Canada the Good: A Short History of Vice since 1500

Chapter 1: Different Worlds, Different Values: Encounters from 1500 to 1700

9 Different Worlds, Different Values Encounters from 1500 to 1700 As soon as [the Aboriginals] saw us they began to run away, making signs to us that they had come to barter with us; and held up some skins of small value, with which they clothe themselves.”1 When Jacques Cartier first met with Aboriginals in the Gaspé area on July 7, 1534, he extended a process, which had begun several decades prior to his arrival, of European interaction with First Nations on the East Coast of North America. In the course of noting in his travel diary that Aboriginals brought him small gifts, he alluded to their previous encounters with Europeans, such as the Basques, who fished along the Atlantic coast and returned home after a very profitable catch. Other European newcomers following in the footsteps of the Basques continued this process of encounters with societies they claimed to have “discovered .” Each of these two worlds had developed rules, based upon specific cultural values and understandings of society, to regulate individual behaviour. These interactions, which varied through time, introduced Aboriginals to sets of individuals who had specific interests and agendas to advance when dealing with these established communities. As agents of social control, missionaries, fur traders, and French royal authorities each attempted to operate in the “New World” according to their own values. However, when the time came for their representatives to enforce their understanding of what constituted morally acceptable behaviour, two of these institutions in particular—the Roman Catholic Church and the French crown—had limited means at their disposal. ENCOUNTERS In recalling his travels to Canada, Jacques Cartier commented little on the social aspects of the Aboriginal societies he encountered. He devoted much more space to descriptions of the geography, the flora, and the fauna of this new territory, and to assessing its economic potential. During his second trip to Canada, Cartier’s crew spent the fall of 1535 and the winter of 1536 near Stadacona, where Quebec City now stands, and he familiarized himself with the Aboriginals living in this settlement. The few times Cartier did comment “ CHAPTER 1 10 Chapter 1 on the social organization and living conditions of Aboriginals, he passed judgment on them. Christianity was a central facet of Europeans’ identity, and Christian cultural ideas shaped their understanding of the world. Being a French Roman Catholic, Cartier demonstrated a sense of curiosity toward Aboriginals, but at the same time he displayed his sense of cultural superiority when commenting on their religious beliefs. “This people has no belief in God that amounts to Jacques Cartier, engraving by John Henry Walker, 1831–1899. McCord Museum, M16425. Different Worlds, Different Values 11 anything,” he observed.2 Cartier acknowledged that, although these Aboriginals had no knowledge of Christianity, they did have some form of spirituality. He wrote that Aboriginals believed in a spirit that communicated with them and could reveal “what the weather will be like.”3 Sometimes this spirit was angry with them and expressed his anger by throwing “dust in their eyes.”4 Cartier indicated that these Aboriginals also had a conception of what happened to their dead: they went “to the stars.”5 Despite recognizing this as a form of spirituality, Cartier viewed it as primitive and he attempted to demonstrate the superiority of his Christian faith based, among other things, on the belief that humans owed their existence and the world they inhabited to a God “Who is in Heaven, Who gives us everything we need and is the Creator of all things and that in Him alone we should believe.”6 In his commentaries, Cartier remarked on other aspects of Aboriginal societies as well. Besides being struck by their communal way of living, he noted how relations between Aboriginal men and women were socially defined and what the boundaries of socially acceptable behaviour were. If Protestants and Roman Catholics defined marriage as an indissoluble union between a man and a woman and a fundamental social unit, this was not the case for the Aboriginals whom Cartier observed at Stadacona. “They maintain the order of marriage, except that the men take two or three wives,” he wrote.7 Although polygamy was socially acceptable, Cartier indicated that widows were not allowed to remarry. If polygamy itself was a curiosity, he condemned the practice of placing adolescent girls “in a brothel open to every one, until the girls have made a match.”8...