From these years of conflict and dialogue, a new geopolitical landscape had emerged. It was something more than a return to the status quo of before 1684, at which time the old communities of Iroquoia had coexisted in peace with the new communities of Kahnawake and Kanehsatake. The Five Nations were more united now than they had previously been: henceforth there could be no thought of going to war against the distant Senecas with the expectation that Mohawk, Oneida, and Onondaga relatives would not be “concerned,” to borrow the term that Anthony Lespinard, the Albany trader, had used. More importantly perhaps, the Christian and League communities had each demonstrated their endurance: henceforth neither group would make any serious attempt to persuade the other to migrate “by […] acts of kindness” or to force it to do so by violence. France’s 1701 peace with the Five Nations, and the latter’s willingness to henceforth cleave to a policy of neutrality in times of intercolonial conflicts, would allow cordial relations to resume between the inhabitants of the missions and their relations and acquaintances in Iroquoia. There would yet be moments of tension and incidents of violence, but never on the scale seen in the final decades of the seventeenth century.95
Conclusion
During the winter of 1705, seventy to a hundred Wabanakis and a small number of Wendats from Lorette ventured for the seasonal hunt to the north of Trois Rivières, up the Saint Maurice River towards the watershed of Lake Saint Jean and the Saguenay. The circumstances which allowed the details of the event to enter the historical record were not happy ones. The Innu who occupied these lands regarded it as their exclusive hunting territory. Some of them, who had been mistreated and had their furs taken by the Wabanakis, lodged a complaint with French officials. Asked by the latter to account for their actions, the Wabanakis countered that they too had rights to the area. They had been led there by the “chief of the Abenaquis of the mission of St. François” (i.e. Arsikantegouk), a man named Outakamachiwenon alias Tekouerimat. As his son Louis testified, the contested hunting grounds had been “given” to his father by his grandfather, who he pointed out had been chief of the Algonquins of Tadoussac (sic).1
This moment is at once enigmatic and emblematic. Enigmatic because the late seventeenth-century sources do not provide a clear idea of the internal relationships and structures of leadership among the groups concerned. Though the French chroniclers failed to make any mention of it, the title of Tekouerimat had visibly lived on after the death of Michel Tekouerimat in 1685. It is a powerful reminder that the colonial record is fragmentary, and sorely wanting in its reporting of Indigenous realities. In this way, this moment is emblematic of the challenges that we face in trying to reconstruct the history of the mission settlements of the Saint Lawrence valley. It is also emblematic because it points to the frictions that accompanied the settlement of diverse peoples in the region, and most importantly it speaks to the interplay of continuity and change that characterized the formation and early evolution of its mission communities. The Wabanaki missions, though the most recent of the settlements, had roots that stretched back to the Innu and Algonquin communities of Kamiskouaouangachit. The figure of Noël Negabamat Tekouerimat, who had played such a key role in the early conceptualization of the mission settlement, persisted long after the title – “He Who Settles Them” – was adopted by its first bearer. Subsequent bearers of the name do not loom as large in the records of the eighteenth century as the first had in the seventeenth, but one is mentioned as late as 1749. That year the Wabanakis of Arsikantegouk and their missionary sent a letter to the canons of the cathedral of Chartres to “refresh […] as if it were made anew” the union that their forebearers had contracted some sixty years earlier. The first of the five chiefs whose name was affixed to the document was called Michel Terrouëmant.2
The human landscape of the Saint Lawrence valley at the end of the seventeenth century was profoundly different from the one that had existed at its outset. A French population had established roots there, in growing towns and on multiplying farms, and alongside them had coalesced a string of Indigenous communities. Almost from the time of their inception, the latter’s position in the region was marked by demographic disparity. All in all, those who were coming to be known as “Sauvages domiciliés” numbered about 2,000 compared to their 15,000 French neighbours – in other words, they represented a little less than a tenth of the Saint Lawrence valley’s population. Their presence was nonetheless not negligible, and concentrated in a way that made it stand out. Kahnawake alone, with a population of 790 according to the 1698 census, or between 950 and 1,000 according to slightly later estimates, formed the third largest town in the colony, following Quebec (which numbered 1,988 in 1698) and Montreal (1,185). The size of the Wabanaki mission of Ariskantegouk was in flux, but it too was substantial: the mission on the Chaudière River had numbered 355 shortly before its relocation to the Saint François River, and within a decade its population at the new site would itself rise to about 1,250. Even the relatively small communities of Kanehsatake and Skawenati on the Island of Montreal, which numbered 160 and 113, respectively, in 1698, and Lorette, with 122, compare favourably with Trois Rivières, the third largest French agglomeration, which was home to a mere 358 colonists.3 To give a sense of perspective, numbers also allow us to grasp the slightness of the missionary presence on the ground: in 1701, of their order’s 48 members, only 4 Jesuits were stationed at Kahnawake, 2 at Ariskantegouk, and 1 at Lorette; the Sulpicians had 1 of their own at Kanehsatake, and 1 or 2 more at Skawenati.4 These villages were not mere appendages of the French Catholic Church, they were in all respects Indigenous communities.
