The Marginalized Contribution of Amerindians to The Society of New France.

The Marginalized Contribution of Amerindians to The Society of New France.
By Wilhelm (Bill) Arends


Amerindians in the History of New France were to a large degree marginalized. Their history has been at times treated as a side issue to the overall history. Past histories of the period have made more of the French and English impact on the continents history with only a passing mention of the Amerindian contribution. They were only mentioned if they participated in European progress. The marginalization of Amerindian history is a by product of the non-Amerindian authors that wrote the History of New France.
An entirely Eurocentric approach to Indian Policy does not supply a thoroughly equitable history of Amerindians in New France. Historian J.M. Bumsted in his introduction to Cornelius Jaenen’s article on The Meeting of the French and Amerindians in the seventeenth Century points out that this Eurocentric history is now changing. Bumsted states that “while it was once common to deal with the history of European settlement as if the native people scarcely existed and hardly mattered, most modern scholarship now recognizes the importance of those who lived in North America before the intrusion of Europeans.” A close look at the Indian Policy of New France and Amerindian actions shows how Amerindian interaction shaped France’s policy toward Amerindians. Religious issues also helped to shape European and Amerindian relations In New France to a large degree.
While Historians have argued that Amerindians were pawns in the competition between European nations over the continent of North America, new social historians have attempted to show that The interaction between Amerindians and the French colonist was a more symbiotic one. This relationship produced marked effects on New France’s Indian Policy.
Historian Bruce Trigger points out in his work The Indians and The Heroic Age of New France, “historians have been anxious to trace the origins of New France and because they view the Indians as a lost cause , have tended to dismiss or underrate the role played by the Indians in the early historic period.” Trigger states that historians have treated Amerindians as “having no history of their own.” He utilizes social science studies and in particular anthropological and Ethnological study to show that “ contrary to conventional interpretation, the history of New France prior to 1665 was overwhelmingly shaped by the Indians throughout.”
Though to say that New France did nothing to shape Indian culture, would be to dismiss the interactions of a materialistic versus a partially-materialistic culture. Trigger argues that as materialism gained a foot hold in North America, “A growing demand for furs led to warfare between different Indian groups which enhanced the power of chiefs who were successful traders.” This growth of trade was actively participated in by the Amerindians. They were not simply passive participants as Trigger points out “they were not unknown to manipulate factors of supply and demand in their own favour.” To say that this was totally a European development though would negate that Amerindians had no idea of material value. One aspect of Amerindian culture that demonstrates a concept of value is their approach to murder and compensation. While as Trigger points out that murder was the cause of many “blood Feuds or . . . intertribal warfare. . . there was a strong desire to avoid the destructive consequences of such behavior.”” Therefore as he states there was “an effort made to replace blood feud with compensation paid by the group to whom the murderer belonged to that of his victim.” The material nature of compensation in this context demonstrates that the Amerindians had a sense of value and the fur trade was not a far leap from their traditional way of life. The interaction between the Amerindians and the French was so great that Trigger concludes that “Their wishes had to be taken account of by any Europeans hoping to have successful dealings in the region [and] this suggests that the central focus of Canadian history prior to 1665 ought not to be its European colonizers but its native peoples.”
In another book more focused on the social aspects of Amerindian life and specifically the life of the Hurons Trigger expands on this Amerindian focused history. In The children of Aataentsic : A history of the Huron People to 1660, Trigger argues that a “reassessment” of Amerindian history is required. He states that this reassesment should be one “in which events are interpreted from a Huron [or Amerindian] perspective rather than from a French or Dutch one.” Trigger believes that “relations between Indians and Europeans in early Canada were very different from those farther south.” In the south the Europeans were more concerned with separating the Indian from his land. The acquisition of land was of far less importance in the North as Canadian Geography would help to make the land far less valuable. As Trigger notes ‘ It is clear, however that for a long time relations between Amerindians and whites in the territory on and bordering the Canadian Shield, were very different from what they were in the United States.” The fur trade played a greater role in French Amerindian relations and helped to shape France’s Indian policy. Trigger demonstrates this position by stating that:
“it was far easier for the white man to buy these furs from experienced Indian trappers than to hunt for them himself: hence as long as furs remained abundant and fetched a good price on European markets, a symbiotic relationship linked the indian hunter and the European trader.

