view (11). In
contrast, the concept of relativism holds that the 'truth of a statement is
relative to the position of the person making the statement' (6). Thus,
this concept raises doubts about the ideal of objectivity in history. The
position of Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob is that the creation of knowledge
today requires 'a different, more nuanced, less absolutist kind of realism
... [a] practical realism' (247) that perforce requires historians to accept
the impossibility of any research being neutral or any interpretations
being other than tentative and imperfect (254). The authors champion
On Merging European and Native Views of Early Contact 53

the cause of writing multicultural history, whether 'cacophonous or har-


monic' (301). Nonetheless, they maintain that some principles must be
preserved. These principles seem to reflect the 'traditional' core of west-
ern historical knowledge that persists despite its state of flux. I want to
examine them here in order to develop a comparison between western
historiography and Cree and other non-western histories.
Appleby and her co-authors expect that historians will adhere to the
rigorous search for truth through commonly accepted standards of
inquiry, scrutiny, and verification. As well, they see the continuation of
the nineteenth-century development of a so-called universal, real, and
sequential temporal dimension in which the past informs the present
(53. 59> 265). For them, narratives, although attacked by postmodernists
as 'fictitious,' are essential both to individual and social identity (235),
and they favour a style of narrative, recognizing that, like lives, there is a
beginning, middle, and end (263). Furthermore, history must be based
on a qualified objectivity, one that draws in the undeniable elements of
subjectivity through which historians should seek to understand 'the
internal dispositions of historical actors' - their motivations, their
responses to events, and the ideas that shaped their social world (259).
These are not the principal constraints or requirements of Cree oral
histories, though there are some convergences. The Cree, as other
Algonquian- and non-Algonquian-speaking Native peoples, distinguish
between two types of oral tradition, which they term atiukan and tipachi-
man? though Richard Preston sees this distinction more as a gradation
than a dichotomy (R. Preston 1975, 292; and see Vincent 1981, 11, and
Scott 1983, 21). The former refers to myths, stories concerning the cre-
ation of the world when people and animals were not differentiated.
Sylvie Vincent refers to these as 'foundation stories' that explain putting
the world in order (1992, 2O).4 The tipachiman are about real people -
living, or their ancestors - but not necessarily without reference to what
western thinking would label the supernatural. For example, the narra-
tive of the first meeting with the white man begins with a Cree man con-
juring in a shaking tent in which his mistabeo, his guardian spirit,
foretells the arrival of the visitors and reassures the Cree before they
encounter the ship and strange men (Scott 1983, 230). Despite its super-
natural elements, the tipachiman is more closely aligned with our
notions of history than is the atiukan, since the former describes actual
events involving human actors, rather than what Richard Preston calls
the 'epic stories.'5 A Cree storyteller usually makes it clear which type of
story - tipachiman or atiukan - he or she is telling, but Preston does not
54 Toby Morantz

believe a storyteller would see the line between the two as clearly as he
does. Stan Cuthand, a Cree linguist from Saskatchewan, would agree.
He notes a very strong relationship between Cree myths and Cree soci-
ety: 'The stories of the mythical beings reinforced socially beneficial
behaviour' (Cuthand 1988, 195).
In Preston's analysis of both types of Cree narratives, he found five
concepts that he suggests convey, to the Crees, notions of their past or
history - that is, the foundations of their historical consciousness. Cree
narratives convey local knowledge that presents a record of the recent
past. They also impart a sense of continuity, of how the Cree people,
through their competency, have been able to maintain their way of life.
Two other functions of their narratives are to present their cosmology -
which describes their environment and their place within it - and their
moral teachings. Lastly, he sees the notion of evolution or change also
embodied in the atiukan stories, though this focus is reserved for
explaining how, in terms of the relationship between humans and ani-
mals, the world of very long ago changed into what it presently is. One
story alone would not suffice to teach all these elements, but a number
heard over time would.
Some of these features are shared with the Western historical tradition,
but not all, as we can see in the differences Preston emphasizes. The
reckoning of time is often a concept that distinguishes western history
from other histories (Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob 1994, 71-2). The western
tradition is represented as having a linear concept of time, and other peo-
ples represented as having a circular or cyclical concept, though Preston
suspects that all societies combine elements of both, as even ours recog-
nizes seasonal and life cycles. He has identified in the Cree tipachiman sto-
ries this dual reckoning of time, for the telling of the stories is situated as
occurring 'long ago' or 'when I was a boy,' but their content is more cycli-
cal, recounting perhaps what people were doing in a certain winter sea-
son. However, as must be evident, the Cree stories do not mark the linear
progression of time as starkly as in western history. The role of the indi-
vidual in the narrative also differs in the Cree historical tradition. Preston
comments that western values make much of some individuals, but Cree
stories 'are not so concerned with prominence as with the action and
what happened as a consequence of the action.'6
Another dimension to 'reading' time differently is the categorization
of time, so necessary to locating events in time. In a combined history,
whose categorization is used? The standard western one has been based
on ethnocentric classifications: 'prehistory' and 'history,' or 'precontact'
On Merging European and Native Views of Early Contact 55

and 'contact.' In the subdiscipline of ethnohistory, focus has been on


change from the time of contact. Implicit in these ethnohistories (see
Francis and Morantz 1983, as one example) is the notion that change
begins with the coming of the Europeans and is framed in terms of the
trade in metal tools, often guns. Native peoples can and do view the sig-
nificant markers differently, emphasizing what is important to them.
Thus, in her work with the Innu of the lower north shore of Quebec,
Sylvie Vincent discovered that the white man's presence per se is not the
important factor in delineating meaningful periods of history. Instead,
the Innu divide history into periods where there was 'only game' (no
flour) or 'only hides' (no cloth). In fact, they recount stories according
to whether something happened 'before flour' or 'after flour,'7 a more
meaningful designation than the usual ones of'postcontact' or 'the post-
1821 merger' or 'post-Confederation,' all meaningless designations in
the life of the subarctic hunter. Thus, standard Canadian history and
Innu history (and likely others) do not share the same objectives, the
same notions of what periods are worth designating.
The differences Preston notes between Cree notions of history and
the western variety are not, I contend, obstacles to writing a single his-
tory of the first encounters between seventeenth-century Cree and
Englishmen. The themes may be different, as may the interpretation of
the events, but these discrepancies or contradictions can be incorpo-
rated in a single history that, as I believe all histories should, reflects the
voices of the different actors.

Complexities and Conventions in Oral Narratives

What complicates turning Cree oral tradition into a form of narrative


that is combinable with Euro-Canadian historical writing is the oral tra-
dition's representation of the past and its narrative conventions. Repre-
sentation of past states is more difficult to retrieve, I contend, from oral
accounts than from recorded ones. In addition, there are stylistic forms
in both types of Cree narrative that do not have counterparts in western
history and, even if they did, their representations are still culturally
embedded and not readily apparent.
Writing in 1984,1 assumed that tipachiman stories were the sole equiv-
alents of the western historical tradition and that the atiukan stories
could be ignored. This was short-sighted; the writings of Richard
Preston, Stan Cuthand, and Sylvie Vincent,8 and of Julie Cruikshank on
Yukon peoples (1990, 1991, 1992, 1996), have demonstrated that both
56 Toby Morantz

types of oral tradition constitute the historical consciousness of the Cree


and other Native peoples.
How, then, are historians to use myth or mythic structures when,
although there is often a strong resemblance, mythic narratives re-
counted today are not identical to the ones told centuries ago? Writes
Terence Turner in his study of South American Native mythology: 'his-
tory and myth are both primarily to be understood as modes of con-
sciousness of the social present, expressed in terms of the relation of
that present to its past (and future)' (Turner igSSb, 279). Thus, in a
mythic story one is confronted with the present and the past at the same
time, not in chronological sequence.
Europeans recorded their narratives, such as that of Abacuk Pricket,
and, in doing so, documented the events and explanations of interest at
the time. Nevertheless, each new generation of historians reinterprets
these narratives in the light of new issues in the present that impose
questions on the events of the past. However, these reinterpretations of
documents are more constrained than those of oral traditions because
more of the original account is preserved. Many factors affect the status
of oral narratives as western-style 'evidence.' Although Preston informs
us that a good storyteller is careful to tell the story just as he or she
heard it,9 these stories are hundreds, even thousands, of years old and
must have been modified by storytellers along the way. Even in one com-
munity there are several versions, differing factually, of the 'first white
man' story.10 Recorded history, on the other hand, generally preserves
the rendition of the story that is in the documents.
The performance of the stories adds another dimension to Cree oral
tradition that does not have its counterpart in written history. Each time
the story is told, the elder is drawing from the past to inform the present
(see Tonkin 1992, 89). A Cree storyteller might be prompted to choose
to tell a specific story to make a point, perhaps about the behaviour of a
young person or the events of the day. He or she has a body of stories
from which to select the one he or she believes relates to the present
situation." In making the point, the story is told in a way that adds,
deletes, or embellishes certain elements, altering the emphasis or even
the interpretation. The lessons of the past become altered; simulta-
neously the story that is handed down to be told and retold also
becomes changed over time, or takes on new significance. Besides being
reinterpreted or changed, stories are dropped if they no longer serve
the needs of the society (Tonkin 1992, 11). We know, here in the north-
east, that stories have also become forgotten or 'forcibly' abandoned.
On Merging European and Native Views of Early Contact 57

John T. MacPherson collected myths from the Algonquins at Abitibi in


1930. He observed that the missionaries were horrified to find explicit
sexual references in many of the myths and thus made Native racon-
teurs ashamed 'of their ware.'12
Oral tradition is no less valuable because the present may impinge
more on the past through such revisions, embellishments, and dele-
dons. Indeed, studies of oral tradition such as Tonkin's argue for this
genre's importance not only for gaining representations of the past but
for understanding the present and future as well. Most importantly, she
demonstrates that the purposes of historical references are multiple as
are the expectations of its nature (Tonkin 1992, 121).
A second factor in attempting to turn Cree oral texts into historical
representations of past Cree life is that anthropologists or historians
have not considered how the collection of stories was made. Tipachiman
are stories that Cree storytellers tell and retell;13 as 'true stories of real
people,' they constitute specialized knowledge about the past. However,
this type of story has not been effectively distinguished from those sto-
ries simply collected from informants in an interview setting where the
anthropologist determines the topics. Life histories based on interviews
form the largest part of the collection of Cree oral tradition held by the
Canadian Museum of Civilization under its 'urgent ethnology' program
of the 1970s. These are personal reminiscences, which Jan Vansina
labels as 'oral history' or 'bits of life history,' and should not be consid-
ered 'oral tradition,' which has passed from 'mouth to mouth, for a
period beyond the lifetime of the informants.' Vansina regards these as
messages transmitted beyond the generation that gave rise to them
(Vansina 1985, 8, 12-13). I would alter the terminology, using 'oral his-
tory' for tipachiman stories and reserving 'oral tradition' for atiukan sto-
ries, to emphasize the differences between the two types of narratives.
However, I agree with Vansina that personal reminiscences or anecdotal
accounts are not the material of a society's history. There is much value
in them, and I use them freely, but they do not necessarily represent a
community's sense of its history, of what is to be remembered or passed
on, of what represents them.
The use of an interview format to develop oral accounts can lead to
incorporating the biases of the interviewer rather than those of the
Crees.14 The transcription of oral accounts from Whapmagoostui (Great
Whale River), on deposit at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, pro-
vides a striking example of this. An anthropologist, working in 1974, was
questioning one of the hunters about the use of alcohol, and in doing
58 Toby Morantz

so she asked the translator to inform the hunter that 'in the West 200
years ago, the fur trader would make the Indians drunk so that they
would steal some of the furs.' The hunter rejected this version, but went
on to explain that the Reverend Walton (the Anglican priest in the area
from 1892 to 1924) had told them that the people in the south got rich
from 'the Indians' furs.' Once again he was presented with the visiting
anthropologist's version: 'it's not the government that got rich, it was
the Hudson [sic] Bay Company.'15 Thus, attention must also be paid to
how the narratives were collected, whether the stories were ones the
elders wanted to tell or were responses to structured questions formu-
lated by the anthropologist. These two methods of collection result in
essentially different sources, of varying interest to historians; they are
what Tonkin labels 'popular memory' (an individual's recall) and 'col-
lective memory' (the community's version) (1992, 132).
Yet even this distinction is clouded. Interviewer bias in the accounts
collected at Whapmagoostui is quite evident, but in Regina Flannery's
life history of the Cree woman Ellen Smallboy is seemingly much less so.
Flannery's methodological approach was to approach her subject by
'introducing a topic and letting her proceed with as few interruptions as
possible' (Flannery 1995, 7). Ellen Smallboy told the stories she deemed
important, but the general subject matter was still generated to satisfy
academic interests. Similarly, in a life history that Sarah Preston wrote
down for Alice Jacob, a Cree woman from Waskaganish, Preston
remarked that she drew counsel from the observation of Paul Radin
(S. Preston 1986, 14) that 'the ideal collectors of [ethnological] data are
the natives themselves and that the more the [ethnologist] keeps in
the background, the more accurate and authentic will the archives of
aboriginal culture ultimately become' (Radin 1933, 70-1).
Translation from the indigenous language to English significantly
lessens the accuracy and authenticity of the original account. Cruik-
shank (1991, 19) demonstrates how the structure of language introduces
notions in one tongue that cannot be easily expressed in another; in my
experience the absence of trained translators for much of the work
done on oral tradition in James Bay has made problematic the English
versions of Cree oral tradition.
Yet another problem is that historians and anthropologists, in their
respective fields, class some pieces of information as 'better' than others
(Tonkin 1992, 54). Accordingly, one has to weigh the use of a popular
western historical genre, such as autobiography, which, in the interests
of representation, gives prominence to the story of one individual in
On Merging European and Native Views of Early Contact 59

Cree society rather than the collectivity. Autobiography, which privi-


leges the story of one individual, can be highly self-indulgent; this is
anathema in a society that values collective action. Sylvie Vincent, how-
ever, suggests that one should not rely on a single person's autobiogra-
phy as historical material, but rather should use several recorded
autobiographies. Personal accounts are told, she suggests, principally
from the perspective of the social group rather than the perspective of
the narrator. Most of all, she sees value in autobiographies as furnishing
a Native perspective, not only on the occasion, but also as a lesson in
what memories are recalled, in what is important to the community
(Vincent, personal communication, May 1997). Here she differs from
Vansina, who holds that important historical information is determined
only after it is transmitted beyond the generation that gave rise to the
stories (Vansina 1985, 28), and with Sarah Preston, who downplays the
importance of the individual in Cree narratives (S. Preston 1986, 6).
There is also the consideration of the time depth in Cree oral histories.
Tipachiman stories, as 'eyewitness' stories, cannot refer to a period more
than several generations old, for the Cree expect 'maximum precision in
narration' (R. Preston 1975, 290) .l6 Thus, in the oral histories of the Cree
Way Project there are the relatively recent stories dating back to the later
iSoos and into the 19305, of the starvation period, sightings of the disap-
pearing caribou, work for the Hudson's Bay Company, missionaries,
raids on the Inuit, construction of birch bark canoes, rivalry between the
coasters and inlanders, to name but a few.17 But the English fur traders
arrived in James Bay several hundred years earlier, in 1668. From where
do we derive our interpretations of what this early contact meant to the
Cree, psychologically and sociologically? What social adaptations or
restructuring, if any, were necessitated by their engagement in the Euro-
pean fur trade, and how did they perceive them? If we turn to the Hud-
son's Bay Company archival records for answers to these questions, we
find that they record only the Europeans' observations, made to satisfy
the economic interests of the company bosses back in England.
In the introduction to this essay, I quoted a Cree tipachiman1* account
of the first meeting with the white man. Surely this is an old Cree story
that does confront these issues. It is the oldest story with a tipachiman
structure, more like an 'eyewitness account,' and quite similar to the
English version in the construction of the narrative. Yet, as we shall see,
other stories of a slightly later period, such as the Cree conflicts with the
Iroquois in the mid-seventeenth century, incorporate more metaphoric
conventions and have few similarities to the published accounts. Is it
6o Toby Morantz

possible this first contact story did not originate with the Cree but was
told to them by a white man? Such is Pierre Trudel's attribution of a
very similar story relating the first Cree-English contact, one told to him
at Whapmagoostui, which is on the eastern coast of Hudson Bay, north
of Wemindji, where the first contact occurred. John Kawapit, the Cree
elder who narrated this story, told Trudel he had heard it from Harold
Udgarden, a 'mixed blood' who worked at Whapmagoostui as a clerk
for about fifty years, beginning in the late iSoos (P. Trudel 1992, 68).
An initial comparison of the Georgekish and Pricket accounts of the
'first meeting' provides highly important, culturally embedded under-
standings of process that inform us, not only about the contrasting views
of the Cree and the English, but also about the value in demonstrating
both these perspectives in any historical account. Yet we would be
deceived if we thought that the tipachiman story informs us of anything
but early-twentieth-century Cree representations of the encounter.
In most cases of first or early contact, the Native side of the story has
been lost to history because their understanding of the events was never
recorded. This is a loss we must accept in probably all encounters,
because preserving the Native response was not a seventeenth-century
European concern. In 1668 and 1670 Captain Zachariah Gillam, captain
of the trading ship the Nonsuch, responded to a questionnaire from the
newly formed Royal Society of London, which had been distributed to
all 'seamen bound for far voyages.' His testimony was read to Royal Soci-
ety members on 19 May 1670 (Birch 1756-7, 2: 436, cited in Morantz
1992, 172). The account is important because it provides details about
Cree religion, government, subsistence, trade, and numbers (Morantz
1992, 188-93). However, of the twenty-two questions to which Gillam
was responding, nineteen were about the land and the voyage; only
three gave him scope to comment on the local inhabitants. Not one of
these three questions inquired about the views of the Natives they
encountered or about the English reactions to them. By contrast, what
interests us today are not the events themselves, but the way 'Natives'
think, feel, and perceive, to paraphrase Clifford Geertz (1983, 56). If, by
some stroke of luck, Gillam had thought to reflect on what his voyages
meant to the Cree he met at Charles Fort (Rupert House or Waskaga-
nish), these views still would not be entirely acceptable today, having
been filtered through late-seventeenth-century European thinking.
The conventions used in Cree narrative also pose special problems in
consolidating the two kinds of history. As was mentioned earlier, the
story of the first meeting with the white man contains reference to the
On Merging European and Native Views of Early Contact 61

conjuring that predicted his arrival. Perhaps this is a convention that


offers reassurance to the Cree listener or indicates that this was preor-
dained knowledge, that the Cree were in control of the events that were
to transpire in their country. It is not, however, a convention that is used
today in western history.
Other conventions, in the form of metaphors, also have symbolic sig-
nificance for Cree who have been raised on these stories from child-
hood and in their own language. The repetition of these metaphors and
the way they are used provide multiple messages for the Cree listener.
One example is the collection of six Cree narratives on the theme of the
'Nottoways.' These are the stories that recount another event in James
Bay, the Iroquois raids, presumably in the mid-i6oos. Although the Jesu-
its were not eyewitnesses to these attacks, they did hear about them and
recorded details of the year, place, and numbers killed or taken captive
by the Iroquois (Jesuit Relations [1610-1791] 1896-1901 [hereafter//?]
47: 150-3). In the Nottoway stories,19 the Cree are the victors; the Iro-
quois are vanquished not through fighting but through the medium of
either an old man or an old woman who, taken captive by the Iroquois
to serve as a guide, outsmarts them by leading them over cliffs or into
rapids. Similar narratives recounting the supremacy of the elderly man
or woman have been recorded for other Algonquian-speaking peoples,
such as the Penobscots (N. Smith 1983) and Pasmaquoddy (Erikson
1983) on the Atlantic coast.
In Julie Cruikshank's major work on Dene oral history, she refers to
these constructions as 'recognizable formulaic narratives' (Cruikshank
1990, 339), remarking on their persistence over time, despite consider-
able changes in every aspect of the lives of the storytellers. These formu-
laic narratives are allegorical in nature, depicting cultural ideals in social
interaction or confronting difficult issues. Furthermore, she comments
that use of such customary cognitive models helps make unfamiliar
events seem comprehensible; the conjuring in the 'first white man' story
is likely a good example of this. She suggests, needless to say, that the for-
mulae or cognitive models, ideological and symbolic, must be under-
stood in the context of the distinct cultural understandings and social
relationships in place at the time (343-5). Cruikshank, as other writers,
draws our attention to these historical narratives as focusing the listener
more on process than event (Cruikshank 1991, 19,135; 1992, 35). To this
end, Vincent (personal communication, May 1997) suggests that the Not-
toway stories are not intended to focus on the event so much as on the
behaviour one should display towards the enemy. Similarly, both authors
62 Toby Morantz

find the different versions informative for the different cultural values
they reveal. Thus, the 'first white man' story is told differently among the
Algonquins living south of the James Bay area in the Abitibi region of
Quebec. John T. MacPherson recorded a story that began in a similar way
but then tells how the white sailors thought they would have some fun
with the lone Native who greeted them. They gave him some firewater
and left him in a drunken stupor. As his companions were about to bury
him, he came to, much to everyone's surprise. Following this episode, the
Natives thought the white men were gods 'because they had a juice that
would cause one to die and come to life again.'20This version offers its lis-
teners a different lesson than the Nottoway stories and is a good example
of the focus on process rather than event, on the relationships rather
than the objects. But how, then, does one bridge the gap between process
and event in a combined history?

Precedents in Writing Blended Histories

We have much more to learn about Native societies, now that oral tradi-
tion has been drawn in as a valued source. However, my objective here is
not to champion the cause of oral tradition, for Julie Cruikshank has
ably done that in her studies of oral tradition in Athapaskan and
Tlinglit-speaking societies (Cruikshank 1990, 1996). Rather, I have tried
to examine the possibility of a history that serves, in one text, the various
functions each society, Native and non-Native, expects from its own his-
tory. In the process, I looked for histories written by non-Native academ-
ics that bring together archival and oral records. Two of the most
innovative are by the anthropologists Richard Price on the Saramaka of
Surinam (1983), and Joanne Rappaport on the Cumbe of Colombia
(1994). Each work provides striking insights into a period in a people's
history and how that history is transformed and viewed. In Price's study
of the Saramaka he alternates oral texts, as given him, with the docu-
mentary history he unearthed in the archives and with his commentary,
often on the same page. The texts and commentary provide very rich
insights into Saramaka thinking, which is framed by the details found in
the archival records. Rappaport's history is similar, although in this
study the Cumbe people themselves have consulted the documents and
absorbed some of their contents into the oral history. It, too, provides
fascinating insights into the interpretations the Cumbe give to specific
historic conditions as well as how they 'resisted, capitulated, and accom-
modated to the state' (Rappaport 1994, 8).
On Merging European and Native Views of Early Contact 63

Yet as fascinating and informative as these blended histories are, what


they have achieved is very limited. The writers have managed to weave
what seem like well-blended histories, but have done so within very
narrow parameters. Both are histories of specific events. Both pit the
Saramaka or Cumbe peoples against the larger (colonial) society. The
Saramaka were runaway slaves whose history speaks to their formative
years and is referred to as 'First-Time' (Price 1983, 5-7). A similar histor-
ical consciousness is expressed in the Cumbe history, for it recounts the
loss of their aboriginal lands and preserves the dream of recovering it
(Rappaport 1994, 2-4). Both accounts are of specific events and directed
to establishing each group's identity. For reasons of identity and to assert
claims to the land, these historical narratives are told and retold. So vivid
and pronounced are they in the people's historical consciousness that
they become accessible to ethnohistorians and pliant to blending with
the documentary record, contributing to a history that is recognizable
within the parameters of western history. Yet, they remain limited histo-
ries, because they address themselves only to specific issues. One could
achieve such a limited, combined history in the case of the Cree. In fact,
such history is probably sitting in the extensive records of the court battle
of the mid-1970s when the Cree engaged with the government of Quebec
over the building of the James Bay hydroelectric dam on the La Grande
River. At that time, the Cree gave testimony that was directed to proving
their age-old ownership of the land, and although they used metaphors
such as 'Job's Garden'21 to represent that they too harvested their lands,
these were metaphors that were understood by non-Cree society.
Nonetheless, there is far more to Cree history than their recent fight
over their territory. It is this history, one that reflects their own ideals
and aspirations, that should be told, a history important to them without
necessarily being oriented to the conflicts and issues over land or iden-
tity imposed on them by the larger Canadian society. One would like to
do greater justice to the broader themes in Cree history, to produce the
grand narrative merited by their long and complex history. In Canada
there is rich archival documentation and an even more extensive and
richer oral tradition. How do we combine them without losing or dis-
torting the Cree's particular view of their past?

The Distinctiveness of Oral Tradition

In this exploration of Cree oral tradition, the characteristics that make it


distinctive, as a historical tradition, have been made quite explicit. There
64 Toby Morantz

are cognitive models embedded in the oral tradition that do not have
their counterparts in mainstream history; these cognitive models them-
selves reveal to the listener understandings that are not easily decoded by
the non-Native. As well, beasts and spirits and man-animals float in and
out of the narratives. These structures and beings are intrinsic to the tell-
ing of the story. If they are dislodged from their context or ignored, the
story cannot impart the same meaning. This was evident almost thirty
years ago to the anthropologist Catharine McClellan, who, Cruikshank
tells us, argued convincingly 'that such narratives cannot be pulled out of
context and have to be understood in relation to the total bodies of oral
literature in which they appear' (McClellan 1970 in Cruikshank 1996,
443). This position is endorsed today by Cruikshank (and see Cohen
!989), who warns that, however well intentioned, the 'uncritical use of
oral traditions developed in one cultural context as though they can be
equated with tangible historical evidence may lead to misinterpretation
of more complex messages in narrative' (Cruikshank 1990, 346).
Sylvie Vincent, whose research on Innu oral tradition also goes back
almost three decades and who has recently been writing texts on Native
history, has similarly concluded in a paper presented at a 1996 confer-
ence precisely addressed to this issue that it is impossible to harmonize
the two traditions of history.*2 She argues that the obstacles are not the
contradictory, irreconcilable interpretations, for those could be pre-
sented in the same text, but rather the differing conceptual and meth-
odological frameworks. In the Innu stories she studies, both time and
story (process rather than event) are fluid and based in analogy, com-
pared to the precision and factuality of western history. How does one
draw into a combined history the Native people's relations with non-
human inhabitants so fundamental to their understanding of their past?
Similar epistemological concerns are expressed by Homi Bhabha, who
writes that 'cultural translation is not simply appropriation or adapta-
tion; it is a process through which cultures are required to revise their
own systems of reference, norms and values, by departing from their
habitual or "inbred" rules of transformation' (Bhabha 1997, 14).

Conclusions

Having devoted a significant effort to writing a multicultural history in


tune with both Innu/Cree and Euro-Canadian perceptions of history,
Vincent and I have independently resolved that it is impossible. What
is possible are histories, such as Price's or Rappaport's, that revolve
On Merging European and Native Views of Early Contact 65

around a single issue that has cast the local people into a confrontation
with the larger society and thus produces histories more amenable to
types of narrative that confirm the conventions of western discourse. To
write a history that tries to find a correspondence between the full body
of oral tradition and the archival records would only destroy what is left
of the Cree notions of their past. It would be the last act of the almost
completed assimilation process, a dismanding of the last bastion of a
unique Cree outlook. It needs no belabouring of the point to argue that
such a history, written by western-trained academics for an essentially
western-trained readership, would distort and destroy the depiction of
the relationships, the symbolism, the patterning, and the integrity of the
Cree oral tradition. As for the interpretation of the oral tradition's
coded messages - revealed as they are through the performance of a
number of stories - the western historian's method of producing repre-
sentation through selecting a few examples would undermine the inter-
pretation and additionally lose for the Cree much of their oral tradition.
There is a political dimension to the use of oral tradition. Writing in
the University of British Columbia Law Review, Cynthia Callison argues for
restitution for and the protection of the oral tradition of Native peoples
through copyright. Her desire is to protect the oral tradition and pre-
vent its appropriation, for she sees cultural appropriation as the exercis-
ing of the power to dominate possessed by the larger society. Such an
act threatens the distinct identity of aboriginal peoples and, along with
it, their integrity and dignity (Callison 1995, 170, 165).
This is not a call for Canadian history to abandon the views and les-
sons learned from analysing the oral tradition. Far from it. Rather, it is a
call to recognize that Canadian historians' use of oral tradition, though
important, is limited. Oral tradition can be put to use, invaluably so, but
this use is inevitably a form of 'plunder,' taking from the oral tradition
what is needed to fit the Euro-Canadian view that history is structured,
chronological, and progressive. Although Tonkin cautions that profes-
sional historians who use the recollections of others 'cannot just scan
them for useful facts to pick out, like currants from a cake' (Tonkin
1992, 6), I am not sure historians can do anything else. Historians have
to abandon all notions of writing a truly multicultural history that
includes Indian or Native history, and be content to ransack the oral tra-
dition for what suits their conceptual needs. Those of us writing ethno-
histories can have only the currants, not the cake. The different
interpretations of the exchange of trade items in the first meeting of the
Cree and English may not faithfully reflect the seventeenth-century
66 Toby Morantz

Cree view, but their version's demonstration of the white man's exuber-
ant materialism may well suit our time's postmodern views that history
functions as 'cultural myth' (Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob 1994, 216).^

NOTES

1 A French translation of the various versions of this story appears in Scott


(1992, 50). Frank Sun also collected several such stories at Wemindji in 1979;
see Appendix A: 'Stories' in Report of Wemindji Cree Views of Religion. On
deposit in Ottawa at the National Ethnology Service, National Museum of
Man.
2 Cree Way was a project initiated in the mid-1970s by the principal of the
Waskaganish School, John Murdoch, and aided primarily by Mrs Annie
Whiskeychan. Some of the narratives they collected and used in school texts
were originally recorded by Richard J. Preston.
3 These terms are in the Waskaganish (Rupert House) dialect. See Richard J.
Preston, 'Notions of History Implicit in East Cree Narratives of the Past,'
unpublished report prepared for the Cree Regional Authority and la Societe
de 1'energie de la Baie James (1986), 3. Other Native peoples such as the
Dene (McClellan 1975, 67) and the Innu (Vincent 1981, 11) also make simi-
lar distinctions in telling their stories.
4 Sylvie Vincent emphasizes that both types of oral tradition are true stories,
the difference being that the tipachiman stories relate events that have been
seen or heard about (Vincent, personal communication, May 1997).
5 Preston, 'Notions of History,' 4.
6 Ibid., 8, 9.
7 Sylvie Vincent, 'Histoire du Quebec: Fragments de la version "Montag-
naise,"' report presented to the Ethnology Service (Ottawa: National
Museum of Man, 1976), 67.
8 Sylvie Vincent, 'Compatibilite apparente, incompatibility reelle des versions
autochtones et des versions occidentales de 1'histoire. L'exemple innu,'
unpublished paper presented to the conference 'Les obstacles ontologiques
dans les relations interculturelles,' Universite Laval, 7-10 October 1996,
10-11.
9 Preston, 'Notions of History,' 3.
10 See Sun, Appendix A: 'Stories.' See also Scott 1983.
11 Vincent, 'Compatibilite apparente,' 11.
12 John T. MacPherson, 'An Ethnological Study of the Abitibi Indians' (report
On Merging European and Native Views of Early Contact 67

prepared for the Division of Anthropology, National Museums of Canada,


1930), 103.
13 Preston, 'Notions of History,' 3.
14 For a more complete discussion of the problems inherent in recording nar-
ratives, see Julie Cruikshank (1990) and Regina Flannery (1995).
15 Ottawa, Museum of Civilization, Great Whale River Collection 1974, Tape
III-D-20-T, Side B.
16 Again, Sylvie Vincent finds this contradicted by her research on Innu oral
history, commenting that tipachiman stories need not only be those of a rela-
tively recent period.
17 One of the oldest of these stories is of the 1832 Hannah Bay 'massacre,' when
four Cree men, all related, attacked this small outpost, killing the post-
master, his Cree wife, and seven other Cree people (see Francis and Morantz
1983, 158). That this relatively old tipachiman story is still extant is not surpris-
ing: it was a terrifying occurrence and continues to be told in the region in
details that are very consistent with the Hudson's Bay Company's record of
1832 (Morantz 1984, 181-2).
18 So designated by Colin Scott (1992, 50) in his rendition.
19 The Nottoway stories in the collection of Cree Way are not identified as
either atiukan or tipachiman stories, but Vincent, commenting on similar sto-
ries among the Innu, refers to them as tipachiman stories (personal commu-
nication, May 1997).
20 MacPherson, 'Ethnological Study of the Abitibi,' 156-7.
21 Job's Garden is the title of a film produced by Boyce Richardson in 1975 to
demonstrate what the land meant to the Cree. He may have derived the title
from Job's wife, Mary, who told him, 'We love our garden. We love the ani-
mals in it and everything that grows in it' (Richardson 1975, 146).
22 Vincent, 'Compatibilite apparente.'
23 Only after this paper had gone to press, did I discover the article by Mari-
anne Ignace, 'Haida Public Discourse,' in which she similarly raises the
problem of translating Haida rhetorical devices to western conventions.
See Ignace 1991.
Memoria as the Place of Fabrication of
the New World*
Gilles Therien

Much has been written about the meeting of the European and the New
World. The leading ideologies, the power struggles, the seizures, have
all been duly noted. The communication problems, the confusions -
often unavoidable - between protagonists, have been stressed. Many
studies rely on the new history, on the study of documents according to
modern criteria of textual analysis. It seems to me that, in most cases, if
one understands only the confrontation of the two worlds, one limits
oneself in a rather distressing way to a binary opposition of mentalities.
The notion of mentality, moreover, is not in itself without confusion.
My own work is not that of an historian. I strive to understand the
interaction of sign systems, to understand their singularity and their
complexity. From this perspective, I will attempt to weave two series of
arguments. The first proposes the existence of a concrete memoria widely
different from the one traditional rhetoric has passed on to us; the sec-
ond examines the function and dysfunction of this memoria in the
specific framework of the fabrication of the New World. Traditional
memoria was generally defined by the rhetoricians of the Renaissance as
an art of memory, a way of ordering the world, and we can easily recog-
nize its effect in the systems of knowledge characteristic of that period.
Above all, it is a creation of the reasoning faculty. My memoria - concrete
memoria - is the scene, both individual and social, where we discover,
thanks to the imagination, our way of understanding the world. The two
forms of memoria contrast with each other, just as do reason and imagi-
nation or rational order and the actuality of experience.
I have chosen the year 1534 as a starting point because it metaphori-

*Translated by Dominique O'Neill.


Memoria as the Place of Fabrication of the New World 69

cally reproduces the various facets of my thinking. This date, which is


not chosen accidentally, allows me to introduce three events that, while
they have no causal links and happened quite apart from each other,
converge in some fashion within my view of the way the discovery and
the settlement of the New World that was New France took place. The
year of Carder's first voyage, 1534 also marks what historian Marcel Tru-
del so rightly calls 'the vain attempts' at colonization (Trudel 1963-83),
which will be transformed, at the beginning of the seventeenth century,
into a determined colonization under difficult material conditions, as
well as a rigorous evangelization with numerous failures. That moment
is the point of convergence of my argument and it is Carder's voyage
that is the first of my three events.
A variety of activities characterized the long reign of Francois I, nota-
bly his nearly incessant wars against Charles v, the first reactions to the
Reformadon that appeared in France and culminated - again in 1534 -
with the affaire des Placards, and his long-standing interest in the king-
doms of Italy and in the recognition of Rome's supremacy. The year
1534 gave him the opportunity - despite his parsimony - to make a regal
gesture, in hope of discovering a French New World capable of produc-
ing results comparable to those obtained by Spain and Portugal from
their American colonization. In that year, the king gave Jacques Carder
a commission that allowed him to sail along the Canadian coast during
his first journey, to travel up the St Lawrence River to the Iroquois
village of Hochelaga during his second, and to attempt to establish a
settlement, which proved short-lived, during his third.
But Francois I was not interested merely in material gain. He was
patron of a flourishing humanism and was equally interested in the life
of the mind. In 1530, a famous Italian, well known to Erasmus and the
intelligentsia of his day, came to the court of France to do business with
the king. Born in 1480, Giulio Camillo had dedicated his life and energy
to the building of a Memory Theatre in Venice. He succeeded in captur-
ing the interest of Francois, who granted him 500 ducats on the spot
and promised him a much more substantial reward if he built a replica
of his theatre in France. In 1534, Camillo was in Paris, devoting his
energy to the construction of his famous Memory Theatre - which he
never finished and whose secret he would never totally reveal. He died
in 1544, leaving only a brief sketch of the plan for his theatre, which
Frances Yates used to reconstruct a plausible version in The Art of Memory
(Yates 1966, 129-59)-
This second event, Francis's support for Camillo's theatre, highlights
7O Gilles Therien

one of the passions of the Renaissance: rhetoric, which humanists had


rediscovered in the writings of the Ancients and whose mysteries they
were attempting to grasp. This leads me, in a roundabout way, to build
upon my argument by pointing out the effects of rhetoric in the mission-
ary and colonial undertaking that New France constitutes. Francois i
financed the construction of a European material memoria while, at the
same time, he planned to impose his own memoria on a totally unknown
world.
The third event took place on 15 August 1534, in Montmartre. A
group of enlightened intellectuals made three vows: to embrace chastity
and poverty and to undertake a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Their leader
was Ignatius Loyola. Others present, Pierre Favre, Francois Xavier,
Diego Laynez, Nicolas Bobadilla, Simon Rodriguez, and Alfonso Sal-
meron, had recently undergone an intense intellectual experience at the
University of Paris, and, thanks to Loyola's famous Spiritual Exercises,
were about to form one of the most powerful and fearsome religious
orders, the Society of Jesus (Lacouture 1991). Trained by and in the
Renaissance, they represented modernity in their time. One of the main
characteristics of their ministry was the teaching of rhetoric as revised by
the Renaissance and corrected by the Counter-Reformation, with which
the Jesuits are identified (see, among others, Dainville 1978).
Thus, 1534 is useful to anchor a reflection that seeks, first of all, a new
way of looking at rhetoric, and particularly at the part called memoria.
Earlier studies seem to have misunderstood memoria in its concrete
economy and in the way it facilitates all action directed towards the out-
side, towards the other. In the Jesuit framework, it will play an important
role upon which we want to reflect. The first Jesuits arrived in New
France in 1611. They were associated with the difficult attempts to set up
a colony in Acadia. Later, in 1625, a second group came to help the Rec-
ollets in the St Lawrence valley. They left when Quebec was taken by the
British in 1629 and came back in 1632 when it was returned. For about
the next twenty-five years, they would be the only missionaries in New
France. The Jesuit evangelization, the preservation of religion, would
occur in total freedom and according to their own spiritual principles.
What I want to show is that this takeover of evangelization by the Jesuits
is linked to rhetoric, a rhetoric one must see not simply as an obsolete
technique of eloquence but rather as a true art of thinking and acting
founded on a spiritual memoria. The first part of this essay will concen-
trate on describing rhetorical objectives different from those to which
we are accustomed, and the second part will find in the writings of New
Memoria as the Place of Fabrication of the New World 71

France, and in particular in the Jesuits' Relations, examples to illustrate


the hypothesis.

Natural Rhetoric

Rhetoric underwent an important development through the impetus of


the Jesuits in their colleges and, we may say, the whole of their activities,
including their missions. It appears as the favourite medium of St Igna-
tius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises. Be they teachers or missionaries, Jesuits
are first of all preachers, propagating a doctrine, a method. Jesuit rheto-
ric is the tool of conversion. Its goal is to shape the memoria of those to
whom it speaks and to incite them to imitate thoughts and deeds. We
find this rhetoric in Jesuit school treatises, treatises on the passions, and
also in the behavioural arts such as the art of the courtier. Its objective is
always defined as the greater glory of God. Jesuit rhetoric moves consid-
erably away from the tradition of Antiquity. For the Sophists, a rhetori-
cian's greatest talent was the ability to demonstrate the truth of any
proposition from any argument. By contrast, for Plato in the Phaedrus,
true rhetoric and its natural use exist as a guarantor of the truth. More-
over, according to Plato, truth can take shape only through reminis-
cence - that is, by means of a memory that is not mere 'recollection,'
but true knowledge in its most perfect sense. Here, one could draw
many parallels with the Jesuits' view that truth was that which is one, and
revealed.
On these questions, Aristotle retained a good part of the Platonic
tradition. Rhetoric is analogous to dialectic. It is used whenever we need
it - that is to say, when we seek to persuade - because it can use argu-
ments in a persuasive mode, a verisimilar mode. Rhetoric allows one to
formulate hypotheses and to verify them. Techniques particular to rhet-
oric are linked not to rhetoric itself - as it is not itself a genre - but to
the context in which it is used. Thus, Aristotle distinguishes types of
applications: the deliberative, the forensic, and the epideictic. He notes
that too much emphasis has been put on the forensic, perhaps because
of the socio-political stakes represented by this type of oratory. As for
memory, Aristotle views the natural memory as made up of images,
remembrances, perceptions, and a medley of sensations, as well as
visions created from within. According to Aristotle's teaching, memory
is essential to thought because image is as well. Thus, for him, the art of
memory in its strictest sense can involve only natural memory. When he
speaks of mnemotechnic, he then has to account for another type of
72 Gilles Therien

memory; one called artificial memory, built on a set of rules. It does not
replace natural memory; it is merely a means of completing it.
In the writings of authors such as Cicero, Quintilian, and the anony-
mous creator of the Rhetorica ad Herennium, the notion of natural mem-
ory seems to have completely disappeared in favour of artificial
memory, and the focus is on the mnemonic arts that foster the develop-
ment of this artificial memory. In this framework, the forensic is privi-
leged, and so is eloquence, in as much as eloquence is the art of
addressing a public to convince it of an argument.
When the Renaissance rediscovered ancient authors, humanists were
confronted by two types of memories, but - in the Aristotelian-Thomis-
tic tradition represented by Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, as
well as in the Platonic-Augustinian stream represented, among others,
by such authors as Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola - natural
memory remained the foundation on which the art of artificial memory
could be built. Several authors, in the Renaissance and today, have had
the unfortunate tendency to forget natural memory and its founda-
tional role. They have been interested only in the arts of memory - the
mnemotechnics - as if these represented the totality of memorial activ-
ity. But the rhetoric we find in the Jesuits' Ratio Studiorum is concerned
with technique, with the rhetoric of figures, only in so far as it is useful
in supporting the central vision they had of the world that they sought
to reform or convert (Ratio Studiorum 1997).
Traditionally, the rhetoric of antiquity was divided in five successive
parts: inventio, elocutio, dispositio, memoria, and actio. The first three parts
have been generally understood as pertaining to discourse and its fabri-
cation, memory allowing one to remember an oration so as to be able to
recite it by heart, and action being the eloquent gestures accompanying
this recital. Interest in the mnemotechnic arts gradually waned and,
with it, interest in memory and gesture. Thus, we have arrived today at a
'limited' rhetoric (Barthes 1970; Genette 1972), a rhetoric that includes
only the three parts pertaining to speech and comes into question only
when rhetoric is perceived in terms of arguments or figures. This is
admittedly a rather brief summary of the neglect into which rhetoric has
fallen, but limited space precludes tracing the evolution of a rhetoric
that eventually will be used largely as a technique whose functioning can
be understood only from one or two tropes or one or two arguments.1
I will limit myself to describing the broad outline of another way of
understanding rhetoric. This latter is not merely an art of oratory, a
practice of eloquence. It is a way of expressing what comes from within.
Memoria as the Place of Fabrication of the New World 73

Seen from this perspective, it is memoria that is the foundation of all


expression, since memoria is the faculty that contains images and permits
thinking, what Robert Fludd called the 'custos mundi sensibilis,' the
custodian of the sensible world (Fludd 1619, 217). Everything might
remain imprisoned by the sensible world if the imagination did not
come and solicit images to give them life. This seeking of images is the
role of inventio. To understand what is at stake in rhetoric, one must see
memoria and inventio as working together, with memoria being fertilized
by inventio and by the imagination.
Memoria, however, has two meanings. It is both the individual, per-
sonal memory, which is unique, and also, in each of us, a collective
memory, one shaped in a social context. Since the birth of psychoanaly-
sis, one could very well conceive of this memoria as being the topos of the
unconscious par excellence. This shaping is entirely from within, and is
necessarily accompanied by images - mental images, of course - that
can be better understood as tropes if one accepts that a trope is the dis-
cursive opposite of the imaged. Elocutio and dispositio then come into
play in order to continue the mise en place of the rhetorical action. The
aim is to outline premises and the arguments pertaining to them. In
short, this step invents a mise en scene for what was produced by the imag-
ination's work on memoria. This second stage of activity consists in laying
out the topoi, the image's space and dimensions. Thus, we now see the
insistence, in the mnemotechnic arts, on laying out topoi that are well
known to the subject and guarantee a certain proportion between the
subject matter he or she wishes to address and the framework in which it
will be addressed. Elocution and disposition are the equivalent of the
mis en recit, of the narration of a mythos asking to be expressed. If we
agree that, on this level, rhetoric is as valuable for speech as for writing,
something with which we normally agree, we need to understand the
way in which this forces us to rethink the very nature of rhetoric.
This way of understanding rhetoric does not arrange its components
in some kind of a causal and monosemous sequence but in a continual
interaction of the diverse components, allowing us to understand the
two consequences drawn from classical rhetoric in the Renaissance.
First, an interest arose in what I would be tempted to call mechanical
rhetoric, which explains why the mnemonic arts became so important.
Then, particular insistence was put on training prior to any rhetorical
exercise of memoria. Thus I find, on the one side, Giulio Camillo's Mem-
ory Theatre and his encyclopedic undertaking, and, on the other, the
spiritual exercises of Ignatius Loyola, which are faithful structural mod-
74 Gilles Therien

els of the constitution of memoria, as much in individuals as in groups.


They are also, in the way they lay out the various narratives and their
premises, a mnemotechnic art. We should not be at all surprised to find,
among the early Jesuits, such great specialists of the art of memory as
Matteo Ricci or Athanasius Kircher, whose memory palaces are even
more ambitious than Camillo's. We should note that Ricci used his mne-
motechnic abilities in his missionary activities with the Chinese Manda-
rins, while Kircher assembled his encyclopedia within the framework of
European Jesuit college practices, thereby illustrating the superior role
played by rhetoric.
Now we can better understand the convergence of the three events
that occurred in 1534. Cartier discovered a land to colonize and
explore. This new knowledge tended to form around the natural mem-
ory, the actual experience lived by Cartier and the arts of memory that
would be recorded in the narratives, the maps, and the illustrations. But
the rhetoric that the Jesuits brought back into favour, for themselves but
also for others, was a rhetoric transformed in the daily exercise of their
mission, a rhetoric that offered a trustworthy and homogeneous mem-
ory that would inspire all those confronted with New France. It was the
Ratio Studiorum and its conception of memoria that would become central
to teaching, first in New France then in Quebec. This trustworthy memo-
ria had a precise premise - that of Roman Catholic monotheism as
defended by the Jesuits. It is this memoria they intended to diffuse, to
share with others. It is from the point of view of this rhetoric that it is
necessary to examine the meeting of Europeans and Amerindians. I do
not intend to speak of the Jesuits' Relations as works of propaganda, or
to search them for particular rhetorical procedures. This seems perti-
nent only to the examination of actio- that is, to the modality of expres-
sion - and would not sufficiently meet the requirements of the other
components of rhetoric, in particular the desire to transmit or to build a
memoria that would be guarantor of the spiritual and intellectual life of
all those who will belong to it.
Loyola's Spiritual Exercises offers a technique of image transformation
(Fabre 1992). It traces a four-week journey, starting with the penitent's
own recognition of his state of sin and leading him to a choice in favour
of God, and then, quite naturally, providing him with an inner book of
images of Christ's life that allows him to model his activities on the
examples that have been the object of a contemplation and of an elec-
tion, in the sense of 'choice.' Loyola knew that his model was not a mere
formula to be learned once and for all. It was not necessary for some
Memoria as the Place of Fabrication of the New World 75

Christians to go beyond a simple conversion: to know that they were


won over to the side of virtue was sufficient; they should not be asked to
give what they could not. The same problem would occur in the mis-
sions. When working with people who were hearing of Christ for the
first time, the goal was not to put the Spiritual Exercises into practice, but
rather to transmit the essence of its message and the minimal commit-
ment that a Christian must make. The Jesuits had been witnesses of the
diversity of the particulars of such a meeting since Francis Xavier
recorded his observations from Goa, Japan, or China. Ignatius Loyola
became very conscious of the limits that must be set in missionary work,
and demanded that those who worked in missionary countries define
the nature of their interlocutors with great care. Missionaries to China
quickly found much to think about, particularly in the matter of the cult
of the ancestors whose importance in the Chinese memoria they realized,
at the risk of causing the mission to fail and of provoking the famous
quarrel over rites. Thus, it is not surprising that Loyola should ask those
who went on a mission for clarification about the people they met and
whether they could really be converted. This Ignatian tradition would
become a Jesuit directive. In 1611, Father Pierre Biard wrote of his stay
in Acadia that one must catechize the savages thoroughly before baptiz-
ing them, an allusion to the baptisms of Father Jesse Fleche that appar-
ently had had no influence whatsoever on the 'nature' of the said
savages (Jesuit Relations [1610-1791] 1896-1901 [hereafter JR] 2: 134 ff.).
The mastery of rhetoric, of the art of preaching taken in its broadest
sense, was made possible only because the memoria about which everyone
had to agree was constituted in and by Loyola's Exercises.'2 This memoria
was subject to the reactions of minds, which forced the Jesuits' founder to
define rules to recognize these minds and to evaluate their importance.
The missionary Jesuit received the same powers through his own experi-
ence of the Spiritual Exercises. He was in possession of a memoria that he
must transmit in order to convert, but he was also confronted by a memo-
ria different from his own - that of his interlocutors - one totally
unknown to him and one that he might even scorn by reporting it as a
demonstration of primitivism. The entire question, then, centred on how
far one must go or not go in acknowledging the memoria of the Other.

The European Memoria Meets the Memoria of the Other

The examples chosen here include Jacques Cartier, Samuel de Cham-


plain, and the Jesuits. Memoria is not the privilege of the clergy, and it
76 Gilles Therien

seems useful to see how two other important personages in the history
of New France expressed their own memoria. Their observations were
not entirely the same as those of the Jesuits, but they maintained some
features whose importance shows both the extent of flexibility or rigidity
in memoria and their own capacity to welcome or to modify themselves in
meeting the Other. Memoria was used to fabricate New France, and the
first obstacles on its path were, of course, the Natives.
The first example, Jacques Carder's visit to Hochelaga, is interesting
for several reasons, one of which is that it remains silent about what really
happened and even where it happened. Carder arrived at Hochelaga on
2 October 1535 and was joyfully welcomed by a crowd of more than one
thousand persons. After Carder exchanged a few gifts for some food, he
and his men retired to their long-boats for the night. The next day, he
marshalled some of his men in what looked like a military column while
the others watched the boats. All were armed. With the help of some of
the inhabitants of Hochelaga, he first went to an unknown place where a
Native, described by Carder as the seigneur of Hochelaga, harangued
him. More gifts were exchanged, and Carder was then taken to the gates
of a circular village 'enclosed by a wooden palisade in three tiers like a
pyramid' (Carder 1993,61). It was a fortified town, which one could enter
only by a single gate. Having entered, Carder found a central square
where the rest of the speeches took place. He counted some fifty long-
houses, whose interior he described, as well as some of the features of his
hosts' way of living.3 The French were made to sit down and a personage
Carder understood to be the ruler ('rof) and leader ('seigneur'} of Hoch-
elaga was brought out. Indeed, he wore a small fur crown. He showed his
paralysed arms and legs, and Carder set about to rub his limbs. All the
sick of the place were then brought out, after which Carder read from the
Gospel of St John and the Passion of our Lord, and again distributed gifts
among his hosts. Then, Carder ordered trumpets and other musical
instruments to be sounded, after which he took leave of them and went
to visit the adjacent mountain. The scene described was illustrated by
Giovanni Batdsta Ramusio in his Italian publicadon of the voyages of
Carder (Ramusio [1556] 1565). It shows a schematic representation of
Hochelaga and, at the bottom of the picture, two men shaking hands
courteously. The one on the left is Carder accompanied by his men; the
other is the ruler of Hochelaga with his (see figure i above, p 11).
The narrator of the second voyage, Carder or someone else, took it
upon himself to describe this event from the point of view of a Euro-
pean memoria. The choice of actions, of speeches, depended on his
imaginary vision of the situation or, at least, what he remembers of it.
Memoria as the Place of Fabrication of the New World 77

The meeting is described along two axes. The first is equivalent to the
meeting of a savage king, whom Cartier identifies as such because he is
carried by his men and adorned by what he calls a crown. What follows
illustrates the power of the European king, whom Cartier personifies
when he bestows the healing touch attributed to the King of France by
Christian tradition, as well as a certain type of blessing for the sick. Cart-
ier, instead of trying to understand what is really happening and to see
in the 'old' man offifty- he himself is forty-four years old - a shaman,
an ancient, an ambassador, or a council leader, and moreover a sick
one, quickly gives him the tide of king, a tide he did not give Donna-
cona. Was it the fortified village, the military aspect of the place, that
triggered in his imagination the notion of some palace or even some
capital? It is difficult to demonstrate absolutely, but the same scenario is
depicted in the print in Ramusio's book: some sort of equality exists
between the leaders, the visit of a 'king' to another 'king.'
The second axis deployed by a memoria that is strictly European is the
religious ceremony. Carder's visit to Hochelaga took place on a Sunday.
From all evidence, no priest accompanied the expedition. According to
his own account, Cartier performed for the savages, but one may be per-
mitted to think the actions were also for himself and his men, a sort of
ceremonial 'white mass' that comprised two parts: the reading of the
Gospel of St John, whose 'in principio' is named, and the Passion of our
Lord, which takes him about two hours to read. If one tries to imagine
the scene, it must be rather comical. Was the text read in Latin or
French? The account is unclear on this point, as it identifies St John's
text by its Latin incipit and the Passion in French. Be that as it may, one
can conclude that the Natives were unable to understand anything, and,
as the texts may have been read in Latin, neither would most of the
French. Yet, on that Sunday, 3 October 1535, a religious ceremony took
place in New France in front of savage peoples.
Carder's narratives are shot through with a European imaginary that
ignores nearly everything of what occurs in terra incognita except in the
very precise field of navigation and geographic 'discovery.' The memoria,
as progenitor of the discourse being elaborated, is extremely rigid. If
this rigidity is taken into consideration, we then understand why, in
Carder's accounts, the presence of the savages is accompanied by either
fear or a feeling of treason, despite the fact that the French are the only
ones who do the Natives injuries they do not comprehend, and who ulti-
mately betray their trust. The long-term failure of Carder's expeditions
is not surprising.
Champlain's attitude, as revealed through his travel narratives, is
78 Gilles Therien

totally different. I have chosen a short example from the 1609 expedi-
tion against the Iroquois, with allies that Champlain had difficulty iden-
tifying correctly. Champlain joined a group of Native warriors and
agreed to sail the River of the Iroquois (known today as the Richelieu)
with them. There were only a few Frenchmen in the boat and they sud-
denly found themselves unable to cross some rapids, perhaps those at
Chambly. Champlain decided to leave his boat and continue his journey
in the Native canoes with only two other Frenchmen, surrounded by
about sixty warriors, his new allies, whom he trusted. It was by this
means of transportation, seldom used by Europeans, that he discovered
the lake that bears his name, met the Iroquois warriors who had come
for the war, and took part in the battle, even if he did not understand its
geopolitical significance. Once the two 'armies' were present, they each
partook of a feast before engaging, the next morning, in a very short
battle during which the French fired their muskets, which immediately
ended the war.
Champlain was relatively serene in the face of all this. He trusted, he
learned, he took note, he did not take offence. Nor was he afraid when
he risked his life in situations where the balance of power was com-
pletely against him, something Carder had always avoided. Champlain
was not only a discoverer and a founder, but a colonizer - someone who
settles on lands already occupied and is ready to come to terms with the
new reality. His memoria, while nurtured in Europe, was open to a form
of imaginary metissage, and this flexibility played an important role in his
attitude towards the Natives.
Yet, his memoria was not always flexible, and this problem is a good
illustration of the equilibrium that attempts to establish itself when two
different memoria meet. During the same trip, on the way home, the war-
riors brought back prisoners. They began to torture one in a way that
Champlain found particularly cruel. Champlain, invited to take part in
the torture, recorded his response: 'I pointed out to them that we did
not commit such cruelties, but that we killed people outright, and that if
they wished me to shoot him with the arquebus, I should be glad to do
so' (Champlain 1922-36, 2: 102-3). The Natives continued their torture
but, when they realized that Champlain seemed displeased, allowed him
to kill the prisoner with his musket, which did not prevent them from
dismembering the body and performing cannibalistic rites.
In this rather violent episode, Champlain's desire to apply his own
rules in the treatment of prisoners is clear: one kills them; one does not
torment them. Such a conviction is part of his military code. He does
Memoria as the Place of Fabrication of the New World 79

not understand the ritual meaning of what is going on before him. As


for the Native warriors, they are willing to introduce the killing into
their own ritual, but without interrupting it. The example is complex,
but it shows that, somewhere along the line, one learns to know the
Other, and that such acts did not impede the alliance between the
French and Native people. Champlain does not use his description of
the torture to condemn the Natives' behaviour. He takes note, disap-
proves of what he cannot approve, but concludes his text as follows: 'So
we all separated with great protestations of mutual friendship, and they
asked me if I would not go to their country, and aid them continually
like a brother. I promised them I would' (Champlain 1922-36, 2: 104-
5). Here Champlain's memoria is flexible: it knows how to adapt and
does not demand that the Native people convert to his own way of
thinking.
If we look at the Jesuits' writings, we must first admit, as I have men-
tioned earlier, that their memoria is fixed in a particularly rigid monothe-
ist and theological frame of mind of the kind found in Loyola's Spiritual
Exercises and in the famous Jesuit advice that a member of the order
should submit to his obligations perinde ac cadaver (as if he were a lifeless
body). It does not mean that the Jesuits' memoria is not subjected to the
same forces of overture, metissage, or even of closure and rigidity. The
difficulty is that the Jesuits believe above all in a homogeneity of
thought and action. Speech and action must be proof of one mind
alone, one spirituality.
We find the first example in the writings of Jean de Brebeuf. In 1635,
he settled in Ihonatiria and had to have a house built to avoid having to
stay, as he had done since he returned to Huronia, in a Huron long-
house. Brebeuf had some very precise plans for this house:

The cabins of this country are neither Louvres nor Palaces, nor anything
like the buildings of our France, not even like the smallest cottages. They
are, nevertheless, somewhat better and more commodious than the hovels
of the Montagnais. I cannot better express the fashion of the Huron
dwellings than to compare them to bowers or garden arbors, some of
which, in place of branches and vegetation, are covered with cedar bark,
some others with large pieces of ash, elm, fir, or spruce bark ... There are
cains or arbors of various sizes, some two brasses [two spans] in length,
others of ten, others of twenty, of thirty, of forty; the usual width is about
four brasses, their height is about the same. There are no different stories;
there is no cellar, no chamber, no garret. It has neither window nor
8o Gilles Therien

chimney, only a miserable hole in the top of the cabin, left to permit the
smoke to escape. This is the way they built ours for us.
The people of Oenrio and of our village were employed at this, by means
of presents given them ... As to the interior, we have suited ourselves; so
that, even if it does not amount to much, the Savages never weary of
coming to see it, and, seeing it, to admire it. We have divided it into three
parts. The first compartment, nearest the door, serves as an ante-chamber,
as a storm door, and as a storeroom for our provisions, in the fashion of the
Savages. The second is that in which we live, and is our kitchen, our
carpenter shop, our mill, or place for grinding wheat, our Refectory, our
parlor and our bedroom. On both sides, in the fashion of the Hurons, are
two benches which they call Endicha, on which are boxes to hold our
clothes and other little conveniences; but below, in the place where the
Hurons keep their wood, we have contrived some little bunks to sleep in,
and to store away some of our clothing from the thievish hands of the
Hurons. They sleep beside the fire, but still they and we have only the earth
for bedstead; for mattress and pillows, some bark or boughs covered with a
rush mat; for sheets and coverings, our clothes and some skins do duty.
The third part of our cabin is also divided into two parts by means of a bit
of carpentry which gives it a fairly good appearance, and which is admired
here for its novelty. In the one is our little Chapel, in which we celebrate
every day holy Mass, and we retire there daily to pray to God. It is true that
the almost continual noise they make usually hinders us, - except in the
morning and evening when everybody has gone away, - and compels us to
go outside to say our prayers. In the other part we put our utensils. The
whole cabin is only six brasses long, and about three and a half wide. That
is how we are lodged, doubtless not so well that we may not have in this
abode a good share of rain, snow, and cold. (JR8: 1O4-9).4

As we can see, Brebeuf borrows the housing style of the Huron all the
while knowing that he will find neither the comfort of the city nor the
distress of the nomadic Montagnais' habitat. But once the shell is built,
he transforms the inside completely. It is no longer truly a Huron long-
house but a European house with subdivisions according to their uses.
From the outside, the observer might think it is a hut like any other, but
a visit inside will reveal the differences.
Memoria, whose most important topos is place, is used here as an
example of the blending that attempts to express itself in daily living.
The object is to be like the others, to be as little different as possible, to
Memoria as the Place of Fabrication of the New World 81

show a certain friendliness by adopting, at least in part, the customs of


the Other. A small incident confirms this very evident tendency in
Brebeuf. Among their baggage, the Jesuits have managed to bring to
New France a mill to grind corn. The object is to improve the staple sag-
amite. Yet, after a trial period the Jesuit notes, 'we have not used [the
mill], inasmuch as we have learned by experience that our Sagamites
are better pounded in a wooden mortar, in the fashion of the Savages,
than ground within the mill. I believe it is because the mill makes the
flour too fine' (/R8: 110-11).
Brebeuf s attitude is reminiscent of Champlain's. Nor is it limited to
housing types and corn mills; it is at the heart of his life among the
Hurons. Whenever possible, he acted like them and adopted their cus-
toms, which might explain why some of the Huron greatly admired him.
To understand Brebeuf s attitude, one must also realize that he was one
of the Jesuits who best spoke the Huron tongue, which made it possible
for him to make allowances, to be flexible. His memoria could communi-
cate with that of the Huron's.
The situation changed drastically when Brebeuf was replaced as
Huronia's superior by Jerome Lalemant in 1638. Lalemant did not know
the Native languages very well. He thought that the missions were not
sufficiently productive, given the small number of converted. He also
concluded that it was a considerable waste of time to travel from one
Huron village to the next, and, in 1639, having written down all of his
complaints against the Huron, their lifestyle, their superstitions, and the
dangers they posed to the missionaries, he mapped out plans for a resi-
dence. The notion was hardly new, but it took on special importance in
the mind of Lalemant, who decided to transform the work of the mis-
sions by building a permanent residence from which the missions and
the spiritual life of the Jesuits would be better organized. A building in
the European style was to become the religious and political capital of
Huronia.
The land was purchased and very quickly a residence, Ste Marie, was
built, with three large centres of activity. The first, fortified and built of
wood and stone, was strictly reserved for the Jesuits and the French. The
Jesuits lived as they did in France, with cells within the residence, and
common rooms like the refectory, the chapel, and sundry buildings
reserved for the occupations that would make them self-sufficient. They
were thus able to live in stricter conformity to the rules of their commu-
nity. A second area, less fortified than the first and comprising a long-
82 Gilles Therien

house, a church, a hospital, and a cemetery, was meant for converted


Huron only. A third area, for the unconverted, was not fortified at all
and appeared like an extra growth to which no one had really paid
attention. Most of the authors of the Relations think that this building
had a detrimental effect on the Huron missions because, by abandoning
the Huron in their villages and by concentrating all the power on one
site, Lalemant left the villages scattered in the region extremely vulnera-
ble to Iroquois attacks. Father Ragueneau's implicit criticism of Lale-
mant for leaving the Huron villages undefended was evident. In 1649
Ragueneau was obliged to set fire to the Ste Marie residence before flee-
ing to St Joseph Island after the terrible Huron defeat at the hands of
the Iroquois, and particularly after the death of Jean de Brebeuf and the
other Jesuits killed by the Iroquois. One can still visit the residence at
Ste Marie, whose restoration was made possible by the work of archaeol-
ogists. In visiting this site, one begins to understand that the European
memoria attempted to implant itself in Huronia without thought to con-
text, without thought to the others. It was a projection of the imagi-
nary of a technocratic Jesuit more accustomed to urban intrigues or the
tranquillity of the College de Clermont than to the reality of a semi-
sedentary people fighting their first war in the European style, a war
whose intent was strictly pillage and massacre, not the war rituals wit-
nessed by Champlain. Ste Marie Among the Hurons was a monument to
a memoria that was blind and corpse-like in its rigidity.
My last example is taken from a incident that occurred in 1652 and
1653 and was related by Father Francois le Mercier, who was then the
superior (JRA 40: 197-209). A group of Algonquin hunters found the
tracks of what they believed to be Iroquois. They chased them, took
them prisoner, and brought them back to the Native residence at Sil-
lery, where they began to mistreat them until the captain of the resi-
dence, Noel Tekouerimat, expressed doubts as to the identity of the
prisoners. He thought they might be Abenaki from the New England
area. After deliberations aimed at avoiding the torture and death of one
of the prisoners, it was decided to free two of them so that they could go
back to their nation to explain what had happened and could ask that
the prisoners held by the Socoqui, a nation related to the Abenaki, be
freed in exchange for a possible alliance. In the meantime, the other
three would be held as hostages. Six months went by before a delega-
tion, for which the two former captives acted as ambassadors, returned
to Sillery. They were loaded with gifts, but did not have the captives
asked for by the Sillery population. After many councils, during which a
Memoria as the Place of Fabrication of the New World 83

certain mistrust was evident, it was decided to agree for the sake of
agreeing. A ceremony then took place and was recorded with care by
the narrator, although, by his own admission, he did not quite under-
stand what was happening. But the people of Sillery were happy, and
that is all that mattered to Father le Mercier, who was concerned with
peace between the diverse Native nations.
The meeting with the ambassadors and the exhibition of the gifts
took place in a room of the Jesuit residence at Sillery. The presents were
laid out on a rope. There were collars, bracelets, earrings, and two calu-
mets. The most important ambassador then presented a collar, 'com-
posed of white and violet-coloured porcelain, so arranged as to form
figures, which this worthy man explained after his own fashion. "There,"
he said, "are the lakes, there are the rivers, there are the mountains and
valleys that must be passed; and there are the portages and waterfalls.
Note everything, to the end that, in the visits that we shall pay one
another, no one may get lost. The roads will be easy now, and no more
ambuscades will be feared. All persons who are met will be so many
friends'" (JR 40: 203-5). The ceremony ended in joy and joint demon-
strations of affection. The Jesuit narrator remains silent on the meaning
of the objects presented to the people of Sillery, in particular the great
necklace. It seems to me that we have here an example of very concrete
aspects of memoria that are totally indecipherable for the Jesuits. Isn't
the white and violet porcelain collar an exterior sign of this memoria that
both of the Native parties have agreed to recognize, to mingle in such a
way that an ancestral alliance, long forgotten, might be resurrected?
Perhaps the collar is merely a wampum destined to re-establish the bal-
ance between the two groups, but perhaps it is also, as the elder
explains, the map, abstract though it might be, of a far-away country
whose direction, roads, and codes had been lost. Evidently, the Native
gesture is to revive a memory, but the Jesuits do not understand.
This example illustrates the limits of the meeting of two memoria. The
fusion is not possible unless one memoria disappears within the other.
We are no longer speaking of exchange and sharing but of assimilation.
Metissage, as we know, is the common weaving of a new memoria, where
elements of each existing memoria find their importance, their useful-
ness, in a new arrangement, a new order. What we see from the collar
episode is a range of attitudes illustrating the successes or the failures of
such metissage, and sometime simply its mystery.
Rhetoric is intimately tied to the history of mentalities. The one we
have encountered in the events recounted here belongs particularly to
84 Gilles Therien

the Jesuits' universe, but, through European culture and the traditions
of Ratio Studiorum, it influences us also. It is not a technique that accom-
panies the faculty of memory, the plea for truth, or the evangelization in
the name of God. We are not in front of a sermon but of a narrative, the
relating of a meeting where the self and another must recognize each
other if a new world is to emerge out of this meeting. Rhetoric, in its
most noble meaning, is the work of singularizing speech from language
that, standardized in a dictionary, is by that fact incapable of producing
a single sentence that can touch us with its poetry or its emotional
charge. Rhetoric is also a recourse to everyone's complexity, giving birth
to a new understanding, a rich and powerful link that is perceptible
when one possesses the different imaginaries but never excludes the
possibility of a meeting. Memoria is the history of everyone as an individ-
ual and a people, a story one must know how to listen to, understand,
and complete with one's own story. The polemic that seems inherent to
rhetoric is the perversion into which it falls when discourse and thought
become homogeneous, and it has only one end: to impose itself as the
truth. You will understand, then, that my sole ambition in confronting
these examples has been to attempt to share my own memoria, and not to
convince anyone of its truth.

NOTES

1 For this usage of 'tropes,' see Groupe Mu (1970); for 'arguments,' see Perel-
man (1977) and Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1970).
2 Jesuit rhetoric is pledged to the Spiritual Exercises; it is this essential dimension
that seems to be lacking in the otherwise remarkable work of Marc Fumaroli,
L 'Age de ['eloquence (1980).
3 As Michel Bideaux notes in his critical edition of the Relations of Jacques Cart-
ier (Carder 1986, 373), this part of the text does not seem to take place at the
same time as the Hochelaga visit.
4 Brebeuf is cited here from the English translation in JR. The only complete
edition of his writings is Jean de Brebeuf, Edits en Huronie, a modernized text
edited by Gilles Therien (Brebeuf 1996).
PART II
Mentalites / Debwewin
This page intentionally left blank
The Sixteenth-Century French Vision
of Empire: The Other Side of
Self-Determination
Olive Patricia Dickason

Columbus's discovery of the fourth part of the world in 1492, and the
Alexandrine bulls of the following year that divided these newly revealed
regions between Spain and Portugal, struck at the national self-esteem of
Francois i, King of France (1515-47). By what right was France, as Cath-
olic a power as Spain or Portugal, excluded from these newly discovered
regions? As the French royal cosmographer Andre Thevet (i5i7?-9O)
would later observe, those lands were large enough to accommodate the
ambitions of fifty Christian monarchs; not only did France have a 'right'
to colonize, it had a special responsibility to do so because of the civilizing
benefits that it could bring to indigenous peoples (Thevet 1575, i: 965).
In other words, 'self-determination,' although that expression was not yet
in use, was very much the order of the day for the French monarch,
indeed for all national monarchs capable of asserting it. In their view it
was their duty as rulers not only to ensure the right to independence of
their respective nation-state societies, but also to exercise their perceived
right to expand their power and influence over non-state societies, which
they did not see as having evolved sufficiently to claim independence.
Today, five centuries later, political thought has come full circle, and it is
now the once-colonized indigenous non-state nations that are demand-
ing 'self-determination,' which, without the expansionist aspect, has
come to be regarded as a right shared by all peoples, whatever their type
of political organization.
The two great happenings of sixteenth-century Europe - discoveries
in the New World and the Reformation - both brought challenges for
France, albeit in different spheres. As Spain and Portugal moved quickly
to establish imperial monopolies in the New World, France began a
long slide into a civil war (1562-98) that pitted Catholic against Protes-
88 Olive Patricia Dickason

tant. Embroiled as it was, France still moved to assert its 'right' to colo-
nies. It is small wonder that under these particular circumstances,
France's early attempts at realizing this goal fell short of success. During
the sixteenth century, the only French colony that maintained a con-
tinuing presence was in Algiers.1 The irony of this record is evident
when one considers France's subsequent reputation for being the most
successful of all European colonial powers in its relations with aborigi-
nal populations. It was a reputation built upon trading, rather than colo-
nial, relationships, although both were factors.
France had not lacked a sense of direction in the colonial sweep-
stakes. The famous challenge of Francois i to the Spanish ambassador
that he produce Adam's will in support of Spain's New World claims
(Gaffarel 1892, 2: 303; 1878, 20) was more than a diplomatic flourish; it
was an expression of popular national sentiment that strongly favoured
French imperial expansion. With that end in view, Francois turned to a
current theory, that permanent European settlement was necessary for
suzerainty to be established over newly claimed lands that were deemed
to be legally vacant because their Native inhabitants led migratory lives
and had not organized themselves into nation-states (Julien, Herval,
and Beauchesne 1946, 14). During the sixteenth century, the principal
exponents for a French overseas empire were the Huguenots, those who
had opted for the Reformed religion in the face of their country's offi-
cial Catholicism. In their search for a refuge that would be under the
French flag (Protestants were as fiercely nationalistic as their Catholic
compatriots), but also to take advantage of new commercial opportuni-
ties, the Huguenots looked to the Americas to realize their aspirations.
Thus, at this time, French colonial projects were largely, although not
exclusively, Huguenot enterprises (Lestringant 1990).
Four of these early attempts will be compared here: one in Canada,
two in Brazil, and one in what was to become the United States. Three
of the episodes took place in regions actively claimed by other Euro-
pean powers: Portugal in the case of the Brazilian plan, and Spain in
that of the United States. The situation was not so clear in Canada, as
neither Spain nor Portugal was actively colonizing that far north. The
latter had made a short-lived attempt along a coast, the location of
which is now unknown; all that remains is a skimpy and incomplete doc-
umentary record (Alfonse 1559, 28). Yet the Spanish and Portuguese
claims had the formidable weight of international sanction behind
them, backed as they were by the papal bulls of 1493 and reinforced by
the Treaty of Tordesillas of the following year.
The Sixteenth-Century French Vision of Empire 89

The Setting

France at this time shared the general European view that those regions
of the Americas occupied by mobile hunters and gatherers (a large part
of the two continents) were res nullius- that is, legally vacant. This belief
was based on the notion that migratory peoples, living 'sans foi, sans loi,
sans roi,' and 'ranging the land like wild beasts,' were not legally inhab-
itants, and so did not qualify for dominium.2 In support of this position, a
leading scholastic theologian, John Major, provided an argument that
was destined to become a principal motor of colonialism. Major, a Scots
Dominican lecturing at the University of Paris, was an outspoken sup-
porter of the right of non-Christian societies to their own political
dominion. However, he did not think that Amerindians qualified for
such a right: the news from the Americas was that they were human
in form only, living according to nature. In that case, wrote Major,
Aristotle's doctrine of natural servitude, 'that some men are by nature
free and others servile,' would apply (Major 1510, dist. 44, quest. 3). In
sixteenth-century French thinking, Aristotle's hierarchy of superior and
inferior, and of the right of the superior to rule the inferior, was beyond
dispute. Its application to Amerindians appeared to be simply common
sense. A favourite adjective referring to the New World peoples was
'pauvre,' used in connection with both their spiritual and material
states. The Amerindians, for their part, considered that their lands must
be more bounteous than those of Europe - why else would Europeans
leave their countries for the Americas? While willing to cooperate and
share with the newcomers, they never doubted their rights to their own
lands, and they certainly never saw themselves as inferior to anyone.
The stage had been prepared for French colonial initiatives during
the first half of the sixteenth century, and the French moved with great
speed to take advantage of new economic opportunities. They exploited
the fisheries of the north Atlantic from the beginning of the century,
but it was the dyewood trade from the Brazilian coast that caught the
public imagination. In 1503 Captain Binot Paulmier de Gonneville of
Honfleur had sailed his ship, the Espoir, to Brazil, where he spent six
months trading among the Carijo, a branch of the Tupi-Guaram, semi-
sedentary agriculturalists who at that time occupied most of the Brazil-
ian Atlantic coast. The French were well prepared for the voyage, with
an appropriate assortment of trade goods, but the Carijo had previously
met Europeans and had reason to complain of their behaviour (Gaf-
farel 1892, 2: 335; Avezac-Macaya, 1869). The principal lure for Gonne-
go Olive Patricia Dickason

ville had been brazilwood, a source of red dye much sought after by
France's burgeoning textile industry, all the more because it was in very
short supply in Europe. Other items of interest included parrots (partic-
ularly valued if they could speak French), as well as monkeys, peppers,
cotton, and ocelot skins. Economically, the Brazilian trade brought
great prosperity to such Atlantic port cities as Rouen and Honfleur;
politically, it would point to away for the French to challenge the Portu-
guese in Brazil.
The problem was not simple. A head-on confrontation would not only
be expensive, it could be very risky. As it was, Portuguese opposition to
the French dyewood trade was exacting a high price in goods, ships, and
personnel (Asseline 1874, i: 348; La Ronciere 1899-1932; Dickason
ig84b, 34). To make counter-discovery claims was more successful in
arousing controversy than in establishing a point; French assertions that
Dieppois Jean Cousin had been the first European to reach Brazil, in
1488, convinced only the French themselves, not the international com-
munity. Instead, the French resorted to legal doctrines that were inter-
nationally recognized in principle, even if frequently contested in
specific cases. These doctrines were freedom of the seas and freedom of
trade, both of which were seen as arising from natural law, that of the
seas directly and that of trade indirectly through jus gentium (law of
nations). Dominican Francisco de Vitoria of the University of Sala-
manca, considered by many to be the father of international law, had
used both points to argue Spain's right in the Americas (Vitoria [1557]
!9i7. 151-2; Green and Dickason 1989, 187-8, 216-17, 244). There was a
catch to freedom of trade, however: it was deemed to apply in newly dis-
covered lands only until a European nation claimed exclusive rights.
That this left plenty of room for disagreement in particular instances
was only too evident along the Brazilian coast, where Portuguese claims
to suzerainty were not backed up with settlements, and so did not deter
French traders. In the hurly-burly of New World politics, legal principles
took second place to what one could get away with.
The French had another string to their legal bow, which they used
with considerable effect, and which suggested what would become the
most famous of their colonizing techniques. It was based on the Roman
legal maxim that had long since become established in canon law, quod
omnes tangit, ab omnibus approbetur (that which touches all is to be
approved by all). This was the doctrine of consent, which could be inter-
preted to mean that, in the eyes of the law, traders or colonizers could
operate in newly 'discovered' lands only if they had the consent of the
The Sixteenth-Century French Vision of Empire 91

Native people. Proclaiming that this principle applied as much to the


Amerindians as anyone else, the French set about cultivating Native alli-
ances in those areas where they judged these would be profitable. In the
case of the brazilwood trade, this was an exceedingly practical, if not
indispensable, method of operation, as the dyewood had to be cut and
prepared for shipment, a service that the Natives were in the best posi-
tion to provide. The French accordingly cultivated those branches of
the Tupi-Guarani in whose lands the best stands of brazilwood were to
be found. The Tupinamba, as the most important of the allies, figure
prominendy in early French accounts, so much so that they became the
stereotypical Amerindian, as the Huron would become in the northern
fur trade (later to be superseded by the Cree), and the plains Sioux in
Wild West lore. An effective technique was to send young French men
and boys to live with the Brazilians, to learn their languages and cus-
toms, and in many cases to intermarry and so form blood relationships.
These 'interpreters' (truchements in sixteenth-century French) were pop-
ularly known as Normans, in reference to the region in France from
which most of them originated. They became an indispensable link in
the French-Brazilian trade.
Establishing good relations with the Native people was one step; the
next was to have these relations recognized in Europe as justification for
a permanent French presence in the New World. Taking a cue from the
explorers' custom of bringing back natives of the lands they had visited
as proof of their 'discoveries,' and the practice that developed from this
of teaching the involuntary visitors the language of their kidnappers so
that they could act as go-betweens and guides on subsequent voyages,
the French brought delegations of their Brazilian allies to Europe. In
Rouen, a major centre for the brazilwood trade, a house for the Brazil-
ian visitors was set aside at 17 rue Malpalu; they as well as other Amerin-
dians (including some from Canada) also stayed in other French
Atlantic port cities and, of course, in Paris. The Brazilians were pre-
sented at court, where they formally requested French protection
against their enemies, and asked for missionaries to instruct them in
Christianity. The French did their best to make sure that embassies from
rival colonial powers were present to witness such requests. They pro-
claimed their right to evangelize in the New World by staging baptismal
spectaculars, with the highest nobles in the land standing in as godpar-
ents. One of the most celebrated of these occasions occurred in 1614, as
we shall later see in connection with France's second attempt to colo-
nize in Brazil.
92 Olive Patricia Dickason

Visiting Amerindians also found themselves involved in the royal civic


entries that were such a ceremonial feature of the perambulating
French court of this period. The pageants, distant descendants of the
Roman triumph, included Brazilians among the nations who made their
ceremonial submissions to the king (Dickason ig84a, 213-17). In the
most famous of these events, which was staged in Rouen in 1550 for
Henri n and Catherine de Medici, two Brazilian villages were recreated
on the banks of the Seine. Not only were flora and fauna from Brazil
imported for the occasion, but so were 50 Brazilians. Also participating
were 150 French sailors who were familiar enough with Native languages
and ways to re-enact village life and demonstrate the collection and
preparation of brazilwood for loading on a ship waiting in the river. A
poem was addressed to the king, asking him to expel the Portuguese
from Brazil (Denis 1850; Nowell 1949, 382). This occasion played a
major role in influencing Henri to support the first French attempt to
establish a colony in Brazil, which took place five years later.
The Portuguese remained convinced that the French in Brazil were
nothing more than pirates, and they treated them as such whenever
they could, fighting on the seas, in Brazilian territory, and in the courts.
When the Portuguese made a spectacular capture of a richly laden
French trading vessel, La Pelerine, in 1532, the French claimed restitu-
tion not only on the basis of freedom of the seas and freedom of trade,
but also on the grounds that Brazilians were free to trade with whom-
ever they wanted, as Europeans had no jurisdiction over them without
their consent (Gaffarel 1878, 87). Such arguments may have spurred the
Portuguese to step up colonization; but Brazilian space was such that
the French were able to continue trading.

First French Attempt: The St Lawrence, 1541-1543

Despite the attractions of Brazil, it was Canada that offered the first
practical opportunity for the French to realize their 'dream of empire'
(Vachon, Chabot, and Desrosiers 1982). Although the fishing and whal-
ing activities of Bretons and Basques in the north Atlantic and the Gulf
of St Lawrence had not caught public imagination as had the Brazilian
trade, they were still yielding handsome profits. Bretons had been so
long on the scene that cartographers commonly included 'Tierra de los
bretones,' 'C. del Breton,' or variations thereof in their maps of the
region (Green and Dickason 1989, 217). However, European territorial
claims were not firmly established in the region. For one thing, it was
The Sixteenth-Century French Vision of Empire 93

not yet clear where Canada lay in relation to the dividing line that Spain
and Portugal had agreed upon in 1494. Both powers were fully occupied
elsewhere, so that while they considered they had rights to the region,
neither was fully committed to asserting its claims. The situation was
such that Francois i felt free to take the initiative. In 1524 he sent Gio-
vanni da Verrazzano along the Atlantic coast to assess its potentialities;
this was followed by the commissioning of the St Malo capitain, Jacques
Carrier (1491-1557), to continue the explorations. Carder did this on
his first two voyages (1534, 1535-6), which led to the decision to attempt
a settlement on the St Lawrence, a 'well-populated' region, whose peo-
ple he found to be 'as obedient and friendly as possible, and just as
familiar as if they had been brought up with us forever' (Thevet 1986,
6). The land was teeming with wildlife; as Carder reported it, the river
was 'the richest in every kind of fish that any one remembers having
seen or heard of.' Even more intriguing were the stories the Nadve peo-
ples told of a faraway 'kingdom of the Saguenay' whose people pos-
sessed 'great store of gold and copper' (Carder 1993, 74-5). On all
counts, the occasion seemed made to order for France to launch its
American empire. In contrast to the other failed attempts that will be
dealt with here, religious considerations did not enter into this enter-
prise; missionaries were not included.
Elaborate preparations and considerable amounts of money were
lavished on France's first attempt to colonize in the Americas. Jean-
Francois de la Rocque de Roberval (c. 1500-60) was chosen to head the
colony, while Carder captained the fleet; the combined operation was
reported to have included about 900 persons, almost certainly an exag-
geration (Carder 1993, 154). For the Atlantic crossing, the fleet was split
between the two leaders. Both Carder and Roberval contributed finan-
cially to the venture. It was provisioned for two years, and included farm-
ing implements and animals - cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and horses - the
first Old World farm animals to be seen in the St Lawrence valley (Car-
tier 1993, 194; Trudel 1963-83, i: 138). Official and commercial enthusi-
asm for the venture did not percolate down to the lower orders of
French society, and consequently the body of the colonists was recruited
largely from prisons and among social outcasts (Carder 1993, 139-40).
In spite of the careful preparations, the enterprise did not plan for the
climate, more rigorous than the French were used to, even though this
was the period of the Little Ice Age in Europe (c. 1450-1850). Indeed,
the comparative severity of the Laurentian climate would soon present
them with subsistence and survival problems.
94 Olive Patricia Dickason

Roberval delayed the departure of his part of the fleet for the better
part of a year in order to indulge in privateering. Thus, it was only Car-
tier and his group who arrived on the St Lawrence in 1541 to establish a
French presence in lands 'uninhabited or not possessed or controlled
by a Christian prince.'3 He and his group remained for the first year in
the colony, which they named Charlesbourg-Royal; Roberval and his set-
tlers, arriving after Cartier and his group departed, continued it for
another year under the name of France-Roy. The people among whom
the French established themselves were St Lawrence Iroquois, farmer/
hunters whose villages were strung along the north shore of the river as
far as Hochelaga (Montreal). Thevet reported that they were more
advanced than the naked Brazilians because they dressed in skins, a cus-
tom he attributed to the cold, 'and for no other reason' (Thevet 1986,
11). Later, Roberval would have his own interpretation of the situation:
not considering skins as 'apparel,' in his eyes the Amerindians were 'all
naked,' even though they wore breeches (Cartier 1993, i l l ) . At least
one Frenchman thought that the St Lawrence Iroquois men looked
rather 'like the portraits of Hercules' (Thevet 1986, 12).
Whereas in Brazil the primacy of the dyewood trade and the presence
of the Portuguese had ensured that the French carefully cultivated alli-
ances with the Amerindians, on the St Lawrence the fur trade had not
yet come into its own, and colonial rivals did not openly contest French
activities. Consequently, there was no apparent need to be concerned
about the Amerindians, even though the colonists were dependent on
them for fresh food. The French came expecting to establish a settle-
ment on the Old Word model, taking neither the Amerindians nor New
World conditions into account.
Misunderstandings quickly led to antagonisms. For example, the
French, at first struck with wonder at the Amerindian gesture of hospi-
tality of carrying the newcomers on their backs as they entered their vil-
lage or when the French had difficulty in getting about,4 soon came to
expect the service. The story is told of one of the French who had devel-
oped the habit of asking a certain Amerindian to take him for walks in
this manner. On one such occasion, the Amerindian, with the French-
man on his back, slipped on the rocky path bordering the river, and the
Frenchman beat him with his cane. Without a word, the Amerindian
strangled the Frenchman and threw him in the water. When a nearby
Frenchman drew his sword, the Amerindian gave him the same treat-
ment.5 On other occasions, Amerindians were reported to have been
mutilated and killed 'for a pastime' by 'brainless' young members of the
The Sixteenth-Century French Vision of Empire 95

French colony (Thevet [1558] 1878, 422-3; 1575, ioi2 v ). According to a


Spanish report, the situation, tense from the start as a consequence of
encounters during Carder's second voyage (1535-6), soon degenerated
into open conflict, resulting in serious manpower losses for the French
(Trudel 1963-83, i: 151-3). According to Roberval, Cartier had re-
ported that the colony had not been able to withstand the Stadaconans,
who went 'about daily to annoy him.'6 Believing he had struck it rich
with finds of precious ores, including diamonds, Cartier returned to
France with his famous load of iron pyrites, 'fool's gold.' It would give
rise to the saying 'false as diamonds from Canada.'7
Roberval, re-establishing the colony in 1542, would add his foibles to
its troubles. At first, he did not encounter overt hostility from the Amer-
indians, suggesting that their enmity had been directed against Cartier
and his group rather than against the French in general. Trading soon
began, for which the French were appreciative when they ran short of
provisions and the Amerindians offered them a 'great store' of fresh fish
(Cartier 1993, no). Subsequently, trading apparently dwindled, indicat-
ing that Roberval was no more successful than Cartier in his dealings
with the Native peoples. Back in France, Antoine de Montchrestien, dra-
matist, economist, and advocate of better treatment of Amerindians by
colonizers, would be unequivocal in his judgment of Roberval, claiming
that his administration of the colony had led only to disorder, quarrels,
and fatigue, while his mistreatment of Amerindians had led to the 'ruin
of his plans' (Montchrestien 1615, 214). In his administration of the col-
ony, Roberval followed contemporary European practices, shackling
colonists for offences and hanging one of them for theft. One can but
speculate what impression such measures must have made on the Amer-
indians, who reserved such treatment for their enemies rather than
their own compatriots. At the same time, Roberval lost a quarter of his
colonists to illness, probably scurvy, a disaster that Cartier had avoided
because of his 1535-6 overwintering experience. On that earlier occa-
sion, friendly Natives had shown the French how to cure scurvy by drink-
ing a tea from the boiled leaves and ground bark of a tree called
'Anneda' (thought to be a variety of spruce). On another level entirely,
it has been theorized that only the strength of Roberval's military com-
plement prevented Amerindian attacks such as had plagued Cartier
(Trudel 1963-83, i: 160).
Expensive as the colonization project had been to launch, it needed
still more reinforcements and supplies if it were to keep going. The
royal treasury was already overtaxed because of France's European
96 Olive Patricia Dickason

involvements, so no additional help was forthcoming. An inscription on


a Descellier map of 1550 put the matter succinctly, if defensively: 'as it
was not possible to trade with the people of this country because of their
aloofness and the intemperance of the land and small profits, they had
returned to France and hoped to come back when it pleased the King'
(Dickason 19843, 172). The enterprise had lasted barely two years in
total, from 1541 to 1543.
The failure gave rise to a clamour in France from opponents of colo-
nization, particularly of Canada, who claimed that the climate was not
only cold, but unhealthy. Besides, as Carder's misadventure had proven,
no gold or other precious minerals were to be found. It would be half a
century before France would attempt to plant another colony in Canada.