Although these communities continued to evolve – to fluctuate in size, to experience a few more relocations, and beginning in the nineteenth century to undergo massive social, cultural, and economic changes – by the end of the seventeenth century they had achieved an essential degree of stability. That they persist to this day is indicative of the unique foundational character of the period. The Wendats had journeyed from ancestral homelands in what is today Ontario, to the Saint Lawrence valley, to the Island of Orleans, to the center of the town of Quebec, before moving on, with influxes from Iroquoia, to Notre Dame de Foy, to the initial Lorette, and finally settling in 1697 at Jeune Lorette. Renamed Wendake – the place of the Wendats – in the 1980s, it remains to this day the home of the Huron-Wendat Nation.5 The Wabanaki community of Arsikantegouk or Saint François lives on too, under the name of Odanak, meaning simply “The Village.” That name, used only since the nineteenth century, evokes a context much changed from that of the late seventeenth century, at which point village communities – in the plural – remained very conspicuous across Wabanaki country.6
Kahnawake continues to thrive along the rapids, a short distance upriver from where it was located in 1696, following a final relocation in 1716. So too does Kanehsatake persist, though it underwent more substantial reconfigurations than any other mission settlement in the first decades of the eighteenth century. In the fall of 1704, the sacramental registers of the mission of La Montagne were officially closed, its inhabitants having completed their relocation to Skawenati, along the Rivière des Prairies. The following year, the bones from the cemetery were transported to the second site – an event which, while corresponding to a standard Catholic practice, may for some of the mission’s inhabitants have recalled the old Feast of the Dead.7 In 1721, the community again moved, this time to the north shore of the Lac des Deux Montagnes or Lake of Two Mountains, at the confluence of the Saint Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers, just opposite the westernmost point of the Island of Montreal and across from the mouth of the Rivière des Prairies.8
The names used to describe this mission community indicate the intricacies of continuity. The names of Kanehsatake and La Montagne continued to be associated in a haphazard fashion with the mission community during its occupation of Skawenati, even though it had abandoned that earlier site. The change of landscape in 1721 offered an opportunity to revive more fully
and coherently the name of Kanehsatake – “at the foot of the hill” now referencing the elevation of the Two Mountains, which are today familiarly known as the Oka Hills. But the name of Skawenati too retained some currency after that date, as the mission still found itself on the “other side of the island.” In their dealings with the Five Nations and with officials in Albany, as late as the 1730s and 1740s the Iroquois inhabitants of the mission at Lake of Two Mountains were indeed still referred to as “Skawenatis.”9
Relocation to this new Kanehsatake was also the occasion for an amalgamation with the Algonquin and Nipissing population that orbited around a short-lived mission settlement, established by the Sulpicians in 1704, at Île aux Tourtes, or Aouanagassing, an island on the southern edge of this same Lake of Two Mountains, facing the westernmost point of the Island of Montreal.10 In addition to these communities, three more would emerge in the eighteenth century as outgrowths of preexisting ones: a second Wabanaki community, that of Wôlinak (originally Wowenok), founded along the Bécancour River in 1704; Oswegatchie, a community occupied mainly by Onondagas on the upper Saint Lawrence River between 1749 and the mid-1760s; and finally the Mohawk community of Akwesasne, also established on the upper Saint Lawrence in 1754.11
