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Bridges 295 appreciate the great solidarity that would result from uniting their two peoples. They attempted this by actually marrying Jacques Cartier to the highest-ranking of their marriageable young women. To this day, an account other than Cartier’s own has never been presented to Canadians about this very meaningful event in their country’s history. I have personally witnessed wedding ceremonies and other similar ceremonies still practised by Canadian Aboriginal peoples whose spiritual ways are almost identical to ours. I will take the reader through Cartier’s account of what happened to him, the young maiden and the people of Canada that day. First, we are told that the people of Stadacona walked up to the French boats at low tide with large quantities of eels and other fish, as gifts for the French.Then there was much chanting and dancing, which usually occurred at such visits, Cartier said. What Cartier did not see, at this point, was that these particular songs and dances were preparatory to a specific ceremony that was about to take place. As well, the abundant quantities of fish and the prevailing festive atmosphere that was described indicate that the whole town (very likely with many guests and visitors from neighbouring places) was present for a very important event—a ceremony ordained after much praying, chanting, councilmaking and, quite likely, fasting, under the highest spiritual leadership. Then the Agouhanna (a title carried by Donnacona, which implies very high standing in society) had his people (likely the other leaders) stand to one side and drew a circle on the sand, inside of which he had Cartier and his own principals stand. Donnacona then made a long speech in front of the thus reunited French and Stadaconans. While he spoke, the Headman “held the hand of a girl of about ten to twelve years old” whom, after he had finished speaking, he presented to the French captain. At this point, all of Donnacona’s people began to “scream and shout, as a sign of joy and alliance”. Now the fact that Cartier accepted the girl was affirmed by the loud, festive reaction of the throng. At any rate,was not Cartier and all of these Frenchmen,in the eyes of the Amerindians, much too long deprived of normal social relations, including those of a man with his wife,or the companionship of a woman,as sadly seen in their disorderly behaviour and appearance? Could so many negative traits in the present state of their intercultural relations not be modified by beginning to create a normal human life, a society, around these angry, rude, rowdy strangers? Canada: Its Cradle, Its Name, Its Spirit 296 Following this ceremony, two younger boys were given to Cartier in the same official way, upon which the Stadaconans made similar demonstrations of joy.2 Cartier then officially thanked Donnacona for these presents. Finally, a crucial detail was given by Taignoagny: the “girl” (in Aboriginal cultural terms, as well as in French social and cultural terms, she is a young woman) ceremonially given (again, in the Aboriginal social frame of reference, that gift was a wife) to Jacques Cartier was “Lord Donnacona’s sister’s own daughter”. This, in the matrilineal system of these Nadowek (Iroquoians), meant that the young woman was called “my daughter” by Donnacona, because she belonged to the same clan as he did, as opposed to his own children, who belonged to their mother’s clan. Thus, the young woman was the highest, as well as the purest, gift that could possibly have been offered to the first man among these Frenchmen. The Stadaconans probably thought, given these gifts and a chance to establish a normal life in this new land, who would care about an oppressive monarch back in problem-ridden France and about the lifelong odious obedience that was owed him: this land was Donnacona’s, this was a pure and abundant free country, this was Canada. Most surely and naturally, there was a burning desire in many French hearts present to make the Canadian way of thinking their own. Unfortunately, of course, it was, for that time, impossible. It was almost entirely a matter of religious prejudice.4 Cartier had his human gifts “put on board the ships”. He gave no details about what occurred to the three young Stadaconans thereafter, except that the “older girl”,had,three days later,fled the ship and that a special guard had been...

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