Trigger believes that this relationship is best studied using ethnohistory and Anthropology. Recording aboriginal ways of life altered by European contact helps to bridge the gap between the “prehistory period studied by archaeologists [and the] recent period.” Because of the diminished nature of Indian cultures such as the Hurons. Anthropological studies of existing Iroquois helps us to understand the Hurons. As Trigger states “Iroquois culture can be used with caution, to gain better insight into the total configuration of Huron culture and hence to understand Huron behavior as it [was] reported by the French.”
Historian William J Eccles in his book France in America, like other historians tends to treat Amerindian history as a part of French history in America, but includes a much more detailed account of Amerindians thus giving their role a greater importance. Eccles includes Amerindians as a part of the economic and religious history of New France, outlining their contribution in his chapter on Merchants and Missionaries1632-1663. He examines the interaction between Amerindian and missionaries, in a more detailed fashion to show how this interaction led to a more humane Indian policy. What he accomplishes that other historians do not, is to link religion to Indian policy and show the logic behind its development.
Eccles states the importance of religion during the period was on the rise as there was a “religious revival that swept over France during the first half of the century” The Amerindians would both benefit and suffer from this religious fervor. As John Halkett In 1826 wrote in his work , Historical Notes respecting the Indians of North America with remarks on the Attempts made to Convert and Civilize Them, notes that:
In Canada, the French missionary entered upon his task with the fervour of a zealot, and often closed it by suffering the fate of a martyr. But after all, what was the result? Did the missionaries of New France, after one hundred and fifty years of zeal and exertion, leave behind them a single Indian tribe whom they had actually converted to Christianity? . . .as far as improvement of the Indian race was concerned the labour was thrown away.

Eccles cites the growth of religious orders during the period as contributing to positive Indian relations. New orders such as the Sulpicians, the Oratorians, and the Compagnie de St. Sacrement, were established in this wave of religious fervor. One of the prime goals of these orders was as Eccles states to “convert the pagan in all parts of the world,” and he notes that “Canada was one of the chief beneficiaries of the movement.” The main purpose of missionaries in New France thus became the conversion of the “pagan Indians,” to Christianity. The missionaries and the church helped to include the Amerindians more fully in the society of New France. The charter of the original Company of New France that was responsible for the colonization of New France, included a very specific clause respecting the rights of Amerindians in the society of New France. As Eccles points out:
Clause XVII declared that any Indians who embraced Christianity and became practicing members of the Roman Church were, without any further formality, to be accepted as French subjects with all the rights and privileges appertaining, including the right to settle in France, whenever they wished and acquire and dispose of property there as would a subject born in the Kingdom.

While Eccles notes that no Amerindian would take advantage of this privilege, he praises French Indian policy on the grounds that “no other European colonizing power advanced such a civilized concept.” This civilizing quest of the missionary orders was as the Journals des Jesuites, states to establish “a new Jerusalem blessed by God and made up of citizens destined for heaven.” This new Jerusalem on the banks of the St. Lawrence as Eccles states was “to further the great work: the conversion of the Indians nations to Christianity.”
Eccles like Trigger shows how Amerindians already had a materialistic based culture. Eccles states that the Hurons “Long before the French appeared on the scene . . . . had been a trading nation exchanging their surplus corn for Tobacco, dried meat, native copper and other goods from surrounding tribes.” While supporting the idea that the Amerindians were pawns in the European quest to control the resources and economy of North America Eccles believes that Europeans simply used Amerindian rivalries to their own benefit. He states that “although the enmity of the Iroquois and Huron Confederacies antedated the arrival of Europeans on the scene, the economic rivalry for control of the beaver trade between the French on the St. Lawrence and the Dutch on the Hudson certainly intensified it.”
Another conventional historian is George F.G. Stanley. Stanley in his book New France The Last Phase 1744-1760, like most authors treats Amerindians as a side to the History of New France. Stanley attempts to show how Amerindians were used as pawns in the struggle between the French and English in the seventeenth century. Stanley points out that as the war progressed an active policy of Amerindian involvement was encouraged. Stanley states that:
The Canadian Commander at Detroit, Longueuil, [complained] . . . bitterly of the activities of American traders who were, he said, telling the Indians that the French would soon be driven from the country and that only the English would be able to supply them with the goods they required.

This was propaganda that Stanley believed had some effect, as Governor Chevalier Claude de Beauharnois noted in his dispatches that areas in contact with American influence showed a “lack of enthusiasm . . . to takeup the hatchet against the Americans when war broke out.”
While Stanley argues that the intrigues of the warring parties were more significant than the economic factors there is a strong argument to be made for both approaches. He contributes to the social history of Amerindians during the period by highlighting the importance of material trade and how it was effected or used to control Amerindians during the French English conflict. The outbreak of war in 1744, place constraints on Amerindian and French Trade as Stanley notes “the interference with French shipping at sea made it harder for them [the French] to obtain the trade goods upon which their influence over the Indians so largely depended.”
Cornelius Jaenen in his work, Friend and Foe: Aspects of French-Amerindian Cultural Contact in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, outlines new approaches to Amerindian history. He states that :
Several new approaches to the initial contacts between Europeans and Amerindians and to the Amerindian background to Canadian history have been suggested . . . The contributions of a variety social scientists - anthropologists, Archaeologists, ethnohistorians, psychologists - and other specialists - linguists, medical doctors, geographers, psychiatrists - are shedding new light on old problems for historians.