While these communities have continued to loom large in the consciousness of their non-Indigenous neighbours, their occupation of earlier sites has meanwhile grown faint in memory. In the nineteenth century, the penultimate site of Kahnawake and Skawenati were each still remembered as Kanatakwenke, meaning “where the village was taken from.”12 French-Canadian farmers periodically came across reminders of Indigenous presence. In the late nineteenth century, the elderly living near the Chaudière Falls could recall that their plows had in earlier years brought up in their furrows human “bones or worm-eaten coffin planks.” Meanwhile, the outcropping next to the former mission site at Sillery was, owing to the occasional discovery of human and material remains, remembered until recently as the “Butte aux Sauvages” (Native Hill). But suburban sprawl has further contributed to the erasure of these memories of settlement.13 The name of Sillery persists, recalling to a certain extent the old mission, but those of Kamiskouaouangachit, Msakkikkan, and Néssawakamighé have long gone out of use. And while the name of the recently canonized Catherine Tekakwitha has continued to loom large in popular consciousness, one would be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of specialists who today recognize the names of the likes of Tekouerimat, Atironta, Ganneaktena, Tonsahoten, Togouirout, or Tatakwiséré, and who have a sense of the crucial role that these figures played in shaping the settlement – both Indigenous and French, given their broader impact on the geopolitics of the region – of the Saint Lawrence valley.
Although the experience of each mission settlement was distinct, they all shared certain commonalities. The men and women who formed and joined these communities had in common a readiness to experiment with cooperation and cohabitation, among each other and alongside French neighbours, and a willingness to adapt their personal and collective identities accordingly. They coalesced in search of regeneration in difficult times and sought out security and opportunities – political, cultural, material, and spiritual. In this context, a community such as that of the Wendats succeeded in rebounding from a position of extreme vulnerability to one of relative strength. By the end of the seventeenth century, the anxieties of mid-century had passed, and the sort of lamentation that had been common in the diplomatic rhetoric through the 1650s and 1660s ceased completely. These processes of regeneration brought together a range of peoples, including former enemies. Without exception, the mission settlements came into being as heterogeneous, multiethnic communities before more focused and lasting collective identities emerged. By the end of the seventeenth century, each of these communities had come to be recognized by the French as a crucial ally, deserving of attention and political accommodation. All things considered, their existence in the Saint Lawrence valley defined French colonial policy just as much as it was defined by it.
While the notion of “mission settlement” is insightful when it comes to describing the initial establishment of these communities through much of the seventeenth century, it comes across as a less accurate descriptor by the period’s end. Given their size and the degree of stability that they had achieved, by this time they can be more usefully thought of collectively as “mission villages.” They were a far cry from what the French had imagined early on. There is little doubt that these communities functioned as sites of religious conversion and perpetuation. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century shifts in culture and identity, namely the revalorization of traditional Indigenous spiritualties, has made it too easy to understate the importance of religion in the establishment of the communities. Yet the balance of the evidence shows that, during their foundational period, taking up residence there meant taking up the Catholic faith and its rituals – in a syncretic fashion, to be sure. As sites of assimilation to French culture and ways of life, however, the mission settlements meanwhile fell short. In the absence of coercive capabilities, Indigenous indifference forced missionaries and officials to adjust their expectations. The Jesuits were the quickest to understand this, already doing so by the 1640s, but before the end of the century the Sulpicians too reached the same conclusion.
