French and Indians in the Heart of North America, 1630–1815 ed. by Robert Englebert and Guillaume Teasdale (review)

French–Indian relations in North America have historically received different treatment in Canada, the United States, and France. French and Indian encounters and interactions are woven into the grand narrative of Canadian history, initiated at the St Lawrence Valley and then extended through the Great Lakes and throughout the West by explorers and fur traders. Historians in the United States have often downplayed the French presence, especially in national narratives where Anglo-American exceptionalism and the advance of the frontier overshadow French colonial efforts within the continent’s interior. Most French historians have largely ignored France’s North American colonies, partly because much of the timeframe occurred prior to the French Revolution and the emergence of a new French identity, and partly because France lost many of her colonies – including New France – and the result was a type of imperial amnesia within the French national narrative.

This excellent anthology, edited by historians Robert Englebert and Guillaume Teasdale, seeks to correct these deficiencies, as well as to break through the pronounced insularity and regionalism sometimes manifested in Quebec, which ignores or excludes French-Canadian history outside Quebec. Focusing on the geographic heart of the continent, the editors have selected essays that highlight the Great Lakes region, the Illinois Country, the Missouri River Valley, and Upper and Lower Louisiana between the early seventeenth century and the War of 1812.

Eight essays incorporating new scholarship from Canadian, American, and French authors expand the boundaries of the bourgeoning field of French and Indian relations. Some of the essays are expanded and reworked presentations from a conference of the French Colonial Historical Society, which met in Quebec City in 2008. Others have been added to the collection since the conference. Each essay seeks to add nuance to standard interpretations about kinship and miscegenation (métissage) between French colonists and Native populations advanced by Jacqueline Peterson and others. The cultural accommodation between French and Indians – Richard White’s “middle ground” – is also revisited. These eight scholars delve into the world of Native America, early America, and French colonialism, assessing the historical bridge-building and addressing such themes as transatlantic connections and diplomatic relations, as well as cultural, environmental, economic, and legal histories.

Essayists represent a range of experience and expertise over a wide array of topics. Historian Kathryn Magee Labelle focuses on the Wendats’ (Huron) Feast of Souls, a solemn and important ceremony employed to reinforce relations, maintain traditions, and incorporate the French into a kinship alliance. Christopher M. Parsons examines the exchange and use of Nicotiana (tobacco) as a physical mediator between natives and newcomers in order to transcend cultural differences between French colonists and Native peoples. Historian Robert Michael Morrissey examines the contestation for Native souls by French missionaries. Jesuits favoured learning Native languages in order to create authentic Christianity in a native context, while other missionaries thought Francization was the best strategy to culturally assimilate and convert Indians. Historian Richard Weyhing chronicles the strategic location of “the straits” (le détroit) wherein Detroit represented a strategic location to array Native groups in imperial wars against England but also became a war zone resulting in the slaughter of hundreds of Meskwakis (Fox) and triggering the Fox Wars.

French historian Gilles Havard assesses France’s conception of sovereignty and the country’s ultimate failure to incorporate Natives as subjects and citizens. Meanwhile, independent scholar Arnaud Balvay re-examines the encounters between the Natchez and the French, which ultimately resulted in massacres by both sides. Historian John Reda demonstrates how Pierre Chouteau and Pierre Menard were able to maintain their relationships and livelihoods under successive sovereigns by identifying the points at which their private interests intersected with imperial imperatives. The final essay, by Nicole St-Onge, examines the French-Canadian voyageurs’ invaluable role in the overland Astorian expedition from Montreal to Fort Astoria, Oregon, in 1810.

It is regrettable...