First French Attempt in Brazil, 1555-1560

France immediately began to cast about for a suitable location for


another attempt at colonizing the New World. Brazil offered the advan-
tages the St Lawrence valley had lacked: French alliances with the local
Amerindians were on a solid footing, trade (principally in dyewood) was
flourishing, and the climate was agreeable. In addition, mounting reli-
gious tensions at home gave urgency to the Huguenot need for a home
away from home. The disadvantage was the Portuguese presence, but
the new region was so vast that this was not seen as particularly threaten-
ing. The situation seemed promising to recoup the St Lawrence failure;
national pride demanded as much, a demand that continued to have
strong popular support, despite pockets of opposition.
Into the scene stepped Chevalier Nicolas Durand de Villegaignon
(c. 1510-71), Knight of Malta, with a vision of founding an overseas haven
where religious tolerance would reign even as it brought 'honour, glory
and profit' to France (Brefrecueil 1565, A v ). He won high-placed support
from both ends of the religious spectrum. On the one hand there was
Gaspard de Coligny (1519-72), Seigneur de Chatillon, d&l'admiral, who
interceded with the king to help obtain two armed vessels of 200 tons
each, as well as a supply vessel and 10,000 francs, a substantial start for the
colonizing fleet. Coligny would later become identified with the Hugue-
nots, although at this time he had not yet declared himself. At the other
end of the spectrum, Louis, Cardinal de Lorraine, a member of the vio-
lently anti-Huguenot Guise family, also lent his considerable weight in
support of the enterprise. Villegaignon further emphasized the project's
ecumenical character by including among his colonists the Franciscan
The Sixteenth-Century French Vision of Empire 97

cosmographer Andre Thevet, who stayed less than three months, and
later by bringing out Calvinist ministers, one of whom was Jean de Lery
(i534-i6n?), who stayed about ten months. Both of these men left
accounts of their Brazilian experiences that are important sources of
information for ethnographers today. Protestants were far more moti-
vated to join the enterprise than Catholics, particularly when Henri n
moved to extirpate 'heresy' in France. When Coligny emerged as the ven-
ture's principal backer, and clearly identified himself with the Protestant
cause in 1559, the colony's character seemed assured. The wild card was
Villegaignon himself: his early sympathies for Protestantism were not suf-
ficient to sustain his stance in favour of toleration once the battle lines
were drawn and positions became entrenched.8
The story of the colony's misfortunes began with the fact that very few
women joined the enterprise, and most of the men were more inter-
ested in striking it rich than in the hard work of establishing a perma-
nent settlement. Preparations were so inadequate that colonists came
without farming equipment and even without sufficient food. Once they
arrived at the bay the Native people called Guanabara (Rio de Janeiro),
Villegaignon did his best to isolate his colonists from the Tupinamba,
despite existing alliances and even though they were dependent on the
Natives for both labour and food. He alienated the Norman interpreters
by trying to regulate their lives, particularly in regard to women. These
moves, along with his attempts to interfere with Native customs, pleased
neither Amerindian allies nor settlers. As the colony struggled with its
problems, news came that the Catholics were gaining the upper hand in
France's civil war. Villegaignon immediately moved to prevent the Prot-
estants among the colonists from publicly practising their faith. This, of
course, gave rise to resentment, conspiracy, and revolt, particularly as
Villegaignon's governance became more repressive and cruel. This
extraordinary switch from his founding goals culminated in his precipi-
tous departure in 1559 for France to defend himself against charges of
maladministration, an apparent abandonment of the colony that has
been severely criticized.9 Even so, when the Portuguese finally located
the colony in 1560, the colonists put up a spirited, if hopeless, resis-
tance. Because of its religious aspects, the Villegaignon episode culmi-
nated in a virulent pamphlet war: of all France's colonial enterprises of
this period, it gave rise to the greatest number of publications.
The puzzle, at least with hindsight, is why the French appeared to
ignore fifty years of experience in Brazil to march straight into disaster.
Much attention has been paid to the character of Villegaignon, which
98 Olive Patricia Dickason

was certainly an important factor. But he did not operate in a vacuum;


like Roberval, he was an aristocrat of his time. Although he had been
informed about Brazilian realities, he did not seem to have considered
that they could have a real effect on his project. There is no evidence
that it ever occurred to him, any more than it had occurred to Roberval,
that Europeans could have something to learn from Amerindian solu-
tions to the problems of living under New World conditions.
In his recruiting campaign, Villegaignon had played down the canni-
balism of the Brazilians. If Europeans were sometimes eaten, he said,
this was because they had offended the Amerindians with their avarice
and ambition. Moreover, he blamed the lack of missionary zeal on the
part of both French and Portuguese for the continued practice of canni-
balism, claiming that they 'had never spoken a single word about our
Lord Jesus Christ to the poor people of that country' (Histoire des choses
memorables 1561, 7). But there is no indication that, once in the New
World, he made arrangements for evangelization. Neither Thevet, Lery,
nor any of the other religious figures in the colony appear to have con-
sidered that such an activity was part of their mandate. Villegaignon did
make every effort to purchase war prisoners from allies so that they
would not be eaten, but then proceeded to overwork them and whip
them into wearing clothes. As far as the prisoners were concerned, they
found greater honour in their traditional fate (Lery [1580] 1972, 175-
8). In 1557 the French leader wrote to John Calvin that Brazilians were
'a fierce and savage people, far removed from courtesy and humanity,
very different from us in learning and doing. So much so that it has
occurred to me to wonder if we have fallen among beasts in the form of
humanity.'10 The give-and-take that had made the brazilwood trade pos-
sible was notably lacking in the colony; indeed, it was not considered
appropriate where permanent setdement was concerned.
Ambiguity shrouds Villegaignon's early sympathies for Protestantism;
the fact that he was a Knight of Malta should have meant that he was a
defender of Catholicism. Jean de Lery and the Calvinist group that
joined the colony in 1557 did so in the belief that Villegaignon was one
of them; Lery would later refer to him as a traitor. Whatever his earlier
inclinations, once civil war erupted in France, Villegaignon fought as a
Catholic (Smith 1891).

The Lure of Florida, 1562-1565

The high public profile of the Brazilian project came close to being
The Sixteenth-Century French Vision of Empire 99

matched by the Florida expeditions of 1562-5.n (The term 'Florida' at


that time included parts of today's Carolinas.) Coligny had not allowed
the Villegaignon failure to kill his dream of founding a haven for
Huguenots; unfortunately, his second attempt would end in even blood-
ier disaster.
Coligny and his associates had learned from the previous experiences,
particularly that of Villegaignon. For one thing, this time there were no
ambiguities as to aims: civil war in all its horror was spreading in France,
and Coligny, now unequivocally on the Protestant side, had no inten-
tion of once more exporting religious conflict. Although this was essen-
tially a Huguenot enterprise, its dedication to religious freedom was
such that a preacher was not provided for at first, though religious ser-
vices were insisted upon. Politically, they were motivated by the desire to
tweak the Spanish king's nose, an ambition that had been gnawing at
French national sensibilities since the papal bulls. In both of these aims,
Coligny was in tune with his country's purpose; once more, as in Brazil,
he had royal support, although this time not full sponsorship.
The project was launched in 1562 with a voyage of reconnaissance led
by Dieppois captain Jean Ribault, who claimed 'vacant' land by erecting
columns (which the Huguenots were using at this point instead of
crosses) bearing the arms of France. Amerindians in attendance were
much interested in the ritual, which they assumed to have religious sig-
nificance (see figure 2). Ribault confirmed French intentions by build-
ing Charlesfort on Port Royal Sound, and manning it with soldiers.
Because France's internal troubles prevented needed reinforcements
from being sent in time, it lasted only a few months. A second voyage
(1564) under Rene de Goulaine de Laudonniere (i52g?-74) established
the more permanent Fort Caroline (with the help of Amerindian
labour) on the St John River to the south of the original fort. The third
voyage (1565), under Ribault, brought out the main body of colonists,
including families, who this time came equipped to establish an agricul-
tural colony. Laudonniere would be no more successful than Villegai-
gnon in establishing an agricultural base; he does not seem to have
accorded it sufficient importance at first, as he fully expected the colony
to be provisioned from France, at least initially. Later he would claim
that most of the colony's troubles could have been avoided if France
had sent the promised supplies.
Coligny had selected Florida partly because of reports that the Span-
iards had antagonized the Natives to the point that it was a Spanish
'cemetery' (Belleforest and Miinster 1575, 2: 2037, 2195). Although the
ioo Olive Patricia Dickason

2 The Timucuan leader Athore greets Laudonniere and shows him a Huguenot
column asserting French rights to 'vacant lands,' erected by Laudonniere's col-
league, Ribault. Dietrich de Bry, after Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues. From Rene
de Laudonniere, Brevis narratio eorum quae in Florida Americae provincia Gallis
acdderunt (1591). National Archives of Canada, neg. 0-116149.
The Sixteenth-Century French Vision of Empire 101

French did not have an established trade in the region, they hoped that
Amerindian-Spanish hostility could be used to their advantage. In this
they were spurred by reports that the region was rich in precious miner-
als. The Floridian Natives, for their part, hoped for allies in their wars
against neighbouring enemies, as well as against the Spanish. The prin-
cipal point the French and Floridians had in common was their hatred
of Spain.
The Timucuans, among whom the French settled, were a matrilineal
agricultural people influenced by the Southeastern Ceremonial Com-
plex, which had connections with the Mississippian Mound Builders as
well as with the city-states of Mexico. The Timucuans were organized
into hierarchical chiefdoms, and lived in towns (sometimes palisaded)
that included ceremonial mounds around a central plaza. Although the
mounds were still in use when Europeans arrived, indications are that
they were no longer being built. Today, these people are extinct.
Good intentions on the part of the French were one thing; making
them work in practice quickly proved to be something else again. The
conquistador syndrome was all too prevalent among the colonists, the
least of whom thought himself superior to the most powerful cacique
(Gaffarel 1875, 89), an attitude which the Amerindians probably recip-
rocated, although we have no direct evidence of this among the Floridi-
ans.ia Laudonniere reported one occasion when some of his men
'exceedingly offended' a cacique by laughing during a solemn cere-
mony (Laudonniere [1586] I979a, 303). He himself was not free from
similar attitudes; when the cacique Satouriona acted contrary to his
wishes, the French leader's reaction was to consider 'howe I might be
revenged of this Savage, and to make him know how dearely this bolde
bravado of his should cost him' (Laudonniere [1586] I979b, 331). That
he made little effort to understand Amerindians is evidenced by his own
words: 'I never trusted them but upon good ground, as one that had dis-
covered a thousand of their crafts and subtilties, aswell by experience as
by reading of the histories of late yeres' (341). The room for misunder-
standing appeared endless.
It is not surprising that Laudonniere's alliances with Satouriona and
other caciques were uneasy. The Frenchman would have preferred neu-
trality, but found that this was impossible in the situation in which the
struggling colony found itself. Without provisions, with no supplies com-
ing from France, and with colonists who, after constructing their neces-
sary buildings, looked for treasure rather than clearing land and
planting, or even hunting or fishing, Laudonniere had to turn to Amer-
1O2 Olive Patricia Dickason

indians for food and services. These the Native people were willing to
provide in trade, but they considered that the French, in accepting their
help, had become their allies and had incurred the responsibility of
fighting with them in their wars. Laudonniere, of course, could not con-
ceive of the French playing a secondary role in Amerindian politics.
It was not only with Amerindians that Laudonniere experienced
mounting tensions and distrust. Perpetual food shortages, which at
times reached the point of famine, soured the colonists and contributed
to outright mutiny. A fortuitous chain of circumstances helped Laudon-
niere to control the revolt, but the provisioning situation remained out
of control. When the Amerindians mocked them for their continuing
inability to provide for themselves, the angry French took one of their
chiefs hostage in the hope of forcing more supplies from his people.
The stratagem didn't work as expected: the Amerindians, seeing the
French break their word as allies, expected they would kill the prisoner
in any event.
The long-promised reinforcements, in provisions and colonists,
finally arrived in 1565 under the leadership of Jean Ribault, who was
under orders to relieve Laudonniere of his command. Ribault never
had the opportunity to fulfil his commission: caught in a storm, most of
his convoy was driven ashore and into the arms of a Spanish expedition
that had been sent to root out the French. This the Spaniards accom-
plished with bloody thoroughness, an action in which they may have
been aided by Amerindians exasperated with the French.'s Satouriona
was reported to have sheltered a French lad from the slaughter, one of
the survivors who found refuge among the Amerindians (Maran 1943-
55. i: 33O). Laudonniere was among the few (as was also the artist
Jacques Lc Moyne de Morgues) who managed to return to France
aboard a French ship that had survived the storm. Fort Caroline was
renamed San Mateo by the Spanish.
As a leader, Laudonniere had been no more consistent than Villegai-
gnon, but along different lines. Where Villegaignon had become
embroiled in a murderous religious conflict, Laudonniere could not
organize his colony to provide for its basic needs, and so faced mutiny
and involuntary involvement in Amerindian wars. In personality, he was
more humane and less authoritarian than the stormy Knight of Malta,
but they shared an inability to break out of their cultural lexicons. Both
leaders (and Roberval as well) were aristocrats who expected others to
accommodate to them, not the reverse. None was capable of serious
negotiation or accommodation with Amerindians, despite avowed good
The Sixteenth-Century French Vision of Empire 103

intentions. In this they were far from unique; their failings were those of
Europeans of their age.
Catherine de Medici had her own thoughts on the subject, which she
expressed in a letter to the French ambassador in Madrid in 1567: 'in
these discoveries and conquests it is not sufficient for a captain to be an
experienced soldier and good sailor, because beyond that it is necessary
to be politically wise and knowledgeable in many things in order to
found and build a new province and a totally new world' (Gaffarel 1878,
364-5; my translation). She obviously believed that faulty leadership was
at the root of French colonial problems. A seventeenth-century English
assessment was predictably harsher. It claimed the disasters were due to
the French being 'more in love with glorie then with vertue' and
'alwaies subject to divisions amongst themselves,' as well as being lazy
and unwilling to work (Alexander [1624] 1873, 2O3)- Nicolas Le
Challeux, a carpenter who had been with the colonists, uttered what
could well have been the last word on the affair: 'Qui veut aller a la
Floride, / Qu'il y aille j'y ay este' ('Whoever wants to go to Florida let
him go; / I have been there'; Le Challeux 1579, verso of title page).
Just as the Villegaignon episode spurred the Portuguese to validate
their territorial claims by intensifying colonization in Brazil, so in Flor-
ida the Spaniards reacted by establishing the first permanent European
colony north of Mexico - San Augustin, in 1565. Other Ribault-Laudon-
niere legacies were the introduction of sassafras to European medicine,
and the drawings of Le Moyne de Morgues, our earliest systematic por-
trayal of a North American people. Incidentally, the colonists had pro-
duced at least eight babies at Fort Caroline, who were thus the first
known children of European parentage to be born in what is now the
United States (Bennett 1964, 21). In Canada, that event had occurred
some 500 years earlier in the Norse settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows.

Postscript and New Beginning at Maragnan, 1612-1615

France's final attempt at realizing its colonial dream in Brazil took place
on an island called Maragnan in the mouth of the Amazon. It illustrated
a new stage in French imperial policy: only Roman Catholic missionar-
ies were allowed in the colonies. Despite its short life, the colony had
enduring consequences, as the Fort Saint Louis of the French grew into
today's city of San Luiz do Maranhao.
Although the project's principal backer, Daniel de la Tousche, Sieur
de La Ravardiere, was a Huguenot, its leader, Chevalier Francois de
1O4 Olive Patricia Dickason

Razilly (1578-1622), was a Catholic. The project reflected the Catholic


victory in the civil wars, which had ended more than a decade earlier. In
obtaining royal approval, La Ravardiere and Razilly agreed to bring out
four Capuchins (a branch of the Franciscans) as missionaries; if the idea
of a Huguenot refuge was present, it is not mentioned in surviving docu-
mentation. Claude d'Abbeville and Yves d'Evreux, two of the Capu-
chins, wrote accounts that today are the project's main claim to fame
(Claude d'Abbeville 16143; Yves d'Evreux 1615). At the time, however,
the mission aroused intense public interest owing to a visit, to Paris by a
group of the Maragnan Tupinamba. The visit, organized by Razilly and
stage-managed by Pere Claude, turned into something of a triumphal
entry.
By this time, the French were beginning to have some success in their
colonial endeavours. Since 1603 they had had a foothold in Acadia, still
tentative, but destined to endure; and they had a more solidly based
establishment at Quebec, founded in 1608. While this was encouraging,
France had not forgotten its claims to Brazil and the century of French
activity along its coasts. Maragnan was particularly attractive because of
the beauty of its location and agrceableness of its climate. Also, the
French still had a strong trading presence there, and the Tupinamba of
the region were all the more firm in their alliance because of steadily
increasing pressures from Portuguese colonization. In fact, most of the
Tupinamba at Maragnan were refugees from areas where Portuguese
settlers had taken over.'4 This may have contributed to their reputation
in certain quarters for being the most political of Brazilian Amerindians
(Mauro 1961, 163).
Upon arrival, Razilly was careful to send advance notice to the French
allies, in order to ensure a welcome. When they met, he told the Tupi-
namba that the French wanted trade to continue and would provide
protection if they recognized the French king as their monarch. He
hoped that they would become Christian, which the Tupi, without real-
izing what that would entail, said they were content to do. As negotia-
tions proceeded, Razilly made more demands: the Tupi were to give up
cannibalism, otherwise the French would not stay; he would tolerate
long hair, but not the custom of piercing lips and other parts of the face
to insert stones or other objects. He also expected the Tupi to accept
French law, which he characterized as 'very gentle and reasonable.' All
of this was repeated later when a cross of possession was erected. Pere
Claude happily reported that this was the birth of the Catholic Church
in Brazil, thus overlooking the Portuguese Jesuits who had been in the
The Sixteenth-Century French Vision of Empire 105

country for something like three-quarters of a century (Claude d'Abbe-


ville 16143, 72-3, 88V, 129V).
The Tupinamba were understandably puzzled at this dramatic
change in their relations with their allies, but they appear to have made
efforts to cooperate, faced as they were with the necessity of making
the best of a bad situation. The French, for their part, having made the
switch from the give-and-take of a purely trading relationship to the
assertiveness of colonial domination, quickly discovered that they did
not have enough men in the field for the new task, and those they
did have were not always well provided for (Claude d'Abbeville i6i4a,
93V). Realizing that a plea for help would be more effective if it came
from the Tupinamba rather than from himself, Razilly persuaded six of
the Natives to go to France to lay the colony's case before the king. As
Le Mercure Franfois reported in Paris, the Tupinamba had come to ask
that the French send them missionaries, soldiers, and artisans, besides
merchandise for trade (Mercure Franfois 1617, 3: 164 ff.). According to
Pere Claude, they wanted no other sovereign than the 'Roy de Lys,' the
French king (Claude d'Abbeville i6i4a, preface, 10). The doctrine of
consent, so noticeably absent on the St Lawrence, was in the forefront
here.
From the moment the delegation landed at Havre-de-Grace, public
interest was high. A month later, when they made their triumphal entry
into Paris, dressed in a modified version of their Native fashion (feath-
ers had been added at strategic places) and shaking maracas, they were
escorted by twenty-six Capuchins. The crowds were so great that the
monks had to retreat with their charges into their convent, and the king
had to send guards for protection. Pere Claude was enchanted. 'Who
would have thought,' he mused, 'that Paris, used to the strange and the
exotic, would go so wild over these Indians?' (Claude d'Abbeville i6i4a,
339v-4Or). When they were presented at court, the king was pleased to
agree publicly to send more Capuchins, as well as soldiers, to Maragnan
(MercureFranfois 1617, 3: 174).
The ceremonies did not end there. The next event was the baptism of
the Brazilians in the church of the Capuchins, which was specially deco-
rated for the occasion. By this time, only three of the Tupinamba were
still alive; the others had succumbed under the pressures of an unaccus-
tomed lifestyle. The survivors were decked out in white taffeta for the
service, which was conducted by the Bishop of Paris with the king and
queen standing in as godparents. In the concluding procession, the Bra-
zilians carried lilies and wore hats decorated with feathers. Cloistered
106 Olive Patricia Dickason

nuns were allowed to see them (Mercure Francois 1617, 3: 164-5; Claude
d'Abbeville i6i4a, 367^-74'). While the event was spectacularly success-
ful, it was also a swan song: it did not save the colony. After a series of
bungles, the alarmed Portuguese managed to pull themselves together
and chase the French out of Maragnan. As at Guanabara Bay and in
Florida, there were complaints that France had let the colony down in
its hour of need.

Conclusion

The failures recounted in this essay gave rise to some serious soul-
searching on techniques of colonization. The French, signally adept at
trading in the New World, had not at first been able to transfer that suc-
cess to planting settlements. It had become obvious that while trading
and colonization might be linked, fundamentally they were separate
enterprises with distinct (and not always compatible) requirements. It
was generally agreed that leadership had failed in the attempts at coloni-
zation; among other lapses, it had not concentrated sufficiently on
establishing a secure subsistence base. For all the detailed and costly
preparations in the project of Cartier and Roberval, the rigours of the
northern climate had not been provided for, nor was a working relation-
ship with Amerindians developed. In the case of Villegaignon, religious
dissension had proved fatal; Laudonniere had fallen out with Amerin-
dian allies; and by the time of the Razilly-La Ravardiere attempt, the
Portuguese were too well established. In lands France would have pre-
ferred to colonize, imperial rivals gave the coup de grace to already falter-
ing attempts; in Canada, northern conditions discouraged colonial
rivalry, but presented challenges that at first overwhelmed inadequate
(or inappropriate) preparations and inexperience.
In no case had the colonists behaved wisely towards the Native peo-
ples. Montchrestien, for one, was strong on this point: the Amerindians,
he said, had demonstrated their willingness to cooperate; it was up to
the French to deal with them fairly, and not try to tyrannize them
(Montchrestien 1615, 218). Others, such as Razilly, did not accord so
much importance to Amerindians, and thought that successful coloniza-
tion depended rather upon cohesive leadership backed by sufficient
military and naval force ([Razilly] 1653, 374-83, 453-64). Cooperation
with Amerindians and even some adaptation to their ways had been
quickly accepted in trade, and would be more slowly accepted in war-
fare; but in the serious matter of imperial expansion, such flexibility was
The Sixteenth-Century French Vision of Empire 107

seen at first as endangering the fundamentals of la mission civilisatrice.


When this inflexible approach turned out to be unworkable, compro-
mises crept into colonial procedures, particularly at the local level. Iron-
ically, it was in the northern part of the Americas, which the French
found the least attractive for colonization, where they had their first suc-
cesses. In Acadia and New France, local colonial officials developed the
practice of de facto arrangements with their Amerindian allies that in
effect accorded them special status as well protection for their village
lands and hunting grounds. This was done apart from official imperial
policy. But, as Razilly had indicated at Maragnan, the ultimate goal of
establishing a new France overseas remained. Once a colony was secure,
the need for compromise would diminish and disappear as Amerindi-
ans recognized the superiority of French ways and became French-
men.15 The idea that they would want to remain themselves, and work
out their destinies in their own way, was not taken seriously. Indeed, the
French were surprised when Amerindians resisted the vision of one
world in the French model. The defeat of New France in 1760 put an
end to la mission civilisatrice in Canada, at least in French terms, but it
did not resolve the basic problem with that approach. Self-determina-
tion, however conceived, remains as problematic today as it was when
the French Empire was being formed.

NOTES

The research and preparation of this paper was assisted by a Rockefeller Fellow-
ship at the Newberry Library, Chicago. The paper extends and develops mate-
rial from Olive Patricia Dickason, The Myth of the Savage and the Beginnings of
French Colonialism in the Americas (1984).

1 The Algiers colony was the result of the initiative of two Marseilles merchants
(Gaffarel 1899, 11). For the difficulties of the French, as well as those of the
English, in establishing colonies, see Quinn 1979, 5: xviii-xix. While the
Spanish planted colonies with relative ease in the Caribbean as well as in
Central and South America, in North America they too found it difficult, a
situation about which there have been many theories but no convincing
arguments. The Spanish encomienda never became an institution north of the
Rio Grande.
2 For a latter-day argument supporting this doctrine, see Varnhagen 1858, 56;
Varnhagen held that the peoples occupying Brazil when Europeans arrived
io8 Olive Patricia Dickason

were mobile invaders, and so were not true proprietors of the soil. Besides,
he wrote, they were 'in a pitiable social state,' incapable of civilizing them-
selves.
3 On the legal theories behind that wording, see Green and Dickason 1989,
143-59,221.
4 This was one of the 'strange customs' reported from both North and South
America; Villegaignon's people experienced it in Brazil. Amerigo Vespucci
(1451-1512) wrote of South Americans, 'What greater wonder can I tell you
than that they thought themselves fortunate when, in passing a river, they
could carry us on their backs?' (Vespucci 1894, 16). In the Caribbean, Caribs
swam out to ships and carried the visitors ashore on their backs (Gullick
1985, 40; Gaffarel 1892, 2: 341).
5 Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, Departement de Manuscrits, Fonds Francais,
Ms. 15452, 157, Andre Thevet, 'Le Grand Insulaire et Pilotage,' 1586[?].
6 Cartier 1993, 108. According to a Spanish account, the Stadaconans killed
more than thirty-five of Carder's men (166).
7 For a Spanish report that Cartier had returned 'very rich,' see Cartier 1993,
Appendix 17, 'Examination of Newfoundland sailors regarding Carder,'
23 September 1542 (163).
8 Janet Whatley has commented that while Villegaignon was probably sincere
in his desire to establish a haven where Catholics and Protestants could live
in peace, he does not appear to have been prepared for emerging doctrinal
restrictions, particularly those of the Calvinists, nor for the political risks that
even tolerance of their cause would entail; see her translation of Jean de
Lery (Lery [1578] 1990); see also Reverdin 1957.
9 See, for example, Gaffarel 1878, 294-9. Villegaignon had received a cold
reception at the French court, to the point of being shunned, so it was prob-
ably beyond his power to aid the colony (Heulhard 1897, 184-8).
10 Lery [1580] 1972, 14, my translation; Barre 1557, 23. When Villegaignon
returned to France in 1559, he took some fifty Amerindians with him, men,
women, and children, whom he distributed as gifts among friends and sup-
porters. Two of these Amerindians, both in their teens at the time, were
reported to have survived for about eight years in France (Haton [1601]
1857, 1:40).
11 On the other side of the picture, the prominent Huguenot historian, Henri
Lancelot-Voisin, Sieur de La Popeliniere, in his survey of imperial history,
Lea Trois Mondes (1582), did not mention the Villegaignon episode at all. He
did report on the Ribault-Laudonniere attempt, but only on its demise in
1565 and Dominique de Gourgues's revenge (La Popeliniere 1582, Bk. 2: 26-
40). For an examination of some of the consequences of the Florida enter-
The Sixteenth-Century French Vision of Empire 109

prise, including Gourgues's personal expedition of reprisal, see Lestringant


1990, 149-202.
12 Jesuit Pierre Biard (i56v?-i622) remarked of the Mi'kmaq of Acadia that
'they think they are better, more valiant and more ingenious than the
French; and, what is more difficult to believe, richer than we are.' The
Mi'kmaq found the French to be thieves and deceivers who were envious
and, worst of all, lacking in generosity (Jesuit Relations [1610-1791] 1896-1901
1: 173)-
13 La Popeliniere, for one, reported that this was the case (1582, Bk. 2, 3OV).
The Spanish leader, Pedro Menendez de Aviles (1519-74), had an Amerin-
dian wife who apparently had kinship connections locally.
14 The extent of these Native movements could be astonishing. Late in the six-
teenth century, one group of Atlantic Coast Tupi migrated across Brazil to
the Andes and back to the mouth of the Amazon during only two genera-
tions, a distance of 3,000 miles (Hemming 1978, 49-50). There appears to
have been a strong mystical element in these migrations, a search for a
promised land where death was unknown; see Metraux 1928, 290-4.
15 For an examination of how some of these problems were worked out in New
France, see Jaenen 1976.
The Mentality of the Men behind
Sixteenth-Century Spanish Voyages
to Terranova
Selma Huxley Barkham

When talking about the contact period of the sixteenth and early seven-
teenth centuries, it is a relief to turn from discussion of the mentality of
the conquistadores and the merchants who fitted out voyages to the Car-
ibbean and Central America and to concentrate, instead, on the out-
look of Renaissance men from the Iberian Peninsula who promoted and
underwrote voyages to the northern part of the New World. It would be
wrong to imply that the men who organized voyages to Central America
were entirely different from those who were sailing mainly to the coasts
of Newfoundland and Labrador, because some of these merchants, par-
ticularly the Basque ones, played a double role; they had a deep interest
not only in the fish and furs of the north, but also in the gold and exotic
produce they had found in warmer climates. However, it must be
stressed that, unlike the motives that inspired many of the conquista-
dores in the south, for the majority of sixteenth-century merchant mari-
ners who made a good living from northern fishing voyages, any form of
year-round settlement or conquest in the New World was of no interest.
All those merchants required was a profitable return on their initial
investment in ships and provisions. Thus, though in both Central and
South America Basques can clearly not be exonerated from having par-
ticipated in some of the unpleasant excesses of the Conquest, on the
southern shores of Labrador events took a very different turn.
Even though there may well have been as many as two thousand men
using harbours every year along the Strait of Belle Isle during the sec-
ond half of the sixteenth century, it would seem that because contact
was mainly ship-based there was a minimum of negative interaction
between Basque fishermen and Innu (Montagnais) hunters. According
to Lope de Isasti, the Basques knew the Innu as both 'Montaneses'
The Men behind the Spanish Voyages to Terranova ill

(mountain people) and 'Canaleses' (people of the channel of Grand


Bay, that is, the Strait of Belle Isle) (Isasti 1850, 150, 154). There was no
encroachment on the nomadic lifestyle of the Innu, but the exchange of
goods during the annual fishing season was mutually useful to the
Basques and to the 'Yndios,' who liked to acquire anything made of
iron, such as axes and knives, and to eat and drink with the fishermen
aboard their ships (Biggar, ed. 1930, 453, 462).
Unfortunately this peaceful contact between Innu and Basques in
Labrador was not often mirrored by the contact between Basques and
the 'Eskimaos' who came down from the northeast and with whom
there were frequent hostilities; the history of contact between these two
groups 'is one of bloodshed and treachery on both sides,' and was reme-
died only after the arrival of Moravian missionaries in 1764 (Lysaght
1971, 83, 181).' But as far as the Innu were concerned, there are few
other regions of North America apart from Southern Labrador where
such a tradition of friendship was maintained between Europeans and a
Native population for more than two centuries. The Labrador 'Indians'
(the Innu) became close allies of both Spanish and French Basque
fishermen. In the 15305, during the first known encounters between
Basques and Innu, the fishermen were thoroughly impressed by the
intelligence of the 'Yndios,' and the fact that they were managing to sur-
vive admirably under difficult climatic conditions. The fishermen were
also interested in the way the Innu made their tents and their clothes, as
well as in the fact that they were able to communicate in several lan-
guages, even though they had no public notaries to draw up their docu-
ments, a complaint made by Basques on several occasions.2
What aspects of northern Iberian culture made possible this felicitous
interaction? Although the whalers and cod fishermen who met and
made friends with the Innu did not live in the same style as the prosper-
ous merchants from inland Spain who helped to finance their voyages,
nevertheless the mariners from the Basque coast and the wealthy mer-
chants from the inland cities had many points in common, and were
completely up to date on each other's activities. Information about con-
ditions in Labrador found its way rapidly into the merchant houses of
Burgos, Vitoria, and Valladolid. Lawsuits about anything that went
wrong in Labrador were often brought before the Chancery Court in
Valladolid to be discussed by lawyers, and the finer points of 'Terranova'
policies were decided upon by insurance brokers. There was no lack of
interest in maritime affairs, however comfortably protected the inland
merchants were from the physical hazards of the sea.'^
112 Selma Huxley Barkham

Some Sources of Evidence for Merchant Thought

For the thoughts of these Renaissance men, both mariners and mer-
chants, there is very little direct evidence in the form of letters or jour-
nals, but there are glimpses in their account books, in their lawsuits, and
in their notarial documents, which are helpful and revealing. Moreover,
by taking the advice given in contemporary moral guidebooks, which
describe how a good merchant ought to behave, and comparing it
with the evidence of how they actually did behave, as reflected in those
very detailed account books and lawsuits, we can achieve some idea of
whether or not they lived up to their moral precepts.
It is well worth reading a little book published in Medina del Campo
in 1544 by Doctor Saravia de la Calle Beronense, written for the instruc-
tion of merchants. It must have found a receptive audience, as a second
edition was printed in 1547. The author clearly knew how difficult it was
to achieve the delicate balance between financial and spiritual success:

Merchant... if you want to trade, confident in the good intention you have
of providing for the community and providing for your household -
remember you are starting out on a perilous profession, and in order not
to fall into any danger you will have to set forth well forewarned ... and, in
order for you to be guided through such an intricate labyrinth, make use of
this thread, spun by the fingers of very saintly and wise doctors ... which will
certainly lead you out of obscure and tortuous turns if you do not let it slip
out of your hand, or try to twist it to your own advantage, or pull it ... to
make it follow your own avaricious tendencies (La Calle Beronense 1544,
xxiiii v —xxv').

He ends by reminding the young merchant that he must deal with his
temporal wealth in such a way that he will not lose eternal riches. As we
shall see, this is the sort of advice that the majority of our Basque mer-
chants genuinely believed in, and the metaphor that Saravia de la Calle
uses, the intricate Labyrinth of Commerce, is one employed again and
again by other authors. The wealthier the merchant, the more compli-
cated were the problems of conscience he would have to wrestle with.
These Renaissance merchants were part of a tradition very different
from the 'look after yourself mentality of many modern businessmen.
Like all merchants and mariners, they kept a sharp eye on their profits,
but that was not their only goal. However interested in money these
Northern Spanish merchants were, they seem to have been almost
The Men behind the Spanish Voyages to Terranova 113

equally motivated by a sense of service, first to God and then to the king.
In wartime, of course, they showed their loyalty to the Crown by provid-
ing ships for the Royal Armadas, with an occasional bout of piracy
thrown in to discomfort the enemies of 'El Rey, nuestro Senor.' But in
daily life they realized that God's service required them above all to be
generous, and that they should not ignore the plight of their less fortu-
nate fellow citizens whether in prisons, hospitals, or elsewhere. For
instance, in nearly every last will and testament, even those written for
dying men on the coast of Labrador, there were clauses asking for some
bequest to be left for the ransom of captives in Moorish jails, or to help
one of the hospitals in their own towns.4
Apart from bequests in wills and testaments, there were other ways in
which merchants and shipowners felt that their profits could be shared.
A large majority of the early-sixteenth-century account books that I have
so far seen begin with a declaration such as the following (written in
Burgos in 1539): 'In the name of God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
and of the Virgin, St. Mary, his mother, be all things dedicated to His
Holy Service. Amen.'5 Or in some cases one finds a shorter version, such
as Diego de Bernuy's: 'Manual of Purchases made in 1546 in which Our
Lord shall take part.'*' According to the account books, He did take part;
for shipowners, for instance, the normal way of contributing to a church
or to a charity was by a donation of at least 2 per cent of the value of the
cargo every time a ship came into port.
Whether they used a shorter or a longer version of the dedication in
their account books, or whether they gave smaller or larger contribu-
tions to church funds, a certain sense of reciprocity marked their
actions: they gave, but they also received. They always talked about 'La
ganancia que Dios nos diere' ('the profits that God shall give us'). For
example, when they were starting out on a voyage, however well provi-
sioned and prepared, they were aware that the element of good luck
would make or break their fortune, and good luck depended on God's
will (with a little extra protection from the saints). Spanish or Basque
shipowners would never have called their ships the Pelican, the Red Lion,
or the Mary and George, or the Mary Rose, even if those names sometimes
possessed a religious connotation. Nearly all Iberian owners called their
ships after saints (often the patron saint of the parish church or a local
hermitage), if they did not use either the name of Jesus, or the Trinity,
or the Three Kings, or the Conception, or the Assumption of the Virgin
Mary, and even if they sometimes abbreviated a name such as the
Buenaventura (from the official name 'Nuestra Seriora de Buenaven-
114 Selma Huxley Barkham

tura-Our Lady of Good Fortune'). Moreover, whenever they could, the


Spanish Basques would take a priest with them on a Terranova voyage,
so that he could say mass for any of the crews of ships that were in the
same harbour. Religion played a vital part in the lives of these seamen,
and it had an effect on the way they treated each other in Terranova
harbours. That, in turn, affected their behaviour towards the Native
people they met in Labrador, initially mainly the Innu.
Let me turn now to the hinterland merchants, particularly those from
the inland city of Burgos, which is one of the places that had seen the
first legal efforts to control the fatal behaviour of the conquistadores
towards Native people on the Caribbean islands. The courageous pro-
tests of the Dominican fathers had obliged the Crown to attempt to
modify abuses through the Laws of Burgos in 1512. Burgos was still at
that point one of the places where the peripatetic Spanish court could
be found, and for a variety of reasons contained a larger number of
wealthy merchants than anywhere else in Spain. Although wealth and
power moved eventually to Seville and Madrid, during the first half of
the sixteenth century Burgos was not only the epicentre of wealth but a
centre of thought, particularly on the subject of ethics and the way peo-
ple should rule their lives in practice as well as in theory. In Burgos the
writings of Erasmus were by no means unknown, and local thought was
also finding its way into pungent print, mainly written by priests, but
priests who, like Fray Luis de Maluenda, author of Leche tie la Fe (1545),
were usually the sons and grandsons of wealthy merchants.

Cristobal de Haro and Early Voyages to Canada

The first of two Burgos merchants whose mentalities I want to bring out
of semi-oblivion is Cristobal de Haro, mainly because of his enthusiastic
contribution to new geographical discoveries, but also because of his
sense of dedication to the Emperor Charles v and his sense of responsi-
bility for the men who served under him. He is one of the first Spanish
merchants who can be directly linked to early attempts at exploration of
the coasts and waters of eastern Canada. The Haro family, though based
in Burgos, had business partners or associates in all the large ports of
western Europe from Antwerp to Lisbon and Seville. So far, we know
very little about that family's activities in Flanders, where many other
Burgos merchants had representatives, but we do know that by about
1510 Cristobal de Haro had been sent to Lisbon, where he was involved
in ventures connected with the great German financiers, the Welsers
The Men behind the Spanish Voyages to Terranova 115

and the Fuggers. However, it appears that the most profitable acquain-
tanceship that Cristobal made in Lisbon was with Fernando de Magal-
lanes - Magellan, as we call him. When Magellan left Portugal for Spain
in 1517, it is clear that Cristobal de Haro took a considerable interest in
him and in his project. Haro became one of the principal investors,
along with the Bishop of Burgos, Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca, in the voy-
age that set out from Seville in 1519 and made the first circumnavigation
of the globe.
It was probably thanks to that investment that Charles v appointed
Haro as his factor in the House of the Spice Trade, which was set up in
Corunna, and that he was thus in charge of dispensing part of the
precious cargo of spices that arrived back in Seville in September 1522
from the circumnavigation of Juan Sebastian de Elcano's little ship the
Victoria. As Haro appears to have invested more money than anyone else
except the Bishop of Burgos in that successful expedition, it is not sur-
prising that the emperor from then on counted on Haro for the organi-
zation of other expeditions. In 1523, Haro was already helping with the
preparations in Corunna for the next expedition, this time northward
from Cuba up the coast of North America as far as Newfoundland
(Vigneras 1957).
On 23 April of that year, a letter was sent from Charles v in Valladolid
to Haro, reiterating that, as an agreement had been made with Esteban
Gomez to discover a new way to the Spice Islands via 'Eastern Cathay'
(presumably somewhere to the west of the 'New-found-land'), a small
ship of fifty tons was being built for this purpose, and Haro was to be
responsible for the provisioning. Moreover, because it was the em-
peror's wish that the departure should take place as soon as possible,
Haro was charged to employ himself in that matter 'with much dili-
gence' (Biggar 1913, 154).
In fact, the ship was enlarged to seventy-five tons, and Gomez, with his
twenty-nine-man crew, did not leave Corunna until September 1524,
returning in the autumn of 1525. Yet it was by no means the last time that
Haro was encouraged by Charles v to 'employ himself with much dili-
gence.' During Haro's time in charge of the House of the Spice Trade in
Corunna, which coincided with the period when the famous cartogra-
pher Diego Rivero was living and working in that city, there are indica-
tions that Haro became personally interested in the region then known
as the land of'los Bacallaos' (the cod fish) (Biggar 1913,169), and he can
hardly have avoided seeing the maps of the area that Diego Rivero was
drawing. Nor could he have overlooked the 'Indians' that Gomez
116 Selma Huxley Barkham

brought back - without permission to do so - from what was probably


either the coast of Maine or Nova Scotia. Of the fifty-eight Indians who
arrived in Corunna, at least thirty-eight were apparently still living there
(or nearby in Betanzos) eight years later in 1533. The emperor was still
concerned with the fate of those surviving Indians (whom he had rescued
from slavery), and it is probable that Haro also kept up to date with infor-
mation about their welfare (Vigneras 1957, 197-203).
Another seven years went by, and another flurry of interest in north-
eastern North America can be seen reflected in the letters of the
emperor to Haro. That set of letters (surviving from the years 1540 to
1541) demonstrates the trust in and dependence on Haro that Charles
had developed. The letters make it quite clear why the emperor relied
on Haro not only as his factor or agent in Corunna but also as an invalu-
able source of information. Like all international merchants, Haro had
his agents and associates in various European ports, and in 1540, when
persistent rumours of the preparations for Carticr and Roberval's expe-
ditions to Canada were beginning to filter down to Spain, the emperor
seems to have thought that Haro would be able to supply more detailed
knowledge of French plans than would his own ambassador to France
(Biggar 1930, 116).
In October 1540 a letter arrived in Burgos from Madrid, asking Haro
to organize what was essentially a spying expedition in northern France.
Haro's response gave the emperor satisfaction; he had already sent a
man called Pedro de Santiago up the coast as far as Rouen to glean all
the latest news. During that winter, Haro explains in his letters to
Charles that his replies had slowed down because he was unwell; in
fact Haro made his will in January. This fascinating correspondence
shows that Haro was able to send the emperor much information about
Carder's last voyage and Roberval's plans, and he was still writing to the
emperor about voyages to Canada and affairs in France in October
1541, only a month before his death (Biggar 1930, 400).
Haro's letters also show an obvious concern for Pedro de Santiago,
who had been away from Spain for more than three months on each of
his fact-finding missions and was now having legal problems because of
his absences. In early October, when the money for Santiago's third spy-
ing trip had still not arrived from the emperor, Haro himself provided
sufficient funds for Santiago's journey as well as enough money to look
after Santiago's wife while he was away (Biggar 1930, 397). On Haro's
tomb the inscription reads (in substance), 'Here lies the Senor Cristobal
de Haro, Factor of His Majesty the Emperor Charles V in the House of the
Spice Trade ... Rcgidor of Burgos ... who died in the month of November,
The Men behind the Spanish Voyages to Terranova 117

1541.' It might seem very inadequate as an epitaph if the remarkable stat-


ues of himself and his wife, Catalina de Ayala, kneeling side by side, did
not proudly adorn a small Plateresque arch on one side of the nave of the
parish church of San Lesmes, with an unostentatious but highly signifi-
cant coat of arms held up by two cherubs. Because of Haro's very large
contribution to Magellan's expedition, Charles v had given permission
for Haro to decorate his own coat of arms with a border of Magellan's five
ships around the edge and a small central shield with a design that looks
like an 'H' for Haro, but is in fact the Pillars of Hercules, depicted against
a background of strange animals and plants, some of which are appar-
ently meant to represent spice trees.
Catalina de Ayala gave birth to her ninth child soon after Cristobal
died, and one can but hope that the emperor treated her and her family
with the same generosity that Cristobal showed Pedro de Santiago's wife.
In fact, it is unlikely that she suffered from lack of funds: Haro, like Diego
de Bernuy - the next Renaissance man on our list - belonged to a group
of merchants who were outstandingly wealthy. Bernuy was one of the four
richest men in the kingdom. Both families owned country estates close to
each other, in Marmellar and Zumel, and one of the few distinguishing
features about the sources of their financial success was that whereas the
Haros had made their fortune mainly as bankers, dealing in loans and
international currency, the Bernuys had founded the beginnings of their
fortune almost entirely on woad (Barkham 1992).

Diego de Bernuy: The First Known Insurance Broker


for Terranova Voyages

Woad is a blue dye that was extracted by a long and complicated process
from the woad plant, hatis tinctoria, which was grown most successfully
and abundantly in the Provencal region of France near Toulouse and
Albi. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, branches of the Bernuy
family were comfortably ensconced both in Toulouse and in Burgos,
and had a network of agents who dealt with the export of woad particu-
larly to England and Flanders. Soon they were also importing woad
from the Azores. Because of the colossal quantity of seaborne merchan-
dise for which the Bernuys were responsible, the family (especially the
Burgos branch) became deeply involved in maritime insurance. Thus a
Burgos merchant, Diego de Bernuy, became the first man we know of to
insure voyages to Canada (Barkham 1980-1, 1992).
By 1547, when Bernuy signed the first known insurance policy for a
Terranova fishing voyage, the Bernuy family had had at least fifty years'
118 Selma Huxley Barkham

experience in the maritime insurance industry, and they had also devel-
oped a number of other financial interests. However, the reason that
prompted Bernuy to insure Terranova voyages (barely five years after
Carrier's last voyage to Canada) was not that he thought of the new
route as an exciting 'window of opportunity' but quite simply because
he wanted to do a favour for the French and Spanish Basque shipowners
whose masters and crews frequently transported his woad and other
merchandise up and down the Atlantic coast, mainly to ports between
Flanders and Seville. Because Bernuy's agents knew these mariners, who
were engaged both in coastal transport and in long-distance fishing voy-
ages, and they knew the need for insurance on transatlantic voyages,
they seem to have persuaded Bernuy to accept the new pioneer Terra-
nova route. In one case, Bernuy says in his account book that he agreed
to insure the ship of Martin Perez de Alcarreta because of his friendship
for Alcarreta's agent in Irun, Joan Perez de Berrotaran. Indeed, Bernuy
actually uses the phrase 'por el amor de el' - for his (i.e., Berrotaran's)
sake (Barkham 1994).
Many of the voyages that Bernuy insured were not just the simple
routes out to Terranova and straight back to the Basque coast. Some
were for cargoes of whale oil that were taken directly from Labrador to
London; the ship would then return to Bordeaux, San Sebastian, or
Pasajes with another cargo. One of the reasons that Basque merchants
were able to invest in long complicated voyages and were able to send
larger and better ships than other merchants for both cod fishing and
whaling in Terranova was because wealthy Burgos merchants were able
to make good any losses if a ship went down. The coverage that Bernuy
and his fellow underwriters pioneered was useful for nearly half a cen-
tury, until the effects of a disastrous financial slump in Burgos reduced
many of the brokers to bankruptcy.
According to contemporary moralists, the profession of insurance
broker was considered high on the list of meritorious ways of earning a
living. The higher the risk involved, the more a decent profit could be
justified. To quote the 1538 Ordinances of the Burgos Consulado:
'Insurance is a very necessary thing so that merchants are preserved
from harm and can be durable and permanent in their trade and com-
merce, and may have a fraternal unity of purpose among each other for
the betterment of all' (Garcia de Quevedo 1905, 151). However unfash-
ionable it may be nowadays to accept that the simple tenets of Christian-
ity had such power over men's minds, it is an inescapable fact that the
warnings of contemporary moralists were listened to and obeyed by
many, even if not all, sixteenth-century businessmen. Although power
The Men behind the Spanish Voyages to Terranova 119

seeking and a desire for upward mobility are often given as the main
incentives for merchant behaviour, another motivation cannot be suffi-
ciently stressed: a belief in the moral obligation of the rich to help the
poor, or, as can be seen in the actions of Haro and Bernuy, the obliga-
tion of the employer to help the people in his service, combined with an
overarching sense of the importance of finding a way to be useful to the
whole community.
Two brief examples illustrate the sort of practical generosity shown by
Burgos merchants. The first is a decree that affected all the members of
the merchants guild - that on the Feast Day of St Michael, the day that
the prior and the consuls of the Consulado were normally elected, the
traditional banquet should no longer take place. Instead, the money
formerly spent on copious quantities of food for an enormous feast was
to be better employed in a charitable way 'in the service of God,' provid-
ing food for the poor or the sick (Garcia de Quevedo 1905, 179). In a
similarly charitable spirit, Diego de Bernuy announced that he was
going to give something important to his city, and he built the largest
hospital in Burgos: the Hospital de la Concepcion. The preamble to the
official donation began in this way:

I, Diego de Bernuy, burgess and Regidor of this City of Burgos, Seigneur of


the towns of Benameji and Alcala, considering the great mercies that from
the most liberal hand of God I have received, and how abundantly he has
shared out His temporal wealth with me through His bounty and kindness
without any merit of mine, and knowing that He has done this not in order
that I should show off my goods and spend them for my own contentment,
but so that I should spend them as a good administrator ...7

And so it behoved him to build the hospital.


Long after Diego de Bernuy had died, it was in a corner of that hospi-
tal that St Teresa de Jesus and her little band of nuns stayed when they
first arrived in Burgos. She said that she had always heard how generous
the inhabitants were - but she had never believed their charity would be
so great (Teresa de Jesus 1982, 277). Indeed, Burgos had a tremendous
reputation not just among nuns and priests but among people such as
Jean Alphonse, the pilot for Roberval on the Canadian voyage in 1542,
who stated that Burgos was the place where the merchants were more
responsible and more loyal than anywhere else in Spain (Alphonse
1559, 14). It little matters whether Alphonse was talking as a Portuguese
or as a Frenchman; it is clear that Burgos was respected by seamen and
merchants of all nationalities.
12O Selma Huxley Barkham

The Merchant Mariners' Friendship with the Innu

Although Burgos had no close geographic connection to the sea like


London or Bordeaux, nor a river connection like the Seine for Paris,
the Rhone for Lyons, or the Garonne for Toulouse, nevertheless it was
able to call its Chamber of Commerce a 'Consulado del Mar,' and its
merchants were constantly aware both of the economic climate on the
coast and the changes in the political climate that could result in pro-
longed embargoes or piracy. Then, as now, maritime disaster could
shake the insurance market, but Burgos merchants were not only
inspired by profits or depressed by losses. They were also moved by that
special Renaissance emotion born of a sharp awareness of newly emerg-
ing geography: a sense of being in the forefront of discovery. Brand new
place-names were being appended to what appeared, from a European
point of view, to be brand new parts of the world. Instead of the tradi-
tional destinations for which most shipowners had normally bought
insurance, there were suddenly some strange new ports - a 'Grand Bay
of Terranova' and harbours called, for instance, 'Los Homos' and 'Bui-
tres,' to name but two of the dozen or more harbours on the Strait of
Belle Isle used by Basque fishermen (Barkham 1977). At the same time
that this new information was being brought back across the Atlantic,
and passed on through the fishermen's agents on the coast to mer-
chants in Burgos, so also the Native people who lived near the 'channel
of Grand Bay,' and who were becoming quite accustomed to the yearly
visitors from across the sea, passed on new information, and sometimes
unusual goods, to tribes who were living far from the sea.
Of course by the 15605 Terranova was no longer a new destination. A
second generation of merchants had become interested in the Terra-
nova run. A great deal more was known about conditions on the western
side of the Atlantic, and very large amounts of money were being made
from what had become an important whale-oil industry in Labrador.
Soon after the death of Diego de Bernuy, during the winter season of
1565-6 another regidor of Burgos, Antonio de Salazar and his partner,
Geronimo de Salamanca Santa Cruz, sent more than 10,000 ducats'
worth of whale oil up to Antwerp in four Basque ships. Meanwhile men
such as Juan de la Salde, the treasurer of Burgos, who owned several
large ships, sent some of them off whaling in Labrador before dispatch-
ing them south to take part in the Carrera de las Indias, the West Indies
run (Barkham 1994, 547).
More than thirty years had gone by since the first written reports had
been brought back about the people who lived in that part of Terranova
The Men behind the Spanish Voyages to Terranova 121

where the whale oil came from (Grand Bay). However it was not until
1571, when Esteban de Garibay's Compendia Historial was printed in
Antwerp, that a description was published in Spanish that mentioned
the Labrador whaling industry or the people who lived in Labrador.
Though contemporary descriptions of conditions in Labrador are few,
any references we have found clearly emphasize the peaceful coexist-
ence between Basques and Innu.
Between 1537, when Robert Lefant first met and talked with the Innu
on the St Paul River estuary, and 1625, when Lope de Isasti described
the Innu as being both 'Mountain people' and 'People of the Canal,'
there seems to have been extraordinary harmony between fishermen
and 'Yndios,' a harmony that seems to have extended happily into the
eighteenth century, when a Basque family from Bayonne, the Ber-
houagues, lived with a large encampment of Innu alongside their house
at Brador. So far, the only known exception to what appears to have
been a policy of intelligent friendship - and non-interference -
occurred when a merchant mariner, Captain Francisco de Sorarte, took
an Innu family back to Deva in the mid-seventeenth century (Esnaola
1927, 81-4). That was the first time we know of in more than a century
of cultural interchange that an active effort was made by Spanish
Basques to convert any Innu.
If there had been any other attempts at conversion before 1625, it is
almost certain that Lope de Isasti (a priest living in Lezo on the harbour
of Pasajes, where ships returning from Terranova were constantly being
moored) would have known about potential missionary activity and
would have expressed an opinion on the subject. Instead, he simply
wrote about the way the Montaneses helped the fishermen who were cur-
ing and drying fish on the beaches in return for some ship's biscuit and
cider (Isasti 1850, 154) .8 This is exactly the same sort of friendly inter-
change that Robert Lefant and Clemente de Odeliza had reported
when they were describing conditions in the Strait of Belle Isle in 1542
(Biggar 1930, 453, 462). The philosophy of 'do as you would be done by'
appears to have applied equally to the way both Native inhabitants and
Basque fishermen treated each other. For instance, the Innu always
came to warn the Basques if there was any danger of impending attack
by the 'Eskimaos.' This reciprocal action continued into the eighteenth
century, constituting two hundred years of cordial relations.
Although there certainly were occasional disagreements between
Basques in Labrador about who was the rightful owner of a mislaid shal-
lop or a dead whale, there seem to have been relatively few disturbing
disputes. Basque fishermen were not all angels, any more than all Bur-
122 Selma Huxley Barkham

gos merchants were saints, but when a modus vivendi broke down, prob-
lems were almost always reflected in a lawsuit, and the legal process
would appear to have been remarkably civilized. Because it was impor-
tant to be in a happy ship, Basque merchant mariners nearly always took
several members of their own family with them as part of the crew, and
there is only one known example of a mutiny. In that case, a crew
refused to stay on for the winter whaling season because of a disastrous
event during the previous winter of 1576-7: an unusually early onset of
winter conditions caught several ships in ice in Labrador harbours, and
a great many wintering fishermen died as a result. However, under nor-
mal circumstances the crews were always keen to join Terranova voy-
ages, which would appear to be another reason for supposing that the
long periods spent in Terranova were not unpleasant. As Montaigne
said of the need for harmony on shipboard, 'Marchants that travell by
sea, have reason to take heede, that those which goe in the same ship,
be not dissolute, blasphemers, and wicked, judging such companie
unfortunate' (Montaigne 1603, Bk. 1, 118). Montaigne would certainly
have known about conditions on transatlantic crossings. Basque mari-
ners took over to Terranova the ship that had been christened by-
Montaigne's sister-in-law, Seraine d'Esteve (Bernard 1968, 737). Indeed,
Montaigne had rather more in common with northern Spanish mer-
chants and mariners than his alliance with a family that owned cod-
fishing and whaling ships. Montaigne's mother, Antoinette Lopez de
Villanova or Villeneuve, was from a Spanish Converso Jewish family
quite similar to that of the Bernuys (who were also of Jewish origin),
while his father came from a long line of Bordeaux merchants.
If I may treat Montaigne as an honorary Spanish merchant, I shall
end on a comparison between his attitude to the people so often called
'savages,' and those of other Renaissance men, such as Robert Lefant
and Clemente de Odeliza, who had often met and talked with the
Montaneses in Labrador. After discussing the opinions expressed by the
'Indians' that Montaigne had met (probably Tupinambas in Rouen or
Bordeaux), he said he was grieved that by prying so narrowly into their
faults 'we are so blinded in ours.' Then, with his usual sense of humour,
he opined that their arguments were very sensible in spite of the fact
that they wore 'no kinde of breeches or hosen' (Montaigne 1603, Bk. i,
104, 107). His statements are almost identical to those of Clemente dc
Odeliza, who was most impressed by the fact that the Montaneses were
very intelligent and resourceful ... 'for men dressed in skins' (Biggar
1930, 462-3). Four centuries ago, the merchant mariners of northern
Spain and southwestern France were able to comment positively on the
The Men behind the Spanish Voyages to Terranova 123

3 Innu tents beside a Basque dwelling, Strait of Belle Isle. Detail from 'Carte
paticuliere depuis la riviere des Esquimaux jusqu'a la pointe Belsamon dans le
golfe de St Laurent a 50° '/> du nord.' France, Service Historique, de 1'Armee de
Terre (cote 7 b 67).

remarkable qualities of the men they had met on the south coast of
Labrador. Because those merchant mariners considered generosity and
a sense of service to be prime virtues, the same virtues were recognized
in the Innu - for instance, in the way the Innu shared food or collabo-
rated in some of the daily tasks of the Basque fishermen.
The remarkable harmony that still existed in the first half of the eigh-
teenth century between Innu hunters and Labrador fishermen - who
were still often, though not exclusively, Basque - is beautifully depicted
on the map from the Ministere de la Guerre in Paris, showing the north-
west corner of the Strait of Belle Isle (figure 3). On that map, two lines
of large Innu tents can be seen, labelled 'Cabanes des Sauvages.' They
look considerably more impressive than the little house of M. de Courte-
124 Selma Huxley Barkham

manche, the stepfather of Francois Martel de Berhouague (a Basque


from a Bayonne family). That the Innu were living peacefully side-by-
side with a small group of Europeans could not be more evident.
It is most unfortunate that there is no parallel for this eighteenth-
century map to illustrate life in the twentieth century. The combination
of mining, hydroelectric development, low-level flying, and the invasion
of Innu hunting grounds by roads and 'tourist' facilities has made a con-
genial sharing of land and resources well-nigh impossible. Unless there
is a change in the mentality of the modern 'invaders,' the future for the
Innu looks bleak and desolate. One cannot help wishing that there were
more people nowadays with the generous mentality of the early Basque
merchant mariners in Labrador.

NOTES

1 'There is certainly no question that the Inuits' initial response to strangers was
immediate open attack or deadly ambush,' says Renee Fossett. 'The Inuit set-
tled into peaceful relations with strangers only after they were convinced that
they had more to gain economically by peaceful trade and welfare than they
had by snatch and grab tactics (personal communication).' See Fossett 2OO1.
2 Giving evidence about a last testament written in Carrol Cove on 24 Decem-
ber 1584, Domingo de Miranda explained that the will was written by the
ship's surgeon, Joan de Arriaga, because 'neither in the said ship nor in the
said harbour there was not any Royal Notary ... nor are there any in the
Province of Terranova because it is a land belonging to Savages' ([Barkham]
Huxley 1987, 117).
3 The Burgos merchants formed what they called the 'Consulado del Mar.' For
a catalogue of their archives see Pedraza Prades and Ballesteros Caballero
1990.
4 See the last will of J.M. de Larnime, Archive Historico de Protocolos de
Guipuzcoa, S.S. 1803, ff. 38-40*.
5 Burgos, Archive del Consulado de Burgos, Legajo 3, frontispiece.
6 Burgos, Archive del Consulado de Burgos, Legajo 4, frontispiece.
7 Archive Municipal de Burgos, No. 705 - H.C., 8 December 1561, my
translation.
8 Writing in about 1625, Isasti actually says that the Innu would not have known
what a priest was. This is surprising, as in the mid-sixteenth century several
priests are known to have been in Labrador as chaplains on whaling vessels
(Isasti 1850, 164).
Relocating Terra Firma:
William Vaughan's Newfoundland
Anne Lake Prescott

For the past few decades, scholars have been deducing from early mod-
ern texts the cultural myths sustaining or reflecting early modern explo-
ration and colonization.1 In much of this mythology the western
hemisphere is a transplanted Eden and a female body. Michael Drayton,
for example, calls Virginia 'earth's only paradise,' even as he mentions,
perhaps with irony, the English cannon roaring offshore; Walter
Ralegh, notoriously, declares that Guiana 'hath yet her maidenhead.'
For Robert Hayman, to whom Francis Drake once gave an orange when
the future governor of the Harbour Grace plantation was a boy in
Devonshire, Newfoundland is a scruffy wench who, with good hus-
bandry and terraforming, might be made comely.* Richard Whit-
bourne's A discourse and discovery of New-found-land (1620) is more
gallant: Newfoundland is our sweet 'Sister-land1 who 'lies, as it were,
with open armes towards England, offering it selfe to be imbraced, and
inhabited by us' (Cell 1982, 165, i l l ) . Such myths read America in
terms of a familiar sexual relation, but also in terms of ancient Euro-
pean or biblical places of beauty and safety, so that westward sailing
Europeans could find themselves, conceptually arid what one might call
geomythically, going east. The process, if not exactly a decentring, sug-
gests a more paradoxical orientation in time and space than we some-
times allow.
In this essay I will look at such acrobatics of the imagination in
the works of one would-be colonizer, the poet and essayist William
Vaughan, who early in the seventeenth century founded a settlement in
Whitbourne's 'Sister-land' (favoured, however, with few profitable
embracings) .3 His version of America is related to those of Drayton,
Ralegh, and others, but it bears his own stamp: largely unexcited by
126 Anne Lake Prescott

Newfoundland as an inviting female body, his heart was fired by the


thought of British investors and settlers in Newfoundland as new Argo-
nauts. Vaughan's writings express multiple perspectives, if from a van-
tage point still centred in Britain, making a knot of thoughts on fiction
and actuality, east and west, there and here, then and now. Psychologi-
cally, Newfoundland clearly decentred Vaughan's imagination, extend-
ing his desire and mental sight over waters he probably never crossed
himself but that were emotionally significant to him, appealing to his
poetic fancy quite as much as to his economic and national interests.
Vaughan's writings demonstrate how intricate was the tangle of literary
fantasy and economic desire that Canada could elicit in Old World
minds. The tangle is both temporal and spatial. In Vaughan's mind, set-
tling Newfoundland is a re-enactment of antiquity: as Jason once sought
the golden fleece in Colchis, east of the Black Sea in what is now Geor-
gia, so brave modern Britons could seek a golden land to the west. The
discovery of America is an innovation, but reaching and exploiting it is
also a recovery, aversion of Renaissance imitatio and recuperation, even
if what is recovered is, in part of Vaughan's mind, not romantically
mythological but an early example of trailblazing commercial adven-
ture. (Another advantage of this particular myth was its aid in subtly
redefining invasion and colonization as the taking back of goods
wrongly held; Jason's demand had been, after all, that a fleece from a
flying Greek ram, or at least one that had taken off from Greece carry-
ing two Greeks, be handed over to a Greek hero.)
For Vaughan, moreover, Newfoundland offers an opportunity to name
a new world literally in terms of the old; for this colonist was self-
consciously a Welsh patriot who, although he never quite spells this out,
seems to have thought of Newfoundland as providing a chance to expand
the Cymric people further west, almost like another Brute with new Tro-
jans. Domestically, Vaughan's outlook was culturally and politically
decentred, even marginalized: although a gentleman, he had lived in a
society that enjoyed anti-Welsh jokes, and his was a conquered people.
The point needs stressing. When trying to avoid the temptation so often
shown by Europeans and their descendants to generalize about New
World 'Indians' as though there were no differences among Native peo-
ples, it is all too easy, when the scholarly perspective glass is reversed, to
generalize about 'European' colonists and explorers. Vaughan reads
himself and his settlement-Cambriola- as Welsh; even when he praises
the Stuarts' United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland,
he has a strikingly strong ethnic consciousness and superimposes on his
William Vaughan's Newfoundland 127

part of Newfoundland not a little bit of England but a little bit of Wales.
There is, however, another political perspective to note: when Vaughan
publicizes Newfoundland by treating it as a new Colchis, land of the
golden fleece and destination of Jason's heroic Argonauts, he appropri-
ates for Great Britain, and not just for Wales, imagery already exploited
by the Hapsburgs. As heirs of the Burgundian dukes, who founded the
chivalric Order of the Golden Fleece, Charles v and his successors had
called themselves newjasons who could send forth new Argosies to find
the New World gold that they claimed was rightly theirs as rulers of a west-
ward moving imperium inherited from Troy and Rome (M. Tanner 1993).
Vaughan, too, transports Colchis beyond the Pillars of Hercules, but he
also moves it well to the north of Spanish mines in the New World and
thus implicitly transfers a set of myths and claims from the Hapsburgs to
the Stuarts. Just as Francis Drake had diverted Spanish gold to English
purses, Vaughan redirects chivalric and imperial myths long cherished in
Burgundy, the Holy Roman Empire, and Spain.
Vaughan was not alone in reading the New World in terms of older
books. As Anthony Grafton, among others, has demonstrated, Europe-
ans experienced the New World not only through a grid of cultural
assumptions but through familiar texts (Grafton, Shelford, and Siraisi
1992). But Vaughan's own geoliterary translation of a founding Euro-
pean myth is not just fancy allegorical drapery over ordinary woods,
rocks, and sea. For him, the myth is really history: he reads the Argosy
euhemeristically, as a veiled account of heroic Greek efforts to open up
new trade routes. Vaughan allegorizes his own historical moment by
attaching it to a myth that he reads as allegorizing an older but analo-
gous historical moment. Jason was an earlier William Vaughan, not a
fantasized and fantasizing romantic. As I will show, Vaughan in fact goes
out of his way to define his settlement as a non-Utopia, a non-Chimera.
Reimagining for Newfoundland a famous ancient voyage, he simulta-
neously claims that the New World wilderness is real estate in every
sense: its value lies precisely in its solidity compared to courtly fantasy,
poetic fictions, philosophical fancies, pipe dreams. Why settle for a
feigned Utopia if you can settle in Canada? Fantasy is a problematic and
dangerous part of the mind, apt to delude the commonwealth and dis-
tract the soul. Newfoundland is stable and offers room for Britain's
excess population, trees to make up for the deforestations Vaughan
laments, and substantial profits from fish. May the flighty gentlemen of
Britain take note and channel their energies towards a terra nova that is
terra firma. The paradox is worth emphasis because of its relevance to
128 Anne Lake Prescott

our own efforts to understand how early modern colonizers could imag-
ine their enterprises: for Vaughan, British hopes for Newfoundland cen-
tre on what feels firm, whereas life on his side of the ocean is too often
beset by illusion. It may be wise to remember this (illusory) conviction
that life in Canada would be somehow solider than in Britain, even if
also somehow glamorously golden and mythic, for we are seldom used
to thinking of reality as an escape from fantasy, and those studying Euro-
pean explorers often emphasize the role in their imaginations of mar-
vels and dreams.
Some facts: born in 1577 to a family with aristocratic ties (his older
brother was made Earl of Carbery and he himself was eventually
knighted), Vaughan attended Oxford, travelled on the Continent, and
developed strong opinions on everything from university tutors to the
medicinal value of garlic (Pritchard 1962, 6, 9-11; Cell 1982, 1-59;
Vaughan 1630, A5-A8). He began writing poetry early, publishing Latin
verses when he was twenty and eventually calling himself 'Orpheus Jun-
ior' after the poet who sangjason's Argonauts across the waves. In 1617,
soon after the Newfoundland Company was incorporated, he sponsored
a settlement on land in the southern part of the territory, not only call-
ing it 'Cambriola' in honour of Wales but putting a further impress on
the land, as is the privilege of a founder, by naming parts of it Vaughan's
Cove and Golden Grove (for his family's Welsh estate).
It may be that Vaughan did not see Newfoundland with his own eyes,
although the epigram by Robert Hayman that I quote below, sometimes
cited as proof of this, does not quite say that he never went there. But
even after the venture failed and the colony was reorganized in 1619, he
retained his enthusiasm and continued to publish works supporting the
settlement. In the mid-i620s he published two works that are part of a
small flurry of texts dealing with Newfoundland. One is Cambrensium
Carolda (1625), Latin verses on Charles j's marriage and other topics; it
includes a map drawn by John Mason, the Newfoundland Company's
second governor and future founder of New Hampshire (figure 4). The
other is The Golden Fleece (Vaughan i626a, recycling some of the earlier
work), which reports on the benefits to be found in that true Colchis,
Newfoundland - a prize to be won with the help of a king and his richer
subjects, but with no role in this revised myth for a Medea. Vaughan
must have been busy in those years, for he also did an adaptation of Tra-
jano Boccalini's Ragguagli di Parnaso (Vaughan i626b).4 Then, in 1630,
he published The Newlanders cure, last in a series of medical texts. By 1641
he was dead.
William Vaughan's Newfoundland 129

4 William Vaughan's Newfoundland: Captain John Mason's map from Vaughan's


Cambrensium Caroleia (1625). Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, STC
24604.

Golden Grove, Colchis, Orpheus: plainly, Vaughan was moved by old


stories. On fantasy itself he was divided. He loved poetry and was drawn
- despite strong doubts - to such works as More's Utopia and Rabclais's
Pantagruel. At the same time, like so many in his culture (not least those
affected by the Reformation's preference for the ear over the eye, the
Word over icons and images), he was deeply troubled by whatever is
cloudy, smoky, flittering upward into the ether from the top part of the
brain, where physiologists located the fantasy.•' Despite his self-declared
identity as a junior Orpheus, Vaughan's books throughout his career
are impatient with the deceptions of the imagination, with slanders,
false genealogies, nowhere societies, popish delusions, gunpowder inge-
nuity, tobacco dreams, love poetry, lying tales.'" As early as his Golden-
grove (1600), he had shown this not uncommon bias against the fantas-
tic. He is happy to quote such fictions as Sidney's Arcadia, but when cit-
ing More he likes to refer to the 'faigned Utopians,' in one case adding
'But I leave the Utopians to their nullibies [nowheres].' 7 Predictably, he
assumes that 'stageplaies are nothing els, but pompes and showes, in
130 Anne Lake Prescott

which there is a declining from our [Christian] beleefe,' for 'while we


be at the stage, wee are ravished with the love thereof, according to the
wise mans wordes: It is a pastime for a foole to do wickedly [Prov. 10.23]'.
and so in laughing at filthy things, we sinnc' (Ki).
In 1611, he published The spirit of detraction conjured, written after his
wife had been killed by a bolt of lightning and in answer to calumniat-
ing neighbours who had been whispering against her, passing around
fictions, smoke, fantasy, 'vaine rumours' from what Vaughan inventively
calls 'bruitish motithes' (Vaughan 1611, f4 v ). In this work, he also
reveals his distress with effeminate courtiers who should find something
better to do than to sit around gossiping, drinking, indulging in 'idle fits
of jollity,' deriving their lineage from Gargantua, telling 'tales of Robin-
hood,' filling their 'mustie mindes' with smoke, and 'carousing' in what
a lovely pun calls their Tobachanales' (4V, A2, Vv2). Other 'phantasti-
call spirits' (H4) vex him too. Printing has given the devil new weap-
onry, and while this may be seen at its worst in, say, Aretino and
Rabelais, even 'the best of us sometimes hee possesseth, with Chymeriz-
ing ploddings, like ayrie castles, and nibles (as a Mouse) on our malig-
nant hearts' (I3 V ). Britain is pestered by new-fangled dress from the
'busie-headed French' (Ni); by lying Catholic stories; by blasphemous
magic from the likes of Cornelius Agrippa; by that work of misapplied
ingenuity, gunpowder (R2); by Circe-touched monsters of the spirit,
Titans, Cyclops; by a tendency towards 'petulance and democraticail
loosenesse' (V3); and by far too much talk rather than honest deeds,
not least from the 'Utopian Chymerizing Schollers' who should stop
interfering in politics (Ss4v). The book ends with a parodic exorcism in
which Vaughan 'conjures' the diabolical spirit of Detraction — 'Pan-
tagruell,' as he remarkably calls this 'limmc of that mighty Leviathan' -
and expels his 'stings, tuskes, clawes, contradictions, carpings, calumna-
tions, and cavillations of savage people, of Aristarches, of Catoes, of
Momistes, of Monsters, and Usurpers' in the name of the Holy Trinity
(ZZi v -ZZs). No wonder that Newfoundland could seem such a refuge,
such an opportunity both for starting over and for reviving lost heroics.
Whatever its hyperbole and fanciful gesticulations (stuffed, excessive,
bulging, oddly playful in its anger, the long work is a sort of Menippean
satire), Detraction conjured gives the impression of a mind genuinely agi-
tated by Britain's social and cultural world and by the human wit's
capacity to invent, babble, and hanker after what is unreal. What he says
about Newfoundland is not merely promotional reassurance to politi-
cally and economically powerful investors or potential investors. Solidity
William Vaughan's Newfoundland 131

appealed to him intellectually and emotionally, and so Orpheus Junior


sings a paradoxical myth of Canadian substantiality, as though this new
Colchis were more real than fantasy-haunted Britain.
Vaughan's Newfoundland is real, solid, with lots of space, trees, and
fish. One can make real and useful maps of it (not the joking kind,
Vaughan may have thought, like those printed in the satirist Joseph
Hall's Mundus alter et idem, 1605). And it will reward practical action with
real profits. Vaughan's colleagues, if less moved than he by the Argo-
naut myth, adopt some of his attitudes, attitudes all the more touching-
in retrospect - when one remembers that the settlements were now in
such trouble. In liminary poems before Cambrensium Caroleia, John Guy,
the Newfoundland Company's first governor and author of a journal
about his experiences in 1612, calls Vaughan a Madoc, after the legend-
ary Welsh traveller to the Americas, and expects 'Terra Nova' to be 'Non
... inferior Colchidi.' In the same group of poems, John Mason says of
the Cambriolan Plantation that he thinks Vaughan, this other Orpheus,
justified in calling the settlement Colchis: its land and waters will give
gold ('Aurum Terra Salumque dabunt'). Such profits were not to be.
Hayman penned a consoling epigram encouraging Vaughan to visit
Newfoundland: mere 'tradesmen' would have been heartbroken,

Yet you proceed with person, purse and penne,


Fitly attended with laborious men.
Goe on, wise Sir, with your old, bold, brave Nation [i.e., Wales]
To yovir new Cambriolls rich Plantation,
Let Dolphins dance before you in the floods,
And play you, Orpheus Junior, in her woods. (Hayman 1628, Bk. 2, no. 87)

The last lines recall how, says Apollonius of Rhodes in Argonautica i:


573-4, fish sported around the Argo as Orpheus struck his lyre.
Vaughan had written a liminary poem for Quodlibets (Hayman 1628, A3V)
on how Hayman intends no 'Castles in the aire' but a practical endeav-
our involving digging the soil, uprooting trees, and showing how to 'cut
off suites and strife' in Britain.
More than his friends, though, Vaughan stresses what Newfoundland
is not at one point Euphrosyne, one of the Graces, is made to say 'Not
here do I feign ['fingo'] a Utopia; I avoid the phantasms of Plato; nor
do I sing beyond the material, the earthy: "nil praeter materiale cano"'
(Vaughan 1625, El). That is why one poem in Cambrensium Caroleia says
that transferring criminals to colonies in Newfoundland would usefully
132 Anne Lake Prescott

diminish their number at home, and other lines praise the New World's
utilitas, its fish and wood, or speak slightingly of 'Aequivocata scholis'
and similar 'Chimeras' (E6-E8, F2). Newfoundland is not only spatially
more substantial than school paradoxes and the Chimera; it is also more
fully present temporally. In a version of the ubi sunt topos, one of
Vaughan's friends, addressing 'Orpheus Junior,' asks 'where are now to
be found the Colossus of Phoebus, the great Lighthouse, the temple of
Jove? Hardly a trace remains of Troy. And who will show you the first
Colchis or the Mausoleum? But happy thou, who offerest Colchis, this
Solomon's Ophir, to the king' (H3V-H4). Again, old European and bib-
lical localities are relocated, and resolidified, in time and space.
The three parts of Vaughan's Golden Fleece (i626a) recount conversa-
tions among such celebrities as the poets Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund
Spenser at the court of Apollo, the third part - to which those studying
early British colonization might pay more attention - being devoted to
Newfoundland. Apollo or no Apollo, Vaughan's sometimes engaging
work still shows the author's old distrust of fantasy. Again, Newfound-
land is real, material: 'This no Eutopia is, nor Common-wealth / Which
Plato faign'd,' he writes the king in a poem reworking one already pub-
lished in Cambrensium Caroleia, for 'Wee bring Your Kingdomes health /
By true Receits.' For good measure, the following poem says it again in
Latin: 'Non hie Eutopiam, non hie Phantasma Platonis, / Regi nil
pra[e]ter materiale damus' (here is no Eutopia or Platonic phantasm,
for we give the king nothing more than matter, substance; Vaughan
i626a, a2v-a3). And a wise king, Vaughan has just said, 'will preferre /
Of Practick Art before all Dreames, that erre' (a2). A preface complains
of life in Britain: idle, fashion-driven, and forgetful of social hierarchy
(Canada's wilderness held no egalitarian charms for Vaughan, who
liked his universe ranked in comely vertical strata). Vaughan's tripartite
tract, he explains, will tell first how 'to remove the Errours of Religion,'
next reform 'the Diseases of the Common-wealth,' and last 'discover the
certainty of the Golden Fleece, which shall restore us to all worldly Hap-
pinesse' (a4 v ).
After thus summoning the New World to the rescue and ransom of
the Old, Vaughan attacks his detractors as lazy cowards who prefer idle
thoughts or sensuous artifice to work and risk. In an energetic mixture
of common proverb and Greek mythology, he says to 'the uncharita-
ble Readers or Deriders of our Golden Fleece that they want 'to reape
the fruits of all painfull Trades without wetting your Cats feet, though
the Fish bee never so dearely prized.' But you
William Vaughan's Newfoundland 133

who repose your chiefest Felicitie in playing on the Violl of Fraud, and in
idealizing a painted Strumpet, come not at Colchos, nor presume yee
once, more then Tantalus, to touch the Golden Apples of our Hesperides.
There lies a Couple of Dragons in the way ... The Place is not for you. They
that labour not with sweate, shall not taste of our Sweete ... As a blacke
Sheepe among some of you is accounted a perillous beast; no lesse
offensive is the grimme Porter of the Golden He. Yea and the Ramme,
which beares the precious Fleece [the ocean, I assume], hath Homes more
piercing then Pikes to assault the assaylant Lozell. (Vaughan i6s6a, bi)

So go ahead and wallow in your bewitched 'Epicurean and Swinish


shape.' The epistle ends with a brief metrical lament that Vaughan says
the clown Tarlton recited to an unreceptive provincial audience:

I liv'd not in that Golden Age,


When Jason wonne the Fleece.
But now I am on Got[h]ams Stage,
Where Fooles doe hisse like Geese. (b2v)

The inhabitants of Gotham, famed in legend and jest for nearly preter-
natural stupidity, are dolts, certainly, but also rustic: unlike the Argo-
nauts they stay blockishly at home.
Liminary poems by Vaughan's collaborators in the efforts to settle
Newfoundland confirm the text's sustaining myth: 'We need not now
complaine for want of Trade,' says John Guy,

Sith from the West we golden wares may lade;


Which Orpheus shewes in this his Golden Fleece,
A Trade more rich, then Jason brought to Greece
From Golchos Land. (b3)

'Orpheus,' says Stephen Berrier in a poem comparing Vaughan to Her-


cules,

Now forsaking Easterne Greece,


From Westerne Colchos brings the Golden Fleece;
Which no Eutopia is, nor Fairy-land,
Yet Colchos in Elisian Fields doth stand.
If Hercules won 'Hesperian Apples,' this
Orpheus greater Gaine doth us allot.
134 Anne Lake Fresco It

For which let Paris judge, who now shall have


The Golden Apple, which the World doth crave? (bg)

And John Mason reports that his heart leaps to hear praises of 'That
hopefull Land, which Winters sixe I tri'd.' Suggesting the somewhat
contradictory aims 'of Fame, of quiet Life, or Gaine,' he urges us to

... joyne to seeke this Golden Fleece,


The like ne'ere came from Colchis into Greece.
Orpheus removes all Errours from the way,
And how this Land shall thrive, he doth bewray. (b3v)

Newfoundland, for Mason, is of intense commercial interest and yet sat-


isfyingly nonmonetary in the sense that extracting its wealth does not
require an actual exchange of money in the New World itself: 'Thus ships
& coine increase, when least we thought, / For Fish and Traines
Exchange, and all unbought' (b3v).8 Newfoundland is golden, Colchoid,
but in fleecing it we make wealth move in just one direction: out. We are
commercial, and poetical; the land is Elysian, and substantial.
Much of the discussion in the third part of Golden Fleece is down-to-
earth in an often imaginative dialogue among such dead notables as
John Florio, Edmund Plowden, Francis Drake, Martin Frobisher, and all
four patron saints of what Vaughan sees as a United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland. Golden Fleece is, after all, in part a political invest-
ment brochure. Colonizing the new Colchis will, Orpheus Junior and
his friends tell members of Apollo's court, 'restore' Britain to health, a
useful reminder that some early colonizing derived not from tumescent
national pride but rather from a nervous conviction that a troubled and
enervated nation had gone downhill. Settlements will revive northern
Europe's recently tattered trade, relieve Britain's wretched poverty, pro-
vide fresh wood to a nation that has improvidently exhausted its own
supply, promote charity by generating wealth that might be distributed
to needy Christians, and lighten the Norman yoke of primogeniture
(Bbl>3; Vaughan was a younger son and not alone in his anger).
True, there are pirates and interlopers, which is why Orpheus Junior
wants support from the government. And, yes, the New World has 'sav-
ages,' 'savages' with whom he mentions that there is barter - in other
words, a real economic relationship that Vaughan's New World myth of
unbought bounty glides past (Ddd4v-Eeei). But those 'rude Nations'
may be made civilized and, of course, brought to understand the Gos-
William Vaughan's Newfoundland 135

pel. It is Sir Ferdinando Gorges whom Vaughan imagines saying this


about New England, though, Orpheus Junior himself pays much more
attention to the way sending his countrymen to Newfoundland might
influence Britain than to what the British are to do with anybody already
living or hunting there. The area's indigenous peoples (who did not in
any case inhabit his own particular lands) seem not to interest him
much, and in this he is quite unlike Thomas Hariot, say, examining
and quoting the inhabitants of what we now call Virginia, or Richard
Whitbourne, whose A discourse and discovery of New-found-land (1620)
describes the Beothuk. Rather, Vaughan seems pleasurably moved by
the thought that all humanity is descended from immigrants, divided
from each other by God when he confounded our languages at Babel so
that 'the glory of his power might be noised in all Regions, and the
sound of his Name, throughout all Nations. This made Saturne to plant
in Italy. This made Hercules to travell to the Atlantique lies ... This
made Jason with his brave Fleete of Argonautickes to saile into Colchos,
in hope of a perpetuall Trade for the Gold of that place with his Grecian
Commodities' (Vaughan i626a, Eeei v ). (Note the evasive jump from
the early colonizing of empty land to more recent trade with already set-
tled local inhabitants.) We in Britain 'are not Natives, but after many
hands led into this Kingdome' (Eeeiv-Eee2). Modern colonists pursue
an ancient imperative. Yet, with more patriotism than consistency,
Vaughan is also distressed that so many Britons now seek their fortunes
in 'Popish and Moorish Countries ... in time forgoing the memory of
their naturall Mother-tongue, as of the t[r]ue Faith, wherein they were
baptized!' (Eee2). Far better to try Newfoundland.
Vaughan's own migrating 'Argonautickes,' then, have emotionally
resonant predecessors in the dark backward and abysm of time. (Nor -
since the real Colchis had far more lumber, pitch, and hemp than
golden fleeces, dragons, or beautiful witches - is his euhemerism unjus-
tified.) Near the start of part 3, moreover, Orpheus Junior explains that
going to Newfoundland is not spiritual exile, for 'I see the same God
overlooking Newfoundland, which overlookes Europe, and all the world
over.'Jesuits understand this, which is why there are now some Chinese
and Japanese Christians, but too many English gentlemen are 'given to
lazinesse, and the love of their dunghils at home' (Aaa4v). The poor do
not have the means to settle in the Americas, while the rich lie 'besotted
with the lullabies of carnall ease.' Meanwhile, for the enterprising, New-
foundland 'is our Colchos, where the Golden Fleece flourisheth on the
backes of Neptunes sheepe [fish, of course], continually to be shorne.
136 Anne Lake Prescott

This is Great Britaines Indies, never to be exhausted dry' (Bbbi r ).


Vaughan also remembers the famous Order of the Golden Fleece, first
instituted in Burgundy and awarded by Hapsburg rulers to the elite as a
sign of chivalric honour and solidarity. But Vaughan again reads this
idealizing symbol, one so useful to those interested in exploiting west-
ern gold mines, as having its origins in economic materiality. Wanting
his settlers to be more than profit-obsessed capitalists out to exploit
some offshore El Dorado, he makes them seem chivalric, glistening with
courtly distinction as they help rescue their mother, Great Britain, from
poverty and decay. So he says, 'this pretious Treasure surmounts the
Duke of Burgundies Golden Fleece.' On the other hand, this is no idle
courtly dream, for Vaughan also notes that the duke named his order of
knighthood 'by reason of his large customs which he received from our
English Woolls and Cloth in the Low Countries' (Bbbi). As Vaughan
says a few lines later, 'let men in cold blood lay aside their crotchets, and
the sparkling flames of imagination, and judiciously weigh the utility of
this business.'
The hearers in Apollo's court are so excited by Orpheus's speech that
they cry out in 'joy, to heare that a new Colchos was found out for the
restoring of Trading,' and many of the ladies resolve to 'imitate Isabella
Queene of Castile, in selling their Jewels, Rings, and Bracelets, for the
furthering of this Plantation and Fishing' (Bbbi v ). Apollo is likewise
impressed. Some pages later he explains why, in words that again com-
bine an insistence on practicality with an appeal to glamour and glitter.
The golden fleece, as Vaughan has made clear, is in fact the money to
be made offish, plain ordinary fish. Ralegh searches upriver for a city of
gold. Magellan dips through seas in the warm spicy tropics. Drake cir-
cles the globe on a ship named the Golden Hind. The prospect Vaughan
offers is living in the woods, and the treasure he promises comes from
sawing trees and gutting cod. One can see why he wanted to associate
Newfoundland with ancient legend and to suggest that it too has gold,
gold, gold. As the emperor Vespasian remarked about the wealth he col-
lected from public urinals, the money itself smelled just fine. Convinced
that Newfoundland is both substantial and shiny, Apollo pronounces
glowingly on hopes for further settlement:

A brave Dessigne it is, as Royall as Reall, as Honourable as Profitable. It


promises renowne to the King, revenew to the Crowne, Treasure to the
Kingdome, a purchase for the Land, a prize for the Sea, Ships for
navigation, Navigation for ships, Mariners for both: Entertainment for the
William Vaughan's Newfoundland 137

rich, employment for the poore, advantage for the Adventurers, and
encrease of Trade to all the subjects. A myne of Gold it is; the Myne is
deepe, the veines are great, the Oare is rare, the gold is pure, the extent
unlimited, the wealth unknowne, the worth invaluable. All this you shall
signfie unto that Noble King [Charles i]. And in the interim of our
progresse, we command all the rest of my vertuous Corporation to obey the
Lady Pallas, whom wee doe substitute in our stead as Queene Regent to see
our State well and peaceably governed (Llliv-Lll2).

The section ends as St David, patron of Wales, sings the praises of his
own country and Newfoundland, rebuking doubters in lines that sug-
gest how slander could shipwreck the new Argo:

Stand backe thy selfe, thou greedy Elfe,


Shall Slugges [human lazybones] the Haven hold?
And merry Greekes [jokesters] runne on a Shelfe
From Colchos bearing Gold?
Both Sea and Land in league conspire
Rich Cambrioll to deface,
If Argonautickes thou aspire
To keepe from Courtly Grace. (L113)

The saint must endure rude interruptions by the falsely witty writers
Skelton and Scoggin, but at the request of Spenser such 'scoffing com-
panions, and base ballet Rimers' are exiled from Parnassus and the new
Colchis, 'for ever after ... incapable of the mystery of the golden fleece'
(Mmm4). The woods of Newfoundland, evidently, are to echo with
nothing but civility and good verse.
Vaughan's interest in Newfoundland also led him to write a new book
of medical advice. Medicine deals with the material world, and Vaughan
liked the thought of keeping Newfoundlanders fit. The Newlanders cure
(1630) builds on earlier medical books such as his Naturall and artificial
directions for health (iGoob and many later editions), a work informing
the reader, for example, that sugar makes milk better for the teeth, that
capon (somewhat surprisingly, all things considered) is an aphrodisiac,
and that the head should get washed four times a year. The 1617 edition
had more explicitly looked westward, presumably because Vaughan was
just launching his settlement. He was also by now even more agitated by
Britain. Perhaps you need a change of air, he tells the reader, if your
native land has 'infinite troupes of Lawyers,' heretics, and reprobates.
138 Anne Lake Prescott

Try New England, Virginia, Newfoundland, or even the Loire valley


(Vaughan 1617, 63). The elegant dedication to Francis Bacon (likewise
involved in the Newfoundland enterprise) explains that Vaughan wrote
this 'Embrion' some years earlier and now proposes to rear it up to
'ripenesse ... [for] their use that dwelt remote from the Meridian of our
modern Artists [i.e., doctors]. And now being engaged for a Plantation
in the Southerne parts of Newfound-land, whereof your Honour is an
Atlanticke piller, I should forget my dude in the superlative degree, if I
presented not the same, as mettall out of confused Oare, five times puri-
fied, unto the tryall of your Lydian touch' (A2V-A3). According to
Bacon's 'constellation,' he says, the great man is

seated here in our Zodiacke betwixt the Signes of Leo and Libra [that is,
Bacon's sign is Virgo, harvest queen and image of Justice], whereby the
Hearts of all this Land doe expect some notable effects to proceede from
the succeeding Rayes of your Wisedome: so it will please you likewise to
illustrate with your Countenance the rising Fortunes of our Plantation in
New-found-land, whereby Justice may shine in that incompassed Climate,
and consequently our Navigation increase by the industry of our
Merchants, for whose sakes partly, I have reviewed these my former
labours, hoping with the favour of God, sometime or other in person there
to partake of their Westerne Ayre. (A3V-A4)

Cure itself proffers a diet suitable to northerners, some in fact sensible


advice on scurvy and frostbite, and a set of satires aimed at helping New-
foundlanders (and Britons) shape up morally. Here one finds spirited
pronouncements on a range of topics from Lord Baltimore's choice of
where to plant his colony to the dangers of 'Utopian' rejection of com-
merce.9
Vaughan's newfound golden fleece was never as thick and shiny as he
had hoped, and his Atlantic Colchis turned out to have more economic
and meteorological dragons than he had foreseen. Golden Grove is now
gone, as is Vaughan's Cove. So, alas, are most of the fish, victims of the
Atlantic ram's overfleecing. And yet, for good or ill, other settlers and
visitors followed and prospered in Vaughan's Canadian non-Utopia. In
anticipating that movement, Vaughan had hoped to see Britain's power
and trade expand, its ranks of criminals diminish, and its idle gentle-
men find something courageous and useful with which to occupy them-
selves. And, of course, he wanted to make money and see the impress of
his family's Welsh names on the new world. I hope I have shown that the
William Vaughan's Newfoundland 139

myths helping him articulate these hopes are relevant to any decentring
the Renaissance: not only should we remember the variety of early mod-
ern perspectives (on both sides of the Atlantic), we should also recall
how the viewpoints of individual Renaissance writers could mentally
shift back and forth. Although, so far as we know, Vaughan never left
Europe, his fancy created a world in which east could indeed meet, and
even become, a newer, realer west, and in which the history being made
in Newfoundland could be justified by myths that he and his friends,
believing such tales to be poetic traces of actual ancient triumphs,
aimed to re-enact in modern times and on another continent.