In examining Amerindian culture at the time of contact with Europeans he finds that not all contact experiences were identical as he notes “did not the French become more dependent upon the native population than the English settlers to the south.” The French were as Jaenen states, first introduced to Amerindians through the writings of Gonzalo Oviedo y Valdez in 1555 and 1568. Oviedo portrayed the Amerindians as a savage people with “Ni Foi, Ni Roi, Ni Loi” (no faith no King No law) in all accounts truly pagan. The reaction that the French had though was to treat them as human rather than sub human as other colonizing powers had. This belief can be seen as an outcrop of their faith. Pope Paul III in his bull Sublimus Deus affirmed that Amerindians were “truly men . . . capable of Understanding the Catholic Faith.”
Therefore the missionaries as Jaenen points out would “accept, in general the common humanity of the natives and in some cases this view gave them an important advantage in propagating their doctrines.” As an example Jaenen cites that it was reported in 1683 by Father Allouez that “among the Miamis and Illinois . . . the natives preferred the French to other Europeans. Alluoez writing about the English opinion of natives states that:
I think that these are the English, from whom They receive no tokens of friendship, and who take no trouble to instruct them. In fact, those heretics pay no heed to their salvation, saying that they took upon Them only As beasts; and that Paradise is not for that sort of people. [Alluoez believes that] The father did not fail to show them that he was animated with very different sentiments toward them; that he looked upon them as men, in Whom he recognized The image of a God who had created them, who had died for them, and who destined them to the same happiness as the Europeans.

Even though the Hurons, New France’s chosen Amerindian allies would be exterminated by the Iroquois of the six nations to the south, the missionaries in their own estimation accomplished their goals. It might appear that the missionaries were not be able to save the Hurons as we see it, but from a Jesuits perspective because of their strong belief in the next life they did. As Eccles says “the missionaries succeeded in their aim of saving the souls of at least half of the Huron Nation and were satisfied that although the victims had been lost to this world, they had been saved for eternity in the next.”
Contrary to the traditional view of Amerindian history social historians have been examining more closely the history of New France from a Amerindian perspective. Cornelius J. Janen in his article The Meeting of the French and Amerindians in the Seventeenth Century, argues that people in the seventeenth century misunderstood the Amerindians because they looked at them from a eurocentric perspective. Jaenen writes that “Few aspects of French Colonization in North America have been more commented on and less understood than the meeting of Europeans and Amerindians.” Jaenen does not accept that Amerindian relations where based on the fact that the French “embraced and cherished the Amerindians” as noble savages. Jaenen sees that :
When lofty objectives were translated into political directives, such as the orders given the Vice-Regent, the duc de Montmorency, ‘to seek to lead the natives therefore to the profession of the Christian faith, to civilization of manners, an ordered life, practice, and intercourse with the French for the gain of their commerce . . .’, the economic motivation emerged.

Jaenen questions the motivation of missionary zeal without actually criticizing the missionaries themselves. He believes that “the religious activities should be seen within the larger framework of cooperation between church and state in the New World to build a new society and to incorporate the Amerindians in that well ordered, institutionalized, hierarchical, French and Christian Society.” This assimilation was for economic and social means as much as for the saving of Indian souls. Jaenen sets forth the for example the Veritables Motifs of the founders of Montreal that state:
. . . and if once reason obtains the advantage over their old customs, with the example of the French, which they esteem and respect, inciting them ti work, it seems that they will set themselves straight, withdrawing from a life so full of poverty and affliction, and that they will take their place beside the Frenchmen and Christian savages . .. “

He criticizes this statement though as it “indicates two fundamental errors: firstly that the aborigines admired and wished to imitate the European way of life; secondly, that Amerindians were vagabonds and Idlers.” Jaenen sees this as exemplary of “lack of understanding involved in the meeting of two culturse.” The Jesuits while attempting to make french men out of the natives though did not lose sight of the superiority of their position. One such Jesuit father as Jaenen noted stated that “these savages were indeed given to understand that the French did not resemble them, and were not so base as they . . .” While clause XVII of the Charter of the company of New France had given The Amerindians certain basic rights of land ownership and citizenship as Jaenen points out this was not totally an equitable situation. He states that “Amerindians were not truly given the same rights and privileges as Europeans,”There were separate seigneuries and villages(known as reserves since their inauguration in 1637) for Amerindians, separate military treaties, separate churches for converts, separate wards in hospitals, and separate schools for their children.” This separation though did not effect the gradual interweaving of Amerindian and French Culture as Jaenen notes :
The process of accommodation was one of Americanization or Barbarization, not of Frenchification and civilization. The french traders adapted to the Amerindian way of life; the militiamen learned to fight in native fashion; the colonist adopted native foods, clothing and transport; the missionaries continued to learn the Amerindian dialects . . .[but] the French, possessing insufficient men, money, and materials to create an irreversible impact, were unable to assimilate the Amerindians and build a stable new society.

We can see by the writings of current historians that the perception of Amerindian history has changed Amerindians in the History of New France are no longer being marginalized. Their history is therefore not treated as a side issue to the overall history. Even though there are more works on the French and English’s impact on the continents history more than simply a passing mention of the Amerindian contribution is included in modern scholarship. They participated in European progress and at times shaped it to meet their economic requirements. The religious influence of the missionaries has been scrutinized and reinterpreted. The result of this revision of Amerindian history in New France has been the production of a much more equitable but still tragic history of the Amerindian people.