Marquette University e-Publications@Marquette Dissertations (2009 -) Dissertations, Theses, and Professional Projects A Place Under Heaven: Amerindian Torture and Cultural Violence in Colonial New France, 1609-1729 Adam Stueck Marquette University Recommended Citation Stueck, Adam, "A Place Under Heaven: Amerindian Torture and Cultural Violence in Colonial New France, 1609-1729" (2012). Dissertations (2009 -). Paper 174. http://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations_mu/174 A PLACE UNDER HEAVEN: AMERINDIAN TORTURE AND CULTURAL VIOLENCE IN COLONIAL NEW FRANCE, 1609-1730 by Adam Stueck A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School, Marquette University, in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Milwaukee, Wisconsin May 2012 ABSTRACT A PLACE UNDER HEAVEN: AMERINDIAN TORTURE AND CULTURAL VIOLENCE IN COLONIAL NEW FRANCE, 1609-1730 Adam Stueck Marquette University, 2012 This doctoral dissertation is entitled, A Place Under Heaven: Amerindian Torture and Cultural Violence in Colonial New France, 1609-1730 . It is an analysis of Amerindian customs of torture by fire, cannibalism, and other forms of cultural violence in New France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Contemporary French writers and many modern historians have described Amerindian customs of torturing, burning, and eating of captives as either a means of military execution, part of an endless cycle of revenge and retribution, or simple blood lust. I argue that Amerindian torture had far more to do with the complex sequence of Amerindian mourning customs, religious beliefs, ideas of space and spatial limits, and a community expression of aggression, as well as a means of revenge. If we better understand the cultural context of Amerindian torture, we see more clearly the process of cultural accommodation in New France. To torture a captive offered communities an opportunity (men and women), young and old, to engage in a relationship with an adversary that tread what in the Amerindian cultural context was a thin or even non-existent line between the worlds of the living and the dead. Both Amerindian captives and captors understood this, and torture became an opportunity to push this barrier as a tortured captive came closer to death. When French colonists, soldiers, and missionaries became involved, torture complicated and altered missionary efforts, and had a direct effect on the political and military relationships between the French and these various Amerindian groups, both friend and foe. These new dynamics of alliances, rivalry, economics, and religion often caused Amerindians to change the circumstances under which they tortured captives and endured torture themselves, but colonization did not bring an end to this violence, only adaptation. The French also adapted when they found themselves captured and tortured. They altered their own religious, military, and political goals in North America at times to combat and at other times manipulate Amerindian cultural violence to their advantage i TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION TO THE DISSERTATION………………………………………….2 CHAPTER I. “A SONG VERY SAD TO HEAR” AMERINDIAN CULTURAL VIOLENCE IN PERSPECTIVE ……………………………………………………………..15 Part I: Introduction …………………………………………………...…15 Part II: Historiographic Perspectives on Amerindian History and Violence in Early America…………………………………………………………23 Part III: Connections Between Sex, Age, and Amerindian Cultural Violence ….….……………………………………………………………. …… ..51 II. “COME, UNCLE, WHERE DO YOU PREFER THAT I SHOULD BURN YOU?” FIRE, DUALITY, AND DECONSTRUCTION OF CULTURAL VIOLENCE IN NEW FRANCE…………………………….………………….57 Part I: Introduction………………………………………………………57 Part II: Concepts of Time, Spatial Relationships, and Amerindian Torture ……………………………………………………………………………60 Part III: The Significance of Fire, and Its Place in Amerindian Cultural Violence …………………………………………………………………69 Part IV: Amerindian Cannibalism in Relationship to Torture by Fire …..77 Part V: The Torture of Saunadanoncoua …………………………......…85 Part VI: Conclusion …………………………………………………….97 III. “MY FATHER, ALLOW ME TO CARESS THE PRISONERS A LITTLE…” CATHOLICISM, TORTURE, AND CULTURAL ACCOMODATION IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NEW FRANCE ……………………………......99 Part I: Introduction ………………………………………………………99 Part II: A Comparison Between the Traditions of Religious Violence Among the French and Those of Amerindians ……………………..….103 Part III: Early Jesuit Responses to Amerindian Torture ………..……110 Part IV: Amerindians, Catholicism, and Cultural Violence …..………122 ii Part VI: The Evolving Relationship Between Catholicism and Torture 132 Part VII: Enduring Torture as a Catholic ……………………………...137 Part VIII: Conclusion ………………………………………………….146 IV. “A VIOLENT DEATH IN HIS SERVICE” THE JESUITS, MARTYRDOM, AND THE SOCIO-POLITICAL CONTEXT OF IROQUOIS CAPTIVITY....148 Part I: Introduction ……………………………………………………..148 Part II: What the Jesuits Actually Endured: The Ordeal of Father Isaac Jogues ……………………………………………………………..