NOTES

1 See, for example, Stephen Greenblatt's chapter on Spenser (in Greenblatt


1980), Montrose 1993, and Stallybrass 1986. See also Miller 1993; she describes
how Humphrey Gilbert and others hoped that, through plantation and trade
in North America, England might exchange its - and its queen's - idle infer-
tility for male vigour and plenty.
2 'To the Virginian Voyage' (1606) in Drayton 1953, 1: 23; Ralegh [1596] 1903,
10: 428). Hayman (1628, Bk. 2, no. 64) writes of Newfoundland:
Indeed she now lookes rude, untowardly;
She must be decked with neat husbandry.
So have I scene a plaine swart, sluttish Jone,
Looke pretty pert, and neat with good cloathes on.
On Hayman's association of Newfoundland with the female body (and with
an earlier state of his own nation), see Prescott 1997.
3 On one occasion, though, Vaughan uses his own sibling metaphor: The Neiu-
londers cure (1630, ASV) calls Newfoundland 'Great Britaines Sister, or Britan-
niol, in regard that for these fourescore yeares and upwards, She hath
furnished us with Fish and Traine.' Indeed, there had long been fisheries off
Newfoundland; see Turgeon 1987. Since fish was more expensive than meat,
Vaughan was not wrong to hope for Atlantic gold.
4 STC 3185, The New-found politicke, an amalgam by several hands.
5 On the larger issues involved with this widespread suspicion of the fantastic
and even the visual, see, for example, Rossky 1958; and on typical suspect fan-
tasy figures in the court masque see Gordon 1975, 179-84.
6 There are similar complaints in The New landers cure; see, for example, 'the
Rabblement of Idolaters, Abbey-Lubbers, Fayries, and Hob-Goblins' (A4); and
140 Anne Lake Prescott

H4-H6, on ballads, old wives' tales, 'glozing Bookes of Chivalry,' stupid jests,
and faked genealogies.
7 Pi, X7; Vaughan (iGooa, T4V) quotes Utopias less fantastic Book i with no
'faigned,' whereas Aa8 mentions 'the (faigned) Syphograuntes.' Vaughan
liked Utopia, but he thought it wise to keep reminding us that Utopians are
not real.
8 'Train' is oil from whales or seals.
9 Vaughan 1630, H7. The 1626 Directions for health (published with Walter
Mason's treatises on the eyes) has a cure taught Vaughan by 'my deare friend
Captaine Mason,' who 'hath happily practiced the same in Newfound-land,
when some of his people in an extraordinary frozen winter, were troubled
with Coughes': wash the blood off some fox lungs and place in an earthen
pipkin. Add white wine to cover. Seal and set in an oven from which baking
bread has just been removed. Repeat last step twice. Administer a nutmeg-
sized portion in broth, beer, or other liquor. 'No beast is so long breathed as
the Fox,' adds Vaughan, 'which makes these Lungs so powerfull' (Vaughan
l626c, Oi-Olv). Cure gives a similar recipe, substituting vinegar for wine.
Images of English Origins in
Newfoundland and Roanoke
Mary C. Fuller

John Donne's elegy To His Mistress Going to Bed' has become a locus
classicus for the relation of English poetry to American discovery.
Donne's address to the woman disrobing as 'my America, my new found
land," generates a series of bivalent identifications of the body as land-
scape, and the landscape as body: as paradisal landscape, as a place to
rule, as a place newly found and full of hidden gems, as a legible book,
as a place for adventurers to enfranchise themselves, a place of edeni-
cally coded nakedness.2 Donne's apostrophe eroticizes exploration, as a
free, bold, joyfully transgressive movement to which no place is out of
bounds; in the remainder of the elegy, a sense of sure, even overdeter-
mined rhetorical and actual possession expresses itself in the multiplica-
tion of possessive pronouns - my America, my new found land, my
kingdom, my mine, my empery. Analogues for the eroticized imperial-
ism so powerfully crystallized in Donne's poem are not far to seek in the
prose accounts of English experience in the Americas: most famously,
perhaps, Walter Ralegh's assertion in The Discoverie of Guiana (1596) that
'Guiana is a countrey that hath yet her maidenhead' (Ralegh [1596]
1903, 10: 428). The frequency with which this phrase is cited and
referred to in modern scholarship suggests that it is seen as typical, even
defining. Yet not every site of English contact with the Americas gener-
ated such a gendered rhetoric of possession and mastery, such a sure
sense of masculine desire and desirability. What alternate strategies, if
any, did the English have for conceptualizing and representing Amer-
ica? And how were these conceptual strategies articulated with the expe-
rience of encountering the actual lands and peoples? Donne's poem
142 Mary C. Fuller

names an alternate, marginal, or failed colonial site - but both the copi-
ous legibility and sure possession of the mistress's geographic body
guarantee that the one part of America Donne can't be thinking of is
the one he names: 'O my America, my new found land.'
Newfoundland was England's earliest landfall, earliest land claim,
but, more than that, the central experience of America for the vast
majority of sixteenth-century Englishmen who had such experience. Yet
even after official colonization began in the early seventeenth century,
Newfoundland virtually failed to register on the English consciousness,
at least as represented in printed documents. As John Reid comments,
'colonization was a conceptual as well as a physical process'; everyone
knew what to do with Newfoundland, but conceptualizing the region
was a different matter (Reid 1981, xiv). What they did, of course, was
fish. Newfoundland was consistently an exception to the generally
unhappy story of England's frustrated search for American riches, as
Franklin McCann backhandedly suggests: after John Cabot's landfall in
1497. 'voyages to that part of America north of Mexico, (except those con-
cerned solely with the Newfoundland fishing), had ended in failure and pro-
duced only disappointment and bitterness' (McCann 1952, 69; emphasis
mine). As the fishery developed, it became a means of retaining what
precious metals the English possessed; a triangular trade with southern
Europe allowed 'exchange of Newfoundland fish for costly Mediterra-
nean commodities with no draining away of bullion from England'
(Cell 1969, 15). Simply in terms of numbers, Bruce Trigger asserts that
in the sixteenth century, 'more European ships and men frequented the
coasts of Newfoundland and the Gulf of the St. Lawrence each year than
travelled between Spain and its rich and far-flung colonies in the New
World' (Trigger 1987, 28). David Quinn and James Axtell both compare
the cod fishery off Newfoundland to the mines of Mexico and Peru.
Mexican gold might be more exciting or evocative a form for wealth,
but the value of the cod and whale fisheries off Newfoundland and in
the St Lawrence was such that 'the Gulf of Mexico could not afford to
look down its nose at its Laurentian cousin' (Axtell 1988, 146). Quinn
guesses that a comparison between 'the calories of nutriment provided
to Europe by Newfoundland products between about 1500 and 1650'
and 'the ounces of bullion extracted from Mexico and Peru' might find
that their effects on human life on Western Europe were at least equal
(Quinn 1990,301).
The failure to represent Newfoundland has to be understood as being
despite, or even because of, the fishery's success. Gillian Cell attributes
Images of English Origins in Newfoundland and Roanoke 143

Richard Hakluyt's omission of Newfoundland from his earlier colonial


writings to a supposed royal preference for gold over fish: 'wishing
above all to enlist Elizabeth's financial support for Raleigh's Virginia, he
knew that a prosaic commodity such as codfish would appeal little to a
Queen eager for more spectacular profits and more glittering spoils'
(Cell 1969, 43). What mattered was not necessarily the relative amount
of profit and spoils taken from the two Americas, but the spectacular
and glittering nature of southern products as opposed to northern
ones. Of course, 'southern' products such as gold and pearls had a
purely hypothetical or representational existence in Virginia - in con-
trast to the unglamorous materiality of Newfoundland's dried cod.
'Raleigh's Virginia' was Roanoke Island on the Outer Banks of North
Carolina; it was settled by the English after 1585, under letters patent
given to Sir Walter Ralegh some ninety years after the voyage of John
Cabot, and hard on the heels of a formal claim to the island of New-
foundland by Ralegh's half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert. Roanoke
proved to have neither gold nor cod, and the catalogue of its profitable
commodities in Thomas Hariot's A briefe and true report (1588) indicated
hopes and theories as much as facts.3 Yet what could be imagined con-
cerning Roanoke proved more attractive than what was known of New-
foundland.
Perhaps part of the explanation for this imbalance can be found pre-
cisely in the realm of representations, in the contrast between one
island perennially described in terms of a lyrical abundance, and the
other whose attributes are almost universally characterized by historians
as 'prosaic.' For instance, Quinn uses the term 'prosaic' with an explan-
atory intention: 'The exploitation of the riches of offshore North Amer-
ica by hundreds of European vessels - their numbers growing steadily
throughout the period down to the early seventeenth century - has
seemed too prosaic to be particularly interesting or even pertinent to
American colonization. Yet it can now be seen as perhaps the main rea-
son why North America continued to retain the interest of the western
European powers' (Quinn 1979, 4: xix; my emphasis). Roanoke proved
rich in a different kind of resource, not commodities so much as narra-
tive and representation. Newfoundland's representational invisibility
can be understood as the result of several intersecting historical and
material factors - latitude, nationalisms, modes of production, and com-
modities produced. These factors may themselves be considered from a
narrative perspective, and interrogated for the ways in which they condi-
tion historical or national narratives. A comparison of these two early
144 Mary C. Fuller

contact sites illustrates graphically the disproportion between material


and symbolic evidence for accounts of English contact with North Amer-
ica in the sixteenth century.

II

Representations of Roanoke are saturated with feminine figures and


imagery, of woman as land, land as virgin. Arthur Barlowe's description
(1584) climaxes in the image of a land still 'as in the first creation,' its
people 'void of all guile ... and such as lived after the manner of the
golden age' (Quinn 1979, 3: 280); this defining moment is linked in the
narrative with the hospitality of a chieftain's wife, who welcomes, feeds,
and protects the English. In a 1587 dedication addressed to Sir Walter
Ralegh, Richard Hakluyt described 'Virginia' as 'that fairest of nymphs
... whom our most generous sovereign has given you to be your bride.'4
One can't underestimate the mnemonic value of Roanoke's connection
to Ralegh, articulate, eloquent, and courtly - rather than to the more
obscure and less literary Gilbert, whose Irish wars were brutal - and the
connection through Ralegh to Elizabeth, to the iconology and gen-
dered politics of her court; it is a cultural linkage that the Park Service
brochure for the Fort Raleigh National Historic site does not hesitate to
encourage. By this Elizabethan connection, Roanoke gives America a
genealogy; it assures us that the American people 'directly connect' with
an English sixteenth century populated by the epic figures of a golden
age (C. Porter 1985, 3).
If Roanoke provides a link to England, it also becomes an origin story
for (English-speaking) America. Robert Arner writes: 'early in the nine-
teenth century, when Americans began to cast about for materials out of
which to construct a national mythology, the story of the Lost Colony
was one of the first sources they discovered ... The emphasis was upon
attempts to explain how the missing settlers, Englishmen no longer, had
become Americans and what legacies, if any, they might have left us. It
was transparently a quest for American parentage' (Arner 1985, 12). In
the light of these uses of history, we might notice not only that Roanoke
is imagined as or in terms of the feminine, but that this imaginative gen-
dering is associated with ideas about the colony's capacity for parenting
and reproduction. Symbolic genealogies affiliate America's first colony
backwards, to the Virgin Queen, and forward, to subsequent genera-
dons of Americans; claims about reproduction assert that the English
engagement with the land has been consummated and validated. At the
Images of English Origins in Newfoundland and Roanoke 145

Fort Raleigh National Historic Site on Roanoke Island, two large


plaques mark the first Christian baptism in America and the first
English birth. On Roanoke Island, biological and social reproduction
are the real ceremonies of possession.
As Robert Arner (on whose work I draw) has documented, fictional
writing on the Roanoke colony gravitates to Virginia Dare, the first
English child born in America - about whom nothing is known but her
birth. This fictional writing (in common with more serious speculations
about the fate of the colony in to to) is deeply involved with issues of
racial mixture: Virginia Dare must be imagined as lovely and lovable,
but there are no English boys to fall in love with her. As Arner remarks,
'If America is in any way to be imagined as arising from the fruitful loins
of Virginia Dare ... then Virginia must perforce be provided with a hus-
band ... [and] only Indians seem to be truly available to take on the job'
(Arner 1985, 28). We know from the later history of Jamestown the
kinds of cultural work performed by one symbolic mixed marriage at
the beginning; to speak only of diplomatic relations, the marriage of
Pocahontas and John Rolfe heralded years of relative peace between
Natives and colonists.5 Yet Rolfe agonized over marrying an Indian prin-
cess already converted to Christianity, who took on English language,
name, and dress as well as religion, and died far from home (Barbour
1971, 247-52; Hulme 1986, 142-6). On the evidence of Rolfe's letter, if it
was difficult to imagine marrying a woman for whom the only remaining
marker of cultural origin would be a feather in her English hat, it would
have been impossible to envision Rolfe putting on Native American
dress to cross the cultural border in the other direction. This is to speak
only of what was discursively admissible at this point; an undocumented
number of English colonists did do precisely that (see 'The White Indi-
ans' in Axtell 1985). Yet some version of this cultural crossing in reverse
haunts the fictional accounts of Dare's fate. Necessarily, an imagined
adult Virginia Dare must also be imagined as in some way literally and
culturally embracing what is Native. The anxiety provoked by this possi-
bility is registered in several writers' decision to kill her off once she
reaches nubile age, a sacrifice sometimes balanced by her resuscitation
as symbol.6
The writings about Virginia Dare exemplify the ways in which
Roanoke becomes the occasion for a discourse both anxious and
mythologizing about the Virgilian mixing of peoples at a moment of
national origin, and about the union of nation with the land. We seem
to know just enough about the Lost Colony to make myths, and myths
146 Mary C. Fuller

that have proved durable and versatile in their uses. There is a disap-
pearance to be explained, a fragmentary message to decipher, named
individuals both lost (the Dare family) and returning to search for them
(John White). There are brilliant images - the White drawings - and
seminal texts by Harriot, Lane, and Barlowe. Finally, there are real and
imagined genealogies, claims about parentage and possession that apply
across national, cultural, and racial boundaries, the possibility of cul-
tural survival and transformation. Yet the records that inspire our narra-
tives document a brief colonial enterprise that failed.
D.W. Prowse opened his monumental A History of Newfoundland
(1895) by lamenting that Newfoundland history at its origin cannot
yield a good story. 'Alas! for the glory of our Island, for the praise of
our discoverer, there are no portraits to discuss, no noble Isabella la
Catolica, no devoted friar. No golden haze of romance surrounds our
earliest annals. The story of the discovery of Newfoundland and North
America, as told by the Cabots, is as dull as the log of a dredge-boat.
Every picturesque element is eliminated from it, and the great voyage,
so pregnant with moral and material results, is brought down to the low
level of a mere trading adventure' (Prowse 1895, 6). Prowse's phrase,
the 'golden haze of romance,' deftly condenses the properties of a
certain colonial narrative - riches, heterosexual courtship, fiction -
completely viable for Ralegh's Virginia, completely absent for New-
foundland. Without colonial romance, colonial representation was
problematized. In its absence, how was the territory of Newfoundland
actually conceptualized and represented?

Ill

After Cabot, the documentary record on Newfoundland is slim as far as


narrative and descriptive materials are concerned. Newfoundland
emerged into discursive prominence only in the early seventeenth cen-
tury, when several factors combined to encourage a renewed interest in
overseas enterprises; moreover, a changing climate of thought focused
particular attention on Newfoundland. Among other factors were the
beginnings of settlements in New England organized around a colonial
fishery: early writers on New England can be relied on to compare fish-
ing on George's Bank to 'the new fownd-Land.' In the years leading up
to the English Revolution, questions about the economic organization
of the fishery as well as jurisdiction over it and over its associated territo-
ries began to intersect with politically sensitive topics like monopolies.
Images of English Origins in Newfoundland and Roanoke 147

As England began to see the Dutch rather than the Spanish as its main
rivals, writings on trade and wealth evinced envy and emulation not
towards Spain's lucrative gold mines but towards the industrious fisher-
men of the Netherlands (see, for instance, Whitbourne 1620, B2; 1622,
22; Gentleman 1614, 7-15; J. Smith 1616, 10; Mason 1620, Bi). Outside
of Asia, rivalry with the Dutch focused particularly on the fishery and
the carrying trade: Richard Whitbourne wrote, 'Let the Dutch report
what sweetnesse they haue suckt from her [Newfoundland] by trade
thither, in buying of fish from our Nation' (Whitbourne 1622, A4V).
More copious writing on and proposals about Newfoundland registered
the resulting conceptual shift in colonial projects. Whitbourne's A dis-
course and discovery of New-found-land (1620), one of the best-informed of
these publications, was supported by the Crown - at least to the extent
of having collections taken up to pay for publication - and promoted
from the pulpit (Bridenbaugh 1968, 408-9).
Many things the English knew about Newfoundland - and after more
than a century's experience, they did know something, despite their
ignorance of the interior, their creative ideas about climate, and their
inattentive cartography - lent themselves not only to description but
also to interpretation by the writers of promotional tracts. Facts about
the island's location, its history, its very insularity, were not inert or neu-
tral knowledge to the colonial promoters and theorists of the 16208 and
16305. Yet the sense of 'Newfoundland' emerging as rhetorical and ideo-
logical construction from these Stuart writings differs markedly from
the representation of Roanoke or Jamestown.
John Mason, who produced an early printed map of the island, repre-
sented Newfoundland in terms not of its isolation, but rather of its
advantageous proximity to Europe. This proximity made it cheaper to
transport settlers to the island, and permitted an easier return to 'our
owne home, which naturally we are so much addicted unto' (Mason
1620, Bi v ). John Hagthorpe commented favourably on Newfoundland's
insularity and isolation, noting that unlike Virginia, which the Spanish
threatened to cut off, Newfoundland is an island 'free from all pretence
or challenge of any forraine Prince' (Hagthorpe 1625, 33). Whitbourne
argues that Newfoundland should be cherished because 'trading thither
and returning home thence, wee little feare the Turkes bondage and
circumcision, nor any outlandish Inquisition' (Whitbourne 1620, 45).
The fishery represents not only freedom from political or religious chal-
lenge, but also an economic freedom from dependence on foreign
exchange: 'And this also to be gathered and brought home by the sole
148 Mary C. Fuller

labour and Industrie of men, without exchange or exportation of our


Coine, and natiue commodities, or other adventure (then of necessary
provisions for the fishing)' (Whitbourne 1620, 13). On another note,
Mason praises the ice that surrounds the island in winter as a defence
against invasion. The Newfoundland projectors, in short, argued that
this was a colonial project where the isolation and emptiness of the site
offered protection against cultural contact, exchange, or adaptation.
That Newfoundland was an island had more than merely practical sig-
nificance to the English; it allowed Newfoundland to be understood as
not only closest to England but most like it.7 Richard Whitbourne was
the first to articulate a view of Newfoundland's location as analogous to
the location of England within Europe, 'it is an Hand, neere as spacious
as Ireland, and lieth so far distant from the Continent of America, as
England is from the neerest part of France, and neere halfe the way
between Ireland and Virginia' (Whitbourne 1620, A3V). Robert Hayman
imagined England's past in the shape of Newfoundland's present:
'When England was us'd for a Fishing place, by Coasters only, 'twas
in the same case, And so unlovely 't had continued still: Had not
our Ancestors us'd paines, and skill' (Hayman 1628, 36). This sense of
Newfoundland's location as marking a natural correspondence with
England was connected to the sense that the North was 'reserved for
the English' as a place where they really were first.8 It drew also on an
anxiety about the effects of more southerly climates on health and
character, backed up by justifiable concerns about the mortality rate in
Jamestown. John Hagthorpe described Newfoundland's climate as
'agreeing with this of ours' more so than was the case for more southerly
colonies. 'First, for the Ayre; it is pleasant, and as temperate in Summer
as here: whereas Virginea and Barmudaes are very hot; whereby ... Caw-
sons and Calentures doe many times there raine ... which hath bin the
death of so many men, and throwne that indeluble infamy upon the
place, as a second Golgothae: and the greatest part of these mischiefes
arising for want of Beare [beer]. But none of these neede be feared in
New-found-land' (Hagthorpe 1625,31-2).
Whitbourne's description of Newfoundland - resembling Ireland in
size and England in relation to the continent, and situated halfway
between Ireland and Virginia - locates it in a symbolic geography, corre-
sponding in the New World to England in the Old; he places it practi-
cally as well, at the centre of a developing colonial economy in the
North Atlantic (Whitbourne 1620, A3V). Newfoundland's middle posi-
tion is remarked on over and over in the seventeenth-century literature.
Images of English Origins in Newfoundland and Roanoke 149

Simon Stock, a would-be Catholic missionary to Lord Baltimore's colony


at Ferryland, tells his superiors: 'Avalon lies midway between England
and Virginia, and when the Faith is spread to Avalon, with greater ease
may we extend it to Virginia, New England, New Scotland and amongst
the Canadians' (Codignola 1988, 86). For ships travelling between
Europe and the Americas, Newfoundland was an easy intermediate stop
for provisioning (the original intent of Gilbert's visit) - and not only for
English ships: Whitbourne comments on the presence of Spanish ships
returning from the West Indies, and Portuguese ships taking on fish for
Brazil. It also provided alternate resources for voyages whose own aims
had failed. After the failure of his second Guiana expedition, Ralegh's
captains headed there for a bit of compensatory fishing and piracy.9
The promoters tried to suggest that Newfoundland's fishery pro-
duced not a poor substitute for American gold - John Smith suggests
that cod 'may seeme a mean and a base commoditie' - but merely
another, and better, version of it (Smith 1616, 10). Writers repeatedly
compared Newfoundland's fishery to the gold and silver of the Indies;
for the colonial promoter William Vaughan, Newfoundland is 'A myne
of Gold' (Vaughan i6s6a, Llli v ). Whitbourne suggests more prosaically
that 'the trade to that Countrey ... may yeerely be so beneficiall to your
Maiestie ... as the West Indies are now yeerely worth to the King of
Spaine' (Whitbourne 1620, 61). In a later pamphlet, he claimed the
Newfoundland trade would bring in more precious metal than the West
Indian mines, 'and with lesse hazard, & more certainty & felicity' (Whit-
bourne 1622, 22).
John Smith, in The generall historic of Virginia, New-England, and the Sum-
mer Isles (1624), prefers fishing over prospecting for colonists. Whit-
bourne similarly derides voyages aimed at the pursuit of gold, 'animated
on by some turbulent spirits that have outrun themselves, and so
brought men in such mindes, that on the coast of Guinnie there, they
might gather up gold along the Sea-shore, washed up with the Sea in
great abundance; and likewise if they would adventure to the West
Indies, there they should load their ships with gold-oare, and drawe it
aboord their ships with Wheele-barrowes, and then share it by the
pound; and such like projects' (Whitbourne 1620, 34). Fish were better
than gold because the fishery involved the English in labour, a labour
seen as morally salutary, socially necessary, and strategically useful. Not
only was the product a commodity both vendible and comestible; since
the fishery trained mariners, the process of fishing was beneficial as
well.10 And training might have more than practical implications:
150 Mary C. Fuller

Anthony Parkhurst, in a letter of 1577 possibly addressed to Edward


Dyer, praised the fishery as imposing on workers a laudable discipline.
Thes men that travell thether kepe a longe lent of halfe one yere, and
spare mutche drynke and vytteles that at home and in other cuntryes
they would wantonly wast. Lyvynge nowe by fysshe, sower bere, bysket,
bad syder and that more then halfe myngeled with water' (Quinn 1979,
4: 7). John Hagthorpe played off the necessary moderation of a colony
at Newfoundland against the unhealthy or even dangerous fertility of
Africa or of Virginia, where nature ' (like a luxurious wombe) casts out
many times, but an abortive fruite' (Hagthorpe 1625, 3O> 36).
Perhaps more to the point than Vaughan's assertion that Newfound-
land was a mine of gold is his imagination of the Newfoundland fishery
as England's 'golden fleece' (the title of his book): This is our Colchos,
where the Golden Fleece flourisheth on the backes of Neptunes sheepe,
continually to be shorne. This is Great Britaines Indies, never to be
exhausted dry' (Vaughan 16262., Bbbi r ). This image concisely incorpo-
rates the two primary benefits of the fishery: the acquisition of specie
and the continual necessity for English labour. Significantly, that labour
is imagined in the form of shearing sheep: in the image not just of a
domestic, land-based husbandry but that practice of husbandry that had
traditionally produced England's primary commodity for foreign trade.
John Mason suggests a more direct comparison of land and sea: 'For
could one acre [of the sea off Newfoundland] be inclosed with the Crea-
tures therein in the monthes of June, Julie, and August, it would exceed
one thousand acres of the best Pasture with the stocke thereon which we
have in England' (Mason 1620, A3V). He continues: T have heard some
countries commended for their two fowld Harvest, which heare thou
hast, although in a different kinde, yet both as profitable, I (dare say) as
theirs so much extolled, if the right course be taken; & well fareth, that
country say I, which in one months time with reasonable paines, wil pay
both land-lords rent, servants wages, and all Houshold charges' (4).
Mason's and Vaughan's images suggest the fishery had to be translated,
metaphorically moved inland, in order to be understood.
Patricia Seed has recently suggested that the use of 'planting' as a syn-
onym for 'colonizing' in early modern English tells us something impor-
tant about what the English believed was necessary to take possession of
New World land; the English, she argues, saw settlement as necessarily
bound up with traditional ways of using the land: hedging and fencing,
manuring and planting, building permanent houses (Seed 1995, 16-
40). Yet the Newfoundland colonists, official and unofficial, settled on
Images of English Origins in Newfoundland and Roanoke 151

land profoundly ill-suited to cultivation and husbandry. The Historical


Atlas of Canada uses colour to illustrate the agricultural capability of the
Atlantic region for the 'mixed agriculture practised by northwestern
Europeans'; the vast majority of Newfoundland is coloured pink (for
'None'), and no part of it is coloured green ('Fair or better') (Harris
and Matthews 1987, plate 20).n Though John Guy explored Conception
Bay extensively during 1608 in search of a desirable site, the Cupid's
Cove colony was still seated on land that supported little more than hay
and root vegetables (Cell 1969, 63). Moreover, the evidence indicates
that Newfoundland's primary economic activity of fishing fostered a
relation to the land of opportunistic exploitation rather than implanta-
tion; there was no need for Englishmen to live there to carry on the fish-
ery, nor any structural incentive to take care of what was there. Early
legislation for Newfoundland targeted less the social behaviour of
Englishmen on the island - though they are enjoined not to murder
and to attend divine service - than their economic behaviour, which
included a number of environmentally wasteful practices favoured by
the industry. A pamphlet printed under Charles i (1633) forbade the
dumping of ballast or anchors in harbours, the destruction of sheds and
flakes for drying fish, or the firing of wood and removal of tree-bark
beyond that needed for roofing; these concerns are with the same
offences adjudicated by Richard Whitbourne when he held an Admi-
ralty Court at Newfoundland in 1615 (Charles i 1633, 6-9, 11-12; Whit-
bourne 1620, Ci, 21-31, 621).
Early maps suggested the primary importance of Newfoundland's
relation to the sea over its quality as land. Indeed, a series of sixteenth-
century maps beginning in 1540 showed Newfoundland as an archipel-
ago rather than a single island (Quinn 1990, 304-6). Such interpreta-
tions (not unreasonable ones) of a deeply corrugated coastline perhaps
reflect a desire not to have a large landmass in the way of a hypothetical
passage to Asia. They also suggest that for a long time Newfoundland
was not thought of as having an interior, that it appeared to the Euro-
pean imagination as a set of liminal harbours - a significant lack in an
age when Europeans still fantasized about the discovery of American
gold, imagined not only deep inside the earth but also deep inland. The
plantation/anti-plantation debate of the later seventeenth century
revolved around the question of whether it made more sense to treat
Newfoundland as harbours for fishing ships than as land for colonists.
Later in the century Sir Josiah Child characterized settlement as directly
detrimental to the pursuit of the fishery: The Planters ... do keep disso-
152 Mary C. Fuller

lute Houses, which have Debauch'd Sea-men, and diverted them from
their Laborious and Industrious Calling; whereas before ... the Sea-men
had no other resort during the Fishing Season (being the time of their
abode in that Country) but to their Ships, which afforded them conve-
nient Food and Repose, without the inconveniencies of Excess' (Child
1698, 208). John Reeves, the first chief justice of Newfoundland's
Supreme Court, stated in his evidence to a parliamentary committee in
the late 17005 that 'Newfoundland is still nothing but a great ship,
dependent upon the mother country for every thing they eat, drink and
wear or for the funds to procure them ... They all look to the sea alone
for support... and those who carry cultivation furthest reap no produce
but what can be furnished by a garden' (Innis [1940] 1954, 299, citing
Third Report 1793). The nature of English endeavours at Newfoundland
and of the land itself worked against recognition of Newfoundland as a
plantation or colony, even as the English were settling it. These observa-
tions about relations to the land should be set next to some observations
about the role of real and symbolic women.
At different times, the home government issued proclamations that
English subjects should leave Newfoundland - these were never en-
forced - and directives to officials to discourage permanent inhabitants
(see Innis [1940] 1954, 316-17; Prowse 1895, 190-2). It is in this context
that Captain Francis Wheler, RN, commissioned to report on French
activities in Newfoundland, remarked of the settlers in 1684, 's°e longe
as there comes no women they are not fixed' (Handcock 1989, 32, 284).
The connection between women and implantation embedded in
Wheler's famous comment has its echoes in other colonial documents.
In 1607 the Spanish ambassador Don Pedro de Zuriiga reported to the
king of Spain on Jamestown: 'it is not their intention to plant colonies,
but to send out pirates from thence, since they do not take women, but
only men' (A. Brown 1890, i: 119). The first English women were sent to
Virginia in 1621 (Kingsbury 1906-35, i: 255-6); the Earl of Southhamp-
ton explained to the government 'that the Plantation can never flourish
till families be planted and the respect of wives and children fix the peo-
ple on the soyle' (Bridenbaugh 1968, 419). English men might live in
Newfoundland, but they were not be taken as permanent residents until
English women were there with them.
Until the nineteenth century, the population of early colonial New-
foundland was both largely male and largely migratory, fluctuating with
the seasonal demands of the fishery. The scholarly literature links these
factors as strongly as did seventeenth-century observers: 'A signal fea-
Images of English Origins in Newfoundland and Roanoke 153

ture of settlement in Newfoundland up to the end of the eighteenth


century was the demographic sexual imbalance and the effect the
absence of women had on the speed and success of settlement' (M. Por-
ter 1985, 109).12
Women were scarce in Newfoundland for a long time: by 1790, in a
population of ten thousand long-term residents, men still outnumbered
women five to one (Harris and Matthews 1987, 50, Plate 25). Scarcity is
not absence, however; Wheler's comment is not to be taken literally as
implying that there were 'noe women' in Newfoundland. The Historical
Atlas of Canada records that 'by the 16708 there was at least one family in
30 different English settlements along the east coast of Newfoundland.
St John's had almost 30 planter families' (Harris and Matthews 1987, 48-
9). Planter families were vastly outnumbered by unmarried planters and
unmarried male servants; yet if, demographically, Newfoundland's pop-
ulation was characterized by 'the extremely small number of females to
support the growth of a "native-born" popu-lation' (Handcock 1989,
40), by that small margin it was distinct from the all-male configuration
of early Jamestown, or for that matter from the settlers at Roanoke
before 1587. Indeed, of the 117 individuals who arrived at Roanoke in
1587 and were lost there, only seventeen - about one in seven - were
women.
But this essay is a study of representations rather than of demography.
In this light, it is striking that actual women in Newfoundland did not sig-
nify - and equally striking, in the light of other colonial representations,
that the land was not made to signify through the typically feminine-
gendered images so prevalent elsewhere. The early-seventeenth-century
proponents of colonization imagined Newfoundland as a mine, a pas-
ture, another England, and many other things, but almost never as a
woman. Sir William Vaughan writes in The Golden Fleece that God 'had
bestowed a large portion for this Countries mariage with our King-
domes, even this great Fishing, that by this meanes it might be fre-
quented and inhabited the sooner by us' (Vaughan i6s6a, Aaa3r). In The
Newlanders cure, Vaughan confers on the island the title of 'Great Brit-
aines Sister, or Britanniol, in regard that for these forescore yeares and
upwards, She hath furnished us with Fish and Traine, which by
Exchange returne us sundry kinds of Commodities' (Vaughan 1630,
A5V). In both these images, however, Newfoundland's gender is closely
linked to 'her' economic contribution: she should be called England's
sister because 'she hath furnished us with Fish and Traine,' or she is a
bride whose 'large portion' has attracted us. The few exceptions are
154 Mary C. Fuller

instructive ones. Richard Whitbourne characterized Newfoundland as


'nurse and mother': 'For as great Brittaine hath ever been a cherishing
nurse and mother to other forraigne sonnes and daughters, feeding
them with the milke of her plenty, and fatting them at her brests, when
they have been even starved at their owne: Even so hath this worthy
Countrey of New-found-land from time to time given free and liberall
entertainment to all that desired her blessings: and chiefly (above all
other Nations) to the English' (Whitbourne 1622, A4). Whitbourne's
resonant gendering of the island is echoed by Prowse: Newfoundland is
'a meagre and haggard kind of mother, yet for all that she saved the
ancient Colony of Virginia from semi-starvation by a timely cargo offish'
(Prowse 1895, xiv). In these images, Newfoundland is gendered not as a
nubile woman (as bride, virgin, and so on) but as wet-nurse to children,
colonies, nations, giving to all 'free and liberall entertainment.' Femi-
nine Newfoundland then fulfils for these 'forraigne sonnes and daugh-
ters' (who include the English) a kind of temporary function; she is
valued and understood only accidentally in terms of her own reproduc-
tive capacity and, more importantly, in terms of her ability to nourish
those who will go on to leave her and become independent. The image
of the wet-nurse corresponds to the geographical view of Newfoundland
as a middle point between destinations; to the economic sense of fish
and fishing as enabling more glamorous military, colonizing, and explor-
ing ventures; and to the demography of a largely migratory population.
Implicit also in the image is a class marking: the wet-nurse is employed to
feed the children of a higher-status woman. In the image of the nurse,
there is no narrative tension, no maidenhead, no virgin longing for wed-
lock; her role is simply to gratify children's oral desire. Newfoundland
does not need discovery. Being like the mother, she is already well
known. Since she is not the mother, there is no sense of attachment, no
sense of that knowledge as mattering. The image corresponds to what
Quinn calls a paradox in the early history of the island: to thousands of
fishermen in western Europe, 'Newfoundland was almost regarded as an
outpost of Europe itself. Yet ... to Europeans of the sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries Newfoundland was scarcely known at all. It was
simply taken for granted' (Quinn 1990, 309).
At the opening of this essay, John Donne's elegy served to exemplify
the rhetorical/lyric conflation of the female body with newfound land.
Yet the seventeenth-century texts show us that Newfoundland was only
with difficulty imagined as new land - fertile, penetrable, desirable, to
be discovered. Gendered images of Newfoundland are markedly non-
Images of English Origins in Newfoundland and Roanoke 155

erotic ones: sister, wet-nurse, or spouse eligible only by her marriage


portion. These concerns return us to the topic of poetic language and
how it figures America, and to a book of poems written by a Newfound-
land colonist and admirer of Donne, Robert Hayman.
Hayman's book is composed of epigrams. Most of those relating to
Newfoundland are addressed to specific investors and colonists, actual
or potential. Among these are a significant fraction addressed to
women, many the wives or widows of men involved in the colonizing
enterprise. In one noteworthy poem, Hayman (1628, Bk. 3, no. 84)
invites Henrietta Maria to become the island's patroness.

To the same most Royall Queene.


When wise Columbus offerd his New-land,
To Wise men, they him held, vaine, foolish, fond,
Yet a wise Woman, of an happy wit,
With go[o]d successe advent[u]r'd upon it:
Then the wise-men their wisedomes did repent,
And their heires since their follies doe lament.
My New-land, (Madam) is already knowne,
The way the ayre, the earth, all therein growne,
It only wants a Woman of your spirit,
To mak't a Land fit for your Heires t'inherit.
Sweet, dreaded Queene, your helpe here will doe well:
Be here a Famous second Isabell.

America requires women as patrons for their ability to see wisdom in


apparent foolishness, for the happy wit of their illogical belief in its pos-
sibility, for their willingness to place confidence in a man when no one
else will. And that romance - the willingness of this woman to connect
herself to the land - is what will make it Tit,' a land to be passed down in
a family that will reproduce and support reproduction. (Other poems,
such as book 2, number 100, invoke the agricultural labour of men as
the means to the same end.) Hayman's poetry imagines that the land
lacks a powerful female figure willing to identify herself with it and, in
doing so, make it viable in a lasting way. In this absence, Newfoundland
is both practically and representationally disadvantaged, still able to pro-
duce only 'unripe eares of corne' and 'these few bad unripe Rimes,' as
Hayman writes in his preface (Hayman 1628, A2).
As Donne's imagination does not encompass 'the cold Country of
Newfound-land' in the eroticized body of 'my America, my new found
156 Mary C. Fuller

land,' so the women in Hayman's poems are generally imagined at a dis-


tance from the land that the rest of his book so reticently represents:
even the former colonist Elizabeth Guy longs for Newfoundland from
the confines of an English home. There is one exception, in a poem
addressed to one of Vaughan's colonists (Hayman 1628, Bk. 2, no. 24),
and it resonates with the gendered images of Newfoundland discussed
earlier.

Tis said, wise Socrates look't like an Asse;


Yet he with wondrous sapience filled was;
So though our Newfound-Land look wild, salvage,
She hath much wealth penn'd in her rustle Cage.
So have I scene a leane-cheekes, bare, and ragged,
Who of his private thousands could have bragged.
Indeed she now lookes rude, untowardly;
She must be decked with neat husbandry.
So have I scene a plaine swarth, sluttish Jone,
Looke pretty pert, and neat with good cloathes on.

Hayman's poem reverses the action of Donne's speaker, clothing the


newfound land in order to see and know it. Rather than associating the
land with wealth and mystic knowledge, Hayman indicates by his adjec-
tives a woman who is plain and, like Whitbourne's wet-nurse, of lower
class; whatever 'private thousands' are belied by a 'rude,' 'swarth,' 'slut-
tish' appearance, at her best she is but 'pert' and 'neat,' adjectives that
might describe a maid. These gendered images of Newfoundland reflect
the 'beastliness' of the product and work with which it was synonymous.
If there is a mythic narrative for Newfoundland history, it might be,
among other things, a narrative of class rather than gender, a narrative
of discovery and settlement imagined as work undertaken by the largely
anonymous common man. It is this anonymous working man whom the
Newfoundland historian D.W. Prowse celebrates over more than 600
pages: 'clearly these old cod smacks had discovered all around ... long
before the court gallants and their grand expeditions' (Prowse 1895,45).
There are reasons we should pay closer attention to the early history
of Newfoundland. Better knowledge of this history might usefully coun-
terbalance a sense (in literary studies, at least) that English colonialism
in its earliest phase was dominated by a paradigm of gender emanating
largely from court culture. It would also help to offset the shaping force
of U.S. history and its nationalist preoccupations in accounts of early
Images of English Origins in Newfoundland and Roanoke 157

British North America. The early history of Newfoundland is anti-


romantic, foregrounding economic activities and motivations, empha-
sizing the discontinuity and incoherence of colonial efforts. It suggests
narratives that would disrupt a sure sense of discovery as entering and
possessing the New World. Donne's poem may have been the most artis-
tically accomplished vision of the New World, but it was not the only
one, or even, from the perspective of some historically grounded inter-
ests, the most important one. Working over these materials to produce a
commemorative narrative of Newfoundland's history would doubtless
produce another myth of origins - but, being a different myth, it might
allow us to know other things about our past.

NOTES

1 'Licence my roving hands, and let them go / Behind, before, above,


between, below. / O my America, my new found land, / My kingdom, safeli-
est when with one man manned, / My mine of precious stones, my empery, /
How blessed am I in this discovering thee. / To enter in these bonds is to be
free, / Then where my hand is set my seal shall be' (Elegy 19, Donne 1990,
13,11.25-32).
2 The connection of lyric and discovery is not urged simply by the text of the
poem, or its resemblances to descriptive and promotional writing on Amer-
ica; we know too that Donne applied in 1609 for a colonial posting with the
Virginia Company, and was appointed to the council of the company in July
1622.
3 Though the prevailing belief seems to have been that gold deposits were
linked to warm climates, the English were at least willing to consider the pos-
sibility that it might be found elsewhere: as witness the initial credence given
to Frobisher's Baffin Island assays.
4 'Epistle Dedicatory to Sir Walter Ralegh by Richard Hakluyt, 1587,' in E.G.R.
Taylor 1935, 2: 367. See the essays by Montrose (1993) and Fuller (1993) f°r
more extended discussion of this image in the context of Ralegh's colonial
projects.
5 Karen Blu comments that for whites she studied in Robeson County, NC,
'Indian blood, if it entered a White family in a much earlier generation and
if it did not come from Robeson County Indians, is apparently not polluting
and can be rather enhancing. A "Cherokee princess" is perhaps the most
frequently mentioned ancestor' (Blu 1980, 25).
6 See Powell and Powell 1988 for examples of the Dare material.
158 Mary C. Fuller

7 This sense of analogy persisted: D.W. Prowse describes the island of New-
foundland as occupying 'nearly the same position in the new world that
Britain does in the old' (Prowse 1895, xiii).
8 Robert Thorne wrote in 1527 that 'there is left one way to discover, which is
into the North' (Hakluyt 1903, 2: 161). In the prefatory material to the first
volume of Principal Navigations, devoted to discoveries to the north and
northeast, Hakluyt favourably compares the discoveries of England in the
North to those of Spain and Portugal in the West. Spain and Portugal had
classical testimonies to the feasibility of their discoveries, as well as 'Colum-
bus to stirre them up, and pricke them forward unto their Westerne discov-
eries.' The English, by contrast, 'were either altogether destitute of such
cleare lights and inducements, or if they had any inkling at all, it was as misty
as they found the Northern seas, and so obscure and ambiguous, that it was
meet rather to deterre them, then to give them encouragement' (Hakluyt
1903, i: xli-xlii). England's northern voyages are unthought of and unprece-
dented, entirely anomalous.
9 Whitbourne notes the depredations of'an English erring Captaine (that
went forth with Sir Walter Rawleigh)' (1620, Ci v ). Numerous narratives in
Principal Navigations describe voyages that made intermediate or unintended
stops at Newfoundland. Whitbourne describes Newfoundland as 'fit for
Harbour and reliefe, upon the way betweene us and Virginia' (Bi v ), also as
lying near the course Spanish ships take returning from the West Indies;
three such ships arrived there for provisioning in 1615, and Portuguese ships
called regularly to take on fish for Brazil (17-18).
10 See Cell 1969, 24-5 on Sir William Cecil's promotion of the fishery as a
source of trained mariners for naval war. Cecil proposed legislation in 1563
increasing the number offish days (mandated by patriotism rather than
religion) and making fish free of export duty; Cell notes that the injunction
to consume fish was frequently reinforced by proclamation.
11 W. Gordon Handcock refers to Grant Head's explanation of Newfound-
land's 'retarded colonization' in terms of'the properties and limitations of
the physical environment, the problems of survival and adaptation, and
especially the critical importance of food supply from external sources'
(Handcock 1989, 13-14, citing Head 1976).
12 In a study of Newfoundland's population W. Gordon Handcock writes,
Tn any colonizing context, the number of women and children may be
regarded as an index of the more stable and permanent population, since it
is axiomatic that these categories have implications for the germination,
perpetuation, and continuity of a population and its social capacity to absorb
subsequent immigrants (intermarriage)' (Handcock 1989, 95).
From the Good Savage to the
Degenerate Indian: The Amerindian in
the Accounts of Travel to America*
Real Ouellet with Mylene Tremblay

The Myth of the Savage

Before becoming a human being with ethnographic, psychological, and


social traits, before becoming an economic or military agent in an inter-
national dynamic, the Amerindian was a Savage- that is, a myth.1 The
Amerindian was the inhabitant of those far-off lands that represented
both the earthly paradise and the fabulously wealthy Orient. When Chris-
topher Columbus reached the Guanahani archipelago in October 1492,
he looked for and saw ample signs of these legendary riches. He noted
that some of the Natives wore 'a small piece [of gold] hanging from a
hole which they have in the nose' (Columbus 1960, 26); he listened
eagerly to all he was told about 'Samoet, which is the island or city where
there is gold' (33); he dreamed of Cuba, which 'has in it gold and spices'
(42). At the same time, his culture allowed him to perceive the strange
beauty of what he had discovered as an image of the Garden of Eden: the
island was covered with 'many trees, very green and tall'; its 'land is
higher than the other islands which have been discovered' (38); the trees
and the flowers gave off a 'sweet' perfume. To show that the frontiers of
the normal world had been crossed, the narrator multiplied the intensive
formulae that stressed the sweetness, youth, and harmony of the scenery:
'the loveliest thing I have seen'; 'the most delightful thing in the world'
(38); 'the island is the most lovely that eyes have ever seen' (46). He also
remarked on the strangeness of its beauty: 'I saw many trees very unlike
ours ... so unlike each other that it is the greatest wonder in the world ...

Translated by Dominique O'Neill.


160 Real Ouellet with Mylene Tremblay

For example: one branch has leaves like those of a cane and another
leaves likes those of a mastic tree, and thus, on a single tree, there are five
or six different kinds all so diverse from each other' (33).
Caught up in this setting, Columbus initially embraced a vision of the
Amerindian as innocent, docile child. Yet such a view was soon chal-
lenged, even by Columbus himself on later voyages. Europeans devel-
oped diverse images of the Native peoples of the New World. These
representations ran the full range from child of Eden to descendant of
Cain. In between were descriptions of behaviour found useful and
exploited by some explorers and deplored by others. This essay exam-
ines, in turn, these various representations and how they changed over
generations of contact.

The Savage's Youth and Beauty

It was in this welcoming territory, bathed in water, that Columbus first


met the Natives of the Caribbean, who swam towards the travellers' ships
to bring them 'parrots and cotton thread in balls, and spears and many
other things' in exchange for 'glass beads and hawks' bells' (23). 'The
people all came to shore, calling us and giving thanks to God,' he had
observed. 'Some brought us water, others various eatables: others, when
they saw that I was not inclined to land, threw themselves into the sea
and came, swimming, and we understood that they asked us if we had
come from heaven' (27). Cartier in Relations (1986, 112-3) and Cham-
plain in Des Sauvagesof 1604 (Champlain 1922-36, i: 180) describe simi-
lar aquatic greetings offered to the new arrivals.
Although Columbus immediately noticed the nakedness of the Native
people, he did not attribute it to destitution, as would Jacques Cartier
forty years later. Columbus wrote: 'They all go naked as their mother
bore them, and the women also, although I saw only one very young
girl. And all those whom I did see were youths, so that I did not see one
who was over thirty years of age; they were all very well built, with very
handsome bodies and very good faces' (23-4). Their nakedness, which
so fascinated the observers - Columbus mentions it repeatedly2 -
seemed like the mark of a primordial state of purity, of a recent birth,
similar to the youth and beauty of the world, evoked in the numerous
mentions of greenness that are scattered throughout Columbus's
description of the newly discovered lands: 'this island ... is so green that
it is a pleasure to gaze upon it' (26); this island 'has many trees, very
green and tall, and this land is higher than the other islands which have
been discovered' (38).
The Amerindian in the Accounts of Travel to America 161

The representation of Eden recurred in an unexpected fashion in the


third voyage, when Columbus wondered about the configuration of the
earthly paradise. Refusing the traditional vision that depicted it as a
'rugged mountain,' he conjured up the image of a woman's breast:

I have come to another conclusion respecting the earth, namely, that it is


not round as they describe, but of the form of a pear, which is very round
except where the stalk grows, at which part it is most prominent; or like a
round ball, upon one part of which is a prominence like a woman's nipple,
this protrusion being the highest and nearest the sky, situated under the
equinoctial line, and at the eastern extremity of this sea, - I call that the
eastern extremity, where the land and the islands end. (Columbus 1978,
130)

This whimsical vision of a naked breast floating on water recalls the


origins of human life, both of the species (through the earthly para-
dise) and of the individual (through the notion of giving birth in an
aquatic surrounding). Andre Thevet, probably recalling Columbus's
passage on the Amerindians' nakedness, would write in 1557 that the
Natives 'live as naked as the day they came out of their mother's womb,
both women and men, without any shame or bashfulness' (Thevet
[1557] 1983,52).
By mentioning shame, Thevet opened a theological discussion that
would be taken up by Jean de Lery and would strongly mark the begin-
ning of the seventeenth century. In 1578, in his Histoire d'un voyage faict
en la terre du Bresil, Lery recalled 'what the Holy Scripture says about
Adam and Eve, who, after their sin, were ashamed when they recognized
that they were naked' (Lery [1578] 1990, 68). If the American Savages
were not ashamed of their nakedness, did that mean that they were not
made 'participants in Adam's guilt & heirs to his sin,' that they did not
'also inherit the shame (that is the result of the sin) as did all the other
nations of the world' (Claude d'Abbeville i6i4a, 270"")? In other words,
could one branch of the human race have escaped the divine maledic-
tion? Unable to tolerate such an hypothesis, the Capuchin Claude
d'Abbeville proposed a rather tortuous, if not far-fetched, theological
justification. The Maragnan Savages were indeed descended from
Adam, whose sin they bore, but they were situated within that small tem-
poral interval that separates the commission and the awareness of the
sin: 'our first parents did not hide their nudity and felt no shame or
bashfulness until their eyes were opened, that is until they realized they
had sinned and saw themselves naked and stripped of the beautiful coat
162 Real Ouellet with Mylene Tremblay

of original justice ... But since the Maragnans have never had any knowl-
edge of the law, they can have no knowledge of the failings of vice and
sin' (Claude d'Abbeville i6i4a, 270). But let us forget these theological
subtleties to explore surer ground.
From these early European encounters with the inhabitants of the
New World, a double image emerged: that of the Christian conqueror
who wanted to entice the Savages with presents 'so that they might
feel great amity towards us,' so as to convert and then reduce them to
slavery; and that of the 'docile' Amerindian, 'deficient in everything'
(Columbus 1960, 23), but paradoxically rich in everything the Spaniards
were avidly searching for.

The Diabolical Savage

The euphoric representation of an edenic America and the generous


and docile Savage changed drastically during Columbus's fourth jour-
ney, when natural elements thwarted his plans. Still speculating on the
'location of the terrestrial paradise' as he continued to look for gold
mines (Columbus 1978, 177), he fell ill and his expedition was practi-
cally paralyzed by cruel weather, 'in that sea which seemed to me as a
sea of blood, seething like a cauldron on a mighty fire' that threatened
at any moment to engulf the ship (179). Like the coast, which had sud-
denly become 'formidable' (180), the Caribbean Natives were no longer
generous and hospitable beings, but enemies 'of a very rough disposi-
tion,' who resolved 'on burning [everything] and on putting us all to
death' (183) and who 'made an attack upon the boats, and at length
massacred the men' (184). One recognizes here the second representa-
tion of the Amerindian, the one whose diabolical cruelty was so often
described through examples of ritual torture or cannibalism in the writ-
ings of Jean de Lery and the Jesuits, or who was sketched by Theodore
deBry.
Although he did not dwell as did so many others on the cruel inhu-
manity of the Beothuks he encountered in the St Lawrence estuary
thirty years later, Carder symbolically recalled this aspect when he
described the inhospitable coast: The land should not be called the
New Land, being composed of stones and horrible rugged rocks; for
along the whole of the north shore [of the gulf] I did not see one cart-
load of earth and yet I landed in many places. Except at Blanc Sablon
there is nothing but moss and short, stunted shrub. In fine, I am rather
inclined to believe that this is the land God gave to Cain' (Carder 1993,
The Amerindian in the Accounts of Travel to America 163

9-10). The obvious biblical reminiscence makes of the nomadic Amer-


indian a reincarnation of Cain, the outcast, condemned to wander for
the horrible murder of his brother, Abel.
In Jesuit spiritual terms, this negative vision of the cruel Amerindian
gave birth to numerous scenes in which the Amerindian torturer resem-
bled the devil, who torments the damned in hell: 'I suppose that the
demons do something similar at the sight of souls condemned to their
braziers' (Jesuit Relations [1610-1791] 1896-1901 [hereafter JR] 21: 30-
3). At other times, the Jesuits compared the Amerindians to those who
put Christ to death, thus drawing a parallel between the violent death of
missionaries and the Passion of Christ: 'dying at the hands of these Bar-
barians, whose salvation we come to seek, is in some degree following
the example of our good Master, who was put to death by those to
whom he came to bring life' (JR 5: 224-5).

The Savage as an Informant

Although they never abandoned this double representation of Native


peoples, one positive and one negative - the explorers and missionaries
of New France rendered it more complex in order to make it fit their
dreams of conquest and their mythical projections. When Champlain
met the Native peoples of the St Lawrence for the first time, he was too
preoccupied with finding a road to China to allow himself to be over-
come by the negative aspects of representation.3 As an efficient explorer
of the land, he had them guide him through the maze of forests and
waterways. He especially used them as informants, questioning them at
length.

When we saw we could do no more ... we questioned the savages we had


with us about the end of the river, which I made them draw by hand, and
[show] whence was the source. They told us, that beyond the first rapid we
had seen, they go up the river in their canoes some ten or fifteen leagues to
a river which extends to the dwelling-place of the Algonquins, who dwell
some sixty leagues distant from the great river; and then they pass five
rapids ... [and] then they come into a lake ... Beyond it they again enter a
river ... and then enter another lake ... Then they come into a lake ... at the
extremity of it the water is brackish and the winter mild. At the end of the
said lake they pass a fall ... From here they enter another lake ... They say
that in the summer the sun sets to the north of this lake. (Champlain 1922-
36, l: 153-6)
164 Real Ouellet with Mylene Tremblay

With the help of this rough information, the explorer was able to consti-
tute, in an embryonic form, the hydrographic network of the Canadian
East.
Once Champlain understood that the St Lawrence was an important
pathway by which to penetrate the continent, he realized that European
technology would not allow him to go any further: a light Amerindian
bark canoe alone could cross the Lachine rapids, which had impeded
Carder's progress in the preceding century. The negative traits of the
Savage had not disappeared: they had merely been ignored or summa-
rized in an incidental ethnographic observation: 'all these people some-
times suffer so great extremity, on account of the great cold and snow,
that they are almost constrained to eat one another; for the animals and
fowl on which they live migrate to warmer countries' (Champlain 1922-
36, i: no).
Like Champlain the explorers, without always admitting it, would
count on the knowledge of the Savage to adapt to the harsh living con-
ditions in America. Several of them would succeed so well that they
would, like the Baron de Saint-Castin, become tribal chiefs, or like Nico-
las Perrot, become trappers, interpreters, or traffickers.

The Reasoning Savage

Even while they composed infinite variations of this dichotomous repre-


sentation of the Savage, European observers gradually were setting up
another representation, which would dominate the beginning of the
Enlightenment: the free-thinking Savage who instructed his civilized
counterpart. Once again, the topos developed slowly, by successive addi-
tions. In 1639, the Jesuit Paul Le Jeune noted the objections of a young
Amerindian seminarian:

You teach us that God existed before the creation of heaven and earth; if
he did, where did he live, since there was neither heaven nor earth? You say
also that the Angels were created in the beginning of the world, and that
those who disobeyed were cast into Hell; elsewhere, you put Hell in the
depths of the earth; these statements cannot agree very well, for, if the
Angels sinned before the creation of the earth, they could not be thrown
into Hell, or Hell is not where you place it. (Jesuit Relations [1610-1791]
1896-1901 [hereafter//?] 16: 182-3)

The missionary told the story as a picturesque anecdote, to show that his
The Amerindian in the Accounts of Travel to America 165 165

seminarians 'are wide-awake' and 'evince a great deal of intelligence.'


Half a century later, the Recollet Chestien Le Clercq would report the
apparently quite reasonable oration of a Mi'kmaq chief on the happi-
ness of his people, whom the French had described as like the 'beasts in
our woods,' 'deprived of bread, wine and a thousand other comforts':
'Well, my brother, if thou dost not yet know the real feelings which our
Indians have towards thy country and towards all thy nation, it is proper
that I inform thee at once. I beg thee now to believe that, all miserable
as we seem in thine eyes, we consider ourselves nevertheless much hap-
pier than thou in this, that we are very content with the little that we
have' (Le Clercq [1691] 1910, 104). In reporting this statement, the mis-
sionary no doubt wished to generate interest for the American missions
as well as to teach a moral lesson to Europeans too concerned with
earthly pleasure. But the words transcribed went beyond the traditional
moralizing Christian remarks to become a relativizing discourse on the
happiness and customs of the people. From this point of view, it fol-
lowed in the critical tradition originating with the second-century soph-
ist Lucian of Samosata, which was still flourishing in France in the
seventeenth century. We find such a tradition echoed again, for exam-
ple, in 1676, in the works of libertine novelists such as Foigny and Vei-
ras,-^ who criticized European values and morals through the eyes of
Australian aboriginals.
The critical discourse on the Reasoning Savage reached its height in
1703, when Baron Lahontan made his Huron, Adario, represent his own
critique of the French orthodoxies and 'ways of living.' Since the work
is too well known to dwell on its importance here,5 we will emphasize
only one, usually neglected, aspect of the accusations brought against
Europe by the Savage.

The Degeneration of the Savage

Paradoxically, just beneath the surface of Lahontan's criticism of


French values and behaviour lay the accusation that the Savage had
degenerated because of the European. This affirmation first appeared
as an incidental, essentially moralizing, remark. When he wanted to
show the progress of the missionary work that had lifted the 'very thick
night covering all these regions with horror,' the Jesuit Paul Le Jeune,
who was not very sympathetic towards the sauvages, wrote in his 1636
Relation: The din of Palaces, the great uproar of Lawyers, Litigants, and
Solicitors is heard here only at a thousand leagues' distance. Exactions,
166 Real Ouellet with Mylene Tremblay

deceits, thefts, rapes, assassinations, treachery, enmity, black malice, are


seen here only once a year, in the letters and Gazettes which people
bring from Old France' (JR 9: 138-40). If we took these lines literally,
we might believe that evil did not come from Adam and Eve's original
sin but was brought from France, along with various devastating dis-
eases, by the French themselves, despite the fact that they were pretend-
ing to lead the Savages to salvation. This interpretation was confirmed
by a comment made later by a Caribbean missionary, the Dominican
Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre, according to whom the Caribbean Natives
'know almost nothing of malice but what the French have taught them'
(Du Tertre 1654, 399)-
While one must be careful to consider these notions as moral observa-
tions only, without specific social relevance, one cannot say the same
about some of the denunciations of the French and Canadians who traf-
ficked in brandy with the Natives. From 1632, his first year in the colony,
onward Le Jeune noted: 'in fact, since I have been here, I have seen only
drunken Savages; they are heard shouting and raving day and night,
they fight and wound each other, they kill the cattle of madame Hebert'
(//?5: 48-50). In 1679, against the advice of the Bishop of Quebec and of
the missionaries who advocated a total ban on the brandy trade among
the Amerindians, the court promulgated an order authorizing the trade
in French settlements.6
Laymen did not hesitate to denounce the disintegrating effects of
alcohol on Amerindian social life. While he recognized the beneficial
effects of the missionary undertaking, Nicolas Denys in 1672 presented a
sombre assessment of the French influence on the Amerindians. The
last chapter of his Histoire naturelle, devoted in large part to the introduc-
tion of brandy in Amerindian societies, clearly illustrated the degenera-
tion of the Native, who had become a bad hunter, violent, poor, and
sometimes criminal in his drunkenness. The degradation is even more
obvious in the case of women, 'who are thieves and cheats, and have no
longer their former purity' (Denys [1672] 1908, 450). Denys assigned
most of the responsibility for these new vices to fishermen and captains
wishing to become wealthy from the traffic in alcohol. He noted as well
the bad influence of conflict among the French themselves, motivated
by ambition and envy, which incited the Natives to steal: '"Do [you] not
take your establishments one from another," they say to us, "and do
[you] not kill one another for that purpose; have we not seen you do it,
and why are you not willing that we should do it? If one is not willing to
give it to us, we will take it"' (451). To correct these problems, Denys
The Amerindian in the Accounts of Travel to America 167

proposed a paradoxical solution: to drown the Amerindian population


in a huge immigration of French settlers, despite the fact that the Jesuits
felt it was necessary to isolate their mission from the rest of the colony.
Denys's condemnation of Native behaviour was echoed by Chrestien
Le Clercq in 1691, who attributed the degeneration of the Mi'kmaq to
alcohol, and denounced brandy as the main obstacle to conversion
(Le Clercq [1691] 1910, 254-8).
If Denys and Le Clerq accused the Europeans of corrupting the
Gaspesians, Antoine Simon Le Page du Pratz, like Adario half a century
earlier, condemned them through an old Natchez in Louisiana, who
wished to convince his compatriots to attack the French. Only the old
man could evoke the Natives' original state, denounce the transforma-
tions engendered by contact with the Europeans, and caution young
people not to let themselves be seduced and subjugated; he alone had
the moral authority to demand liberty and dignity in the name of his
people:

For a long time now, we have noticed that the proximity of Frenchmen
does us more harm than good; we see it, we the Elders, but the young
people do not see it. The Frenchmen's Merchandise pleases the young; but
what is it all good for, except to debauch the girls & corrupt the Nation's
blood, & to make [the girls] prideful and lazy? The young men are in the
same situation: & the married men must kill themselves with work to feed
their family & satisfy their children. (Le Page du Pratz 1758, 3: 238)

The old man's revulsion allowed the author to put forth his own crit-
icism of the French commander sent to govern the Natchez, and to
demonstrate his insight, since he had predicted everything (231). Cor-
ruption spread even further among the Natchez through the experience
of war, because it provoked 'too familiar a contact with the French'
(329); 'this familiarity allows for vice, from which stem dangerous
illnesses & the corruption of the blood which is naturally very pure in
this colony; the people who come in contact with the Naturals think they
have permission to commit vice because it is customary to offer women
to guests when they arrive; this does ill to their health & their Merchan-
dise' (330). The flaws of European civilization had managed to catch up
with the Savage, even in the depth of his distant American forest.
Another of Le Page du Pratz's Natchez personalities, Serpent Pique,
listed the deceptive advantages of the coming of the French, asking
whether the blankets and guns were worth the loss of their land and
l68 Real Ouellet with Mylene Tremblay

wheat. The conclusion did not leave any doubt: according to Serpent
Pique, 'before the arrival of the French, we lived like men who knew
how to content themselves with what they had; instead, today, we walk as
Slaves who do not do what they wish' (Le Page du Pratz 1758, i: 205).
Rousseau had said it forcefully a few years earlier: a society cannot turn
back once it has known the poisoned seduction of civilization.
Ten years after Le Page du Pratz, the Dutchman Cornelius De Pauw
discussed the subject of Amerindian degeneration at length, in a pub-
lished debate with Antoine-Joseph Pernety. For De Pauw, the degenera-
tion of the Amerindians, in the North as in the South, was undeniable
and 'progressive'; it attacked the 'physical and moral faculties.' This
degeneration even affected Europeans who spent time in America (De
Pauw 1770, Defence, 10-14), the animals (78-104), and the plants (111-
18). No expression was too strong or too contemptuous to describe the
Savages: they were stupid (233), moronic (19), pusillanimous (15), cruel
(53); their women were ugly (19) and barren (25); they were prone to
all sorts of diseases, including the venereal (35); it was 'animal instinct'
and not brains that 'teach[es] the Savage to build a hut, sleep with his
mate, raise his children, speak, live from hunting and fishing, or from
wild fruit according to the products indigenous to the area, defend him-
self against his enemies or attack them' (251). For De Pauw, Native
degeneration came not from the Europeans, but from the 'inclemency
of the climate' (10) and perhaps also from 'the blood of this pusillani-
mous race' (15). The harshness of this judgment is less striking than the
new point of view - very different from the majority of authors - accord-
ing to which de Pauw saw the Amerindian as subjected to a heavy bio-
logical, geographical, and historical determinism (see Roelens 1972;
Ouellet and Beaulieu in Lahontan [1702-3] 1990).
This vehement affirmation around 1770 of the Amerindian's degener-
ation formed part of the development of philosophical treatises turned
resolutely towards progress and technical development. Yet, at the same
time, primitivist discourse continued to present the Savage as a stable
and ahistorical entity. Pierre Berthiaume, studying the writings of Tur-
got and Condorcet, rightly speaks of 'the Savage's deliquescence,' in as
much as the primitive figure can no longer be located on the axis of
humanity's continuous progress. For Turgot and Condorcet, as in the
Encyclopedic,7 he was absent, or rather he became an 'aberration, quickly
erased in order to create a new human model, one who would illustrate
the economic postulates on which rested the new conception of the
world' (Berthiaume 1993, 198). It is significant, in this regard, that in his
The Amerindian in the Accounts of Travel to America 169

letters from Canada in 1757-8, the young Bougainville, steeped in the


dominant philosophical values, often represented the Amerindians as
bloodthirsty monsters, cannibalistic barbarians, entirely opposite to his
happy and kindly Tahitians of 1771 (Melancon 1996).

If representations of both the Good and the Cruel Savage hearken back
to the myth of the lost paradise, we begin to see the Reasoning Native,
denouncer of European civilization, as the spokesperson for Europe's
criticism of itself. The Degenerate Native, victim of a civilization held in
contempt, then becomes the echo of a guilty conscience. It is in this
sense that, as part of our collective unconscious, the image returns to
haunt us today, in the increasing number of situations in which both the
descendants of the European colonizers and the descendants of the
American Savages of the seventeenth century maintain that the Amerin-
dian is the victim of the white man's wickedness. Though the idea of this
degeneration is fading progressively as new research defines more pre-
cisely the role of the Amerindian in American history, certain representa-
tions still persist. For example, the recent association between the
Amerindians and the ecological movement recalls the Savage Philoso-
pher, faithful to the values of the natural state. But by reclaiming this
message, are the Amerindians themselves not conforming to the old ste-
reotype of the 'natural' wise man, guardian of the earth and appointed
critic of civilization (H. Tanner and Sioui 1994; Fixico 1994)? Who is to
distinguish between the ethnographic reality and the fictive work of
myth? Are the myths of the good Savage and of the Savage as a re-
fraction of the Other's imperialism based on the existence of a real
Amerindian, or does such a figure actually exist outside language and
subjectivity?

NOTES

1 See, for example, the title of Olive P. Dickason's well-known book, The Myth of
the Savage and the Beginnings of French Colonialism in the Americas (1984).
2 See, for example, Columbus 1960, 29, 36, 41, 52.
3 See, however, the passage on the monstrous Armouchiquois he had heard
about, 'who are savages of quite monstrous shape: for their head is small and
their body short, their arms and likewise their thighs slender like those of a
skeleton, their legs thick and long, and of the same size all the way down; and
when they sit upon their heels, their knees are higher by half a foot than their
170 Real Ouellet with Mylene Tremblay

head, which is a strange thing, and they seem to be out of the course of
nature' (Champlain 1922-36, i: 181).
4 See Foigny 1676; Veiras 1676-8.
5 See the long introduction by Real Ouellet and Alain Beaulieu to their edition
of Louis-Armand de Lorn d'Arce, Baron de Lahontan, Oeuvres completes
([Lahontan 1702-3] 1990).
6 On this subject, see A. Vachon on Francois de Laval (Vachon 1969); Stanley
1953» 492-8; Eastman 1915, 72-82, 122-34, 179-201.
7 On the Encyclopedic?, lack of interest in North America and the Amerindians,
see Ouellet and Beaulieu's introduction to Lahontan [1702-3] 1990.
PART III
Translatio fide
This page intentionally left blank
Few, Uncooperative, and 111 Informed?
The Roman Catholic Clergy in
French and British North America,
1610-1658
Luca Codignola

The resolutions of the Council of Trent (1545-63) signalled a new


awareness of the spiritual needs of the Catholic faithful, both in Europe
and abroad, and the beginning of an in-depth reorganization of all mis-
sionary activities. North America became part of this movement in the
early seventeenth century, when the French and the British began to set-
tle in the New World. The years from 1563 to 1632 witnessed the earliest
phase of evangelical activity in North America, which ended around
1629, when the English briefly conquered Quebec. This first phase
included the earliest Recollet and Jesuit missions in both New France
and the Avalon colony in Newfoundland. The second phase, 1632 to
1659, included the Jesuit missions in Canada, Acadia, and Maryland; the
Capuchin and Recollet missions in Acadia; and the initiatives of the
French devots — the last group being lay men and women who devoted
their lives to the cause of Christianity, often as part of a community,
although they elected not to embrace any ecclesiastical status as priests
or nuns. This phase ended with the arrival of the vicar apostolic of Can-
ada, Francois de Laval, later first bishop of Quebec, which signalled the
end of the period in which the conversion of the Amerindians was the
main priority of the European clergy in French and British North Amer-
ica. Later, the need to maintain the True Faith among the European
community replaced the earlier enthusiasm for missionary work and the
ill-founded hope for an easy evangelization of all Amerindians (Codi-
gnola 1995).
The topic of Native conversions and missionary endeavours has been
closely studied in recent years. Yet the creation of the North American
Catholic network - the flow of people, objects, and ideas characterizing
Catholicism on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean - is still little known.
174 Luca Codignola

Historians have usually focused on missionary activity in North America,


or on the atmosphere of religious awakening that pervaded Europe for
about a hundred years after the Council of Trent, but rarely have they
worked on both at the same time (Deslandres 1989, 1990, 1993; Prosper!
1982; Tallon 1990, 1993). Furthermore, by relying almost exclusively on
the available literary sources, such as the so-called Jesuit relations
(known mostly through American historian Reuben Gold Thwaites's
very incomplete edition; see Codignola 1996), or on accounts such as
those of the Franciscan Recollet lay brother Gabriel Sagard (i632a,
1636), the Capuchin Pacifique de Provins (Rene de 1'Escale) (1646), or
the Jesuit Andrew White (1633, 1634), historians have amplified the
extent of the influence of these works. They have used them as matter-
of-course evidence of extensive missionary activity in North America,
and have lost track of the individuals who composed them, as if these
men and women were very numerous and as if they acted in unison
under the Holy See's overall guidance. But were they really that numer-
ous? Did they really cooperate, as latter-day historians have all too often
taken for granted? And how extensive was the influence of the printed
missionary literature?

Some sparse evidence exists showing that a few priests accompanied


the exploring expeditions and the French and Basque fishing fleets
between 1497 and 1604. Although the general conversion of the Amer-
indians was a proclaimed objective of all exploring and colonizing expe-
ditions, these priests, like the crews to which they ministered, had hardly
any interest in the Amerindians. In fact, systematic plans to carry over to
the Americas 'our holy Christian faith and Holy Mother the Catholic
church' (Biggar 1930, 207-9; my translation) were not implemented or
even attempted in the course of the sixteenth century. In the first
decade of the seventeenth century, however, the needs of the Amerindi-
ans slowly began to take precedence over those of the fishing crews. The
first priest who was recruited not for the fishing ships, but for the con-
version of the Amerindians - the Mi'kmaq of Acadia - was the secular
priest Jesse Fleche, who in 1610 spent some weeks in the newly founded
colony of Port-Royal. Some years previously, in 1604, the king of France,
Henri iv, had asked the Society of Jesus for two missionaries who were to
accompany the fishing fleet to the Grand Banks to take advantage of the
new opportunities for the 'conversion of that vast continent that is
called New France, Norumbega, Canada and Bacalaos' (Campeau 1967-
94, i:5).'
Catholic Clergy in French and British North America 175

Between 1611 and 1613 a Jesuit mission existed in Acadia, and eleven
years later another mission of the order was established in Quebec,
which lasted from 1625 to 1629, when the English for a time conquered
the French colony. In the first three decades of the seventeenth century,
a total of eighteen Jesuits left France to go to Quebec and Acadia. At
that time, the Society of Jesus, which had been founded in 1534 and
approved in 1540, had missions all over Europe, besides those in Asia
and in Iberian America (Szilas 1990, 58*, 78). The Society of Jesus was
not the only order involved in the early days of New France. Between
1615 and 1625 twenty-one Recollets were sent to Quebec. The Recollets
were a branch of the Order of Friars Minor, also known as Franciscans.
Like the Jesuits, they were actively involved in missionary work in France
and abroad. In Spanish America they were among the earliest and most
active orders, with several hundred convents (Iriarte 1983, 303-45).
In the i6ios and 16205 the idea of taking advantage of the settlement
of North America to establish Catholic missions was not the concern of
French missionaries alone. The planting of an English colony, the Ava-
lon settlement in Newfoundland, was contemporary with the earliest
Jesuit and Recollet attempts in New France. George Calvert, Baron Balti-
more and a Catholic member of the English Privy Council, had to
accommodate both Protestants and Catholics in Ferryland, the centre of
his colony. This provided an opening for Catholic missionaries, five of
whom (three secular priests and two Jesuits) went to Newfoundland
between 1627 and 1629 (Codignola 1988).
The second phase of the expansion of Catholicism in North America,
between 1632 and 1658, represents quite diverse forms of religious orga-
nization. A 'regular order' is a community of priests who also follow a
special set of 'rules' (hence 'regular') that have been approved by the
pope. Orders usually subdivide their territory into 'provinces,' whose
chief administrator is known as the 'provincial.' Secular priests are not
members of any order and, as such, they are under the jurisdiction of
the bishop of the diocese in which they live. Some secular priests, such
as the Sulpicians, live together as a community, but do not regard them-
selves as a 'regular order.' Canada proper was in effect a French Jesuit
province, although the missionary field was not reserved to them. Aca-
dia from 1630 to 1658 was an open field in which Recollets, Capuchins,
and Jesuits all tried their lot. Maryland was the only province in British
North America where, from 1633 to 1645, there was a Jesuit presence
resembling the experiment among the Huron. 2
After 1632 the Jesuits in New France grew in number, though not as
176 Luca Codignola

much as one might expect. From 1632 to 1658, inclusive, sixty-two of


them left France for either Canada or Acadia. These figures must be
placed in their context. According to its own records, the Society of
Jesus boasted 15,544 priests in 1616, to whom 13,104 students, at various
levels, must be added. In 1653 it had a little less than 1,000 missionaries
around the world, of whom the highest number (381) were in continen-
tal Europe and the lowest (9) in Scotland (Synopsis historiae 1950). As the
Recollets did not return to Canada until 1670, for about a quarter of a
century (1632-57) the Jesuits were the only male missionaries in that
colony, where they shared their mission with a small group of eight sec-
ular priests who had joined the colony for personal reasons or to attend
to the needs of the female religious community. In 1657, three priests
and one deacon belonging to the Sulpicians, secular priests living as a
community, joined them in Canada and settled in Montreal. As for the
female congregations, from 1639 to 1657 eleven Ursulines and fifteen
Augustines Hospitalieres de la Misericorde de Jesus crossed the ocean to
work in New France.
If in Canada the Jesuits had no rivals, in Acadia the Society shared the
territory with one cordelier (a branch of the Franciscans), the Recollets
(1630-45), and the Capuchins (1632-58). Information about the Recol-
lets is so scanty and imprecise that we do not even know whether their
six or so missionaries to Acadia ever tried to minister to the Amerindi-
ans. As for the Capuchins, it is difficult to know in detail the history of
their mission in North America. In fact, their failure to impress later his-
torians, who devote so much attention to their Jesuit contemporaries in
Canada, is due mainly to the fact that the latter have produced vast writ-
ten sources, whereas sources describing the former are either lost or
unknown. Yet the Capuchins were at the time among the most powerful
of the regular orders, and were engaged in missions in Europe and over-
seas. In 1596 there were 660 Capuchin convents in Europe alone, with
7,230 members. The Capuchin province of Paris, whose responsibility
included Acadia and which was in 1632 only one among ten French
provinces, had 745 members, of whom only 202 were lay brothers. In
their first attempt to establish a mission, from three to six Capuchins
were in La Heve from 1632 to about 1635. Their second attempt was
much more successful and lasted almost twenty years, from 1639 to 1658
(the year of the English conquest of Acadia). The Capuchin mission in
Acadia consisted of Port-Royal, Riviere Saintjean, Pentagouet, lie du
Cap-Breton, and Baie des Chaleurs. These establishments were served
by as many as fifty-seven Capuchins, a small number, yet much more
Catholic Clergy in French and British North America 177

substantial than it is usually thought, and almost identical to that of


their Jesuit contemporaries in Acadia. We also know that, like the Jesuits
in Acadia, the Capuchins devoted most of their time to the conversion
of the Mi'kmaq, although their overall achievement was quite modest
(Campeau 1967-94, 6: 389).
Maryland's short-lived experiment with Catholicism was a direct out-
come of the failure of Lord Baltimore's aborted Avalon colony. In 1633
three Jesuits accompanied one of George Calvert's sons, Leonard Cal-
vert, to the newly founded colony of Maryland. Like all missionaries,
they started off with the idea of converting the local Amerindians, but
after the Virginia Protestants invaded the colony in 1645 they contented
themselves with the already difficult task of keeping the faith among
their few co-religionists. Their lives were very difficult and their success
almost nil (Axtell 1986). It seems that fourteen Jesuits were sent to Mary-
land between 1633 and 1645. In 1638 the province had five of them in
the colony at the same time. In the same year, the total number of Jesu-
its who were under the jurisdiction of the English province was 506 (of
whom 237 were priests and 44 lay brothers), in addition to 225 students
at various levels.
These North American figures are not unreasonable when placed in
their proper North Atlantic context. In fact, the proportion of priests and
nuns who were active in North America and their counterparts who
remained in Europe is strikingly in line with the difference in population
between the colonies and their mother countries. France had 16,000,000
inhabitants in the early seventeenth century, whereas the whole of New
France had 1,206 French residents in 1650 and about 3,000 in 1660. As for
the Huron, the celebrated target of the Jesuit missionary efforts, the
entire nation consisted of some 18,000 to 21,000 individuals in 1636.
(Their number would be cut almost in half by the epidemics of 1636-9.)
For its part, Newfoundland had almost no European inhabitants at the
time of Lord Baltimore's venture in the 16208, and in 1660 the Upper
South (that is, Maryland and Virginia) of the British continental colonies,
where most of the English-speaking Catholics resided at that time, had
24,000 residents of European origin. In contrast, at mid-century, England
and Wales alone had 8,250,000 inhabitants.

Those who were involved in the evangelization of French and British


North America took it for granted that they were part of God's grand
design. However, they differed in almost every other respect. Indeed,
the general picture is one of ecclesiastical anarchy. The group alle-
178 Luca Codignola

giances of the missionaries were much more significant in practical


terms than their common membership in the Catholic Church.
The Holy See exercised very little control over the initiatives that were
taken to send missionaries to French and British North America, in spite
of the fact that territories that were outside the Christian world and not
part of any diocese were considered mission territories and reserved to
the sole jurisdiction of the pope. The first successful attempt of the Holy
See to coordinate missionary activities and to centralize information on
foreign lands came in 1622 with the establishment of the Sacred Con-
gregation 'de Propaganda Fide.' This department had the double task
of spreading the True Faith among the infidels and of protecting it
where Catholics lived side by side with non-Catholics. At the beginning
of their activity, the cardinals of the Sacred Congregation had no juris-
diction over Iberian America, and until 1625 they were almost com-
pletely unaware of the French and English activities in North America
(Codignola 1988, 2i). Until the appointment of Laval in 1657, Propa-
ganda Fide struggled hard, and with little success, to keep abreast of
what was going on in the New World. In 1641 it even tried unsuccessfully
to dispatch a secular priest, Charles Camus Duperon, 'to report on the
behaviour of the local ecclesiastics.'^
As we have seen, most of the missionary initiatives were in the hands
of the regular orders, namely, the Recollets, the Jesuits, and the Capu-
chins. Of these, only the latter had a good relationship with Propaganda
Fide and kept it informed on a fairly regular basis. In fact, the Capuchin
mission had been the direct result of a plan devised in 1630 by the secre-
tary of Propaganda Fide, Francesco Ingoli, and the spiritual leader of
the Capuchin order, Joseph de Paris (Francois-Joseph Du Tremblay)
(Campeau 1967-94, 2: 279-80). The relationship between the Society of
Jesus and Propaganda Fide was particularly strained. From the time of
the establishment of the new coordinating agency, the Jesuits had
insisted on the privilege of the same faculties (that is, spiritual power to
consecrate altars, to absolve from matrimonial impediments, arid so on)
in North America that were accorded to them in the East Indies. For its
part, Propaganda maintained that faculties were granted to all mission-
aries on an equal basis, and that the Jesuits were not a special case. As
far as North America was concerned, when it had become clear that its
earliest overtures had led nowhere, Propaganda Fide for all purposes
lost contact with New France and had to wait until the 16505 to receive
further information on Canada from the Society of Jesus.
Examples of jealousy between the secular clergy and the regulars
Catholic Clergy in French and British North America 179

abound throughout the early phase of the history of New France. Jean
de Biencourt, better known as Sieur de Poutrincourt, brought the secu-
lar priest Fleche to Acadia in order to prevent the Jesuits from being
sent to his colony. For their part, the Society of Jesus used its court con-
nections to overrule Sieur de Poutrincourt's family and go to Port-
Royal, where they promptly criticized Fleche's missionary methods and
the laymen's easy-going manners (Campeau 1967-94, 2: i9O*-2i6*,
203-50). The dispute between the secular clergy and the regular orders
was all too well known in Europe. That it did not produce any major
trauma in North America was because there were almost no secular
clergy in the colonies until the arrival of Laval in 1659. Yet right from
the time of his selection as future bishop, Laval met with the opposition
of the Sulpicians, who were, in all but their canonical constitutions, very
much a regular order. In fact, Laval had been hurriedly selected as a
candidate for the soon-to-be-established bishopric of Quebec by the
Jesuits, who gave him their support because they feared that the Societe
de Notre-Dame de Montreal, the devot group that was established in
1639 and that in 1642 had founded Montreal without bothering to
inform the Society of Jesus, would manage to have someone they
favoured appointed to the position (Campeau 1974, 64-6).
There were also differences and jealousies between regular orders,
each trying to secure full jurisdiction and exclusive rights over new mis-
sions at the expense of other orders. Rather then seeking cooperation
with each other, they seemed to avoid it as much as possible. The Jesuits
and the Recollets got along well only for a very short time, when the lat-
ter received and lodged the Jesuits in their Quebec convent of Saint-
Charles in 1625 (Sagard 1636, 869; Campeau 1967-94, 2: 146, 176-7).
The presence of both groups in Quebec was owing simply to overlap-
ping influences within the French court. The Queen Mother's first dame
d'honneur, Antoinette de Pons, Marquise de Guercheville, was influential
in selecting the first Jesuits who were sent to Acadia in 1611, whereas
proximity to the court probably favoured the Recollet province of Paris
over that of Aquitaine in 1615. No common plan for evangelization of
the Amerindians was ever devised.
Relations between the two branches of the Franciscan family, the Rec-
ollets and the Capuchins, were even worse. For one thing, it is most
likely that the exclusion of the Recollets from Canada in 1632 was due to
the Capuchins, and not to the Jesuits, as a Recollet tradition that origi-
nated long after the events would have had it (Le Tac [1689] 1888; Le
Clercq 1691; Dube 1995). Joseph de Paris had been so persuasive that in
180 Luca Codignola

January 1632 Richelieu had granted the whole of New France to the
Capuchins, who, however, declined the offer to become involved in
Canada and kept only Acadia for themselves (Campeau 1967-94, 2: 273-
6). When in March 1633 Richelieu ordered all Recollets in Acadia to
leave the mission to their fellow Franciscans, so as to avoid 'the prob-
lems that might arise from the mingling of persons of different alle-
giances in that country,' 4 they refused to leave. Then the two branches
of the Franciscan family became enmeshed in a civil war that set them in
opposition. Since Charles de Saint-Etienne de La Tour was retaining his
Recollets, the Capuchins felt they had little choice but to support La
Tour's rival, Charles de Menou d'Aulnay (MacDonald 1983, 208 n.6).
The order of the Minims never went to New France, but their permis-
sion to go to North America had spelled out that they could reside only
where no other regular order was already active. Had they succeeded in
their project, one could only guess that a fourth contestant would have
positioned itself in the same arena.5
There were also differences within the same orders. The Recollet
provinces of Paris and Aquitaine very strongly opposed each other in
their respective North American projects, actually hindering each
other's progress. The Recollets of Aquitaine had not been ready to go to
New France in 1614, so their place had been taken by the Recollets of
Paris. The former then turned to Acadia, where they resided from 1620
to 1624. The only contact between the Recollets of Acadia and their con-
freres in Quebec seems to have been in the winter 1624—5, when three
of the Acadians took refuge in Quebec in order to return to France at
the earliest opportunity.
As for the Capuchins, the death of Joseph de Paris in 1638 created
problems within their province of Paris, of which he was the real leader,
although he was not, officially, its provincial. In fact, his death created
problems in the whole of France, as he was considered overall leader by
all the French Capuchin provinces. A bitter struggle ensued in which a
'Roman' party (that is, one on good terms with Propaganda Fide) and
a 'local' party contended for overall leadership. The power of that
province within France was constantly being eroded by other French
provinces, such as Touraine (separated 1610), Burgundy (1618), Brit-
tany (1629), Normandy (1629), and Aquitaine (1640), all of which
resented the central leadership of Paris and had only recently managed
to be recognized as independent bodies (Raoul de Sccaux 1965, 261-
574). At stake was the control of the province's foreign missions in
Greece, England, Palestine, and Canada. As for Canada, the fact that a
Catholic Clergy in French and British North America 181

Capuchin might be sent and then recalled - or begged to be recalled -


seems more closely linked to his membership in the party in power
within the province's current leadership, than to the progress of mis-
sionary work with the Amerindians.
Finally, as did the Recollets, the Jesuits took special care to avoid the
simultaneous presence of confreres of different provinces in contiguous
mission fields. When in 1628 the suggestion was made to entrust a new
mission in Acadia to the Jesuit province of Aquitaine, the general of the
Society, Muzio Vitelleschi, refused to comply, on the ground that New
France had been entrusted 'for many years' to the province of Paris, and
that all occasions of jurisdictional jealousies must be avoided (Campeau
1967-94, 2: 197-9). Yet, the plentiful sources of the Society of Jesus have
revealed that, even within an order usually deemed monolithic in
the extreme, there were differences and jealousies. Barthelemi Vimont,
who had problems with fellow Jesuit Paul Ragueneau, was recalled in
1659. Ragueneau himself then returned to France, together with Joseph-
Antoine Poncet de La Riviere, because they had been engaged in politi-
cal controversy. We do not know the reason for the sudden departure
from Canada of Amable de Fretat, who spent only one winter in the
colony, but we know that Nicolas Adam was reputed to be 'the worst
possible choice for the Canadian mission' (Campeau 1967-94, 2: 798).
Most important of all, within each order there was open opposition to
any involvement in the North American missions, something that cer-
tainly contributed to the small numbers of missionaries who actually set
foot there. Jesuits, Recollets, and Capuchins strongly believed that their
prime objective was the war against Protestant influence within France
itself. As one Jesuit applicant was told in 1620, 'Here [i.e., in France] you
will find New France, Constantinople, and the remote places of which
you write, or, to put it in an even clearer fashion, here you will find souls
to which you could extend your zeal with great results' (Campeau 1967-
94, 2: 40-1). At any rate, for those who felt a special interest in the for-
eign missions, Asia or Spanish and Portuguese territories came well
before Canada or Acadia, where missionary activity seemed something
of a waste of time. The project of the Discalced Carmelite known in reli-
gion as Simon Stock (Thomas Doughty) to establish a mission in Avalon
- where he did not himself want to go - met with opposition from the
superiors of his order and from most of his confreres. They considered
Avalon a waste of time, concentrated their efforts on their Middle East
missions, and consequently tried to discredit Stock's project. For exam-
ple, they doctored a report on Newfoundland that they had received
182 Luca Codignola

from one of Stock's companions in England, Bede of the Blessed Sacra-


ment (John Hiccocks), and forwarded to Propaganda Fide a version of
it so garbled that it made Stock's project meaningless (Codignola 1988,
26-9). The Capuchin Pacifique de Provins, who had been appointed
prefect of the Capuchin missions in 'all places in North America where
French shall be, and in the whole of New France,'6 declared that he had
no intention of going to such a wasteland, and managed instead to be
sent to Guadeloupe.

How did prospective missionaries acquire information about their North


American destinations? Some printed material was available to prospec-
tive missionaries and the devout public alike. Jesuit Pierre Biard's 1616
report was soon published, and there was immediate need for a new edi-
tion, though in the event it was never printed. In fact, the major differ-
ence between the first (1611-29) and the second phase (1632-58) of the
Jesuit mission in North America was the new acquaintance of the French
confreres with the daily experiences of their fellow missionaries labour-
ing in Canada. This was made possible by the printing and circulating of
the so-called Jesuit relations. The Jesuit relations were inaugurated in
1632 by the superior Paul Lejeune at the end of his first summer in Can-
ada. The periodic issue of the Relations and their late-nineteenth-century
publication within a corpus of seventy-three volumes have made the
Jesuit experience in New France the best known of all missionary activi-
ties in North America, to contemporaries and to historians alike. Written
reports on the activity of missionaries had always existed. Yet what had
been throughout the Middle Ages and the pre-Tridentine period the
occasional result of a missionary's or diplomat's own initiative now
became a regular activity of the members of the Society of Jesus under the
influence of its founder, Ignacio (Inigo) de Loyola, and of his earliest
missionaries in Asia. They believed that information on mission territo-
ries had to be systematically centralized and shared by all members of the
order. Among other things, these reports could be used, after careful
editing, to excite the enthusiasm of new missionaries and to serve some
fundraising purposes (Codignola and Pizzorusso 1996).
No relations, however, were produced by the Jesuit mission in Mary-
land. For that colony, the available printed literature consists only of two
small pamphlets that publicized the venture and that were produced in
1633 (only a few months prior to the departure of three Jesuits to the
colony) and 1634. The first was the eight-page Declaration of the Lord
Balternore's Plantation, written by Andrew White, the first superior, and
Catholic Clergy in French and British North America 183

revised by the second Baron Baltimore and second proprietor of Mary-


land, Cecil Calvert. (Some excerpts were translated and reached Propa-
ganda Fide, but had no visible effects in Rome.) The second pamphlet
was White's fourteen-page Relation of the Success/nil Beginnings of the Lord
Baltemore's Plantation. One could well maintain that there was no major
difference between the French Jesuit missions in Canada and Acadia
and the English Jesuit mission in Maryland - except for the celebrity of
the first two, mainly due to the printing of their Relations.1
It appears that the Recollets compiled annual reports similar to those
later produced by the Jesuits, yet only one of them has come down to us,
via Sagard. The principal printed source of information about the Rec-
ollets is the two books written by Sagard himself, who spent only one
winter (1623-4) in Canada. The subsequent availability of his accounts
(Sagard 16323, 1636) has blinded later historians to the fact that they do
not know how much these accounts circulated among Sagard's contem-
poraries. In reality, we know almost nothing of what the other Recollets
did during or thought of their experience in Canada.
The Capuchins were almost ten times more numerous than the Rec-
ollets, but again nothing was published on their Acadian experience.
One should compare this silence with the great success enjoyed by the
books of their confreres Claude d'Abbeville (Clement Foullon) (1612,
i6i4a, i6i4b) and Yves d'Evreux (1615) relating their Brazilian experi-
ences, published only a generation before, or with the attitude of Paci-
fique de Provins, who refused to go to Acadia but who, immediately
upon his return from the West Indies, wrote a book to tell the world of
the wonderful new opportunities to enlarge God's vineyard (Pacifique
de Provins 1646).

In this article, I have briefly addressed the issues of the number of the
missionary clergy in French and British North America between 1610
and 1658, of the cooperation among them, and of the influence of
printed missionary literature. Before any firm conclusion can be
reached, however, we need an in-depth prosopographical account of
the ecclesiastical personnel in early North America - their geographical,
family, and educational background, the rationale behind their depar-
ture, the length of their stay, the careers of those who returned to
Europe, and, finally, the spreading of knowledge regarding the New
World and its influence over their choices.
For the time being, available figures show that the number of people
who were involved in the evangelization of North America, on both
184 Luca Codignola

sides of the Atlantic Ocean, was very small. Only 190-193 male and 26
female members of the clergy, at all levels (including the lay brothers
and the converse [lay] sisters), voluntarily went or were forcibly sent to
North America between 1610 and 1658. For almost half a century, the
members of the clergy who left European ports for North America aver-
aged not more than four a year. Considering the massive influence
claimed for them, this is a very low figure even when, to account for the
inaccuracy of the available data, we double it by estimating that there
were others who might have manifested some wish to go.
As for cooperation, it would certainly be too much to say that there
was none at all among the ecclesiastical personnel. Hostility and dissent,
however, were almost as evident. The Holy See - that is, mainly the
Sacred Congregation 'de Propaganda Fide' - had little control over
what was going on in North America. For their part, the Jesuits, the
Recollets, and the Capuchins did their utmost to exclude fellow mis-
sionaries from the territories they believed it was their rightful duty to
administer. Furthermore, available evidence points to the fact that most
of the information relating to the North American missions circulated
through personal contacts and byword of mouth among groups of peo-
ple who might have been interested, but represented a very limited sam-
ple of the European missionaries, let alone of the European clergy.
Printed missionary literature, when it existed at all, seems to have had
little influence on the prospective missionaries. Historians need to
come to terms with the available evidence: there was far less European
interest than we have assumed in the evangelization of French and Brit-
ish North America.

