This dissertation analyzes seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French perceptions of the bodies of Indians in New France and Louisiana. It reveals that all French authors who visited New France in the early seventeenth century believed that human differences were mutable and, with instruction and land cultivation, Indians would physically and culturally assimilate into French colonial society---if Europeans did not degenerate from life in the wilderness first. Beginning in the late seventeenth century, missionary disillusionment, colonial projections of order and later Enlightenment concepts of natural rights and systems of nature prompted authors to reformulate these early perceptions. As Indians appeared unwilling or unable to adopt civilized manners, some authors concluded that natives did not possess the reason needed to do so. By the late eighteenth century, some colonial officials and European naturalists suggested that the physique and morals of North American Indians were not mutable but, instead, that Indians in French North America were permanently and essentially incapable of "improving" either their bodies or their minds. / Historians studying seventeenth- and eighteenth-century colonial perceptions of North American Indians have generally analyzed European depictions of Indians with twentieth-century understandings of human difference. By examining French perceptions of Indians with early modern understandings of the body, this thesis seeks to see natives through the eyes of the authors who described them. / The sources for this study include French travelogues and missionary accounts from New France and Louisiana which were published contemporaneously, correspondence and memoirs which have since been published and archived letters from colonial administrators writing from Canada and Louisiana.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.38428 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Creators | Van Eyck, Masarah. |
| Contributors | Boulle, Pierre H. (advisor), Morantz, Toby (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of History.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001872763, proquestno: NQ78789, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
Page generated in 0.0019 seconds