In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

6 Devil with the Face of an Angel Physical and Moral Descriptions of Aboriginal People by Missionary Émile Petitot MURIELLE NAGY The French Oblate missionary, Émile Petitot (1838–1916), who lived in the Canadian northwest from 1862 to 1881, wrote about the language, traditions , history, and territory of the Dene1 and Tchiglit (Siglit) Inuit.2 Petitot was a prolific author.3 However, with the exception of his contribution to geography (which included maps with Aboriginal toponyms and ethnonyms4 ) and his dictionaries (which have been used by linguists5 ), his ethnographic texts and travel narratives were almost forgotten, until they were inventoried and indexed with thematic excerpts in the early 1970s.6 This chapter will be interrogating these texts.7 Petitot wrote for various audiences: his religious order; readers of journals that promoted Catholic missions; the scientific community; and, in the later part of his life, the general public. Except for frequent statistics on the Aboriginal people he baptized, Petitot’s writings are not specifically concerned with his missionary endeavor. Petitot was first and foremost an avid researcher in ethnography, linguistics, and geography—and was considered as such by his Oblates colleagues and superiors. He positioned himself as a detached observer and would certainly have claimed that he wrote in what Mary Louise Pratt has called an “innocent pursuit of knowledge.”8 Pratt’s expression is linked to her definition of “anti-conquest,” as being “the strategies of representation whereby European bourgeois subjects seek to secure their innocence in the same moment as they assert European hegemony.”9 Petitot certainly did not view himself as an instrument of “European hegemony,” and indeed probably saw himself more as an explorer and ethnographer than a missionary. 85 86 Murielle Nagy As a consequence, Petitot’s writings can be read and utilized as primary sources for the period of early contact between Aboriginal peoples and missionaries , in what is now the Northwest Territories of Canada. Many of his comments on the different peoples he lived with show an openness toward their cultural practices that was unusual for someone working as a missionary . An acute observer, Petitot recorded facial expressions and body language, as well as describing and drawing in great detail body features, decorations (earrings, labrets, tattoos, etc.), and hair styles. Notwithstanding his finely tuned cultural observations, comments about his own values, emotions, and sexuality are also embedded throughout his writings on Aboriginal peoples, and the literary tropes he uses position the indigenous body as a site of erotic fascination. This chapter will explore how Petitot’s physical and moral descriptions of Aboriginal individuals are full of contradictions and require a careful and nuanced reading. His own correspondence and that of others about him both reveal paradoxes between the missionary and the man. The letters show that all the significant aspects of Petitot’s life in Canada were linked to his intimate relationships with Aboriginal people, and that these influenced—whether consciously or not—what he wrote in his publications. Since Petitot wrote within a colonial context, this analysis will be organized around three specific considerations. First, it follows Edward Said’s recommendations for the study of Orientalist texts: “The things to look at are the style, figures of speech, setting, narrative devices, historical and social circumstances , not the correctness of the representation nor its fidelity to some great original.”10 It also engages with Said’s general views on Orientalism—a school of interpretation and representation of the Orient from a Western perspective—to reflect on the notion of otherness in Petitot’s writings. As a missionary, Petitot was very much part of the colonial invasion of the Canadian North and his depictions of Aboriginal peoples were addressed to European readers, for whom they were totally foreign and exotic. Second, this analysis considers the “relationship between personal narrative and impersonal description in ethnographic writing” that has been both identified and studied by Mary Louise Pratt.11 Petitot mostly traveled with guides and often lived with the families he visited. During those times, he had little privacy and his writings provide many details about the people he met, the social settings he encountered, and even the conversations he heard. Petitot was the narrator in his books as well as a major protagonist in the situations he described. His status as an agent of religious change, his preconceptions about the Aboriginal people he met, and the interactions he had with them, all influenced his depictions of various individuals and groups. Focusing on the intimate will allow...

Share