NOTES

1 All translations from Campeau are my own.


2 This summary is based mainly on archival material that is surveyed in full
in my articles 'Competing Networks: Roman Catholic Ecclesiastics in
French North America, 1610-58' (Codignola iQ99a) and 'Roman Catholic
Ecclesiastics in English North America, 1610-58: A Comparative Assessment'
(Codignola 19990).
3 Rome, Archives of the Sacred Congregation de 'Propaganda Fide' (hereafter
APF), Scritture Original! rife rite nelle Congregazioni Generali (hereafter
SOCG), vol. 402, ff. 2OO'~V, 2O2r~v, Charles Camus Duperon [to Propaganda
Fide, Lyon, January 1641].
Catholic Clergy in French and British North America 185

4 Paris, Archives du Ministere des Affaires-Etrangeres, Memoires et documents,


Amerique. vol. 4, f. I24r~v, Louis xm to Claude Bouthillier, 16 March 1633.
5 APF, Acta, vol. 17, f. gov, General Congregation of Propaganda Fide, 7 May
1646.
6 APF, Acta, vol. 15, ff. 29v-3Or, General Congregation of Propaganda Fide,
Rome, 14 February 1642.
7 There are manuscript excepts from White 1633 in APF, SOCG, vol. 347, ff.
376'-77v-
Canada in Seventeenth-Century Jesuit
Thought: Backwater or Opportunity?
Peter A. Goddard

Old France could have been like the New, if God hadn 't viewed it more favour-
ably. Who does not feel obliged to thank God for having made our condition
better than that of the savages ?
Francois Annat, SJ, 1644

French religious orders were embarrassingly late to take up the apostolic


mission that characterized early modern Catholicism. To thejesuits' 1604
request for a posting to the New World, Henri iv is reputed to have
replied that 'their Indies were in France' (Campeau 1967-94, i: 198); mis-
sions d Vinterieur to renovate dilapidated Catholicism would preoccupy
the Society of Jesus in the seventeenth century. Jesuits were active in Aca-
dia from 1611 to 1613, but arrived in the 'nouvelle France' of the St
Lawrence basin only in 1625, a century after Franciscan and Dominican
missions were launched in New Spain. While Spanish America seemed
crowded with missionaries, Canada would attract a derisory number:
three Jesuits in 1632, and only sixty-two by 1658 (see Codignola, else-
where in this volume). Tagging so far behind their Iberian counterparts,
French Jesuits faced a different and less promising situation. Compared
to well-peopled Meso-America, with its agricultural base and its highly
developed communications, Canada was sparsely populated and difficult
of access. To the north the boreal forest (largely coniferous) supported
hunting-and-gathering peoples whose condition seemed to the mission-
aries barely above that of the beasts, while the settled horticultural
peoples of the Carolinian forest farther south epitomized pagan deca-
dence. In 1627, Charles Lalement suggested the scale of the challenge of
converting the Amerindians: 'With regard to their way of life, it is enough
Canada in Seventeenth-Century Jesuit Thought 187

to say that they are completely savage. From morning to night they have
no other care than to fill their stomach ... Vices of the flesh are common
among them, such that one marries several women, and leaves them
whenever he feels like it, to take others ... Cleanliness is unknown among
them ... They have neither religion [culte divin], nor any sort of prayers'
(Campeau 1967-94, 2: 141-3, author's translations throughout; see also
Codignola 1995, 204-5). To the usual linguistic and cultural barriers were
added subsistence concerns and the dangers of Huron-Iroquois warfare.
Nor did the home front support the missionary campaign. Until Jean-
Baptiste Colbert adopted a policy of colonial expansion in the i66os,
French ministers were unenthusiastic about northern colonial venture,
and the reading public preferred Oriental exotica to boreal gloom.1
Worse yet, from the point of view of religious conversion, an 'Augustin-
ian backlash' or reaction against liberal doctrines of salvation, animated
those educated milieux that sustained Christian reform activity (Briggs
1989, 239; Brockliss 1987, 247; Williams 1989, 7-29, 90-3). Early devots-
stern and moralizing enthusiasts of Catholic reform - and then after
1640 followers of the rigorous Flemish bishop Cornelius Jansen, pro-
moted a puritanical vision that saw religious conversion as profound
inner transformation. Their obsession with sin and with religious purity
confined the missionary impulse by characterizing true Christian life as
restricted to the devoted, predestined few, and by setting impossibly
high standards of religious conduct. While Jesuits were formally com-
mitted to combatting this bleak view of salvation, their own position
was precarious: French elites were suspicious of 'ultramontanism,' or
Roman influence, and France was hostile towards Spain, the spiritual
home of the Society of Jesus. This uncomfortable political situation
forced Jesuits to downplay their attachment to the optimistic creed of
'finding God in all things,' which had animated the society's activity
since its inception in 1540 (Chatellier 1993, 22-58; Gentilcore 1994;
Duverger 1987, 161-8; Cervantes 1994, 10-16). Perhaps reflecting this
pessimistic religious climate, fewer Jesuits than expected embraced the
challenge of mission work in New France (Deslandres 1993, 5-10; Codi-
gnola, in this volume).
How did this inauspicious climate influence the Jesuits' thinking
about Canada? This essay examines the appeal of the seventeenth-
century Canadian mission to the Jesuits, and assesses the uses to which
their Canadian experience was put in teaching, preaching, and religious
controversy back in France. It suggests that mystical spirituality and
asceticism as well as a 'Christian utopianism' found a home in Canada,
188 Peter A. Goddard

at least as the new land was imagined. If boundless numbers of converts


were not forthcoming, the Canadian mission might still effect the inte-
rior alchemy of spiritual transformation in the lives of individuals, and
provide example to the faithful. In its conditions of harshness, difficulty,
and austerity, Canada was a laboratory for the spiritual project as it
emerged from the Renaissance and Reformation: interior, universal,
and rational. The uses to which Canada was put additionally reflect
changes in the ideological climate of Catholic Europe over the course of
the century. Up to 1650, Jesuits emphasized the privations of their new
setting for reasons of ascetic spirituality and rigour. Later in the century,
they represented the Canadian mission as an illustration of the possibili-
ties of salvation more liberally interpreted. Throughout the century, the
Canadian mission offered proof of Jesuit competence and commitment,
as their very ideas of conversion and religious vocation were at first
assaulted by Jansenist critics and then undermined by 'enlightened'
free-thinkers who simply did not care about organized religion. Distant
and for the most part inaccessible, Canada in Jesuit thought was the
forum of the possible, in spirituality, at least, ever responsive to the
order's concerns and preoccupations in Europe itself.

Most Favoured Territory for Spiritual Exploration

Historians of religion are increasingly aware of the diversity of outlook


in the historic Catholic world. No longer do confessional concerns
dominate the historiography: the struggle between the rival versions of
Christianity has abated, and the fractures once papered over for the
sake of unity are now exposed for inspection. New research recognizes
heterodox currents in early modern Christianity, including the persis-
tent sense among social elites that Christian revelation was a personal,
interior, and, above all, God-inspired boon. This sense was present in
medieval contemplation, and in the imitatio Christi promoted by accom-
plished humanists in search of a higher level of Christian observance.
The tendency is identifiable in the Augustinian doctrine of grace that
infused sixteenth-century Protestant thought (Bossy 1985, 91). It was
also the essential element of seventeenth-century Jansenism, or Catholic
rigorism, that emerged as a force in French religious life, inspired by
the Abbe de Saint-Cyran and his Flemish colleague Cornelius Jansen,
author of the famous, if rarely read, Augustinus (1641). Jansenists, as
advocates of this severe disciplinarian Christianity were called, opposed
what they viewed as the lax tendencies not only of the everyday Christian
Canada in Seventeenth-Century Jesuit Thought 189

world but also the clergy, especially the Jesuits, whose standards were
deemed too inclusive (and hence too low) to assure the purity of the
faith. Historians have long viewed this Augustinian tendency as a prop-
erty of extremist oppositional movements such as Jansenism or Puritan-
ism; however, it asserted itself even within the Society of Jesus, whose
adherence to post-Tridentine doctrine and support of Rome have given
Jesuits the reputation of being supporters of modern centralism and
orthodoxy (Guibert 1964, 349-73).
A Jesuit thinker who demonstrates this mystical and ascetical strain of
Christianitas, or true Christian doctrine, and who dominated the missio-
logical theory of Canada in the first half of the seventeenth century, was
Louis Lallemant (1587-1635). From 1619 to 1631, Lallemant taught at
the Jesuit college at Rouen, an important centre for the training of mis-
sionaries (Bottereau 1937). Jean Rigoleuc, organizer of the Breton mis-
sions, and Paul Le Jeune, who styled himself the pioneer of the New
France mission, were Lallemant's 'disciples,'2 while the future Canadian
martyrs Jean de Brebeuf, Antoine Daniel, and Isaac Jogues were among
his spiritual charges (Bottereau 1937, 126; and see Latourelle 1993,
225-74). Early in his career, the frail Lallemant had sought a missionary
posting to Canada, lured not by the prospect of abundant conver-
sions - indeed, other mission fields were known to produce a greater
harvest - but rather by the conviction that the Canadian mission offered
rewards of a different sort: 'it is more fruitful in travails and in crosses: it
is less brilliant, and contributes more to the sanctification of its mission-
aries' (Lallement [1694] 1781, 52). However, Lallemant's talents proved
better-suited for the training of Jesuit novices, and he served as counsel-
lor and spiritual guide to those Jesuits returning from the pastoral field
to refresh their vocation.
Lallemant cultivated an inwardly directed, mystical spirituality. He
emphasized inner purification and spiritual perfection, and he insisted
on separating oneself from the struggles and temptations of the world.
He also spoke against the optimistic creed that the Jesuits have embod-
ied historically: nature, in Lallemant's quasi-monastic view, was void of
virtue and the polar opposite of the spirit. Strikingly Augustinian in its
insistence that truth dwelt within the believer, and not in the external
world,3 his doctrine stood apart from the Ignatian conviction that God
would be found in all places. Lallemant asserted, instead, that hardship
in the new land would force reflection on where grace lay. Conversion
to an ascetic and rigorous if not mystical faith was the only option for
salvation (Lallement [1694] 1781, 69; and see Buckley 1989).
igo Peter A. Goddard

Lallemant's student Paul Le Jeune was the great publicist of the Cana-
dian mission in its early (post-i632) days. Brought up in a Calvinist
household, Le Jeune was a confessional warrior, always eager to spar
with enemies of the truth. He also embodied the great Jesuit principle
of indifference: he admitted to no particular desire to go to Canada but
willingly submitted as a means of fulfilling his vocation. As author and
editor of mission Relations from 1632, he presented an accessible por-
trait of the conversion of the Amerindians to a devout public at the
same time as he stressed the arduousness of apostolic life in the boreal
forest.4 The ascetic, penitent soul thrived in arduous Canadian condi-
tions - 'the more one loses, the more one gains' (Jesuit Relations [1610-
1791] 1896-1901 [hereafter JR] 5: 167-8). In such a life, the individual
might find his own path of the cross, or higher conversion, as both Le
Jeune's Relations and his personal correspondence indicated.
Lejeune's view of the Native reflects the severity of Lallemantian spir-
ituality in the early days of mission in Canada. While Le Jeune affirmed
the humanity and the virtues of the Algonquian Montagnais in the
famous mission Relation of 1634, he was equally concerned to depict, in
Augustinian terms, a vein of corruption in the pagan human breast. It
has been fashionable to excoriate Le feune as an exponent of culturally
imperialist attitudes, which unavoidably he was.5 Yet if we step back from
the imputed ethnographic content of his accounts, and attempt to
understand Paul Le Jeune's religious world-view, with its emphasis on
the austere and extreme states in which grace operates, we see that the
figures Le Jeune produces are edifying ones, part of an epideictic rheto-
ric aimed at spiritual improvement. His reports on the Montagnais illus-
trated the chasm between 'natural' ways and godly ones; conversion
alone bridges this gap. The faith tames, civilizes, lets true virtue flourish.
The effects of this rigorist form of conversion were most pronounced in
the case of the sauvage, but were universally applicable, especially in the
case of the jaded, self-loving bourgeois back in France (Goddard 1993).
In Lejeune's view, Canada was a place where the fundamental impor-
tance of religious conversion, the actual transformation of self, and the
defeat of nature within, could be illustrated. One underexamined
aspect of the massively studied mission Relations is that of the exemplary
conversion.'' Much space in these annual accounts was taken up by sto-
ries of almost miraculously total transformation from sauvage to Chris-
tian, eliding many stages of historical development. Such conversions
were expedited by sensitive instruction, prayer, ceaseless goodwill (even
if embodied by the terrorist pastorale de la peur, or use of fear as a spur to
Canada in Seventeenth-Century Jesuit Thought 191

change), and heroic acts of charity, including the provision of medi-


cal aid in times of epidemic, and the sharing of meagre foodstuffs in
times of famine. The missionary was Christ's middleman in the transfor-
mation; the Relations comprise a long-running advertisement for the
powers of Jesuit techniques of persuasion and instruction, and their
understanding of the profound nature of conversion.
Yet Catholic reform embraced more than individual spiritual prog-
ress. In outlining the starkness of the choice between sauvage perdition
and Christian salvation, Le Jeune represented Canada as a place for the
realization of a collective spiritual Utopia, the purified society sought by
religious reformers: 'old France is fitted to conceive noble desires, but
the New is adapted to their execution; that one desires in old France is
what one does in the New' (JR8: 116-17). Lejeune's Canada would not
be dominated by either mercantile or political concerns, which would
simply reproduce the moral turpitude of France itself. Instead he pro-
posed a rule of the deuots. Strict conditions governing immigration, a
rigorist code of conduct for inhabitants, and the need for colonists to
exemplify Christianity for the indigenous population: all this was meant
to attract the attention of the devot, whose interest was in control, con-
formity, and edification.7
Given that controls on immigration were theoretically strict, that
logistics under the blundering Compagnie des Cent Associes were
nightmarish, and that few French people of the religiously and cultur-
ally correct sort actually wanted to go to New France, it is difficult to
accept that Jesuit writing about New France was simply propaganda for
the colonizing effort. Indeed, the very characterization, in the Relations,
of the pagan sauvage as concupiscent natural man was counterproduc-
tive to the goal of attracting settlers to the St Lawrence.8 With frank
descriptions of natural hardship only partially offset by favourable
mention of the superior robustness of the peoples, the New France of
some Jesuit accounts seems a figuration of neostoical fantasy, a place
where the hard, pure life might be imagined, full of tests to the faith
and to life itself. Just as accounts of the most remote regions of France -
Haute Savoie or the Breton island of Ushant- described the austere but
morally pure lives and primitive Christian institutions (in places where
readers could never go to see for themselves),-' so too did descriptions
of life in Christianized Native settlements reveal the dynamic of
reformed Catholicism as upheld in a community of righteous but rustic
individuals, separated from worldly civilization. Zealous observance
characterized life among Amerindian converts at Sillery and Trois-
1Q2 Peter A. Goddard

Rivieres in the 16405 and 16508, with public penance, strict Sabbatarian-
ism, and rigid community discipline against both apostasy arid simple
moral weakness (no dancing or drumming).
The Jesuits in New France hoped to imitate the 'reductions' of con-
temporary Paraguay, where by 1627 as many as 30,000 formerly nomadic
Guaranis lived under close supervision in fourteen Jesuit-run and
largely self-sufficient communities. As in Paraguay, Jesuits hoped to
build the ideal community of harmony, sharing, and godly discipline,
the embodiment of the ideal of ascetic communal Christianity (Jetten
1994)- Such community depended on its isolation, the fact that it was
buffered from corrupting civilization. So, while an earlier lay writer
about Canada, Marc Lescarbot, could emphasize the nearness of this
new France, and its location on the same latitude as the familiar (Lescar-
bot 1618, 128), Jesuits tended to emphasize the distance, and that this
was a radically different world. No less important is the fact that Jesuits
controlled the representation of such places: no one, for the time being,
could challenge such views. As Christian Marouby points out (1990, 31-
94), the classical Utopia requires isolation and self-sufficiency.
The best instance of the Jesuit practice of representing a Christian
Utopia, and indeed the greatest single pastoral effort of the Jesuit mis-
sion to Canada, was the mission of St Joseph to the Huron (Wcndat) of
the Georgian Bay area from 1635 to 1650. In 1633, Le Jeune wrote that if
all went well, and war did not interfere, the harvest of souls from this
'stable nation' would be great: 'probably in two years it will be seen that
there is not a nation so barbarous as not to recognize and honor God'
(JR 5: 189-90). The evangelization of the Huron, into which the Jesuits
poured the best of their meagre resources, sought not only to capitalize
on the advanced degree of social and economic qualities of these north-
ern farmers, but also to serve as the gateway to the innumerable peoples
beyond the Great Lakes (JR 28: 65-6). The wholesale transformation of
community appeared possible without the egregious Europeanization
that seemed to obstruct the conversion process when it was attempted in
Quebec. The Huron mission would demonstrate the efficacy of the
unadulterated Jesuit program, in which instruction arid example alone
would produce change in life and belief. Mission reports were consis-
tently most optimistic about this 'harvest'; here Jesuits made predictions
about the flowering of Christianity that would prove unachievable, but
that illustrated their strong desire to establish the 'reduction' in north-
ern latitudes on the basis of the already famous Paraguayan example far
to the south.
Canada in Seventeenth-Century Jesuit Thought 193

For its duration, the Huron mission was the site of a program of cul-
tural change according to the broad lines of reformed Catholicism.
Advanced knowledge of Huron cultural practice, acquired over a
decade, made it possible for missionaries to write out detailed prescrip-
tions for Christianization (JR 13: 167-70). These involved the reorienta-
tion of cultic practice from the void of ignorant superstition towards the
true God, and also the repression of the entire range of concupiscent
behaviours of unenlightened natural man. Discipline was imposed on
both the individual and the collective level, and a new community rose
up in opposition to the old. In 1637 the headman Aenons, sympathetic
to the Jesuits, illustrated perfectly the requirements of comprehensive
cultural change when he linked the rigorous new practice with the
Jesuit desire to 'overthrow the country' and to create something new
and pure {JR 13: 171-2). Impossible without a miracle, he said.
With the 1649 destruction of the mission centre Sainte-Marie and the
dispersal of the Christianized Wendat population, the window of great-
est Jesuit opportunity in New France was inexorably closing. Following
his decision to take control of French government after the death of
chief minister Mazarin in 1661, Louis xiv began to pay more attention
to colonial affairs. The loss of the Jesuits' monopoly on missions after
1672, and the arrival of Recollet missionaries that year, limited the free-
dom enjoyed by the Society. So too were the ills of European coloniza-
tion spreading: Jesuits would battle the brandy trade, for instance, but
increasingly the controlled environment of the 'reduction' was the only
place where indigenous Christianity might thrive. A secular era had
arrived.

Propaganda against Rigorism

At the same time, Jesuits in France were engaged in an increasingly bit-


ter contest with Jansenism, the puritanical strain of Catholicism that
gained new prominence with the 1655 papal condemnation of Antoine
Arnauld for his defence of Jansen's religious purism, and with Pascal's
brilliant Lettres provinciates (1656), which satirized Jesuit moral conduct
and their allegedly sunny outlook on religious life. Despite the Augus-
tinian pall cast by Lallemantian spirituality, the Jesuits were formally
committed to the optimistic doctrine of grace, as promulgated by the
Council of Trent. Jesuit attempts to build a bridge between sinful
humanity and a wrathful God through pragmatic casuistry drew much
ire from ultra-rigorists such as Arnauld, and deadly mockery from Pas-
194 Peter A. Goddard

cal. The Society needed some means of preserving itself from accusa-
tions of 'laxism,' that perilous tendency to view God in human terms, as
someone who can be negotiated with and even bought off, and which
could lead to the systematic weakening of Christian moral obligation.
They sought defence too against charges of the strange doctrine of fe
peche philosophique, or 'philosophical sin,' in which Jesuits were charged
with sloppy gate-keeping by not holding new Christians accountable for
sins committed prior to conversion (see, for example, Arnauld 1690,
114-26).
Missions to the stark Canadian wilderness fulfilled the function of
counterargument, and allowed the Jesuits to claim the moral high
ground in this bitter conflict. The rigorism and asceticism that charac-
terized Le Jeune's writing in the 16305 could stand as a testament to the
Jesuit commitment to a rigorous form of religious experience. Far from
being the cats who lapped up the cream of apostolic work in comfort-
able and exotic situations ranging from the Qing court to Louis xiv's
confessional, Jesuits in New France were selfless workers who risked all
for marginalized and downtrodden peoples. According to Michel Le
Tellier, writing in the i68os, Jesuits welcomed 'a perpetual exile in the
forests of Guyana or Canada' (Le Tellier 1687, i: 149-50). Martyrdom as
the embodiment of true religious commitment was a theme that
emerged in later Jesuit writing, though it was not initially apparent in
the reaction to the deaths of Brebeuf, Daniel, and others in the 16405.'"
Their history was published in epic form by Francois Du Creux in his
Historia Canadensis, sen novae-frandae Him decem ([1664] 1951-2), and
then repeated in increasingly lurid forms; it contradicted the armchair
critics and hypocritical bishops who supported Jansenism from their
comfortable positions at home. If the missionaries endured great tra-
vails, and demanded high standards of the sauvage convert, they surely
would not be more tolerant when confessing educated Christians in
France. The later decades of mission writing emphasized the purity of
faith as practised in the primitive setting, as well as the pristine clarity of
evangelism and the strength of communal discipline. Canadian rigour
thus opposed domestic laxism, and showed that the Jesuits were champi-
ons of the clearest evangel, wherever it might be preached. Outside the
site of a 1700 clerical assembly convened to condemn laxist doctrines,
there appeared a poster that contrasted in one panel the morale severe
(severe morality), featuring a cartoon of corpulent Jansenist bishops
and abbots enjoying a feast, and on the other, the morale reldchee (slack
Canada in Seventeenth-Century Jesuit Thought 195

morality), illustrated by a missionary undergoing mutilation while


defending the faith at the hands of his sauvage captors (Hebert 1927,
309; and see Briggs 1989, 222-8).
Loss of the Canadian mission monopoly in 1672 meant that Jesuit
accounts of religious life could be challenged by competing religious
orders who now laboured in the same fields. The Recollets (reformed
Franciscans) disputed earlier Jesuit claims about numbers of converts,
and they reopened the case of the effectiveness of their rivals' strategies.
The Premier etablissement de la fay dans la Nauvelle France (1691) - attrib-
uted to Chrestien Le Clercq, but ghost-written by Jansenists (see Hamil-
ton 1976) and bearing themes common to Arnauld and Pontchateau's
La Morale pratique des jesuites — denied the presence of grace in sinful nat-
ural man, and promoted a repressive form of conversion centred on
coercive institutions. Arnauld himself wrote voluminously and libel-
lously about Jesuit laxism, which was in his view most apparent in the
order's overly accommodating treatment of pagan Chinese, Japanese,
or sauvage populations (Arnauld and Poritchateau 1689-95). Jesuits
countered this sentiment by portraying Native converts as embodiments
of purest Christianitas, equal before God, even if a little rough about the
edges. As Claude Allouez wrote in the Relation of 1672-3, 'the name
"Savage" gives rise to so very disparaging an idea of those who bear it,
that many people in Europe have thought that it is impossible to make
true Christians of them. But such persons do not reflect that God died
for the barbarian as well as for the Jew, and that his spirit breathes
where it wills.' Allouez emphasized the quality of the converts: 'Good
trees bear good fruits ... not only are there true Christians among these
savage peoples, but also ... many more in proportion than in our civi-
lized Europe' (JR 58: 84-5). Jesuit writing after 1672 is rich in edifying
examples of the new Christians, and represented an enormous recuper-
ative effort directed against the very stereotype of savage natural man
that earlier Relations had unwittingly set abroad. This effort culminated
in Joseph-Fran gois Lafitau's Moeurs des sauvages ameriquains, comparees
aux moeurs des premiers temps (1724), in which Lafitau would formally inte-
grate the Amerindians into a world-historical scheme, recognizing not
simply their humanity, which had never been at issue for the Jesuits, but
their cultural integrity and their reverence, however error-shrouded, for
the divine. But even Lafitau despaired: too much damage had been
done by earlier Jesuits, who for the sake of illustrating exemplary con-
version had disparaged the life of the unconverted (Lafitau 1724, i: 5).
196 Peter A. Goddard

Testing Grounds for Rationalism

In addition to securing ammunition for the wearying ideological war on


the home front over soteriology and missiology, Jesuits found intellec-
tual opportunity in the Canadian mission. An order devoted to the pro-
motion of learning did not neglect to incorporate Canada into its
philosophical project. While Canada would never be a showcase for sci-
entific advance (its peoples were deemed too primitive to be impressed
by the apparatus of western science), it served as a testing place for cer-
tain metaphysical assumptions tied to the emergent world of rational-
ism. Incipient rationalism was most pronounced in analysis of the
supernatural. Mission reports contradicted the obsession with witch-
craft, sorcery, black magic, and diabolical intervention that character-
ized some elite thinking in Europe, and elsewhere in the colonial world
(Goddard 1995 and 1997). The Jesuits' thinking on Canada provided a
sceptical demonology. From Le Jeune onwards, missionaries confronted
the question of diabolism in Native religion and in shamanistic resis-
tance to missionary activity. Yet just as Lallemantian spiritualism was
devoid of any sustained analysis of the Devil and his supposed effects
(the necessary bases of human sin and depravity were found in nature
itself), missionaries working within this framework found little active
role for the Devil. Instead, Jesuits described Algonquian and Iroquoian
spirituality as 'superstition,' or error in understanding of the sacred, but
not idolatry, the worship of a false god. Jesuit missionaries perpetrated
the slur that the Aboriginal peoples lacked religion, but they did absolve
them of the charge of Devil-worship. As Paul Ragueneau wrote in 1648,
'it is easy to call irreligion what is merely stupidity, and to take for dia-
bolical working something that is nothing more than human' (JR 33:
144-5), including those customs that were 'impertinentes' (rude or
saucy) rather than diabolically criminal. There was no Devil in New
France, only the need for an 'eschole de la verite,' or 'school of truth,'
to teach these peoples true faith and steer them away from their absurd
ways.
Represented as a disenchanted environment, Canada thus may have
played a role in undermining traditional demonology, which had
surged to great heights in parts of Europe itself. To counter the regime
of fear, ignorance, and superstition that they found in traditional life,
Jesuits proposed rational understanding and emphasized the impor-
tance of pedagogy. Waywardness from the true path was a function of
lack of education: nowhere could the consequences be seen more
Canada in Seventeenth-Century Jesuit Thought 197

clearly than in Canada, where an uneducated population upheld ridicu-


lous beliefs, but could be brought to Christianity through instruction.
This suited the Jesuits, as it demonstrated the true strength of the mis-
sion: Jerome Lalemant, in Huron country, explained the centrality of
the reasonable approach: 'We have not here, nor can we have, either
the power of constraint or the chains of benefits, to the extent that
would be necessary to render these people entirely ours.' He spoke the
language of imperialism, but of reason and not force: 'All our power lies
at the end of our tongues, in the exhibition and production of our
books and Writings, the effect of which they never cease to wonder at.
This is the only thing that avails us with these peoples, in lieu of all other
ground for credibility' (JR 17: 134-5).

Conclusion: Canada as Signpost and Showplace of Christianitas

Seventeenth-century Canada was far from being an autonomous 'New


World' whose harsh climate, difficulty of access, and primitive peoples
underlined difference and distance from Europe, as it might have
appeared to Renaissance Europeans who encountered the northern
land in the sixteenth century. Rather, it was integrated into contempo-
rary religious consciousness and controversy. Site of some of the seven-
teenth century's most ambitious missions outside of Europe, Canada
served an especially important function in early modern Jesuit thought.
For Jesuits, it was a place where the spiritually inclined might go in
order to annihilate self and submit to God, and where nature in its most
imposing forms might be defeated and supplanted by grace. More opti-
mistically, Canada was a site for the establishment of the Christian
republic, where new converts would live in exemplary fidelity to Chris-
tianitas, the Jesuit conception of true Christian doctrine. Representa-
tions of the pure and rigorous religious states achieved in Canada
countered 'those who alleged Jesuit laxism in the mission fields and at
home. Canada was also the locale for efforts to establish the rational
foundations of Christianity, to occlude the irrational and the supersti-
tious, and to develop the disenchanted view of nature that is fundamen-
tal to modern scientific understanding. Was Canada thus indispensable
to early modern Jesuits? It symbolized multiple meanings: spiritual,
political, ideological, and intellectual. Its very remoteness from Chris-
tian Europe meant that it could be represented in sometimes contradic-
tory but always idealized ways. To Jesuits, Canada was the great frontier,
a land of opportunity not for gold and riches, but for the development
198 PeterA.Goddard

of self and Christian society. Far from being the site of absolute free-
dom, of course, the frontier is often the mirror of the centre: the Jesuits'
Canada reflected an ambitious program with universal intent.

NOTES

1 On the latter point, see the unsurpassed works by Chinard (1913) and
Atkinson (1927).
2 Bremond summarizes the 'school' of Lallemant as 'sober, scarcely aware
of the world around them, but very active' (Bremond 1928-38, 5: 66; my
translation).
3 Lallement's spiritual doctrine embodies Augustine's injunction in De vera
religione: 'Noli foras ire, in teipsum redi; in intcriore homine habitat veritas'
(Do not go outward; return within yourself. In the inward man dwells truth)
(see Taylor 1989, 129-31).
4 Le Jeune's indifference is apparent in his description of hardships encoun-
tered early in the mission: after an account of the privations of the voyage to
New France, he stated simply that 'I would not have wished to be in France'
(JRy 15). On Ignatian indifference, see Barthes 1971, 77-8. Le Jeune's
writing about Canada contains some of the century's most harrowing 'realist'
accounts of hardship and privation. I would set his Relation of 1634 ('What
one must suffer in wintering with the savages') (JR 7: 35—233), in which he
recounts his participation in winter nomadism, alongside Thomas James's
The strange and dangerous voyage ofcaplaine Thomas James, in his intended
Discovery of the Northwest Passage into the South Sea (1633), as classics i n this
genre of colonial writing.
5 See Principe 1990 for the argument that Le Jeune's assessment was more
balanced than is suggested by revisionist history of Native—missionary
contact, including work by Yvon Le Bras (Le Bras 1988, 142-9).
6 Recent work points to a new appreciation of the figurative aspects of Jesuit
conversion accounts, although literalism predominates among historians of
the mission; see Deffain 1995 and Ouellet 1993.
7 SeeJR Q: 133-49, for laudatory accounts of the moral quality of the new
colony. Another useful comment about moral qualities under conditions of
duress (Iroquois attack, epidemics, etc.) is Jean de Brebeufs 'Not vice rules
here, but virtue and piety; not only among ours, who everywhere show
themselves men, and true sons of the Society, but also among our French,
and among the barbarians' (JRzy 250-1).
8 Contrast the portrait of the Algonquian and Iroquoian peoples with that of
Canada in Seventeenth-Century Jesuit Thought 199

the gentle Guarani depicted in Yves d'Evreux's Voyage dans le nord du Bresil
fait durant les annees 1613 et 1614 ([1615] 1864); the Capuchin characterized
these Amerindians as naturally religious and virtuous folk.
9 For remote and isolated Brittany, see Boschet 1697, 91 ff; for the Alps, see
Charles de Geneve 1976, 3: 199-221. The same strategy of idealizing the
impossibly remote is found in seventeenth-century writing about China; see
Semedo 1645, Avant-discours; see also Duteil 1996.
10 For an iconoclastic view of Canadian martyrology, see Lafleche, 1988-91.
Dominique Deslandres (1995) provides useful context for Lafleche's inter-
pretation of the ideology of martyrdom.
*A New Loreto in New France':
Pierre-Joseph-Marie Chaumonot, SJ,
and the Holy House of Loreto*
Andre Sanfapon

In the seventeenth century, the most popular Marian shrine in Italy was
Our Lady of Loreto. In the santa Casa, sheltered by the basilica on which
Bramante and other Renaissance architects had laboured to such mag-
nificent effect, pilgrims would gather their thoughts before the statue of
Our Lady, in the glow of devotional lamps. Having come to seek the Vir-
gin's blessings in her own house, they were confident their prayers
would be answered. Here, they could feel like children of the Virgin,
addressing her as the daughter of Anne and Joachim and, at the same
time, as the wife of Joseph and virgin mother of Jesus. Why should they
have had any doubts about the tradition, which as we know was a legend
born in 1472, nurtured in subsequent decades by humanists, and
granted broad support by theologians? Following his predecessors' lead,
Pope Sixtus v had also given the tradition his sanction and had inscribed
on the building's pediment the words: Deiparae domus in qua Verbum cam
faclum est (The house of the Mother of God, in whom the Word was
made flesh) (Veuillot 1841, 190). For a believer of the time, the Holy
House in which the Virgin Mary was born, had received the angel Gab-
riel at the Annunciation, and had reared her son Jesus, had been trans-
ported in 1291 by the angels from Nazareth to Tersatto in Dalmatia,
and, three years later, from there to the other shore of the Adriatic,
around Recanati, ending up, finally, at Loreto, in the province of
Ancona, protected by the Renaissance church built mainly between
1468 and 1513.' This was the legend when Pierre Chaumonot (1611-93)
made the first of several pilgrimages to the shrine about 1630. Not long
afterwards, he embarked on what was to become more than a half-

*Translated by Glenn Gavin.


'A New Loreto in New France' 201

century as a missionary to Canada, mostly among the Huron (Wendat).


Finally, in 1674, Chaumonot - a member of the Society of Jesus and an
ordained priest designated, at his request, for the Canadian missions -
was able to fulfil his dream of erecting a chapel in Canada modelled on
the santa Casa of Loreto.
This project and the actual construction of a Holy House in New
France are known to us chiefly through the descriptions and percep-
tions the Jesuits recorded in dieir Relations and through Father Chau-
monot's autobiography, which he wrote on orders from his superior in
1688 at the Lorette mission. These documents and related correspon-
dence enable us to determine the goals of the project, the stages in its
development and execution, and the conditions under which it was car-
ried out. The modelling of Notre Dame de Lorette in New France on
the santa Casa of Loreto in Italy was seen by the Jesuits as an effective
means of strengthening the missionary endeavour in the colony. The
Jesuits working to Christianize the Amerindians in Canada were not
doing so in a vacuum, but rather - in 1637, when the Loreto project
began to take shape in Italy - in the spirit of a century still profoundly
marked in many ways by the Renaissance. Yet there was a certain distanc-
ing from the Renaissance, as well, in that authority in every field was
held in higher esteem, as were those of its symbols likely to shore up
efforts to remould the faithful of the Old World and mould the fresh
converts of the New World into ideal Christians and, hence, obedient
subjects of the King, God's representative on earth.
As a Burgundian youth, Pierre Chaumonot had been cured of scabies
of the scalp at the Marian shrine in Italy. Deciding that he had been
adopted by the Virgin as her son (Chaumonot 1885, 13-17), he made
devotion to Our Lady of Loreto the foundation of his spiritual life.
Underscoring his adoption by adding 'Marie' to his given name, Pierre-
Joseph, Chaumonot shortly afterward- became a son of St Ignatius
Loyola, founding father of the Jesuits. Towards the end of 1636 at the
College of Rome, Chaumonot met Father Joseph-Antoine Poncet, who
had been named to the mission in Canada and who had him read the
first Relation by Father Jean de Brebeuf, about the mission to the Huron.
Full of desire to go to New France, Chaumonot prepared himself by a
pilgrimage on foot from Rome to Loreto, undertaken with Poncet in
the fall of 1637 (Chaumonot 1885, 34-5, 37-9; Campeau 1967-94, 3:
176). Before the statue of Our Lady, Chaumonot made a vow to serve
Christ, asking the Virgin to see to the success of his trip to Canada and
resolving to 'build in New France ... a chapel to be called Notre-Dame-
2O2 Andre Sanfafon

de-Lorette, according to the design of the Holy House of the Mother of


God' in which he and Poncet were then praying (Chaumonot 1885,41-
2). After his ordination, Chaumonot returned to Loreto, availing him-
self of the permission granted to Jesuits newly ordained in the pontifical
city to choose the location of their first mass in accordance with that
which 'their devotion inspires in them.' He writes: 'I had no intention of
choosing any other place than the chapel built by Cardinal Palotti in
honour of the Virgin, under the name and on the model of the Holy
House of Loreto' (43).
In Rome, hearing of Chaumonot's devotion to Loreto and pledge to
build the chapel in Canada, Signora Portia Lancelotti, niece of a cardi-
nal and one of Father Poncet's confessants, made the first gift - 25 ecus,
she said, 'to lay the first stone or brick of the Holy House of Lorette, to
be built one day in this new world' (Chaumonot 1885, 42, 195). Accom-
plishing this goal would take several decades, yet, from 1639, the year
of his arrival in Canada, until 1674, when the chapel at the mission of
Lorette was finally consecrated, Chaumonot says that his "desire to
obtain in Canada for the Blessed Virgin a house built on the model of
the true house' never faltered (193)- When he embarked at Dieppe on
4 May 1639, his baggage contained a small statue of his special pro-
tector, Our Lady of Loreto, which was placed in the chapel of the
missionary house at Ste Marie Among the Hurons when he arrived there
on 10 September (Jesuit Relations [1610-1791] 1896-1901 [hereafter JR]
30:94-5).
Between 1639 and 1674, the Huron nation lived through a terrible
period of upheaval that placed its very existence in jeopardy. The
Huron's contact with European colonizers, merchants, and missionaries
had devastating consequences: epidemics broke out, struggles with the
Iroquois developed over the control of the fur trade, and within a
decade2 the inhabitants of Huronia were decimated demographically,
economically, and culturally. When Huronia was destroyed and its survi-
vors dispersed, several Huron 'carefully selected for their Christian
piety' (Trigger [1976] 1987,801) travelled with their Jesuit missionaries
to find refuge at Notre Dame de Foy, near Quebec. The arrival of these
warriors on lie d'Orleans in 1650 helped reinforce Quebec's defences
against the Iroquois and English threat. Deprived of their ancestral ter-
ritory, increasingly estranged from their traditional civilization through
their adoption of European beliefs and practices, dependent on the
French, and subject to their laws, these Huron were the target of inten-
sive Christianization in the seven locales in which they lived, between
'A New Loreto in New France' 203

1650 and 1674, around Quebec (Vaugeois 1996; Blouin 1987). Charac-
terized by special devotion to the Virgin and membership in pious fra-
ternities, by the wearing of crosses, rosaries, and devotional medallions,
by regular attendance at mass featuring the use of images and relics
(Gagnon 1975, 29-46), and by fervent participation in ritual Christian
processions, these individuals were kept away as much as possible from
the bad example of certain unscrupulous French residents of Quebec.
In spite of the upheaval in their lives, these Huron were on the way to
achieving the objectives derived from the model of the 'ideal Christian'
and loyal subject of the king, as set forth by the Jesuits (Lindsay 1900;
Chaumonot 1885; Sanfacon 1996). In their efforts among the Amerindi-
ans, Chaumonot and his colleagues spoke of the 'miraculous cures
which occur at Nostre Dame de Laurette [Loreto],' which did not fail to
touch their audience; the Relations tell us that some of that number actu-
ally experienced the powers of the Loretan Virgin (JR 30: 92-7).
After years of missionary work, Chaumonot decided that the time was
ripe for launching his much-delayed project after Father Poncet sent
him a statue modelled on the one in Loreto, the shrine at which Poncet
was then serving as confessor. He also sent 'a head-covering or bonnet
of white taffeta which had been placed briefly on the head of the statue
in the Holy House of Italy, and a faience dish, fashioned after the one
[held by] the infant Jesus and having touched it, and thumbnail-sized
loaves of bread which had been kneaded in the Holy Family's dishes and
then blessed' (Chaumonot 1885, 203) ,3 With these objects, Chaumonot
was in possession of what he needed: a tangible impetus for the develop-
ment in Canada of devotion to Our Lady of Loreto.
The Notre Dame de Foy site had become uncomfortable for the
Huron and some Iroquois converts. Father Claude Dablon, superior-
general of this mission, wrote in 1673: 'As this mission increases daily ...
our Savages ... were in need of land and wood' (JR 58: 131; Father Chau-
monot has indicated the same causes in his autobiography [Chaumonot
1885: 194]). The Jesuits decided to transfer the Huron mission north-
ward to their St Gabriel seigneury, in the Laurentian foothills not far
from Quebec. Chaumonot and his brothers agreed that this new mis-
sion would be an ideal site on which to 'build of brick a new Loreto in
New France' (195). Their goals were to increase devotion to the Virgin,
celebrate the mystery of the Incarnation, allow those who could never
make the pilgrimage to Italy to fulfil their duty to honour the Loreto
shrine 'at least in its image,' and, finally, nurture 'spiritual birth in the
hearts of all the French and all the Savages of America!' (JR&0: 68-73) .4
204 Andre Sanfafon

Bursting with joy, on 4 March 1672 Chaumonot gave his 'offering made
to Our Lady of Loreto of a living temple in which to enclose and, as it
were, set as a jewel the holy house in Canada built on the design of the
original, which is in Italy' (Lindsay 1900, 144-6). This 'living temple,'
which he described as rather a 'poor hut or dwelling,' was nothing other
than his own body and soul. In thus consecrating himself, Chaumonot
became nothing less than the spiritual and bodily incarnation in New
France of the santa Casa of Loreto.
Yet Chaumonot's pledge went beyond this 'living temple' to plans for
and construction of a new Loreto. Many other people were involved in
the construction project. Chaumonot wrote, 'the devotion which is
entertained here for Notre Dame de Lorette in Canada, began just as
soon as the project for building that holy chapel was formed. In fact,
when at the beginning of the year 1673 we went to mark out its site, per-
sons of high standing in this country betook themselves thither with
much fervor, and themselves wished to fell some of the trees which occu-
pied the place designated for building the chapel'((JR6 9
before the construction of the chapel (mass was then being celebrated in
a cabin at the Lorette mission in progress), 'the mere name of Lorette, -
since our village as yet had none but that, - was powerful enough to
attract thither all sorts of persons, who came on pilgrimages, from great
distances, in very bad weather and by wretched roads' (JR6o: 94-5).
The layout of the future village was decided on in the course of 1673:
a square whose sides would be composed of bark cabins (longhouses)
equidistant from each other, with the chapel at its centre (JR 60: 79).
The missionaries showed the plan to the Huron still at Notre Dame de
Foy; the dogique,5 Louis Thaondechoren, 'relating, among other things,
what he had heard of Our Lady of Loretto in Italy ... [He] said that it
seemed to him that all their cabins, which he saw ranged around the
chapel, represented in his eyes the great temple enclosing the sacred
house of Loretto; that thus they were to consider the whole of their vil-
lage as a great church, of which all the cabins constituted so many differ-
ent parts' (JR 58: 149-51; 60: 79). In the discourse of this seventeenth-
century Huron, then, the projected bark cabins became, by analogy, the
temple itself, the church erected by Renaissance architects in Loreto,
Italy, which housed the santa Casa.
During 1673-4, Chaumonot and his missionary colleagues continued
to prepare the Amerindians spiritually for their move to the Lorette site,
dedicating them to the Holy Angels, to Our Lady of Loreto and to St
Anne, successively, 'for the happy establishment of the house and the
'A New Loreto in New France' 205

village of their Queen in Canada'((JR6o::73-5; Chaumonot 1885, 193-4;


Merlet 1858, 6; Lindsay 1900, 162-3). The 'vow sent by the Huron nation
to Laurette [Loreto] supplicating the Blessed Virgin to bring about the
conversion of the savages throughout New France, in the year 1673' was
accompanied by a porcelain-bead (wampum) collar inscribed with the
following words: 'Ecce ancilla dornini, fiat mihi secundum verbum
tuum' (Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to
thy word). The Huron vow continued, 'We want these letters in porce-
lain to take the place of our hearts ... All your subjects of this new world
come to pay you homage and recognize you as queen in a house where
you wished to be only a servant' (Lindsay 1900, 161, 166). These words
resonate with the ambivalence of the Loretan image of Mary, queen and
servant, a model to emulate in order to reach celestial glory through
earthly submission.
Urged by Father Chaumonot to become fully prepared spiritually, the
Huron turned first to the angels who had taken the Holy House to
Loreto, then to the Virgin of Loreto herself and, finally, to St Anne,
Mary's mother. To involve St Anne directly echoed the Huron tradition
of the extended family, shaped by matrilineal and matrilocal customs
and by the key role assigned to the grandmother or the woman-chief in
Huronia before 1650 (Trigger [1976] 1987, 523). The Huron would eas-
ily have understood the legend that Mary had inherited the house in
Nazareth from her mother and had later brought her husband, Joseph,
to it, where they raised Jesus, Mary's son.
Consecrations such as that of the village at Lorette were not uncom-
mon in Europe at the time. The feast days of the guardian angels and of
St Joseph had been compulsory holidays in France since 1661, and in
1670 Rome extended this obligation to the rest of the world; Leopold i
was preparing to dedicate his whole empire to St Joseph, whom he would
proclaim protector of the House of Austria (Delumeau 1989, 340).
At the same time, France had been solemnly dedicated to the Virgin
by its king (Darricau iggob). Numerous towns and regions in Europe
had been placed under her protection, and devotion to Mary was at the
heart of the movement for reform in the Catholic Church (Darricau
iggoa). The novelty of Lorette in New France thus lay not in the conse-
cration of the hamlet to the Virgin but in the Jesuits' realization of a
planned mission project centred on a renowned Marian model in
Europe. Moreover, they respected - albeit more on the inside than the
outside of the chapel - the salient features of the santa Casa's evocative
power.
2O6 Andre Sanfaf on

The plans for the basilica of Our Lady of Loreto and of the Holy
House were known by the Jesuits in Quebec, especially Father Chau-
monot, because of the pilgrimages he had made to Loreto before his
departure for Canada.6 In 1675, Father Bouvart described the chapel as
'similar to the true Loretto ... wholly of brick - forty feet long by twenty
wide, and twenty-five feet high.' He supplied details on the location of
the doors, chimney, and windows, and, by way of additional documenta-
tion, referred to his reading: 'Turcellin opines that the main portion of
the dwelling is the North side, and affirms that the threshold of the
door is of wood - which we have observed in case of the Canadian Lor-
etto' (JR6o::88-91). Turcellin' was Father Orazio Torsellini (1544-99),
who had been rector of the Jesuit college at Loreto; in 1594, he wrote
his Lauretanae historiae libri quinque.1 Bouvart went on to mention 'a cup-
board quite simply constructed, and suitable for locking up plate and
other similar articles ... The small recess which is behind the altar is
called by the Italians "il camino santo" [the holy chimney], because it
contains the chimney of the holy family, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Our
Hurons name it at least as properly in their language, Marie etiondata,
"the apartment of Mary" because that, as is believed, was where the
blessed Virgin had her bed, and where, it is asserted, she often changed
the clothing of her divine child, and warmed him' (JR 60: 90-3).
A copy of the statue of the Madonna at Loreto was placed, like the
original, on the mantelpiece, where 'it is greatly esteemed and justly
venerated' (JR 58: 154-7). Yet the statue bore one notable change from
the original: 'the image of Our Lady which is in the true Loretto being
black, - either on account of the smoke from the lamps which burn
there, or otherwise, - we have had the image of our Lorette painted in
flesh-color. We did this for fear lest, if we exposed for the veneration of
our Savages an image entirely black, we might cause them to resume the
custom which we have made them abandon, of blackening and staining
their faces' (JR 60: 92-3). Altogether, the arrangement of the chapel
interior proved to be quite effective in the daily life of the mission,
where the concrete elements of the santa Casa were used to further the
Christianizing of the Hurons and Iroquois at Lorette and to attract
French pilgrims from the colony.
The blessing of the chapel took place on 4 November 1674, 'with a
great coming together of French and savages, as many Huron as Abenaki'
(Chaumonot 1885, 198); Father Bouvart adds that 'there were some
present who had purposely come from a distance often long leagues' (JR
60: 94-5). A procession formed to go into the forest to fetch three statues
'A New Loreto in New France' 207

that had been sent from Europe: the main one was the copy of Our Lady
of Loreto; the two others were 'made of the real wood of Notre Dame de
Foy' in what is now Belgium.8 One statue 'is a Virgin, bearing her Son;
and it was sent to our savages by the cities of Nancy and Bar. The other,
which the princes and princesses of the most illustrious and pious house
of Lorraine have sent us, is a Saint Joseph, who also holds the infantjesus
upon one of his arms.' These statues were adorned with relics: 'a piece of
the Blessed Virgin's veil, which is at the base of the St, Joseph, and a small
portion of the same St. Joseph's girdle, enshrined in a little escutcheon
which the infantjesus holds, who is himself borne by his mother.' The
nuns of the Hospital of Quebec had made a robe for the statue of Our
Lady of Loreto so as to cover her majestically, like the one on display in
the santa Casa in Italy. They had also donated 'a bowl fashioned after the
holy bowls which are at Loretto, one that has touched them' (/R6o: 84-
7; 58:157). In this way, the model of the Holy House was being assimilated
to the Huron mission, its continuity and legitimacy derived from Euro-
pean traditions of piety connected with two shrines dedicated to the Vir-
gin and with the protective mediation offered by the princely house of
Lorraine and by two cities, Nancy and Bar, pledged to the Virgin by their
prince. Upon returning to the village of the Huron, the procession 'made
its way round the great square, so that the holy Virgin might take posses-
sion of all the cabins in front of which she passed before entering into her
own dwelling' (Lindsay 1900, 147).
In his sermon, Father Claude Dablon, superior-general of the col-
ony's Jesuit missions, highlighted the symbolic meaning of the model
and of the similarity and resemblance between the holy houses of Italy
and New France (JR 60: 86-9). The description of this ceremony shows
how strongly the Jesuits insisted on the dramatic passage from the bar-
barism of forest life to Christian civilization in 'Mary's hamlet,' where
the chapel's statues and relics and the Holy Family's cabin would help
mission proteges forge ahead towards sanctification, far from the
demons of the forest. This passage was further symbolized by the use of
'the real wood of Notre Dame de Foy,' in two of the statues in the
chapel. In the Holy House, the chaste Joseph had plied his humble car-
penter's trade, while the young Jesus - consistent with traditional repre-
sentation - gathered up the wood shavings and chips. The relics
allegedly from the Virgin's veil and St Joseph's girdle formed a legacy
embodying other aspects of domestic life, enhanced by the robe des-
tined to 'majestically' cover Our Lady of Loreto's statue and by the
dishes fashioned after those of the Italian shrine.
2o8 Andre Sanfaf on

Well before the chapel modelled on the Holy House was actually con-
structed, the Quebec Jesuits had made a point of popularizing the place
and objects commemorating the daily life of the Virgin and Holy Fam-
ily. As a result, almost immediately after its dedication the Holy House
of Lorette was functioning as an effective place of pilgrimage: 'Since the
opening of the chapel, the devotion of the French for coming thither
on pilgrimages, for making and fulfilling vows there, and receiving the
sacraments there, has been altogether extraordinary.' Over the ensuing
months, pilgrims from Quebec and its environs - 'the governor of this
country and the common people, the priests and the religious, the rich
and the poor' - converged on Lorette (JR 58: 142-3; 60: 94-7, 308-9). In
1675, Bouvart stated that there was 'in all New France no place more
notable through the devotion of the French and the Savages than ...
Notre Dame de Lorette' (/R6o: 68-9).
According to the testimony of their missionaries, the Amerindians
quickly adapted daily chapel devotions to the specific features presented
by the model of the santa Casa, which they called the House of the
Virgin. As the 'settlers' of the new Lorette, the Huron seemed to be
'the first to feel its effects when manifesting ... their devotion ... their
fervor in honoring Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in their holy house.' They
displayed 'greater assiduity at mass, at the instructions, arid at prayers,'
imitating 'the punctuality of the most accomplished Religious' (JR 60:
98-9). Many came to chapel as early as four o'clock in the morning,
some praying for as long as two or three hours at a time (JR 58: 166-7).
The children were likewise eager and joyful about going to pray or to
receive instruction at the chapel; this had not been the case in the
Native settlement at Notre Dame de Foy, where, in the opinion of
Father Chaumonot and the children's mothers, 'they had no ardor' for
such things (JR 60: 98-101). The Huron made it a point of honour to
keep the Virgin's house extremely tidy, and,to clear away the snow on
the paths leading to it (/R6o: 100-3). Thus, they were putting into prac-
tice the teaching inspired by the Lorette model - accepting simple
everyday tasks and doing them with humility, devotion, and prayer, just
as each member of the Holy Family had done in the Holy House.
Each day, the Huron families took turns praying in the camino santo,
the 'little recess ... behind the altar,' where the French also went to med-
itate after confession and communion; 'and, when the round of the cab-
ins is complete, they begin again with even more fervor than if it were
the first time' (JR6o::102-3). The Virgin's 'room' created a locus of the
sacred - concentrating there the essence of its Loretan prototype - one
'A New Loreto in New France' 209

more responsive, perhaps, to Amerindian aspirations than the statue of


Our Lady of Loreto because of the Native tradition linking the soul of
places and objects to the divine. Such syncretism allied the resonances
from the ancestral religion, felt in all aspects of Huron life, with Chris-
tian catechism and clerical teaching. 'The object of their principal
prayers,' wrote Father Dablon, general superior of the colony's Jesuit
missions, in 1674, 'is to obtain that their families may be properly gov-
erned, like that of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph; the conversion of infidels,
especially of the Savages; and success for France in all its affairs and
undertakings' (JR 58: 168-9). No doubt such prayers more faithfully
reflect the suggestions made by the missionaries themselves than the
Huron's own meditations - like the reminder that a good Christian was,
unfailingly, a loyal subject of the king. Indeed, what more effective
means could there be than to propose the actual words for prayers
offered at Notre Dame de Lorette? Not to be outdone by the adults,
children, too, went to the chapel to say their rosaries; one of them called
the Virgin '"My mother!"' (/R6i: 42-5). Bouvarl concluded, 'We doubt
not that the Blessed Virgin gladly accepts this blessed ardor which is
prevalent for honoring her in her house in Canada' (/R6o: 102-3).
This 'most particular devotion for the blessed Virgin' was no passing
fancy; it was still in evidence some years after the village was founded.
The Amerindians were so strongly attached to their chapel, the mission-
aries tell us, that they willingly endured shortages of food, preferring
'the happiness of residing near the house of the blessed Virgin. Some
have even made a vow never to remove from its vicinity' (/R6i: 34-7).
'Miracles' took place, and die missionaries encouraged the Amerindi-
ans of Lorette 'to acknowledge the favors' received from the Virgin 'and
to profit by them' (JR 58: 162-3) •
In the village of Lorette - where the Virgin was sovereign and treated
as such in her house - as well as throughout the mission lands, the
Amerindians continued to make progress (the missionaries assure us)
in the practice of virtues leading to Christian perfection - demonstrat-
ing patience, resignation and submission, piety, fervour, mortification,
charity, generosity, and purity (JR 58: 132-3, 148-51; 60: 44-9, 294-5,
300-7; 61: 34-5, 38-9; 62: 256-7). These essentially passive virtues coin-
cided exactly with those that devotion to the Holy House of Loreto and
to the Holy Family sought to strengthen.'1 A number of Huron crossed
over into the realm of action, developing such missionary zeal that they
not only provided mutual support among themselves, but also urged the
members of other nations to convert and adopt the demanding tenets
21O Andre Sanfafon

of Christianity (JR$8::164-5; 60: 26-33, 306-7; 63: 192-5). The Relation


for 1677-8 reports that Notre Dame de Lorette 'perseveres in the prac-
tice of all Christian virtues ... many lead a very spiritual life; and, not
content with meditation in the church, they likewise practice it in the
fields, while at work' (/R6i: 34-5).
According to the Jesuits, the Loretan model was operating effectively:
French pilgrims - men, women, old people - 'acknowledge themselves
well paid for their trouble, through the consolation which they feel at
having seen this sanctuary, and through the graces and other favors
which they have received in it' (JR60: 96-7). Besides their devotion to
the shrine of Notre Dame de Lorette, the French had confidence in the
special effectiveness of the prayers of the Native people there: new
Christians, they were seen by the clergy and inhabitants of New France
as having souls that were fresh and naive, and as shaping in the New
World a newborn church in which the fervour of the early church could
be felt once more. In 1688, when Father Chaumonot had been serving
as chaplain of the Holy House of Lorette for fourteen years, Monsignor
de Saint-Vallier wrote: 'The Hurons and the Iroquois who have joined
up with them ... have such tender devotion toward the blessed Virgin
that they all want to die near the Holy House, and, in spite of the
repeated invitation several of them have been offered to settle else-
where, they have never been persuaded to do so ... The chapel is nearly
always filled with these good Christians; and when they have returned to
their cabins, it is almost as if they were still in church; they speak of God,
they sing Hymns of thanksgiving, they recite their Rosary or other
prayers, and they encourage one another to perform all manner of
good deeds' (Saint-Vallier [1688] 1856, 67; Chaumonot 1885, 44). Chau-
monot maintained that 'it would be necessary to compose an entire
book to describe all the extraordinary favours' obtained from the Virgin
of Lorette in New France (Chaumonot 1885, 198). Objects connected
with Loretan devotional practice were lent out to other parishes in the
Quebec area, and the tiny loaves of bread that had been moulded by
nuns at Quebec in dishes sent from Lorcto were blessed and distributed
to them as well, thus spreading and reinforcing devotion to the Holy
House (203-5) •
The exalted feelings Chaumonot, his colleagues, and French and
Amerindian believers experienced for the Holy House at Lorette and its
material details - furnishings and household articles - were well within
the range of prayer typically adopted by European pilgrims making
their way to the original shrine at Lore to. Guidebooks for pilgrims in
'A New Loreto in New France' 211

the seventeenth century, such as the one published in 1616 by Cesare


Franciotti, exhort them to contemplate - at each stage of their journey -
the utter perfection of the Holy House and the 'New Nazareth,' each
element of which furnished material for the elevation of the spirit since
each was thought to bear unique witness to the mysteries of the Annun-
ciation and Incarnation. Devotional practice, whether in Loreto or Lor-
ette, was directed both to the Holy House and to the Virgin, with the
line between the two generally blurred, thus yielding a synthesis that in
no way troubled clergy or pilgrims (Franciotti 1616; Baron 1956), Father
Chaumonot was well acquainted with this devotional literature, which
nourished both his prayers and his efforts in colonial and missionary cir-
cles — notably including his solicitation among the religious communi-
ties and the elite of Quebec for donations to help in the construction of
the chapel.10 Yet despite the highly charged devotion generated by the
construction of the Holy House, relatively few donations were forthcom-
ing: 'in the way of alms and other aids from men, we have received so lit-
tle that it does not deserve to be recounted,' Father Bouvart said dryly in
!675 (/ff Go: 74-5). Father Chaumonot, however, was more grateful, tak-
ing care to draw up a list in his 1688 autobiography of the donations
received from religious institutions and the elite of Quebec for the
adornment of the Marian chapel, including chalices and ciboria, crosses
and candelabra, lamps and vases - all of silver - altar facing, chasuble
and accessories, and, naturally, hard cash (Chaumonot 1885, 195-6).
The Huron provided a cabin for religious services until the construction
of the chapel was completed, and also gave their labour - when it was
sought by the French workmen - as well as eighteen moose-skins, of
which Bouvart observes, 'we preferred to exchange these for clothing,
which we bought for them in order to help cover them1 (JRQo: 84-5).
The late i68os and the 16905 were often less happy than the early years
at the Lorette mission, which endured both scandals and ravages, caused
particularly by the frequent abuse of alcohol. The aging Father Chau-
monot was no longer able to control his flock. Having run the mission
from 1673 to 1691, he resigned and retired to the Jesuit College at Que-
bec, where he died in 1693. More and more of the Huron were breaching
the contract accepted on 4 November 1674, the day of the chapel's bene-
diction. The Jesuits, represented by Father Chaumonot, had conceded
the lands around the mission to the Huron, who were 'obliged, byway of
dues, not to take liquor to excess; and that those who shall henceforth
become intoxicated shall be driven from Lorette and shall lose their
fields, whatever work they may have accomplished' (JR 60: 88-9).
212 Andre Sanfafon

While the Amerindians of Lorette clearly enjoyed certain advantages


living under the protection of the French of Quebec, they were far from
being truly at home in the area. Their tenuous entitlement had been
made clear from the moment the Jesuits decided to leave the mission of
Notre Dame de Foy for Notre Dame de Lorette. Although the Huron
were able to choose the site of their future dwellings on the Jesuit prop-
erty (Chaumonot 1885, 194), those who had hastened to build their cab-
ins before the winter of 1673-4 were obliged to demolish them because
they did not fit in with the missionaries' plan, which included the num-
ber of cabins; their width, length, and spacing; and their arrangement
and alignment along the lane leading to the chapel as well as die latter's
central location, and construction by French workmen using red brick
and wooden framework. All this planning by the Jesuits only served to
further dispossess the Amerindians of traditional landmarks. Even so,
important cultural features were maintained in Lorette: family lodgings
in longhouses, distinctive dress made of animal skins, meetings of the
councils of elders, hunting and fishing cycles, the cultivation of corn
and other crops important to the Native diet, and, especially, the Huron
language, which the experienced missionaries used routinely in their
dealings with the Amerindians and which their newly arrived counter-
parts set about learning (Trigger [1976] 1987, 818; Morissonneau 1978,
389-90).
Before the end of the century, the Huron were moving into new terri-
tory, which they called Jeune-Lorette, soon renamed Village-des-Hurons
(now Wendake). By 1722, Notre Dame de Lorette had become An-
cienne Lorette. Following the lead of their Huron compatriots, the
French residing near the new village demonstrated their devotion to
Notre Dame de Lorette by christening the new parish Saint-Ambroise-
de-laJeune-Lorette. The three Lorettes together form what is today des-
ignated the Lorette region in the present diocese of Quebec. Forsaking
die old for the young Lorette, Chaumonot's successor, Father de Con-
vert, and the Hurons took to the new site everything they could remove
from the former chapel including, certainly, the statues and the objects
connected with the celebration of mass in the santa Casa (Lindsay 1900,
36, 186-7; Traquair 1930, 8). According to one legend that grew up in
the Quebec City area, on two occasions the statue of Our Lady of Lor-
ette miraculously returned to the old mission from the new one (Lind-
say 1900, 148; Gros-Louis and Gros-Louis 1980, 90-1). The story is vivid
testimony to the deep roots underlying devotion to the Virgin of Lorette
and to the degree of popular resistance encountered when devotional
'A New Loreto in New France' 213

patterns are altered. How could the Holy House function effectively
without the miraculous statue and the objects connected with the
Loretan tradition? The legend served to restore order in a situation felt
to be chaotic, indeed doomed, although it should be added that
another statue of the Virgin, resembling to some extent that of Notre
Dame de Lorette, had already replaced at Ancienne-Lorette the copy of
the statue of Our Lady of Loreto that had been moved to the chapel of
Jeune-Lorette (Lindsay 1900, 148-9). The French who had settled
around Notre Dame de Lorette, Cote St Paul, Champigny, and St Ange
all attended services at the original mission chapel, which as early as
1676 had become for them the equivalent of a parish church (Allard
1979,48,60).
In the chapel of the new Huron village, the memory of the Holy
House of Ancienne-Lorette was kept alive. On 13 February 1698, Monsi-
gnor de Saint-Vallier, bishop of Quebec, granted the sum of one hun-
dred ecus to aid in construction of the new church 'and to further mark
our goodwill toward them, we have granted a new title of Notre Dame
de Laurette for the chapel which they [the Jesuits] are to build for the
Savages, as they have given us to understand that the aforesaid Huron
savages have a particular devotion to the mystery and feast-day of Our
Lady of Laurette' (Lindsay 1900, 36-7). A sculpture created by Noel
LeVasseur in the eighteenth century showing the Holy House being
borne by two angels and a cherub can still be seen in the present chapel,
affixed to the upper part of the wall above the main altar. Below it, there
is another sculpture, presenting the distinctive features of Our Lady of
Lorette, behind a decorative wooden plaque reminiscent of the triangu-
lar shape of the robe with which the Lorette statue is traditionally
adorned. The Huron likewise venerate, in their chapel, a Black Virgin of
Loreto blessed by Pope John Paul ii in 1980. In Ancienne-Lorette, after
the Huron mission left, parishioners continued to honour the Virgin of
Lorette, especially in front of a statue kept in the parish to this day."
The Jesuits of Quebec systematically made use of specific Judeo-
Christian elements characterizing the model of the santa Casa so as to
produce the maximum effect on the senses, as well as on the beliefs and
devotional practices of the French and Amerindian populations of New
France to whom they were proposing that model. Analysing the Jesuits'
Marian undertaking allows us to identify and articulate a long list of con-
ditions singled out as favourable to success. First, select a familiar
model, one already quite popular with European Christians, and focus
on its essential traits. Have first-hand knowledge of the model's impact
214 Andre Sanfafon

and, thus, the ability to offer vivid and abundant testimony about it. Cre-
ate a network of reliable collaborators with access to the prototype in
order to give the model the greatest number of essential characteristics
of the original. Wait for the most propitious time at which to inaugurate
the model. Involve as many people as possible from the target popula-
tion, stressing the ripple effect of benefits for all the actors. At every
stage of its development and execution, place the responsibility for the
realization of the project under the aegis of key religious and political
leaders. Complete the project within a reasonable period of time after
approval has been secured and work initiated. Appeal in so far as possi-
ble to thefivesenses - on which adherence to the model is predicated -
so that its essential features can be seen, heard, touched, tasted, and
smelled. Make very explicit the parallels inextricably linking the pro-
totype and its copy. Be involved in the 'mechanics' of the model's
everyday operation, particularly by recommending intentions and
formulations for prayers in which the chief distinguishing traits of the
model are present. Brook no doubt concerning the model's effective-
ness; be convinced and convincing that the constituent elements of the
recreated model are imbued with the power of the original. Publicize
the blessings bestowed through specific kinds of reliance on the model.
Nourish an aura of the extraordinary around the model, thus protecting
it from trivialization and all forms of defilement. Strengthen the symbol-
ism of the place of worship through multiple links with complementary
Marian traditions. Finally, express gratitude to both the divinity at the
centre of the model, to whom all blessings received are publicly attrib-
uted, and, as well, to the collaborators helping to make the model work,
for their indispensable support.
Father Chaumonot had been able to bring all these conditions
together to maximum effect, apparendy ensuring that the model of the
santa Casa would function optimally (although for a limited time) by first
informing his Jesuit colleagues, and then the elite of Quebec, of his plans.
The operational impact of the model of the Holy House made a striking
impression on all the missionaries. In October 1676, Fatherjean Enjalran
was only too happy to serve as their spokesman, stating, 'Our savages have
an admirable veneration for this place ... All the people agree that there
are in this mission persons of eminent holiness' (JR6o: 144-5).
In Europe throughout the second half of the seventeenth century,
the fervour displayed by the faithful towards the Italian shrine of Loreto
was maintained, even though the peak of its glory had come at the end
of the sixteenth century, when tens of thousands of pilgrims flocked
'A New Lore to in New France' 215

there at a time. Beginning with Julius H, a succession of popes rein-


forced the Holy House's renown by granting it exceptional titles and
privileges. For example, in 1676 and 1682, Pope Innocent xi had the
image of the santa Casa superimposed on Agnus Dei medallions, with
the words 'Sancta Maria Lauretana ora pro nobis' (Holy Mary of Loreto,
pray for us). Some years earlier, in 1671, the Sulpician Alexandre de
Bretonvilliers, who had succeeded Jean-Jacques Olier at the head of that
order, did as their venerable founder had done in 1630, making 'the pil-
grimage to Loreto, which he called the earthly paradise; he left a gold
medal there, whose weight was the same as ten louis, on which the
image of the Seminary of St Sulpice was engraved' (Chevalier 1906,400-
i). Gifts converged on the treasury of Loreto at a steady pace from
everywhere in Europe. Published versions of the account of the Holy
House's four-time translation were widely circulated. Nevertheless,
there were persistent and growing objections to the story, and not just in
Jansenist circles. Louis Moreri, writing in Le grand dictionnaire historique
([1674] cited by Chevalier 1906, 401), observed of Loreto that 'the
objections are stronger than the answers,' while men of letters, such as
Mabillon in 1685, went to Loreto in the course of journeys to Italy with-
out being persuaded by accounts of the translation.
Veneration of Our Lady of Loreto continued outside of Italy as well.
In 1673, tne year before the Jesuits of Quebec established the Huron
mission at the Lorette site, Gerard van Herdegom, the priest of Baarle in
the Netherlands, erected in his parish a chapel modelled on Loreto's
santa Casa. His goal was to foster devotion to the Virgin in the North
Brabant region, subject, as it was, to strong pressure from Dutch Protest-
antism. Miracles attributed to Mary were represented in the chapel,
along with Marian symbols (Mekking 1975). In 1697, the year the Huron
had to leave Lorette for Jeune-Lorette, the Jesuit Juan Maria de Salva-
tierra founded, at the southwestern tip of the North American conti-
nent, the first permanent Californian mission, placing it under the
protection of the Virgin at Loreto in Baja California (Mathes 1980). Back
in New France, when the Sulpician mission to the Mohawk moved to
Sault-au-Recollet in 1701, 'the seminary had a fort constructed of stakes,
defended by three bastions, with a chapel built on the model of Notre
Dame of Loreto, in Italy, which gave the name Nouvelk-Lorette to the mis-
sion of Sault au Recollet' (Faillon 1853, 2: 169, cited by Lindsay 1900,
144). The Sulpicians were hoping that the same benefits would be con-
ferred on the Mohawk by a model of the santa Casa as had been observed
among a majority of the Huron and Iroquois at Lorette mission.
216 Andre Sanfafon

Father Chaumonot's ardent and unflagging devotion to Our Lady of


Loreto was clearly no isolated phenomenon. In Italy, France, the Neth-
erlands, and other European countries, and in the American missions
from New France to Baja California, and elsewhere in Latin America,
the model of the Holy House was chosen as a powerful symbol of affir-
mation, and of resistance to Protestantism. It was seen as an effective
means of making converts and of proceeding on the road to Christian
perfection that, in a mystic and mythic leap, was ascribed to the early
church. Mission lands were to constitute a second Holy Land, sites of
divine election snatched away from 'barbarism' and shielded, in so far as
possible, from the vices of 'civilization.' Perfection and primitivism were
allied ideas, central to the Catholic Reformation. The Virgin of Loreto,
of the Incarnation, returned believers to the dawn of Christianity and
the Church, symbolizing for them both birth and rebirth to spiritual life.
The Loretan tradition served to decentre the representation of the
Holy Land (fallen into the hands of 'infidels' and 'barbarians') by
asserting a four-fold translation of the Holy House of the Virgin Mary
from Nazareth to its site at Loreto, in Italy - the home of Christianity
and high 'civilization.' The tradition was also a part of vast centrifugal
forces in Europe, such as the Counter-Reformation; these forces lay
behind Loretan doctrine and the Marian triumph at Loreto's basilica.
Centrifugal, too, was the export of the Holy House to the soil of the New
World, spinning off into the new Lorelos that sprouted up in the Amer-
icas to enhance a missionary endeavour utterly sworn - and here I am
borrowing the words of Father Chaumonot and his colleagues - 'to gain
... ascendancy' over Native minds in order 'to adapt Them to our Chris-
tian customs' (JR 18: 18-19; 5?: 68-9).
The construction of the chapel and the Huron village inspired by Our
Lady of Loreto and the associated devotions focusing on Jesus, Mar)',
Joseph, Anne, Joachim, the holy angels, and the santa Casa, together
with the chapel's furnishings, utensils, articles of cloth and apparel,
formed a unified whole producing an indisputable effect right down to
the present on Amerindians and the French alike, as it once did on
Father Chaumonot. All of this tended towards a polarisation of devo-
tions between French and Amerindians, with the result of altering spe-
cific facets of everyday behaviour in the colony. This Christianizing or
'civilizing' mission was obviously understood entirely in terms of the
European frame of reference. Yet it would be unwise to conclude that
the Loretan model led to an invevitable decline in female rank and con-
sequent upgrading of male rank within Huron society. The symbolic
'A New Loreto in New France' 217

thrust of the model and its teachings is ambivalent: if the Virgin of the
Holy House of Lorette is the servant of God and of her family, she is also
a powerful woman, inheritor of a lineage, queen of the village of Notre
Dame de Lorette and treated as such in her house or chapel around
which the life of the protected community revolved. Totally dependent
on the French for their survival, beginning in 1648 or perhaps even 1647
- in the eye of the Iroquois hurricane sweeping across their ancestral
Huronia (Trigger [1976] 1987, 749-50) - the Christianized Hurons fol-
lowed their missionaries and settler allies to the region around Quebec.
From then on, in a twin quest for security and identity, the Huron found
themselves in a situation that offered certain advantages even though it
also implied a process of assimilation and resistance, accommodation
and continuity.
Devotions to the Virgin and the Holy House were inseparable in
Loretan practice, using the basic components of belief to give rise to
a complex and powerful model, capable of nurturing the spiritual
progress in New France of French and Amerindians alike, through fam-
ily roles assigned by the canons of a Western and Christian civilization
then undergoing transformation (Muchembled 1988; Delumeau 1983,
1989). The Virgin of Loreto/Lorette represents the glorification of
Mary, the humble servant of God, 'our all-gracious mother and all-
powerful protectress' (/R60: 70-1), the one who shows the way to medi-
tation upon the mysteries of the Annunciation and Incarnation by
means of accessible, tangible objects such as her house, bed, wardrobe,
garments, dishes. An ideal model of family life is presented: that of the
Holy Family - inheritors of Anne and Joachim's house - whose lives
exemplified the passive virtues of obedience, humility, and purity. Mary,
Joseph, and Jesus shared supposedly around twenty-five years of a mod-
est existence spent in domestic work and carpentry, the parents' efforts
unfailingly seconded by the help of their son, Jesus.
In die seventeenth-century mystical perspective shaping Father Chau-
monot's spirituality, the veneration of the Holy Family and Holy House
of Loreto was not a mere devotion to be added to a host of others, but
rather a genuine duty for which distance granted no dispensation: in
order to pay the homage due to that place and its sainted figures, it
would be necessary to build in America a copy of the house from Naza-
reth. There is no reason to doubt the Jesuit's sincerity as he trod the
path to sanctification by fulfilling his obligations towards the Holy Fam-
ily - in particular, the Blessed Virgin, his adoptive mother - and the 'his-
toric' sites that had housed them. Nor is there any doubt that the same
2i8 Andre Sanfafon

devotion helped impose the values of a society predicated on authority -


especially patriarchal authority - on an Amerindian culture that had
always laid greater stress on liberty and, owing to its matrilineal and
matrilocal structure, had assigned much greater power to women.Ia The
power enjoyed by Huron women had been immense compared to that
of their European counterparts, still considered minors at that time,
subject to the authority of father or spouse. Devotion to the Holy House
made it possible to emphasize nuclear family organization: the benevo-
lent authority of the chaste Joseph, and the honourable place of Mary in
the house left her by her mother, surrounded by familiar household
objects, lavishing attention upon her husband and son in the course of
daily domestic routine. This model was ideal for the Amerindians, who
believed that objects as well as beings possessed a soul.
Imbued with the tradition of Loreto, where he had gone as beggar,
patient, pilgrim, novice, and priest, and under whose aegis he had
placed his missionary venture in Canada, Father Chaumonot remained
faithful to his calling throughout his years among the Huron, whom he
knew better than any other European. He was convinced that his work -
first in Huronia, then around Quebec - was suited to the needs of
Amerindians and French colonists, both of whom, he believed, had
everything to learn from the models of spiritual life he was offering
them. A good Christian is, first of all, a child who obeys and respects his
or her parents, who, in their turn, submit to divine will in sobriety and
chastity. In his struggle against marital discord (whether among Amer-
indians or the French), drunkenness, and infidelity (/R6o: 78-81), and
for progress towards a healthier spiritual life, under Tridentine precepts
and the moral code promulgated by the Catholic Reformation, Pierre-
Joseph-Marie Chaumonot, adopted son of the Virgin of Loreto and of
St Ignatius, and their devoted admirer and loyal servant, relied on the
unquestioned values of his time. These would sanctify the family,
infancy, and childhood, creating a special fervour in the celebration of
maternity (conception, pregnancy, birth, nursing), all revealed in the
devotions to the Holy House, the Holy Family, the Infant Jesus, and, at
Notre Dame de Lorette in 1678, in the Huron's self-offering to Our
Lady of Chartres, the Virgo paritum, the 'Virgin about to give birth'
(Lemieux 1985, 159-73; Sanfacon 1996), As a missionary priest, Chau-
monot sought to guide Amerindians and French alike on the path
towards salvation. This endeavour was the essential collective project in
the reformist yet absolutist seventeenth century, where miracles could
be seen wherever one wanted to find them; where vows and prayers
were the usual route to hopes of divine succour and saving grace; and
'A New Loreto in New France' 219

where the marvellous routinely intervened, even in scientific explana-


tion (Delumeau 1989, 179-219; Sole 1979, 207-8).

NOTES

1 The parish church Sanctae Mariae in fundo Laureti, whose construction


dales hack to the last quarter of the twelfth century, was placed under the
patronage of the Nativity of Mary, and not of the Incarnation, and was a site
of Marian pilgrimage well before the legend of the Holy House took root
(Chevalier 1906, 223-7). For a brief account of the phases of construction
of the basilica and subsequent alterations of importance, see the article
'Loreto,' in the Endclapedia italiana di scienze, lettere ed arti (Rome, 1949),
504-5, and the accompanying photographs.
2 Known essentially through the accounts assembled by Reuben Gold
Thwaites in The Jesuit Relations (1896-1901) and through archaeological
research, the era during which European and Amerindian involvement
led to the 'upheaval of Huron territory' has been the object of numerous
studies. See, for example, Trigger [1976] 1987 and 1978; Delage 1993;
Heidenreich 1971; and Salisbury 1996. The documents of the Jesuits in New
France are being re-edited by Fr. Lucien Oampeau (Campeau 1967-94).
3 Chauinonot adds: 'all these things, or even those resembling them, are
miraculous here.' The chapel of Notre Dame de Lorette thus had two dishes
from Italy: the first one sent by Father Poncet, the other given by Mother de
la Nativite, a nun from the convent of the Hotel-Dieu at Quebec, who had
received it from Madame Barbe de Boullongne, widow of Governor Louis
d'Ailleboust. The museum of the Village-des-Hurons or Wendake still con-
tains one of the two dishes saved from the chapel fire of 1862 (Lindsay 1900,
186-7).
4 See also Quebec, Archives of the Monastery of the Hotel-Dieu, F. i C. 176,
No. i.
5 'The name dogiquewas. given to the savage whose piety and instruction made
him worthy of substituting during devotional exercises when the mi.ssionaiy
was absent' (Chaumonot 1885, 190).
6 Father Chaumonot was not the only one in Quebec well acquainted with the
santa Casain Italy; in fact, the Relation for 1673-4 mentions, with respect to
the 'beautiful parallel between the Loretto of Canada and the Loretto of
Europe,' that 'all who have seen both consider that they arc exactly similar'
(JR 58: 156-7). Plans of the Holy House had, moreover, been published; see
Philippon 1649.
7 Chevalier (1906, 368-70) says of Torsellini's work, 'No other book on Loreto
22O Andre Sanfacon

has enjoyed such a success/ but notes that 'his statements concerning the
quadruple translation [of the santa Casa] rest on no proof worthy of a
serious historian's attention.'
8 This wood was taken from an oak tree in whose trunk a woodcutter had, in
1609, found a small statue of the Virgin (Hayot 1939, 9-11).
9 For devotion in New France to the Holy Family, especially with regard to the
religious fraternity named for them, see Cliche 1988, 158-70. Beginning in
1642, Montreal's Notre Dame Society dedicated the future city to the Holy
Family.
10 Quebec, Archives of the Monasteiy of the Hotel-Dieu, F.i, C.iy6, No.i.
11 Archaeological excavations in August 1983 by Gilles Drolet and his team -
with research completed by Michel Gaumond, archaeologist with the Que-
bec Ministry of Culture - made it possible to find and authenticate remnants
of brick walls from the original chapel 'less than one hundred feet from the
[present] church' in Ancienne-Lorette (Drolet 1985, iii). A cartoon booklet,
with text by Gilles Drolet and drawings by Paul Roux, reconstructs Father
Chaumonot's itinerary as a missionary (Drolet 1989).
12 Feminist studies have given us new perspectives on this question, in the light
of seventeenth-century social values and their enduring influences. For
Karen Anderson (1991), the Jesuits came to New France consciously and
determinedly bearing a new social and moral order, characterized by values
that hinged on wealth, power, prestige, fear, submission, and fidelity. Jesuit
action, therefore, helped put Amerindian women under the domination of
men. For her part, Laura Peers (1996), in a study of the cultivation of Marian
devotion by the Jesuits working among the Salish (Flatheads) in the nine-
teenth century in what is now Montana, maintains that Marian devotional
practices became potent tools for assimilation via the introduction of
Western Christian models of conjugal and family life. From this perspective,
the veneration of the Holy House and Holy Family in the mission of Notre
Dame de Lorette furnished the chief illustration of the European model of
the nuclear family, with roles divided among husband and wife, father and
mother, grandfather and grandmother, evoking a paradigm of family life
claimed to be ideal.
PART IV
Decentring at Work
This page intentionally left blank
The Delights of Nature in This New
World: A Seventeenth-Century
Canadian View of the Environment
Lynn Berry

On a day in early October 1663, the governor of Trois-Rivieres, Pierre


Boucher, hastened to add the final words to his treatise on the natural
history of Canada so that it might be carried on a ship bound for France
the moment that the wind was favourable. Florentin Lambert published
Boucher's slender book in Paris the following year and offered it to his
customers on the Rue Saint-Jacques as the Histoire Veritable et naturelle
des moeurs et productions du Pays de la Nouvelle France vulgairement dite le
Canada.1 French readers found fifteen short chapters in the Histoire:
four of them surveyed Boucher's experience of Iroquoian and Algon-
quian cultures, but the majority of the book was dedicated to the geog-
raphy and climate, the flora and fauna, of his adopted country, Canada.
The view of the natural environment that Boucher presents in his
treatise sets the book apart from the literature published in France at
that time. When we compare his portrayal of the natural world to that
which appeared in scientific publications, in literature, even in works
written by others who had experienced Canadian nature themselves, we
see that no one offered his particular combination of detailed and
ordered observation touched with affectionate appreciation. Most
importantly, no other French author conveyed the same sense of pride
and belonging connected with a New World landscape. Boucher and his
contemporaries in France held many values in common, but the differ-
ences in their portrayals of nature show that he thought beyond the
needs of France when he wrote his Histoire.
It was a visit to France, after twenty-seven years intensely lived in the
Canadian environment and amidst its indigenous peoples, that caused
Boucher to recognize clearly and marvel at the differences between the
land he was born in and the land that he had chosen as his home. Look-
224 Lynn Berry

ing around him on his return to Canada, he saw the abundance and
diversity of the natural world with new eyes, and wrote about it in a way
that other writers could not duplicate. His observations show that he
had experienced a process of hybridization, and had become a kind of
acclimatized and hardy transplant, like those plants or animals brought
from France that he described as thriving in the New World.
Pierre Boucher's experience of Canada began in 1635, at the age
of thirteen, when he and his parents and siblings emigrated from
Mortagne in Normandy to the town of Quebec. As a teenager, he was a
lay assistant to the Jesuits at their Huron mission. He went on to become
a soldier, an official interpreter of Native languages for the colonial gov-
ernor, and a fur trade post manager. Later, he became governor of
Trois-Rivieres, a seigneur, and a judge. In 1661, Boucher received letters
of nobility for organizing Trois-Rivieres against a prolonged Iroquois
siege (Roy 1926, 401-2). The settlements of the St Lawrence valley
region had faced determined and constant Iroquois resistance with little
respite for the previous two decades, and the colony was in a deplorable
state. Owing to his years of experience at the forefront of French
defence, his knowledge of the country, and his position as noble and
seigneur, Boucher was chosen by the colonial governor to travel to
France and solicit military aid from Louis XTV and his ministers. On his
return from this mission in the summer of 1662, Boucher composed his
Histoire and returned it to Paris for publication the following year.
Boucher had several motives for writing his Histoire, all of them based
more on local interests than on those of the mother country. One goal
was to offer an accurate description of his adopted home to those in
France who had besieged him with questions, questions that revealed
distorted views acquired from short-term visitors. As gratified as he was
by their interest, he was deeply troubled that Canada was being misrep-
resented out of ignorance or malice. Boucher's second aim was to
remind the king of his promised economic and military assistance to the
colony, and to that end he included in his Histoire frequent and often
intense denunciations of 'our enemy,' the Iroquois. What good are the
natural advantages of Canada, he asked, when such bounty remained
untouched because the Iroquois war 'prevents us from exploring it, as it
is desirable we should' (Boucher [1664] 1883, 14). His third goal was to
use his own experience to offer information and advice to potential
immigrants. His treatise, however, was not simply a piece of colonial
propaganda or a dutiful response to a request for information from Col-
bert, the king's first minister, as some historians have claimed (Trudel
A Seventeenth-Century View of the Environment 225

in Boucher [1664] 1964, ix-x; Levere andjarrell 1974, 4; Douville 1969;


19703, 8, 32). Boucher makes it clear in his preface that composing such
a document had long been his own idea (Boucher [1664] 1883, 8, 9).
And although he dedicates his book to Colbert, he makes no reference
to a specific request from Colbert for such a treatise. Boucher, who was
one of the more important seigneurs in Canada, holding title to four
seigneuries totalling over 13,000 hectares, needed to establish settlers or
risk losing uncleared lands to the Crown for redistribution. Cole Harris,
who wrote sceptically about the seigneurs' ability to create settlement in
the seventeenth century, called Boucher one of the 'most energetic col-
onizer [s] in all the ranks of Canadian seigneurs' (Harris 1968, 104).
As much as he wanted colonists, Boucher was not willing to accept just
anyone France cared to send him. His intention of guiding the coloniza-
tion process is evident behind the advice he offers in his Histoire. While
he praises the abundant resources that would provide a settler's sub-
sistence in Canada, he makes it clear that they belong only to hard-
working, honest habitants who would settle permanently, as he himself
had done. He wanted no urban dandies longing for the luxuries of
Paris, nor was he much interested in hivernants - those domestics, sol-
diers, missionaries, traders, or government officials who aimed to return
to France after an indefinite stay and never made a commitment to the
colony. Libertines, scapegraces, or 'filles mal-vivantes' who slipped into
the country and who did not reform he threatened with expulsion or
death: 'We know how to hang people in this country as well as they do
elsewhere, and we have proved it to some who have not been well
behaved' (Boucher [1664] 1883, 15, 78).
With these motives in mind, Boucher presented the Histoire to his
audience. 'Speaking of New France as a whole,' Boucher begins, with
admiration, '1 may say that it is a good country, and one that contains in
itself a good portion of ail that can be wished for'(Boucher [1664] 1883,
13). In succeeding chapters, he takes his readers across the known
regions of this 'very large country ... divided in two by a great river,
called the Saint Lawrence,' whose source was as mysterious as the full
extent of the continent (14, 16). He describes the natural advantages of
the land: the productive soils, the 'dense and very fine forests,' the great
quantides of animals of diverse species, the remarkable number of lakes
and rivers bordered with fine grasslands and teeming with Fish and
waterfowl for seemingly unlimited hunting and fishing. He devotes five
chapters to descriptions of over 150 species of plants and trees, mam-
mals, birds, and fish of the Laurentian colony, including 44 birds,
226 Lynn Berry

24 land and 3 marine mammals, 25 fish, 28 trees and shrubs, and 22 edi-
ble plants. He notes the most productive resources and connects a num-
ber of them to habitats and seasons. He indicates, for example, the ideal
months for pigeon hunting or smelt fishing, and notes that certain coni-
fers grow in damp places and that the preferred habitat of the black
bear is the oak forests near Montreal (31, 36, 43, 45). In the interests of
candour, he acknowledges what he considers 'the most troublesome
and disagreeable things' - the Iroquois war, mosquitoes, rattlesnakes,
and the length of winter (76-8). He nonetheless praises the countiy as
remarkably healthy: animals and plants from France were thriving; habi-
tant children grew up 'well formed, tall and robust'; rare plants had
marvellous curative powers; and even 'in the coldest place here winter is
a more cheerful season than it is in France' (13-14, 71). Boucher's
appreciation of this bountiful land increases as he surveys it from the
Adantic coast, eastward to Tadoussac and Quebec, and further up the St
Lawrence to Trois-Rivieres and Montreal. Only his desire for brevity
restrains his enthusiastic descriptions of the charms of the lands to the
west, controlled by the Iroquois: 'I could not describe to you all the
beautiful places in those countries, nor the good things to be found
there, and at the same time be brief, as I intend to be* (24).
The brevity of Boucher's natural history does not limit its significance
in comparison to the work of his contemporaries. During this period,
the words 'histoire naturelle' signified a simple description of natural
phenomena. Unlike what contemporaries termed 'natural philosophy,'
natural history did not search for the causes of phenomena or attempt
to explain how living things functioned (Roger 1995, 201). Natural his-
tory was actually not a popular topic in mid-seventeenth-century France.
A variety of such works had appeared in most European countries in the
century before Boucher wrote, but by the early seventeenth century,
mathematics, mechanics, and physics attracted the majority of scholars,
whether professional or amateur. It was to this audience that Jacques
Rohault's System of Natural Philosophy (1671) appealed, with its exposi-
tion of Cartesian physics, chemistry, astronomy, and physiology. In
France the period was one of increased scientific study; scholarly socie-
ties and academies were formed and advancements in the use of micro-
scopes and dissection led to intense focus on a single plant or animal
species. There was no serious renewal of interest in natural history until
the 16705, and that took place in England before it spread to Europe
(Roger 1995,199-200).2 Those few works on the natural world that were
printed immediately after Boucher's Histoire were either treatises based
A Seventeenth-Century View of the Environment 227

on dissections of individual species or religiously motivated tracts show-


ing nature as the handiwork of God (Pinon 1995, 18; Roger 1995, 200).
Boucher never discussed the relationship between God and the
natural environment in his Histoire, notwithstanding the strong religious
convictions evident in his later writings; he preferred rational, not
supernatural, explanations for natural phenomena. Only in his brief
mention of the Laurentian earthquake of 1663 does Boucher write of
divine influence in the natural world, claiming that God had ensured no
one was hurt by this otherwise natural phenomenon (Boucher [1664]
1964, 10). His descriptions of birds and animals include a strong sense
of habitat, sight, and sound almost completely lacking among the zoolo-
gists of the day. The prevailing Cartesian philosophy of the mechanistes,
which insisted, among other things, that animals were nothing more
than complicated machines, did not resonate at all in Boucher's sensi-
tive descriptions of the 'wonderful skill' of the beaver or 'delicate and
pretty' flying squirrel (Boucher [1664] 1883, 39). For Boucher, the natu-
ral world was not a vast, impersonal machine but more a complex, living
whole.
In the non-scientific literature of Boucher's day, as in the scientific,
the absence of the natural world is striking. Where it is represented,
nature is reduced to an idealized theatrical backdrop to the dialogue of
pleasant company. Boucher's writing stands out in a time when the ste-
rility of artificial norms 'killed or paralysed everything that it touched
[in literature]' (Marion 1964, 245; see also Auregan 1990, 85). When
Boucher notes 'the quantity and variety of the beautiful flowers to be
found [in Iroquois country]' (Boucher [1664] 1883, 49), his words con-
vey a sense of joy at the beauty of the natural world. In contrast, Marie
de I'lncarnation, the Ursuline nun at Quebec, assured her sister at
home in Tours that 'we have [flower seeds and bulbs] brought from
France for our garden having none here that are very exceptional or
beautiful (Guyart [1626-72] 1971, no. 149, 501). Nor did Boucher's
ideal of landscape resemble that of French authors who extolled the
idyllic and pastoral; he praised the soils suitable for farming in Canada,
but wrote more often and enthusiastically about hunting and fishing in
the forests and marshes.
If Boucher's natural history had no counterpart in the French litera-
ture of the period, what of those authors who had experienced seven-
teenth-century Canada before him? We find observations on nature
made by Marc Lescarbot, who was in Acadia in 1606-7, by the Recollet
missionary Gabriel Sagard on the basis of ten months in Huronia in
228 Lynn Berry

1623-4, and by Samuel de Champlain in accounts of his twelve visits to


New France from 1603 to 1635. Several Jesuit priests also made refer-
ence to Canada's geography, flora, and fauna in their Relations and
internal correspondence (Levere and Jarrell 1974, 3). There are simi-
larities between their comments on Canadian nature and those of
Boucher. Lescarbot wrote appreciatively of productive soils; Champlain
praised the bounteous hunting and fishing; some Jesuits approved of
the invigorating climate. But when we look more closely, we see that
these authors cannot match Boucher's roots in the Canadian environ-
ment or the scope or accuracy of his knowledge about it.
Most of these writers reported their observations as travellers in a for-
eign land. Their language is that of a visitor, referring to New France as
'there,* not 'here.' Samuel de Champlain, for example, despite his years
in the colony, remained a visitor: 'I have always enjoyed my visits to New
France' (Champlain [1619] 1970, 23). Much of their work is in the form
of journals kept while moving through the landscape, one often fraught
with dangers. To promote their cause and inspire their patrons, explor-
ers and missionaries alike dramatized natural perils, although mission-
aries were generally more interested in ethnography than in their
natural surroundings. Gabriel Sagard listed the hazards and discomfort
of travel in the Canadian woods as trials willingly endured for his mis-
sion (Sagard [1632] 1990, 123-4). Champlain wanted it known that he
endured his perils and risks in the service of the king (Champlain 1922-
36, 3: 247-9) • A genuine or prolonged interest in the natural world for
its own sake was far from being a hallmark of Jesuit thought, Peter God-
dard suggests that 'seventeenth-century French Jesuit accounts stressed
the moral history of the native, and spent comparatively little time
understanding the Canadian environment' (Goddard 1995,48).
Colonial promoters, by contrast, tended to reduce the natural world
in Canada to geographic and economic details that promised depend-
able commerce and great annual profits to merchants and the court. As
such, many promoters simply enumerated the natural commodities that
they hoped for, occasionally dropping short lists of the names of trees,
fish, birds, or mammals into their narrative, and only rarely adding
descriptive details.3 Sometimes, in their eagerness to encourage inves-
tors, they portrayed parts of Canada as almost a terrestrial paradise.
Marc Lescarbot, the Parisian lawyer and intellectual disappointed by
corruption in France, exaggerated the noble qualities of Acadia and its
inhabitants using classical and Biblical references, no matter howr
strained the comparison (Carile 1988, 86). Others included the occa-
A Seventeenth-Century View of the Environment 229

sional fantastic creature in their work to please audiences who expected


exotic tales from faraway lands. Among Champlain's generally realistic
accounts, he includes such unusual denizens as a bird 'as big as a hen
and yellow all over except for a red head and blue wings' (Champlain
[1619] 1970, 59). For almost all of the authors who wrote about Canada
before Boucher, nature was an incidental part of a discourse motivated
from the court, the church, commerce, or curiosity centred in France.
Boucher's account of Canadian nature differed from these in almost
every respect. As a seigneur, he understood as well as any Frenchman
the advantages of drawing 'utilitez' from the land, but he was scornful of
those who wanted only to take money out of the country. When asked in
France about the profit to be made in Canada, he wrote, 'that gave me
an inclination to laugh ... I seemed to see people who wanted to reap a
harvest before they had sowed anything' (Boucher [1664] 1883, 73). He
cautioned his readers against unproven reports such as those about
gems in the Lake Superior district or the curative power of balsam gum
(SO, 83). Moreover, he did not wish to recruit immigrants under false
pretences with fictional Edenic landscapes, nor did he seek to impress
readers with rash claims or tales of danger. His work is remarkably free
of error and exaggeration, and is concrete and accurate enough in its
description of flora and fauna that we can recognize the great majority
of the species that he describes.
Boucher's descriptions of birds and animals are exceeded in simplic-
ity and freshness only by those of Sagard. The Recollet's descriptions of
the hummingbird or a hibernating bear were probably inspired by his
Franciscan training (Carile 1988, 89). For him, natural wonders were
marvellous signs of God's creative powers and providence. Though
Sagard wrote of the natural environment with detailed delight, he was a
passing observer in an exotic land and was willing to rely on unsubstanti-
ated hearsay to explain the things he saw, particularly if it offered evi-
dence of God's design in the New World. For example, he had heard
that the hummingbird slept through the winter, clasped to a branch
from October to April (Sagard [1632] 1990, 301). He readily added this
story to the list of singular Canadian birds that inspired him to be '[con-
tent] d'admirer et louer Dieu' (Sagard [1632] 1990, 303). (Bird migra-
tion was not considered seriously until the advent of bird banding in the
early nineteenth century.) Boucher's natural history, however, is born
of long residence and patient observation in one place over time. He
sometimes criticizes the ignorance of French newcomers to Canada -
such as those new arrivals who mistook the bellowing calls of bullfrogs
230 Lynn Berry

for those of elk - and he criticizes the captains from France who did not
respect the skill of Iroquois warriors and paid for their ignorance with
their lives (Boucher [1664] 1883, 41, 77). His detailed and systematic
natural history did not have the naivety of a newly arrived Frenchman; it
was not an appendix describing commodities in an explorer's journal,
or an incidental inspiration in a missionary's report. Though the
authors before him had actually experienced the Canadian environ-
ment, they did not, at heart, have the same understanding of it or
attachment to it that Boucher had (see Warwick in Sagard, 1990). In
Marcel Trudel's words, 'no one understood better than he did, no one
had had more actual experience of New France, or more varied' (Tru-
del in Boucher [1664] 1964, preface).
Influences in Boucher's life may explain his exceptional approach to
nature in the New World. As we have seen, his long residence in Canada
gave him a profound appreciation of the wild environment. This resi-
dence was shaped by interaction with the people who knew Canadian
nature best, the Iroquoian and Algonquian peoples whom he describes
in the Histoire. The complexities of Boucher's attitudes towards different
Native groups, as revealed in the section of his treatise devoted to them,
are outside the scope of this paper, but we can consider the ways in
which his view of the natural world was affected by contact with Amer-
indians.
At a time when many of the young people of New France were being
deeply influenced by Native society, two significant events in Boucher's
early years brought him into particularly close contact with Native cus-
toms and the environment. The first influence was the young Boucher's
four years as a lay assistant to the Jesuit fathers at their mission in Huron
country. Native paddlers had transported him the 1,300 kilometres from
Quebec to Georgian Bay. For all the Jesuits' emphasis on conversion,
the missions were predominantly Native environments. Boucher would
have adopted aspects of Huron dress and food, resided in a bark lodge,
cut firewood in the forests, worked in the fields of maize and squash,
and joined with Huron warriors in the defence of the mission against
Iroquois attack. The impact of such an intensely lived experience on a
teenager only recently arrived in Canada from a pastoral Norman vil-
lage must have been profound. The Marquis de Denonville, a contem-
porary of Boucher's who was the governor of New France, complained
in a letter to Paris, 'I would not know, Monseigneur, how to sufficiently
express to you the attraction that the life of the savages has for all the
young people' (quoted in Delage 1992, 154). Its influence on his view of
the environment is revealed in the Histoire. Journeys in the woods and
A Seventeenth-Century View of the Environment 231

on the waters of Huronia appear in Boucher's descriptions of the con-


struction of the birch bark canoe, of negotiating river rapids and por-
tages, of dealing with 'surprisingly irksome' mosquitoes (Boucher
[1664] 1883, 28, 30, 32, 50-1, 75, 77). Native snowshoes aided his winter
travel and bolstered his uncommon appreciation for winter: 'We go all
about on the snow, by the aid of certain foot gear, made by the Indians,
which we call snowshoes, and which are very convenient' (20). By con-
trast, Champlain, for example, gives no indication in his writings that he
used such contrivances himself: They make a sort of racket,' he
observed, 'which they attach to their feet' (Champlain [1604] 1993,
i l l ) . Boucher also writes of Native farming, of their use of wild plants or
animals for food, dye, or medicine. His knowledge of animal behaviour
and habitat were no doubt learned when hunting or fishing with his
Native hosts. Boucher's descriptions of birds are more detailed for those
species that he hunts: 'I will name to you only those that are near to us,
and that we kill every day' (Boucher [1664] 1883, 41). Raymond Dou-
ville wonders if Boucher's ideals of agricultural communalism, which he
pursued later in life at his seigneury of Boucherville, were inspired by
the agricultural subsistence of the Huron corn farmers (Douville,
I970b, 25).
The second event that ensured the continued influence of Native
views and culture on Boucher and his connection to the environment
was his marriage to a Native woman. During his years among the Huron
he had learned several Native dialects well enough to be appointed, at
eighteen, as official interpreter for Governor Montmagny on military
and diplomatic missions. This led him to a position as a fur trade post
manager in the frontier town of Trois-Rivieres, at the crossroads of
many Amerindian trade routes. It was here, in 1649, that he married
Marie-Madeleine Ouebadinoukoue, dz7Chretienne (Jette 1983, 136; Roy
1934, 38-9). This was an uncommon event. Government policy to
encourage intermarriage had produced only one other 'official' wed-
ding during Boucher's twenty years in the Trois-Rivieres region (Char-
bonneau and Legare 1980, 4: 146). Marie had received some education
with the Ursulines, but such francisation was not always profound. 4 In the
time they had together before she died after the birth of their first son,
it is likely that she brought vital kinship relations and her experience of
Native ways of life to her marriage.5 It could have been Marie who
taught him some of the Native names for the fish and plants that he
used in his Histoire. Her relatives might have been those who Boucher
referred to as the Amerindians he trusted for information of distant
places (Boucher [1664] 1883, 11, 14).
232 Lynn Berry

Yet, if interactions with Native peoples shaped Boucher's vision of the


New World, it was probably his one-year visit to France that most stirred
his awareness of the benefits of his adopted country. We know that he
was prompted to write about Canadian society by the misunderstand-
ings about it he encountered in France. Could the state of the French
environment itself have caused him to see Canadian nature in a new
light on his return? Perhaps the roiling waters of the St Lawrence
seemed more remarkable after the sluggish Seine; it may be that the
healthy children of Canada were proof to Boucher of its invigorating cli-
mate after seeing the poverty of the French peasantry. The Seine, in
contrast to the beautiful St Lawrence, was polluted (Braudel 1981, 229);
and when Boucher made his visit to France, that country was still recov-
ering from the major grain famine of 1660-2 (Moogk 1989, 470). On his
return to Canada, Boucher wrote that 'All the poor people would do
better here than in France' (Boucher [1664] 1883, 81).
Certainly in the frequent comparisons he made in the Histoire, the
resources of Canada are described as surpassing those of France. He
positively glows about many things that he feels are superior: the St
Lawrence grasslands are more verdant, the fruits of the wild hawthorn
are larger and more delicious, and the local eels taste much better than
any to be found in France.'1 He is as quick to point out the drawbacks in
his former country, such as the insect-infested crops or the wolves that
he felt to be more vicious than those of Canada (Boucher [1664] 1883,
37. 47)- His most telling remarks are about those exiled in France by the
Iroquois war who were anxious to return to the delights of New France:

I can assure you that ... there are few of those who have come here who
have any intention to return to France, unless called there by affairs of
great importance; and I tell you candidly that during my stay in Paris and
elsewhere, last year, I met with many persons in easy circumstances who
had formerly been inhabitants of Canada, and had left it on account of the
war, who assured me that they were full of impatience to return to it, so
true it is that New France has attractions for those who know how to
appreciate its delights. (Boucher [1664] 1883, 15)

It is evidently not nostalgia that causes Boucher to make comparisons


with the nature of France. Rather, he does so as a New World resident
struggling to convey the bounty of his world to people who could
scarcely imagine it. The abundance of eels would be inconceivable to
anyone who had not seen it (45-6). He repeatedly points to the veracity
A Seventeenth-Century View of the Environment 233

of his experience as an eyewitness, cutting short his ardent descriptions


of the environment as if he believes that only personal experience, not
mere words, could hope to encompass the abundance and diversity of
the land in which he lives. 'I assure you, my dear readers,' he writes 'that
I have seen the greater part of all that I speak of (11).
Boucher did not refer to himself in the Histoire as a Canadian, as the
term was not yet commonly used to designate the French residents of
the St Lawrence region." Nonetheless, his ideal of landscape - the for-
ests intersected with rivers, wetlands bordered with grassy meadows,
wildlife in abundance - was clearly centred in Canada. He invoked the
environment as part of the identity and destiny of 'ce pays naissaiit' and,
perhaps unconsciously, as part of his own identity, even though he
had not been born there. Ethnobiologist Jacques Rousseau, studying
Boucher's role as naturalist and geographer, suggests that having
arrived in the country at a young age, Boucher considered himself
native-born (Rousseau in Boucher [1664] 1964, 267). We may suspect
that his identification with the New World landscape in the Histoire is a
sign of emerging Canadian colonial pride, for as David Arnold points
out, 'The importance of an appreciation of one's own country through
its natural sights and wonders as well as its representative plants, birds
and animals (rather than the mythical beasts of the medieval world)
began to form a significant basis for emerging national identities in
Europe as early as the sixteenth century' (Arnold 1996, 137).
Notwithstanding his appreciation for it, Boucher did not admire the
natural beauty of Canada without condition. When he aimed to 'make a
new world of it,' he did not propose to leave it untouched or pursue
Native ways of life, despite his close connections to their society in his
early years. Boucher was a hybrid; the inspiration for his Histoire came
from two worlds. French ideals of land use informed those he acquired
from almost thirty years of exposure to the Canadian environment and
its Native inhabitants. France was not a foreign country to him, for he
accepted its honours with pleasure and expected Canada would remain
within the French domain. The colony's growth, he claimed, would
ensure that 'the French name should become equally renowned in both
worlds, in America and in Europe' (Boucher [1664] 1883, 8). The king
might continue to claim Boucher's allegiance, but it was the 'new'
France and its environment that claimed his affection. His vision of
nature in the Histoirewas not limited by a missionary's desire to focus on
conversions or God's creativity in an exotic land, by an explorer's anxi-
ety to prove a path to riches, or a colonizer's need to feed the ambitions
234 Lynn Berry

of his court patrons. Comparison to the Old World nation that Boucher
had left behind inspired his admiration for the delights of the New
World that had become his home.

