Cultures in Contact
ANT 326L (30410)
Spring, 2008
Samuel M. Wilson
Voyages of Jacques Cartier
Cartier Voyages
• 1534 - Captured two Indians fishing
• 1535-36 - expedition to Stadacona and Hochelaga
• 1541-42 - established base near QuebecFrance’s linguistic advantage
Development of the fur trade
Company of New France (1602)
Samuel de Champlain (1603)
• Alliances with Algonquian tribes
• Alliances against the Iroquois
• Algonquian alliances made exploration further south difficult
• Adopted Indian ways
– “by directing one’s course with the help of the savages and their canoes, a man may see all that there is to be seen, good and bad, within the space of a year or two.”
Conflict between missionaries and fur traders
• “The greatest obstacle [to conversion] was on the part of the gentlemen of the
Company, who, to monopolize trade, did not wish the country to be settled, and did not even wish us to make the Indians sedentary, without which nothing can be done for the salvation of these heathen.”
French and Indian Wars: 1689-1763
• The impact of a European war on Native Americans
Prior to French-Indian War
French and English claims
Conflict in Europe
• North America had become part of the World System, and events were influenced greatly by what was going on in Europe
• (esp. the French-British rivalry that began in 1689)
French and English claims
Situation in the 1680s
• Spain controlled Florida
• France held the St. Lawrence
• England (& Sweden and Holland) controlled the east coast
• Iroquois Confederacy controlled much of upstate New York
England's advantage
• New France 12,000
• English Colonies 200,000
The Iroquois' situation
• militarily in the middle
• controlled access to furs
• were strong allies to the British
The Iroquois Confederacy
for internal peace and external defense
• Mohawk
• Oneida
• Onondaga
• Cayuga
• Seneca
Iroquois social and political organization
• matrilineal society - longhouses were parts of matrilineal clans - husbands came to live in woman's longhouse
• government by a network of councils - required consensus
• Iroquois government was one model for U.S. Constitution
First major conflicts
• French forts of the St. Lawrence, Lakes, Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri
• 1754 Fort Duquesne
• 1758 Louisbourg, Nova Scotia
1750s
The Acadians
1750s England vs. France
• 1755 explusion of Acadians
• 1755 fall of Ft. Dusquesne
• 1759 fall of Quebec
• 1774 British Canada become refuge of Loyalists
Aftermath, 1763
• Britain's superior numbers had eventually allowed them to prevail (and eventually to lose it all)
• took the Ohio Valley
• defeated the Cherokees
• by treaty got all of North America east of the Mississippi, including Canada and
Florida
• Native Americans lost their foreign support in the East