A major theme we learned was the ability to reflect on past events using various lenses, and placing ourselves in the historical context. It is important to remove our 2018 selves when looking at historical events or documents. This is a big part of “doing” history and something we did during our seminar sessions when we looked at various sources and discussed them. One instance we reflected on the past was when we looked at the James P. Ronda article We Are Well As We Are. The article was her critique of Christian missionaries who converted Indigenous people to Christianity. A major theme was how accepting this new spiritual faith meant the Indigenous people would have to perform spiritual suicide. Here is my analysis on her article:
We Are Well As We Are
“We Are Well As We Are” by James Ronda is a critique of Christian missionaries and their relations with the Indigenous Peoples of New France and New England. The relationship between Jesuit missionaries and the Huron Peoples was toxic and “required to renounce not only his own personal past, but that of his forefathers as well”.1 This type of cultural genocide and lack of understanding will be explored and explain how it was to commit cultural suicide for a converted Indigenous person.
Firstly, it is vital to understand the lack of understanding of the Christian faith the Indigenous had. When missionaries urged for converting they would mention heaven and hell, and sin. To the Indigenous peoples these words held little to no meaning and were European in nature. One Huron stated, “I have no acquaintances there, and the French who are there would not care to give me anything to eat.” 2 This was a concept driven towards a people with vastly different beliefs and ideas about afterlife that it would have been a much harder task to indoctrinate this belief. The historical relationship between settlers and Indigenous Peoples has been challenging and how could European concepts and ideas be properly understood when the goal of the missionaries was to convert a savage. This clearly, as Ronda mentioned later, an alien concept, “A few accepted…and were converted; others rejected what they saw as an alien ideology.” 3 It shows that the Jesuits did not want to understand the ideologies of the Indigenous Peoples as much as they wanted to destroy a culture in the name of God.
This idea of cultural suicide is embedded deep within “We Are Well As We Are”. This idea that to accept this European faith that one must literally kill off their own self. These Indigenous Peoples did not have a concept of sin, or how to sin but to accept it they must kill that mentality. To accept this idea of Heaven, which is very European, they must accept themselves as European and shed off their personal history and the history of their forefathers.
To accept this faith was spiritual suicide. It was to cast off many beliefs they had to become European, which is to be Christian. It was an absurd request and with the bringing of disease and death this Mission asked for Indigenous Peoples to accept suicide. As one Huron said, “You tell us God is full of goodness, and then, when we give ourselves up to him he massacres us.”4
1Ronda, James P. “”We Are Well As We Are”: An Indian Critique of Seventeenth-Century Christian Missions.” The William and Mary Quarterly 34, no. 1 (1977): 66-82.
2Ibid
3Ibid
4Ibid
Another reading log I did that I took much interest in was Jan Noel’s “Nagging Wife Revisited: Women and the Fur Trade in New France”. This was interesting to me because the role of women was much different than what I originally thought. By reading Noel’s work I was able to understand that their role was not solely within the household like I previously thought. They certainly played a major role in the everyday functions, and progression of the fur trade in New France. Here is my analysis of this article:
Nagging Wife Revisited: Women and the Fur Trade in New France
Reading Log #3
Jan Noel’s “Nagging Wife Revisited: Women and the Fur Trade in New France” seeks out to dispel ideas about the fragility and the role of women in New France. She gives this view in a few ways, first by describing the role of women in the fur trade, and certain women who commandeered outposts. Secondly by describing the types of jobs women frequently faced in New France as 80 percent of the settlers lived in the harsh, unforgiving countryside.
When the word fur trade is brought up many connotations are associated with it. Perhaps an image of big, burly men with their fur coats and beaver hat trekking through the woods with an Indigenous guide. What is imagined when women in the fur trade are mentioned? Jan describes women such as Louise Denys de la Ronde who seized an opportunity to begin setting up operations to tan hides, as these tanned hides sometimes outperformed that of furs.1 This in itself might come across as odd. The role of women in a more contemporary complex has always been relegated towards housework and cooking and cleaning, which they did. Louise had to administer her husband’s business and after his death still set up business connections with other fur traders. At her death her enterprise was worth about 46,000 livres.2 Louise is not the only case, but does show how perceptions of pioneer women may perhaps be quite wrong, and in New France the role of women was much more fluid and was no confined to the house solely.
As aforementioned the roles of women in New France expanded further than the household. Many women held jobs such as the birch canoe builders, who make so many they “bill the crown for six thousand livres per year.”3 Due to the untamed wilderness women also bore the job of culling and cultivating. Jobs included: gardening, raising livestock, mining, trading. Perhaps the role of women in New France differed from the lack of female employment of England because of this untamed, uninhabited wilderness that required the whole family to work. It was crucial women not only cared for home but also seek jobs in time of distress, for when crops fail what else to turn to but a wage.
This journal article does a fine job detailing the roles women played in New France, and it shines a light on how important women were at this time. They were entrepreneurs, the had to keep the family business afloat, they had to raise 18 children, and still manage time to work the trading outpost. The roles of women in New France were not so confined by gender as much as it was by class, but regardless in this time women were multitaskers who kept the family afloat.
11 Jan Noel. “‘Nagging Wife’ Revisited: Women and the Fur Trade in New France.” French Colonial History, 2006, 45.
2Ibid
3Ibid
Through reading, and analyzing through various lenses like I did for these two articles has allowed me to “do” history much better. It has helped me look at things through a feminist lens, or a gender lens, and various others that has helped me learn and understand history better. Throughout the year and all our class discussion I have learned much about Canadian history. The weekly reading logs also helped me become better at citing sources as well!