Onontio le médiateur: La gestion des conflits amérindiens en Nouvelle-France 1603–1717 (review)

This book argues, as the title suggests, that the governors of New France acted as mediators between Indian groups in the areas claimed by France and managed relations between often hostile Native groups to the advantage of French interests. The study aims to offer a more sophisticated understanding of French–Indian relations in general, and French–Iroquois in particular, and explore the ways by which the French were able to establish 'leur domination' over the Indians (16). The argument is neither novel nor persuasive.

According to Gohier the French policy of friendly alliances with Indians, and the governor of New France as mediator in, and director of, Indian affairs began with Champlain. To manage their allies and deal with the Iroquois menace to the colony, the French adopted the mediator's role and a policy of maintaining peace among their allies and with the Iroquois. The culmination of that role was the Great Peace of Montreal in 1701 when, thanks to Governor Calliére, all the Indians of New France, including the Iroquois, made peace and recognized Onontio – the name they gave to the French governor of the colony – as the key mediator in all their disputes and, thereby, made him the arbiter of Indian-Indian and Indian-Euroamerican politics in the region. After that event, the power of the governor waned as the goal of mediation – peace for all – was largely met and meant less need for his efforts. If parts of this scenario sound familiar, it is because it builds on views of the roles of the French governor and of French colonization articulated by William J. Eccles (Frontenac: The Courtier Governor, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1959) and more recently by Richard White (The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) and Gilles Havard (Empire et métissages: Indiens et Français dans le pays d'en haut, 1660–1715, Sillery-Paris: Septentrion et les Presses de l'Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2003). The major difference between these works and Gohier's is that, unlike all but Eccles, he focuses on the St Lawrence and lower Great Lakes region.

There is much about this work that can be questioned. The picture of French governors as kind rulers, acknowledged as such by Natives, and the French as respectful of Indians, overlooks the attempts of various governors to keep some Native groups at odds with each other in order to keep them from forming military and/or economic alliances that might exclude the French or prove detrimental to French interests. (See, for examples of the latter, the works cited above.) Taking at face value that the goals of French policy were mostly met and that the self-proclaimed powers of French governors to 'manage' Indian nations were real overlooks the obvious efforts of many Native groups to use the French for their own ends. Governors Montmagny, Frontenac and Vaudreuil may have been styled 'Onontio,' and may have liked the ring of the name and the notion of power it implied in their minds, but it was a title given them by Indians because it suited Indian aspirations. The Iroquois, for example, played up to the Dutch and English governors in New Netherland and New York in the same way when necessity demanded it. The notion that the governors of New France occupied their special role because of an unequal relationship in which they were dominant is highly questionable. French involvement in Indian alliance networks often forced them into situations and actions that were costly and not part of French plans. The French were obliged to act in ways that they had not anticipated, or thought advantageous, because they needed Indians and not because the French had more 'power' over them.

The failure to look at events from the Indian perspective is disappointing. This study is so clearly grounded on the French...