Thursday, November 17, 2011

Thursdays According to a French Fry

So, it has been decreed that Thursdays shall be my domain, much like Tuesdays are Limey's. Here I shall post whatever the hell I want - Stories, poems, things that happened to me during the day, photography, random awesome internet things. Whatever! It's my day and I'll do what I like with it. Including completely forget that I'm supposed to post something, which is what happened today. I have a mid term tomorrow! I had to study.

So I'm going to use you guys as guinea pigs for my studying.

Today, we shall have a Very (very) Short History of Canada, according to Heather.

Part One: The Beginning of Time, The Fur Trade, Colonization, and The Jesuits, Oh My!

Before I begin, I would just like to point out that I'm a first year university student. I'm not a professional historian. So, if you're looking for a source of information for a project or something, GO SOMEWHERE ELSE. I'm trying to be accurate. But I make mistakes. So, after that disclaimer...on with the show...

Basically, a really, really long time ago, there was a big bang and oh hey, the universe was created. Fast forward several billion years, and suddenly we've got a tiny backwater planet in a tiny backwater solar system on the edges of a vast, incomprehensibly huge universe. On this planet, there was a landmass that came to be known at The Americas.

With me so far?

The first people to occupy Canada are now known, appropriately, as the First Nations. They are a pretty cool, extremely varied people. On the west coast of Canada, they had semi-permanent communities, art, and a hierarchical society - all the wonderful markers of fledging society about to spread its wings. In the prairies, they were a bit more egalitarian. Their lives were based on movement, and responsibility was shared by everyone. In the East, there were both egalitarian and hierarchical societies. They grew corn, beans and squash (a triad known as The Three Sisters). The fact they had agriculture is actually quite interesting, because it meant that they couldn't move around as much. They still managed it though, as their culture was a mixture of settlement and migration.

As we can see, the First Peoples had a pretty thriving culture before any European intervention. Then, this guy called Christopher Columbus arrived on the scene. He was a regular asshole, enslaving and killing a lot of Natives, but he only gets a mention in the story because he got to the Americas first. Specifically, South America. Canada's tale has more of a French Twist to it.

In 1534, Jaques Cartier found himself surrounded by Native Americans in canoes waving furs in his face. They were extremely eager to trade. And that is exactly what they did. Cartier's voyages found him going inland, which the natives were initially quite happy about. Communities even traveled inland to him in order to trade. However, that changed when they found their sons and daughters being kidnapped, as well as Cartier consorting with the their rivals.

The fur trade, however, flourished. It depended almost entirely on the First Nations, since they were the ones who hunted and processed the furs. In exchange, they wanted guns, kettles, axes, and things like that. The French, however, decreed that not just anyone could trade. They couldn't have relations with their new neighbours souring after all. So they gave the monopoly of the Fur Trade to a few companies, with the caveat that they would promote settlement of New France and conversion to Christianity of the Natives.

In the 1600's, Samuel de Champlain established the first permanent settlement in Canada - a place called Quebec. Through him, the French were able to trade with the First Peoples who surrounded them, and create alliances. These alliances were made through exchanges of men, who would go and live with Native Tribes, thus learning enough of the language and culture to act as interpreters. However, this also meant that the French found themselves caught up in disputes between tribes. They would go on raids with their new Allies in order to solidify the relationship, which, of course, made them new enemies in the process. Unfortunately, these enemies were the Iroquois, who were a fairly tough people.

Eventually, the French Crown got its shit together and decided to try to colonize this huge mass of land they now liked to think they owned. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people who made the voyage to New France were either convicts, slaves or indentured servants. For those not in the know, an indentured servant was someone who had some work to do for a master, but only for a certain amount of time. About half of them up and left when their job was done. They weren't allowed to marry, trade or have any fun while they were there, so it's not hard to see why they decided to leave when their service was up. Some did stay on as farmers, however. And the military regularly dispatched troops to the new colony. So, now, there was a lovely cache of young, unmarried men who probably didn't really want to be there.

Send in the women!

No, really, that's what happened. The French Crown collected together orphaned or otherwise dispossessed girls and sent them off to New France, promising to pay their dowry. They were know as Les filles du roi, which means "daughters of the king." Many of them were married off within two weeks.

The guys that stayed behind to be farmers ended up engaging in a kind of feudalish system, where they worked lots of land sub-granted out to them by seigneurs. However, it was illegal for them to do individual trade with the Natives. And thus, the Coureurs du bois ("Runners of the wood") were born. These were young men who were not necessarily meant to be trading, but would go out there anyway, learn the Native language, and build relations with the Natives. This caused some concern because A. it was illegal, B. Time spent with the Native Peoples meant time spend away from working on their farms, and C. it also meant time away from the Church. Because, well, those Natives were most certainly not Christian were they?

This time, the French sent in the Missionaries.

The first were known as the Recollets. They didn't have much luck. The Natives tended to be a migratory people, so you had to be willing to move around with if you were going to convert them. That's where the Jesuits came in. These guys were extremely committed to the cause. They went to live with the people they were trying to convert, willing to adapt to their ways of life in order to convert them to Christianity. They did seek to eventually completely settle the Natives down, creating settlements for them. However, as it turned out, conversion to Christianity became less of a complete rejection of the First Nation culture, and more of an integration. Elements of Christianity were included in the same marriage and burial rituals, as well as kinship structures. Conversion was extremely important to the French. Champlain actually only agreed to trade guns for furs to the Wendats if they accepted Jesuit priests, and the only people who could use them were those that actually converted.

Remember the Iroquois? Well, these guys were a tough lot. They were eventually responsible for the destruction of Huronia (The Wendats). The Iroquois were involved in something called The Mourning Wars, where they would go on raids of enemy tribes. Generally, they weren't all that bloody, and women and children who were captured were even adopted into the tribe. Men, particularly the wounded ones, were often killed, but there weren't a lot of casualties - that is, until guns happened. You see, the Dutch established a colony in New York, and they weren't picky about who they traded with. When the League of Peace (Five Native Nations that had agreed to not fight each other) got a hold of these in the 17th century, the attacks on Huronia escalated. They had been asked to join the League repeatedly, and declined. The attacks eventually led to the Huron people dispersing about the Great Lakes, forming new composite peoples. This all was facilitated by the European guns.

And that is where we shall leave Canada for now. This is slightly longer than I intended, but I hope someone found it interesting. I would also like to say, before anyone decides to yell at me: I AM TOTALLY OPEN TO BEING CORRECTED. The wonderful thing about history is that it starts conversations, so if anyone notices something I did wrong, please tell me!

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