How did the Native American relationships with the French and English settlers differ?
Read Online (Free) relies on page scans, which are not currently available to screen readers. To access this article, please contact JSTOR User Support . We'll provide a PDF copy for your screen reader. With a personal account, you can read up to 100 articles each month for free. Show
Already have an account? Log in Monthly Plan
Yearly Plan
Log in through your institution Purchase a PDFPurchase this article for $5.00 USD. Purchase this issue for $25.00 USD. Go to Table of Contents. How does it work?
journal article The Form and function of French-Native American relations in early eighteenth-century French colonial LouisianaProceedings of the Meeting of the French Colonial Historical Society Vol. 15 (1992) , pp. 154-177 (24 pages) Published By: Michigan State University Press https://www.jstor.org/stable/42952226 Read and download Log in through your school or library Alternate access options For independent researchers Read Online Read 100 articles/month free Subscribe to JPASS Unlimited reading + 10 downloads Purchase article $5.00 - Download now and later Publisher Information Since its founding in 1947, the mission of the Michigan State University Press has been to be a catalyst for positive intellectual, social, and technological change through the publication of research and intellectual inquiry, making significant contributions to scholarship in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Rights & Usage This item is part of a JSTOR
Collection. In the early 1600s, French explorers made alliances with the Algonquins, Montagnais, and Hurons to gain access to rich fur territories. Indigenous peoples pursued these alliances with the French as a means of securing a wide range of European manufactured goods, but cloth, firearms, and metal weapons were among the most sought after. By the early 1700s, the fur trade was firmly established in the Great Lakes region. The French empire was based on the fur trade in this region and required Native American alliances to sustain it. Native people and the French traded, lived together, and often married each other and built families together. Native Americans in the Great Lakes and Mississippi valley regions often incorporated Frenchmen into their societies through marriage and the ritual of the calumet — the ceremonial pipe that brought peace and order to relationships and turned strangers into kinfolk. Throughout New France, many Native Americans converted to the Catholic faith, settled in French mission villages, attended Mass, and wore crucifixes. Many Native Americans, however, continued to practice their traditional religion or to observe a mixture of the two, and the French did not resort to forced conversions as the Spanish did. Voyageurs (travelers in French) were men hired to work for the fur trade companies to transport trade goods throughout the vast territory to rendezvous posts. At the rendezvous points, these goods were exchanged for furs, which were then sent to larger cities for shipment to the east coast. Many traders and voyageurs married Native American women and were integrated into their Native kinship networks, frequently trading exclusively within their particular community. The French and Native people lived together in an often egalitarian fashion, ate the same foods, dressed similarly, and suffered the same hardships. As a result of generations of intermarriage, cultural differences began to blur as “mixed” children entered the fur trade. The French and Native trading system created a unique fur trade culture consisting of large communities with people of diverse heritage. French-Native relations also brought chaos to the region. The fur trade brought the spread of guns, contagious diseases, and alcohol. French demand for Native slaves resulted in Native people raiding other Indigenous communities. Slavery existed in North America long before Europeans introduced the transatlantic slave trade. Native Americans often took their enemies captive rather than killing them and held them as subordinate people. Sometimes they gave these people as gifts while making alliances, at other times families adopted them in place of deceased relatives. But European colonialism introduced different concepts of slavery, brought new slave peoples to America from Africa, and drove Native-Native slave raiding to unprecedented levels. Slavery was an integral part of the fur trade during this period. Trade with the French flowed along the extensive network of waterways from French settlements along the St. Lawrence River like Montreal and Québec City, to posts in the interior at Mackinac and the upper Mississippi. The French empire depended on maintaining a network of Native alliances, and so French officials, traders, and officers tried to employ diplomacy, tact, and respect for Native culture. These relations sustained the business of the fur trade. The French traded iron tools, kettles, wool blankets and other supplies for the furs to make hats, while Native peoples exchanged furs for goods from around the world. Resources
How did Native American relationships with the French and with the English differ?How did Native American relationships with the French and with the English differ? The English viewed the Native Americans as enemies, while the French established good trading partnerships with the Native Americans.
What was the relationship between the French settlers and the Native Americans?France saw Indigenous nations as allies, and relied on them for survival and fur trade wealth. Indigenous people traded for European goods, established military alliances and hostilities, intermarried, sometimes converted to Christianity, and participated politically in the governance of New France.
How were relations with American Indians different between the French and the Spanish?French colonists often engaged in cooperative relationships with Native Americans, while their Spanish counterparts seemed more interested in controlling and enslaving large groups of Native Americans.
How was the relationship between the French and Natives different from other Europeans Why?The French are a notable exception to this, and in fact, enjoyed excellent relations with the Natives almost from the very beginning. Why were the French different? The main reason is that they did not try to change the Natives. They also did not compete with the Natives for land.
|