Ways of life in the mission settlements did adapt to their surroundings over time. Lorette, as the oldest and smallest mission settlement, was at the forefront of this trend. The small scale of the community forced change in old family structures, including the abandonment of former restrictions against marrying within one’s clan. Intermarriage with French and later English neighbours, relatively rare in the seventeenth century, became gradually more common. Whereas multifamily longhouses remained the predominant form of dwelling in the community at the end of the seventeenth century, these appear to have been wholly replaced by houses in the French style during the 1710s. And whereas it was reported in 1674 that just a few of the Wendats “knew French,” by the middle of the eighteenth century most spoke it. Such transitions occurred at a slower pace at Kahnawake and Kanehsatake. There, with a few exceptions, multifamily longhouses persisted as the principal form of dwelling until the second half of the eighteenth century, and well into the nineteenth a majority of people still did not speak the language of their French or English neighbours.14
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, then, most of these key social and cultural shifts had yet to occur. Likewise, modes of subsistence in the mission settlements remained essentially those of Old Huronia, Iroquoia, and Wabanaki country. A little wheat was produced, and a small number of domestic animals were raised. But the culture of corn continued to dominate, diminishing only through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to be replaced by a greater reliance on hunting and fishing, for the communities’ own subsistence and for sale, along with foraged plants and crafts, to the nearby townspeople. At Kahnawake and Kanehsatake, wage labour as canoe paddlers for the fur trading companies would take on a crucial economic importance beginning in the late eighteenth century, as it did for some of their French neighbours.15
One major shift that did occur around the turn of the seventeenth century, visible in hindsight, was the end of the traditional pattern of village relocation – and in this respect, it becomes clear that, though the mission settlements were not merely products of colonial policy, their existence was indeed shaped by it. Whereas the availability of land during the middle portion of the seventeenth century made it possible for Indigenous groups to choose land in the Saint Lawrence valley themselves, the ever-growing density of French settlement made this increasingly difficult. Settlement relocations beginning in the final quarter of the seventeenth century were more tightly constrained by the interplay of missionary and royal priorities. Lorette became the first of the mission settlements to achieve the sort of fixed place on the landscape that the French had initially envisioned for them. That the community remained in place after 1697, rupturing with ancient pattern
s of village relocation, had more to do with the priorities of the Jesuits than those of the neophytes themselves. Jesuit chronicler Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix, observing the generally poor quality of the soil at Lorette, remarked a few decades later that his order had “good reasons for not allowing [the Wendats] to abandon it.”16
Indeed, the customary need to secure new fields and firewood became fused with the Jesuits and Sulpicians’ concern with achieving a compromise between proximity and distance between the mission communities, urban centers, such as Quebec and Montreal, and countryside cleared by the habitants. The missionaries rapidly grew attentive to the financial implications of Indigenous settlement and resettlement in the seigneurial zone. They took care to retain title to lands, and saw no qualms in using village relocation as an opportunity to sell off cleared and improved lands to French colonists. Paternalism was at the core of these dealings, insofar as Jesuits and Sulpicians genuinely believed that the future of the missions depended on their societies’ own financial security. They assumed that they were better caretakers of the mission residents’ interests than the latter could ever be themselves, and were blind to the possibility that their land transactions might have deleterious long-term effects on the communities whose well-being they had at heart.17
The interplay of missionary and court politics, well beyond the reach of the people of these communities, also came to bear on patterns of resettlement. This is well illustrated by the way in which the Jesuits petitioned the Crown in 1699 for a concession which would grant them full title to the seigneury of Sillery and resolve any ambiguity as to its status. In moving to a new Lorette two years earlier, the Wendat community had vacated this seigneury for that of Saint Gabriel. Yet Sillery had been granted by the Crown in 1651 to the “néophytes sauvages chrétiens,” under trusteeship of the Jesuits. As it was now devoid of such neophytes, the Jesuits thought best to argue that full seigneurial ownership was only a fair compensation for all that they had invested and continued to invest in their missions. Frontenac had recently died, and Governor Callière and Intendant Champigny supported the request. Louis XIV ratified it in May of 1702. But on that occasion the king made it clear that such magnanimity should not be expected in the future. This ratification, he declared, was made “although it is against the rule that [His Majesty] has made for himself to grant no more lands in Canada to religious communities,” the latter being “already far too powerful in that country.”18 Louis XIV’s death in 1715 opened the door for exceptions – a westward extension of the seigneury of Sault Saint Louis to the Jesuits for the final relocation of Kahnawake, and the seigneury of Lac des Deux Montagnes to the Sulpicians for that of Skawenati. Otherwise this policy would stand.19
Flesh Reborn Page 38