……151 Part III: The Ordeals of Father Jean de Brébeuf and Father Gabriel Lalemant ……………………………………………………………….168 Part IV: The Ordeals of Father Bressany and Father Poncet …………..176 Part IV: Conclusion: the Legacy of the Martyrs ……………………….188 V. “THAT THEY MIGHT DRINK OF THEIR BROTH” THE EVOLUTION OF AMERINDIAN CULTURAL VIOLENCE IN NEW FRANCE THROUGH THE EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY………………………………...………………………….………...191 Part I: Introduction ……………………………………………….…….191 Part II: Cultural Violence and Diplomacy at the End of the Seventeenth Century ..……………………………………………………...………...193 Part III: Amerindian Cultural Violence and Internal Conflicts in the Early Eighteenth-Century ……………………………..……………….…….203 Part V: The Relationship between Slavery and Amerindian Cultural Violence in Eighteenth-Century New France ………………………….214 CONCLUSION TO THE DISSERTATION …………………………………………..219 APPENDIXES ……………….………………………………………………….……..223 BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………………….….…239 1 Do you think by your arguments to throw water on the fire that consumes me, and lessen ever so little the zeal I have for the conversion of these peoples? I declare that these things have served only to confirm me the more in my vocation; that I feel myself more carried away than ever for my affection for New France, and that I bear a holy jealousy towards those who are already enduring all these sufferings; all these labors seem to me nothing, in comparison with what I am willing to endure for God; if I knew a place under heaven where there was yet more to be suffered, I would go there. 1 Father Jean de Brébeuf, 1636 1 John Patrick Donnelly, S.J., ed. and trans., Jesuit Writings of the Early Modern Period, 1540-1640 (Indianapolis, Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 2006), 128. 2 Introduction to the Dissertation For more than a century and a half, the French colonial presence dominated eastern North America. From the founding of Quebec in 1609 through the surrender of Canada to the British in 1763, French fur traders, soldiers, missionaries, and explorers colonized half a continent while their British rivals clung to the eastern seaboard. The motivations of these French colonists varied. Some came out of greed, others out of religious fervor. Some travelled the endless wilderness with boundless curiosity for what lay on the other side of the river as they explored the French dominion. A few of these individuals found what they sought. They became wealthy; they brought their ideas of God to the New World; and they brought glory to France in the form of land, wealth, and relationships with the indigenous people who already lived in the place they called New France. As a whole, the French viewed their Amerindian neighbors as primitive. The latter wandered in pursuit of game animals to kill with their stone-tipped weapons. If they practiced agriculture at all, it was simple maize cultivation. They lacked a written language, so Amerindians could not create a formal history. If they wore clothing at all, they made it from the skins of animals. The French viewed indigenous religious customs as a collection of pagan superstitions. When Amerindians went to war against each other, they did so only when they held the advantage and favored ambushes and traps to formal battle with an equal adversary. Amerindians confused and frustrated the French with their lack of clear purpose for warfare. They did not fight over land or riches, or to kill the 3 enemy on the battle field. Instead, they largely fought to take captives. If the French believed the social and religious customs of Amerindians to be primitive or barbaric, the former viewed the latter’s treatment of captives as beyond horrific. 2 Amerindians adopted many of their captives into the communities, tribal bodies, and even families. They did this to increase their population, and as part of a complex series of mourning rituals for the dead. Many captives though met a different fate-- one of death by slow fire. Priests, soldiers, and explorers described the shocking violence of such scenes in their reports to their superiors in France. The French expressed disgust at how these Amerindians slowly burned, dismembered, and even ate other human beings. Equal to this disgust was the French confusion not only over how people could do this to each other, but also at how these captives appeared to accept this fate with calm stoicism, rarely crying out or giving any indication of pain during their torture, even when taken to the point of death. Four hundred years later, historians continue to grapple with