Loi, nationalité et mariages mixtes entre Français et autochtones: Le cas de l'arrêt du Conseil supérieur de la Louisiane du 18 décembre 1728

Did Native people have the same rights as French people in the colonies during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? They did, according to a law enacted in all the colonies. Indeed, once converted, aboriginal people could go and live in France, get married to French people, and inherit their wealth. However, the implementation of this law, which was specific to the French colonies, posed some problems. Marriages between French settlers and aboriginal women constituted a non-negligible loss of income for the colony. The law allowed an aboriginal widow to inherit the goods and wealth of her deceased husband. In these cases, the French judges, among other members of Louisiana's Conseil supérieur, were faced with the dilemma of either upholding the missionary vocation of the French colonies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—a vocation used to justify the colonization of the New World—or preventing the loss of part of the colony's wealth.