NOTES

1 Or The True and Natural History of the Customs and Productions of the (Country of
New France, Commonly Known as Canada. Unless noted otherwise, quotations
are based on the English translation of the Histoire Veritable published by one
of Boucher's descendants, Edward Louis Montizambert — Canada in the Seven-
teenth Century, cited as Boucher [1664] 1883. This translation is generally accu-
rate, but when Montizambert omitted words or entire passages, bowdlerized
descriptions, or slightly altered meanings, I have used my own translations.
These corrections are based on the facsimile reproduction of Histoire Vmtabk
et naturelle, cited as Boucher [1664] 1964. Translations of all other French
texts are my own. Boucher used the terms 'New France' and 'Canada' inter-
changeably. As New France actually represented a much broader portion of
North American territory than the Great Lakes-St Lawrence colony of f Can-
ada, I will use 'Canada' in this paper in referring to the region.
2 For an excellent overview of early modern zoological works up to the end of
the seventeenth century, see Pinon 1995.
3 I^escarbot is described in this fashion in Carile 1988, 85. See also Champiain's
predicted incomes from Canadian resources in Champlain [1604] 1993, 236-
8 and his 'Utilitez du Pays de la Nouvelle-France,' his most focused reference
to nature in his journals of exploration (Champlain 1922-36, 6: 366-74).
4 Dominique Deslandres argues that the Ursulines were seldom completely suc-
cessful in their attempts to 'civilize' their Native students (Deslandres 1987,
100). Marie continued, for example, to use her Native name after her mar-
riage to Boucher (Charbonneau and Legare 1980, 4: 127-8).
5 See Van Kirk 1980, 53-73 for more on the essential contributions of Native
women to European husbands. As for Marie's kinship, there is some
uncertainty whether she was a Huron or of Algonquian background (Suite
1882, 3: 101; Mitchell 1967, 64). Her first marriage is also a mystery. She was
widow when she married Boucher, probably having been in a Native relation-
ship, which the church did not recognize (Charbonneau and Legare 1980, 4:
127-8).
6 Boucher's preference for wild haws contrasts with Marie de 1'Incarnation's
suffering in making do with indigenous fruits after a hard frost killed French
fruit trees planted in the convent, garden (Guyart [1626-72] 1971, 364).
A Seventeenth-Century View of the Environment 235

7 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 'Canadian' or 'Canadois' referred


to the Aboriginal residents of the St Lawrence region. In the second half of
the seventeenth century, it came to designate the French established in the
Laurentian region of New France, distinguishing them from the French sol-
diers and administrators who were temporarily stationed there.
The Beginning of French Exploration
out of the St Lawrence Valley: Motives,
Methods, and Changing Attitudes
towards Native People
Conrad E. Heidenreich

Introduction

The successful exploration of the Canadian interior by Frenchmen


beginning in the early seventeenth century is sometimes explained in
terms of three factors: first, the presence of magnificent river routes
from the St Lawrence valley to the Great Lakes and beyond; second, the
early and rapid dependence of the French on the fur trade economy,
which, it is said, drew them westward in search of furs and customers;
and third, Native populations who saw themselves benefiting from this
trade and therefore welcomed, or at least acquiesced to, an increasing
French presence among them. J.B. Brebner, comparing the colonies of
the Atlantic coast with those of New France, noted that 'none of the
coastal colonies gave birth to a Champlain, to a missionary effort like
the Jesuits' or to a combination of practical ability and geographical
imagination like Radisson's.' But he continued, 'The reasons for this
difference are, of course, not to be sought in any theories of relative
national skills and adaptabilities. If there was any one controlling influ-
ence, it was topography' (Brebner [1933] 1966, 217; and see 114-50,
216-18). D.B. Quinn observes, 'The concentration on the fur trade and
the subordination of all oilier economic effort to this proved successful.
This limitation of ends and consequent economy in means was basic to
the success of the venture ... This might not have been possible without
the exceptional qualities of leadership and organization which Cham-
plain brought to his task ... but beyond this ... had it not appeared to the
Indians that their interests would be served by its continuance, the
French post at Quebec could not have survived' (Quinn 1977, 488-9).
Attractive as these explanation maybe, especially in terms of develop-
French Exploration out of the St Lawrence Valley2237

merits during the second half of the seventeenth century, they are inad-
equate as an explanation for the beginnings of interior exploration out
of the St Lawrence valley, in which the human factor, credited above but
then dismissed, proves to be of signal importance. This paper presents a
brief examination of the first thirty-five years of the seventeenth century
in Canada, the motives from which the French acted, and the proce-
dures developed by them that would eventually lead to the exploration
of the Great Lakes and the system of rivers to Hudson Bay and the Gulf
of Mexico before any Dutch or Englishman had even seen Lake
Ontario. These French successes were the result of a total rethinking of
how exploration should be carried out, by a group of men - among
them notably Champlain - who were far more flexible in their attitudes
and thinking than Carticr and Roberval, who preceded them.

The Sixteenth Century: Jacques Cartier and Others

Although exploration begins with motives, these are not enough to set
the actual process in motion. Means have to be devised to overcome the
physical and in some cases cultural obstacles that stand in the way. The
expeditions of Jacques Cartier are good examples of situations where
powerful motives were present and great efforts were made to push west-
ward, yet all came to naught because neither the physical nor cultural
obstacles to exploration could be overcome. Cartier's motive on his first
(1534) and second (1535-6) expeditions was to find a route through the
Canadian landmass (M. Trudel 1973, 12, 19-20). What he discovered
was that the St Lawrence valley was a cul-de-sac. All the entrances to the
interior were blocked by mighty waterfalls (Cartier 1993, 65, 103-4). On
his third expedition (1541—2), shared with Roberval (1542—3), a motive
was added that originated in stories told to Cartier by the St Lawrence
Iroquoians on his second voyage. This was the possibility of exploring
and conquering the mythical Kingdom of Saguenay, with its supposed
riches of gold and precious stones. After these stories were repeated at
the French court by kidnapped Stadaconans, the French began to envi-
sion themselves in a situation analogous to that of the Spaniards in Cen-
tral and South America. Like their contemporaries - De Soto with six
hundred men (1539-42), and Coronado with three hundred (1540-1) -
Cartier and Roberval, with their combined force of at least five hundred
men, were supposed to mix exploration with conquest (Cartier 1993, 97,
135-8, 144-51). And like the Spanish expeditions into the southern
reaches of North America, the Cartier-Roberval adventure also ended in
238 Conrad E. Heidenreich

abject failure: failure to develop the technologies to overcome the phys-


ical obstacles that led out of the St Lawrence valley, failure to adapt to
Canadian winters, and, above all, failure to develop a positive attitude
towards a potentially helpful indigenous population. The consequence
of this ill-conceived adventure was bitter conflict with the St Lawrence
Iroquoians, and, subsequently, the closure of the St Lawrence valley to
further European exploration and potential trade until the early 15805
(Heidenreich 1990, 478-81). The intent to conquer, to settle, and to
exploit, driven by a simplistic vision of fabulous wealth, came to a shat-
tering end on the margins of the Canadian Shield. Clearly, technologies
had to be developed to overcome physical obstacles, but what was even
more important was that deep-seated cultural attitudes had to change,
allowing positive Native relations to emerge as the key to successful
exploration. Europeans had to learn that physical barriers could only be
overcome through the removal of cultural barriers - their own and
those with whom they came in contact.

The Seventeenth Century: Samuel de Champlain and Others

By the beginning of the seventeenth century, the French had refamiliar-


ized themselves with the St Lawrence valley and had established trading
relations with the Montagnais atTadoussac. On 27 May 1603, these rela-
tionships were taken a step further when two Montagnais, who had just
returned from an audience with Henri iv, reported to their chief Anad-
abijou and their people that the French wanted to settle among them
and help them against their enemies the Iroquois, either by making
peace or by vanquishing them (Champlain 1922-36, i: 98-101). Their
communication was greeted with enthusiasm by the assembly. Cham-
plain, who had witnessed this meeting, had been charged with deter-
mining if European setdement in Canada was possible and what the
chances were of finding a route west, past the Lachine Rapids (3: 313-
7). Between 24 May, when he arrived atTadoussac, and 11 July, when he
returned there following a reconnaissance of the St Lawrence valley, he
solved two of the technical aspects of the exploratory process that even-
tually enabled the French to explore inland.
Champlain's first important innovation was that he systematically
gathered Native geographical information, a practice followed later by
ever)' French explorer of the century, none of whom, it is probable, ever
undertook a journey of exploration inland without knowing beforehand
to some extent where he was going and what he could expect to find. In
French Exploration out of the St Lawrence Valley 239

the short summer of 1603, Champlain learned more about the river sys-
tems that flowed into the St Lawrence valley than all the explorers
before him (Heidenreich 1976, 1-4). On 11 June, the Montagnais
described a route forty to fifty days long from Tadoussac to a northern
salt sea (Hudson Bay), which Champlain reasoned was a gulf of the
Atlantic, 'which overflows in the north into the midst of the continent'
(Champlain 1922-36, i: 121-4, 4: 42). On 26 June, he was told of a route
up the St Maurice River to Lac St Jean (i: 136-7). Four days later, he
learned of the way up the Richelieu River to the Atlantic coast, a route
he partially explored in 1609 (i: 143-4). On 4, 10, and 11 July Cham-
plain obtained from Algonquin informants three accounts with sketch
maps of the upper St Lawrence through Lake Ontario to Lake Erie (i:
1
53-65)- The sketch map from the second of these accounts was used by
Champlain on his large Carte Geographique of 1612. (For Champlain's
explorations out of the St Lawrence valley 1603-15, see figure 5.)
The second important innovation by Champlain was that he recog-
nized the potential importance of the birch-bark canoe in exploration.
He first described the canoe in some detail on May 28 (i: 104-5). On
30 June, as he failed to get across the first set of rapids on the Riche-
lieu River in his ship as well as his rowboat, he became more aware of
the manoeuvrability and portability of the canoe (i: 141-3). The next
day, he was given his first ride in a canoe across the St Lawrence River
(i: 144-5). On 3 July, when a shallow draft boat specifically developed to
navigate across the Lachine Rapids failed to achieve its goal Champlain
concluded that

it would be a matter of great toil and labour to be able to see and do by


boat what a man might propose, except at great cost and expense, besides
the risk of labouring in vain. But with the canoes of the savages one may
travel freely and quickly throughout the country, as well up the little rivers
as up the large ones. So that by directing one's course with the help of the
savages and their canoes, a man may see all that is to be seen.' (l: 147-52)

Extraordinary as it may seem, this is the first printed recognition by a


European of the potential importance of the canoe and the admission
that Native help would be necessary to undertake exploration. Coinci-
dentally, also in the summer of 1603, the Englishman Martin Fringe
described birch-bark canoes on the Atlantic coast and even brought a
seventeen-footer back to Bristol. However, neither Fringe nor any other
Englishman drew the kinds of conclusions Champlain did (Quinn and
24-O Conrad E. Heidenreich

5 Ghamplain's explorations, 1603-15,


French Exploration out of the St Lawrence Valley 241

Quinn: 1983, 222-3) • ^n about two months, Champlain had solved two
technical aspects of exploration: the use of Native verbal and carto-
graphical information, and the potential use of the canoe as a mode of
transportation. Even more importantly, he began to recognize the need
for Native help to achieve his ends.
When Champlain returned to the St Lawrence in 1608, after four years
on the Atlantic coast, he had become proficient at gathering and inter-
preting Native geographical information (Heidenreich 1976, 4-11). On
at least one occasion he had tested Native descriptions of a part of the
New England coast and found them to be totally reliable (Champlain
1922-36, i: 335-40). He had also gained more experience in dealing
with Native people and more knowledge of their customs. Champlain's
new tasks were to establish a base of operations at Quebec and to con-
tinue exploration past the Lachine Rapids and towards the northern salt
sea (2: 3-5, 16-19; 4: 31-43). Immediately he set his sights on the
Saguenay route because he had heard that the English were trying to
find a northwestern passage to China and he was certain that the salt sea
the Montagnais had told him about was part of that passage (2: 19).
When the Montagnais, who by now had been trading partners of the
French for at least twenty years, refused to take him or any other French-
men along on a northern journey, Champlain became convinced that
somehow he had to build a greater bridge of trust between them. In Sep-
tember 1608, therefore, he promised the Montagnais and their allies the
Iroquet Algonquins (who were named Iroquet after their chief) the one
thing they wanted from him - the fulfilment of Henri iv's promise that
the French would help them in their wars (2: 69-70). As a result of these
promises, a combined force of two hundred to three hundred Monta-
gnais, Iroquet, and Huron - the latter a group the French had never
seen before - met in June 1609 near the mouth of the Batiscan River to
'make an alliance' and to conduct a raid on the Iroquois up the Riche-
lieu River (2: 64-71). Champlain saw this as an opportunity not only to
further his standing in the eyes of his new allies, but also to engage in the
exploration of an important waterway (2: 80-1). Although the final war
party consisted of only sixty Natives as well as Champlain and two French
volunteers, it was considered a success by the Native allies. At the conclu-
sion of the raid, further expressions of friendship were exchanged
between the allies, and promises were made to take Champlain explor-
ing to the west and north if he continued to 'aid them, continually like a
brother' (2: 104-5, no). This he promised to do.
As a result of the 'alliance' and raid of 1609, Champlain received two
242 Conrad E. Heidenreich

offers for 1610: the Montagnais promised to take him up the St Maurice
River to the northern salt sea and return via the Saguenay, while the
Huron would take him west to the 'mer douce' Carder had been told
about in 1535, and show him some copper deposits (2: 118-19). Neither
trip took place. Instead, he got involved in another fight with the Iro-
quois, this time at the mouth of the Richelieu River. He did, however,
manage to place a French youth (probably Etienne Brule) with Iro-
quet's people and the Huron. Because the Algonquin were apprehen-
sive about taking Brule with them lest an accident befall him for which
they might be blamed, Champlain had to agree to take along a Huron
lad, Savignon (2: 138-42). With these two young men, Champlain and
Iroquet began to develop the important role of the French-Native inter-
preter and trader's agent. Brule and Savignon were to learn the lan-
guage of their hosts and report back to their respective people on what
they had seen. Increasingly frustrated by the reluctance of the Native
people to take him exploring, Champlain tried in 1611 to persuade the
Montagnais to take just one of his men with them up the St Maurice (2:
!73-4)- When they declined, he tried to purchase a canoe to undertake
exploration without them, but was unsuccessful in getting one. By now it
became apparent that these refusals were prompted by Native fears that
if anything happened to the French while in their care, they might be
blamed and their relationship could be in danger (2: 139; 3: 91). Young-
sters were one thing; important men like Champlain were quite
another. However, the success of the Brule-Savignon exchange was
extended to other youths (2: 186-206). In spite of his disappointment,
Champlain reiterated his promise to support his Native allies and
requested again that they take him exploring. This time he assured the
Huron that he would ask the king for forty to fifty armed men to accom-
pany him on an expedition against their enemies. He further promised
that if he found their country fertile he would establish several settle-
ments there 'whereby we should have communication with one another,
and live happily in the future in the fear of God, whom we should make
known to them' (2: 195-6). Apparently Champlain's suggestions for
what could be interpreted as future Huron assimilation to French values
received a favourable response from the assembled Natives. It is certain
that at this point Champlain's thoughts on this subject were only at a
very preliminary stage. It is therefore equally certain that the Huron did
not understand the full meaning of what was being suggested to them.
From their reaction, it is probable that they saw Champlain's sugges-
tions as a friendly gesture designed to further closer relations.
French Exploration out of the St Lawrence Valley 243

An accident prevented Champlain from coming to Canada in 1612.


Late in the year he learned the disheartening news that the English
under Hudson had wintered at the northern salt sea he had been trying
to reach since 1603 (2: 239-40, 255-7). Shortly after that, he met his
Algonquin interpreter Nicholas de Vignau, who claimed to have been to
the northern sea and could guide Champlain there. Full of hope,
Champlain arrived at the Lachine Rapids in May 1613, with sixteen men
ready to explore and to aid his allies in war, only to find out from the
few Algonquins who had bothered to show up that they had been mis-
treated by traders the previous year and had been told that he was not
returning (2: 254). Certain that the friendship and trust he had been
trying to build was in danger, Champlain decided to explore northward,
up the Ottawa River, with his French companions but without the Native
help that had been promised for many years. Along the way he hoped to
renew his contacts. On 27 May, after acquiring with some difficulty only
two canoes and one Algonquin guide, the first European exploring
party lurched into the Canadian interior. Lack of more canoes forced
Champlain to leave twelve men behind. Five days later, unable to learn
how to stern a canoe,1 the party acquired another Algonquin paddler
and sent one of their men back to the Lachine Rapids (2: 265). The
party got as far as Morrison Island, home of Champlain's old acquain-
tance Tessouat, headman of the Kichesipirini Algonquins. It was the
first time any group of Europeans had penetrated any distance inland.
The Algonquins were astonished at this accomplishment, but, after dis-
crediting de Vignau's reports, discouraged the French from proceeding
any further. All Champlain could do was to reiterate his promise to help
them in their wars, ask them to come and trade again, and request their
help in exploration (2: 296—8).
The disappointments of 1613, as well as those of earlier years, further
convinced Champlain and his superiors that exploration could be car-
ried out only with Native help. In order to get that help, Champlain had
to develop even closer relations with Native leaders, which meant, at least
initially, acceding to their request for further French participation in
their wars (3: 31-2). But how could these relations be strengthened so as
to become a permanent bond? Over the years, Champlain had become
increasingly convinced that it was his duty as a Catholic to introduce
Christianity to the Native peoples. He also thought that it would be ben-
eficial for both groups if the Native people learned French and adopted
aspects of French culture. Through these strategies, he hoped to create
a permanent bond between them. The plan to bring the Natives 'to the
244 Conrad E. Heidenreich

knowledge of God' was also a clause in the commissions received by de


Monts, Champlain's superior (2: 5-8; 3: 3-7, 13-16, 227). In 1614, there-
fore, Champlain made arrangements for missionaries to be sent to Can-
ada. The order suggested to him was the Recollets (Friars Minor), a
reformed branch of the Franciscans, four of whom accompanied him to
the St Lawrence colony in 1615. When Champlain arrived at the Lachine
Rapids that year, he was asked by the Huron for help on yet another cam-
paign against the Iroquois, this time from the Huron country. Champlain
discussed the matter with the experienced trader Grave Du Pont and the
two decided that in order to strengthen their ties with their new allies,
further their plans for exploring westward, and plant the Recollets
among the Huron, Champlain should 'help them in their wars' (3: 31-2).
Accordingly, Champlain was taken westward to the 'mer douce,' through
the Huron country, and then through south-central Ontario to the Iro-
quois southeast of Lake Ontario. After the raid, Champlain and Father
Le Caron spent the winter of 1615-16 with fifteen Frenchmen in Huron
country. Champlain visited Huron villages and neighbouring Native
groups to promote French trade and good will, while Father Le Caron
began his mission and set himself the task of learning Huron. Both men
tried to grapple with the intricacies of Huron culture, but neither
succeeded very well. When they returned to Quebec, the Recollets
announced that it was impossible to convert Natives to Christianity with-
out first 'civilizing' them (Le Clercq [1691] 1881, i: 109-12). They sug-
gested that this could best be done by persuading those who were
migratory to become settled agriculturalists and to place among all the
groups French settlers from whom they could learn French ways (Le
Clercq [1691] 1881, i: 214-23; Sagard 1636, 2: 169-71). The Huron, not
really knowing what was being planned for them, accepted their new mil-
itary and trading allies and from 1616 on the French had fewer problems
travelling with their Native escorts out of the St Lawrence valley.
The interior had finally been penetrated to the 'mer douce,' and the
foundations had been laid for future exploration and trade through the
establishment of personal relations, more formal alliances, a limited
exchange of people, and mutual trust shown in battle. The adoption of
Christianity and some degree of assimilation to French values was seen
by Champlain and the Recollets as the glue that would eventually bind
Natives and French even closer together. Over succeeding years, Cham-
plain laid elaborate plans for further exploration westward from the
Huron country to China ('six month's journey'), as well as the routes to
the 'mer glacialle' and the 'mer du sud' (Champlain 1923-36, 2: 326-30,
French Exploration out of the St Lawrence Valley 245

345). Time and again he reiterated that all French plans - exploration,
trade, defence of the colony, settlements, and missionizing - hinged on
good Native relations. The continuing problem was how to enact the
intentions formulated by him and the Recollets. By the mid-16205, it had
become evident that the plans to Christianize and 'civilize' the Native
people were not being realized. Native cultures were resistant to the
kinds of changes demanded of them, and there were far too few French
colonists to act as role models.
In 1632 Cardinal Richelieu decided to replace the Recollets, a mendi-
cant order that could not pay its way in a colony that was itself in need of
money, with the Capuchins. When the latter could not undertake the St
Lawrence mission because they had just been given a special apostolate
to England, he sent the self-funded Jesuits instead (Grant 1984, 26).
Although they later changed their policies drastically, initially the Jesuits
continued those established by their predecessors. However, in order to
speed up the process of conversion and acculturation, they were willing
to take a step the Recollets had not suggested. On 22 July 1635, five
months before Champlain died, he and Father Paul Le Jeune, superior
of the Jesuit mission to Canada, met with seven hundred Huron in a
council at Quebec to discuss with them a proposal they had formulated
for more binding ties between the two groups. The proposal was for
French men to settle in the Huron country, where they would marry
Huron women after these had adopted Christianity. Champlain prom-
ised that this would strengthen Huron-French ties. Moreover, he said,
Christianity would make them triumph over their enemies, and the
French could teach them to make all the things they now purchased
(Jesuit Relations [1610-1791] 1896-1901 [hereafter//?] 8:47-51, 12: 125-
7). a Although the purpose of this proposal was mainly to spread Chris-
tianity and French values, Champlain also hoped for strong socio-politi-
cal ties with the Huron and the development of a group of people who
would take 'exploration to the extremity of North America' (Charlevoix
i?44> 1: 282, 288-9; my translation). It took the Huron two years to
respond to this proposal, finally deciding that marriage was not a matter
of national policy, but up to individuals and their families. Among other
things, they were concerned about dowries, the fate of the women in
cases of separation, and the disposition of property in such cases. In
other words, the Huron balked at some of the French values attached to
marriage, particularly the indissolubility of Christian unions, but had
otherwise no qualms about French men marrying Huron women. This
was, of course, not what the priests wanted to hear, because their main
246 Conrad E. Heidenreich

concern had been to use marriage as a vehicle for conversion and accul-
turation. By placing marriage into the hands of couples and their
Huron families, the Jesuits would lose control of the acculturation pro-
cess. The conclusion they reached was that the whole matter deserved
more thought before any further steps were taken (JR 14: 15-21).
Over succeeding years, the Jesuits retreated further from the plans of
Champlain and the Recollets, gradually coming to the conclusion by the
16405 that in order to Christianize the Native people, it would be best to
segregate them from excessive French influence arid avoid trying to
'Frenchify' them (Axtell 1985, 43-70) .3

Discussion

It is difficult to know how much Champlain and his contemporaries


learned from the Cartier-Roberval fiasco. Even if there had been a
'Kingdom of the Saguenay,' the attempt to transfer to the northern
Canadian wilderness the approach used by the conquistadores was ill-
conceived at best. The Native groups and physiographic conditions
faced by the French were in no way comparable to anything faced by the
Spaniards. That Carder and his contemporaries could not discern these
differences accounts for their failure. Champlain was aware of Carder's
writings and suggested that Carder failed because 'he was unwilling to
run risks or to leave his pinnaces and adventure himself (Champlain
1922-36, 2: 221). Champlain may not have known diat underlying that
failure were also poor Native relations (6: 192-3).* Whether or not
Champlain understood the causes for Carder's failure, he did develop a
successful approach to exploration, one that was the opposite of that of
his predecessor. Like Carder, but with far fewer resources, Champlain
had the task of exploring routes leading westward. Conditioned by at
least twenty years of trading, Champlain's contemporaries had devel-
oped attitudes to the Native people quite different from those of their
earlier countrymen. Enough prejudices had been removed between
Native and Frenchman to permit Champlain to recognize the former as
a reliable geographical informant and to reject European technology in
favour of Native technology, and their expertise in travel and living off
the land. He was the first European to clearly see and recommend that,
in order to explore and live in Canada, certain adaptations had to take
place to the Native presence and the physical environment. The way to
overcome the physical obstacles to exploration was to become accepted
by the Native people and learn to proceed with their help.
French Exploration out of the St Lawrence Valley 247

At this point, the prime object of exploration was to find a route west
to China, a route Champlain was convinced existed. At no point does he
or any contemporary writer suggest that exploration was conducted in
order to expand the fur trade. The fur trade to the St Lawrence was in
Native hands, and it was assumed, correctly, that it would expand as a con-
sequence of exploration, as more Native groups were contacted by
explorers, missionaries, and traders' agents. Exploration did not follow
automatically from trading relations. Quite the contrary. Native traders
and their fellow countrymen refused to take Frenchmen with them for
fear that these valued but inexperienced men might die in their company
or on their lands, thus rupturing existing friendly relations. Champlain
learned that in order to be accepted and taken on exploring trips, close
personal relations and trust had to be built with Native leaders. He did
this by acting on their insistence that, as befitted allies, they be helped in
their wars, and through a 'cultural exchange program' involving young
men. It took seven years (1608-15) of negotiation, tokens of friendship,
alliances, and aid in war before he finally saw the 'mer douce.' Once
friendly relations had been established that led Native people to allow
Frenchmen to accompany them on their travels, Champlain set him-
self the task of trying to create permanent bonds between the French
and their Native allies, especially the settled and agricultural Huron.
To Champlain, a devout Catholic living in the climate of the Counter-
Reformation and cognizant of the clauses in de Monts's commissions
regarding Native conversions, the answer was Christianization through a
strong missionary effort. A common religion and - he hoped - accep-
tance of French values would create the bonds he sought. Although at
first he found little support among the traders, he found enough support
in France for the sponsorship of four Recollets to begin the task of trying
to assimilating the Native people into a Catholic community. In 1635 the
Jesuits elaborated on these plans to include intermarriage between
French men and Native women. This suggestion was not simply a way of
providing women for a gender-imbalanced French colonial population,
but a serious attempt to spread Christianity and promote assimilation
(Axtell 1985, 278; Jaenen 1976, 161-5; Dickason 1992, 167-9). Through
the i66os the directives of the French minister in charge of colonial
affairs, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, urged his intendant, Jean Talon, to encour-
age assimilation through mingling French and Native so that they would
become 'one people and one race' (O'Callaghan and Fernow 1853-87,9:
59). By this time, the Jesuits had long abandoned this plan because it did
not lead to Christianization (Charlevoix 1744, 2: 164).
248 Conrad E. Heidenreich

Whatever one may think today of Champlain's intentions and those


of his contemporaries, their actions opened the Canadian interior to
peaceful exploration, the fur trade, and missionary activity. From the
French point of view, the problem with Native people was that they were
pagan, but, as Father Brebeuf put it, 'You must have sincere affection
for the Savages, - looking upon them as ransomed by the blood of the
son of God, and as our brethren, with whom we are to pass the rest of
out lives' (JR 12: 117, see also 10: 87). Even the Recollets, who insisted
that the Natives be 'made into men [civilized] so that they become
Christian,' saw them as 'sharing your [European] human nature'
(Sagard 1636, 6-7; my translation). In other words, Native people were
regarded as human and were, in Christian terms, 'perfectible' through
conversion. Both the Recollets and Jesuits agreed, as did the higher
French civil authorities, that it was a duty placed on them by the Chris-
tian Scriptures to effect conversions. In order to proselytize, the mission-
aries, just like the explorers and traders' agents, had to leave the St
Lawrence colony for the Canadian interior and come to grips with alien
languages and cultures. In this endeavour, the Jesuits learned from Rec-
ollet failures. In order to be accepted and thereby gain an audience for
their main message, they reversed their stand on assimilation. Some
priests even approached a stance of cultural relativism in many matters
that is astonishing for the period (Axtell 1985, ch. 5).
Exploration westward from Dutch and English occupied areas did not
take place until the i68os, in spite of the fact that a good water route was
present in the Hudson-Mohawk River system. Even on Hudson Bay,
where the English operated a fur trade economy after 1668, exploration
was not a factor until the middle of the eighteenth century. The motive
to explore was simply absent in both areas. Nor was missionizing a major
motive. The Dutch Reformed Church did not have the manpower in
New Netherlands to undertake missionary work, and its first minister,
Jonas Michaelius, was doubtful if such an enterprise was worthwhile
(Trelease 1960, 38-40; Jameson 1909, 126-9). Among the New England
Puritans, Native missionizing was initially considered to be a worthwhile
effort, but once real difficulties were encountered their ardour waned
and rapidly slid into indifference and hostility (Jennings 1976, 53-7; and
see Axtell 1985, 131-78). Both the Dutch and the Puritans would have
been horrified at the idea of institutionalized intermarriage with the
local Native population (Axtell 1985, 302-4; Axtell 1981, 155-7, 279-80).
Although the French had strong reservations about aspects of Native
culture, among the Dutch and especially the English such reservations
French Exploration out of the St Lawrence Valley 249

were reinforced by racial prejudice (Axtell 1981, 80-1, 102-5, 270). The
powerful ideologies present in the Dutch and English colonies made
accommodation to Native culture difficult if not impossible. Without
such accommodation, westward exploration could not take place.

Conclusions

The interior exploration of Canada out of the St Lawrence valley did


not take place simply because water routes were present and the French
hoped to expand their infant fur trade. The earliest and most consistent
motive from Carder to Champlain was to explore routes across the
continent to China. By the late sixteenth century, the Native-French
animosities that had closed the St Lawrence after Cartier had been over-
come, and by the early seventeenth century, the French were in the
position to rethink the problem of exploration. Champlain could rely
on the bridges late-sixteenth-century traders had built between them-
selves and the Native peoples of the lower St Lawrence and the gulf.
Champlain realized very quickly that exploration could be carried out
only with Native help. In fact all major French undertakings in Canada -
settlement, commerce, and exploration - depended on the friendly
cooperation of the local Native groups. Natives were needed to trap and
transport furs, their good will was necessary to establish and maintain
settlements, and their help and technical expertise were necessary to
travel into the interior.
To Champlain, his superiors, and those traders who could see beyond
a year's trading, the main task was to become firmly accepted by the
Native people. The fur trade had created good commercial relations,
but these were apparently not enough for the kind of trust necessary to
create permanent bonds. As the person charged with exploration and
settlement, Champlain had the task of establishing the kind of trust that
would permit French motives to be fulfilled in safety. Trade was a mutu-
ally beneficial undertaking between Native and French, but how could
settlement and exploration become mutually beneficial? Gradually a
solution was worked out between the Native leaders and the French.
The first step was for both sides to become better acquainted through
an exchange of people. The next and crucial step was for the two groups
to enter into alliances and for the French to cement those alliances by
helping their new allies in war. Some historians have pilloried Cham-
plain for this action, yet it is evident that, after a great deal of thought
and consultation, the French felt they had no choice in the matter. In
250 Conrad E. Heidenreich

order to achieve their aims, Native help was necessary, and the one
thing they all wanted from the French was that support be given them in
their wars. As Champlain put it in June 1615: 'Thereupon the said Sieur
du Pont and I came to the conclusion that it was very necessaiy to assist
them [in war], both to engage them the more to love us, and also to
provide the means of furthering my enterprises and explorations which
apparently could only be carried out with their help' (Champlain 1922-
36, 3: 31-2). Once a strong bond had been created, Champlain hoped
that the various Native groups would accept missionaries. This was the
second powerful motive that made French travel into the interior a
necessity. With the Recollets, Champlain planned the transfer of Cathol-
icism into the interior Native communities; with the Jesuits he proposed
an intermarried French-Native-Catholic population that would secure
French objectives in North America. From the point of view of the
Native people, the establishment of commercial relations, an exchange
of people, mutual aid in war, and marriage into an allied group were
necessary steps in forging binding ties. The two cultures had found ways
of bridging the gap between them.
What helped the French to bridge this gap? Unlike the English and
Dutch, the French wanted to explore and missionize. With their minute
population and lack of expertise in travelling in the New World, they
needed Native cooperation. The English and Dutch colonies were
essentially agricultural settlements for which they needed Native land,
not aid. Secondly, although all the European groups had strong cultural
biases, the French were relatively free of the feelings of racial superiority
that were present in the Dutch and English colonies. Finally, by and
large, the French regarded Native people as humans who could become
equals through conversion to Christianity. To the south, Native human-
ity as well as their ability to become Christians was a matter of some
dispute. Comparatively speaking, the French had a positive attitude
towards Natives, born to some extent out of necessity, but to a much
greater degree out of their willingness to try to understand the foreign
cultures they were meeting, as well as the demands of the Catholic
Church, which insisted on the conversion of the Natives, whom they
regarded as humans worthy of such an effort.
Attitudes and flexibility, more than physiography and the ramifications
of the fur trade, account for the early and sustained success of French
exploration. Champlain and others like him, working with Native leaders
and their people, were able to set aside a significant array of prejudices in
order to create bridges between their cultures. What we see in the actions
French Exploration out of the St Lawrence Valley 251

of these men is the application of new attitudes towards life in the New
World. For the first time, the Native population was treated with some
respect and was deemed to be worthy of understanding. There was a gen-
uine rethinking of how to deal with human and physical problems, based
not on dogma or experiences elsewhere, but on direct observations of
local situations. These early-seventeenth-century Frenchmen developed
a pragmatic flexibility that permitted a relatively peaceful beginning of
French activities in Canada. Because adaptation had to be to Canadian
conditions, what developed here was not merely the transfer of French
culture to a new land, but the development of a Canadian culture.

NOTES

1 To 'stern' is to steer from the rear of the canoe while providing power at the
same time.
2 Champlain first mentioned a plan for interior settlements in 1611 (Cham-
plain 1922-36, 2: 195-6); it was Father Le Jeune who added the suggestion
that the French intermarry with the Huron. For an elaboration of the Jesuit
scheme for French-Native intermarriage, see Campeau 1967-94, 3: 36-9.
3 The term 'Frenchify' was used by Charlevoix, 1744, 3: 144: 'Enfin on ne
pouvoit plus douter que le meilleur moyen de les christianiserne fut de se
bien donner de garde de les franciser.'
4 In the 1632 edition of Les Voyages, Champlain mentioned the Cartier-
Roberval voyage briefly for the first time, concluding that they were 'not
able to live there with the savages who were unbearable,' Champlain 1922-36,
6:193. There is no reason to believe that Champlain knew anything about this
voyage when he first came to Canada.
The Earliest European Encounters
with Iroquoian Languages
Wallace Chafe

The earliest significant record we have of a Native Canadian language


comes from the first and second voyages of Jacques Carder in 1534 and
1535-6, respectively (Carder 1924). The narratives of these voyages have
a complicated history (Hoffman 1961, 112-62, 213-15), but their signifi-
cance here is the fact that they were accompanied by lists of words said
to represent 'the language of the recently discovered land called New
France' (the first voyage), or 'the language of the countries and king-
doms of Hochelaga and Canada, otherwise called New France' (the
second voyage). The circumstances of the first voyage suggest that the
first of these two 'Carder vocabularies,' as they have come to be called,
represents the language spoken in a place whose name was spelled by
the French 'Stadacona'; hence I will refer to the language as 'Stadaco-
nan.' It clearly belonged to the group of languages now classified as con-
stituting the Northern Iroquoian branch of the Iroquoian language
family. The second vocabulary probably consists largely of Stadaconan
words too, although it seems to contain some words from other places.
Linguists often refer to the language or languages of these two vocabu-
laries collectively as 'Laurentian' (e.g., Lounsbury 1961; Mithun 1982).
During the sixty years that followed the Carder expeditions, although
the area remained temporarily free of other French incursions, the
speakers of Stadaconan had disappeared.1 When the French returned
to the same area at the beginning of the seventeenth century, their
attention shifted to the related Huron language, which survived much
longer than Stadaconan, although it too is no longer spoken (Barbeau
1949)- From the early seventeenth century to the early twentieth,
Huron, or something much like it, was studied in considerable depth by
scholars with both religious and secular motivations.
Early European Encounters with Iroquoian Languages 253

With the perspectives available today, it is intriguing to look back


at these earliest encounters between the French and the speakers of Sta-
daconan and Huron, asking what insights were gained into these lan-
guages and the nature of language in general, noting also the interests
and abilities of those who recorded them, the first North American lin-
guists. I will limit the discussion here to encounters with Stadaconan, to
the earliest encounters with Huron that were documented chiefly in the
writings of Gabriel Sagard, and to the immediately following work of
Jean de Brebeuf, the first productive linguist in the long tradition of
Huron studies that continued among the Jesuits.

The Cartier Vocabularies

The vocabularies attached to the accounts of Carder's first and second


voyages provide us with a glimpse, however limited, into the minds of
the ill-fated people whose words were recorded, but they are at the same
time a source of considerable frustration for a variety of reasons. First,
we are in the dark concerning the person or persons who elicited these
words, from whom they were elicited, and when and where the elicita-
tion took place. The events reported in the account of the first voyage
suggest that the first list could have come only from either or both of
two young men, identified as Taignoagny and Domagaya, who were res-
idents of Stadacona but were kidnapped and taken to France. The sec-
ond vocabulary is more frustrating in this respect, since its source could
have been any or all of the ten captives taken to France after the second
voyage. A possible hint lies in a statement from Father Andre Thevet,
the sixteenth-century author of several works on eastern Canada. The
Natives of Canada, Thevet said, 'believe that the soul is immortal, and if
a man turns out badly, after his death a great bird takes his soul and car-
ries it away; otherwise the soul goes into a place adorned with many
beautiful trees, and birds singing melodiously. This is what the Seigneur
of the Country of Canada, called Donacona Aguanna, told us. This man
died in France as a good Christian, speaking French, for he had lived
there four years' (Thevet [1558] 1878, 407; editors' translation). Donna-
cona was the father of Taignoagny and Domagaya. If he were the one
who gave Thevet and others this information on Stadaconan beliefs,
perhaps he was also the one who provided the Stadaconan words in the
second vocabulary, but we may never know this for sure.
A second source of frustration is the tangled history of the documents
themselves. We may have access to the earliest version of the second
254 Wallace Chafe

vocabulary, but for the first we have only copies and translations (Hoff-
man 1961, 156-60). Third, numerous mistakes in copying left a variety
of different spellings of the same word in different manuscripts. For
example, the first vocabulary gives the word for 'bread' (pain) as caca-
comy, whereas the second vocabulary gives it as carraconny. In this case, it
is easy to see what happened. From what we now know of the history of
the Iroquoian language family, we can reconstruct this word as having
sounded something like kahrahkg-ni-, which is more closely approxi-
mated by the spelling in the second vocabulary.12 Whoever copied this
word in the first vocabulary must have mistaken an r (or double r) for a c
and a double n for an m. Such errors abound.
Fourth, the Stadaconan sounds were filtered through the phonetic
expectations of a speaker of French, a fact that led to many inevitable
distortions of what was actually heard. Fifth, various changes in pronun-
ciation were taking place in the French language at the time, and
French orthography had not become stabilized. For example, for at
least some French speakers the sound represented earlier by the letter s
after a vowel had been replaced by a lengthening of the vowel, but the s
was still being used as an indication of the lengthening, as in teste. Later
the s was replaced by a circumflex accent over the lengthened vowel, as
in tete. This orthographic situation may help to explain spellings like
anondasco for 'legs' in the first vocabulary, a spelling that makes sense
only if the s marked a lengthening of the preceding a rather than an
actual s sound. The word can be reconstructed as having sounded some-
thing like anQdd-kQ..
Sixth, there are various examples of miscommunication between the
elicitor of the words and his source (Mithun 1982, 231-3). The elicitor
asked for the word for 'salmon' but was given the word for 'pot,' pre-
sumably because he was pointing to a salmon in a pot. He asked for the
word for 'bronze' but was given the word for 'ring,' presumably because
he was pointing to a bronze ring.
Finally, as mentioned above, it is possible that more than one lan-
guage or dialect was included in the second vocabulary. Scholars have
sometimes tried to equate the language of the Cartier vocabularies with
one or another of the Iroquoian languages about which more is known
- for example, with Huron (Robinson 1948; Barbeau 1961), Mohawk
(Cuoq 1869), and even Tuscarora (Beaugrand-Champagne 1937, 99-
104, 108-14). The most plausible hypothesis is that the vocabularies rep-
resent for the most part the language of Stadacona, which was closely
related to, but distinct from, other Iroquoian languages in the area. But
Early European Encounters with Iroquoian Languages 255

as the most recent study of this question concludes, the vocabularies 'do
not represent a single, unified language, but, rather, contain several dif-
ferent Iroquoian languages or dialects' (Mithun 1982, 242). These
admixtures may have included the dialects of the towns of Achelacy and
Hochelaga further up the St Lawrence, and perhaps also a dialect of
Huron.
The compiler or compilers of these vocabularies provided short lists
of words and a few phrases such as 'The smoke hurts my eyes' (Carder
1924, 245), 'Give me a drink,' 'Give me breakfast,' 'Give me supper,' and
'Let's go to bed' (243), which may suggest something about the circum-
stances in which these items were collected. Perhaps, too, they hint that
some practical use of the language was foreseen. There was no discus-
sion of either the sounds or the grammar of the language, which may
have been viewed as one more example of the exotic traits of its users,
supplementing other curiosities that were described in the accounts
themselves.

Gabriel Sagard and the Earliest Studies of Huron

In 1615 Samuel de Champlain arranged for four members of a branch


of the Franciscans known as Recollets to come to Quebec. Immediately
on their arrival, one of them, Father Joseph Le Caron, set off for the
Huron country. With the exception of the layman Etienne Brule, who
had gone to live among the Hurons as early as 1610, Le Caron was prob-
ably the first Frenchman to visit the Huron in their own territory. Know-
ing the importance of language as a vehicle of conversion, he tried his
best to record and describe the Huron language for the benefit of other
members of his order. When he returned to Quebec in the spring of
1616, he brought with him the beginnings of a Huron dictionary, of
which no record seems to have survived (Le Clercq [1691] 1881, i: 249).
This dictionary must have been studied by the lay brother Gabriel
Sagard, who in 1623 joined the effort to convert the Huron. He stayed
among them for less than a year, but, like Champlain, he was a talented
writer, and his subsequent book, Le grand voyage du pays des Hurons, situe
en I'Amerique vers la mer douce, es derniers confins de la nouvelle France, was
published in France in 1632. It attracted enough attention to justify a
revised edition, with the new title Histoire du Canada, in 1636. Published
as an appendix to the first edition was a dictionary of the Huron lan-
guage (Sagard i632b).
Sagard provided a revealing description of his fieldwork methodology:
256 Wallace Chafe

After dinner I used to read some little book I had brought or else write. I
carefully noted the words of the language I was learning and made lists of
them which I used to study and repeat to my savages, who enjoyed it and
helped me to perfect myself at it, using a very good method. They would
often say to me, 'AuieV (instead of Gabriel which they could not
pronounce because of the letter B which does not occur at all in their
language, any more than the other labial letters), Assehoua, Agnonra, and
Seatonqua, 'Gabriel, take your pen and write.' Then they would explain as
best they could what I wanted to learn from them. And as sometimes they
could not make me understand their conceptions they would explain them
to me by figures, similitudes, and external demonstrations, sometimes in
speech, and sometimes with a stick, tracing the object on the ground as
best they could, or by a movement of the body. (Sagard [1632] 1939, 73)

Included in this passage is a complete and apparently spontaneous


Huron sentence: Auiel, Assehoua, Agnonra, Seatonqua, which Sagard
translated 'Gabriel, take your pen and write.' He carefully separated the
four words, beginning each with a capital letter and setting it off with a
comma.3 The second of these words, probably pronounced ahsehwa'),
meant 'you should pick it up,' and the fourth, probably sehyadghgwah,
was an imperative meaning 'write with it!' It may seem curious that the
Huron already had a way of saying 'write,' but in fact the other lan-
guages of the Northern Iroquoian family also have words related to this
one in both form arid meaning, all based on a verb root reconslructible
as *-hyatQ-. It would seem that all the northern Iroquoian peoples were
already familiar with the idea of making visible marks that stood for
something else, though not for the sounds of language, and it must have
been easy and natural to extend this idea to the orthographic marks the
French were making.
We cannot be sure of the pronunciation of the third word in this sen-
tence, but perhaps it was something like anyp'-ra?. It was translated 'pen'
above, but in Sagard's dictionary he said it meant 'rackets.' Both the
Huron and the French were doing their best to find ways of talking
about unfamiliar objects. The Huron had not seen pens before they saw
Le Caron's or Sagard's. The French had not seen snowshoes. We know
from elsewhere in his book that Sagard associated snowshoes with tennis
rackets, but just why the Huron associated Sagard's pen with a snowshoe
is more open to speculation. Could its narrow shaft, widening to a
plume at the top, have reminded the Hurons of a snowshoe shape? Or
did both pens and snowshoes leave marks?
Early European Encounters with Iroquoian Languages 257

Sagard observed more than individual words and phrases, and was
sensitive to differences in conversational style. 'They speak very compos-
edly as though desirous of being fully understood,' he wrote, 'and pause
of a sudden to reflect for a considerable space of time, then resume
their speech. This restraint of theirs leads them to call Frenchmen
women, because they are too hasty and excited in their movements and
speak all together and interrupt one another' (Sagard [1632] 1939,
140).
Sagard's dictionary is a fascinating record of the Huron language as it
was spoken at the beginning of the seventeenth century. His purpose
was stated clearly on the tide page: 'Dictionary of the Huron Language:
necessary for those who have no knowledge of it, and need to deal with
the savages of that country.' He opened the dictionary with an introduc-
tion in which he pointed out that each Native nation had its own way of
speaking, a situation he blamed on the presumption of those who built
the tower of Babel. There were even, he said, dialect differences among
the Huron themselves. He was the first to point out that Iroquoian
words often express complex thoughts that have to be translated with
entire sentences in French (Sagard i632b, 3-7). Because Iroquoian
verbs can contain a variety of different prefixes and a verb root can be
inflected in hundreds of different ways, it is difficult even today to
decide on the best format for a dictionary of any Iroquoian language.
Sagard's practical solution was to provide, not an alphabetical list of
words, but a collection of meaning categories with examples relevant to
each category. Thus, under the heading 'go' (alter, partir) he included
entries such as 'Where are you going?' 'Goodbye, I'm leaving,' 'I'm leav-
ing tomorrow morning,' and 'Let's go together' (Sagard i632b, a vi'~ v ).
The last category in the dictionary is Yoscaha, the name of the good twin
in the Iroquois creation myth (Tooker [1964] 1991, 151). Sagard seems
to have mixed Huron with Christian theology, equating the Huron cre-
ator Yoscaha with the Christian God, as the Huron's indirect descen-
dants the Wyandots continued to do into the present century (Barbeau
!9i5> 49. 5 1 )- Included in this section were sentences like 'The abode of
Yoscaha is far from here,' as well as 'The abode of the Devil is under the
earth.' Souls were said to 'dance with Ataensique,' the grandmother of
Yoscaha (Sagard i632b, i viiir~v).
The dictionary gives us numerous clues to specific changes that had
taken place in the sounds of Huron. For example, the word for 'town'
(ville) was given as andata (Sagard i632b, i vii'). At first glance this word
may not look much like the Stadaconan word with the same meaning,
258 Wallace Chafe

written canada, but in fact there is a complete correspondence between


the two. Comparing them, we see that the sound k (spelled cin canada),
or its voiced equivalent g, had been dropped from the beginnings of
Huron words, as in fact we saw earlier with the pronunciation of Gabriel
as Auiel. We see, too, that in Huron an n had been replaced by an nd,
and where the earlier Frenchman had written a Stadaconan d, Sagard
wrote a Huron t.
Sagard showed above all a healthy appreciation that language is some-
thing to be used, not just studied abstractly. He realized the importance
of learning and using the Huron language if one was to influence peo-
ple's minds, and of equating Christian beliefs with Huron beliefs where
that was possible. He noticed the diversity of languages in eastern Can-
ada as well as the diversity within Huron itself, and he realized that lan-
guages are constantly changing. In all these ways he showed a kind of
linguistic sophistication that is absent from the Carder vocabularies. He
did not, however, perform any systematic phonological or grammatical
analyses.

Jean de Brebeuf and the Beginnings of the Jesuit Tradition

In 1625 the Recollets were joined by Jesuits, who shortly thereafter


replaced them. One of the Jesuits was Jean de Brebeuf, whose Relation of
1636 had a number of things to say about the Huron language. The
Jesuits were trained in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and were well pre-
pared to be the linguists of their day (Hanzeli 1969, 32—44). One prac-
tice that Brebeuf and others followed was to present samples of
connected speech in Huron with translations interspersed between the
lines; the same practice is followed today. Regrettably, as it now seems,
Brebeuf did not record the kinds of things the Hurons were saying to
each other in their daily lives, as Sagard often did, but limited his Huron
texts to translations of religious materials. However, the linguistic high
point of Brebeuf s Relation is a charming essay on the nature of the
Huron language. 'This is only to give some little foretaste of the lan-
guage,' he wrote, 'and notice some of its peculiarities, in anticipation of
a Grammar and a complete Dictionary' (Jesuit Relations [1610-1791]
1896-1901 [hereafter//?] 10: 116-17). Sadly he did not live to complete
either the grammar or the dictionary, and only the little foretaste has
survived.
In several ways, Brebeuf foreshadowed the things linguists would say
in the coming centuries when they wrote about these languages. As in
Early European Encounters with Iroquoian Languages 259

most linguistic descriptions today, he began with a discussion of sounds.


It was natural at the time to equate the sounds of a language with the let-
ters used to represent them (Hanzeli 1969, 38), and in this case to
believe that the letters of the French alphabet provided a standard
against which other languages could be compared. Thus, Brebeuf
began by saying that the Hurons were not acquainted with the letters B,
F, L, M, P, X, or Z. What he meant, of course, was that the French sounds
written with those letters were not Huron sounds. Among the missing
sounds, he went on to point out, confirming Sagard's observation, were
the labial sounds written B, M, P, and F. 'This is probably the reason,' he
speculated, 'why they all open their lips so awkwardly.' The translation
here is misleading. What Brebeuf wrote was 'c'est volontiers la cause
qu'ils ont tous les levres ouvertes de si mauvaise grace,' and he must
have meant that they didn't dose their lips while they were talking, as is
still the case with speakers of Iroquoian languages today (JR 10: 116—17).
Brebeuf noticed, too, that the Hurons had one 'letter' that was absent
from French. The missionaries had decided to write this sound with the
Greek letter x, or khi. What was involved here was an aspirated k, which,
although missing from French, the Jesuits were able to relate to their
knowledge of ancient Greek. Later, they would realize that Huron pos-
sessed an aspirated t as well, which they wrote with the Greek letter 6, or
theta.
Turning from sounds to meanings, Brebeuf was seriously frustrated,
as Sagard had been, by the absence of concepts he found basic to civili-
zation and Christianity. 'As they have hardly any virtue or Religion, or
any learning or government, they have consequently no simple words
suitable to express what is connected with these. Hence it is that we are
at a loss in explaining to them many important matters depending upon
a knowledge of these things' (JR 10: 116-17).
He noticed that when they talked about relatives they never said sim-
ply 'father' and the like, but always added prefixes to yield words that
meant 'my father,' 'thy father,' 'his father,' and so on. He had to write
home for advice: 'On this account, we find ourselves hindered from get-
ting them to say properly in their Language, In the name of the Father, and
of the Son, and of the holy Ghost. Would you judge it fitting, while waiting a
better expression, to substitute instead, In the name of our Father, and of
his Son, and of their holy Ghost? ... Would we venture to employ it thus
until the Huron language shall be enriched, or the mind of the Hurons
opened to other languages? We will do nothing without advice' (JR 10:
116, 118-21).
260 Wallace Chafe

There was still another problem here: 'Now in connection with this
name Father I must not forget the difficulty there is in teaching to say
Our Father who art in Heaven, to those who have none on earth; to speak
to them of the dead whom they have loved, is to insult them. A woman,
whose mother had died a short time before, almost lost her desire to be
baptized because the command, Thou shalt honor thy Father and thy
Mother, had been inadvertently quoted to her' (JR 10: 118, 121). Thus we
know that the Huron possessed a taboo against uttering the name of a
deceased relative.
Like Sagard, Brebeuf recognized that the structure of Huron words
was marvellously complex. He noticed 'that they vary their tenses in as
many ways as did the Greeks; their numbers also, - besides that the first
person, of both the dual number and the plural, is, moreover, double;
thus to say 'we set out, thou and I,' we must say kiarascwa, and to say 'we
set out, he and I,' aiarascwa. Likewise in the plural, 'we, several of us, set
out,' awarascwa; 'we, together, set out,' cwarascwd (JR 10: 120-1). What
Brebeuf had noticed was that the Huron did not distinguish just
between singular and plural, but between singular, dual, and plural.
Beyond that, however, they distinguished between so-called inclusive
and exclusive first persons - that is, whether 'we' included or excluded
the person spoken to - something even classical Greek did not do,
Brebeuf, in short, was as interested as Sagard in the practical and
social dimensions of the language, but perhaps because of his Jesuit
training he explored the structure of Huron in ways that Sagard had
not. The Huron who eventually settled at Lorette, years after the devas-
tating Iroquois attacks, retained their language well into the nineteenth
century. The Jesuit missionaries among them maintained their lively
interest in the language, building through the years extensive dictionar-
ies and grammars. These materials show an increasingly sophisticated
understanding of the nature of the language, towards which Brebeuf
had led the way.

Perhaps, with what we may think now is our superior knowledge and
experience, we in this century can take a more detached perspective on
these earliest encounters, interpreting them as tentative steps in the
direction of cross-cultural understanding. First came the Cartier voyag-
ers, for whom it was only natural to view Native languages and all the
other customs of its speakers as simply strange. When the compassion-
ate and perceptive Sagard had been able to share his life with the
Hurons for a while, he came to appreciate both their good and bad
Early European Encounters with Iroquoian Languages 261

qualities and could compare them and their language not at all
unfavourably with the French. Brebeuf, living much longer among them
and better trained as a linguist, understood in more specific detail the
intricacies of both their language and their culture. In the centuries
since then, other linguists have come to appreciate more and more of
the richness of these and other Native languages, along with the cul-
tures of which they are or were a part. It would be hard to deny, how-
ever, that even today we maintain our preconceptions of what other
languages and cultures are or should be like, having replaced the reli-
gions of Sagard and Brebeuf with the theories of academia.

NOTES

1 For a discussion of various explanations of their disappearance see Trigger


[1976] 1987, 214-24-
2 In the spellings of Iroquoian words used here, $ and Q are nasalized vowels,
and a raised dot indicates lengthening of the preceding vowel. In English, h is
pronounced only before a vowel, but in these languages it appears just as fre-
quently after a vowel, as it does twice in this word. In later examples, o is the
symbol for a glottal stop.
3 See, for example, Hanzeli's remark that 'the authors of [Jesuit] grammars
seem to have been obsessed with words' (Hanzeli 1969, 43-4).
Decentring Icons of History:
Exploring the Archaeology of
the Frobisher Voyages and
Early European-Inuit Contact
Reginald Auger, William W. Fitzhugh, Lynda Gullason,
Anne Henshaw, Donald Hogarth, Dosia Laeyendecker1

Among 'first contact' events in the Americas, the voyages of Martin Fro-
bisher stand out as one of the most extensively documented of early
exploration ventures. Few other voyages can claim so many narratives
(Best, Ellis, Fenton, Hall, Settle, Lok, and others), and some (including
Best's and Fenton's accounts), provide alternative perspectives on the
same events. Few other exploration narratives deal with events in such a
circumscribed geographic locus, the environs of outer Frobisher Bay.
Forget for the moment that we did not know the exact location until
nearly three hundred years after the fact, as Helen Wallis (1984) has
pointed out. Frobisher historians have benefited from an unusual
instance of historical preservation: the bankruptcy proceedings follow-
ing die Cathay Company's economic failure, which produced the most
detailed financial records of any early expedition (Shammas 1975;
McDermott 1984). From this welter has emerged a remarkable record of
England's first venture into the New World, and to a region - Frobisher
Bay - that would not be revisited by Europeans on a sustained basis for
nearly three hundred years (see Symons, 1999).
In recent years, historians have become accustomed to utilizing new
sources that greatly expand the 'voices' of historical evidence. Neverthe-
less, studies of early exploration of the New World remain constrained
by the accounts of the principal European observers. WThile historians
long ago uncovered the most important documents describing these
ventures, and now have also explored much of their social, economic,
political, and biographical underpinnings, we remain substantially igno-
rant about many aspects of these pioneering enterprises. Much of what
we know or can learn lies in the archives and libraries of the European
actors, but these sources are silent on crucial aspects of these ventures
Exploring the Archaeology of Early European-Inuit Contact 263

6 The Frobisher site research area: (i) Baffin Land in relation to England and
(ii) the location of Kodlunarn Island and Kamaiyuk.

relating to Native peoples and their relations with Europeans. The Meta
Incognita research project, in which the authors of this article have all
been involved, was designed to bring the resources of scientific study to
bear on a sixteenth-century event that had generated ample historical
records, but where the scientific record invited fuller investigation.
Our research program emerged from a thirty-year-old riddle that was
resolved by a surprise discovery at the Smithsonian Institution in 1964.
Curator Wilcomb Washburn happened upon an artefact that had been
presented to the Smithsonian in the mid-i86os by American explorer/
journalist Charles Francis Hall (1865, 1866). Hall had found a site
known to the Inuit as 'Kodlunarn' (White Man's Island) at the eastern
entrance to Frobisher's Bay (see figure 6, i-ii) with mining trenches,
architectural remains, and artefacts. The Inuit insisted to Hall that these
events had transpired at Kodlunarn Island many generations ago rather
than in recent decades, and that the qallunat (white men) had come
first in two ships, 'then two or three, then many - very many vessels.'
264 Reginald Auger et al.

This convinced Hall (1865, 246-7) that he had identified the long-lost
mines on Frobisher's Countess of Warwick Island (Kodlunarn Island).
However, when Vilhjalmur Stcfansson, compiling his edition of the Fro-
bisher voyages (Best [1578] 1938), consulted the Royal Geographical
Society and the Smithsonian Institution on the whereabouts of Hall's
collections, both institutions informed him that the collections were no
longer available, having been 'mislaid' (Sayre et al. 1982, 442-3; Wash-
burn 1993). The artefact that Washburn rediscovered was an iron
'bloom' (a mass of smelted iron ore) originally collected by Hall, and
the archaeometallurgical investigation of its properties and history
became our starting point.
From an archaeological point of view, the Frobisher records already
provide a rare window on the first encounters between Europeans and
Inuit in post-Viking times. The official accounts of the 1576, 1577, and
1578 voyages contain descriptions of Inuit life and customs, housing,
behaviour; of hostage-taking on both sides; of skirmishes between the
English and Inuit; and of details of the establishment of shore camps,
mines, and general operations (Best [1578] 1867; [1578] 1938). Edward
Fenton's journal contains valuable details of the 1578 voyage and min-
ing activities, including operations at Kodlunarn Island. The fate of the
Inuit hostages can be traced to their graves in England (Cheshire et al.
1980), while the disappearance and presumed loss of a group of five sail-
ors and the ship's boat in 1576 leads to a more ambiguous conclusion.
In short, the ethnographic detail provided in these and other Frobisher
accounts (Sturtevant and Quinn 1987), and from the John White illus-
trations, is remarkable for its day. Not until Zorgdrager's 1720 descrip-
tions of Greenland Inuit, and Parry's of people in northern Hudson Bay
in the 18205, are Frobisher's descriptions of Inuit people and culture
substantially enhanced. These and other aspects of the Frobisher voy-
ages have been under investigation since 1981 as part of an archaeologi-
cal investigation of the Frobisher voyages themselves, and their impact
on Inuit cultures of the east Baffin region (Fitzhugh and Olin 1993). In
this essay we present a cross-section of the results so far obtained, to illu-
minate the context of exchange between the Inuit and the English
towards the end of the Renaissance.

The Setting: Environment and Culture

Frobisher Bay is on southeastern Baffin Island; the rugged landscape is


formed on crystalline rocks of the Canadian Shield. On the south side
Exploring the Archaeology of Early European-Inuit Contact 265

of Frobisher Bay, two small ice caps cover the eastern end of the Meta
Incognita peninsula; on the north side (Hall's Peninsula), ice and snow
usually disappear during the summer months. The average July temper-
ature is below 8° C, with annual precipitation of around 400 mm (Jacobs
et al. 1985). Permanently frozen ground underlies a thin layer of soil
that thaws during the summer months. This low arctic tundra zone
(Jacobs 1988) is treeless and consists of many species of sedges, grasses,
herbs, mosses, heath plants, and dwarf shrubs. Since spring is late and
summer is short, starting in mid-June one can see willow catkins unfold
their flowers, the flora burst into a mosaic of colours, and fields grow
purple with fireweed. By mid-August crowberries and blueberries are
ripe, and the hills are covered with red and yellow fall foliage of the
bearberry plant.
Two major climatic changes, the Medieval Optimum (ca AD 1250-
1500) and the Little Ice Age (ca AD 1600-1800), have influenced the
outer Frobisher Bay environment during the latest period of the
Holocene (Grove 1988; Houghton, Callander, and Varney 1992). Both
the medieval climate warming and the later cooler conditions would
have had direct impacts on the resources available to the Inuit both
from the sea and the land. Frobisher, like other European explorers,
would have also felt the impact of climatic conditions corresponding
with the beginning of the Little Ice Age as he and his fleet negotiated
the sea ice in Davis Strait and the coastal waters off Frobisher Bay. Mem-
bers of our research program have sought to reconstruct local manifes-
tations of these global climatic episodes from animal and plant remains
preserved in the archaeological record as well as from palaeoclimatic
proxies preserved in glacier ice, lake sediments, and tree rings.
Inuit populations inhabiting the eastern Arctic have a cultural history
that began over four thousand years ago when the first Palaeo-Eskimo
immigrated from the western Arctic (Damas 1984; Maxwell 1985). About
AD 1000, people of the Thule culture, the direct ancestors of the Inuit,
migrated to the eastern Arctic. Throughout this period, contact be-
tween the Inuit and other groups such as the Dorset people as well as
interactions with an unpredictable physical environment and internal
changes within their own society attest to a successful adaptation to their
new environment. The last five hundred years represent the most recent
part of this continuum, one that marks the entrance and participation
of Inuit peoples in the world economy. The influx of commodities and
new technologies created different needs for the Inuit, and required
Inuit materials and labour to be traded in exchange, but the degree to
266 Reginald Auger et al.

which the Inuit participated in this global economy is still a subject for
discussion.
The settlement patterns and house structures of the sixteenth-century
Inuit did not differ substantially from those of their ancestors. But in the
nineteenth century, following the Little Ice Age, semi-subterranean sod
and stone-walled structures were replaced by qarmat (winterized tents)
on land and by snow houses on the ice. During the summer, light seal-
skin tent camps were located near Arctic char fishing areas. In the fall,
people lived in qarmat and hunted caribou and seals, and in the winter
they gathered in large snow-house villages on land or on the sea ice and
hunted walrus, seal, polar bear and also caribou (Morrison 1983;
McGhee ig84a; Maxwell 1985; McCartney and Savelle 1985; Stenton
1987; Park 1988, 1997)-

Martin Frobisher's Voyages to Baffin Island

The effervescent political and economic situation that characterized the


expansion of England at the end of the Renaissance is at the heart of Mar-
tin Frobisher's voyages in search of a northwest passage. The trading of
English woollens to Russia was under the monopoly of London's Muscovy
Company, and when the English ranged farther afield, their attempts to
reach China, made from the northeast of England during the 15508, were
not successful. A favourite of Queen Elizabeth i, Frobisher exploited his
political allies to gain permission to search for a northwest passage, the
promised speedy route to Cathay, where immense riches were thought to
abound. For fifteen years he had cherished the ambition to find the
fabled passage, which he saw as 'the onley thing of the worlde that was left
yet undone' (Best [1578] 1867, 70). Michael Lok, the treasurer of the
Muscovy Company, was enticed by the prospect of making a quick profit
in such an enterprise to the Orient, and he arranged for the financing of
the first voyage to the Northwest in 1576.
The voyagers set out from the Thames estuary in June 1576; this
meant their northern, transatlantic return voyage would be late in the
season. The fleet was small and thinly manned - two small barks and
one pinnace, with a total complement of thirty-seven. They sailed up the
east coast of England, rounded Scotland, and crossed to Greenland. As
they neared the Greenland coast, the smallest of the three vessels sank,
and the captain of the second, afraid to meet the same fate, sailed back
to England. With much trouble, Frobisher decided to push his way far-
ther west. On 26 July the captain came in sight of a promontory, which
Exploring the Archaeology of Early European-Inuit Contact 267

he named Queen Elizabeth Foreland. A cape to the north was sighted


from afar, and he sailed between the two headlands for a distance of
possibly sixty leagues. Because of the appearance of the Native people,
the difference in duration of the flow and ebb tides, and an underesti-
mation of the size of the earth, Frobisher and company concluded they
were in a strait at the entrance to the Orient: Asia lay to the north and
the Americas to the south. This confusion was accentuated by an
implicit faith in the Zeno chart of 1558, which is now known to have
been fictitious, and by the publication of Sir Humphrey Gilbert's A dis-
course to prove a passage ... to Cathay (Gilbert [1576] 1886), in which Gil-
bert provided a hypothetical map showing a passage crossing the
temperate zone in the northern part of the New World.
Two aspects of the first voyage are noteworthy: the encounters Fro-
bisher had with the Inuit and the rocks the expedition brought back to
England. Frobisher first met the Inuit approximately sixty leagues up
the bay, which he had named Frobisher's Streytes. In the distance he
saw figures whom he initially thought were 'porposes, or scales, or some
kinde of strange fishe, but, coming nearer, he discovered them to be
men in small boates made of leather' (Best [1578] 1867, 73). From his
precarious vantage point on a hill, Frobisher narrowly escaped to his
ship; the Inuit followed after him and came aboard the ship, bringing
with them fish and raw flesh, which they 'greedily devoured ... before
our mens faces' (Best [1578] 1867, 72-3). From the account of that voy-
age, we also learn that the Inuit exchanged coats of seal and bear skins
for such things as bells, looking glasses, and other trinkets. But that first
encounter soon turned sour. Following the reciprocal taking of captives
and the loss of his shore boat and some sailors to the Inuit, Frobisher
took a captive whom he brought back to England. The poor soul did
not survive for long in that alien world; he died of a disease he had con-
tracted at sea.
On the same ship as the ailing captive were mineral samples from the
island. These samples are of special interest, for they are at the root of
the two subsequent expeditions. At landfall, a pitch-black rock, as large
as a 'halfepennye loaf had been collected as token of possession of the
new land. That rock would raise curiosity among financial backers,
notably Michael Lok. After an early assay of the rock indicating rich
ore (grading twenty-five ounces of gold to the ton), Lok, in consulta-
tion with the London-based Italian assayer Giovanni Battista Agnello,
decided to pursue the idea of mounting a return expedition to Baffin
Island. The gold rush was on.
268 Reginald Auger et al.

7 Aerial photograph of Kodlunarn Island.

The English mounted a second expedition the next year with the sole
purpose of exploring for new sources of the rock they had collected;
reaching China was no longer a consideration of the expedition. The
second voyage was made with three ships and a complement of 145 per-
sons, of whom eight were miners and three were assayers. The Saxon-
trained Jonas Shutz, who was to become chief technologist for the
group in London, was master assayer. Frobisher initially explored a
place called Beare Sound on the northeast coast of Frobisher Bay. Here
they found a rock similar to the discovery of the previous year, but his
crew was forced to depart because of the danger from drifting pack ice.
The flotilla then sailed further up Frobisher Bay and discovered a
sound, which they named Countess of Warwick Sound. They anchored
off a tiny island with veins of the sought-after mineral, and named it
Countess of Warwick Island.
The island (see figures 7 and 9) - barely more than a barren eight-
hectare rock - not only yielded the black ore, but also provided a
safe harbour and some protection for Frobisher's exposed crew from
Exploring the Archaeology of Early European-Inuit Contact 269

8 Ship's trench (1577 mine); excavation of the deposit left there by the 1578
Frobisher expedition.

increasingly provocative Inuit. In addition to mining and fortifying the


island against Inuit attacks, Frobisher built an assay shop for testing the
rocks. The fleet left on 24 August after loading aboard the three ships
158 tons of 'black ore' derived from a small trench on the north side of
the island (figure 8). A test sample of 'red ore' was taken from Jonas
Mount, facing Napoleon Bay, ten kilometres northeast of Countess of
Warwick Island. This sample produced a sensational assay (grading forty
ounces of gold per ton), a result that was mainly responsible for the
next voyage (Hogarth, Boreham, and Mitchell 1994, 34, 44).
On the voyagers' return to England, funding had to be raised to build
furnaces for processing the ore they had brought back. However, delays
in the search for sufficient funding prevented them from working on
the ore, and it was not assessed before a third expedition was under way.
Plans had been made for an impressive expedition, which left Harwich
on 31 May 1578. That fleet comprised slightly over 400 men aboard fif-
teen ships, including 156 miners and 5 assayers supervised by goldsmith
Robert Denham. The goal of the third expedition was to mine as much
ore as possible, ship it to England, and to leave behind a colony of min-
270 Reginald Auger et al.

9 Industrial area on Kodlunarn Island, showing evidence of two shops used by


chemists brought to Baffin Island by Frobisher in 1578.

ers, soldiers, and carpenters. Altogether, one hundred men were to


remain, with provisions for eighteen months.
The north Atlantic crossing did not turn out as expected; late spring
weather conditions prevented the fleet from reaching Baffin Island until
two months later, and it was a much battered fleet that arrived in the bay.
The thirteen vessels that remained were in dire need of repair. Missing
was the Dennis, a hundred-ton ship carrying materials for construction of
the house intended for the establishment of the colony, and the Thomas,
which had deserted. Realizing that too many parts for the house were
missing, the men abandoned plans to leave colonists behind, and every-
one was brought back to England. Frobisher nevertheless intended to
return to Countess of Warwick Island the next year, and before leaving he
buried dry goods and other provisions on Countess of Warwick Island
and filled his vessels with about 1,245 tons of 'black ore.' One ship con-
taining 110 tons was wrecked on the homeward voyage, but the remain-
der reached England. Arriving in England, Frobisher discovered that his
1577 ore contained neither gold nor silver; and the same would prove
true for his shiploads of 1578. The rocks were worthless.
Thus ended, rather ignominiously, Frobisher and Lok's Northwest
Exploring the Archaeology of Early European-Inuit Contact 271

venture. Beginning with the second voyage, a loosely bound company


had directed operations, but Queen Elizabeth i, who had contributed
an aging royal ship as the major part of her investment, refused to sanc-
tion incorporation. In the end many shareholders lost money, some
mariners remained unpaid, and Michael Lok, the prime force behind
the venture, went to debtors' prison. At least twenty-four lives were lost,
four ships were wrecked, and twenty-two ships and pinnaces were
destroyed. No gold was produced and hardly any silver. As ventures in
exploration, the voyages were shrouded in secrecy; detailed geographi-
cal information was expunged from published accounts, and maps were
deliberately made vague, if not purposely distorted. Information useful
to England's enemies was not going to be available from this venture.
What, then, was accomplished? Perhaps the Frobisher venture is best
accounted for as a prestige exercise. England needed national unity and
international prestige at a time when Spain was becoming the centre of
European attention and was regarded by many as the dominant Euro-
pean power. Despite the suppression of geographical information, the
hardships of the voyages and the strange accounts of an inaccessible
region stimulated a new national pride and respect for England on the
continent. Besides constituting a successful exercise in national pur-
pose, the voyages laid the foundation for the seventeenth-century explo-
rations that resulted in British sovereignty over North America's Arctic
islands. Tangible, but perhaps more important for history, was the geo-
graphic and ethnographic information gained, which was not to be
surpassed for another 250 years. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century
investigators have now returned to the scientific evidence to shed fresh
light on the venture, and in particular on its Canadian rather than its
English aspects.

Archaeological Investigations

The Elizabethan site at Kodlunarn Island and the coexisting Inuit site at
Kamaiyuk (figures 9 and 10), as well as other Elizabethan and Inuit sites
in Frobisher Bay (Stenton 1987), have now been investigated for several
years (1981, 1990-4) by the Canadian, American, and British research-
ers of the Meta Incognita project. Combining Inuit oral history, written
accounts of the voyages, archival research, and archaeology, this effort
has greatly expanded our knowledge of the history of the Frobisher voy-
ages. In particular, our research has focused on two subjects: the archae-
ology of Kodlunarn Island and other Elizabethan sites in Frobisher Bay,
272 Reginald Auger et al.

10 Sod house at the Inuit site of Kamaiyuk showing interior flooring of rocks
approximately two feet below ground surface; the roof rafters were of whale rib.

and Inuit-European contacts and cultural change (Alsford 1993;


Fitzhugh and Olin 1993; Gullason 1999; Henshaw 1995; Hogarth, Bore-
ham, and Mitchell 1994). Here, we want to address several key issues: (i)
the history of the Frobisher sites on Kodlunarn Island; (2) the dating of
the Frobisher remains and the question of Norse contacts; (3) the prob-
lem of the 'lost sailors'; (4) the assays of the 'black ore'; (5) the provi-
sioning of a sixteenth-century Arctic expedition; and (6) the history of
Inuit occupations and Inuit-European contact.

Research on Kodlunarn Island

A principal effort of the project has been directed towards providing


modern documentation of the Frobisher site on Kodlunarn Island. This
site is important not only because it represents the remains of the first
English establishment in the Americas, but because it is a valuable
source of information on early mining technology and pyrotechnology
related to assaying. Furthermore it represents an unusual archaeologi-
cal opportunity to document the provisioning of a sixteenth-century
Arctic expedition. The site is also an important archaeological monu-
Exploring the Archaeology of Early European-Inuit Contact 273

merit, which needs to be investigated in order to document what mate-


rial objects from the Elizabethan world were available to the Inuit, and
how the Inuit utilized them.
Although the 1577-8 expeditions exploited minerals at various loca-
tions, Kodlunarn Island was chosen as Frobisher's base camp for sup-
plies, assaying, ship repair, and blacksmithing. The prime reason was
that it had a vein of black ore that would become the source of 158 tons
of rock exported to England in 1577. Despite the fact that in the inter-
vening four hundred years Kodlunarn Island has been visited by Inuit,
explorers, treasure seekers, and archaeologists alike, excavation has
revealed that much of the original Frobisher site - for example, the
remains of the house that was built there - is intact and amenable to
archaeological study.
The Frobisher house was initially intended as an experiment to test
English expertise in building in a cold environment. On 30 August 1578
Frobisher reported: This daye the masons finished a house whiche Cap-
taine Fenton caused to be made of lyme and stone upon the Countesse
of Warwickes Ilande, to the ende we mighte prove against the nexte
yeare, whether the snow coulde overwhelm it, the frosts break uppe, or
the people dismember the same' (Best [1578] 1867, 272). The structure
was also intended by the expedition to encourage relations with the
Inuit: 'And the better to allure those brutish and uncivill people to cour-
tesie, againste others times of our comming, we lefte therein dyvers of
our countrie toyes, as bells, and knives, wherein they specially delight...
Also pictures of men and women in lead, men a horsebacke, looking-
lasses, whistles, and pipes. Also in the house was made an oven, and
breade left baked therein, for them to see and taste' (Best [1578] 1867,
272). The house is by far the most damaged feature at the site. Yet after
removing the various debris left by previous expeditions, we were able to
identify both the southeast and the northwest corners.
Large rocks had been used to make the inside and outside facing
walls while smaller rocks were incorporated in between them. All were
joined together by the use of a porous mortar containing bits of flint. A
line of mortar along the southeast corner resembles a builders' trench.
The house floor was identified by the presence of a brown soil in which
charcoal fragments were recovered adjacent to the north wall; however,
the limited time available for work prevented us from locating the door-
way. Picking through the debris left after the various tests of the house,
we were able to recover green glazed and black glazed stove tiles similar
to the ones recovered from the ship's trench.
274 Reginald Auger et al.

