French Colonization in North America

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French Colonization in North America

• Dr. Greg OBrien
• Department of History
• UNC - Greensboro

2
France Arrives

• Initial contacts
• Goals
• Water route to Asia
• Fur trade
• Missionaries
• Jacques Cartier
• Explored 1534-42
• Gulf of St. Lawrence / St. Lawrence River
• Scurvy cure

Cartier
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Cartiers impact

• Encountered two major towns on the St. Lawrence
  River
• Stadacona (Quebec)
• Hochelaga (Montreal)
• Kidnapped Donacona (chief of Stadacona)
• Attempt to est. a colony failed

Hochelaga (Montreal)
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The French Return

• Samuel de Champlain
• Had toured Spanish Mexico on behalf of the French
  crown
• Explored Northeast Great Lakes 1609-16
• Stadacona Hochelaga abandoned
• Est. Quebec City
• Opened fur trade with Hurons and Algonquian groups

Champlain
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Champlain French-Iroquois Relations

• French supply their Algonquian and Huron allies
  with guns
• Champlain explores Lake Champlain in 1609
• travels with Hurons and Montagnais
• Encounter a party of Mohawks on the shore
• Battle / Impact of guns
• Iroquois seek the Dutch after 1614
• Henry Hudson hired by Dutch, explored region in
  1609 (Hudson River)

• The battle on shores of Lake Champlain,
• Mohawks and most other Iroquois
• became enemies of the French.

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French-Indian Relations

• Fur Trade
• Coureurs de bois (Runners of the woods)
• Beaver
• Felt for hats, coats, etc.
• Castoreum oil used in perfumes
• What items do Indians want?
• Trading Posts
• Diplomacy
• The calumet
• French adaptation

Beaver pelt
Calumet
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French Jesuit Missions to the Indians

• Methods of conversion
• Competition with shamans
• Kateri Tekakwitha (1656-1680)

French missions in yellow Spanish missions in red
Jesuit Relations
Iroquois woman Kateri Tekakwitha -painted 1680s
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France Moves to the Lower Mississippi Valley

• Robert Cavelier de la Salle
• Expedition down Mississippi River in 1682
• Attempted to est. a colony on Texas coast

La Salle
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French Louisiana

• Permanent French presence on Gulf Coast, 1699
  (Biloxi)
• Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur de Iberville
• Fort Rosalie at Natchez, 1716
• New Orleans est. 1718
• Relations with Indians in South, esp. the
  Choctaws
• Fur trade
• Diplomacy

Iberville
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Natchez Revolt and Slavery in French Louisiana

• French at Natchez
• Sexual relationships
• Christian conversion
• Tobacco and African slaves
• 6,000 Africans, 1719-1743
• Code Noir (1685)
• Attack Nov. 29, 1729
• 237 French men, women, children killed in 4 hours
• African slaves join the Natchez
• War
• French reliance on Choctaws
• Fate of the Natchez?
• Louisiana becomes a Royal Colony

French portrayals of the Natchez Indians
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Expulsion of the Acadians

• 1755 British response to new war against France
• Acadiana (Nova Scotia) ceded to Britain in 1713
• Acadians pledged allegiance, neutrality in 1730
• 1754 Britain demands new oath and taking up arms
  against France and Indians
• Acadians refuse
• 14,000 deported to Louisiana and elsewhere (¾
  total pop.)
• Cajuns

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Additional Resources

• W. J. Eccles, France in America (1973)
• Richard White, The Middle Ground Indians,
  Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region,
  1650-1815 (1991)
• Daniel H. Usner, Jr., Indians, Settlers, and
  Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy The Lower
  Mississippi Valley Before 1783 (1992)
• Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans in Colonial
  Louisiana The Development of Afro-Creole Culture
  in the Eighteenth Century (1992)
• Carl J. Ekberg, French Roots in the Illinois
  Country The Mississippi Frontier in Colonial
  Times (2000)
• James S. Pritchard, In Search of Empire The
  French in the Americas, 1670-1730 (2004)
• John Mack Faragher, Great and Noble Scheme The
  Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French
  Acadians from Their American Homeland (2006)
• David Hackett Fischer, Champlain's Dream (2008)