specialcollections@tulane.edu / This dissertation looks at the complex set of representations of Native Americans of the upper and lower Mississippi Valley at stake in four French cultural productions of the late 17th to mid-18th century (1683-1753). These cultural productions extend throughout the French colonial effort in Louisiana. They include two travel narratives – Louis Hennepin’s Découverte de la Louisiane (1683) and Jean-François Benjamin Dumont de Montigny’s Mémoires Historiques (1753) – a newspaper chronicle from the Mercure de France, which relates the visit of five Louisianan Natives to Paris in 1725, and Jean-Philippe Rameau’s entrée Les Sauvages (1736) from his opera-ballet Les Indes Galantes. Through a close literary and musical analysis of these four cultural productions, this dissertation uncovers the multifold and dissonant discourses displayed when representing Native Louisianans. This research is grounded in the understanding that representations of indigenous characters provide limited knowledge about the Louisianan tribes, yet reveal extensive information about their authors, intended audience, and consequently about French identity and culture during this time. These dissonant discourses reflect major uncertainties about the French colonial venture in Louisiana, inquiries into other models of societal organizations and sets of values, interrogations about the potential degeneration of European civilization, questioning of the universality of the Christian faith, and epistemological contradictions associated with the curiosity toward foreign cultures. Moving away from the binary opposition between the “noble” or “ignoble” savage, this dissertation demonstrates how the complex image of Native Americans is fabricated and used to mirror the contemporaneous conflicting epistemologies characterizing the late years of early modern France. / 1 / Sophie Capmartin

Ma thèse explore les rencontres qui eurent lieu entre Français, Amérindiens et Africains en Louisiane, à l’époque de l’Amérique coloniale. C’est plus précisément sur la partie sud du territoire que ce travail s’est penché. Les bornes chronologiques sont 1686, découverte du territoire par Robert La Salle et 1803, vente du territoire, alors Français, aux Américains par Napoléon en 1803. Mon projet était d’analyser les rapports établis entre ces trois groupes en mettant l’accent sur les relations intimes qui se sont créées entre eux (relations sexuelles, concubinage, mariages mixtes), et les liens de parenté sont également des objets d’étude dans cette recherche. De ces relations intimes émergent diverses communautés : ainsi, les « métis » font référence aux enfants nés de Français et d’Amérindiens alors que les « Griffe » désignent une autre communauté, résultat d’unions entre Africains et Amérindiens. L’étude de ces deux groupes représente une partie de ce travail. Cette thèse s’attache aussi à analyser les conséquences de ces unions sur les rapports sociaux, économiques, et diplomatiques entre ces différents peuples. / Historians have agreed that the French were more successful than their competitors in developing cordial relations with Native Americans during the conquest of North America. French diplomatic savoir faire and their skill at trading with Indians are usually cited to explain this success, but the Spaniards relied upon similar policies of trade and gift giving, while enjoying considerably less success with the Indians. I propose an alternative model to understand the relative success of French Colonization in North America. Intimate Frontiers, an ethno-historical examination of the colonial encounters in the Lower French Louisiana, focuses on the social relations between Europeans, Indians and African in colonial Mississippi Valley. It examines the importance of the intimate bonds forged between settlers and natives in maintaining diplomatic alliances in the region even after the French left Louisiana in 1763. My work brings sexuality and intimacy into the political arena, challenging the prevailing view that power was defined solely by political and military alliances.