What Hall reported from his informants as a reservoir has been iden-
tified as Frobisher's mining trench. Hall stated, 'I soon came across an
excavation, which was probably the commencement of a mine dug by
Frobisher, though the Innuits, judging only from what they saw, called it
a reservoir for fresh water, a quantity of which collected in it at certain
seasons. This excavation was at some distance from the ruins of the
stone houses, and was eighty-eight feet long and six feet deep' (Hall
1865, 389). The Inuit interpretation of this feature results from the fact
that water accumulates in it during spring runoff. Although the prime
reason for the trench was undoubtedly mineral extraction, the Inuit
suggestion that it was a water reservoir is also reasonable, since the melt-
ing of permafrost in summer allows for the accumulation of water in the
depression. Mining activities are attested by the black ore spoil found
particularly at the south end of the reservoir. The depression measures
twenty-five metres long by four metres wide. In all likelihood, since
water is not readily available on the island another man-made feature
discovered on the west side of the hilltop house may be a well.
An eroded promontory on the east side of the island is probably the
site of a defensive feature described by George Best in 1577: 'On
Thurseday, the ninth of August, we beganne to make a small fort for our
defence in the Countesse Hand, and entrenched a corner of a cliffe,
which on thre parts like a wall of good heygth was compassed and well
fenced with the sea, and we finished the rest with caskes of earth to good
purpose, and this was called Bestes Bulwarke' (Best [1578] 1867, 148).
Erosion has eliminated any original Frobisher traces in this area as well
as most of the promontory.
What Hall terms the 'ship's trench' was actually first excavated as a
mine in 1577; most of our excavation effort has been spent testing this
feature. Rock samples from this trench were identical with those discov-
ered at Dartford (Hogarth, Boreham and Mitchell 1994, 132). In 1578
the trench was used as a place to cache excess food, timber, and other
dry goods intended for the following year. Physically, this feature is a V--
shaped cut through the ledges on the north shore of the island that
measures twenty-six metres long by six metres wide at the shoreline. In
1993 a nine-square-metre excavation unit was begun, and was enlarged
in 1994 to an area of eighteen square metres. Excavation reached a
depth of one metre below the surface, with permafrost encountered at
O.6 m. Analysis of the profile shows the presence of wood chips and shav-
ings and other evidence of wood working above the layer in which
goods were buried by the 1578 departing expedition. Should this inter-
Exploring the Archaeology of Early European-Inuit Contact 275

pretation be confirmed by other evidence, it would lend credence to the


Inuit oral tradition that shipbuilding activities by white men, the 'lost
sailors,' followed the departure of the Frobisher expedition.
Aside from possible evidence of boat-building activities, our excava-
tions proved that the trench was used to store food, as the last expedi-
tion records. At 0.6 m below the surface, we exposed a compact layer of
peas frozen in permafrost. We also recovered a blackened concretion
containing grains of wheat and barley. Some of that blackened matter
has the imprint of the inside of a barrel, indicating the storing of a
coarse flour, probably for baking ship's biscuit. Barrel staves and hoops
were also found, as well as over twenty thousand stove tile fragments.
When reconstructed, these fragments exhibit stamped impressions
showing scenes of classical mythology; two of them bear a date of 1561,
which fixes their time of manufacture. Some of the same tiles have also
been recovered from excavations at contemporary Inuit sites, and oral
tradition transmitted to Hall (1865, 244-5) makes reference to Inuit
grinding them into powder in order to polish their brass ornaments. An
exceptional discovery is that of a wicker basket found at 0.8 m below the
surface. Contemporary sixteenth-century illustrations show that baskets
were used in mining, and in the Frobisher case they were probably
employed to load black ore aboard the ships.
The ruin Hall called a 'shop' was tested in 1981 (Fitzhugh I993a, 66,
Structure i) and at that time, based on the presence of large amounts of
slag, fire brick, cinder, and coal, was believed to be a blacksmith shop.
However, our 1994 work revealed a different picture. Instead of finding
scales and metal droplets originating from welding activities and com-
mon to a blacksmith shop (cf. Light and Unglik 1987), we recovered
thousands of fragments of crucibles but almost no evidence of metal
working; chemical analysis of soil samples failed to produce the high iron
content characteristic of a blacksmith shop. We now believe this location
was used primarily for assaying ore rather than for iron working.
A second feature (Fitzhugh I993a, 68, Structure 2) investigated in
1994 lies thirteen metres to the northwest of the first shop. Surface evi-
dence prior to excavation appeared to indicate a foundation measuring
15 by 15 feet (4.5 by 4.5 m). A three-by-one-metre test unit across its east
wall revealed a dry stone wall. Unlike what was revealed at the first shop,
this structure yielded few crucible fragments, but produced many frag-
ments of cupels (small assaying vessels of bone-ash); in addition there
were refractory clay materials that may be related to the use of an assay
oven. The lead scraps recovered will be used to test the lead/gold con-
276 Reginald Auger et al.

lamination hypothesis put forth by Hogarth (1993) and described


below.

Dating the Frobisher Remains

So convincing was Hall's discovery that for more than a century few
scholars questioned his interpretation that Kodlunarn was the site of
Frobisher's lost mines. However, in 1980 radiocarbon assays on the
Smithsonian iron bloom collected by Hall and newly identified by Wash-
burn produced two dates (AD 1230-1400, 1160-1280) that suggested
Norse rather than Frobisher origin. Several scholars associated with the
bloom study (Sayre et al. 1982; Harbottle, Cresswell, and Stoenner 1993)
have maintained that the radiocarbon assays and bloom typology indi-
cate an early medieval age for these unusual artefacts. These views have
since been amplified by historical studies (e.g., Seaver 1996) that have
questioned the general view that Norse contacts in the New World west
of Greenland were, in general, rare events. But in 1981 a Smithsonian
field investigation recovered wood and charcoal samples from Kodlu-
narn Island structures associated with artefacts that we attributed to Fro-
bisher. The wood and charcoal samples dated to the Frobisher period
and were identified as European hardwoods; thus they could not have
originated from local driftwood or Scandinavian sources (Laeyendecker
1993)- Three new iron blooms were also recovered the same year from
Kodlunarn, and although questions about their date and origin have not
been completely answered, the consensus is that they seemingly were
carried as ship ballast by the Frobisher party (Fitzhugh 1997). In our
view, these peculiar artefacts are those described in the Frobisher finan-
cial records as 'paid for vc. yronstones of Russia at iiij pece beinge vj
tones for balliste for the Gabriell bought of master Patrik & R. Hopton'
(McDermott 1984, 144) and which were off-loaded on Kodlunarn for the
purpose of making room for ore cargo (Fitzhugh I993b, 236). Though it
has been suggested that the blooms had been exposed to contamination
by ancient carbon introduced during smithing activities (Unglik 1993),
radiocarbon assays from carbon extracted from the interior of the
blooms, remote from external contamination, are found to date roughly
to the Elizabethan period (Fitzhugh I993b, 232-4). Despite ambiguities
and the need for further study of the three new Frobisher blooms, our
research places these artefacts securely in a Frobisher context, from all
points of evidence: archaeological context, typology, metallurgy, and
dating.
Exploring the Archaeology of Early European-Inuit Contact 277

The Lost Sailors: Documentary Evidence versus Inuit Oral History

One of the questions emerging from this new archaeological work con-
cerns the fate of the five sailors who, according to the accounts of the
1576 voyage, were taken captive by the Inuit. In 1577, expedition mem-
bers believed they had found evidence of the lost sailors in York Sound
on the other side of the bay from the place where they had been taken
captive. Wrote Best, 'They also beheld (to their greatest marvaile) a
dublet of canvas, made after the Englishe fashion, a shirt, a girdle,
three shoes for contrarie feete and of unequal bignesse, which they well
conjectured to be the apparell of our five poore countriemen whiche
were intercepted the laste yeare by these countrie people, aboute fiftye
leagues from this place further within the straightes' (Best [1578] 1867,
140-1). Although they could not locate their lost sailors, Captain Yorke
left them a message to signal his whereabouts. Yet oral tradition
recorded among the Inuit in 1860-1 by Hall (1865) brings to light
another version of the 'lost sailors' incident. As it was reported to Hall,
a group of white men were abandoned in Frobisher Bay; the Inuit
helped them survive the following winter; and in the spring they built a
ship (presumably from timbers cached by Frobisher at Countess of
Warwick Island). Inuit history tells that the sailors tried to sail away
before the ice had cleared, and perished in a storm. Hall's informants,
when asked how they knew this story, replied, 'all the old Innuits said
so' (Hall 1865,390).
It is unclear whether these accounts relate to the same incident or to
separate ones. English sources speak of a single group of lost sailors, the
group lost in the 1576 incident. It might be reasonable to believe that
the Inuit account tells another version of this incident, but there are dif-
ficulties with such an attribution. Since Frobisher did not discover Kod-
lunarn Island until 1577, the Inuit account of the lost sailors must follow
the final departure of the Frobisher party in September 1578; Frobisher
never finds evidence of his 1576 men having been on Kodlunarn, which,
given the explicit details of the Inuit account, was certainly the location
of the event they are describing. Susan Rowley has studied the Inuit
responses to Hall's questions and finds their responses consistent and
unelaborated; when they did not know an answer they responded that
they had never heard of it. 'Certainly the Inuit believed they were trans-
mitting factual information to Hall - information they had received
from their parents who in turn had received it from their parents'
(Rowley 1993, 35). It is possible, however, that the differing oral and
278 Reginald Auger et al.

documentary accounts can be reconciled. Edward Fenton gives a vivid


account of Frobisher's chaotic departure from the bay in September
1578, during a powerful two-day storm. On the evening of 2 September,
a pinnace was sent to overtake the ship Mooneznd may not have reached
its objective. Were these the English sailors oral tradition still preserved
an account of when the Inuit spoke to Hall three centuries later? In the
pinnace they could have returned to Kodlunarn, wintered in Fro-
bisher's house, established amicable social relationships with the Inuit,
and trading goods for meat and clothing. If indeed they built a boat and
departed in the spring, they would have encountered the Arctic ice-pack
a few miles offshore, and lost their primitive vessel to the ice. Analysis of
the written and Inuit accounts together with new archaeological data
from Kodlunarn, such as that of the ship's trench described above, may
provide clues that will reconcile the two versions of the end of Fro-
bisher's stay on Kodlunarn.

Elizabethan Mining and Metallurgy

Documentary and archaeological evidence both indicate that small-


scale mining and metallurgical operations took place on Countess of
Warwick Island during the second and third Frobisher voyages. On
third voyage, about 1,250 tons of black ore were loaded from Countess
of Warwick Island and six mines on the north shore of Frobisher Bay
and one on Resolution Island. All but no tons reached England. In the
meantime, however, small-scale assays of Frobisher's ore had been made
in England, first near the Tower of London and then at other sites in
the city. The presence of gold and silver was determined in much the
same way as in fire assays today. The ore was melted, and precious met-
als were dissolved in molten lead. The lead was then oxidized and the
remaining impurities dissolved in lead oxide. Finally, the silver from the
remaining gold-silver alloy was separated by adding a suitable acid, and
silver, now in solution, was then precipitated as a chloride. Larger-scale
operations (both bulk assays and pilot-plant extraction tests) were later
conducted at the Bignores estate, south of the Thames, about twenty
kilometres downstream from the London furnaces. The technology at
Bignores was similar to the London furnaces, but the plant operated on
a grander scale: the old foot bellows used in the London melting opera-
tions became a 'great bellows' activated with a water wheel; crushing
and grinding was accomplished in a water-powered circuit instead
of by mortars and pestles. But despite improved efficiency, little gold
Exploring the Archaeology of Early European-Inuit Contact 279

appeared. The metallurgists (and Michael Lok) blamed the furnaces,


not the ore, and there were charges and counter-charges over the abili-
ties of the furnaces. Then, amidst a series of petty squabbles, the Big-
nores plant was closed after having operated for only fifteen weeks. The
'company' decided to return to the London furnaces for one last
attempt to wring gold from the recalcitrant ore, using the 'old order,'
which reportedly had previously produced acceptable results. Yet these
tests were hardly better than those at Bignores. Finally in 1583 William
Williams, assay-master of the Mint in the Tower, checked the ore and
found neither gold nor silver.
How was it possible that the five assayers hired for Frobisher's 1578
expedition failed to recognize that the ore they were assaying was worth-
less? Hogarth (1993) has suggested that the assays were skewed by the
presence of gold and silver in the lead additive used by the field assayers
in their assays. This hypothesis is impossible to test from documentary
sources because the logbooks containing the records of the 1578 field
assays blew out of Frobisher's cabin window (as he described it), and
were lost at sea on the return voyage (Hogarth, Boreham, and Mitchell
1994, 51). Of course, forgery is another likely hypothesis, because Fro-
bisher and Lok had much at stake in the venture. Another explanation,
one which cannot be summarily dismissed, is that Frobisher's assayers
were untrained, or lacked metallurgical experience to perform reliable
assays, particularly for the last stage, which involved the separation of
gold from silver. We continue to study these various hypotheses.
What in fact was Frobisher's precious cargo? In modern geological
parlance, the black ores are hornblende-rich highly metamorphosed
basic and ultrabasic igneous rocks - most unlikely candidates for a con-
centration of precious metals. Samplings of this cargo have been found
at Smerwick Harbour, Ireland, at the site of a wrecked Frobisher vessel,
and at Dartford, England, site of the ore-storage depot two kilometres
south of the Bignores furnaces. (Hogarth, Boreham and Mitchell 1994,
59-100). Some of these rocks can be traced to individual trenches in Fro-
bisher Bay. However, recent analyses of the principal ore types (Baffin,
Dartford, and Smerwick) averaged 4 parts per billion (ppb) gold only,
compared with 3.5 ppb in the Earth's crust! The Elizabethan assays were
ten thousand times too high. The original sandy 'red ore' was likely oxi-
dized sulphide ('gossan'), and rocks of this type in other areas can hold
large amounts of gold and silver. None of these materials can be con-
strued as 'fool's gold,' and use of this term to describe the Frobisher
ores should be discontinued.
280 Reginald Auger et al.

The Archaeology of a Protohistoric Inuit Site: Material Culture

Frobisher and his group met with Inuit on several occasions, and the ini-
tial encounters were positive; the Englishmen had even brought a few
items for trade. Sometimes Inuit came on board to trade, and after sev-
eral courteous meetings, trust was established on both sides. The Inuit
spent time explaining the names and functions of many items of their
culture. However, relations irretrievably broke down in 1576 after five of
the ships' men disappeared on shore. In revenge, an Inuk was taken
hostage and brought back to England. The on-going conflict culmi-
nated in the Bloody Point battle in 1577, when several Inuit were killed
and a young woman and child were taken prisoner and brought to
England (Cheshire et al. 1980; Sturtevant and Quinn 1987). During the
third year, the Inuit deliberately avoided the English, and there was very
little direct contact between the two peoples.
As is common among early economic encounters, the European
goods traded to the Inuit were a combination of strictly utilitarian and
more frivolous items, among them bells, pins, needles, mirrors, and
knives. There are recorded instances of direct trading and gift giving,
and indirect trade, in the form of items left in abandoned kayaks or
tents. As we have seen, during the final season, Frobisher left many
items 'to allure those brutish and uncivil people to courtesy' in the little
house he had built on the summit of Kodlunarn. Moreover, anticipating
their own return, the English buried timber, barrels of provisions, and
other things in the ship's trench. More Elizabethan goods were made
available through outright abandonment. Towards the end of the sec-
ond voyage, we read 'it was now good time to leave; for, as the men were
wel wearied, so their shoes and clothes were well worne, their baskets
bottoms torne out, their tooles broken and the shippes reasonably well
filled' (Best [1578] 1867, 152). Traces of the Elizabethan presence in
Frobisher Bay have now been found in the artefact collections at five
Inuit sites: fragments of green-glazed stove tile, bits of clay roof tile,
English flint and coal, iron, wood, glass beads, and a small silver knife
blade.
Direct trade with the Elizabethans had little significant long-term
effect on Inuit culture. The impact of the Elizabethan expeditions lies
in the fact that they provide new raw materials (wood, iron, coal, brick,
tile) as sources for the Inuit. Significantly, however, certain iron objects,
notably blooms, were neither consistently collected nor exploited as a
source of iron, either because they were not interpreted as such or
Exploring the Archaeology of Early European-Inuit Contact 281

because the Inuit did not have the technology to extract the metal from
these blooms (Ehrenreich and Wayman 1993, 146).
Indeed, if one of the problems with interpreting sixteenth-century
Inuit-European interaction lies in the paucity of material evidence
recovered, this is especially true of metal items, which were highly val-
ued, heavily reused, and rapidly corroded. The issue is complicated by
the extensive use by the Inuit of deposits of meteoric iron in the Arctic
prior to European contact. In fact, McGhee (i984b) has called the
Thule period preceding contact, an 'iron age' culture, this based on its
widespread presence. McCartney's term, 'epi-metallurgy,' is more pre-
cise, however, since it denotes dependency on, rather than the produc-
tion of metal. Epi-metallurgy is technologically an intermediate phase
between no metal use and abundant metal use, and is marked by careful
curation and manufacture of miniaturized tools. Once more-routine
European contact was established beginning in the mid-nineteenth
century, the steady flow of manufactured metal goods into Inuit soci-
ety required less need for careful curation of iron or production of
miniaturized cutting/grooving/scraping blades (McCartney 1991, 29).
McCartney (1991) has suggested that the rate of Thule metal use accel-
erated after AD 1600, owing to the great 'influx' of metal from the Fro-
bisher expeditions and those that followed.
The Meta Incognita project considered this hypothesis by looking at
prehistoric and sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Thule Inuit artefacts
from three sites in Frobisher Bay for evidence of metal use (Gullason,
!999)- The most useful line of evidence, blade slot width, indicated that
tool slots containing metal blades general measured less than three mil-
limetres wide, while those containing slate blades were over four millime-
tres wide. Slot widths between three and four millimetres could have held
either material. Although tool function was found to have a greater influ-
ence on the blade slot width than the actual material of the blade, blade
slot width strongly confirmed the presence of metal use in prehistoric
contexts. However, contrary to McCartney's prediction, there appears to
have been a dedinein metal use after 1600, compared to prehistoric times.
It appears that, despite the proximity of the Frobisher base camp and its
supply of metal, much less metal was used in the initial contact period
than in precontact times. Moveover, the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies, the period of indirect middleman contact from ship-based trade in
Hudson Strait, showed a frequency of metal-edged tools nearly identical
to that of the precontact period. In fact, the real increase in metal use did
not occur at the AD 1600 watershed but well after AD 1850 (Gullason 1999).
282 Reginald Auger et al.

Because little ethnographic information exists for the period AD


1400-1850 from outer Frobisher Bay, our knowledge of Inuit proto-
historic economies comes largely from archaeological evidence at
Kamaiyuk, the Inuit site three kilometres northeast of Kodlunarn
Island. It is this site that we believe was described by George Best in
1577:
Upon the maine land over against the Countesses Hand we discovered, and
behelde to our great marvell, the poore caves and houses of those countrie
people, which serve them (as it shoulde seeme) for their winter dwellings
& are made two fadome under grounde ... From the ground upward they
builde with whales bones, for lacke of timber, whiche bending one over
another, are handsomly compacted in the toppe togither, & are covered
over with Scales skinnes, which in stead of tiles, fenceth them from the
rayne. In cache house they have only one roome, having the one halfe of
the floure raysed with broad stones a fote higher than ye other, whereon
strawing Mosse, they make their nests to sleepe in. (Best [1578] 1938, 1: 64)

Kamaiyuk is located near the rich marine resources of the outer


Frobisher Bay polynia, a permanent ice-free water zone that probably
also existed at the time the site was occupied. The site dates between
AD 1470-1650 and contains three large bilobate semi-subterranean
structures, one single lobe semi-subterranean structure, and two half-
eroded semi-subterranean structures.
Seal remains made up almost half of the non-Cetacean mammals
identified from each of the four houses excavated at Kamaiyuk. In addi-
tion to ringed seals, both harp and harbour seals are also present at the
site, indicating that open-water sea-mammal hunting was practised by
Kamaiyuk's inhabitants. Other species adapted to open-water or floe-
edge habitats, including walrus and bearded seal, were also recovered in
fairly high percentages. Although caribou are available on a year-round
basis in this area, few caribou remains were recovered. Difficulties in
hunting caribou in winter before the introduction of firearms may help
explain the low percentage of caribou remains identified (Henshaw
!Q95) • The high percentage of dog remains represent 9.29 per cent MNI
(Minimum Number of Individuals); this is another feature that stands
out in the Kamaiyuk faunal assemblage. Dogs were obviously extremely
important to Kamaiyuk residents. From ethnographic data we know that
dogs were used for transportation, for hunting, and, as a last resort, as a
food source (Damas 1984, 405; Saladin D'Anglure 1984, 498). Neverthe-
Exploring the Archaeology of Early European-Inuit Contact 283

less, it is curious why these animals are so heavily represented in the


remains. Perhaps those concentrations resulted from starvation or from
the use of dogs as food during difficult times.
Another important finding from this data is that Kamaiyuk residents
brought seal carcasses back to camp whole and then divided the meat
between household groups (Henshaw 1995). This interpretation is
based on the analysis of seal element frequency found within each of
the structures excavated. Such practices help maintain intragroup cohe-
sion at the household level. Perhaps significantly, this custom becomes
more prevalent during later periods of European contact in the Frobisher
Bay sites.
Wood was an important commodity traditionally traded among Inuit
groups. Thule Inuit people used wood for the manufacturing of tool
handles, bowls, dishes, spoons, snow shovels, weapons, sleds, skin boat
frames, and sometimes in house construction. Driftwood, however, was
their only source of wood. The beaches of the western Canadian Arctic
and Alaska have generally larger amounts of driftwood than beaches in
the central and eastern regions (Giddings 1941). In addition, because of
the scarcity of driftwood in certain areas, whalebone was often used
in house construction by central and eastern Inuit groups (C. Arnold
1994).
As we might expect, beginning with the Frobisher period, more and
different wood was introduced to the Inuit by European explorers and,
from the second half of the nineteenth century, by American and Euro-
pean whalers and traders. The composition of driftwood also changed,
when shipwrecks and debris from the timber industry in Siberia and
Canada brought more wood into circulation in the Arctic Ocean. Wood
has a limited buoyancy; coniferous wood is estimated to stay afloat on
open water about ten months. Incorporated into sea ice and trans-
ported by currents in the Arctic Ocean, driftwood from the boreal forest
regions of Canada, Alaska, and Russia can stay afloat and reach distant
beaches (Haggblom 1982).
Wooden artefacts and chips from wood working were excavated in
large quantities from Inuit sites at Kamaiyuk and other locations in Fro-
bisher Bay. Preservation of this otherwise perishable material can be very
good in arctic sites because of frozen conditions. At the Kamaiyuk Thule
Inuit site we found some evidence of European woods - fragments of oak,
elm, and walnut - but only a few European wooden artefacts, including
an eighteenth-century pistol-shaped knife handle of maple and a tub-
stave of oak. The Inuit who lived here throughout the period of the Fro-
284 Reginald Auger et al.

bisher voyages, and for nearly a century afterward, made most of their
tools in the traditional way using driftwood. Here again we find that the
model that suggests that European methods quickly replaced Native
practices is not well supported by existing evidence.

Conclusions: Towards a More Decentred History

When our work first began, a prestigious institution commented to the


effect that the historical record of the Frobisher voyages is so detailed
that further research was unnecessary; the only question that remained
was its precise location, and Hall had settled even that in 1861. This is
the quintessential Eurocentric view. In fact, our work suggests that one
must decentre history as well as European studies of the New World in
general to develop a fuller understanding of the Frobisher voyages and
the impact they had on the history of the Baffin Island Inuit. Knowledge
gained from archaeology, archaeometry and materials science, and oral
history offers alternate views of history, reinforcing, augmenting, and
sometimes disproving those gained from traditional historical and archi-
val studies.
The results obtained to date from the Meta Incognita archaeological
programs have necessitated revisions in the European historical
accounts that until now have been the dominant source of information
on this early chapter of Europe-in-America. The 'new voices' now being
heard are not only those of disciplines that provide novel sources and
perspectives; they are also those of Native peoples, the evidence of
whose lives challenges the European epic of discovery. In addition to
their oral traditions, the information contained in their ancient archae-
ological sites provides materials for reassessing the Eurocentric histo-
rical tradition. Among the 'decentred' perspectives reached in our
studies, we may cite the following.
From analyses of European metal and wood excavated from Inuit sites
in Frobisher Bay, it is clear that, although their introduction was cer-
tainly important for Inuit living in this area, as demonstrated by the
existence of oral testimony of the i86os (Hall 1865), its symbolic value
outweighed its practical importance for the Inuit. There is little evi-
dence of any fundamental economic shift in the lives or culture of the
resident Inuit that can be attributed to Elizabethan contact. Faunal anal-
yses also show that sixteenth-century Inuit continued to seek locally
available resources to fulfil their dietary needs. Although the Frobisher
voyages marked the onset of new transformations, those expeditions
Exploring the Archaeology of Early European-Inuit Contact 285

were mostly ship-based, leaving few possibilities for intensive interaction


with local Inuit and no chance to undermine their local economic base.
As Graburn has suggested (1969, 101), European explorers probably
were treated by the Inuit more like migratory animals than as a formida-
ble economic or colonial force. Definite changes in eating habits and
technology appear in the archaeological record only for later phases of
contact, beginning around 1840, when the American and European
whale fishery reached the region; for the early period, direct evidence of
transformation is modest, perhaps almost non-existent.
Did contact with the Frobisher expeditions result in important indi-
rect effects on the organization of Inuit society? The repeated visitations
by the Frobisher fleet and the new and useful materials, obtained first in
trade and later by scavenging caches, certainly provided the Inuit with
new information about the world and its inhabitants. Yet, it was only
gradually that the Inuit became aware of a society that was substantially
more advanced technologically than their own. Access to European
materials and goods could also be used as an advantage in economic
exchanges with neighbouring groups, as is demonstrated by the pres-
ence of Frobisher stove tiles and other materials at the Qaamarviit
site, located at the head of Frobisher Bay (Stenton 1983, 1987). More
generally, archaeologists have argued that European contact resulted
in subtle shifts in Inuit social and political organization, in changes in
settlement systems and patterns that enhanced contact opportunities,
and in changes in ritual and ceremonial life. European goods made
their way into the amulets used in Inuit ritual, as reported by one of
Hall's informants, who described their use to adorn a stone monument
located in the hills north of Frobisher Bay (Hall 1865, 497). But if these
were the effects of European culture on the Inuit, the effect of Inuit cul-
ture on North Americans of European origin - perhaps by requiring,
after four centuries, the very raising of the question - is a subject yet to
be investigated.
In short, a new history of European discovery, of contact and transfor-
mation of both Europeans and Native Americans, must now incorporate
perspectives that before were not seen as in the mainstream of the aca-
demic enterprise. The Frobisher chapter provides a useful case study for
such a new approach to history. Few early European ventures in the New
World are so early and so well documented. Its impact was regionally
specific, and had precise bearings on a resident Native population
whose archaeological sites and oral histories are available. The result is
to provide resources for studies of European-Native interaction at a
286 Reginald Auger et al.

crucial era in history. Whether or not the impacts of contact were im-
mediately registered on the Inuit or the English is immaterial. There is
much to learn, but only with the aid of new approaches and research
programs that cross not only ethnic and political boundaries but aca-
demic and public ones as well. Though these approaches are still exper-
imental, the benefits of multivocal research are beginning to take root.

NOTE

l This paper has been assembled by Dosia Laeyendecker and Reginald Auger
from individual paper presentations by all of the authors.
Sir William Phips and the Decentring of
Empire in Northeastern North America,
1690-1694
Emerson W. Baker and John G. Reid

On a mid-November day in 1693, the governor of Massachusetts


happened to pass by the scene of an argument on a Boston wharf. Sir
William Phips was stopped by one of the protagonists, the Huguenot
merchant Benjamin Faneuil, and informed that the customs officials
William Hill and Henry Francklyn were about to seize the vessel and
cargo of an Acadian trader, Abraham Boudrot. Their authority came
from the collector of customs for New England, Jahleel Brenton. 'For
what?' the governor demanded. Faneuil replied too softly to be heard by
Hill and Francklyn, who described the incident in a later deposition, but
his words prompted a declaration by Phips that must have been clearly
audible for some distance around. Boudrot and Faneuil, the governor
proclaimed, 'are as good or better English men than the Collector is,
and let him seize them if he dare. If he doth, I will break his head.'
Understandably, Hill and Francklyn then abandoned their effort to
seize Boudrot's shallop, and its 'sundry Packs of Beaver and ... consider-
able quantity of skins and small Furrs' were soon safely unloaded.1
In part, Phips's defence of Boudrot and Faneuil represented a small
skirmish in an ongoing conflict between the governor and the collector
over the powers of entering and clearing vessels.2 Yet there was more to
it than merely embracing an opportunity to pursue a long-standing
quarrel. Phips's declaration, and in particular the inclusiveness of his
definition of 'good ... English men,' was a product of the need for a New
England governor of this era to reach accommodations with members
of non-English communities whose acquiescence was essential to the
pursuit of English economic interests. It was indicative of severe limita-
tions on English influence in northeastern North America, even in areas
to which an imperial claim had been asserted. The decentring of
288 Emerson W. Baker and John G. Reid

empire in this way could not be admitted explicitly in reports to Lon-


don, and was liable for this reason to be a volatile element in Phips's
interactions with political enemies such as Brenton. Yet Phips, who had
grown up in close proximity to both French and Wabanaki inhabitants,
was in an unusually apt position to realize and act upon the need for
negotiated relationships. His associations with London merchants,
gained later in life, also enabled him to commercialize his negotiating
skills in search of personal profit. While Phips's activities were ultimately
unsuccessful, either in consolidating imperial ascendancy or in adding
significantly to his personal wealth, they did demonstrate the extent to
which Acadian and Wabanaki influences were central to the dynamics of
empire in this place and time.
Boudrot was one example of an Acadian who understood all of this
with evident clarity. He and Faneuil, by November 1693, were trading
partners of at least two and a half years' standing. Regarding the Eng-
lishness of Faneuil, a Huguenot refugee from France who had been nat-
uralized in 1687 and formally admitted to the colony of Massachusetts
some four years later, there could be no serious debate.3 Boudrot's sta-
tus was different. An Acadian trader from Port-Royal, thirty years old in
1693, he was one of those who had conducted an illegal trade during the
i68os, carrying furs, feathers, and some agricultural products to Boston
in return for textiles, manufactured goods, spices, and other commodi-
ties. Familiar as he was with New England - and the same applied in all
likelihood to his crew - it was the clear understanding of Hill and
FranckJyn that 'the said Boudroit [sic] and all his Mariners ... [were]
Frenchmen as they owned themselves to be.'4 Phips's contrary assertion
rested in part on the specific ground of his administration of an oath of
allegiance to a number of Port-Royal inhabitants in 1690, following his
successful raid on the chief Acadian settlement in the spring of that
year. Phips had claimed 'Port-Royal and places adjacent' as long-standing
possessions of the English Crown, and in the following year 'Nova
Scotia' had been added - along with all the territory southwestwards as
far as the tip of the old Province of Maine at the Piscataqua River - to
the colony of Massachusetts Bay. As far as Phips was concerned, Boudrot
and his crew were inhabitants of the Massachusetts colony, and Boudrot
for one had long acknowledged himself as 'included and under the
present Subjection of those parts to the Crowne of England.' 5
There was also a broader imperial and commercial context. Phips's
appointment as governor had depended crucially on his enlistment in
London of the support of influential members of the Whig mercantile
Sir William Phips and the Decentring of Empire 289

elite. On the basis of his success at Port-Royal, and of what he effectively


portrayed as the honourable failure of his attempt on Quebec later in
1690, Phips held out the promise of lucrative new trades in furs, naval
stores, and mineral products, which would flow from English control of
the great stretch of territories known severally to would-be colonizers
and commercial exploiters as Canada, Acadia/Nova Scotia, and north-
ern New England. There is good reason to believe too that Phips's per-
sonal ambitions ran much more in this direction than towards an
extended career as governor. The difficulty, however, lay in the ques-
tion of how control could be asserted over large areas that lacked any
English settlement or - in the case of northern New England - where
small English communities were overshadowed by the reality of the
superior military power of the Wabanaki. The St Lawrence valley, with
its substantial French population and well-defended centres at Quebec
and Montreal, presented a different problem. It was vulnerable, if at all,
only to a powerful military and naval assault, the mounting of which
remained for Phips a cherished but unfulfilled ambition. The gover-
nor's favoured strategy for the northeastern coastal territories, however,
was one of accommodation with the established non-English peoples,
both Acadian and aboriginal.
Phips's attempts to fashion an English sphere of influence and com-
mercial activity out of the unpromising state of English military weak-
ness and lack of settlement that characterized northern New England
and Acadia/Nova Scotia during the early 16908 had important impli-
cations. Paradoxes arose that stemmed not only from the inherent
difficulties of cross-cultural interaction but also from the constraints
imposed on the English side by its conduct of negotiations using termi-
nologies of allegiance and subjection that preserved the fiction of
English imperial control. More generally, in the context of increased
London-based merchant interest in the expansion of North American
trade, the colony of Massachusetts Bay, as defined in 1691, provides
an important illustration of the difficulties that resulted when areas
of potential commercial exploitation were far removed from areas of
English settlement, and of the inadequacy of the formal hierarchies of
empire to encompass the relationships that emerged with non-English
peoples. A full understanding of the complex processes of change that
were occurring in northeastern North America as the turn of the eigh-
teenth century approached can be attained only by attaching central
importance - as Phips did - to events in the large northeastern reaches
of the territory defined in the Massachusetts charter of 1691, rather than
2QO Emerson W. Baker and John G. Reid

by concentrating exclusively on the small southeastern corner that hap-


pened to contain the largest English settlements.*'
Sir William Phips's personal familiarity with the northeastern coast-
lines of New England was lifelong. Born and raised on a farmstead over-
looking the Sheepscot River, Phips was the son of a fur trader who was
also the only known English gunsmith on the Wabanaki coast during
the middle decades of the seventeenth century. The young William
Phips grew up with the company of the Wabanaki who were his close
neighbours and the trading partners of his father. His contemporary
and biographer, Cotton Mather, remarked in 'Pietas in Patriam' that
'his Birth and Youth in the East, had rendred him well known unto the
Indians there: he had Hunted and Fished many a weary Day in his Child-
hood with them' (Mather [1702] 1Q77, 337). To be sure, the relations of
Phips and his family with the Wabanaki did not remain untroubled. In
August 1676, during the Wabanaki-English conflict that corresponded
to King Philip's War in southern New England, the twenty-five-year-old
Phips fled hastily to Boston with a group of relatives and neighbours
when threatened by a Wabanaki raid. He never again took up perma-
nent residence in the region, although he was a frequent visitor to it
while governor. The young Phips was also undoubtedly well aware of the
French presence in Acadia. French military and trading activities at
Pentagoet were geographically separated from Phips's home only by a
short coastal voyage (Faulkner and Faulkner 1987, 25-9). Also, Phips
had been twenty years of age when a French military expedition had
received a surprisingly warm welcome in the Pemaquid-Kennebec set-
tlements. The English colonists, the French commander reported, had
shown 'visible joy to see Pentagouet and its territory in the hands of the
King [of France].'7
These impressions notwithstanding, the episode had no substantive
consequences affecting the rival English and French claims to the terri-
tory between the Penobscot and Kennebec Rivers. Yet the colonists'
friendly greetings, with Phips either a participant or close enough to be
fully and intimately aware of what had taken place, demonstrated that
unusual accommodations were not only possible but even necessary at
times, for the colonial residents of a region where English and French
claims rivalled one another but where the actual grip of either power on
the territory was feeble and depended ultimately on Aboriginal suffer-
ance. The abandonment of a strategy of accommodation at key points in
1675 and 1676 - in the form of English attempts to disarm the Wabanaki
in the Kennebec-Penobscot region -was a crucial element in precipitat-
Sir William Phips and the Decentring of Empire 291

ing the hostilities that resulted in the expulsion of Phips and his family.
These Indianes in these parts did never Apeare dissatisfied untill their
Armes wear Taken Away,' wrote the Pemaquid fur trader Thomas Gard-
ner to Governor John Leverett in September 1675, adding that 'I do not
find by Any thing I Can discerne that the Indianes East of us ar in the
least our Ennimies' (Maine Historical Soc. 1869-1916, 6: 92; Baker 1986,
184-200). In a region where the balance of coexistence was always deli-
cate and trust always fragile, neglect of the need for intercultural rela-
tionships to be nourished was often all that was required to prompt a
phase of hostility.
To be sure, Sir William Phips's next interaction with the non-English
peoples of the northeast initially showed no overt sign of conciliation.
During the late 16805, Phips had gained wealth and a knighthood
through his persistent and ultimately successful effort to find and sal-
vage the cargo of a sunken Spanish treasure galleon off the coast of His-
pianola. He had returned to New England shortly after the English
Revolution of 1688, after a prolonged absence in England and the Car-
ibbean that had been broken since 1683 only by two short sojourns in
Boston. Cultivated by both Increase and Cotton Mather, Phips eventu-
ally made a profession of faith that led to his admission on 23 March
1690 to membership of the younger Mather's North Church in Boston
(Mather [1702] 1977, 295-8). On the previous day, he had accepted the
command of a seaborne expedition against Acadia, precipitated not
only by the military setbacks encountered by the English at the hands of
the Wabanaki, with suspected French encouragement from Port-Royal,
but also by the news of successful French and Aboriginal raids on
Schenectady, New York, and Salmon Falls, New Hampshire. Phips's fleet
of seven vessels proceeded quickly to Port-Royal. There, Phips per-
suaded a demoralized governor, Louis-Alexandre Des Friches de
Meneval, to surrender on terms that were promptly broken by English
plundering of the Acadian settlement and its church.8
Notwithstanding the failure of Phips's next expedition - to Quebec
later in 1690 - the French imperial perspective would henceforward cast
him as a dangerous and vindictive foe. Meneval's complaints that Phips
had personally harassed him, even while Meneval was imprisoned in
New England, were relayed to England with a formal French protest and
were sufficient to produce a mild but distinct reprimand at the level of
the cabinet council: 'Sir William Phips to be spoke with about his usage
of the Governor of Port-royal.' Following Phips's arrival in New England
as governor in 1692, Governor Frontenac of New France commented
292 Emerson W. Baker and John G. Reid

that 'Phipps still intends to bend his efforts to come and visit us again
next year, which obliges me to take all precautions I can to give him a
good reception.'9
Yet, at Port-Royal in 1690, Phips left the custody of the English claim
to Nova Scotia in the hands of a council of Acadian inhabitants. The
president of the Acadian council was to be Charles La Tourasse, for-
merly a sergeant in the French garrison. Although La Tourasse was
described in his oath of office as appointed only by Phips and his advi-
sors, the five councillors were purportedly 'chosen by the Inhabitants of
port-Royal, L'Accadie or Nova-scotia ..., which choice is approved by the
Honourable Sr. William Phipps Knight..., with the advice of his Council.'
An oath of allegiance was administered to an unspecified number of the
residents of Port-Royal, and Phips made a parting gift to the president
and council of a list of instructions that enjoined them to report to the
Massachusetts governor 'from time to time how Matters are with you."0
The arrangement suffered an early setback, however, when a new
French commandant, Joseph Robinau de Villebon, removed the French
military headquarters to Fort Naxouat, in the valley of the St John River,
and there established a powerful centre of coordination between Native
and French military efforts against New England. The president of
Phips's Acadian council then quickly put himself under Villebon's
orders.'l
Phips encountered a further setback, as well as vociferous criticism,
when he led the expensive and disastrous attempt on Canada later in
1690. He defended himself effectively in London, however, and gained
powerful support. Crucial to this process were two of the Massachusetts
agents in England, Increase Mather and Sir Henry Ashurst. Mather
could offer his extensive network of relationships with dissenting clergy
and dissenting merchants in London and elsewhere, while Ashurst - a
Whig member of Parliament and a London alderman of long standing -
was the leading member of London's pre-eminent Presbyterian mer-
chant family. The promise of new North American trade was central to
their support of Ashurst and other City merchants.12
Thus Increase Mather's urging, in a pamphlet drafted in late March
1691 - at Ashurst's house and with Phips's participation - that a second
attempt should be mounted on Canada: 'His Majesties Subjects,' he
reminded his readers in language that associated economic advantage
with direct imperial control, 'have lately reduced the French in Acady
unto Obedience to the Crown of England: If the like should be done in
Canada, that would be worth Millions to the English Crown and Nation'
Sir William Phips and the Decentring of Empire 293

(Andros Tracts 1868-74, 2: 223-30). Similarly, on 18 April 1691, a petition


bearing the signatures of seventy-seven English merchants was person-
ally presented to William III by Mather. The petition supported the res-
toration of New England's charter rights - lost in 1684, but now under
renewed discussion following the Revolution of 1688 - and linked this
issue with the mounting of a new assault on Canada, 'thereby to enlarge
your Majesties Dominions to the Great Advantage of the Crowne and
English Nation."3
Brief as the petition was in its contents, it represented a tour de force
because of the signatures it carried. Among them were included mer-
chant families that were leading participants in a wide range of interna-
tional trading networks. Close family contacts of Ashurst - his brother
Sir William, a leading trader in Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean,
and his brother-in-law, the prominent Virginia trader Sir Thomas Lane
- joined in the petition with others such as the Levant merchant Sir
Humphrey Edwin and the future governor of the Bank of England Sir
Gilbert Heathcote. Each of those four was a future lord mayor of Lon-
don. In all, the petition represented a formidable show of strength by a
number of London's foremost Whig and Dissenting merchants at a time
when their increasing role as public creditors was adding political to
commercial potency (De Krey 1985; Olson 1992, 28; M. Hall 1988, 213;
Dickson 1967, ch. 1-3).
The momentum created by this petition carried Phips not only
through a crucial hearing of the Lords of Trade three days after its pre-
sentation, but ultimately - again with the assistance of Ashurst and
Mather - to appointment as the first governor of Massachusetts under
the new charter of 1691. As well, during the summer and autumn of
1691, Phips proposed a series of commercial schemes for the exploita-
tion of mineral, timber, and other resources within the territories from
the Piscataqua River east to Nova Scotia that were included within the
boundaries of Massachusetts.14 The difficulty that became evident when
he arrived in Boston as governor in May 1692 was that there was no sig-
nificant English presence in any of these areas. Instead, northeast of the
town of Wells, in the old province of Maine, they were firmly controlled
by Native inhabitants and were also subject to French influences radiat-
ing outwards from Villebon's headquarters.
From 1692 until the time of Phips's death in 1695, through no unwill-
ingness on the part of the governor, direct attacks were never mounted
on either Canada or Fort Naxouat. With respect to Canada, imperial
assistance was made available only for a planned naval assault in 1693,
294 Emerson W. Baker andjohn G. Reid

which was forestalled by a combination of the setbacks the fleet had


already experienced at the hands of the French in the Caribbean and
the outbreak of epidemic disease among the crews. Naxouat was well
defended and virtually inaccessible except by a difficult ascent of the St
John valley. Instead, New England's main military efforts were devoted
until the summer of 1693 to waging a raiding war against the Wabanaki
and to Phips's project for the building of Fort William Henry, a new and
powerful fort at Pemaquid.
In the meantime, Phips sought to reanimate the relationship with the
Acadian inhabitants that he had sought to establish in 1690. In a report
to London in early October 1692, he asserted that 'I have caused the
inhabitants of Port-Royal to renew their oath of allegiance to their
Majesties.'15 The slim basis for this statement was apparently an ambiv-
alent conversation between Port-Royal inhabitants and an English naval
captain, and yet in the area of trade it conformed with the statements of
at least some Acadians (Villebon 1934, 40-1). As early as May 1691, Abra-
ham Boudrot and Jean Martel had petitioned the Massachusetts council
for the freedom of trade promised by Phips in 1690, and owed to them,
they believed, by 'this place [Massachusetts], who ought to be their pro-
tectors.' Intermittent as formal communications were between Acadians
and New England during the ensuing years, claims based on Phips's
undertakings persisted even after his death. In late 1696, for example, a
Port-Royal cooper and merchant detained in Salem from sailing in a
new vessel he had built there, sought relief on the ground of his oath to
the English Crown. 'According to the promise made by Sir William
Phips to the Inhabitants of Port-Royal,' Pierre Lanoue petitioned Massa-
chusetts authorities that 'he may have the priviledge of one of his said
Majestys Subjects."()
Phips also claimed to have gained for the English Crown the alle-
giance of another of the non-English peoples of the northeastern
reaches of the Massachusetts colony as defined in 1691. The establish-
ment of the new Fort William Henry at Pemaquid, he reported to Lon-
don in early September 1693, had combined with the success of English
raiding warfare to prompt the Wabanaki to make peace in a treaty con-
cluded at Pemaquid on 11 August 1693 and signed by thirteen of the
leading sachems. Two who would further develop their relationship
with Phips were Madockawando, of the Penobscot, and Egeremet, of the
Kennebec. The terms set down were unprecedented in Wabanaki-
English relations, promising 'hearty subjection and obedience unto the
Crown of England' on behalf of'all the Indians belonging unto the sev-
Sir William Phips and the Decentring of Empire 295

eral rivers aforesaid [Penobscot, Kennebec, Androscoggin, Saco], and


of all other Indians ... from Merrimack River unto the most Easterly
bounds of [Massachusetts]."7
The Wabanaki treaty also had commercial implications, which Phips
tried unsuccessfully to turn to personal account by involving the planta-
tions secretary, William Blathwayt, in a fur-trading enterprise.'8 The gov-
ernor's personal acquisitiveness, and its bearing on matters of allegiance
and imperial consolidation, was demonstrated anew in the spring of
1694. During one of his frequent sojourns at Pemaquid, he purchased a
large tract of land from Madockawando, consisting principally of thou-
sands of acres of the St George River valley. The deed was witnessed by
Egeremet and by a cousin of Madockawando, Wenemoet, and was
accompanied by another the next day by which Sylvanus Davis - a politi-
cal associate of Phips - bought a nearby tract. The two deeds, chrono-
logically, represented an exception to the overwhelming concentration
of Wabanaki-English land transactions from the late 16408 to the mid-
16705; they were made final in a meeting held between Phips, Madock-
awando, Egeremet, and others on board an English warship anchored
in Pemaquid harbour. The French officer Claude-Sebastien de Villieu,
on the basis of what he had been told by a Wabanaki observer, reported
that 'the two Indians had come out, and going to the side of the vessel,
had thrown their hatchets into the sea, in order, so they said, to make it
impossible for them or their descendants to recover them again. After-
wards, the Governor gave them his hand in token of friendship, and
they drank one another's health, and went into the saloon where they
had supper."0
Ironically, however, the land transactions of 1694 provided the key to
the ignition of factional disputes among the Wabanaki that quickly
undermined the 1693 treaty. For several months, a group led by the
Penobscot sachem Taxous had been making little headway in French-
assisted efforts to induce other Wabanaki to break the peace. The news
of the land sales had what Villieu described as 'a wonderful effect,' in
that Madockawando and Egeremet had allowed the appearance - and
possibly the substance - of self-interest to taint their actions, in contrast
with the traditionally collective process for authorization of land trans-
actions by the sachems. Within three weeks, enough Penobscot warriors
had joined Taxous to induce Madockawando himself to agree to create
consensus by participating in raids on English settlements in the Piscat-
aqua region. Kennebec forces also took part, and the hostilities, for the
time being, brought an end to any prospect of stable Wabanaki-English
296 Emerson W. Baker and John G. Reid

accommodation.20 The lieutenant-governor of New Hampshire, John


Usher - a long-standing political opponent of Phips, but also now hard-
pressed by the Wabanaki offensive - was quick to condemn the 1693
treaty as 'the Notion of a peice, only to Carry on an Indian Trade.'21
The reality was more complex. In the cross-cultural context of
Wabanaki-English negotiations - notably at a time, as in 1693, when
both sides had good reason to seek an end to a costly and damaging
conflict - matters such as peace and trade could readily be discussed.
Trade stability and favourable prices had obvious attractions for
Wabanaki leaders who had had too much experience of abusive and dis-
orderly New England traders on their coast. Within months of the
treaty, Massachusetts legislation had outlawed such trade abuses, and,
according to a French report, the Wabanaki were being offered at
Pemaquid 'all the merchandise they required at the low prices current
in Boston.'22 More abstract questions such as sovereignty, submission,
and allegiance, however, were much more liable to be understood dif-
ferently by the two sides. Thus, when Phips took unorthodox steps
towards land acquisition in the following year, Wabanaki sensibilities
and priorities were quickly reasserted as taking precedence over the
agreement that Phips had misleadingly characterized as an acceptance
of allegiance. What had taken place in reality was a decentring of impe-
rial influence. A relationship had been negotiated, one that was essen-
tial for the maintenance of an English sphere of activity in Wabanaki
territory, but it remained subject to decisive repudiation if its conse-
quences were deemed unacceptable by a sufficiently powerful body of
Wabanaki opinion.
There were complexities too in the Acadian-New England relation-
ship, even as it was manifested in Phips's contacts with Abraham
Boudrot. On 4 December 1692, Villebon recorded in his journal that
Boudrot, 'in whom I have great confidence,' had volunteered that 'if I
would permit him to go to Boston under the pretext of trading, he
would, by the end of March at latest, bring me reliable news of what was
going on' (Villebon 1934, 44-5). Boudrot's motives are impossible to
evaluate fully. The trading that he portrayed to Villebon as a pretext was
no doubt for him, in view of his earlier commercial activities, at least
partly an end in itself. Nevertheless, he was a productive spy. Although
his first information-gathering voyage took longer than expected, he
was able to report to Villebon on 3 June 1693 not only on Boston but
also on the newly completed Fort William Henry, which he had visited
apparently in the company of Phips (Villebon 1934, 47).
Sir William Phips and the Decentring of Empire 297

In the following year, Villebon reported to France on the unrest


being caused in Massachusetts by the burdens of war taxation. 'I
obtained information' the commandant noted - not naming his infor-
mant, but describing him in the terms he habitually applied to Boudrot
- 'from a settler of Port-Royal whom 1 had sent to Boston, and who
returned a month ago; he had made a pretence of attaching himself to
Sir William Phips so that he might more easily become acquainted with
his views.'a;< For all that, Phips himself took some pride in his Acadian
sources of information, as on the occasion in April 1693 that he
reported to the Lords of Trade on the departure of two French naval
vessels for France, 'as I am informed from Port-Royal.' In the period
immediately after Phips's governorship - he died in office in early 1695
- regular intelligence was being provided to New England on French
shipping by Charles Melanson, whose brother Peter was by this time
Villebon's 'captain of the coast.' To add to the complexities of the situa-
tion, Melanson - who was Boudrot's father-in-law - promised in one let-
ter of early 1696 to the Massachusetts lieutenant-governor, William
Stoughton, that 'if I doe know any news more I shall informe your hon-
neur by abraham boudrot and my brother in law for they hope to goe to
Boston this spring with two [trading] vessells.'24
Yet, even accepting that information travelled in both directions and
sometimes by the same carriers, Boudrot's reports to Villebon were
exceptionally damaging to Phips's aspirations for the northeastern por-
tions of greater Massachusetts. Following a second visit by Boudrot to
Fort William Henry in 1694, Villebon sent to France a detailed plan for
the seizure of the fort, based not on a direct seaborne assault but on the
dispatch of land forces along a wagon trail that joined the fort with a
point on the harbour some two miles distant. This approach was quickly
approved by Versailles, and it proved its value in August 1696, when the
fort - boastfully described by Phips in 1693 as 'Sufficient to resist all the
Indians in america' - capitulated to a French and Wabanaki force after
a short siege. The exact extent to which this English disaster was precip-
itated by Boudrot's intelligence is impossible to estimate. The fort had
also been reconnoitred by a French officer 'deguise en Sauvage,' and in
any case had its own faults of design and construction. Nevertheless, the
value attached by Villebon to Boudrot's observations was self-evident in
his plan of attack.-'5 The ultimate significance of Boudrot's successful
espionage was not that it represented any archetypical example of an
Acadian response to the blandishments of a governor such as Phips.
Acadian responses to English imperial thrusts over the years had been
298 Emerson W. Baker and John G. Reid

too varied and complex for that. Rather, the necessity for Phips to make
accommodations with Acadian economic and political leaders - who
faced pressures also from French imperial officials, and had experience
in manoeuvring among ambiguities - illustrated the limitations on the
English sphere of activity. The fall of Pemaquid was a visible setback, but
the phenomenon from which Boudrot's role arose was the decentring
effect on English imperial influence that stemmed from the inde-
pendent goals and activities of Acadians on whom Phips necessarily
depended for commercial and strategic reasons.
By the summer of the year after Phips's death, therefore, the persis-
tence of trading contacts between the Acadians and New England could
not obscure the reality that allegiance had proved to be an easier con-
cept to put down on paper than to induce in the lived experience of
non-English peoples. Phips's defence in 1693 of the Englishness of Abra-
ham Boudrot suggested a naivety of approach, even though in all likeli-
hood Boudrot remained the only contemporary fully able to savour its
irony. The renewal of hostilities with the Wabanaki in 1694 led to a strik-
ing acknowledgment of Native military power by Phips's successor, the
Earl of Bellomont, who reported ruefully to London in 1700 that any-
general alliance of northeastern Aboriginal peoples would be sufficient
'in a short time to drive us quite out of this Continent.' 20 It also sig-
nalled the failure of Phips's plans for greater Massachusetts, plans that
were being further undermined by the espionage activities of Boudrot,
and would be conclusively and conspicuously ruined after the gover-
nor's death by the fall of Fort William Henry.
In a wider imperial context, Phips's failure was not as clear-cut, either
in straightforward military terms or in terms of the geopolitical realities
facing English colonial activity. The military question was simple
enough: Phips never ceased to urge the conquest of Canada, not only as
being 'worth Millions to the Englishe Nation' but also as the sole ulti-
mate source of strategic security for Massachusetts.27 Phips was aware
that arrangements made with either Acadians or Wabanaki had an
inherent element of instability as long as imperial rivalries persisted
between Canada and New England. Thus, the failure of those arrange-
ments must be understood in the context that they were intended to be
followed by a further military thrust, which did not materialize.
More generally, Sir William Phips grappled during the early 16905
with problems that were to become increasingly acute for British imperi-
alism during the eighteenth century. The harnessing together of com-
mercial and strategic objectives, which became so evident following the
Sir William Phips and the Decentring of Empire 299

Revolution of 1689 and of which the support of Phips and Mather by


leading City merchants in 1691 was an early indication, implied that
English (then British) hegemony would be asserted over large areas of
North America, and eventually over large areas elsewhere in the world,
where there was little if any British settlement. The financial revolution
that created both the 'military-Fiscal state' defined by John Brewer and
the connections between landed and monied interests embodied in the
'gentlemanly capitalism' of P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, was in its early
days during Phips's lifetime (Brewer 1989, 137-54; Cain and Hopkins
1993, 22-9, 58-64) -28
Even so, the expanding roles of the state and of the monied interests
that were the sources of public credit were already perceptible. Crucially
lacking, however, were the tools to resolve the paradoxes that could arise
where imperial expansion confronted the well-entrenched positions of
non-English peoples, whether Aboriginal or colonial. English imperial-
ism in the Americas had centred largely on the establishment of colonies
of settlement. In such contexts, interactions with Aboriginal inhabitants
were relatively straightforward, involving the definition of territories
where English domination was established by force of numbers. Periph-
eral areas of more marginal settlement existed, as the province of Maine
had been throughout much of the seventeenth century, but English
experience in the Americas did not encompass the variety of informal
arrangements with Aboriginal peoples that was accommodated under
what W.J. Eccles has described as 'the 'Janusian" - two-faced - attitude of
the French towards the Indians at that time: tell Europeans - friends or
foes - one thing, and the Indians something quite different, or nothing
at all' (Eccles 1984, 485; see also White 1991).
In seeking to extract expressions of allegiance from non-English
inhabitants, therefore, Phips worked with the tools that he had. Yet Mas-
sachusetts under the charter of 1691 was a colony of greater complexity
than historians have normally recognized. While it retained certain
characteristics of a colony of settlement, notably in the areas that
immediately surrounded Massachusetts Bay itself, it was geographically
dominated by territories in which English hegemony had yet to be con-
vincingly asserted. Demands for allegiance, in those circumstances,
might be greeted without animosity - though with different cultural per-
ceptions - by Acadians or Wabanaki who were willing to enter into a
relationship, commercial or otherwise, with New England. Such rela-
tionships, however, required what was for imperial purposes a danger-
ous level of dependence on non-English peoples and individuals.
3OO Emerson W. Baker and John G. Reid

Purported expressions of allegiance were eminently reportable to Lon-


don, either to imperial officials or to merchants such as Ashurst and his
cohorts, who sought a hospitable environment for exploitation of natu-
ral resources. To pretend that they denoted a submissive spirit was
tempting but ultimately unsustainable. At one level, this was the trap
into which Phips fell, and the fatal flaw in his approach to the territories
of northern New England and Acadia/Nova Scotia that were so crucial
to his personal and imperial aspirations.
At another level, Phips did at least recognize the need for negotiated
solutions. To an extent unreported to London, the purported expres-
sions of allegiance disguised the assumption of reciprocal obligations
that were more nuanced, more balanced, more personal - and more
delicate - in nature. These linkages are glimpsed not so much in formal
documentation as in the fragmentary evidence of personal exchanges:
in Phips on the deck of a naval frigate in a companionable group with
Madockawando and Egeremet, in the governor's visceral defence of
Boudrot and Faneuil. When Phips asserted the Englishness of Abraham
Boudrot, he did not know that Boudrot had already reported to Ville-
bon on the weaknesses of Fort William Henry and would do so again. In
that sense, Phips was deceived and outwitted. On the other hand, in rec-
ognizing that a widespread English sphere of influence in northeastern
North America could be fashioned - at least for the time being - only
through a negotiated relationship with 'English men' of the kind Phips
supposed Boudrot to be, he was not seriously mistaken. If every attempt
at a commercial or strategic advance for English interests implied a fur-
ther decentring of empire, this was a paradox that Phips's personal
background and mercantile associations enabled him to live with com-
fortably enough. It formed, however, an ambiguous legacy to succeed-
ing colonial governors and to the Acadian and Wabanaki leaders of later
generations.

NOTES

1 Great Britain, Public Record Office (hereafter PRO), CO5/858, no. 42(1),
12-13, Deposition of William Hill and Henry Francklyn, 10 September 1694.
2 This dispute is fully explored in Baker and Reid 1998, 223-31.
3 'List of Persons of the French nation admitted into the Colony by the Gover-
nor and Councill,' l February 1691, cited in Drake 1856, 536n; and Bosher
1995. However, for evidence of concern that French spies might have been
Sir William Phips and the Decentring of Empire 301

concealed among Huguenot refugees, see also Order, 25 December 1691,


Massachusetts Archives (hereafter MA), General Court Records, 6, 1689-98,
209-10.
4 PRO, €05/858, No. 42 (i), 12-13, Deposition of William Hill and Henry
Francklyn, 1O September 1694; see also Daigle 1976; Arsenault 1978, 2: 442.
5 PRO, CO5/855, No. 109, 9, Journal of the Proceedings in the Late Expedi-
tion to Port-Royal, 1690; PRO, CO5/9O5, 298-352, Charter of Massachusetts
Bay, 7 October 1691; Petition of Jean Martel and Abraham Boudrot, 6 May
1691, MA, vol. 37, 23.
6 In the arguments that follow, there are a number of works to which we owe
more than will necessarily be indicated by specific citations. They include:
Brewer 1989; Cain and Hopkins 1993; Daigle 1975; Dickson 1967; Greene
1994; R.Johnson 1991; Olson 1992; Stone 1994. We build too on our own
earlier studies: Baker 1986, and Reid 1981.
7 France, Archives des colonies (hereafter AC), Ci lA, 3, 187-8, Talon to
Jean-Baptiste Colbert, ll November 1671; see also Reid 1983.
8 PRO, CO5/855, No. 109, 3-6, 15, Journal of the Proceedings in the Late
Expedition, 1690.
9 Great Britain, Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on the Manuscripts
of Allan George Finch, Esq., 3: 389, Cabinet Council Minutes, 30 April 1691;
Frontenac to Minister of Marine, 15 September 1692, AC, Cl lA, 12, f. 27.
10 PRO, CO5/855, No. log, (i, 11-12, 14-15, Journal of the Proceedings in the
Late Expedition.
11 See Villebon to Chevry, [ 1690], in Villebon 1934, 24; and Villebon, Journal
of Acadia,' December 1692 (44-5).
12 On Mather's network, see Cressy 1987, 272-4; M. Hall 1988, 212-21; Olson
1992, 45, 49. On the Ashursts, see De Krey 1985, 89-90.
13 Petition of Several Merchants, [18 April 1691], MA, 37, 7.
14 PRO, SP44/235, 170, Proceedings on the Petition of Sir William Phips et al,
13 August 1691; PRO, 005/856, No. 183, Petition of New England Agents,
27 August 1691; PRO, 00391/7, 42, Journal of Lords of Trade, 2 September
1691; PRO, COs/856, No. 184; Phips to Lords of Trade, [2 September 1691];
PRO, 005/905, 298-352, Charter of Massachusetts, 7 October 1691.
15 Williamsburg, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library, William Blathwayt
Papers (hereafter CWBP), Vol. 5, Folder l, Phips to William Blathwayt, 12
October 1692.
16 Villebon 1934, 40-1; Petition of Jean Martel and Abraham Boudrot, 6 May
1691, MA, 37, 23; Petition of Pierre Lanoue, [i December 1696], MA, 2, 582.
17 PRO, 005/751, No. 37 (i), Submission and Agreements of the Eastern
Indians, 11 August 1693; PRO, 005/751, No. 37 (iv), Articles Signed by Sir
302 Emerson W. Baker and John G. Reid

William Phips to the Eastern Indians, ll August 1693; PRO, 005/751,


No. 37, Phips to the Earl of Nottingham, 11 September 1693.
18 CWBP, Vol. 5, Folder l, Phips to Blathwayt, ll September, 3 October 1693;
PRO, 005/857, No. 95, Petition of Sir William Phips, [3 October 1693].
19 Account of a Journey Made by Monsieur de Villieu, 8 June 1694, in Villebon
1934, 62; Maine Historical Society (1887-1910), 10: 237.
20 Journal of Villieu, June 1694, in Villebon 1934, 60-3; on the more normal
Wabanaki processes for land sales, see Baker 1989, 252-3.
21 PRO, CO5/924, No. 40 (i), John Usher to William Stoughton, 28 July 1694.
22 An Act for Giving Necessary Supplies to the Eastern Indians, and for Regulat-
ing of Trade with them, Massachusetts [1692-9] 1978, 173-4; Villebon to
Pontchartrain, 2O August 1694, in Villebon 1934, 67. On the earlier incidents
of disorderly trade, see Baker 1986, 136, 144-5, 184-5.
23 Villebon 1934, 72; for evidence of Boudrot's continued gathering of informa-
tion in Boston after Phips's departure and death, see Villebon 1934, 77.
24 Phips to Lords of Trade, 3 April 1693, PRO, CO5/857, No. 46; Villebon 1934,
46; Charles Melanson to [William Stoughton], 5 February 1696, MA, 2,
587-8; Arsenault 1978, 2: 687; Daigle 1975, 139-50. It is not clear which of his
wife's three brothers is referred to by Melanson; see Arsenault 1978, 2: 524-5.
25 Villebon 1934, 67-71; AC, CuD, 2, 22O, Projet pour I'Entreprise de Peincuit,
1694; AC, B, 17, 123-31, Minister to Villebon, 16 April 1695; PRO, 005/751,
No. 37, Phips to Nottingham, 11 September 1693; Williams 1987, 20-1.
26 PRO, CO5/861, No. 31, Bellomont to Lords of Trade, 20 April 1700.
27 CWBP, Vol. 5, Folder i, Phips to Blathwayt, 12 October 1692.
28 The term 'financial revolution' is owed, of course, to Dickson, 1967.
PARTY
Afterword
This page intentionally left blank
Amerindians and the Horizon of
Modernity
Denys Delage and Jean-Philippe Warren

The essays gathered in this volume demonstrate that the complex his-
tory of the encounter between the Amerindian peoples and the Euro-
pean nations cannot be reduced to two or three formulas, in the way
still attempted not so long ago in textbooks on Canadian history. This is
why the achievement of the essays nevertheless calls for caution when it
comes time to draw conclusions, to develop certain lines of argument,
or to account for the reflections they generate. No afterword can be
exhaustive, but as sociologists we can at least attempt an analysis of the
global significance of these studies.
In doing so, we willingly expose ourselves to the critique of historians
who are apprehensive about grand generalizations. Instead of exploit-
ing the customary ways of thinking about the Renaissance, we have cho-
sen to emphasize those general traits and tendencies of European and
indigenous societies that were in opposition and to illuminate the prin-
cipal paradigms necessary for the understanding of that centuries-long
difference. We follow, in this regard, the tradition of Max Weber, who
constructed an idealized concept of the 'Protestant ethic,' beyond all
the contingencies of the emergence of specific protestantisms, or that of
Marcel Mauss, writing on the Gift, a concept that transcends the infinite
number of actual forms of exchange. It is important to characterize as
broadly as possible what - beginning with the Renaissance - has distin-
guished western Europe from the rest of the world. Similarly, it is just as
important to identify the Renaissance's 'logic' - its basic ethos, core
tenets, central thrust, defining features, and its world historical signifi-
cance - apart from the lengthy processes and conditions of its emer-

*Translated by Genevieve Zubrzycki.


306 Denys Delage and Jean-Philippe Warren

gence. If the Renaissance presented a rupture in the history of


humanity, the nature of this break must be specified, since it still con-
fronts us today with some of the most fundamental debates in the
humanities. Here we can begin to list the issues and formulate the ques-
tions most central to a decentring of the Renaissance. First is the issue of
cultural relativism and the concept of 'progress.' Does the Renaissance
mark a step forward for humanity, like the invention of writing or of
iron-work? Does answering this question in the affirmative contradict
the fundamentalist form of cultural relativism, a relativism that would
obscure the unavoidable converging movement of human societies?
Second, there is the issue of identity, and its relationship to modernity,
for the indigenous peoples of past and present. Is the act of adopting
modernity a betrayal of one's culture? Third, beyond the texture of
detail that characterizes historical writing, is it important to evaluate, as
responsible citizens, the legacy of the past? What do we reject, and what
do we accept and adopt, from a tradition of conquest and interaction,
of manipulation and understanding, that characterizes the shock of
encounter for so-called 'traditional' and 'modern' societies?
The Renaissance has not only left us brilliantly sculpted marbles and
paintings in which the purity of forms is married with a sumptuous
style; it also established a civilizing process to which the whole of
humanity is still subjected, dragged along in a movement of global ques-
tioning punctuated over five centuries by revolutions in rapid succes-
sion. The Renaissance movement appeared in Northern Italy among
princes, thinkers, merchants, and artists, and spread spatially through-
out western Europe and socially to other classes before eventually reach-
ing America and the rest of the world. The destiny of the West was
played out on the ships of explorers such as Magellan or with the horses
of conquistadores such as Cortez. The Renaissance brought about,
sometimes in spite of itself, although most of the time consciously, the
fatal combustion of the societies it was reaching. The conquest of the
Americas was, to a large extent, the result of technical advances such as
gunpowder and sophisticated weapons - no one today would deny this
fact, given the enormity and the barbarity of the massacres that accom-
panied it. But if the Renaissance had been that alone, it would not be of
great interest, just as it is not worth lingering over the descent of the
nomadic Huns on the Roman Empire and the ruins these population
movements created at the time. The encounter of the Old and New
Worlds raises an important question, which requires the gathering of
materials in order to answer it, since this encounter was in fact that of
Amerindians and the Horizon of Modernity 307

two worlds, and not that of two halves of the same world, or of three or
four different worlds. This encounter is thus different from the violent
confrontation of two Australian tribes or from that of two sixteenth-
century European 'nations.' During the age of the great discoveries and
of the formation of colonial empires, Europe's encounter with Africa,
Asia, and America was that of a modern world, emerging from the
Renaissance, with worlds obviously extremely different from each other
but nevertheless all pre-Renaissance and premodern. These worlds have
been referred to by anthropologists and sociologists in various ways that
reflect the same reality, whether Claude Levi-Strauss's famous distinc-
tion between cold and hot societies (Charbonnier [1961] 1969, 37-48)
or, closer in time, Michel Freitag's distinction between societies with
'culture-symbolic' and 'politico-institutional' modes of reproduction
(Freitag 1986).
Traditionally, the Middle Ages appears to us in the form of a society
cemented by deeply rooted traditions (familial, professional, religious,
feudal) and kept together by a cosmological explanation of the world in
which the terrestrial order emulates the celestial order, the carrier of all
knowledge of beings and of things. Doubt is frowned upon, and the
answers to conflicts and tensions are found in the sacred books. Truth
about the world is revealed in the Bible, with the consequence - surpris-
ing from our modern perspective - that all commentary on humankind
and nature takes place within the confines of sacred discourse. That a
rationalist tradition existed in parallel, reaching back into the Greek
classics, should not lead us to downplay the omnipresence and omnipo-
tence of the theological universe. Born of divine irradiation, man, like
all beings, was part of a universe of heavenly forces. The mystic Hilde-
gard of Bingen had clearly depicted the celestial hierarchy by drawing a
series of concentrical circles with man at the centre, followed by the
earth, then around it the seven heavens and lastly the integrative and
subsuming figure of God.
The Renaissance broke with the medieval order and destroyed its
frameworks; the cosmos became a mute and insignificant nature that
man could transform into an instrument of his power (Bloch [1977]
1994, 6-9). Without clearly breaking with theology or the concept of
God, the Renaissance thus brought us closer to humankind, whose exist-
ence would now be conceived as historical - that is, inscribed in time, in
a specific context, and in flux, but also in terms of the consequences of
its own actions. The notions of liberty and free will, as well as that of
humanity's capacity to exercise creative power over nature, upon the
308 Denys Delage and Jean-Philippe Warren

world, thus emerged. With the Renaissance, everything becomes possi-


ble (Koyre 1973, 12). From then on, it was possible to conceive that
besides a world of mystery, in which human knowledge is constrained by
insurmountable limits, there exists another one without curbs or con-
straints, where intellectual activity opens the door to concrete knowl-
edge of the world. Medieval unity is dissolved in a decentring move-
ment, and we observe revealing signs of this dissolution in the various
spheres of human activity (Cassirer [1927] 1983, 11-103).
In painting, for example, a transformation becomes obvious with the
development of perspective, which structures the pictorial space from
the point of view of the spectator - that is, from the subject's point of
view. This decentring is also evident in the political, social, religious,
cosmological, and geographical spheres, in a series of significant frag-
mentations. We observe political fragmentation with the abandonment
of the old imperial dream of a pan-European unity; the fragmentation
of a coherent social universe with the rise of the bourgeoisie and the
progressive dismantling of a society divided in three orders, peasants,
lords, and priests; the fragmentation of religious unity with the dazzling
beginnings of the Reformation and the subsequent proliferation of
'heretical,' dissident, and heterodox sects; and the fragmentation of cos-
mological unity with Copernicus's heliocentrism - the idea of a centre
itself loses its meaning, since even the sun is part of a galactic immensity
imagined without end or frontiers. Lastly, there is a geographical frag-
mentation, with the failure of the old spatial representation of the world
with Europe at its centre and at the periphery monsters, dragons, and
barbarous peoples. Historians have minutely detailed the process of
these great fragmentations that decentre, each in its own way, the old
medieval unity. But this movement has extended even into our times:
after the Darwinian revolution (humankind is no longer the centre of
creation), Freud's psychoanalytic revolution brought about yet another
decentring, at the individual level (conscience is no longer the centre of
the subject).
But in spite of this general movement of decentring, there exists a yet
more radical and more definitive ^centring that the Renaissance aspires
to create. The diversity and variety of new forms are conceived as the
development of a unique creative force. The eighteenth century
referred to this force as 'Reason' (Cassirer [1932] 1970, 41). Thus in a
way, the Renaissance introduces modernity by making conceivable a
society where culture and institutions could be redefined according to
the unwavering and indisputable authority of reason instead of accord-
Amerindians and the Horizon of Modernity 309

ing to the contingent and arbitrary norms inherited by tradition.


Although Pascal was sceptical of the power of such a transformation, on
the whole thinkers and politicians were not worried by a project that
allowed them to build a better society on the ruins of an old world
through a 'truer' - that is, objective - knowledge of the world.
Now, what is specific to reason is that it makes explicit the constructed
character of culture by making each thing an object of investigation and
of analysis. So-called archaic societies certainly know culture's double-
sidedness - through myth, for example - but in contrast to modern
societies, they receive culture as a fact of eternity that transcends the lim-
its of knowledge. Reason, however, since it is constitutive of human
nature, allows man to objectivize himself; in other words, it allows the sub-
ject of reason to become-to himself-an object (Dumont 1968). Man can
thus become an object to himself in two intimately linked ways, which rep-
resent, mutatis mutandis, the two faces of modernity. When humanity, cul-
ture, and modernity become objects of comprehension, we observe the
blossoming of natural sciences with Galileo and Newton, and of philoso-
phy and of law with, among others, Hobbes, Montesquieu, and Rousseau,
who initiate a lineage of thinkers elevating liberty, equality, and fraternity
above old tyrannies of class and race. Yet at the same time man, culture,
and nature become objects of manipulation. The important technologi-
cal advances of modernity are used not only in the extraction and exploi-
tation of primary resources, but also - indeed, primarily- to accomplish
the alienation and enslavement of entire populations. This is how moder-
nity was constituted, as an oscillation between these two modes of appro-
priation of the world; and it is precisely this tension that characterizes the
first explorers' encounters with the Amerindian peoples.

Modernity and New France

What is it that we can explain in the history of New France by employing


such a conception of modernity? In which ways does New France
present an original configuration and balance of modernity's two objec-
tivizing tendencies? Why did the North American colony under the
French Empire follow a trajectory so radically different from, for exam-
ple, French Algeria? The answer to the first question follows from the
specific fact that cultural mediation with Amerindian peoples was neces-
sary for the exploitation of American natural resources. In other words,
in order to become objects of manipulation, these peoples first had to
become objects of comprehension for colonial powers.
gio Denys Delage and Jean-Philippe Warren

The missionary power, in order to better evangelize these supposedly


idolatrous tribes, had to learn Amerindian languages. Missionaries
wrote grammars and dictionaries, and often discovered a natural sympa-
thy for peoples whose origins and cultures at first inspired prejudice.
Missionaries found in certain Huron, for example, 'fine dialecticians'
and powerful orators and philosophers. By the time he died, Father Le
Jeune would maintain that besides God, everything was relative (Jesuit
Relations [1610-1791] 1896-1901 [hereafter/R] 44: 276-309). Marie de
1'Incarnation, although a cloistered nun, adapted herself to local mores
and learned Algonquin and Huron in order to teach to her 'little sav-
ages' (Guyart [1626-72] 1971, 177, 202, 230, 718, 802, 962-3; Delage,
1992, 162). Missionaries had left Europe with the idea that they were
going to live among primitive and barbaric tribes, but it was in their own
culture that they actually discovered ridiculous mores, shameful social
ideas, and clearly amoral policies. Thus, they sometimes ended up sub-
scribing to Montaigne's view, according to which what we call barbarism
is in fact that which is simply not our own custom (Montaigne [1580]
1962, i: 230-45).
As for the royal power, it doubly needed an alliance with the Amerin-
dians. First of all, European cartographers borrowed virtually all their
knowledge from the Native peoples, even copying their maps. Second,
in the wars against other colonial powers, the Crown understood how
vital was the need for good relations with Native peoples. When French
and then Anglo-Amerindian alliances were made, the different diplo-
matic forms were borrowed largely from indigenous ways and traditions.
The royal power respected the rites of the alliances, going so far as to
declare itself ready to conciliate degrees of freedom in the interpreta-
tion Amerindians would make of alliances the French would have
wished to be more coercive. The commercial power also had to let
young people grow up in tribes in order to learn the language, the tech-
niques, and the commercial networks of Native peoples. Given that,
before the conquest of New France in 1759, 75 per cent of the colony's
exports came from the fur trade, it was essential that this trade be orga-
nized, and to accomplish this it. was necessary to gain the favour of those
who were hunting and trading furs, the Amerindians.
No one asserts - indeed, everything leads us to believe the contrary -
that if French colonization had continued, a precarious balance would
have been maintained between 'co-opted' and 'dominated' Amerindi-
ans, to use the conceptual framework described above. If domination
in certain cases led to an understanding of the Amerindians (which
Amerindians and the Horizon of Modernity 311

happened more often than is usually acknowledged), as a general rule


this very understanding provided only a basis for the domination of pop
ulations and the conquest of territories. Yet ways of life on both sides
had been made relative by the comparison with the Other. Many essays
in this volume provide examples of men and women who crossed
frontiers and dared to leave the paths prescribed by their culture. We
witness Champlain succeeding where Cartier had failed because the
former had managed to make the Amerindians his allies instead of con-
sidering them like beasts to conquer. Did not the Basques also succeed
at the same enterprise? Pierre Boucher surely symbolizes a life in which
the North American experience meant multilingualism, miscegenation,
and fascination with nature. And, in another area, didn't Sir William
Phips understand that the empire's expansion required the redefinition
of collective membership on other bases than that of ethnicity? Many
Native people also lived in both worlds: Pastedechouan the Montagnais,
Kondiaronk the Huron, Tecumseh the Shawnee are a few representa-
tive examples.
Nevertheless, in spite of the Amerindians' great reflexive capacities, it
was the Europeans who developed an ethnographic perspective (and an
ethnographic literature) on Amerindians, as they had on peoples from
Antiquity or from other continents. This led to descriptions and compar-
isons for which the objectivization of culture was essential. Everything
became an object of discussion for observers who conceived society as a
modifiable, transformable, and manipulable given. The councils of the
Amerindians might furnish the basis of a conception of the republic, or
the ways in which they raised their children might inspire Rousseau's view
of a less coercive education. In each case, this was possible thanks to the
idea that Amerindian culture, like Western culture, was a human product
that reason could analyse. In North America, the encounter between
these two worlds amplified the process of realization of the modern
project. But if the encounter with Native people, with their difference
and with the criticisms they addressed to Western culture, fed the ques-
tioning of manners, religious and secular beliefs, and Western institu-
tions, it nevertheless did not interrogate the fundamental relationship:
the colonial one. Colonial societies have seldom contemplated melting
into Amerindian societies. The Amerindian has always been judged as
barbarous, often primitive, childlike, and lazy- in other words, incapable
of full autonomy outside the control and supervision of the church or the
state. In addition, modernity has provided all the justifying arguments to
augment the religious ones: 'natural' servitude, the right to discover and
$12 Denys Delage and Jean-Philippe Warren

conquer, the duty to work, private property, the 'survival of the fittest,'
and so on. In short, the objectivization of culture has made possible the
desire to eliminate the Other as Other, as well as the desire to be open to
the Other (Simard 1988, 83).
Despite this history, modernity is not definable in a purely negative
form. It is not a cultural matrix without culture; it rather allows society
to explicitly rework cultural symbols and practices that constitute that
society's past and the basis of its future. Modernity adds to the concep-
tion of culture as heritage the conception of culture as project. If the
encounter of both worlds leads Amerindians to a certain cultural relativ-
ism, they are nevertheless not generally inclined to critique their own
culture; they do not distance themselves from it in order to objectivize
it, whereas this is precisely what Europeans do. The transformations in
the Renaissance mode of thought, and the intense cultural variation
resulting from colonial expansion, had prepared Europeans for the
objectivization of cultures, including their own. Europeans, as a result,
have mastered the manipulation of cultures to their own ends.
Two contradictory processes seem to be simultaneously at play here,
which in great part explains why, while cultural relativism facilitates
Western domination, at the same time it prevents Amerindians from
adopting a distance from their own culture. Why was it so difficult for
them to appropriate the Renaissance, and how could they move from
being the object of the Renaissance to its subject in the colonial con-
text? In addition to the fact that Amerindian modes of thought were
quite different from those of the Renaissance, it is historically via the
colonial process that the Renaissance reached Amerindian peoples, and
for that reason the Renaissance is intimately associated with the powers
that sought to enslave them. Both the colonized and the colonizer
see what the other attempts to hide: Amerindians do not formulate a
critique of their own culture but criticize the colonial relationship,
whereas the European blindly does the opposite.

Historiography and the Colonial Legacy in the Age of


Political Correctness

It is important for contemporary historians, regardless of their ethnic


background, to refuse the paradigms stemming from the colonial heri-
tage. Historians must take a step further in the work of deconstruction
and objectivization initiated by the Renaissance by breaking with anach-
ronism and ethnocentrism. Breaking with anachronism implies making
Amerindians and the Horizon of Modernity 313

the effort to understand a bygone epoch for itself, in its own logic, while
recognizing that one can do this only from one's own epoch. The same
logic, of course, applies to the study of other cultures. This is what the
studies in this volume have undertaken. Some have insisted on the
necessity of using all sources - not only written archives but also mate-
rial traces from the past revealed by archaeology as well as the memories
available to us through oral traditions. Many have insisted on the broad-
ening of geographical perspectives and diffusion networks, on compari-
sons, and on the interaction between micro and macro perspectives.
Others have proposed ways of reading sources, have proceeded to the
analysis of mental categories, or have proposed to characterize the
nature of the relationship to the Other: negation, segregation, observa-
tion, fusion, juxtaposition, interaction, and so on. These relations have
varied depending on the historical periods, the colonies, and the indi-
viduals involved; they have given rise to conquests, alliances, failures,
discoveries of all sorts, identity transformations, and the definition of
new ways of attaining knowledge. Brother Sagard, for example, built his
Huron dictionary around semantic networks rather than in alphabetical
order; Vaughan promoted the colonization of Newfoundland for strictly
socio-economic reasons rather than for religious motives.
This book is thus part of the recent reorientation of colonial history
that deconstructs the perspective of the actors - indeed, investigates all
actors (not only the colonists) - as well as analyzing the interaction and
influence among and between individual and collective actors, so as to
situate them in their historical contemporaneity. This last aspect is the
most problematic. The various actors, although contemporaries, are
participating in different temporal universes: a merchant's temporality
is not that of a self-sufficient peasant; the more cyclical temporality of
hunter-gatherers is different from the concept of time in colonial socie-
ties. Moreover, even though they are contemporaries, the 'partners' are
not equals. Europeans have three advantages over Amerindians: their
greater epidemiological resistance, their connection to centralized
states, and the Renaissance's legacy of objectification. History must
resist the temptation, in the name of political correctness, to deny these
inequalities and the relations of domination characteristic of past centu-
ries in the name of present-day idealizations.
The issue of biases intrinsic to written sources is related to these
broader questions. It is much easier to write the history of the Jesuits
than that of the Capuchins because the former have left writings behind
them, whereas the latter have not. The same is true for the history of
314 Denys Delage and Jean-Philippe Warren

upper classes and Europeans, as opposed to that of lower classes and


Amerindians. Because of the availability of materials, the history of
Native peoples will always be much less the history of the relationships of
Amerindians among themselves than the history of their relationship
with 'whites.' Regardless of its wealth, oral history will never be able to fill
this hole completely because it is related to another system, and neither
its structure nor its functions are analogous to those of the written his-
tory of the post-Renaissance period. How can history as a discipline deal
with the myths of traditional Native societies? In the same manner that it
does with the myths of all peoples, be they Celtic, Germanic, or English
from the Middle Ages: by objectivizing them, by uncovering their systems
of meanings in order to understand the mental universe and the cos-
mology which inhabit them. We need to leave behind the ideal of the
equivalence of two different systems of thought. For example, medical
knowledge stemming from contemporary Western scientific botany bor-
rowed from the knowledge of all the peoples of the world, but very often
by overshadowing this borrowing and by ignoring, as a result of ethno-
centrism, the traditional systems of classification. It is, of course, impor-
tant to criticize this arrogance, but it is also essential to recognize that a
modern synthesis cannot stem from traditional knowledge. Modern
knowledge comes about through a tradition of objectivization, maintain-
ing of critical distance, and rigorous experimentation inherited from the
Renaissance, and from the way such knowledge is made part of a system-
atic and rational framework. We can thus acknowledge, for example,
that peppermint tea, according to traditional Amerindian knowledge, is
excellent against fever, but modernity will never accept the idea that it
achieves its effects for reasons related to spiritual cults or to a mythical
genesis. We must therefore abandon the idea of typical equivalencies
between pre- and post Renaissance societies.
Such a statement might well appear reactionary, since it seems to
reflect the racist idea of the white man's superiority, but this is not what
we intend. In the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twenti-
eth, evolutionist theses applied to human relationships were translated in
North America into an opposition between white civilization and Native
savagery. Thus, savagery would inevitably disappear as modernity pro-
gressed. Such views explicitly led to policies of assimilation, while they
implicitly meant that it was impossible for Amerindian societies to appro-
priate the fruits of the Renaissance - that is, of modernity. Had they done
this, these societies would supposedly have stripped themselves of their
identity, according to the official discourse of the day. The educated
Amerindians and the Horizon of Modernity 315

Amerindian practising a non-traditional profession would have become a


'white, 1 just as Canadian Indian law provided: a man or a woman who
exceeded the level of high school education was stripped of his or her
Indian status. In brief, colonialist discourse clearly signified that the dif-
fusion of the Renaissance was incompatible with Native identity. This
restriction stems from a colonial perspective that neither English nor
French could possibly have conceived of applying to themselves.
The rejection of the evolutionist paradigm (Civilization versus Savage-
ness) however does not imply our rescue from the colonial relationship,
which, like the monster Hydra, grows a new head whenever one is cut
off. The paradigm of cultural relativism is, oddly enough, its carrier;
everyone tries honourably to judge each society according to its own val-
ues and rules, while at the same time admitting that once agriculture,
iron, writing, and the critical method were invented, nomadic cultures
with stone tools and traditions of myth all end up adopting them. Schol-
ars furthermore contribute to the confining of Amerindians to folklore
from the moment they refuse to concede to Native peoples the capacity
to assimilate modernity. They do so by defining and maintaining the
identity of Native peoples in a negative relationship with modernity, and
by representing contemporaneity as an affliction these innocent peo-
ples should be kept away from.
Nor do we believe that Native concepts of history are opposed to
European concepts of history. In their prehistories both were mythic,
but the concepts of history used by historians today, whether they are
indigenous or not, and whether they concern some event or histor-
ical object, arise from the same epistemology, one stemming from the
Renaissance. This does not mean, of course, that historical produc-
tion is homogeneous. The historiographic trend that differentiates Na-
tive societies from Western societies along a set of binary oppositions
(holistic/linear, static/dynamic, atemporal/temporal, communal/indi-
vidualistic, spiritual/profane) is not only unfruitful, but is also very
problematic. Such a conception leads us to confine the field of Native
history to a pre-Renaissance universe or, even worse, to an atemporal
universe. This way of doing ethnohistory actually ossifies and folklorizes
cultural forces even further (Simard 1988, 85). Nevertheless, we cannot
study past societies without objectivizing them - that is, without histori-
cizing them in specific places, contexts, periods, and dynamics.
As soon as the colonial relationship manifested itself, it created a mir-
ror effect. Not only are cultures juxtaposed, but relations and systems
are superimposed and impose themselves: writing, a market economy,
316 Denys Delage and Jean-Philippe Warren

missions, armies. The result is to engender a distance vis-a-vis oneself, as


well as a separation between the subject and the object, a phenomenon
that is at the source of a historical consciousness. We thus face a contra-
diction, both in the case of ancient mythologies and the framework of
colonial subjugation (Simard 1988, 84). For example, it is only in the
midst of divisions, tensions, and opposed interpretations between tribes,
clans, masters, and prisoners-slaves, in the context of such alliances or
such 'proto-imperialist' conquests, that the Iroquois society of the Five
Nations managed to maintain, for a while, a certain diplomatic balance.

Conclusion

Any historical or anthropological analysis of past societies, or of their


myths, oral or written, Christian, Iroquois, or Algonquian, fatally engen-
ders a certain disenchantment with the world. To qualify this disen-
chantment as non-indigenous would lead to misrepresenting Native
peoples as capable of living only in a mythical culture, forbidding them
the critical reflexivity of a culture simultaneously conceived as heritage
and project. It would then be possible to believe that in order to better
preserve the innocence of virtuous and authentic societies, the West
should have the exclusive monopoly over history, politics, and sciences.
Though it is beyond the scope of this short afterword, we must neverthe-
less insist that indigenous peoples entered the modern era at the begin-
ning of the colonial era, and that they were confronted with the Other,
with doubt, and with subversion, just as other European peoples had
previously been in their encounter with the process of civilization
opened by the Renaissance (Simard 1988, 86). The revolt of indigenous
peoples from all over the colonial world against the colonial power,
after the Second World War, borrowed its ideals and its means from
modernity. In North America, they appropriated the extraordinary tool
introduced to them by the missionaries - namely, writing. Should we
today forbid them this medium for fear that they might betray their
ancestors' traditions (Barbeau 1915, 296)? Leaders such as Metacom,
known to the English as King Philip, worked, often without success, to
cross tribal barriers to create united fronts against colonial invasion.
Tribes with older ties with whites had acquired much superior skills in
manipulating their European allies.
After the passage of the Renaissance, there is no escape possible
towards the past and towards the world of myth. This does not mean
that modernity represents an ideal society, one which we should now
Amerindians and the Horizon of Modernity 317

continue reproducing. Modernity is the horizon against which our most


profound crises and our most fruitful dialogues emerge - crises because
the objectivization of culture is always the beginning of a questioning;
dialogues because the past is no longer controlled by dogma and it is
possible to plan the future. Modernity is in crisis, some say, and this is
true in many respects. The horizon modernity opens before us has no
certitudes. In spite of this, it is possible to believe that both colonizers
and the peoples who are victims of this history share, whether they wish
it or not, a common destiny. Amerindians still have to appropriate the
legacy of the Renaissance, to the extent that the Renaissance has to
appropriate the legacy of Amerindian peoples. Beyond crises, this is
reassuring. 'When your sky will reach my sky,' said the poet Rene Char,
'our house will have a roof.'
This page intentionally left blank
Works Cited

This list comprises published sources only; manuscripts and unpublished


sources such as conference papers and government reports are referred to in
the notes to individual essays. Included are all published works cited, plus in a
few cases later relevant work by the author in question.

Adorno, Rolena. 1994. 'The Indigenous Ethnographer: The "indio ladino" as


Historian and Cultural Mediation." In Implicit Understandings: Observing, Report-
ing, and Reflecting on the Encounters, between Europeans and Other Peoples in the
Early Modem Era. Edited by Stuart B. Schwartz, 378-402. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
Alexander, Sir William. [1624] 1873. Sir William Alexander and American Coloniza-
tion. Boston: Prince Society.
Alfonse.Jean Fonteneau. 1559. Les Voyages auantureux du Capitainejan Alfonce,
Sainctongeois. Poitiers: Jan Marncf.
Allard, Lionel. 1979. L'Ancienne-Lorette. Montreal: Lemeac.
Alsford, Stephen, ed. 1993. The Meta Incognita Project: Contributions toField Studies.
Mercury Series, Directorate Paper no. 6. Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Civili-
zation.
Anderson, Karen. 1991. Chain Her by OneFoot. The Subjugation of Women in
Seventeenth-Century NetvFrance. London: RouUedge.
TheAndros Tracts: Being a Collection of Pamphlets and Official Papers issued during the
period between the Overthrow of the Andros Government and the Establishment of the
Second Charter of Massachusetts. 1868-74. Compiled by W.H. Whitmore. 3 vols.
Boston: Prince Society.
Annat, Francois. 1644. Le Libelle intitule 'Theologie morale desjesuites' contredit el
convaincue en tons ses chefs. Cahors: n.p.
320 Works Cited

Appleby, Joyce, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob. 1994. Telling the Truth about
History. New York: W.W. Norton.
Arnauld, Antoine. 1690. Seconde denonciation de la nouvelle heresie du pechephilo-
sophique enseigneepar lesjesuites de Dijon. Cologne: heirs of Balthazar d'Egmond.
Arnauld, Antoine, and Sebastien-Joseph du Cambout de Pontchateau. 1689-95.
La Morale pratique desjesuites, representee en plusieurs histoires arrivees dans toutes les
parties du monde. 8 vols. Cologne: Gervimis Quentel.
Arner, Robert D. 1985. The Lost Colony in Literature. Raleigh: North Carolina
Department of Cultural Resources.
Arnold, Charles D. 1994. 'The Importance of Wood in the Early Thule Culture
of the Western Canadian Arctic.' In Threads of Arctic Prehistory: Papers in Honour
of William E. Taylor Jr. Edited by David Morrison, 269-79. Archaeological Sur-
vey of Canada, Mercury Series Paper no. 149. Ottawa: Canadian Museum of
Civilization.
Arnold, David. 1996. The Problem of Nature: Environment, Culture and European
Expansion. Oxford: Blackwell.
Arsenault, Bona. 1978. Histoire et genealogie des Acadiens. 6 vols. Montreal: Editions
Lemeac.
Asher, G.M., ed. 1860. Henry Hudson the Navigator. 1st series, no. 27. London:
Hakluyt Society.
Asseline, David. 1874. Les Antiquitez et chroniques de la Ville de Dieppe. 2 vols. Paris:
Maisonneuve; Rouen: Meterie.
Atkinson, Geoffroy. 1927. La Litterature geographique francaise de la Renaissance.
Paris: Auguste Picard. Reprint, 1968. New York: Burt Franklin.
Auregan, Pierre. 1990. 'Nature et litterature a 1'age classique.' In La Nature.
Edited byJean-Christophe Goddard, 81-97. Paris: Integrale.
Avezac-Macaya, Marie-Armand-Pascal de. 1869. Campagne du navire I'Espoir de
Honfleur, 1503-1505. Relation authentique du voyage du Capitaine de Gonnevillt es
nouvelles terres des Indes. Paris: Challamel Aine.
Axtell, James. 1988. 'At the Water's Edge: Trading in the Sixteenth Century.' In
After Columbus: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America, 144-81.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- 1986. 'White Legend: The Jesuit Missions in Maryland.' Maryland Historical
Magazine 81, 1 (spring): 1-7.
- 1985. The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- 1981. The European and the Indian: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North
America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Baker, Emerson W. 1989. '"A Scratch with a Bear's Paw": Anglo-Indian Land
Deeds in Early Maine.' Ethnohistory 36, 3: 237-56.
Works Cited 321

- 1986. Trouble to the Eastward: The Failure of Anglo-Indian Relations in Early


Maine.' PhD thesis, College of William and Mary.
Baker, Emerson W., and John G. Reid. 1998. The New England Knight: Sir William
Phips, 1651-1605. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Barbeau, Marius. 1961. 'The Language of Canada in the Voyages of Jacques
Cartier (1534-1538).' Contributions to Anthropology, I9yf}, 108-229. National
Museums of Canada Bulletin no. 173. Ottawa: Queen's Printer.
- 1949- 'How the Huron-Wyandot Language Was Saved from Oblivion.' Proceed-
ings of the American Philosophical Society 93: 226-32.
- 1915. Huron and Wyandot Mythology. Canada Department of Mines, Geological
Survey, Memoir 80, no. ll, Anthropological Series. Ottawa: Government
Printing Bureau.
Barbour, Philip L. 1971. Pocahontas and Her World. London: Robert Hale.
Barkham, Selma Huxley. 1994. 'Aseguradores burgaleses y pesca transatlantica
en el Pais Vasco y el efecto de las guerras sobre sus negocios (h. 1540-11.1585).'
Adas del V Centenario del Consuladu de Burgos (14Q4-IQQ4), 529-53. Burgos:
Excma Diputacion Provincial de Burgos.
- 1992. 'Diego de Bernuy, Fjemplo de un mercader no lanero.' In Historia de
Burgos. Edited by Angel Montenegro Duque. Vol. 3: 195-229. Burgos: Caja dc
Aborros Municipal de Burgos, 1985- .
- 1980-1. 'Burgos Insurance for Basque Ships, 1547-1592: Maritime Policies
from Spain.' Archivaria 11: 87—99-
- 1977. 'The Identification of Labrador Ports in Spanish l6th-Century Docu-
ments.' Canadian Cartographer 14, l: 1-9.
- ed. 1987. Itsasoa. Vol. 3. Los vasms en el marco Atldntico Norte. Siglns XVIy XVII.
San Sebastian, Spain: Eusko Kultur Eragintza Etor.
Baron, Andre. 1956. 'Le Cuke dc la Tres Sainte Vierge a Lorette.' In Maria.
Etudes sur la Sainte Vierge. Edited by Hubert Du Manoir. Vol. 4: 85-109. Paris:
Beauchesne.
Barre, Nicolas. 1557. Copies de quelques lettres sur la navigation de Chmallierde
Villegaignon es terres de I'Amerique oultre I'Aequinoctial, jusques. soubz le tmpique de
Capricorne: cotenant .sommairement fey fortunes encourues en ce voyage ... Paris:
Martin le Jeune.
Barthes, Roland. 1971. Sade, Fourier, Loyola. Paris: Seuil.
- 1970. 'L'ancienne rhetorique.' Communication 16: 172-229.
Bauer, George W. 1973. Tales from the Cree. Cobalt, ON: Highway Book Shop.
Beauchamp, William M. 1916. Moravian Journals Relating to Central New York,
Ij-jtj-tid Syracuse, NY: Dehler Press.
Bcaugrand-Champagne, Aristide. 1937. 'Le peuple d'Hochelaga.' Les cahiers des
<fex2:93-il4-
322 Works Cited

Belleforest, Francois de, and Sebastian Munster. 1575. La Cosmographie universelk


de tout le monde. 2 vols. Paris: M. Sonnius.
Bennett, Charles E. 1964. Laudonniere and Fort Caroline. Gainesville: University of
Florida Press.
Berkhofer, Robert F.,Jr. 1978. The While Man's Indian: Images of the American
Indian from Columbus to the Present. New York: Vintage Books.
Bernabe, Jean, Patrick Chamoiseau, and Raphael Confiant. 1989. Eloge de la
Creolite. Paris: Gallimard.
Bernard, Jacques. 1968. Navires et gens de mer a Bordeaux (vers l40O-vers 1550).
Paris: SEVPEN.
Berthiaume, Pierre. 1993. 'Deliquescence du Sauvage.' In L"Indien,' instance dis-
cursive. Actes du Colloque de Montreal, iQQl. Edited by Antonio Gomez-Moriana
and Daniele Trottier, 185-203. Collection L'Univers des discours. Candiac,
QC: Editions Balzac.
Best, George. [1578] 1938. The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher in Search of a pas-
sage to Cathay and India fry the North-West, A.D. 1576-8. From the original 1578 text
of George Best. Edited by Vilhjalmur Stefansson and Eloise McCaskill. 2 vols.
London: Argonaut Press.
- [1578] 1867. The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, in Search of a Passage to Cathay
and India by the North-West, A.D. 1576-8. Edited by Richard Collinson. 1st
series, vol. 38. London: Hakluyt Society.
Bhabha, Homi. 1997. 'The Voice of the Dom: Retrieving the Experience of the
Once-Colonized.' Times Literary Supplement, 8 August, 14-15.
- 1995. 'In a Spirit of Calm Violence.' In After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and
PostcolonialDisplacements. Edited by Gyan Prakash, 326-43. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
- 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.
Biggar, H.P., ed. 1930. A Collection of Documents relating to Jacques Cartier and the
Sieur de Robervai Ottawa: Public Archives of Canada.
- ed. 1913. Les Precurseurs de Jacques Cartier, 1497-1534. Ottawa: Public Archives
of Canada.
Birch, Thomas. 1756-7. The History of the Royal Society of London for Improving of
Natural Knowledge from Its First Rise. 4 vols. London: A. Millar.
Bishop, Charles A. 1974. The Northern Ojibwa and the Fur Trade: An Historical and
Ecological Study. Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Bloch, Ernst. [1974] 1994. La Phitosophie de la Renaissance. Paris: Petite Biblio-
theqtie Payot.
Blouin, Anne-Marie. 1987. 'Histoire et iconographie des Hurons de Lorette du
XVIIe au XIXe siccle.' PhD thesis, Universite de Montreal.
Blu, Karen I. 1980. The Lumbee Problem: The Making of an American Indian People.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Works Cited 323

Boone, Elizabeth Hill. 19943. 'Introduction: Writing and Recording Knowl-


edge.' In Writing without Words: Alternative Literacies in Mesoamerica and the
Andes. Edited by Elizabeth Hill Boone and Walter D. Mignolo, 3-26. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press.
- lQ94b. 'Aztec Pictorial Histories: Records without Words.' In Writing without
Words: Alternative Literacies in Mesoamerica and the Andes. Edited by Elizabeth Hill
Boone and Walter D. Mignolo, 50-76. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Boone, Elizabeth Hill, and Walter D. Mignolo, eds. 1994. Writing without Words:
Alternative Literacies in Mesoamerica and the Andes. Durham, NC: Duke Univer-
sity Press.
Boschet, Antoine. 1697. Le Par/ait missionnaire, ou la vie du R.P.Julien Maunoir.
Paris: Jean Anisson.
Bosher, J.F. 1995. 'Huguenot Merchants and the Protestant International in the
Seventeenth Century.' William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, l: 77-102.
Bossy, John. 1985. Christianity in the West, 1400-1700. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Bottereau, Georges. 1937. 'Louis Lallemantjesuite.' Dictionnaire de spiritualite
ascetique et mystique: doctrine et histoire. Edited by Marcel Viller. 17 vols. Paris:
Beauchesne. Col. 9: columns 125-35.
Boucher, Pierre. [1664] 1964. Histoire Veritable et naturelle des moeurs et productions
du pays de la Nouvette-France vulgairement dite le Canada. Boucherville, QC:
Societe Historique de Boucherville.
- [1664] 1883. Canada in the Seventeenth Century. From theFrench of Pierre Boucher.
Translated by Edward Louis Montizambert. Montreal: George E. Desbarats.
Braudel, Fernand. 1981. The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible.
New York: Harper and Row.
Brebeuf, Jean de. 1996. Ecrits en Huronie. Modern text edited and annotated by
Gilles Therien. Montreal: Collection Sciences humaines, Bibliotheque quebe-
coise.
Brebner, John Bartlet. [1933] 1966. The Explorers of North America, I4Q2-I866.
New York: Meridian.
Brefrecueil de Vaffliction et dispersion de I'Eglise desfideles au pays du Bresil, partie de
I'Amerique Australe. N.p.: 1565.
Bremond, Henri. 1928-38. Histoire litteraire du sentiment religieux en France. 12 vols.
Paris: Bloud et Gay.
Brewer, John. 1989. The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688-
1783. New York: Knopf.
Bridenbaugh, Carl. 1968. Vexed and Troubled Englishmen, 1^0-1642. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Briggs, Robin. 1989. Communities of Belief: Cultural and Social Tension in Early
Modern France. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
324 Works Cited

Brockliss, Lawrence W.B. 1987. French Higher Education in the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries: A Cultural History. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Brodhead, John R. 1853. History of the State of New York. 2 vols. New York: Harper
and Brothers.
Brotherston, Gordon. 1992. Book of the Fourth World: Reading the Native Americas
through Their Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, Alexander. 1890. The Genesis of the United States. 2 vols. Boston: Hough-
ton, Mifflin.
Brown, Jennifer S.H. 1980. Strangers in Blood: Fur Trade Company Families in Indian
Country. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
Brown, Jennifer S.H., and Elizabeth Vibert, eds. 1996. Reading beyond Words:
Contexts for Native History. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press.
Bucher, Bernadette. 1977. La Sauvage aux seins pendants. Paris: Hermann.
Buckley, Michael J. 1989. 'Seventeenth-Century French Spirituality: Three
Figures.' In Christian Spirituality: Post-Reformation and Modern. Edited
by Louis Dupre and Don E. Saliers, 28-68. New York: Crossroad, SCM
Press.
Burke, Peter, 1998. The European Renaissance: Centres and Peripheries. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Cain, P.J., and A.G. Hopkins. 1993- British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion,
1688—1914. London: Longman.
Callison, Cynthia. 1995. 'Appropriation of Aboriginal Oral Traditions.' University
of British Columbia Law Revieia. Special Issue - Material Culture in Flux: Law
and Policy of Repatriation of Cultural Property. Vol. 29: 162-72.
Campeau, Lucien. 1974. L'Evechede Quebec (1674). Aux origines du premier diocese
erige en Amerique francaise. Quebec: Societe Historique de Quebec.
— ed. 1967—94. Monumenta Novae Franciae. 8 vols. Rome: Monumenta
historica societatis lesu; Quebec: Presses de 1'Universite Laval; Montreal:
Bellarmin.
Carile, Paolo. 1988. 'Nature et culture dans les premieres descriptions de la
Nouvelle France.' In Le Paysage a la Renaissance. Edited by Yves Giraud, 83-90.
Fribourg, Switzerland: Editions universitaires Fribourg Suisse.
- 1987. Lo sguardo impedito: studi sulla relazioni di viaggio in 'Nouvelk-France'e sulla
letteratura popolare. Fasano: Schena.
Carter, Paul. 1995. 'Spatial History.' In The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. Edited
by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffen, 375-7. London:
Routledge.
Cartier, Jacques. 1993. The Voyages of Jacques Cartier. Edited by Ramsay Cook.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
- 1986. Relations. Edited by Michel Bideaux. Collection Bibliotheque du Nou-
veau Monde. Montreal: Les Presses de 1'Universite de Montreal.
Works Cited 325

- 1924. The Voyages of Jacques Cartier. Edited by H.P. Biggar. Publications of the
Public Archives of Canada no. 11. Ottawa: F.A. Acland.
Cassirer, Ernst. [1932] 1970. La Philosophie des luinieres. Paris: Fayard.
- [1927] 1983. Individu et cosmos dans la philosophie de fa Renaissance. Paris:
Editions de Minuit.
Cell, Gillian T. 1969. English Enterprise in Newfoundland 1577-1660. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press.
- ed. 1982. Newfoundland Discovered: English Attempts at Colonisation, 1610-1630.
2nd series, vol. 160. London: Hakluyt Society.
Certeau, Michel de. [1975] 1988. The Writing of History. Translated Tom Conley.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Cervantes, Fernando. 1994. The Devil in the New World: The Impact of Diabolism in
New Spain. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Champlain, Samuel de. 1922-36. The Works of Samuel de Champlain. Edited by
Henry P. Biggar. 6 vols. Toronto: Champlain Society.
- [1619] 1970. Voyages to New France. Translated by Michael Macklem. Ottawa:
Oberon.
- [1604] 1993. Des Sauvages. Edited and annotated by Alain Beaulieu and Real
Ouellet. Montreal: Editions Typo.
Charbonneau, Hubert, and Jacques Legare, eds. 1980. Repertoire des aa.es de bap-
teme, manage, sefndture et des recensements du Qjtebec anden. Vol. 4. Montreal:
Presses de 1'Universite de Montreal.
Charbonnier, Georges. [1961] 1969. Entretiens avec Claude Levi-Strauss. Paris:
Union generale d'editions, Le monde en 10/18.
Charles I. 1633. A Commission for the, well governing of Our people, inhabiting in the.
New-found-land; Or, Traffiquing in Bayes, Creekes, or fresh Rivers there. London:
Robert Barker and the Assigns of John Bill.
Charlevoix, Pierre-Francois-Xavier de. 1744. Histoire el Description Generale de la
Nouvelle France. 6 vols. Paris: Rolin Fils.
~ [1744] IQQ4-Journal d'un voyage fait parordre du mi dans I'Amerique septentroniale.
Edited and annotated by Pierre Berthiaume. Montreal: Presses de 1'Universite
de Montreal.
Chatellier, Louis. 1993. La Religion des pauvres. Les sources du christianisme moderne
XVIe-XIXe siecles. Paris: Aubier.
Chaumonot, Pierre Joseph Marie. 1885. Un Missionaire des Hurons. Autobiographie
du Pere Chaumonot de la Compagnie de Jesus et son complement. Edited by Felix
Martin. Paris: H. Oudin.
Cheshire, Neil, Tony Waldron, Alison Quinn, and David Quinn. 1980.
'Frobisher's Eskimos in England.' Archivaria 1O: 23-50.
Chevalier, Ulysse. 1906. Notre-Dame de Lorette. Etude historique sur I'authentidte de la
santa Casa. Paris: Alphonse Picard.
326 Works Cited

Child, Sirjosiah. 1698. A New Discourse of Trade. 4th ed. London: T. Sowle.
Chinard, Gilbert. 1913. L'Amerique et le reve exotique dans la litteraturefrancaise au
XVIIIe siecle. Paris: Hachette.
Cholenec, Pierre. [1696] 1940. The Life of Katharine Tegakouita (1696).' In
Catholic Church, Sacred Congregation of Rites, The Positio ... on the Introduc-
tion of the Cause for Beatification and Canonization and on the Virtues of the Servant
of God Katharine Tekakwitha, the Lily of the Mohawks. New York: Fordham
University Press.
Claude d'Abbeville (Clement Foullon). 16143. Histoire de la mission des Peres
Capucins en I'lsle de Maragnan et terres circonvoysines ou est traicte des singularitez
admirables & des Meurs merueilleuses des Indiens habitans de cepais Avec les missives
et advis qui ont este enuoyez de nouve. Par le R.P. Claude d'Abbeuille Predicateur
Capucin. Paris: Francois Huby.
- i6l4b. Lesfruicts de la mission des reverends peres Capuchins en I'isle de Maragnan.
Lille: Christophe Beys.
- 1612. L'arrivee des Peres Capucins en I'IndeNouvelle, appellee Maraguon, Avec la
reception que leur ontfaict les Sauvages de ce pays, & la conversion d 'iceux a nostre
SaincteFoy. Declaree par une lettre que le R.P. Claude d 'Abbeville Predicateur Capucin,
envoye d Frere Martial, pareillement Capucin, & d M. Foullon ses Freres. Paris: Abra-
ham Le Febvre.
Cliche, Marie-Aimee. 1988. Les Pratiques de devotion en Nouvelle-France. Comporte-
ments populaires et encadrement ecclesial dans le gouvernement de Quebec. Quebec:
Presses de 1'Universite Laval.
Codignola, Luca. I999a. 'Competing Networks: Roman Catholic Ecclesiastics in
French North America, 1610-58.' Canadian Historical Review So, 4: 539-84.
- I99gb. 'Roman Catholic Ecclesiastics in English North America, 1610-58: A
Comparative Assessment.' Canadian Catholic Historical Association, Historical
Studies 65: 107-24.
- 1996. 'The Battle Is Over: Campeau's Monumentavs. Thwaites' Jesuit Relations,
1602-1650.' In Missionaries, Native Americans, and Cultural 'Processes,'
special issue of European Review of Native American Studies 10, 2: 3-10.
- 1995- 'The Holy See and the Conversion of the Indians in French and British
North America, 1493-1750.' In America in European Consciousness, 1493-1750.
Edited by Karen Ordahl Kupperman, 195-242. Chapel Hill, NC: University of
North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture.
- 1988. The Coldest Harbour of the Land: Simon Stock and Lord Baltimore's Colony in
Newfoundland, 1621-1649. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.
Codignola, Luca, and Giovanni Pizzorusso. 1996. 'Les lieux, les methodes et les
sources de 1'expansion missionnaire du Moyen Age au XVIIe siecle: Rome sur
la voie de la centralisation.' In Transferts culturels et metissages Amerique/Europe,
Works Cited 327

XVIe-XXe siecle / Cultural Transfer, America and Europe: 500 Years of Intercultura-
tion. Edited by Laurier Turgeon, Denys Delage, and Real Ouellet, 489-512.
Quebec: Presses de 1'Universite Laval; Paris: L'Harmattan.
Cohen, David William. 1989. 'The Undefining of Oral Tradition.' Ethnohistory
36, i: 9-18-
Columbus, Christopher. 1978. Four Voyages to the New World: Letters and Selected
Documents. Bilingual Edition, translated and edited by R.H. Major, introduc-
tion by John E. Fagg. Gloucester, MA: Corinth Books.
- 1960. The Journal of Christopher Columbus. Translated by Cecil Jane, appendix by
R.A. Skelton. New York: Bramhall House.
Copway, George. 1850. The Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojib-
way Nation. London: C. Gilpin.
- 1847. The Life, History, and Travels of Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh (George Copway), a young
Indian chief of the Ojibwa nation. Philadelphia: Harmstead.
Corboz, Andre. 1980. 'Contribute all'urbanistica palladiana: la pianta di Hoche-
laga (1556) quale progetto del club barbaro.' In Palladio: ein Symposium. Edited
by Kurt W. Forster and Martin Kubelik, 57-69. Rome: Schweizerisches Institut.
Creigh ton, Donald. 1937. The Commercial Empire of the St Lawrence, 1760-1850.
Toronto: Ryerson Press.
Cressy, David. 1987. Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England
and New England in the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Cruikshank, Julie. 1996. 'Discovery of Gold on the Klondike: Perspectives from
Oral Tradition.' In Reading beyond Words: Contexts for Native History. Edited by
Jennifer S.H. Brown and Elizabeth Vibert, 433-59. Peterborough, ON: Broad-
view Press.
— 1992. 'Images of Society in Klondike Gold Rush Narratives: Skookum Jim and
the Discovery of Gold.' Ethnohistory 39, i: 20-41.
- 1991. Reading Voices Dan Dha Ts'edenintth 'e: Oral and Written Interpretation of the
Yukon's Past. Vancouver: Douglas Mclntyre.
- 1990. Life Lived like a Story: Life Stories of Three Yukon Elders. Vancouver: UBC
Press.
Cummins, Thomas. 1995. 'From Lies to Truth: Colonial Ekphrasis and the Act
of Crosscultural Translation.' In Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in
Europe and Latin America, 1450-1650. Edited by Claire Farago, 152-74. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Cuoq, Jean-Andre [N.O., ancien missionaire]. 1869. 'Quels etaient les sauvages
que rencontra Jacques Carder sur les rives du Saint-Laurent?' Annales de philo-
sophic chretienne, 5e serie, 79: 198-204.
Cusick, David. [1827] 1848. Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations. 3rd ed.
328 Works Cited

Lockport, NY: Niagara County Historical Society and Turner and McCollum
Printers.
Cuthand, Stan. 1988. 'On Nelson's Text.' In 'The Orders of the Dreamed. 'George
Nelson on Cree and Northern Ojibwa Religion and Myth, 1823. Edited by Jennifer
S.H. Brown and Robert Brightman, 189-98. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba
Press.
Daigle, Jean. 1976. 'Nos amis les ennemis: les marchands acadiens et le Massa-
chusetts a la fin du lye siecle.' La Societe historique acadienne: les cahiers 7, 4:
161-70.
— 1975. 'Nos amis les ennemis: relations commerciales de 1'Acadie avec le
Massachusetts, 1670-1711.' PhD thesis, University of Maine.
Dainville, Francois de. 1978. L'Education desjesuites. Paris: Minuit.
Damas, David. 1984. 'Copper Eskimo.' In Handbook of the North American Indians,
edited by William Sturtevant. Vol. 5, Arctic, edited by David Damas, 397-414.
Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Darricau, Raymond. 19903. 'Marie (La bienheureuse Vierge).' In Dictionnaire du
Grand Siecle. Edited by Francois Bluche, 971-2. Paris: Fayard.
- l99Ob. 'Voeu de Louis XIII.' In Dictionnaire du Grand Siecle. Edited by Francois
Bluche, 1614-15. Paris: Fayard.
Davis, Natalie Zemon. 19953. 'Metissage culturel et meditation historique.' Le
Monde, 18-19June !995> U-
- 1995b. Women on the Margins. Three Seventeenth-Century Lives. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.
- 1994. 'Iroquois Women, European Women.' In Women, 'Race, 'and Writing
in the Early Modern Period. Edited by Margo Hendricks and Patricia Parker,
243-58, London: Routledge.
Deffain, Dominique. 1995. Un voyageur francais en Nouvelle-France au XVIIe siecle.:
Etude litteraire des relations du pere Paul Lejeune. Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
De Krey, Gary Stuart. 1985. A Fractured Society: The Politics of London in the First Age
of Party, 1688-1715. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Delage, Denys. 1993. Bitter Feast: Amerindians and Europeans in Northeastern North
America, 1600-64. Translated by Jane Brierley. Vancouver: UBC Press. Origi-
nally published as Le Pays renverse: Amerindiens etEuropeens en Amerique du Nord-
Est, 1600-1664. Montreal: Boreal, 1985.
- 1992. 'L'influence des Amerindiens sur les Canadiens et les Francais au temps
de la Nouvelle France.' Lekton 2, 2: 103-91.
Delumeau, Jean. 1989. Rassurer et proteger. Le sentiment de securite dans I'Occident
d'autrefois. Paris: Fayard.
- 1983. LePeche et lapeur. La culpabilisation en Occident (XIIIe-XVHIe siecles). Paris:
Fayard.
Works Ciled 329

Denis, Ferdinand, ed. 1850. UneFete bresilienne celebree a Rouen en 1550 ... Paris:
J. Techener. Reprint, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Gregg Press, 1986.
Denys, Nicolas. [1672] 1908. The Description and Natural History of the Coasts of
North America (Acadia). Translated and edited, with a memoir of the author,
collateral documents, and a reprint from the original, by William F. Ganong.
Toronto: Champlain Society.
De Pauw, Cornelius. 1770. Reclierchesphilosophiques surles Americains, ou Memoires
interessants pour servir a I 'Histoire de I 'Espece Humaine de Mr de p***. Avec une Dis-
sertation sur I'Amerique & les Americains, parDom Pernetj. Et laDefense de I'Auteur
des Reclierches contre cetteDissertation. Berlin: GJ. Decker; the Defensehas its own
pagination.
Derrida, Jacques. 1972. 'Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human
Sciences.' In The Structuralist Controversy: The Languages of Criticism and the
Sciences of Man. Edited by Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato, 247-65.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Deserontyou,John. [1782] 1926. '"A Form of Ritual Condolence April 9 1782."
Found at Lancaster, NY: Museum of the American Indian. Mentioned in 1826.
Notes.' Indian Notes 3: 139-40.
Deslandres, Dominique. 1995. 'A quand une ethnohistoire des missionnaircs?'
Etudes d'histomreligieusetil: 115-24.
- 1993- 'Mission et alterite: Les missionnaires francais et la definition de
l"'Autre"au XVII' siecle.' In Proceedings of the Eighteentli Meeting of the French
Colonial Historical Society, Montreal, May iggz / Actes du Dix-huilieme Colloque de
la Societe d'Histoire Colcmiale Franfaise, Montreal, Mai igc/2. Edited by James S.
Pritchard, 1-13. Cleveland, OH: French Colonial Historical Society/ La
Societe d'Histoire Coloniale Franfaise.
— 1990. 'Le modele francais d'integration socio-religieuse, 1600—1650. Missions
interieures et premieres missions canadiennes.' PhD Thesis, Univcrsitc de
Montreal.
- 1989. 'Seculicrs, laics, Jesuites: episteme et projets d'evangelisation et d'accul-
turation en Nouvelle France. Les premieres tentatives, 1604-1613.' In Anthro-
pologie et histoire, special section of Melanges de I'EcoleFrancaise de Rome, 101, 2.
Edited by Serge Gruzinski, 751-88.
- 1987. 'L'education dcs Amerindiennes d'apres la correspondence de Marie
Guyart de ITncarnation.' Studies in Religion 16, 1: 91-110.
Devens, Carol. 1992. Countering Colonization: Native American Women and (treat
Lakes Missions, 1630-1900. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Dickason, Olive Patricia. 1996. 'Europeans and a New World Cosmography.' In
Reading beyond Words: Contexts for Native History. Edited by Jennifer S.H. Brown
and Elizabeth Vibert, 4-20. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press.
33O Works Cited

- 1992. Canada's First Nations. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.


- 19843. The Myth of the Savage and the Beginnings of French Colonialism in the Amer-
icas. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press. Translated as Le Mythe du sauvage.
Sillery, QC: Septentrion, 1993.
- 19840. 'The Brazilian Connection: A Look at the Origin of French Tech-
niques for Trading with Amerindians.' In Rendezvous: Selected Papers of the
Fourth North American Fur Trade Conference, ig8l. Edited by Thomas C. Buckley,
27-42. St Paul, MN: North American Fur Trade Conference.
- 1979. 'Europeans and Amerindians: Some Comparative Aspects of Early
Contact.' Canadian Historical Association Historical Papers (1979): 182-202.
Dickson, P.G.M. 1967. The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Develop-
ment of Public Credit, 1688-1756. London: Macmillan; New York: St Martin's
Press.
Doiron, Normand, et al., eds. 1984. Scritti sulla Nouvelle-France nel seicento.
Quaderni del Seicento francese, 6. Bari: Adriatica.
Donne, John. 1990. John Donne. Edited by John Carey. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press.
Douville, Raymond. 19703. Pierre Boucher: Sieur de Boucherville, 1622-1717.
Montreal: Fides.
- ed. I97ob. Pierre Boucher: texte choisis etpresentes. Montreal: Fides.
- 1969. 'Boucher, Pierre, Sieur de Grosbois.' Dictionary of Canadian Biography
2: 82-7.
Drake, Samuel Gardner. 1856. The History and Antiquities of Boston. Boston:
Luther Stevens.
Drayton, Michael. 1953. The Poems of Michael Drayton. Edited by John Buxton. 2
vols. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Drolet, Gilles. 1989. Missionnaire en Nouvelle-France: Pierre-Joseph-Marie Chaumonot
(161 r-i6f)3). Sainte-Foy, QC: Anne Sigier.
- 1985. Notre-Dam.e de Lorette et le Pere Chaumonot [Choix de textes]. Sainte-Foy, QC:
Anne Sigier.
Druke, Mary A. 1987. 'Linking Arms: The Structure of Iroquois Intertribal
Diplomacy.' In Beyond the Covenant Chain: The Iroquois and Their Neighbors in
Indian North America, 1600-1800. Edited by Daniel K. Richter and James H.
Merrell, 29-39. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
Dube, Pauline, ed. 1995. LesFreres insoumis ou 'L'ombre d'un clocher.' Quebec: Nuit
Blanche Editeur.
Du Creux, Francois. [1664] 1951-2. History of Canada, or New France. Translated
Percy J. Robinson and edited by James B. Conacher. 2 vols. Toronto: Cham-
plain Society. Originally published as Historia Canadensis, sen Novae-Frandae
libri decem. Paris: Sebastien Cramoisy, 1664.
Works Cited 331

Dumont, Fernand. 1968. Le Lieu de I'Homme: la culture comme distance el memoire.


Collection constantes, vol. 14. Montreal: Editions HMH.
Duteil, Jean-Pierre. 1996. 'Missionnaires, relations de voyage et decouverte de
1'Extreme-Orient.' Melanges de science religieuse 53, 3: 263-74.
Du Tertre,Jean-Baptiste. 1654. Histoire generate des Isles de S. Christophe, de la
Guadeloupe, de la Martinique, et autres dans VAmerique. Paris: Jacques Langlois.
Duverger, Christian. 1987. La conversion des Indiens de Nouvelle-Espagne. Paris:
Seuil.
Eastman, Mack. 1915. Church and State in Early Canada. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press and T. and A. Constable.
Eccles, W.J. 1990. France in America. Rev. ed. Markham, ON: Fitzhenry and
Whiteside.
- 1987. Essays on NewFrance. Toronto: Oxford University Press.
- 'Sovereignty-Association, 1500-1783.' Canadian HistoricalReviewb?,, 4: 475-510.
Ehrenreich, Robert, and Michael Wayman. 1993. 'Acculturation in the Arctic:
The Inuit Meet Martin Frobisher.' In The Mela Incognita Project: Contributions to
Field Studies. Edited by Stephen Alsford, 139-47. Mercury Series, Directorate
Paper no. 6. Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Civilization.
Elliott, J.H. 1970. The Old World and the New, 1402-1650. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Erasmus. [1514] 1976. The Collected Works of Erasmus. Vol. 3. The Correspondence of
Erasmus. Translated by R.A.B. Mynors and D.F.S. Thomson, annotated by
James K. McConica. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Erikson, Vincent. 1983. "The Mohawks Are Coming": Elijah Kellogg's Observa-
tions.' In Actes du Quatonieme Congres des Algonc/uinistes. Edited by William
Cowan, 37-48. Ottawa: Carlelon University Press.
Esnaola, Juan de. 1927. Santa Maria delciar. Vergara: n.p.
Fabian, Johannes. 1983. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New
York: Columbia University Press.
Fabre, Pierre-Antoine. 1992. Ignore de Loyola: le lieu de I'image. Paris: Vrin and
EHESS.
Faillon, Etienne-Michel. 1853. Vie de la soeur Bourgeoys, fondatrice de la Congregation
de Notre-Dame de Villemarie en Canada. 2 vols. Villemarie [Montreal]: Soeurs de
la Congregation de Notre-Dame.
Farago, Claire, ed. 1995. Refraining the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and
Latin America, 1450-1650. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Faulkner, Alaric, and Gretchen Fearon Faulkner. 1987. The French atPentagoet,
1635-16/4: An Archaeological Portrait of the Acadian Frontier. Occasional Publica-
tions in Maine Archaeology no. 5. Augusta, ME: Maine Historic Preservation
Commission; Saint John, NB: New Brunswick Museum.
332 Works Cited

Ferguson, Wallace K. 1948. The Renaissance in Historical Thought: Five Centuries of


Interpretation. Cambridge, MA: Houghton Mifflin, Riverside Press.
Ferland, Remi. 1992. Les Relations desjesuites: un art de la persuasion. Precedes de rhe-
torique etfonction conative dans les Relations du pere Lejeune. Quebec: Editions de
la Huit.
Fitzhugh, William W. 1997. 'Iron Blooms, Elizabethans, and Politics: The Fro-
bisher Project, 1974-1995-' Review of Archaeology 17, 2: 12-21.
- 1996. 'Early Contact and Acculturation in the North: Native America and the
Global System.' In Transferts culturels et metissages Amerique/Europe XVIe-XXe sie-
cle. Culture Transfer, America and Europe: 500 Years of Interculturation. Edited by
Laurier Turgeon, Denys Delage, and Real Ouellet, 93-104. Quebec: Presses
de 1'Universite Laval.
- 19933. 'Archeology of Kodlunarn Island.' In Archeology of the Frobisher Voyages.
Edited by William W. Fitzhugh and Jacqueline S. Olin, 59-98. Washington,
DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
- I993b. 'Questions Remain.' In Archeology of the Frobisher Voyages. Edited by
William W. Fitzhugh and Jacqueline S. Olin, 231-8. Washington, DC: Smith-
sonian Institution Press.
Fitzhugh, William W., and Jacqueline S. Olin, eds. 1993. Archaeology of the
Frobisher Voyages. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Fixico, Donald L. 1994. 'Columbus and the American Indian Experience:
Cultural Destruction and Historical Distortion.' In Culture et Colonisation en
Amerique du Nord: Canada, Etats-Unis, Mexique. Edited by Jaap Lintvelt, Real
Ouellet, and Hub. Hermans, 215-32. Coll. Nouveaux Cahiers du Celat.
Quebec: Septentrion.
Flannery, Regina. 1995. Ellen Smallboy: Glimpses of a Cree Woman's Life. Montreal:
McGill-Queen's University Press.
Fludd, Robert. 1619. Tomus secundus de Supernaturali, Praeternatural et Contra
naturali Microcosmi historia. Oppenheim: de Bry.
Fogelson, Raymond D. 1974. 'On the Varieties of Indian History: Sequoyah and
Traveller Bird.' Journal of Ethnic Studies 2, l: 105-12.
Foigny, Gabriel de. 1676. La Terre australe connue. Vannes, France: J. Verneuil.
Fossett, Renee. 2001. In Order to Live Untroubled: Inuit Social Change and Challenge,
1550-1940. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press.
Foster, Michael K. 1984. 'On Who Spoke First at Iroquois-White Councils: An
Exercise in the Method of Upstreaming.' In Extending the Rafters: Interdisciplin-
ary Approaches to Iroquoian Studies. Edited by Michael K. Foster, Jack Campisi,
and Marianne Mithun, 183-207. Albany, NY: State University of New York
Press.
Franciotti, Cesare. 1616. Viaggio alia S. Casa di Loreto. Venice.
Works Cited 333

Francis, Daniel, and Toby Morantz. 1983. Partners in Furs: A History of the Fur Trade
in Eastern James Bay, 1600-1870. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.
Freitag, Michel. 1986. Dialectique et Societe. Tome 2. Culture, pouvoir, controk: les
modes de reproduction formels de la societe. Montreal: Lcs Editions Albert St-Martin.
Fuller, Mary C. 1993. 'Ralegh's Fugitive Gold: Reference and Deferral in The
Discoverie of Guiana.' In Nezv World Encounters. Edited by Stephen Greenblatt,
218-40. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Fumaroli, Marc. 1980. L'Age de ['eloquence: rhetorique et 'res literaria'de la Renais-
sance au seuil de I'epoque classique. Geneva: Libraire Droz.
Gaffarel, Paul. 1899. Les Colonies francaises. Paris: Felix Alcan.
- 1892. Histoire de la deamverte de I'Amerique. 2 vols. Paris: Arthur Rousseau.
- 1878. Histoire du Bresil francais au seizieme sieck. Paris: Maisonneuve.
- 1875. Histoire de la Floride francaise. Paris: Firmin-Didot.
Gagnon, Francois-Marc. 1975. La Conversion parl'image. un aspect de la mission des
jesuites aupris des Indiens du Canada au XVIIesiecle. Montreal: Bellarmin.
Garcia de Quevedo, Eloy. 1905. Ordenanzas del Consulado de Burgos de 1538, prece-
didas de un bosquejo historico. Burgos, n.p.
Gaiibay y Zamalloa, Esteban de. 1571. Compendia Historial Libra XV. Gapitulo 10,
vol. 2. Antwerp: Plantin.
Geertz, Clifford. 1983. Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology.
New York: Basic Books.
Genette, Gerard. 1972. 'La Rhetorique restreinte.' Figures $: 21-40.
Geneve, P. Charles de. 1976. I^es Trophees sacrees ou missions des Capucins en Savoie,
dans I'air, La Suisse Romande et la vallee d'Aoste, a la fin du XVIe et au XVIIe .siecle.
Edited by Felix Tisserand. 3 vols. Lausanne: Felix Tissei and.
Gentilcore, David. 1994. '"Adapt Yourselves to the People's Capabilities": Mis-
sionary Strategies, Methods and Impact in the Kingdom of Naples, 1600—
1800.' Journal of Ecclesiastical History 45, 2: 269-96.
Gentleman, Tobias. 1614. Englands way to win wealth, and to employ ships and mari-
ners. London: Nicholas Oakes for Nathaniel Butter.
Gibson, John Arthur. 1992. Concerning the League: The Iroquois Tradition in Onon-
daga. Edited by Hanni Woodbury in collaboration with Reg Henry and Harry
Webster, on the basis of A.A. Goldenweiser's manuscript. Memoir g. Win-
nipeg, MB: Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics.
Giddings, J.L., Jr. 1941. 'Dendrochronology in Northern Alaska.' University of
Arizona Bulletin, 12, 4. Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research Bulletin No. I . Tucson:
University of Arizona and University of Alaska.
Gilbert, Sir Humphrey. [1576] 1886. A discourse to prove a passage by the North-west
to Cathay and the East Indies. Reprinted in Voyages in Search of a North-West
Passage. London: Cassell.
334 Works Cited

Gliozzi, Giuliano. 1976. Adamo e il nuovo mondo: la nascita dell'antropologia come


ideologic, coloniale: dalle genealogie bibliche alle teorie razziali (1500-1700). Florence:
La nuova Italia editrice.
Goddard, Peter A. 1997. The Devil in New France: Jesuit Demonology, 1611-
1650.' Canadian Historical Review 78, i: 40-62.
- 1995. 'Science and Scepticism in the Early Mission to New France.' Journal of
the Canadian Historical Association 6: 43-58.
- 1993. 'Paul Le Jeune: Anthropology and the Problematics of Post-Tridentine
Conversion.' In Proceedings of the Eighteenth Meeting of the French Colonial Histori-
cal Society. Edited by James Pritchard, 14-25. Cleveland, OH: French Colonial
Historical Society.
Gordon, D.J. 1975. The Renaissance Imagination. Collected and edited by Stephen
Orgel. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Gouberville, Gilles de. [1549-62] 1993-4. LeJournal du Sire de Gouberville. 4 vols.
Bricqueboscq, France: Editions des Champs.
Graburn, Nelson H.H. 1969. Eskimos without Igloos: Social and Economic Develop-
ment in Sugluk. Boston: Little, Brown.
Grafton, Anthony, with April Shelford and Nancy Siraisi. 1992. New Worlds,
Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery. Cambridge:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Grant, John Webster. 1984. Moon of Wintertime: Missionaries and the Indians of
Canada in Encounter since IB34- Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Grassman, Thomas. 1966. 'Pastedechouan (Patetchoanen, Ahinsistan, Atet-
kouanon), Pierre-Antoine, fl. 1620-36.' Dictionary of Canadian Biography l:
533-4-
— 1969. The Mohawk Indians and Their Valley, being a chronological documentary
record to the end 0/1603. Schenectady, NY: J.S. Lischynsky.
Great Britain. Historical Manuscripts Commission. [1691] 1957. Report on the
Manuscripts of (the late) Allan GeorgeFinch, Esq., vol. 3, no. 71. Edited by Francis
Bickley. London: Her Majesty's Stationary Office.
Green, L.C., and Olive Patricia Dickason. 1989. The Law of Nations and the New
World. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press.
Greenblatt, Stephen, 1991. Marvelous Possessions: The Wonders oftheNeiu World.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- 1990. Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture. New York: Routledge.
- 1980. Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More to Shakespeare. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
- ed., 1993. New World Encounters. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Greene, Jack P. 1994. Negotiated Authorities: Essays in Colonial Political and Constitu-
tional History. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
Works Cited 335

Gros-Louis, Charlotte, and Celine Gros-Louis. 1980. La ChapellehuronnedeLorette


I73o-ig8o. N.p.
Groupe Mu. 1970. Rhetoriquegeneral*. Collection Langue et Langage. Paris:
Larousse.
Grove, Jean. 1988. The Little Ice Age. New York: Methuen.
Guibert, Joseph de. 1964. The Jesuits: Their Spiritual Doctrine and Practm: A. Histori-
cal Study. Translated by William J. Young, edited by George E. Gauss. Chicago:
Institute of Jesuit Sources.
Gullason, Lynda. 1999. 'Engendering Interaction: Inuit-European Contact in
Frobisher Bay, Baffin Island.' PhD thesis, McGill University.
Gullick, C.J.M.R. 1985. Myths of a Minority: The Changing Traditions of the Vincen-
tian Caribs. Assen: Van Gorcum.
Guyart, Marie [de I'lncarnation]. [1626-72] 1971. Correspondance. Edited by
Dom Guy Oury. Solesmes: Abbaye de Saint-Pierre.
Haggblom, Anders. 1982. 'Driftwood in Svalbard as an Indicator of Sea Ice
Conditions.' Geografiska Annaler64 A, 1-2:81-94.
Hagthorpe.John. 1625. Englands-Exchequer, Or a discourse of the sea and navigation,
with some things thereto coincident concerning plantations. London: M. Flesher for
Nathaniel Butter and Nicolas Bourne.
Hakluyt, Richard. 1903. The Principal Navigations. 12 vols. Glasgow: James Macle-
hose and Sons.
Hall, Charles Francis. 1866. Arctic Researches and Life among t!ie Esquimaux:
Being the Narrative of an Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin. New York:
Harper.
- 1865. Life with the Esquimaux: A Narrative of Arctic Experience in Search of Survivors
of SirJohn Franklin's Expedition. London: Sampson Low, Son and Marston.
Hall, Joseph. 1605. Mundus alter et idem. London: H. Lownes.
Hall, iMichacl G. 1988. The Last American Puritan: The Life of Increase Mather, 1639-
1723. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Hamilton, Raphael N. 1976. 'Who wrote Premier Etablissement de laFoy dans la
Nouvelle France'?' Canadian'Historical Review 57, 3: 265—88.
Handcock, W. Gordon. 1989. 'Soe longe as there comes no women': Origins of English
Settlement in Newfoundland. St John's, NF: Breakwater Books.
Hanzeli, Victor Egon. 1969. Missionary Linguistics in New France: A Study of
Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Descriptions of American Indian Languages.
The Hague: Mouton.
Harbottle, Carman, R.G. Cresswell, and R.W. Stoenner. 1993. 'Carbon-H Dating
of Iron Blooms from Kodlunarn Insland.' In Archeology of the Frohisher Voyages.
Edited by William W. Fitzhugh and Jacqueline S. Olin, 173-80. Washington
DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
336 Works Cited

Harlot, Thomas. 1588. A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia.
London: R. Robinson.
Harris, R. Cole. 1982. 'Regionalism and the Canadian Archipelago.' In Heartland
and Hinterland: A Geography of Canada. Edited by L.D. McCann, 459-84.
Scarborough, ON: Prentice-Hall.
— 1968. The Seigneurial System in Early Canada: A Geographical Study. Quebec: Les
Presses de 1'Universite Laval; Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Harris, R. Cole, and Geoffrey Matthews, eds. 1987. Historical Atlas of Canada.
Volume i. From the Beginning to 1800. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Haskins, Charles Homer. 1927. The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.
Haton, Claude. [1601] 1857. Memoires de Claude Haton contenant le recit des evene-
ments accomplis de 1553 a 15^2, principalement dans la Champagne et la Brie.
Edited by Felix Bourquelot. 2 vols. Paris: Imprimerie Imperiale.
Hayman, Robert. 1628. Quodlibets, Lately Come Overfrom New Britaniola, Old
Newfound-Land. London: Elizabeth All-de & F. Kingston for R. Michell.
Hayot, E. 1939. Petite histoire deNotre-Dame deFoy d'apres des documents inedits.
Brussels: Imprimeries Ch. Bulens.
Head, Grant C. 1976. Eighteenth Century Newfoundland: A Geographer's Perspective.
Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.
Hebert, Francois. 1927. Memoires du cure de Versailles, Francois Hebert, 1686-1704.
Edited by Georges Girard. Paris: Editions de France.
Heidenreich, Conrad E. 1990. 'History of the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes Area to
A.D. 1650.' In The Archaeology of Southern Ontario toA.D. 1650. Edited by ChrisJ.
Ellis and Neil Ferris, 475-92. London, ON: Occasional Papers of the London
Chapter, Ontario Archaeological Society.
— 1976. Explorations and Mapping of Samuel de Champlain, 1603—1632. Cartograph-
ica Monograph no. 17. Toronto: B.V. Gutsell.
- 1971. Huronia: A History and Geography of the Huron Indians, 1600-1650.
Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.
Heintzman, Ralph, 1994. 'Political Space and Economic Space: Quebec and the
Empire of the St Lawrence, 'Journal of Canadian Studies 29, 2: 19-63.
Helms, Mary W. 1994. 'Essay on Objects: Interpretations of Distance Made
Tangible.' In Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting on the
Encounters between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modem Era. Edited by
Stuart B. Schwartz, 355-77. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hemming, John. 1978. Red Gold: The Conquest of the Brazilian Indians, 1500-1760.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Henshaw, A.S. 1995. 'Central Inuit Household Economies: Zooarcheological,
Environmental, and Historical Evidence from Outer Frobisher Bay, Baffin
Island, Canada.' PhD thesis, Harvard University.
Works Cited 337

Heulhard, Arthur. 1897. Vitlegagnon roi d'Amerique. Paris: Ernest Leroux.


Hewitt, J.N.B. 1928. 'Iroquoian Cosmology, Second Part.' Forty-Third Annual
Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institu-
tion, 1925-1936. Washington, DC: Government Printing.
- 1888. 'Meaning of the Words for Gens in the Iroquoian and Algonquin
Tongue.' American Anthropologist 1, l: 192.
- ed. 1918. 'Seneca Fiction, Legends and Myths Collected by Jeremiah Curtin
and J.N.B. Hewitt.' In Thirty-Second Annual Report of the Bureau of American
Ethnology, igw-lQII. Washington, DC: Government Printing.
Histoire des chases memorables advenues en la Terre du Bresilpartie de I'Amerique Aus-
trale, sous le gouvemement de N. de Villegaignon depuis Van Igggjusques a Van
1558. 1561. Geneva: n.p.
Hoffman, Bernard G. 1961. Cabot to Cartier: Sources for a Historical Ethnography of
Northeastern North America, 1497-1550. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Hogarth, Donald D. 1993. 'Mining and Metallurgy of the Frobisher Ores.' In
Archeology of the Frobisher Voyages. Edited by William W. Fitzhugh and Jacqueline
S. Olin, 137-45. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Hogarth, Donald D., P.W. Boreham, andf.G. Mitchell. 1994. Mines, Minerals,
Metallurgy. Mercury Series, Directorate Paper no. 7. Ottawa: Canadian
Museum of Civilization.
Hough, Franklin B. 1861. Proceedings of the Commissioners of Indian Affairs
Appointed by Law for the Extinguishment of Indian Titles in the State of New York.
Albany, NY: Joel Munsell.
Houghton, J.T., B.A. Callander, and S.K. Varney, eds. 1992. Climate Change lt)<)2:
The Supplementary Report to the IPCC Scientific Assessment. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
Hughjones, Stephen. 1989. 'Waribi and White Man: History and Myth in North-
west Amazonia.' In History and Ethnicity. Edited by E. Tonkin, M. McDonald,
and M. Chapman, 53-69. ASA Monograph no. 27. London: Routledge.
Hulme, Peter. 1986. Colonial Encounters: Europe ana'the Native Caribbean, 1492-
1707. London: Methuen.
Ignace, Marianne. 1991. 'Haida Public Discourse.' Canadian Journal of Native
Studies ll, l: 113-35.
Innis, Harold, 1956. The Fur Trade in Canada. Rev. ed. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press.
- [194°] 1954- The Cod Fisheries: The History of an International Economy. Rev. ed.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Iriarte, Lazaro. 1983. Franciscan History: The Three Orders of St Francis of Assist.
Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press.
Isasti, Lope Martinez de. 1850. Compendia Historial de Guipuzcoa. San Sebastian,
Spain: n.p.
338 Works Cited

Jacobs, John D. 1988. 'Climate, Vegetation and Resources in Southern Baffin


Island.' In The Natural History of Canada's North: Current Research. Edited by
Carolynn Kobelka and Christopher Stephens, 75-91. Occasional Papers of the
Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre 3. Yellowknife, NWT: Prince of
Wales Northern Heritage Centre.
Jacobs, John D., W.N. Mode, C.A. Squires, and G.H. Miller. 1985. 'Holocene
Environmental Change in the Frobisher Bay Area, Baffin Island, N.W.T.:
Deglaciation, Emergence, and the Sequence of Vegetation and Climate.'
Geographic physique et Quarternaire 39, 2: 151-62.
Jaenen, Cornelius J. 1976. Friend and Foe: Aspects of French-Amerindian Cultural
Contact in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Toronto: McClelland and Stew-
art; New York: Columbia University Press.
James, Thomas. 1633. The strange and dangerous voyage of captaine Thomas James, in
his intended Discovery of the Northwest Passage into the South Sea. London: J. Legatt
for J. Partridge.
Jameson, J. Franklin, ed. 1909. Narratives of New Nether land, 1609-1664. New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons.
Jennings, Francis. 1976. The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism and the Cant
of Conquest. New York: W.W. Norton.
The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (JR). [1610-1791] 1896-1901. Edited by
Reuben Gold Thwaites. 73 vols. Cleveland: Burrows Brothers. Reprint, New
York: Pageant Book, 1959.
Jette, Rene. 1983- Dictionnairegenealogique des families du Qiiebec. Montreal: Presses
de 1'Universite de Montreal.
Jetten, Marc. 1994. Enclaves amerindiennes: les 'reductions'du Canada 1637-1701.
Sillery, QC: Septentrion.
Johnson, Richard R. iggi.Jofm Nelson, Merchant Adventurer: A Life between Empires.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Johnson, Sir William. 1921-65. Papers of Sir William Johnson. Edited by James
Sullivan. 14 vols. Albany: State University of New York Press.
LeJournal desjesuites. [1871] 1893. Edited by Abbe Laverdiere and Abbe Cas-
grain. 2nd ed. Montreal: J.M. Valois.
Julien, Charles-Andre, Rene Herval, and Theodore Beauchesne, eds. 1946. Les
Francais en Amerique pendant la premiere moitie du XVIe siecle. Paris: Presses Uni-
versitaires de France.
Kelly, Joan. 1977. 'Did Women Have a Renaissance?' In Becoming Visible: Women
in European History. Edited by Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz, 137-64.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Kicza, John. 2000. '"Clinging to the Coast and Venturing beyond Known
Shores": Recent Works on Renaissance Overseas Expansion and Coloniza-
tion.' Renaissance Quarterly 53, 2: 542-55.
Works Cited 339

Kingsbury, Susan M., ed. 1906-35. Records of the Virginia Company of London.
4 vols. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Koyre, Alexandre. 1973. Etudes d'histoire de lapensee scientifique. Paris: Gallimard.
La Calle Beronense, Saravia de. 1544. Instruction de Mercaderes. Medina del
Campo: n.p.
Lacouture, Jean. iQQi.Jesuites. Vol. i, Les conquerants. Paris: Seuil.
Laeyendecker. Dosia M. 1993. 'Wood and Charcoal Remains from Kodlunarn
Island.' In Archeology of the Frobisher Voyages. Edited by William W. Fitzhugh
and Jacqueline S. Olin, 155-72. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution
Press.
Lafitau, Joseph-Francois. 1724. Moeurs des sauvages ameriquains, comparees aux
moeurs des premiers temps. 2 vols. Paris: Saugrain 1'aine; Charles Estienne
Hochereau.
Lafleche, Guy. 1988-91. Les Saints martyrs canadiens. 3 vols. Montreal: Singulier.
Lahontan, Louis-Armand de Lom d'Arce, Baron de. [1702-3] 1990. Oeuvres com-
pletes. Edited by Real Ouellet and Alain Beaulieu. 2 vols. Collection Biblio-
theque du Nouveau Monde. Montreal: Presses de 1'Universite de Montreal.
Lallemant, Louis. [1694] 1781. Doctrine spirituelle. In La Vie et la doctrine spirituelle
du Pere Louis Lallemant. Edited by Pierre Champion. Paris: Estienne Michallet.
La Popeliniere, Sieur de, Henri Lancelot-Voisin. 1582. Les Trots Mondes. Paris:
Pierre L'Huillier.
La Ronciere, Charles de. 1899-1932. Histoire de la marine francaise. 6 vols. Paris:
Plon-Nourrit.
Larouche, Pierre. 1992. Montreal 1535: la Redecouverte de Hochelaga. Outremont,
QC: Les editions Villes nouvelles-Villes anciennes.
Latourelle, Rene. 1993. Jean de Brebeuf. Montreal: St Laurent Bellarmin.
Laudonniere, Rene de. [1586] I979a. 'Rene de Laudonniere's Account of the
First French Settlement at Charlesfort.' In New American World. Vol. 2. Edited
by David Quinn, 294-316. New York: Arno Press and Hector Bye.
- [1586] I97gb. 'The Second Voyage vinto Florida.' In New American World. Vol.
2. Edited by David Quinn, 319-353. New York: Arno Press and Hector Bye.
Leacock, Eleanor. 1980. 'Montagnais Women and the Jesuit Program for Coloni-
zation.' In Women and Colonization: Anthropological Perspectives. Edited by Mona
Etienne and Eleanor Leacock, 25-42. New York: Praeger.
Le Bras, Yvon. 1994. L'Amerindien dans les Relations du pere Paul Lejeune. Quebec:
Editions de la Huit.
- 1988. 'L'Autre dans les Relations de Paul Lejeune.' In Les figures de L'Indien.
Edited by Gilles Therien, 141-50. Montreal: Universite du Quebec a
Montreal.
Le Challeux, Nicolas. 1579. Brief discours et histoire d'un voyage de quelques Francois
en laFloride ... Geneva: Eustace Vignon.
34O Works Cited

Le Clercq, Chresticn [Chretien]. [1691] 1910. New Relation ofGaspesia: With the
Customs and Religion of the Gaspesian Indians. Translated and edited with a
reprint from the original, by William F. Ganong. Toronto: Champlain Society.
- [1691] 1881. First Establishment of the Faith in NewFrance. Translated by John G.
Shea. 2 vols. New York: John G. Shea.
- 1691. Premier etablissement de lafoy dans la Nouvelle France, contenant la publication
de I'Evangile, I'Histoire des ColoniesFranfoises, & lesfameuses decouvertes depuis le
Fleuve de saint Laurent, la Louisiane & lefleuve Colbert jusqu 'au Golphe Mt-xique,
acheves sous la conduite defeu Monsieur de la, Salle. 2 vols. Paris: Amable Auroy.
Leder, Laurence, ed. 1956. The Livingston Indian Records, 1666-1723. Gettysburg:
Pennsylvania Historical Society Association.
Lernieux, Denise. 1985. LesPetits innocents. L'enfance en Nouvelk-France. Quebec:
Institut quebecois de recherche sur la culture.
Le Moyne de Morgues, Jacques. 1874. Narrative ofLe Moyne, an artist who accompa-
nied the French Expedition toFlorida under Laudonmere, 1564. Translated from the
Latin of DeBry. Boston: James R. Osgood.
Le Page du Pratz, Antoine Simon. 1758. Histoire de la Louisiane: Contenant la
Decouverte de ce vaste Pays. 3 vols. Paris: De Bure, La Veuve Delaguette and
Lambert.
Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. 1966. Les Patsans de Languedoc. Paris: SEVPEN.
Lery, Jean de. [1580] 1972. Histoire d 'un voyage fait en la terre du Bresil. Lausanne:
Bibliotheque Romande.
- [i578] 1990. History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, Otherwise Called America,
Containing the Navigation and the Remarkable Things Seen on the Sea by the Author;
The Behavior of Villegaignon in that Country; The Customs and Strange Ways of Life
of the American Savages; Together with the Description of Various Animals, Trees,
Plants and Other Singular Things Completely Unknown Over Here. Translated with
an introduction by Janet Whatley. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Published in French as Histoire d 'un voyage faict en la terre du Bresil.
Lescarbot, Marc. 1618. Histoire de la Nouvelle-France. Paris: Chez Adricn Perier.
Lestringant, Frank. 1990. Le Huguenot et fe Sauvage: L 'Amerique et la controverse colo-
niale en France, au temps des Guerres de Religion (1555-1580). Paris: Aux Amateurs
de Livres.
[Le Tac, Sixte, attrib.]. [ 1689] 1888. Histoire chronologique de la NmivetteFrance ou
Canada depuis sa decouverte (mil cinq cents quatre) jusques en Van mil six cents trente
deux Par lePere Sixte Le Tac, Recollects. Edited by Eugene Reveillaud. Paris:
G. Fischbacher-Grassart and Maisonneuve Frcres.
Le Tellier, Michel. 1687. Defense des nouveaux chrestiens et des missionnaires de la.
Chine, du Japan, & des Indes. Conlre deux Livres intitulez La Morale Pratique des
Jesuites et I'Esprit de M. Arnauld. 2 vols. Paris: Estienne Michallet.
Works Cited 341

Levere, Trevor H., and Richard A. Jarrell. 1974. A Curious Field-book: Science and
Society in Canadian History. Toronto: Oxford University Press.
Light, John, and Henry Unglik. 1987. A Frontier Fur Trade Blacksmith Shop, 1796-
1812. Rev. ed. Ottawa: Parks Canada.
Lindsay, Lionel Saint-George. 1900. Notre-Dame de la Jeune-Lorette en la Nouvelle-
France. Etude historique. Montreal: Cie. de Publication de la Revue Cana-
dienne.
Lintvelt,Jaap, Real Ouellet, and Hub. Hermans, eds. 1994. Culture et colonisation
en Amerique du Nord. Sillery, QC: Septentrion.
Lounsbury, Floyd G. igGi.'Iroquois-Cherokee Linguistic Relations.' In Sympo-
sium on Cherokee and Iroquois Culture. Edited by William N. Fenton and John
Gulick, 11-17. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 180. Washington, DC:
Government Publishing Office.
Lowenthal, David. 1985. The Past Is a Foreign Country. London: Cambridge
University Press.
Luis de Maluenda, Fray. 1545. Leche de laFe. Burgos, n.p.
Lysaght, A.M., ed. 1971. Joseph Banks in Newfoundland and Labrador: His Diary,
Manuscripts and Collections. Berkeley: University of California Press.
McCann, Franklin T. 1952. English Discovery of America to 1585. New York: King's
Crown Press.
McCartney, Allen P. 1991. 'Canadian Arctic Trade Metal: Reflections of Prehis-
toric to Historic Social Networks." In Metals in Society: Theory beyond Analysis.
Edited by Robert M. Ehrenreich, 26-43. Philadelphia: MASCA, Research
Papers in Science and Archaeology, vol. 8, part 2.
McCartney, Allen P., and James M. Savelle. 1985. 'Thule Eskimo Whaling in the
Central Canadian Arctic.' Arctic Anthropology 22, 2: 37-58.
McClellan, Catharine. 1975. My Old People Say: An Ethnographic Survey of Southern
Yukon Territory. National Museum of Man Publications in Ethnology, Service
Paper no. 6. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada.
- 1970. 'Indian Stories about the First Whites in Northwestern America.' In
Ethnohistory in Southwestern Alaska and Southern Yukon: Method and Content.
Edited by Margaret Lantis, 103-33. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.
McDermott,J. 1984. 'The Account Books of Michal Lok, Relating to the North-
west Voyages of Martin Frobisher 1576-1578: Text and Analysis.' M. Phil, the-
sis, University of Hull.
MacDonald, M.A. 1983. Fortune and La Tour: The Civil War in Acadia. Toronto:
Methuen.
McGhee, Robert. 19843. The Thule Village at Brooman Point, High Arctic Canada.
Mercury Series, Archaeological Survey of Canada Paper no. 125. Ottawa:
National Museums of Canada.
342 Works Cited

- 19845. 'Contact between Native North Americans and the Medieval Norse: A
Review of the Evidence.' American Antiquity 49, i: 4-26.
Mackenthun, Gesa. 1997. Metaphors of Dispossession: American Beginnings and
the Translation of Empire, 1492-1637. Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press.
Maine Historical Society. 1887-1910. York Deeds. 18 vols. Portland, ME: Brown
Thurston.
- 1869-1916. Documentary History of the State of Maine, Maine Historical Society
Collections. Series 2. 24 vols. Portland, ME: Thurston.
Major [Mair], John. 1510. In Secundum Librum Sententiarum. Paris: Sententiarum
libri quator.
Maran, Rene. 1943-55. Lespionniers de I'Empire. 3 vols. Paris: Albin Michel.
Marion, Seraphin. 1964. 'Pierre Boucher, Ecrivain.' In Histoire Veritable et
naturelle des moeurs et productions du pays de la Nouvelle-France vulgairement dite le
Canada, 235-46. Boucherville, QC: Societe historique de Boucherville.
Marouby, Christian. 1990. Utopie et primitivisme: essai sur I'imaginaire anthro-
pologique a I'dge classique. Paris: Seuil.
Mason, John. 1620. A briefe discourse of the New-found-land. Edinburgh: A. Hart.
Massachusetts. [1692-9] 1978. Province Laws, i6gs-l6gg. Edited by John D. Cash-
ing. Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier.
Mather, Cotton. [1702] 1977. Magnalia Christi Americana: Bookslandll. Edited by
Kenneth B. Murdock with Elizabeth W. Miller. Cambridge, MA: Belknap
Press.
Mathes, W. Michael. 1980. 'Juan Maria de Salvatierra: A Portrait.' California
History tjQ, 2: 170-2.
Mauro, Frederic. 1961. Le Bresil au XVIIe siecle. Coimbra: n.p.
Maxwell, Moreau S. 1985. Prehistory of the Eastern Arctic. Orlando, FL: Academic
Press.
Meinig, D.W. 1986. The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years
of History. Vol. l. Atlantic America, 1492-1800. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press.
Mekking, A.J.J. 1975. 'De Kapel van onze lieve vrouw van Loreto onder de
Linden te Thorn.' In Publications de la Societe historique et archeologique dans
leLimbourgill: 233-340.
Melancon, Benoit. 1996. 'Bougainville avant Tahiti: les Amerindians dans la
correspondance canadienne (1756-1759).' In La I^ettre au XVIHe siecle et ses
avatars. Actes du Colloque international tenu au College universitaire Glendon,
Universite York, Toronto (Ontario), Canada, 2Q avril-Iermai IQ()3. Edited by
Georges Berube and Marie-France Silver, 217-29. Toronto: Editions du
GREF.
Works Cited 343

Mercure Francois. 1617. Vol. 3. Paris: Jean Richer.


Meriet, Lucien. 1858. Histoire des relations des Hurons et des Abnaquis du Canada
avec Notre-Dame de Chartres. Chartres: Petrot-Garnier.
Metraux, Alfred. 1928. La civilisation materielle des tribus Tupi-Guarani. Paris: Paul
Genthner.
Mignolo, Walter D. 1995. The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territorialily,
and Colonization. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
- 1994. 'Afterword: Writing and Recorded Knowledge in Colonial and Posicolo-
nial Situations.' In Writing without Words: Alternative Literacies in Mesoamerica
and the Andes. Edited by Elizabeth Hill Boone and Walter D. Mignolo, 293-
313. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Miller, Shannon. 1993. 'Exchanging the New World: Production and Reproduc-
tion in the Newfoundland Enterprise.' Medievalia et Humanistica: Studies in
Medieval and Renaissance Culture, new series 19: 69-95.
Mitchell, Estelle. 1967. Messire Pierre Boucher (ecuyer), seigneur de Bouchenrille, 1622—
1717. Montreal: Beauchemin.
Mithun, Marianne. 1982. 'The Mystery of the Vanished Laurentides.' In Papers
from the gth International Conference on Historical Linguistics, series 4, vol. 21.
Edited by Anders Ahlqvist, 230-42. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Montaigne, Michel de. 1603. Theessayes orMorall, Politike and MilitarieDiscourses of
Michell de Montaigne done into English. Translated by John Florio. London:
V. Sims for E. Blount.
- [1580] 1962. Essais, 1:31. In Oeuvres completes. Text established by Albert
Thibaudet and Maurice Rat, introduction and notes by Maurice Rat. Paris:
Editions Gallimard.
Montchrestien, Antoine de. 1615. Traicte de I'economie politique. Rouen, n.p.
Montrose, Louis. 1993. 'The Work of Gender in the Discourse of Discovery.' In
New World Encounters. Edited by Stephen Greenblatt, 177—217- Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press.
Moogk, Peter N. 1989. 'Reluctant Exiles: Emigrants from France in Canada
before 1760.' William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 46: 463-505.
Morantz, Toby. 1992. 'Old Texts, Old Questions: Another Look at the Issue of
Continuity and the Early Fur-Trade Period.' Canadian Historical Review, 73, 2:
166-93.
- 1984. 'Oral and Recorded History in James Bay.' In Papers of the Fifteenth Algon-
quian Conference. Edited by William Cowan, 171-91. Ottawa: Carleton Univer-
sity Press.
Morrison, David A. 1983. Thule Culture in Western Coronation Gulf, N.W.T. Mer-
cury Series, Archaeological Survey of Canada Paper no. 116. Ottawa: National
Museums of Canada.
344 Works Cited

Morissonneau, Christian. 1978. 'Huron of Lorette.' In Handbook of North Ameri-


can Indians. Vol. 15. Northeast. Edited by Bruce G. Trigger, 389-93- Washing-
ton, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Muchembled, Robert. 1988. L'Invention de I'homme modeme. Sensibilites, moeurs et
comportements collectifs sous I'Ancien Regime. Paris: Fayard.
Nowell, Charles E. 1949. 'The French in Sixteenth-Century Brazil.' The Americas
5. 4: 381-93-
O'Callaghan, Edmund B., and Berthold Fernow, eds. 1853-87. Documents
Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York. l5 vols. Albany, NY:
Weed, Parsons.
O'Gorman, Edmundo, 1961. The Invention of America. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
Olson, Alison Gilbert. 1992. Making the Empire Work: London and American Interest
Groups, 1690-1790. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Ouellet, Real, ed. 1993. Rhetorique et conquete missionnaire: lejesuite Paul Lejeune.
Sillery, QC: Septentrion.
Owens, Louis. 1992. Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Pactfique de Provins [P. Rene de 1'Escale]. 1646. Brieve Relation du Voyage des Isles
de I'Amerique. Paris: Nicholas and Jean de La Coste.
Pagden, Anthony, 1995. Lords of All the World: Ideologies oj Empire in Spain, Britain
and France, 1500-1800. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995.
- 1993. European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993.
- 1987. Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, 1500-1800. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Park, Robert W. 1997- 'Thule Winter Site Demography in the High Arctic.'
American Antiquity 62, 2: 273-84.
- 1988. '"Winter Houses" and Qarmat in Thule and Historic Inuit Settlement
Patterns: Some Implications for Thule Studies.' Canadian Journal of Archaeology
12: 163-75.
Parry, Sir William Edward. 1826. Journal of a Third Voyage for the Discovery of a
North-west Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific,: performed in the years 1824—25.
London: J. Murray.
- 1824. Journal of a Second Voyage for the Discovery of a North-west Passage from the
Atlantic to the Pacific: performed in the years 1821-22-23. London: J. Murray.
- 1821. Journal of a Voyage for the Discovery of a North-west Passage from the Atlantic to
the Pacific: performed in the years i8iff-2O. London: J. Murray.
Pedraza Prades, Maria Dolores, and Floriano Ballesteros Caballero. 1990.
Catdlogo de las Fondos del Consulado del Mar, de Burgos. Burgos: Excma. Dipu-
tacion Provincial de Burgos.
Works Cited 345

Peers, Laura. 1996. "The Guardian of All": Jesuit Missionary and Salish Percep-
tions of the Virgin Mary.' In Reading beyond Words: Contexts for Native History.
Edited by Jennifer S.H. Brown and Elizabeth Vibert, 284-303. Peterborough,
ON: Broadview Press.
Perelman, Chaim. 1977. L'Empire rhetorique: rhetorique et argumentation. Collection
Pour demain. Paris: J. Vrin.
Perelman, Chaim, and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. 1970. Traite de I'argumentation. La
nouvelle rhetorique. 2nd ed. Brussels: Editions de 1'Institut de sociologie de
1'Universite libre de Bruxelles.
Petrone, Penny. 1990. Native Literature in Canada. Toronto: Oxford University
Press.
Philippon, Adam. 1649. Le Veritable plan et portrait de la maison miraculeuse de la
Sainte Vierge, ainsy qu 'ette se voit a present a Lorette. Paris: n.p.
Pinon, Laurent. 1995. Livres dezoologie de la Renaissance: une anthologie, 1450-
1700. Paris: Klincksieck.
Pioffet, Marie-Christine. 1997. La Tentation de I'epopee dans les Relations desjesuites.
Sillery, QC: Septentrion.
Porter, Charles W., III. 1985. Fort Raleigh and the First English Settlement in the New
World: Handbook 130. Washington, DC: National Park Service.
Porter, Marilyn. 1985. '"She Was Skipper of the Shore-crew": Notes on the His-
tory of the Sexual Division of Labour in Newfoundland.' Labour/Le Travail 15:
105-23-
Powell, William S., and Virginia W. Powell, eds. 1988. England and Roanoke: A
Collection of Poems, 1584-1987. Raleigh: North Carolina Department of Cul-
tural Resources.
Pratt, Maiy Louise. 1992- Jmperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation.
London: Routledge.
Prescott, Anne Lake. 1997. 'Rabelaisian Apocrypha and Satire in Early Canada:
The Case of Robert Hayman.' In Ediler et traduire Rabelais a travers les ages.
Edited by Paul J. Smith, 101-16. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Preston, Richard J. 1975. Cree Narrative: Expressing the Personal Meanings of Events.
National Museum of Man Mercury Series, Ethnology Service Paper no. 30.
Ottawa: National Museums of Canada.
Preston, Sarah, ed. 1986. Let the Past Go: A Life History, narrated by Alice Jacob.
Canadian Museum of Civilization Mercury Series, Ethnology Service Paper
no. 104. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada.
Price, Richard. 1983. First-Time: The Historical Vision of an Afro-American People.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Principe, Charles. 1990. 'A Moral Portrait of the Indians of the St Lawrence in
One Relation of New France, Written by Paul Lejeune, s.j.' Canadian Catholic
Historical Association Historical Studies 57: 29-50.
346 Works Cited

Pritchard, Allan. 1962. 'From These Uncouth Shores: Seventeenth-Century


Literature of Newfoundland.' Canadian Literature 14: 5-20.
Prosperi, Adriano. 1982. '"Otras Indias": Missionari della Controriforma tra con-
tadini e selvaggi.' In Scienze credenze occulte livelli di cultura. Convegno Internazio-
nale di Studi (Firenze, 26-30 giugno 1980), 205-34. Florence: Leo S. Olschki
Editore.
Prowse, D.W. 1895. ^ History of Newfoundland from the English, Colonial, andForeign
Records. London: Macmillan and Co.
Quinn, David B. 1990. 'Newfoundland in the Consciousness of Europe in the
Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries.' In Explorers and Colonies: America,
1500-1625. Edited by David B. Quinn, 301-20. London: Hambledon Press.
- 1977. North America from Earliest Discovery to First Settlements. New York: Harper
and Row.
- ed. 1979. New American World. 5 vols. New York: Arno Press and Hector Bye.
Quinn, David B., and Alison M. Quinn, eds. 1983. The English New England
Voyages, 1602-1608. 2nd series, no. 161. London: Hakluyt Society.
Quint, David. 1995. 'A Reconsideration of Montaigne's Des cannibales.' In
America in European Consciousness, 1493-1750. Edited by Karen Ordahl Kupper-
man, 166-91. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Radin, Paul. 1933. The Method and Theory of Ethnology: An Essay in Criticism. New
York: McGraw-Hill.
Ralegh, Walter. [1596] 1903. The Discovery of Guiana. Vol. 10 of The Principal
Navigations. 12 vols. Compiled by Richard Hakluyt, 338-431. Glasgow: James
Maclehose and Sons.
Ramos, Alcida. 1988. 'Indian Voices: Contact Experienced and Expressed.'
Rethinking History and Myth: Indigenous South American Perspectives on the Past.
Edited by Jonathan Hill, 214-34. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Ramusio, Giovanni Battista. [1556] 1565. Terzo Volume delle Navigationi et Viaggi.
Venice: Stamperia de'Giunti.
Raoul de Sceaux, P. [Jean Hauzaize]. 1965. Histoire des Freres Mineurs Capudns de
la province de Paris (1601-1660). Blois: Editions Notre-Dame de la Trinite.
Rappaport, Joanne. 1994. Cumbe Reborn: An Andean Ethnography of History.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ratelle, Maurice. 1992. Le 'Two Row Wampum'ou Les voiesparalleles. Quebec:
Gouvernement du Quebec, Ministere de 1'Energie et des ressources, Direc-
tion des Affaires Autochtones.
Ratio Studiorum. 1997. Edition bilingue latin-francais. Paris: Belin.
Ray, Arthur J. 1974. Indians in the Fur Trade: Their Role as Hunters, Trappers, and
Middlemen in the Lands Southwest of Hudson Bay, 1660-1870. Toronto: University
of Toronto Press.
Ray, Arthur}., and Donald B. Freeman. 1978. 'Give Us Good Measure': An Economic
Works Cited 347

Analysis of Relations between the Indians and the Hudson's Bay Company before 1763.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
[Razilly]. l653- Memoire pour servir d 'instruction a la grande compagnie de. I'Amerique,
qui s'y voudront interesser, ou passer dans lePais. Paris: Guillaume de Luyne.
Reid, John G. 1983. Trench Aspirations in the Kennebec-Penobscot Region,
1671.' Maine Historical Society Quarterly 23, 2: 85-92.
- 1981. Acadia, Maine, and New Scotland: Marginal Colonies in the Seventeenth Cen-
tury. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Reverdin, Olivier. 1957. Quatorze Calvinistes chez les Topinambous. Geneva: Edi-
tions du Journal de Geneve and Libraire E. Droz.
Richardson, Boyce. 1975. Strangers Devour the Land. Toronto: MacmLIIan.
Richter, Daniel K. 1992. Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the froquois League, in
the Era of European Colonization. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Ridington, Robin. 1990. Little Bit Know Something: Stories in a Language of Anthro-
pology. Vancouver: Douglas and Mclntyre; Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.
Robinson, Percy J. 1948. 'The Huron Equivalents of Cartier's Second Vocabu-
lary.' In Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, vol. 42, series 3, section ii:
127-46.
Roelens, Maurice. 1972. 'Lahontan dans I'Encyclopedieet ses suites.' In Recherches
nouvelles surquelques ecrivains des Lumieres. Edited by Jacques Proust, 163-200.
Geneva: Droz.
Roger, Jacques. 1995. Pour une histoire des sciences A part entiere. Paris: A. Michel.
Rossky, William. 1958. 'Imagination in the English Renaissance: Psychology and
Poetic.' Studies in the Renaissance 5: 49-73.
Rousseau, Jacques. 1964. 'Pierre Boucher, Naturaliste et Geographe.' In Histoire
Veritable et naturetie des moeurs et productions du pays de la Nouvelle-France vulgaire-
ment dite le, Canada, by Pierre Boucher, 262-400. Bouchcrville, QC: La Societe
Historique de Boucherville.
Rowley, Susan. 1993. 'Frobisher Miksanut: Inuit Accounts of the Frobisher
Voyages.' In Archeology of the Frobisher Voyages. Edited by William W. Fitzhugh
and Jacqueline S. Olin, 27-40. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution
Press.
Roy, Pierre-Georges, ed. 1934. 'Contrat de Mariage de Pierre Boucher et de
Marie Chretien.' Bulletin des recherches historiques 40: 38-9.
- ed. 1926. 'Memoires de Feu Monsieur Boucher, Seigneur de Boucherville et
Aricien Gouverneur des Trois-Rivieres (Extraits).' Bulletin des recherches kis-
hrriques 32: 398-404.
Ryan, Michael T. 1981. 'Assimilating New Worlds in the Sixteenth and Seven-
teenth Centuries.' Comparative Studies in Society and History 29: 519-38.
Sagard, Gabriel. 1636. Histoire du Canada et des Voyages que les Freres Mineurs Recol-
lets y ontfaicts pour la conversion des fnfideUes. Paris: Claude Sonnius.
348 Works Cited

- 16323. Le grand voyage du pays des Hurons, situe en I'Amerique vers la mer douce, PS
demiers confins de la nouvelle France Ou il est traicte de tout ce qui est du pays &
du gouvemement des Sauvages Avec un Dictionnaire de La langue huronne. ParFr.
Gabriel Sagard Recollet de St. Franfois de la prouince St. Denis. Paris: Denys
Moreau.
- i632b. Dictionaire de la langue huronne. Paris: Denys Moreau.
- [1632] 1998. Le grand voyage du pays des Hurons [including] Dictionnaire de la
langue huronne. Edited and annotated by Jack Warwick. Montreal: Presses de
I'Universite de Montreal.
- [1632] 1990. Le grand voyage du Pays des Hurons. Edited by Real Ouellet and
Jack Warwick. Quebec: Bibliotheque Quebecoise.
- [1632] 1939. The Longjoumey to the Country of the Hurons. Edited with an
introduction by George M. Wrong, translated by H.H. Langton. Toronto:
Champlain Society.
Saint-Vallier,Jean-Baptiste de la Croix de Chevrieres. [1688] 1856. Estat present de
I'Eglise et de la coloniefrancaise dans la Nouvelle-France. Quebec: Augustin Cote.
Saladin d'Anglure, Bernard. 1984. 'Inuit of Quebec.' In Handbook of the North
American Indians, edited by William Sturtcvant. Vol. 5, Arctic, edited by David
Damas, 476-507. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Salisbury, Neal. 1996. 'Native People and European Settlers in Eastern North
America, 1600-1783.' In The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Ameri-
cas. Vol. i. North America, part l. Edited by Bruce G. Trigger and Wilcomb E.
Washburn, 399-460. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sanfacoii, Andre. 1996. 'Objets porteurs d'identite dans les consecrations
amerindiennes a Notre-Dame de Chartres.' In Transferts culturels et metissages
Amerique/Europe XVfe—XXe siecle. Culture Transfer, America and Europe: 500 Years
of Interculturation. Edited by Laurier Turgeon, Denys Delage, and Real Ouel-
let, 449-66. Quebec: Presses de 1'Universile Laval.
Savelle, James M. 1985. 'Effects of Nineteenth-Century European Exploration
on the Development of the Netsilik Inuit Culture.' In The Franklin Era in Cana-
dian Arctic History, 1845-1850. Edited by Patricia D. Sutherland, 192-214.
National Museum of Man, Archaeological Survey of Canada Paper no. 131.
Ottawa: National Museums of Canada.
Sayre, Edward V., Garman Hai bottle, Raymond W. Stoenner, Wilcomb Wash-
burn, Jacqueline S. Olin, and W'illiam W. Fitzhugh. 1982. The Carbon-14
Dating of an Iron Bloom Associated with the Voyages of Sir Martin Fro-
bisher.' In 'Nuclear and Chemical Dating Techniques.' ACS Symposium Series,
176. Edited by Lloyd Currie, 441-51. Washington, DC: American Chemical
Society.
Scott, Colin. 1992. 'La Rencontre avec les blancs, d'apres les recits historiques et
Works Cited 349

mythiques des Cris de la Bale James.' Recherches amerindiennes au Quebec 22,


2-3: 47-62.
- 1983. The Semiotics of Material Life among the Wemindji Cree Hunters.'
PhD Thesis, McGill University.
Seaver, KirstenA. 1996. The Frozen Echo: Greenland and the Exploration of North
America, ca. A.D. lOOO-JtjOO. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Seed, Patricia. 1995- Ceremonies of Possession in Europe's Conquest of the New World,,
1492-1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Semedo, Alvaro. 1645. Histoire universelle du grand Royaume de la Chine. Translated
by Louis Coulon. Paris: Sebastien et Gabriel Cramoisy.
Shammas, Carole. 1975. 'The "Invisible Merchant" and Property Rights: The
Misadventures of an Elizabethan Joint Stock Company.' Business History 17, 2:
95-108.
Shimony, Annemarie. 1961. Conservatism among the Iroquois at the Six Nations
Reserve. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Shoemaker, Nancy. 1995. 'Kateri Tekakwitha's Tortuous Path to Sainthood.' In
Negotiations of Change: Historical Perspectives on Native American Women. Edited
by Nancy Shoemaker, 49-71. New York: Routledge.
Silverblatt, Irene. 1994. 'Andean Witches and Virgins: Seventeenth-Century
Nativism and Subversive Gender Ideologies.' In Women, 'Race, 'and Writing
in the Early Modem Period. Edited by Margo Hendricks and Patricia Parker,
259-71. London: Routledge.
Simard,JeanJacques. 1988. 'L'Anthropologie et son casse-tete.' Anthropologie et
Societe\2, \: 77-102.
Smith, John. 1624. The generall historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer
Isles. London: J. Dawson andj. Haviland for M. Sparkes.
— 1616. A description of New England: or the observations, and discoveries, of captain
John Smith. London: Humfrey Lownes for Robert Clerke.
Smith, Nicholas. 1983. 'The Wabanaki-Mohawk Conflict: A Folkhistory Tradi-
tion.' In Actes du Quatorzieme Congres des Algonquinistes. Edited by William
Cowan, 45-56. Ottawa: Carleton University Press.
Smith, Thomas Edward Vermilye. 1891. 'Villegaignon: Founder and Destroyer
of the First Huguenot Settlement in the New World.' Papers of the American
Society of Church History 3: 185-206.
Sole, Jacques. 1979. Les Mythes chretiens de la Renaissance aux Lumieres. Paris: Albin
Michel.
Stallybrass, Peter. 1986. 'Patriarchal Territories: The Body Enclosed.' In Rewrit-
ing the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modem Europe.
Edited by Margaret W. Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan, and Nancy J. Vickers,
123-42. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
35O Works Cited

Stanley, George F.G. 1953. 'The Indians and the Brandy Trade during the
Ancien Regime.' Revue d'histoire de I'Amerique francaise 6, 4: 489-505.
Stenton, Douglas R. 1987. 'Recent Archaeological Investigations in Frobisher
Bay, Baffin Island, N.W.T.' Canadian Journal of Archaeology 11: 13-48.
- 1983. 'An Analysis of Faunal Remains from the Peale Point Site, (KkDo-i)
Baffin Island, N.W.T.' Master's thesis, Trent University.
Stone, Lawrence, ed. 1994. An Imperial State at War: Britain from 1689 to 1815.
London: Routledge.
Sturtevant, William C., and David B. Quinn. 1987. This New Prey: Eskimos in
Europe in 1567, 1576, and 1577.' In Indians and Europe: An Interdisciplinary
Collection of Essays. Edited by Christian F. Feest, 61-140. Aachen: Rader Verlag.
Suite, Benjamin. 1882. Histoire des Canadiens-francais, 1608-1880. Vol. 3. Mont-
real: Wilson.
Symons, T.H.B., ed. 1999. Meta Incognita: A Discourse of Discovery. Martin Frobisher's
Expeditions, 1576-1578. Mercury Series. Directorate Paper 10. 2 vols. Ottawa:
Canadian Museum of Civilization.
Synopsis historiae Societatis Jesu. 1950. Louvain: Typis ad Sancti Alphonsi.
Szilas, L. 1990. 'Les Fondations des Jesuites en Europe jusqu'en 1615.' Plate 78
in Atlas d'histoire de I'Eglise. Les eglises chretiennes hieret aujourd'hui. Edited by
HubertJedin, Kenneth Scott Latourette, and Jochen Martin. Turnhout:
Brepols.
Tallon, Alain. 1993. 'La Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement et la fondation de
Montreal.' In Les Origines de Montreal. Actes du colloque organise par la Sociele
historique de Montreal (mat 19Q2), Edited byJean-Remi Brault, 39-62. Montreal:
Lemeac.
- 1990. La Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement (1629-1667). Spiritualite et societe. Paris:
Editions du Cerf.
Tanner, Helen Hornbeck, and Georges E. Sioui. 1994. 'Personal Reactions of
Indigenous People to European Ideas and Behavior.' In Culture et Colonisation
en Amerique du Nord: Canada, Etats-Unis, Mexique. Edited byjaap Lintvelt, Real
Ouellet, and Hub. Hermans, 77-92. Collection Nouveaux Cahiers du Celat.
Quebec: Septentrion.
Tanner, Marie. 1993. The Last Descendant of Aeneas: The Hapsburgs and the Mythic
Image of the Emperor. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Taylor, Charles. 1989. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modem Identity.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Taylor, E.G.R., ed. 1935. The Original Writings and Correspondence of the Two
Richard Hahluyts. 2nd series, nos. 76-7. 2 vols. London: Hakluyt Society.
Theresa de Jesus. 1982. Libra de las Fundaciones. Edited by Victor Garcia de la
Concha. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.
Works Cited 351

Therien, Gilles, ed. 1995. Figures de Vlndien. Montreal: Typo.


Thevet, Andre 1997. Le Bresil d'Andre Thevet. Les Singularitex de la France antartique.
Edited by Frank Lestringant. Paris: Chandeigne.
- 1986. Andre Thevet's North America: A Sixteenth-Century View. Translated and
edited by Roger Schlesinger and Arthur P. Stabler. Montreal: McGill-Queen's
University Press.
- 1575. La Cosmographie Universeile. 2 vols. Paris: Pierre L'Huilier.
- Ll558] 1878. Les Singularitez de la France anlarctique. Edited by Paul Gaffarel.
Paris: Maisonneuve.
— [1557] 1983. Les Singularites de la France antartique, Le Bresil des Cannibales
au XVTe sieclf. Texts selected and annotated by Frank Lestringant. Paris:
Maspero.
Third Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the State of Trade to New-
foundland. London 1793.
Tonkin, Elizabeth. 1992. Narrating Our Pasts: The Social Construction of Oral
History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tooker, Elisabeth. [1964] 1991. An Ethnography of the Huron Indians, 1615-1641).
Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin no. 190. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse
University Press.
Traquair, Ramsay. 1930. The Huron Mission Church and Treasure of Notre Dame de
la feune Lorette, Quebec, Montreal: McGill University Publications (Art and
Architecture) 13, 28.
Trelease, Allen W. 1960. Indian Affairs in Colonial New York: The Seventeenth
Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Trigger, Bruce G. 1987. 'Introduction to Papers on the Beginnings of the Fur
Trade.' Man in the Northeast 33: 27-30.
— 1985. Natives and Newcomers: Canada's 7leroic Age' Reconsidered. Montreal:
McGill-Queen's University Press.
- 1982. 'Ethnohistory: Problems and Prospects.' Ethnohistory 29, i: 1-19.
- [1976] 1987. The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660. 2nd.
ed. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.
- ed. 1978. Northeast. Vol. 15 of Handbook of North American Indians. Edited by
William C. Sturtevant. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Trndel, Marcel. 1973. The Beginnings of New France, 1524-1663. Toronto: McClel-
land and Stewart.
- 1963-83. Histoire de la Nouvelle-France. 3 vols. Montreal: Fides.
Trudel, Pierre. 1992.'On decouvre toujours 1'amerique: 1'arrivec des Europeens
selon des recits cris recueillis a WTiapmagoostui.' Recherches amerindiennes au
Quebec 22, 2-3: 63-72.
Turgeon, Lauricr. 1987. 'Lc Temps des peches lointaines. Permanences et trans-
352 Works Cited

formations (vers l50O-vers 1850).' In Histoire des peches maritime* en France.


Edited by Michel Mollat, 133-81. Toulouse: Privat.
Turgeon, Laurier, Real Ouellet, and Denys Delage, eds. 1996. Transferts adturels
et metissages. Amerique/Europe, XVIe-XXe siecle. Quebec: Presses de 1'Universite
Laval.
Turner, Terence. ig88a. 'History, Myth, and Social Consciousness among the
Kayapo of Central Brazil.' Rethinking History and Myth: Indigenous South
American Perspectives on the Past. Edited by Jonathan Hill, 195-213. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press.
- iQ88b. 'Commentary. Ethno-Ethnohistory: Myth and History in Native South
American Representations of Contact with Western Society.' Rethinking History
and Myth: Indigenous South American Perspectives on the Past. Edited by Jonathan
Hill, 235-81. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Unglik, Henry. 1993. 'Metallurgical Study of an Iron Bloom and Associated
Finds from Kodlunarn Island.' In Archeology of the Frobisher Voyages. Edited by
William W. Fit/.hugh and Jacqueline S. Olin, 181-212. Washington, DC:
Smithsonian Institution Press.
Vachon, A. 1969. 'Francois de Laval.' Dictionary of Canadian Biography 2: 367-70.
Vachon, Andre, with Victorin Chabot and Andre Desrosicrs. 1982. 'Dreams of
Empire: Canada before 1700.' Exhibition catalogue. Ottawa: National
Archives of Canada.
Van Kirk, Sylvia. 1980. 'Many Tender Ties': Women in Fur-Trade Society, 1670-1870.
Winnipeg: Watson and Dwyer. Reprint, Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1983.
Vansina.Jan. 1985. OralTradition as History. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
- 1965. Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Method. Translated by H.M. Wright.
Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Varnhagcn, F.A. de. 1858. Examen de quelques points de I'histoiregeographique du
Bresil. Paris: L. Martinet.
Vaugeois, Denis, ed. 1996. Les Hurons de Lorette. Sillery, QC: Septeiurion.
Vaughan, William. 1630. The Newlanders cure. London: Nicolas Oakes for F.
Constable.
- 16263. The Golden Fleece. London: William Stansby and Miles Flesher for Fran-
cis Williams.
- l626b. The New-found politicke, an amalgam by several hands (adaptation of
Trajano Boccalini's Ragguagli di Pamaso). London: Eliot's Court Press for
Francis Williams.
- l626c. Directions for health. London: J. Beale for F. Williams.
— 1625. Cambrensium Camleia. London: W. Stansby.
- 1617. Naturall and artificial directions for health. London: T. Snodham for Roger
Jackson.
Works Cited 353

- 1611. The spirit of detraction conjured and convicted in seven circles. London: W.
Stansby for G. Norton.
- iGooa. The Golden-grove. London: Simon Stafford.
- iGoob. Naturall and artificial directions for health. London: Richarde Bradocke.
Veiras, Denis [Vairasse d'Allais]. 167&-8. L'Histoire des Sevarambes, peuples qui
habitent unepartie du troisieme continent communement appelU la Terre australe.
5 vols. Paris: Cl. Barbin.
Vespucci, Amerigo. 1894. The Letters of Amerigo Vespucci and Other Documents.
Edited by Clements Markham. 1st series, no. 90. London: Hakluyt Society.
Veuillot, Louis. 1841. Rome el Lorette. Tours: Alfred Mame.
Viau, Roland, 1997. Enfants du neant et mangeurs d 'antes. Guerre, culture et societe en
Iroquoisie andenne, Montreal: Boreal.
Vigneras, L.A. 1957. 'El Viaje de Esteban Gomez a Norte America.' Revista de
Indias 17, 68: 189-207.
Villebon, Joseph Robineau de. 1934. Acadia at theEnd of the Seventeenth Century:
Letters, Journals and Memoirs of Joseph Robineau de Villebon, Commandant in Aca-
dia, 1690-1700. Edited by John Clarence Webster. Monograph Series no. i.
Saint John, NB: New Brunswick Museum.
Vincent, Sylvie. 1992. 'L'Arrivee des chercheurs de terres. Recits et dires des
Montagnais de la Moyenne et de la Basse Cote-Nord.' Recherches amerindiennes
au Quehec22, 2-3: 19-29.
- 1981. 'La tradition orale montagnaise. Comment 1'interroger?' Cahien, de Clio.
70: 5-26.
Vitoria, Francisco de. [1557] 1917. De Indis et de Jure Belli Relectiones. Edited by
Ernest Nys. Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution. Reprint, New York:
Oceana Publications; London: Wildy and Sons, 1964.
Walcott, Derek. 1995. 'The Muse of History.' In The Post-Colonial Studies Reader.
Edited by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffen, 370-4. London:
Routledge.
Wallace, Paul A.W. 1946. The White Roots of Peace. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press.
Wallis, Helen. 1984. 'England's Search for the Northern Passages in the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.' Arctic37, 4: 453-72.
Warkentin, Germaine. 1999. 'In Search of 'The Word of the Other": Aboriginal
Sign Systems and the History of the Book in Canada.' Book History 2: 1-27.
- 1996. 'Discovering Radisson: A Renaissance Adventurer between Two Worlds.'
In Reading beyond Words: Contexts for Native History. Edited by Jennifer S.H.
Brown and Elizabeth Vibert, 43-70. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press.
- ed., 1993. Canadian Exploration Literature: An Anthology, 1660-1860. Toronto:
Oxford University Press.
Washburn, Wilcomb E. 1993. 'The Frobisher Relics: A Museum History.' In
354 Works Cited

Archeology oftheFrobisher Voyages. Edited by William W. Fitzhugh and Jacqueline


S. Olin, 41-9. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Whitbourne, Richard. 1622. A discourse containing a loving invitation. London:
Felix Kyngston.
- 1620. A discourse and discovery of Nao-found-land. London: Felix Kyngston for
William Barret.
White, Andrew. 1634. A Relation of the Successfull Beginnings of the Lord Baltemore's
Plantation in Mary-land ... Extract of Certain Letters Written from Thence ... The
Conditions Propounded by His Lordship for the Second Voyage Intended this Present
Yeere, 1634. London: n.p.
- 1633. A Declaration of the Lord Baltemore's Plantation in Mary-land. London:
Bernard Alsop and Thomas Fawcet.
White, Hayden. 1986. 'Historical Pluralism.' Critical Inquiry 12, 3: 480-93.
White, Richard. 1991. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics in the
Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Whitt, Laurie Anne. 1995. 'Indigenous Peoples and the Cultural Politics of
Knowledge.' In Issues in Native American Cultural Identity. Edited by Michael K.
Green, 223-71. New York: Peter Lang.
Williams, Alan F. 1987. Father Baudoin's War: D'Iberville's Campaigns in Acadia and
Newfoundland, 1696, l6g~. St John's: Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Williams, Charles E. 1989. The French Oratorians and Absolutism, 1611-1641. New
York: Peter Lang.
Wogan, Peter. 1994. 'Perceptions of European Literacy in Early Contact Situa-
tions.' Ethnohistory^l, 3: 407-29.
Wolf, Eric R. 1982. Europe and the People without History. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Yates, Frances. 1966. The Art of Memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Yeats, William Butler. 1950. Collected Poems. 2nd ed. London: Macmillan.
Yves d'Evreux [Simon Michellet]. [1615] 1864. Voyage dans If nord du Bresil fait
durant les annres 1613 et 1614. Edited by M. Ferdinand Denis. Paris: Libraire A.
Franck.
— 1615. Suitte de I'Histoire des chosen plus memorables advenues en Maragnan es annas
1613. & 1614. Second traite. Paris: Francois Huby.
Zorgdrager, Cornelus Gijsbertsz. 1720. Bloeyende. Opkomst derAloude en Hedendaag-
sche Groenlandsche visschery. Amsterdam: J. Oostenvyck.
Contributors

Reginald Auger is an associate professor of the Department of Anthro-


pology, Laval University, and a participant in Laval's Centre d'etudes
interdisciplinaires sur les lettres, les arts, et les traditions (CELAT). He
edited Ethnicity and Culture (1987), and is a participant in the Meta
Incognita project, studying the archaeology of Martin Frobisher's min-
ing operations (1576-8) on Baffin Island.

Emerson W. Baker is an associate professor of the Department of


History, Salem State College, Salem, Massachusetts. He is the editor
of American Beginnings: Exploration, Culture, and Cartography in the Land
ofNorumbega (1994). With John Reid he co-authored The New England
Knight: Sir William Phips 1651-1605 (1998).

Selma Huxley Barkham's work on the Basque coast of Newfoundland


has won her honorary doctorates from Memorial University and the
University of Windsor; she was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal
Canadian Geographical Society in 1980, and is a member of the Order
of Canada. Besides writing numerous essays, reviews, and technical
papers, she is co-editor with John J. Mannion of'The Sixteenth-Century
Fishery' in Volume 1 of the Historical Atlas of Canada (1987).

Lynn Berry is a graduate student in the Department of History, Univer-


sity of Toronto, and is working on a doctoral dissertation on natural his-
tory in New France. She is the author of entries on Catherine-Gertrude
Jeremie and Nicolas Jeremie in the Biographical Dictionary of American
and Canadian Naturalists and Environmentalists (199?)-
356 Contributors

Wallace Chafe is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, University of Califor-


nia, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Seneca Thanksgiving Rituals
(1961), Handbook of the Seneca Language (1963), Seneca Morphology and Dic-
tionary (1967), Meaning and the Structure of Language (1970), The Caddoan,
Iroquoian, and Siouan Languages (1976), Evidentially: The Linguistic Cod-
ing of Epistemology (1986), and Discourse, Consciousness, and Time (1994)-

Luca Codignola studied at the University of Toronto and now teaches


the history of Canada and early American history at the University of
Genoa, Italy. Among his most recent works are The Coldest Harbour of the
Land (1988), L'Amerique du Nord francaise dans les archives religieuses de
Rome, 1600-1922, with P. Hurtubise and F. Harvey (1999), and Storia del
Canada, with L. Bruti-Liberati (1999).

Natalie Zemon Davis is Henry Charles Lea Professor of History Emeri-


tus, Princeton University, and adjunct professor of history and anthro-
pology, professor of medieval studies, and senior fellow in comparative
literature at the University of Toronto. Among her many publications
are The Return, of Martin Guerre (1983), Women on the Margins (1995),
Slaves on Screen (2000), and The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France (2000).

Denys Delage is a professor of sociology, Laval University, Quebec, and


is a member of CELAT. He is the author of the acclaimed Le Pays ren-
verse: Amerindians et Europeens en Amerique du Nord-Est, 1600-1664 (1985),
which has been published in English under the title The Bitter Feast
(1993).

Olive Patricia Dickason is Professor Emeritus of History, University of


Alberta, adjunct professor, University of Ottawa, and a member of the
Order of Canada. She is the author of The Myth of the Savage and the
Beginnings of French Colonialism in the Americas (1984), The Law of Nations
and the New World (with L.C. Green, 1989), and Canada's First Nations: A
History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times (1992, third edition forth-
coming 2001).

Deborah Doxtator, a Mohawk, whose parents came from the Tyendi-


naga reserve in Ontario, received her PhD in English from the Univer-
sity of Western Ontario, and in 1996 became assistant professor of
English and humanities, York University, Toronto. She died of cancer in
August 1998.
Contributors 357

William W. Fitzhugh is the director of the Arctic Studies Center, Smith-


sonian Institution, Washington DC. He is a participant in the Meta
Incognita project. Among his many publications are Cultures in Contact:
The Impact of European Contacts on Native American Cultural Institutions, AD
1000-1800 (1985); with Aron Crowell he co-edited Crossroads of Conti-
nents: Cultures of Siberia (1988), with Jacqueline S. Olin, Archeology of the
Frobisher Voyages (1993), and with Elizabeth I. Ward, Vikings: The North
Atlantic Saga (2000).

Mary C. Fuller is associate professor of literature, Massachusetts Insti-


tute of Technology. She is the author of Voyages in Print: English Travel to
America, 1576-1624 (1995), and of articles on English contacts with New-
foundland, Guiana, and the Ottoman Empire.

Peter A. Coddard is an associate professor of history, University of


Guelph. Among his articles are 'The Devil in New France: Jesuit Demon-
ology, 1611-1650' (1997) and 'Augustine and the Amerindian in Seven-
teenth Century New France' (1998). He is at work on a study of
seventeenth-century missionary anthropology.

Lynda Gullason is a participant in the Meta Incognita project. Her


doctoral dissertation (1999, McGill University) explored the role played
by gender in cross-cultural contact, using archaeological and archival
material that represents different phases of contact history from the
sixteenth century to the early twentieth century. She has completed
postdoctoral research at CELAT, Universite Laval, and is currently a
postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Institution studying Thule Inuit
metal use before and after European contact.

Conrad Heidenreich is a professor of geography, York University,


Toronto. He is the author of Huronia: A History and Geography of the
Huron Indians (1971), The Early Fur Trades: A Study in Cultural Interaction
(1976), and The Exploration and Mapping of Samuel de Champlain (1976).
He was a member of the editorial board for Volume i of the Historical
Atlas of Canada and edited or co-edited ten of the plates in that volume.

Anne Henshaw completed her doctorate atHarvard University in the field


of arctic archaeology and subsistence studies. She is an adjunct professor
in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Bowdoin College in
Brunswick, Maine, and is a participant in the Meta Incognita project.
358 Contributors

Donald Hogarth is adjunct professor, Department of Earth Sciences,


University of Ottawa, and is the author of Martin Frobisher's Northwest
Venture, 1576-1581: Mines, Minerals, and Metallurgy (1994). He is a par-
ticipant in the Meta Incognita project.

Dosia Laeyendecker is an archaeobotanist, and is retired from the


Smithsonian Institution. She was a member of the Meta Incognita
project, studying the archaeology of the Frobisher site on Kodlunarn
Island.

Toby Morantz is a member of the Department of Anthropology, McGill


University, Montreal. She is the co-author (with Daniel Francis) of Part-
ners in Furs: A History oftheFur Trade in Eastern James Bay, 1600-1870
(1982) and has also published An Ethnohistoric Study of Eastern James Bay
Cree Social Organization, 1700-1850 (1983) and a number of widely cited
articles. She has just completed a twentieth-century study of eastern
James Bay, The White Man's Gonna Get You: The Colonial Challenge to the
Crees in Quebec (forthcoming).

Real Ouellet is a professor of French and Quebecois literature, Laval


University, and is a member of CELAT. He has written widely on the
novel, the theatre, and on exploration narrative. Among his many dis-
tinguished individual and collaborative projects is the critical edition of
the Oeuvres completes of the Baron de Lahontan (1990).

Carolyn Podruchny is an assistant professor of American studies and his-


tory at Western Michigan University. From January to August 2001, she
served as the interim director of the D'Arcy McNickle Center for Ameri-
can Indian History at the Newberry Library in Chicago. Her doctoral
dissertation (University of Toronto, 1999) examined the culture of
French-Canadian voyageurs, and she has published articles on fur-trade
and Algonquian history.

Anne Lake Prescott teaches at Barnard College, Columbia University,


New York. She is the author of French Poets and the English Renaissance
(1978), and Imagining Rabelais in Renaissance England (1998) as well as
many essays on English literature in the sixteenth century. Her most
recent book, co-edited with Betty Travitsky, is Female and Mak Voices in
Early Modern England: An Anthology of Renaissance Writing (2000).
Contributors 359

John G. Reid is a member of the Department of History, St Mary's Uni-


versity, Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is the author of Maine, Charles II, and
Massachusetts: Governmental Relationships in Early Northern New England
U977)» Acadia, Maine and New Scotland; Marginal Colonies in the Seven-
teenth Century (1981), and co-edited The Atlantic Region to Confederation: A
History (1994). With Emerson W. Baker, he co-authored The New England
Knight: Sir William Phips 1651-1695 (1998).

Andre Sanf agon is a professor of early modern European history at


Laval University. He has published widely on French urban history and
the history of missions from Europe to Canada. He is the author of Char-
Ires dans la seconds moitie du XVIIe siede (1977), and La dissertation his-
torique: guide d'elaboration et de redaction (2000).

Gilles Therien FRCS recently retired as professor of semiotics but


remains a member of the Department of Literary Studies, Universite
de Quebec a Montreal. He is the author of Semiologies (1985) and
numerous studies of Native-Euro-Canadian interaction, and is the
editor of the collections Les figures de I'indien (1988) and Ecrits en
Hurbnie (1996, 2OOO).

Mylene Tremblay teaches in the Department of Literature, Laval Uni-


versity. Her doctoral dissertation (1998) is a critical edition of Louis
Hermepin's Nouveau voyage d'un pays plus grand que I'Europe (1698).

Germaine Warkentin is Professor of English (Emeritus), University of


Toronto, and a former director of the Centre for Reformation Studies,
Victoria University in the University of Toronto. She has published
widely on topics in the English Renaissance and Canadian literature,
and is currently editing the writings of Pierre-Esprit Radisson for the
Champlain Society.

Jean-Philippe Warren has taught sociology at the Edmundston Campus


of the Universite de Moncton in New Brunswick. He has published Un
supplement d'dme: les intentionsprimordiales deFernandDumont (IQ47-197O)
(1998), as well as articles on the history of Quebec. He is collaborating
with Gilles Gagne on a study of postmodern transition.
This page intentionally left blank
Index

Abbadie de Saint-Castin,Jean-Vincent Ailleboust, Louis d', 2ign3


d', Baron de Saint-Casein, 164 Alaska, 283
Abenaki, 82, 206 Albany, 41
Abitibi, 57, 62 Albertus Magnus, 72
aboriginal peoples. See Native peoples Albi, 117
Acadia, 20, 70, 75, 104, 107, 1091112, Alcarrcta, Martin Perez de, 118
'74, 175-7, 179-80, 181, 183, 186, alcohol, 57-8, 62, 130, 166-7, 193,
227, 228, 289, 290, 291, 292, 300, 211, 2l8; beer, 148
301011 Alexander, Sir William, 103
Acadians, 14, 173, 287, 288, 289, 292, Alexandrine bulls. See Papacy
294, 296, 297-8, 299, 300 Alfonse, Jean Fonteneau, 88
Achelacy (St Lawrence Iroquoian Algiers, 88, iO7ni
town), 255 Algonquian linguistic and cultural
Acosta,Jose de, 5, 8 group, 26, 27, 28,43, 49, 53, 61, 190,
Adam, Nicolas, 181 196, ig8n8, 223, 230, 234n5, 316
Adorno, Rolena, 26 Algonquin (people), 28, 57, 62, 82-3,
Aenons, 193 163,239,241,242,243,310
agency, as a social concept, 24 Allard, Lionel, 213
Agnello, Giovanni Battista, 267 alliances. See diplomacy
Agouhanna, 26 Allouez, Claude, 195
agriculture, 20, 80-1, 99, 101, 150-2, Alphonse.Jean, 119
153, 155, 186, 192, 211, 227, 229, Alsford, Stephen, 272
230, 231, 232, 234116, 244, 247, 250, amaru, 24-5, 27
288, 315; cattle, 93; farming imple- Amazon River, 103, 1091114
ments, 93, 97; pastoral representa- Amerindians. See Native peoples
tion, 15(^-2, 153; semi-sedentary, Amsterdam, 27
89,94 Anadabijou, 238
362 Index

Anderson, Karen, 2201112 Auregan, Pierre, 227


Andes, 24, 27, iogni4 Australia, 37, 165, 307
Andros Tracts, 293 autobiography, 58-9
Angers, 27 Avalon, 173, 175, 177, 181
Anglicans, 58 Avezac-Macaya, Marie-Armand-Pascal
Annat, Francois, 186 de, 89
Antwerp, 114, 120, 121 Aviles, Pedro Menendez de, iogni3
Appleby, Joyce, 50, 52-3, 54, 66 Awenhaniyonda, 39
Aquinas, Thomas, 72 Axtell, James, 142, 145, 177, 246, 247,
Aquitaine, 179, 180, 181 248, 249
archaeological evidence, 14, 50, Ayala, Catalina de, 117
2l9n2, 220nii, 263, 264, 265, 269, ayullus, 27
271-6, 277, 278, 280-5,313 Azores, 117
Arctic, 265, 271, 272, 278, 281, 283 Aztecs, 34
Argonauts, 126-7, 128, 131, 133-4,
135,137 Bacalaos, 174
Aristotle, 71, 72 Bacon, Francis, 138
Arnauld, Antoine, 193, 194, 195 Baffin Island, 3, I57n3, 263, 264-5,
Arner, Robert, 144, 145 267, 270, 279, 284
Arnold, Charles D., 283 Baie des Chaleurs, 176
Arnold, David, 233 Baker, Emerson W., 14, 291, 3OOn2,
Arriaga,Joan de, I24n2 3Oin6,3O2n20,3O2n22
Arsenault, Bona, 3Oin4, 3O2n24 Baltimore, Lord. Se<? Calvert, Cecil;
artisans, 3, 19, 2O, 103, 105, 211, 212, Calvert, George
270, 273, 275, 290, 294 baptism, 75, 91, 105, 145
Asher, G.M.,48 Barbeau, Maurice, 252, 254, 257, 316
Ashurst, Sir Henry, 292, 293, 300, Barkham, Selma Huxley, 13, 117, 118,
3Oini2 12O, 121, 124n2
Ashurst, Sir William, 293, 3011112 Barlowe, William, 146
Asseline, David, 90 Baron, Andre, 211
Athapaskans, 62 Barre, Nicolas, io8mo
Athore, 100 barter. See trade
atiukan, 40, 53-4, 55, 57, 67ni7 Barthes, Roland, 72, ig8n4
Atkinson, Geoffroy, 20, igSni Basques, 13, 92, 110-11, 112, 113-14,
Attikamegue, 28 118, 120, 121-2, 123, 124, 174, 311
Auger, Reginald, 286nl Batiscan River, 241
Augustines Hospitalieres de la Miseri- Bauer, George W., 51
corde de Jesus, 176 Bayonne, 121, 123
Augustinianism, 188-9,1QO, 193, ig8n3 Beauchesne, Theodore, 88
Aulnay, Charles de Menou de, 180 Beaugrand-Champagne, Aristide, 254
Index 363

Beaulieu, Alain, 168, i?on5, !7On7 books. See literacy


beaver skins, 28 Boone, Elizabeth, 31, 34, 43
Bede of the Blessed Sacrament (John Bordeaux, 118, 120, 122
Hiccocks), 182 Boreham, P.W., 269, 272, 274, 279
Belleforest, Francois de, 99 Boschet, Antoine, iggng
Bellomont, earl of. SeeCoote, Richard Bosher,J.F., 3OOn3
Bennett, Charles E., 103 Bossy, John, 188
Beothuk, 135, 162 Boston, 287, 290, 291, 293, 296, 297,
Berhouague family, 121, 124 302n23
Berkhofer, Robert F., Jr, 47 Bottereau, George, 189
Bernabe,Jean, 26, 31 Boucher, Pierre, 14, 223-34, 234ni,
Bernard, Jacques, 122 234114, 234115, 234n6, 311
Berrotaran, Joan Perez de, 118 Boudrot, Abraham, 287, 288, 294,
Berry, Lynn, 14 296, 297, 298, 300, 301115, 3Oini6,
Berthiaume, Pierre, 168 302n23
Best, George, 262, 263, 264, 266, 267, Bougainville, Louis-Antoine, comte
273, 274, 277, 280, 282 de,169
Betanzos, 116 Boullongne, Madame Barbe de,
Bhabha, Homi, 26, 64 219113
Biard, Pierre, 75, lCK)ni2, 182 Bouthillier, Claude, l85n4
Bideaux, Michel, 84n3 Bouvart, Martin, 206, 208, 209, 211
Biggar, H.P., ill, 115, 116, 121, 122, Brador, 121
174 Bramante, 200
Birch, Thomas, 60 Braudel, Fernand, 232
birch-bark drawings, 40 Brazil, 8, 13, 20, 21, 24, 3ini, 88,
Bishop, Charles A., 50 89-90, 96-8, 99, 103, 104, I07n2,
Black Robe (film), 30 io8n4, i(X)ni4, 149, I58ng, 183,
Black Robes, 25. See also Jesuits I99n8
Black Sea, 126 Brazilians, 21, 23, 92, 94, 98, 105-6
Blathwayt, William, 295, 301 n 15, brazilwood, 90, 91, 92
302nl8, 302n27 Brebeuf,Jean de, 21, 79-8l, 82, 84n4,
blended histories. See hybridity 189, 194, 198117, 201, 248, 253>
Bloch, Ernst, 307 258-61
Bloch, Marc, 19 Brebner, J.B., 236
Blouin, Anne-Marie, 203 Bremond, Henri, ig8n2
Blu, Karen, I57n5 Brenton,Jahleel, 287, 288
Bobadilla, Nicolas, 70 Bretons, 92, 189
Boccalini, Trajano, 128 Bretonvilliers, Alexandre de, 215
body, image of, 141, 142, 154-6, 160, Brewer, John, 299, 3Oin6
161-2 Bridenbaugh, Carl, 147
364 Index

Briggs, Robin, 187, 195 Calvert, Leonard, 177


Bristol, 6, 7, 239 Calvin, John, 98
British (peoples), 36, 70, 126-8, 130, Calvinists, 97, 98, io8n8, 190
131, 132, 134. 135, 137-8, 173- 183, Cambriola. See Newfoundland
271,299 Camillo, Giulio, 69, 73, 74
Brittany, 180, 199119 Campeau, Lucien, 174, 177, 178, 179,
Brockliss, Lawrence W.B., 187 180, 181, l84nl, 186, 187, 201,
Brodhead, John R,, 43, 47n5 2i9n2, 25in2
Brotherston, Gordon, 44 Canada, as region within New France,
Brown, Alexander, 152 88, 91, 92-6, 106, 107, 116, 117,
Brown, Jennifer S.H., 26, 43 118, 173, 174-5, i79-8i, 182, 183,
Brule, Etienne, 242, 255 186-98, 19804, I99nio, 201, 202,
Bry, Dietrich de, loo 203-4, 209, 2ign6, 223-34, 234nl,
Bry, Theodore de, 162 234n3, 23508, 237, 243, 244, 248,
Bucher, Bernadette, 21 249, 251, 25in4, 252, 253, 257-8,
Buckley, MichaelJ., 189 289, 292, 293, 298. See also New
Buenaventura (ship), 113-14 France
Burckhardt, Jacob, 5 cannibalism, 21, 98, 162, 164, 169
Burgos, 113, 114, 116, 117, 118, canoes, 28, 59, 78, 163, 164, 231, 239,
119-21, I24n3, I24n5, I24n6, I24n7 241, 242, 243, 25ini
Burgos merchant house, 111 capitalism, concept of, 34, 315
Burgundy, 136, 180, 201 Capuchins, 104, 105, 173, 174, 175,
Burke, Peter, 8 176-7, 178, 179-81, 182, 183, 184,
Burnuy, Diego de, 113, 117-18, 119, iggnS, 245,313
12O, 122 Carbery, earl of. SeeVaughan,
Richard
Caballero, Ballesteros, I24n3 Caribbean, 2O, 26, 31, iO7nl, !O8n4,
Caboto, Giovanni (also known asjean 114, 160, 162, 166, 291, 294
or John Cabot), 6, 7, 142, 143, 146 Caribs, io8n4
cacique, 101 Carigouan, 27
Cain, PJ., 299, 3Oin6 Carijo, 89
calendar. See time Carile, Paolo, 228, 229, 234n3
California, 215, 216 Carmelites, 181
Callander, B.A., 265 Carter, Paul, 37
Callison, Cynthia, 65 Carrier, Jacques, 10, 11, 20, 22, 25-6,
calumets, 83 32n2, 33, 69, 74, 75-7- 78, 84n3, 93,
Calvert, Cecil (second Baron Balti- 94, 95, 96, 106, io8n6, 108117, 116,
more), 183 118, 160, 162-3, 164, 237-8, 242,
Calvert, George (first Baron Balti- 246, 249, 2jln4, 252-5, 258, 260,
more), 138, 149, 175, 177, 182, 183 3H
Index 365

cartography. See maps and mapping Chatillon. S<?eColigny, Gaspard de


Cassirer, Ernst, 308 Chaumonot, Pierre, 200-2, 203-5,
catechism, 75 206, 208, 210, 211, 212, 213, 2l6,
Cathay and Cathay Company, 262, 217, 2l8, 219, 2ign5, 2ign6, 22Onii
266,267 Cherokee, I57n5
Catholicism, 21, 27-8, 3ini, 34, 74, Cheshire, Neil, 264, 280
77, 88, 97, 98, 103, 104, 108118, 130, Chevalier, Ulysse, 215, 2igni, 22On7
149, 173-5, 177-8, i84n2, 186, 187, Child, Sir Josiah, 151-2
188, 191-3, 205, 216, 2igni, 247, children, 38, 91, loSnio, 117, 152,
250 154, I58ni2, 160, 167, 168, 200, 206,
Cayugas, 38, 41, 42-3, 47n3 208, 218, 231, 232, 242, 311
Cecil, Sir William, 158 China. See Asia
Cell, Gillian, 6, 125, 128, 142-3, 151, Chinard, Gilbert, igSnl
I58nio Cholenec, Pierre, 27-8
ceremonies, 10, 21, 28-9, 39, 77, 80, Christ, 74, 75, 98, 163, 2OO, 203, 205,
83, 92, 101, 105-6, 119, 202, 206-7, 206, 207, 209, 2l6, 217,2l8
208, 212, 285; of possession, 145, Christendom, concept of, 8, 94, 145,
157 178
Certeau, Michel de, 8 Christianity, 33, 34, 74-5, 91, 104, 113,
Cervantes, Fernando, 187 118-19, 130, 134, 135,145,162,165,
Chabot, Victorin, 92 173, 188-9, 191-8, 201, 202,203,
Chafe, Wallace, 14 206, 209-10, 213, 216, 218, 22Oni2,
Challeux, Nicolas Le, 103 243-4, 245-6, 247, 248, 250, 25in3,
Chambly, 78 253, 257, 258, 259, 316
Chamoiseau, Patrick, 26, 31 Cicero,72
Champlain, Samuel de, 14, i6n3, 33, civilization, concept of, 168, 2l6, 259,
34, 35-6, 40-1, 44, 75-6, 77-9, 81, 306; European program of, 24,
82,160,163-4, !7On3,228,229, 231, 33-4,46-7, 87, 107, io8n2,169,192,
234n3, 236, 237, 238-51, 25in2, 207, 216, 234n4, 243-4, 245-6, 247,
25in4, 255, 3H 248, 25in3, 306, 316. See also evan-
Charbonneau, Hubert, 234n4, 234n5 gelization
Charbonnier, Georges, 307 clans, 38, 39-40, 42, 45, 316; wolf clan,
Charles i, 128, 151 45
Charles v, 69, 114, 115, 116-17, 127 class, 20, 154, 156,309,314
Charlesbourg-Royal, 94 classical mythology, 3-4, 5, 44, 228,
Charles Fort. S^Waskaganish 275, 307
Charlesfort (Florida), 99 Claude d'Abbeville (Clement
Charlevoix, Pierre-Francois-Xavier Foullon), 104, 105, 106, 161-2,
de, i6n3, 245, 247, 25in3 183
Chatellier, Louis, 187 clergy, 114, 119, I24n8, 173, 174,
366 Index

175-6. 177, 178-9, 183-4, 194, 208, Confiant, Raphael, 26, 31


210, 215, 245-6, 292, 308 confreres, 181, 182
Cliche, Marie-Aimee, 220ng conjuring. See medicine; spirituality
climate, 93, 96,104,106, no, 111,138, Constantinople, 181
147, 148, 157113, 164, 168, 197, 223, conversion, 25, 47n2, 71, 75, 81, 121,
228, 265, 273 164-5, 173, 175, 177, 187, 188, 189,
cloth. See textiles 190-2, 194, 195, I98n6, 201, 203,
clothing, 48-9, 94, 98, i l l , 122, 209-10, 230, 245, 247, 248, 250, 255
139112, 156, 206, 207, 211 Coote, Richard, first earl of Bello-
Code Noir, 20 mont, 298
Codignola, Luca, 13, 149, 173, 174, Copernicus, 308
175, 178, 182, 184112, 186, 187 copper, 93, 242
Cohen, David William, 64 Copway, George, 34
Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, 187, 224, 225, Corboz, Andre, 10, 16115
247, 3°in7 corn, 81, 155, 231
Coligny, Gaspard de, Seigneur de Coronado, Francisco Vasquez de, 237
Chatillon, 96, 97, 99 Cortez, Hernan, 306
Colombia, 62 Corunna, 115, 116; House of the
colonialism and colonization, 29-30, Spice Trade, 115-17
33-4, 36, 37, 44,45-7, 63, 65, 69, 70, cosmology, 44-5, 49, 54, 68, 190, 307,
74, 78, 87-107, 10701, 125, 126, 128, 308, 314. See also creation stories;
131-2, 134, 135, Hi-2, 143-4, 146, epistemology; history; land and
147-8 149,150-1,152, J53,154, 156- landscape; place
7, 158011, 162, 169, 174, 187, 191, Costa, Uriel da, 27, 30
193, 202, 224, 225, 228, 233, 23401, Council of Trent, 173, 174, 193
238, 242, 244-6, 298, 299, 306, 307, Counter-Reformation. See Reforma-
309-12, 313-17; colonists, 93, 94, tion
101, 102, 103, 10809, 135, 145, 149, court (of a European ruler) and
151-2, 155, 156, 167, 218, 225, 244, courtier, 10, 71, 130, 136, 137,
245, 269-70, 285, 289-90; conquista- I39n5, 156, 228, 229, 233; English,
dors, 101, no, 114, 246, 306. See also 7, 144; French, 36, 69, 91, 92, 105,
European expansion; imperialism; io8ng, 179, 237; Spanish, 114
'Other'; post-colonialism court (of law), 29, 63, 151, 152
Columbus, Christopher, 5, 41, 42, 87, Cousin, Jean, 90
155, 15808, 159-61, 162, 169112 creation stories, 38-40, 43, 53, 257
Compagnie des Cent Associes, 191 Cree, 40,48-50, 51-2, 53, 54-5, 56-61,
Conception Bay, 151 63-6, 66ni, 66n3, 671115, 67ni8, 91
condolence rituals, 45 Cree Way project, 51-2, 59, 66n2,
Condorcct, Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de 67017
Caritat, marquis de, 168 Creighlon, Donald, 10
Index 367

creolite, 26-9 demonology, 196


Cresswell, R.G., 276 Dene, 61, 66113
Cressy, David, 3011112 Denham, Robert, 269
Cronk, Sam, 4703 Denis, Ferdinand, 92
Cruikshank, Julie, 55, 58, 61-2, 64, Dennis (ship), 270
66ni2 Denonville, Marquis de, 230
Cuba, 115, 159 Denys, Nicolas, 166-7
Cumbe (people), 62-3 De Pauw, Cornelius, 168
Cummins, Thomas, 29 Derrida, Jacques, 7-8, 15, 44
Cuoq, Jean-Andre, 254 Desceliermap (1550), 96
Cupid's Cove colony, 151 Deserontyou, Captain John, 45
Cusick, David, 34, 41-2 Des Friches de Meneval, Louis-
Cuthand, Stan, 54, 55 Alexandre, 291
Deslandres, Dominique, 174, 187,
Dablon, Claude, 203, 207, 209 1991110, 23404
Daigle.Jean, 301114, 30in6, 30in24 Desrosiers, Andre, 92
Dainville, Francois de, 70 Deva, 121
Damas, David, 265, 282 Devens, Carol, 24
Daniel, Antoine, 189, 194 devots, 173, 179, 187, 181
Dare, Virginia, 145-6, 157116 diamonds, 95
Darricau, Raymond, 205 Dickason, Olive, 11, 13, 21, 33, 34, 90,
Darwin, 308 92, 96, 107, 10803, 16901, 247
Davis, Natalie Zemon, 12, 15, 26, 30 Dicksoo, P.G.M., 293, 30106, 3021128
Davis, Sylvanus, 295 dictionaries, 20, 22, 27, 84, 215, 255-8,
Davis Strait, 265 260,310,313
death, concepts of, 42, 62, 78-9, Dieppe, 90, 99, 202
1091114 diplomacy, 23, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 33,
dehuewin, 13 36, 39-40, 41, 76-8, 79, 82-3, 88, 91,
decentring, concept of, 7-9, 10, 12, 94, 96, 97, 98, 101-2, 104-5, 106-7,
14, 15, 21, 24, 29,31, 125, 126, 139, 121-2, 145, 231, 238, 241-2, 243-5,
216, 284, 287-8, 296, 298, 306, 308 246, 247, 249-50, 278-80, 291,
decolonize. See post-colonialism 295-6,3io,3n,3i3, 3i6
Deffain, Dominique, ig8n6 disease, 25, 168, 267, 294; scurvy, 95;
De'haen'hiyawa'kho ('Sky Grasper'), small pox epidemics, 42
39 Domagaya, 25-6, 28, 253
De Krey, Gary Stuart, 293, 3011112 Dominicans, 89, 90, 114, 166, 186
Delage, Denys, 9, ll, 14, 16113, 22, Donnacona, 25, 77, 253
2ign2, 230, 310 Donne,John, 141-2, 154-5, 156, 157,
Delumeau, Jean, 205, 217, 219 I57m,57n2
demography, 19-20, 153, 158012, 202 Dorset (people), 265
368 Index

Doughty, Thomas. See Stock, Simon Elcano.Juan Sebastian de, 115


Douville, Raymond, 225, 231 elders, 40, 49, 56, 58, 60, 76-7, 83, 167,
Doxtator, Deborah, 3, 11, 12, 15 212
Drake, Francis, 125, 127, 134, 136, Elizabeth i, 143, 144, 266, 271
300113 Elliot, J.H., 4, 20
drawings. See birch-bark drawings; fur Ellis, Thomas, 262
pelt drawings; mnemonic devices; empiricism, concept of, 35, 36, 40, 65
pictorial manuscripts; wampum English (people), 6, 10, 12, 26, 27, 41,
belts 48-9, 52, 55. 59, 60, 65-6, 107111,
Drayton, Michael, 125, I39n2 125, 127, 135, 139111, 141-2, 143,
dreams, 34, 44 144, 147, H8, H9-52, 152, 153. 154,
Drolet, Gilles, 22Onll 156-7, I57n3, 158118, isSng, 173,
Droz, Eugenie, 19 175, 176, i?7, 178, 181, 202, 226,
Druke, Mary A., 36, 40 237, 239, 241, 243, 248, 249, 250,
Dubc, Pauline, 179 262, 264, 266, 268, 271, 272, 273,
Du Creux, Francois, 194 277-9, 280-6,287-93,294-300,315,
Dumont, Fernand, 309 316. See also British
Duperon, Charles Camus, 178 English Revolution, 146, 291, 293, 299
Du Pont. See Grave du Pont Enjalran.Jean, 214
Durand, Nicolas. 5e«Villegaignon, environment. See\and and landscape;
Chevalier Nicolas Durand de natural history and science
Dutch (people), 46, 147, 168, 215, epidemics, 42, 2O2, 313. See also dis-
237, 248, 249, 250 ease
Duteil, Jean-Pierre, 199119 epistemology, 33-8, 40, 41-2, 43,
Du Tertre, Jean-Baptiste, 166 44-7, 47112, 52-3, 54, 57, 61, 64, 68,
Du Tremblay, Francois-Joseph. See 84, H4,3 0 7-9,312,313,314,315
Joseph de Paris Erasmus, Desiderius, 6, 9, 19, 22, 69,
Duverger, Christian, 187 114
Duvergier de Hauranne, Jean, Abbe Erikson, Vincent, 61
de Saint-Cyran, 188 eroticism. See sexuality
Dyer, Edward, 150 Escale, Rene de 1'. S«ePacifique de
Provins
early modern, concept of, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, Eskimos, felnuit
9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 20 Esnaola.Juan de, 121
East Indies, 178 Espoir (ship), 22, 89 Esteve, Seraine
Eastman, Mack, 170116 de, 122
Eccles, W.J., 6, 299 ethnohistory, concepts of, 50-1, 55,
Edwin, Sir Humphrey, 293 62-3, 65
Egerement, 294, 295, 3OO European expansion, 3-4, 5-6, 8, 10,
Ehrenreich, Robert, 281 12, 20-1,34,44,69,87,93
Index 369

European gaze or regard, concept of, Favre, Pierre, 70


21-4, 29, 31 Feast of the Dead, 10
European peoples, 3, 4, 7, 10, 11-12, feasts, 78
14, 15, 19-2O, 21, 23, 24, 26, 29, 30, Febvre, Lucien, 19
3L 33-7, 43-7, 47n2, 48-51, 54-5, Fenton, Edward, 262, 264, 278
59-62, 64-6, 66117, 68, 74, 75-84, Ferguson, Wallace, 4, 5, 9, 14
88-9, 90, 95-6, 98, 107112, 111, 126, Ferland, Remi, l6n3
127, 154, 162, 165, 167, 168, 169, Fernow, Berthold, 247
173-4, 184, 187-8, 192, 195, 196, Ferryland. See Newfoundland
197, 202, 205, 210-11, 218, 2ign2, Ficino, Marsilio, 72
226, 233, 239, 243, 248, 250, 262, First Nations. See Native peoples
264, 265, 271, 272, 276, 281, 283, fishing and fishers, 22, 49, 89, 92, 93,
284-5, 305, 307-8, 310-12, 313-14, 95, 101, 110, 111, 115, 118, 120,
316. See also names of individual 121-2, 123, 132, 134, 135, 136,
peoples I39n3, 142-3, 146, 147-8, 149-50,
evangelization, 69, 70, 74-5, 84, 91, 151-2, 154, i58ng, 1581110,168,
98, 135, 173, 177-8, 183-4, 192-3, 174, 212, 225-6, 227, 228, 231, 266,
194, 209-10, 213, 243-4, 310. See 290
also civilization; missions and mis- Fitzhugh, William, 5, 264, 272, 275,
sionaries 276
explorers (European), 33, 35-6, 43, Five Nations, felroquois
48, 50, 74, 91,93, 114, 125, 126, 141, Fixico, Donald, L., 169
154, 160, 163-4, 174, 228, 230, 233, Flanders, 114, 117, 118
234n3, 236-51, 247, 248, 249-50, Flannery, Regina, 58, 66ni2
262-3, 265, 268-71, 273, 283, 285, Flathead. See Salish
3°6, 309 Fleche,Jesse, 75, 174, 179
Flemish (people), 187, 188
Fabian, Johannes, 29-30 flint, 38, 43
Fabre, Pierre-Antoine, 74 Florida, 13,98-103, 106, I08nn
Faillon, Etienne-Michel, 215 Florio, John, 134
families, 26-7, 3inl, 38, 39-40, 49, Fludd, Robert, 73
50,99, 103, 122, 152, 153, 167, Fogelson, Raymond, 50
205, 208-9, 212, 217, 218, 2igng, Foigny, Gabriel de, 165, !7On4
2201112, 231, 234115, 245-6, 259-6O, Fonseca, Juan Rodriguez de, Bishop
291,293 of Burgos, 114
Faneuil, Benjamin, 287, 288, 300 Fort Caroline, 99, 102, 103. See ako
Farago, Claire, 21-2 San Mateo
farming. See agriculture Fort Naxouat, 292, 293, 294
Faulkner, Alaric, 290 Fort Raleigh National Historic Site,
Faulkner, Gretchen Fearon, 290 144, H5
37° Index

Fort Saint Louis (Brazil), 103 frontier thesis, 12


Fort William Henry, 294, 296, 297, Fugger family (German financiers),
298,300 114-15
Fossett, Renee, I24nl Fuller, Mary, 13, I57n4
Foster, Michael K., 36 Fumaroli, Marc, 84n2
Foullon, Clement. See Claude fur pelt drawings, 40
d'Abbeville furs, 28, 48-9, 55, 58, 80, 94, 249, 287,
France-Roy. See Charlesbourg-Royal 288,289
Franciotti, Cesare, 211 fur trade. See trade
Francis, Daniel, 49, 50, 55, 67ni5 fur traders. See traders
Franciscans, 30, 34, 96, 104, 174, 175,
176, 179, 180, 186, 195, 229, 244, Gabel, Leona, 19
255 Gaffarel, Paul, 88, 89, 92, 101, 103,
Francklyn, Henry, 287, 288, 300, io8n4,io8ng
30ln4 Gagnon, Francois-Marc, 203
Francois i, 69, 70, 87, 88, 93 Galen, 20
Freeman, Donald B., 28 Galileo, 309
Freitag, Michel, 307 Gardner, Thomas, 291
French (people), 6, 1O, 12, 13, 14, 2O, Garibay, Esteban de, 121
21, 22, 23-4, 25, 26, 27, 28, 33, garments. See trade goods; textiles
34, 36, 50-1, 69, 76-7, 78, 79, 81, Garonne River, 120
87-107, iO7ni, lognia, in, 116, Gaumond, Michel, 22Onn
118, 120, 130, 152, 165-6, 167-8, gaze. See European gaze
173, 174, 175, 178, 181, 182, 183, Geertz, Clifford, 60
186, 187, 188-9, 190, 191, 193, 194, gender, 13, 19, 2O, 21, 24, 26, 39,
ig8n7, 202, 203, 205, 206, 208, 209, 125-6, i39ni, I39n2, 141-2, 144,
21O-11, 212, 213, 2l6, 217, 2l8, 223, 153-5, 156, 216-17, 218, 220nl2,
224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229-3O, 247
232-3, 235n8,236-51, 25in2, Genette, Gerard, 72
252-3, 254, 255, 256-8, 259, 261, Geneve, Charles de, iggng
288, 289, 290-2, 294, 296, 297-8, Gentilcore, David, 187
299, 300n3, 309, 310, 315 Gentleman, Tobias, 147
Fretat, Amable de, 181 geographic theories, 12, 77, 141-2,
Freud, Sigmund, 308 148-9, 154, 241, 262, 271, 308, 313
Frobisher, Martin, 3, 4, 5, 14, 134, Georgekish, Geordie, 48, 60
I57n3,262-85 Georgian Bay, 192, 230
Frobisher Bay, 3, 262, 263, 264-5, 268, Gibson, John Arthur, 43
271, 278, 279, 280, 282-3, 285 Giddings,J.L.Jr, 283
Frontenac, Louis de Buade, comte gift exchange, 22-4, 25-6, 28, 32n4,
de, 291, 3Oing 76, 82-3, io8nio, 162, 247, 280, 305
Index 371

Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 139111, 143, Groseilliers, Medard Chouart, Sieur


144,149,267 de, 10
Gillarn, Captain Zachariah, 60 Gros-Louis, Celine, 212
Gillis, Pieter, 22 Gros-Louis, Charlotte, 212
Gliozzi, Giuliano, 8-9 Grove, Jean, 265
God (Christian), 27,33, 71, 74,80,84, Grupe Mu, 84ni
113, 119, 135, 138, 160, 162, 164, Guadeloupe, 182
177, 183, 186, 187, 188,189,192, Guanabara Bay, 24, 106
193, 194, 195, 197, 200, 201, 210, Guanabaras, 97
217, 227, 229, 233, 242, 244, 248, Guanahani archipelago, 159
257,307,310 Guaranis, 192, I99n8
Goddard, Peter, 13, 190, 196, 228 Guiana, 125, 141, 149, 194
gods and goddesses, 27, 62, 196 Guibert, Joseph de, 189
gold, 93, 96, 110, 127, 135, 136-7, Guise, Charles de, Cardinal de
I39n3, 142, 143, 147, 149, 150, 151, Lorraine, 96
I57n3, 159, 162, 197, 215, 237, 267, Gulf of Mexico, 237
269, 270, 271, 275, 278-9; fool's Gulf of St Lawrence, 92, 123, 142, 249
gold, 95, 279 Gullason, Linda, 281
Golden Hind (ship), 136 Gullick, CJ.M.R., io8n4
Gomez, Esteban, 115-16 Guy, Elizabeth, 156
Gonneville, Captain Binot Paulmier Guy, John, 131, 133, 151
de, 22,89-90 Guyart, Marie (de 1'Incarnation), 25,
Gordon, D.J., I39n5 28-9, 32n3, 227, 234n6, 310
Gorges, Sir Ferdinando, 135
Gouberville, Gilles de, 23 habitants, 225
Gourgues, Dominique de, lo8-gmi Haggblom, Anders, 283
Graburn, Nelson H.H., 285 Hagthorpe, John, 147, 148, 150
Grafton, Anthony, 9, 127 Haida, 67n2O
Grand Bay, 121 Hakluyt, Richard, 143, 144, I57n4,
Grant, John Webster, 34, 35, 47n2 I58n8
Grassman, Thomas, 27, 42 Hall, Charles Francis, 262, 263-4, 274,
Grave du Pont, Francois, 244, 250 275, 276, 277, 278, 284, 285
Great Lakes, 42, 192, 234nl, 236, 237 Hall,Joseph, 131
Great Whale River (Whapmagoos- Hall, Michael G., 293, 3Oini2
tu
i)> 57, 58, 60; Great Whale River Hamilton, Raphael, 195
Collection, 66ni3 Handcock, Gordon W., 6, 152, 153,
Green, L.C., 90, 92, io8n3 I58nu, I58ni2
Greenblatt, Stephen, 5, I5ni, I39ni Hannah Bay, 671115
Greene, Jack P., 3om6 Hanzeli, Victor Egon, 258, 259, 26ln3
Greenland, 264, 266, 276 Hapsburgs, 127, 135, 136
372 Index

Harbottle, Carman, 276 66n3, 66n7, 127, 144-5, 306,


Harlot or Harriot, Thomas, 135, 143, 312-16
146 Hobbes, Thomas, 9, 309
Haro, Cristobal de, 114-15, 116-17, Hochelaga, 10, l l , 25, 69, 76-7, 84n3,
119 94, 252, 255
Harris, R. Cole, 12, 151, 153, 225 Hoffman, Bernard G., 252, 254
Haskins, Charles Homer, 19 Hogarth, Donald D., 269, 272, 274,
Haton, Claude, 1081110 276, 279
Havre-de-Grace, 105 Honfleur, 22, 89, 90
Hayman, Robert, 125, 128, 131, Ho'nigo'heowa'nen, 39-40
I39n2, 148, 155-6 Hopkins, A.G., 299, 3Oin6
Hayot, E., 220118 hospitals, 119; Hotel-Dieu, 219113,
Head, Grant, I58nil 2l9n4, 2201110
healing. See medicine Hough, Franklin B., 42
Heathcote, Sir Gilbert, 293 Houghton,J.T., 265
Hebert, Francois, 195 Hudson, Henry, 48, 49, 243
Heidenreich, Conrad, 14, 35, 219112, Hudson Bay, 60, 237, 239, 248, 264
238,239 Hudson River, 42, 248
Heintzman, Ralph, 16114 Hudson's Bay Company, 49, 52, 58,
Helms, June, 29 59, 67ni5
Hemming, John, 1091114 Hudson Strait, 281
Henri n, 92, 97 Hugh-Jones, Stephen, 51
Henri iv, 174, 186, 238, 241 Huguenots, 88, 96, 99, 104, io8nil,
Henrietta Maria (Queen), 155 287, 288, 301113. See also Protestant-
Henry, Reg, 38-9, 47113 ism
Henshaw, Anne S., 272, 283 humanism, 4-5, 6, 7, 9, 12-13, 14, 2O,
Herdegom, Gerard van, 215 30, 69-70, 72-3, 126, 188, 200,258.
Hermans, Hub., i6n3 See also classical mythology
Herval, Rene, 88 Hunt, Lynn, 50, 52-3, 54, 66
Heulhard, Arthur, loSng hunting and hunters, 37, 49, 55, 57-8,
Hewitt, J.N.B., 37, 39, 40, 42 59, 82, 94, 101, 107, 110-11, 135,
Hiccocks, John. S^Bede of the 166, 168, 186, 227, 228, 290, 310,
Blessed Sacrament 313
hierarchy: European, 21, 24, 33-4, 89, Huron, 7, 13, 14, 21, 25, 28, 35, 40-1,
93, 132, 289, 307; Native, 101 43, 50-1, 79, 80, 81, 82, 91, 165, 175,
Hill, William, 287, 288, 3OOni, 301 n4 177, 187, 182-3, !97, 201, 202-3,
Hispanic America. See New Spain 204-5, 2O6, 207, 2O8-10, 211, 212,
history, perceptions and concepts of, 213, 215, 2l6, 217, 2l8, 2ign2, 224,
33. 34-5, 36-9, 40-2, 43. 44, 45-7, 230, 241-2, 244, 245-6, 247, 25in2,
49-51, 52-3, 54-7, 58-6l, 62-6, 252-3, 254, 255-60, 310,311,313
Index 373

Huronia, 79, 81, 82, 84114, 202, 217, 187, 196, ig8n7, igSnS, 202, 203,
219113, 227, 231, 234115 206, 210, 215, 217, 223,224,226,
hybridity, concept of, 14, 26—9, 31, 230, 232, 238, 241-2, 244, 252,
52-3, 62-5, 224, 233. See also creolite; 254-5, 256, 257, 258, 260, 26in2,
metissage; middle ground 316; Five Nations, 42, 316; Great
Law (or Great Peace), 38-9; Great
Iberia, 5-6, no, in, 113, 175, 178, League of Peace and Power, 28;
186 Iroquoian Confederacy, 3, 38, 41,
Ignace, Marianne, 67n2O 43, 45', St Lawrence Iroquois, 23,
Ihonatiria, 79 25-6, 28, 69, 76-7, 94, 237, 238; Six
He du Cap-Breton, 176 Nations, 38, 41, 42, 45
illustrations. See pictorial manuscripts Isabella (Queen of Spain), 136, 146,
imperialism, 14, 34, 37, 87-107, 155
1081111, 127, 141, 190, 197, 287-9, Isasti, Lope de, 110, i n , 121, I24n8
291, 293, 295, 296, 297-8, 299, 300, Italian (people), 10, 69, 200-1, 206-7,
308,311,316 215, 216, 306
Incas, 24, 27
Indians. See Native peoples Jacob, Alice, 58, 66
indigenous peoples. See Native peo- Jacob, Margaret, 50, 52-3, 54
ples Jacobs, John D., 265
individualism, concept of, 27, 44-5, Jaenen, Cornelius, iogni5, 188, 247
54, 58-9, 73, 84 James, Thomas, ig8n4
Ingoli, Francesco, 178 James Bay, 48, 49, 58, 59, 61, 62;
Innis, Harold Adams, 10, 152 hydroelectric dam, 63
Innu, 55, 64, 66n3, 66n7, 67ni4, Jameson, J. Franklin, 45, 248
671117, 110-11, 114, 121, 123, 124. Jamestown, 145, 147, 148, 152, 153
See also Montagnais Jansen, Cornelius, 187
Inquisition records, 24 Jansenists, 188-9, 193, 194, 195, 215
interpreters, 27, 91, 97, 164, 231, 242, Jason. See Argonauts
243 Jennings, Francis, 248
Inuit, 3, 4, 8, 59, 121, 123, I24ni, Jarrell, Richard A., 225, 228
124n8, 124ng, 263, 264, 265-6, 267, Jerusalem, 70
269,271-4, 277-8, 280-6 Jesuit Relations, 21, 33, 61, 71, 74, 75,
Ireland, 134, 148 80, 81, 82, 83, 84n4, I09ni2, 163,
Iriarte, Lazaro, 175 164, 166, 173, 182, 183, 190, 191,
Irish (people), 144 192, 193, 195, 196, 197, I98n4,
Iroquet Algonquin (people), 241, ig8n7, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206,
242 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 214, 216,
Iroquois, 22, 28, 29, 33, 38-9, 40, 41, 217, 218, 2ign2, 2i9-2On6, 228,
42, 43, 44-5, 47ni, 51, 59, 61, 78, 82, 245, 246, 248, 258, 259, 310
374 Index

Jesuits, 7, 8, 12-13, 24, 25, 27-8, 29, 270, 271, 272, 273, 276, 277, 278,
31, 32113, 32114, 33, 34-5, 41, 50, 61, 280,282
70, 71, 72, 74, 75-6, 79-83, 84, 84112, Kondiaronk, 311
104-5,1081112,135,162, 163,164-6, Koyre, Alexandre, 308
167, 173, 174, 175-7, 178-83, 184,
186-98, 19806, 201-19, 219112, Labrador, no, in, 113, 114, 118, 120,
22Oni2,224,228, 230, 236, 245-6, 121, 122, 123, 124, I24n8
247, 248, 250, 251112, 253, 258-60, La Calle Beronense, Saravia de, 112
26103,313 Lachine, 45, 238, 239, 241, 243, 244
Jesus. See Christ Lacouture.Jean, 70
Jette, Rene, 231 Lac Stjean, 239
Jetten, Marc, 192 Laeyendecker, Dosia, 286nl
Jews, 27, 122, 195 Lafitau, Joseph-Francois, 195
Job's Garden (film), 63, 67018 Lafleche, Guy, iggnio
Jogues, Isaac, 189 La Grande River, 63
Johnson, Richard R., 3Oln6 La Heve, 176
Johnson, Sir William, 41, 47n4 Lahontan, Louis-Armand de Lorn
Joseph de Paris (Francois-Joseph Du d'Arce, Baron de, 20, 165-6, 168,
Tremblay), 178, 179-80 17005, 17007
Judaism, 27 Lake Champlaio, 78
Julien, Charles-Andre, 88 Lake Erie, 239
Lake Ontario, 237, 239, 244
Kamaiyuk, 263, 271, 272, 282-3 Lake Saint Louis, 28
Kawapit,John, 60 Lake Superior, 10, 229
Kelly,Joan, 19 Lalemant, Jerome, 81, 82, 197
Kennebec River, 290, 295 Lallemant, Louis, 189-90, 193, 196,
Kennebecs, 294, 295 19802, 19803
Kichesipirini Algonquins, 243 Lalement, Charles, 186-7
Kicza,John, 5 Lambert, Florentin, 223
King Philip's War, 290. See also Meta- Lancelotti, Signora Portia, 202
com land aod laodscape, 3, 12, 14, 2O, 32,
Kingsbury, Susan M., 152 36, 42-3, 45, 49, 54, 60, 63, 67018,
kingship, 76-7 83, 88, 90, 92-3, 96, 120, 124, 125,
kinship. See families 127,128,131,132,134,141,142,143,
Kiotseaeton, 28 145, 146, 151, 159, 167-8,216,
Kircher, Athanasius, 74 223-34; Native knowledge of, 14,35,
knights, 96, 98, 102, 128, 291, 292 44, 163-4, 188, 238-44, 246; repre-
knives. See trade goods sentations, 141-4, 153, 154-5, 156,
knowledge systems. S^epistemology 159-61, 162-3, 227; res nullius, 89,
Kodlunarn Island, 3, 8, 263, 264, 268, 94, 99, 135, 148, 231. See also place
Index 375

Lane, Ralph, 146 Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel, 19-20


Lane, Sir Thomas, 293 Lery, Jean de, 8, 21, 22, 23, 31, 97, 98,
Lanoue, Pierre, 294, 3Oini6 io8n8, io8nio, 161, 162
L'Anse aux Meadows, 103 Lescarbot, Marc, 192, 227, 228, 234n3
La Pelerine (ship), 92 Lestringant, Frank, lognil
La Peyrere,Isaac de,9 Le Tac, Sixte, 179
La Popeliniere, Henri Lancelot- Le Tellier, Michel, 194
Voisin, Sieur de, io8nli, lO9ni3 LeVasseur, Noel, 213
La Ravardiere, Daniel de la Tousche, Levere, Trevor H., 225, 228
Sieur de, 103, 104, 106 Leverett, John, 291
La Ronciere, Charles de, 90 Levi-Strauss, Claude, 307
Larouche, Pierre, 10, i6n5 Lezo, 121
Larrume,J.M. de, I24n4 Light, John, 275
La Tour, Charles de Saint-Etienne de, Lindsay, Lionel Saint-George, 203,
180 204-5, 207, 212, 213, 215, 2ign3
La Tourasse, Charles, 292 linguistic evidence, 14, 42-3, 45,
Latourelle, Rene, 189 47n3, 47n5
Laudonniere, Rene de Goulaine de, Lintvelt,Jaap, i6n3
99,100,101-2, 103, 106, io8nii Lisbon, 114, 115
Laurentian language, 252 literacy, concept of, 30, 31, 33, 34, 42,
Laval, Francois de (Bishop of Que- 43-4, 256, 306, 315
bec), 166, lyonG, 173, 178, 179 Little Ice Age, 93, 265, 266
law, concept of, 29, 33, 40, 89, 90-1, Livingston, John, 41
104, io8n3, 111, 114, 122, 151, 309, Loire valley, 138
315; lawyers, 228 Lok, Michael, 262, 266, 267, 270, 271,
Laynez, Diego, 70 279
Leacock, Eleanor, 24 London, 118, 120, 266, 267, 278-9,
Le Bras, Yvon, ig8n5 288, 289, 292, 294, 298,300
La Caron, Joseph, 244, 255 longhouses, 28, 76, 79-80, 81-2, 212
Le Clercq, Chrestien, 165, 167, 179, Loreto, Holy House of, 13, 200-19,
195, 244, 255 2i9ni,2i9-2On6, 22On7
Leder, Laurence, 41 Lorette, 2O1-2, 204, 206-19, 2ign3,
Lefant, Robert, 121, 122 2i9-2On6, 22onn, 22Oni2, 260
Legare, Jacques, 234n4, 234n5 Louis xni, l85n4
Lejeune, Paul, 21, 27, 30, 164-6, 182, Louis xiv, 193, 194, 224
189, 190, 191, 194, ig8n4, ig8n5, Louisiana, 167
245, 25in2, 310 Lounsbury, Floyd G., 252
Leopold i, 205 Lowenthal, David, 37
Le Page du Pratz, Antoine Simon, Loyola, St Ignatius, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75,
167-8 79, 182, 201
376 Index

Lucian of Samosata, 165 martyrs, 189, 194, iggnio


Lyons, 120 Mary and George (ship), 113
Lysaght, A.M., in Maryland, 173, 175, 177, 182-3
Mary Rose (ship) ,113
Mabillon.Jean, 215 Mason,John, 128, 129, 131, 134, 147,
McCann, Franklin, 142 148,150
McCartney, Allen P., 266, 281 Mason, Walter, i4Ong
McClellan, Catharine, 64, 66113 Massachusetts, 287, 288, 292, 293, 294,
McDermott,J., 262, 276 295, 296, 297, 298, 299, 30105,
MacDonald, M.A., 180 3Oini4, 302n22
McGhee, Robert, 281 Massachusetts Bay, 288, 289, 299
Mackenthun, Gesa, 14 material culture, 3-4, 5, 8, 13, 22-3,
MacPherson.John T., 57, 62 29, 55, 83, 206-7, 208-9, 210-11,
Madockawando, 294, 295, 3°° 212, 213, 2l6, 2ign3, 220n8, 231,
Madrid, 103, 114, 116 263, 267, 273-5, 276, 280-4, 285,
Magellan or Magallanes, Fernando 306,309,313
de, 115, 117, 136, 306 Mather, Cotton, 290, 291
Maine, 116, 288, 293, 299 Mather, Increase, 291, 292, 293, 299,
Maine Historical Society, 291, 3O2ni9 30ini2
Major, John, 89 Mathes, W. Michael, 215
Malta, 96, 98, 102 Matthews, Geoffrey, 151, 153
Malthus, 20 Mauss, Marcel, 305
Maluenda, Fray Luis de, 114 Mauzaize.Jean. S^Raoul de Sceaux
maps and mapping, 20, 35, 43, 44, 74, Maxwell, Moreau S., 265, 266
83,92,96, 115, 123, 124, I24n9, 129, Mayans, 30
131, 147, 151, 239-41, 267, 310 Mazarin, Jules, Cardinal, 193
Maragnan, 103-6, 107, 161-2 Medici, Catherine de, 92, 103
Maran, Rene, 102 medicine: European, 103, 137, 138,
Marie de 1'Incarnation. S^Guyart, i4Ong, 314; European medical
Marie texts, 128, i4ong; European views
Marion, Seraphin, 227 of Native medicine, 231; Native
Marmellar, 117 concepts of, 24, 25, 27, 28-9, 51, 61,
Marouby, Christian, 192 62, 76-7, 209
marriage, 26, 27, 91, 145, 153, 154, Medina del Campo, 112
I58ni2, 187, 231, 234114, 23405, Meinig, Donald, 5, 9
245-6, 247, 248, 250, 25in2, Melancon, Benoit, 169
311 Melanson, Charles, 297, 302n24
Marseilles, iO7ni memory, concepts of, 30, 41, 57-8,
Martel,Jean, 294, 3Oln5, 3011116 59, 71, 74; artificial memory, 72;
Martyr, Peter, 30 memoria, 68, 70, 71, 72-4, 75-84;
Index 377

memory sticks, 31; natural memory, 228, 230, 231, 233, 236, 244, 245,
71-2, 74 247, 248, 250, 260, 310, 316. See also
Memory Theatre, 69, 73 evangelization
mentalite, 13, 14, 20, 21, 30, 68, 83-4, Mississippian Mound Builders, 101
no, 114, 124 Mitchell, Estelle, 234n5
merchants, 28, iO7ni, no, 111-13, Mitchell, J.G., 269, 272, 274, 279
114-15, 116, 117-20, 121, 122, 123, Mithun, Marianne, 252, 254-5
124, I24n3, 138, 2O2, 228,287-9, 'mixed blood.' See Metis
292-3, 294, 299, 300, 301 n 13, 306, mnemonic arts, 72, 73-4
313 mnemonic devices, 40, 41. See also
Mercier, Francois le, 82-3 birch-bark drawings; fur pelt draw-
Merlet, Lucien, 205 ings; memory sticks; wampum
Metacom, 316 modernity, concept of, 5, 13, 14, 30,
Meta Incognita project, 14, 263, 265, 70, 306-7, 308-12, 316-17
271, 281, 284 Mohawk, 7, n, 12, 26, 27, 28, 42, 43,
Metis (people), 60, 67ni5 45,46,47ni,2i5,254
metissage and metissage culturel, 13, Mohawk River, 42, 248
26-9,78,79,83,311 moieties, 39-40
Metraux, Alfred, !O9ni4 monsters, 130, 133, 156, 169,
Mexico, 20, 26-7, 29, 30, 101, 103, 142 i69-70n3,229, 308, 315
Michaelius, Jonas, 248 Montagnais, 21, 24, 27, 28, 30, 33, 35,
Michellet, Simon. See Yves d'Evreux 43, 79, 80, 110-11, 122, 190, 238,
middle ground, 26-9 239, 241-2, 311. Seealsolnnu
Mignolo, Walter D., 5, I5ni, 30, 31 Montaigne, Michel de, 21, 122, 310
Mi'kmaq, !O9ni2, 165, 174, 177 Montana, 22Oni2
military alliances, 36 Montchrestien, Antoine de, 95, 106
Miller, Shannon, I39ni Montesquieu, Charles Louis de Sec-
milling, 80, 81 ondat, Baron de La Brede, 309
Milton, John, 6 Montizambert, Edward Louis, 234ni
Minims, 180 Montmagny, Charles Huault de, 231
mining, 4, 142, 147, 149, 153, 162, Montmartre, 70
263-4, 267, 268-70, 272, 273, 274, Montreal, 94, 176, 179, 2ign9, 226,
275-6, 278-9, 293 289
Miranda, Domingo de, I24n2 Montrose, Louis, 139, I57n4
missions and missionaries, 13, 34, 43, Moogk, Peter, 232
47n2, 57, 59, ?o, 7L 74, 75, 80, 8i-2, Moone (ship), 278
91, 93, 98, 103, 104, 105, 107, 111, Moors, 113
121, 149, 163, 165, 166, 173-84, Morantz, Toby, 12, 14, 36, 40, 45, 49,
186-98, I98n4, I98n5, I98n6, 50, 52, 55, 60, 67ni5
201-19, 2ign5, 22Onn, 224, 225, Moravians, 41, ill
378 Index

More, Thomas, 129 210-11, 213, 216, 217, 218, 2ign2,


Moreri, Louis, 215 2ign5, 220ni2, 223, 227, 230-1,
Morgues, Jacques Le Moyne de, 100, 233, 234n4, 234115, 235n8, 236, 238,
102,103 239-41, 242, 243-51, 25in2, 253,
Morisco writings, 27 256-7, 263, 267, 284, 289, 290-1,
Morissonneau, Christian, 212 292, 293, 294-6, 297, 298, 299,
Morrison, David A., 266 3Oi-2ni7, 3O2n22, 305-6, 309-12,
Morrison Island, 243 313-17. See also individual Native
Motolinia, 34 nations
Mourning wars, 42 Native trading networks, 12, 28, 231,
Muchembled, Robert, 217 240-1, 246, 310
Miinster, Sebastian, 99 natural history and science, 14, 20,
Murdoch, John, 66n2 223-33, 234111, 234n3, 308, 311
Muscovy Company, 266 needles. See trade goods
mysticism. See spirituality Nemaska Cree Regional Authority,
myth, concept of, 34-5, 36-7, 40, 42, 66n3
44-5, 46, 53. 54, 56, 66, 73, 125, 126, Netherlands, 147, 215, 2l6
127-8, 131, 133, 134-5, 139, 144, New England, 12, 13, 82, 135, 138,
145-6, 156, 157, 159, 163,169,200, 146, 149, 241, 248, 287, 288, 289-90,
212-13, 216, 309, 314, 315, 316. See 291, 292, 293, 294, 296, 297, 298,
also atiukan; classical mythology 299,300,3011114
Newfoundland, 13,37, io8n7, no,
nakedness. See body; clothing 114, 115, 117-18, 120, 121, 122,
Naskapi, 33 124112, 125-39, I39n2, I39n3,
Natchez, 167-8 I39n4, 142-4, 146-9, 150-7, I57n7,
nation, concept of, 3, 10, 12, 19, 37-8, I58ng, 1581111, 158012, 173, i?5»
40, 41, 42-3, 47n5, 87, 88, 89, 90, 96, 177, l8l-2, 313; Cambriola, 126,
107, 135, 143, 144, 145,154,192, 128, 131; Ferryland, 149, 175; New-
233, 307, 313 foundland Company, 128, 131
Native peoples, 7, 10-11, 12, 13, 14, New France, 12, 13, 25, 27-8, 36, 6g,
15, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 70-1, 74, 75, 81, 107, lognis, 163,
29, 30-1, 33-7, 40-1, 42, 44-7, 47n2, 166, 173, 174, 175-7, 178-9, 180,
50-7, 58-9, 60, 62, 64, 65, 66n3, 181,182,186,187, i8g, igi, ig2-4,
66n7, 74, 75-84, 87-8, 89, 91, 94-5, ig6, ig8n4, 201, 205, 207, 210, 215,
97, 98, 99, 101-3, 104, 106-7, 216, 217, 2ign2, 220ng, 220ni2,
io8nio, iO9ni2, 1091113, in, 114, 223, 225, 228, 230, 232, 234111,
115-16, 120,121-2, 123, I24n2,126, 234113,235118,236,252,291,3og-i2
135, 145, 163, 166, I70n7, 173, 174, New Hampshire, 128, 2gi, 2g6
176, 177, 190, 191-2, 195, 198115, New Netherlands, 248
iggnS, 201, 203, 204-5, 208, 209, New Scotland, 149
Index 379

New Spain, 9, 34, 186 views, 57-8, 66ni3; oral tradition, 3,


Newton, Sir Isaac, 309 8, 29, 36, 37, 38-40, 41-2, 43, 44,
New York, 41, 291 48-50, 51-2, 53-4, 55-7, 58-62,
Nicks, Trudy C., 32115 63-4, 65, 66ni, 66n3, 66114, 66ni2,
nobility, 23, 91, 224, 308 67ni5, 67ni7, 67n2O, 93, 275,
Nonsuch (ship), 60 277-8, 284, 313, 316; performance,
Normandy, 180, 224, 230 56, 65. See also atiukan; creation
Normans, 91, 97, 134 stories; Cree Way project; tipachi-
Norse, 103, 264, 272, 276 man
North Carolina, 99, 143 oratoiy, 28-9, 32n4, 41, 71, 72, 76, 83,
north, concept of, 148, 158118 310
northwest passage, 151, 163, 241, Order of the Golden Fleece, 135
244-5, 247, 249, 266, 267, 268 orientalism. See 'Other'
Norumbega, 174 Orleans, lie de, 2O2
Notre Dame de Lorette, 13 Orpheus, 129, 131, 133-4, 135
Nottoway stones, 61, 62, 67ni7 'Other,' concept of, 3, 4, 7-8, 14, 21,
Nova Scotia, 116, 288, 289, 292, 293, 29-30, 43, 169, 310, 312, 316; prac-
300 tice of'Othering,' 23, 24, 33-4,
Nowell, Charles E., 92 40-1, 43, 44, 46-7, 70, 75-84,
nuns, 106, 119, 173, 177, 210, 219113, 311-12,313
227, 310 Ottawa River, 243
Ouebadinoukoue, Marie-Madeleine,
O'Callaghan, Edmund B., 247 dWChretienne, 231, 234n4, 234n5
Odeliza, Clemente de, 121, 122 Ouellet, Real, 9, 13, i6n3, 168, i7On5,
Odendoonniha, 39 !7On7, 198116
Oenrios, 80 Owens, Louis, 46
O'Gorman, Edmundo, 5, 11, 15
O'Grady, Patricia, 16115 Pacifique de Provins (Rene de
Ohio River, 42 1'Escale), 174, 182, 183
Ojibwa, 13, 43 Pagden, Anthony, 5, I5ni
Olbrechts-Tyteca, Lucie, 84111 Palotti (Pallotta), Giovanni Battista,
Olier, Jean-Jacques, 215 Cardinal, 202
Olin, Jacqueline S., 264, 272 papacy, 88, 99, 174, 178, 184, 193, 200,
Olson, Alison Gilbert, 293, 301 nG, 213, 215; Alexandrine bulls, 87, 88,
3Oini2 99
Oneida, 41, 43, 45 Paraguay, 192
Onondaga, 3, 29, 41,43 Paris, 19, 69, 70, 89, 91, 104, 105,
orality: copyright protection, 65; oral 108115, 120, 123, I24n9, 176, 180,
history as a categoiy, 57, 59, 61, 181, 185114, 223, 224, 225, 228, 230,
671114, 271, 284, 285, 314; oral inter- 232
380 Index

Park, Robert W., 266 Pizzorusso, Giovanni, 182


Parkhurst, Anthony, 150 place, concept of, 34, 36, 42-3, 54, 68,
Parry, Sir William, 264 8o-l. See also land and landscape
Pasajes, 118 Plato, 71, 72
Pascal, Blaise, 193-4, 309 Plowden, Edmuod, 134
Pasmaquoddy, 61 Pocahontas, 145
Pastedechouan, 27, 30, 311 Poncet de la Riviere, Joseph-Antoioe,
pastoral literary genre, 14-15, 227; 181, 201-2, 203, 21903
European category of, 21, 150-2, Pootchateau, Sebastien-Joseph du
153. See also agriculture Cambout de, 195
peace-making. See diplomacy Port-Royal, 174, 176, 179, 288, 289,
peasants, 19, 21, 232, 308, 313. See also 291, 292, 294, 297, 3°in5
habitants Port Royal Souod (Florida), 99
Peers, Laura, 22Onl2 Porter in, Charles W. 144
Pelican (ship), 113 Porter, Marilyo, 153
Pemaquid, 290, 291, 294, 295, 296, Portuguese (people), 10, 22, 27, 87,
298 88, 90, 92, 93, 94, 96, 97, 98, 103,
Penobscot, 61, 294, 295 104, 106, 115, 120, 149, 15808,
Penobscot River, 290, 295 15809, 181
Pentagouet, 176 post-colonialism, concept of, 5, 7, 9,
Perelman, Chalm, 84ni 12, 20, 30, 47, 316, 317
Pernety, Antoine-Joseph, 168 postmodern theory, 46, 52-3, 66, 68,
Perrot, Nicolas, 164 308, 313. SeealsoDemda,Jacques
Peru, 24, 26-7, 142 Poutriocourt, Jean de Biencourt,
Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca), 6 Sieur de, 179
Petrone, Penny, 34 Powell, Virginia W., 15706
Philippon, Adam, 22On6 Powell, William S., 15706
Phillips, Ruth, 32n5 Prades, Pedraza, 12403
Phips, Sir William, 287-300, 301 n 14, Pratt, Mary Louise, 2O
30ini5, 302017, 302nl8, 302023, Prescott, Anoe Lake, 13, 13902
3O2n24, 3O2n25, 302027, 311 Prestoo, Richard J., 40, 53-4, 55, 56,
Pico della Mirandola, 72 59, 6602, 6603, 66n5, 6606, 66n8,
pictorial manuscripts, 29, 30, 40, 41, 66nii
43-4. 74, 273, 308. See also birch Preston, Sarah, 58, 59
bark drawings; fur pelt drawings; Price, Richard, 62-3, 64-5
wampum belts Pricket, Abacuk, 48, 56, 60
Pinon, Laurent, 23402 priests. See clergy
Pioffet, Marie-Christine, i6n3 Principe, Charles, 198
pirates, 92, 113, 120, 134, 149, 152 Fringe, Martin, 239
Piscataqua River, 288, 293, 295 prioting press, 20, 43
Index 381

Pritchard, Allan, 128 Raoul de Sceaux (Jean Mauzaize),


progress, concept of, 306 180
Propaganda Fide. See Sacred Congre- Rappaport, Joanne, 62-3, 64-5
gation 'de Propaganda Fide' Ratelle, Maurice, 46
Prosperi, Adriano, 174 rationalism, concept of, 35, 51, 68,
Protestantism, 21, 3ini, 87-8, 96-7, 196-7, 208-9, 227, 307, 3H, 314
98, 99, io8n8, 175, 177, 181, 188, Ray, Arthur]., 28, 50
215, 2l6, 305. See also Huguenots Razilly, Chevalier Francois de, 103-4,
Prowse, D.W., 146, 152, 154, 156, 105, 106, 107
I58n7 Recollets, 70, 165, 173, 174, 175, 176,
Puritanism, 189, 248 178,179-81, 183, 184, 193, 195, 227,
229, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 250,
qarmat, 266 255,258
Quebec (colony), 25, 55, 62, 63, 74, Red Lion (ship), 113
104, 175, 180, 210, 212, 255, 289. See reductions, 192, 193. See also missions
also New France; St Lawrence River and missionaries
Quebec (town), 29, 70, 202, 203, 206, Reeves, John, 152
211, 213, 217, 2l8, 219n3, 2i9n4, Reformation, 69, 87, 88, 129, 216, 308;
2ign6, 22Onio, 224, 226, 227, 230, Catholic or Counter-Reformation,
236, 241, 244, 245, 289, 291 70, 216, 2l8, 247
Quevedo, Garcia de, 118, 119 Reid, John G., 14, 142, 3Oon2, 3Oin6,
Quinn, Alison M., 239, 241 30in7
Quinn, David B., lO7ni, 142, 143,144, relativism, concept of, 52, 306, 310,
150, 151, 154, 236, 239, 241, 264, 312,315
280 religion, 36,44,47n2,60,66ni, 77,88,
Quint, David, 21 96, 99, 102, 113-14, 132, H5, 147,
Quintilian, 72 161-2, 164-6, 174, 187, 194-5, 197,
I99n8, 227, 247, 248, 257, 258,
Rabelais, 129, 130 259-60, 261, 307, 308, 313. See also
race, concept of, 8-9, 145, 146, 168, spirituality
309, 3H religious orders, 13, 173-84, 186, 195.
Radin, Paul, 58 See also names of individual orders
Radisson, Pierre-Esprit, 10, 26, 36, 41, Renaissance, concept of, 4-5, 7, 8, 9,
236 12, 13, 14, 15, 19-20, 24, 29, 31, 34,
Ragueneau, Paul, 82, 181, 196 37-8, 40, 41, 43, 44, 46, 47, 68, 70,
Ralegh, Walter, 125, 136, I39n2, 141, 72, 73, 110, 112, 120, 122, 139, 188,
H3, 144, 149, I57n4, i58ng 197, 200, 201, 216, 305-9, 312, 314,
Ramos, Alcida, 35, 46 315, 316; Age of Discovery, 4, 87,
Ramusio, Giovanni Battista, 10, 11, 126; Northern Renaissance, 5, 6,
i6n5, 76, 77 12, 15, 19, 266
382 Index

resistance, 24-6, 29, 31, 45-7, 62-3, Rosskey, William, I39n5


65,217,310-12 Rotinonhsyonni. S^Iroquois
Reverdin, Olivier, io8n8 Rouen, 90, 91, 92, 116, 122, 189
rhetoric, 28, 30, 36, 67n2O, 68, 70, Rousseau, Jacques, 233
83-4, 84n2, 141, 190; natural rheto- Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 168, 309, 311
ric, 71-5. See also oratory Roux, Paul, 22Onii
Rhone River, 120 Rowley, Susan, 277
Ribault.Jean, 99, 100, 102, 103, Roy, Pierre-Georges, 224, 231
io8nii Royal Geographical Society, 264
Ricci, Matteo, 74 Royal Society of London, 60
Richardson, Boyce, 67ni8 Rupert House. See Waskaganish
Richelieu, Armand Jean du Plessis, Rupert River, 48
Cardinal, due de, 180, 245 Ryan, Michael, 9
Richelieu River, 78, 239, 241, 242
Richter, Daniel, 42 Sacred Congregation 'de Propaganda
Ridington, Robin, 44 Fide,' 178, 180, 182, 183, 184,
Rigoleuc.Jean, 189 i84n3, i85n5, i85n6
Rio de Janeiro, 97 sagamite, 81
Rio Grande, I07ni Sagard, Gabriel, l6n3, 28, 174, 179,
rituals. See ceremonies 183, 227, 228, 229, 244, 248, 253,
Rivero, Diego, 115 255-8,259,260,261,393
rivers, 93, 236, 239. See also individual Saguenay, 93; mythical kingdom, 237,
names 246; river, 241, 242
Riviere Saint-Jean, 176 Sahagun, Bernardino de, 30
Roanoke Island, 143-6, 147, 153 sailors, 6, 62, 92, io8n7, 114, 120,
Roberval, Jean-Francois de la Rocque 136-7, 152, 264, 267, 272,275,
de, 93, 94, 95, 98, 102,106, 116,117, 277-8, 288
237-8, 246, 25in4 Saint-Castin, Baron de. S^Abbadie
Robeson County Indians, I57n5 de Saint-Castin
Robinau, Joseph. SeeVillebon,Joseph Saint-Charles, 179
Robinau de Saint-Cyran, Abbe de. &£ Duvergier
Robinson, PercyJ., 254 de Hauranne
Rodriguez, Simon, 70 St David, 137
Roelens, Maurice, 168 St George River, 295
Roger, Jacques, 226-7 Stjohn River (Acadia), 292, 293
Rohault, Jacques, 226 Stjohn River (Florida), 99
Rolfe,John, 145 St Joseph Island, 82
Roman empire, 4, 306 St Joseph to the Huron, mission of,
Rome, 69, 127, 183, 189, 201, 202, 205, 192-3
2igni St Lawrence River, 10, 2O, 24, 25, 69,
Index 383

70, 92, 93, 94, 105, 142, 162, 163, Schenectady, 291
164, 225, 232, 239, 247, 249, 255; Scott, Colin, 48-9, 53, 66ni, 66ng,
basin, 186 67ni6
St Lawrence valley, 92, 96, 191, 224, seasonal cycle, 38, 39, 54
232, 233, 234nl, 235118, 236, 237, Seaver, Kirsten A., 276
238, 239, 241, 244, 245, 248, 249, Seed, Patricia, 150
289 seigneurs, 76, 96, 224, 225, 229, 231
StMalo, 93 Seine River, 92, 120, 232
St Maurice River, 239, 242 Semedo, Alvaro, I99ng
St Paul River, 121 Seneca, 37, 42
Saint-Vallier, Monsignor de, 210, 213 Serpent Pique,167-8
Sainte-Marie among the Huron, 8i-2, Settle, Dionise, 262
193,202 Seville, 114, 115, 118
sainthood, 23, 113, 134, 200 sexuality, 28, 57, 125-6, 135, 141, 145,
Saladin D'Anglure, Bernard, 282 146, 150, 155, 161. See alsobody;
Salamanca, 90 virgins
Salazar, Antonio de, 120 shaking tent, 53
Salde.Juan de la, 12O shamans, 27
Salish (people), 22Onl2 Shammas, Carole, 262
Salmeron, Alfonso, 70 Shawnees, 311
Salvatierra, Juan Maria de, 215 Shelford, April, 9, 127
Samoet, 159 Shimony, Annemarie, 45
San Augustin, 103 shipping and ships, 25, 3ini, 33,
Sancerre, 3ini 48-9, 53, 90, 91, 92, 96, 102, io8n4,
Sanfacon, Andre, 13, 203 HO, 111, 113-15, 117, Il8, 12O-1,
San Lesrnes, 117 122, 124n2, 134, 142, 143, 149, 152,
San Luiz do Maranhao, 103 i58ng, 160, 162, 223, 239, 263, 264,
San Mateo, 102. See also Fort Caroline 267, 268, 269-71, 273, 275, 276, 277,
San Sebastian, 118 278, 280, 281, 283, 285, 287, 291,
Santa Cruz, Geronimo de Salamanca, 293-4, 294, 295, 297, 300, 306;
120 fleets, 93, 94, 96, 174, 265, 266,
Santiago, Pedro de, 116, 117 269-70, 294. See also names of indi-
saplings, 38 vidual ships
Saramakas, 62-3 Shutz, Jonas, 268
Saskatchewan, 54 Sidney, Sir Philip, 129, 132
sassafras, 103 Sillery, 82-3, 191
Satouriona, 101, 102 Silverblatt, Irene, 24, 27
Savelle, James M., 266 Simard, Jean-Jacques, 312, 315, 316
Savignon (Huron boy), 242 Sioui, Georges, 169
Sayre, Edward V., 264, 276 Sioux, 91
384 Index

Siraisi, Nancy, 9, 127 Stallybrass, Peter, 139111


Six Nations. See Iroquois Stanley, George F.G., 170116
Six Nations, Ontario, 47n3 staple theory, 10, 12
slaves, 63, 116, 168, 316 Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, 264
Smallboy, Ellen, 58 Stenton, Douglas R., 266, 271, 285
Smith,John, 147, 149 Stock, Simon (Thomas Doughty),
Smith, Nicholas, 61 149,181-2
Societe de 1'energie de la Baie James, Stoenner, R.W., 276
66n3 Stone, Lawrence, 301116
Societe de Notre-Dame de Montreal, stories, See oral tradition
179 Stoughton, William, 297, 3O2n2i,
Society of Jesus. S^Jesuits 302n24
Socoqui, 82 stove tiles, 3, 5, 8, 273, 275, 280, 285
soldiers, 105, 225, 235n8, 270 Strait of Belle Isle, no, i l l , 120, 121,
Sole, Jacques, 219 123
songs: of death, 21; Tupi, 21 structuralism, analytic category, 35,
Sophists, 71, 165 36, 38, 40, 42, 44, 46, 73-4
Sorarte, Francisco de, 121 Stuart Kings of England, 127
Soto, Hernando de, 237 Sturtevant, William C., 264, 280
South Carolina, 99 Sulpicians, 175, 176, 179, 215
Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, Suite, Benjamin, 234115
101 Sun, Frank, 66m, 66119
Spanish (people), 6, 10, 24, 25, 27, superstition, concept of, 34-5, 81,
87, 88, 90, 93, 95, 99, 101, 102, 103, 196-7
107111, io8n6, io8n7, iO9ni3, 110- Surinam, 62
24, 127, 147. 149, 152, I58n8, I58n9, Susquehanna River, 42
162, 181, 187, 237, 246, 271, 291 symmetrical comparative analysis,
Spenser, Edmund, 132, 137, 139m 30-1,64-5,68-9
spirituality, 27-9, 33~5, 37, 42, 45, 53, Symons, T.H.B., 262
61, 64, 70, 73, 74-5, 79, 81, 89, 112, Szilas, L., 175
135, 163, 188, 189, 190, 191, 196,
197, 203-4, 205, 209-10, 216, 217, Tadoussac, 28, 226, 238, 239
218-19, 253, 314, 315; European Tahitians, 169
mystical spirituality, 187, 189, 211, Taignoagny, 25-6, 28, 253
2l6, 217; European spiritual power, Tallon, Alain, 174
178. See also medicine, spiritual Talon, Jean, 247, 301117
power of Tanner, Helen Hornbeck, 169
Stadacona, 14, 95, io8n6, 237, 253; Tanner, Marie, 127
Stadaconan language, 252-3, 254, Taxous, 295
257-8 Taylor, Charles, 198113
Index 385

Taylor, E.G.R., 157 238, 247, 248, 249, 250, 278, 280,
Tecumseh, 311 289, 294, 295, 310
Tekakwitha, Kateri (Catherine), trade goods, 50, 65-6, 89-90, 288, 289,
27-8, 30 296; European, 3, 22-4, 25-6, 48-9,
Tekouerimat, Noel, 82 105, i l l , 118, 160, 167-8, 267,273,
Teresa de Jesus, 119 280; Native, 48-9, 278, 280, 283. See
Terranova. See Newfoundland also furs
Tessouat, 243 traders, 225, 242, 243, 244, 248, 287;
textiles, 22, 55, go, 136, 266 fur traders, 28, 43, 49, 58, 59, 249,
Thames, 278 288, 290,291
Thaondechoren, Louis, 204 trading posts, 49, 50, 60, 67ni5, 224,
Therien, Gilles, 12, 13, 16113, 84114 231,236
Thevet, Andre, 33, 87, 93, 94, 95, 97, translatio fide, 13
98, 161,253 trapping, 49, 164
Thomas (ship), 270 Traquair, Ramsay, 212
Thorne, Robert, 158118 travel literature, 2O, 24, 33, 74, 76-8,
Thucydides, 35, 36 198114, 228, 246, 247, 252, 255, 262,
Thule culture, 265, 281, 283 264, 271. See also explorers
Thwaites, Reuben Gold, 174, 219112 treaties, 29, 36, 41, 294, 295, 296
time, concepts of, 15, 29-30, 33, 34, Treaty of Tordesillas, 88
35, 36-7, 38-9, 40, 41, 44, 47, 53, tree of peace (Iroquoian), 42
54-5, 59, 64, 125, 132, 135,313,315 Trelease, Allen W., 248
Timucuans, 100, 101 Tremblay, Francois-Joseph Du. See
tipachiman, 40, 53-4, 55, 57, 59, 60, Joseph de Paris
66114, 671114, 671115, 671117 Tremblay, Mylene, 13
Tlinglit, 62 trickster figures, 51
Tonkin, Elizabeth, 40, 56, 57, 58, 65 Trigger, Bruce, 24, 34, 40, 50-1, 142,
Tooker, Elizabeth, 257 2O2, 205, 212, 217, 219n2, 26lni
Torsellini, Orazio, 206, 220117 Trois-Rivieres, 191-2, 223, 224, 226,
Toulouse, 117, 120 231
Touraine, 180 Trudel, Marcel, 6, 69, 93, 95, 224, 230,
Tours, 227 237
trade, 23-4, 25-6, 28, 36, 48-9, 55, 60, Trudel, Pierre, 60
65-6, 88, 89-90, 91, 92, 94, 95, 96, Tupi, 21, 24-5, 1091114; Ttipi-Guarani,
98, 102, 104, 105, 106, 114, 127, 133, 89,91
134, 135, 136-7, 138, 139m, 146, Tupinamba, 21, 22, 23, 91, 97, 104-5,
147-8, 149, 150, 153, 166, 241, 244, 122
245, 265-6, 281, 283, 292, 293, 296, Turgeon, Laurier, 16113, I39n3
3021122, 3021124, 302n26; fur trade, Turgot, Anne Robert Jacques, Baron
50, 58, 91, 94, 110, 193, 202, 236, de 1'Aulne, 168
386 Index

Turner, Frederick Jackson, 12 Villanova (or Villeneuve), Antoinette


Turner, Terence, 35, 56 Lopez de, 122
Tuscaroras, 41, 254 Villebon, Joseph Robinau de, 292,
twins, 38, 257 293, 294, 296, 297, 300, SOinii,
Tyendinaga: clan, 45; reserve, 11 30ini6, 302ni9, 302n2O, 3O2n22,
3O2n23, 3O2n24, 3O2n25
Udgarden, Harold, 60 Villegaignon, Chevalier Nicolas
ukramontanism, 187 Durand de, 96-8, 99, 102, 103, 106,
Unglik, Henry, 275, 276 io8n4, io8n8, io8ng, io8nio,
Ursulines, 25, 28, 2Q, 30, 176, 227, 231, io8nn
234IH Villieu, Claude-Sebastien de, 295,
Usher, John, 296, 3O2n2i 3O2nig, 3O2n2o
utopianism, 125, 127, 129, !4On7, 187, Vimont, Barthelemi, 181
191, 192,316-17 Vincent, Sylvie, 53, 55, 59, 61-2, 64,
66n3, 66114, 66n7, 66mo, 67ni4,
Vachon, Andre, 92, !7On6 67ni7, 67nig
Vairasse d'Allais. S^Veiras, Denis Virginia, 13, 125, 135, 138, 143. 144,
Valladolid merchant house, i l l , 115 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 152, 154,
Vandals, 4 177, 293
Van Kirk, Sylvia, 26, 234115 Virginia Company, I57n2
Vansina.Jan, 51, 57, 59 Virgin Maiy, 27, 2OO, 201, 2O2, 203,
Varney, S.K., 265 205, 207-11, 213-14, 215-18, 219111,
Varnhagen, F.E. de, !O7n2 22On8,22Oni2
Vaugeois, Denis, 203 virgins, 27: groups of, 27, 30; repre-
Vaughan, Richard (second earl of sentations, 144,154,
Carbery), 128 Visigoths, 4
Vaughan, William, 13, 125-39, I39n2, Vitelleschi, Muzio, 181
I39n3, I39n4, !39-40n6, !4On7, Vitoria, Francisco de, 90
Hong, 149, 150, 153, 156, 313 Vitoria merchant house, i l l
Veiras, Denis (Vairasse d'Allais), 165,
!7On4 Wabanaki, 14, 288, 289, 290, 291,
Venice, 69 294, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299, 300,
Verrazano, Giovanni de, 22, 93 302n20
Vespucci, Amerigo, lo8n4 Walcott, Derek, 37
Viau, Roland, i6n3 Wales, 126-7, 128, 131, 137, 177
Vibert, Elizabeth, 43 Wallace, Paul A.W., 39
Victoria (ship), 115 Wallis, Helen, 262
Vigneau, Nicholas de, 243 Walton, Reverend, 58
Vigneras, L.A., 115, 116 wampum, 32n5, 41, 47n4; beads, 29;
Vikings. See Norse belts, 28, 29, 31, 40, 41, 45, 47114;
Index 387

collars, 83, 205; strings, 41, 47n4; William in, 293


Two Row, 46 Williams, Alan F., 3O2n25
Warkentin, Germaine, 4, 10, 26, 31, Williams, Charles E., 187
41 winter, 38, 39, 54, 122, 134, 148, 226,
Warren, Jean-Philippe, 14 229, 231, 238, 277,282
Warwick, Jack, 230 witches, 21, 24, 196
Washburn, Wilcomb, 263, 264, 276 woad, 117, 118
Waskaganish (Charles Fort or Rupert Wogan, Peter, 31
House), 51, 58, 60, 66n2, 66n3 Wolf, Eric, 51
Wayman, Michael, 281 women, 9, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26,
Weber, Max, 305 27-8, 39, 48-9, 61, 67ni5, 97,
Welser family (German financiers), io8mo, iogni3, 130, I39n2, 141,
114-15 144,145,152,153,155,156,1581112,
Welsh (people), 126, 131, 138 160, 161, 166, 167, 168, 173, 174,
Wemindji, James Bay, 48, 60, 66ni 176, 187, 200, 210, 217,218,231,
Wendake, 212, 219 234n5, 245, 247, 257, 260, 310, 315
Wendat. See Huron world view. See cosmology
Wenemoet, 295 worship, 27
West Indies, 149, 150, i^Sng, 183 writing tablet, 30
whaling, 92, i l l , 118, 120-1, 122,
I24n8, 142, 283, 285; whale bones, Xavier, Francois, 70, 75
282; whale oil, !4On8
Whapmagoostui (Great Whale Yates, Frances, 69
River), 57, 58, 60 Yeats, William Butler, 9, I5n2
Whatley, Janet, io8n8 Yoscaha, 257
Wheler, Captain Francis, RN, 152, 153 Yukon (peoples), 55
Whiskeychan, Annie, 66n2 Yves d'Evreux (Simon Michellet),
Whitbourne, Richard, 125-6, 135, 104,183, iggnS
147-8, 149, 151, 154, 156, I58ng
White, Andrew, 174, 182-3, !85n7 Zeno chart, 267
White, Hayden, 36 zodiac, 138
White, John, 146, 264 Zorgdrager, Cornelus Gijsbertsz, 264
White, Richard, 26, 299 Zumel, 117
Whitt, Laurie Anne, 35 Zuniga, Don Pedro de, 152

You might also like