In the
summer Algonquin tribes gathered several hundred strong along alluvial plains
scattered about the Northeast e.g. by
the St Lawrence, Connecticut , Saco and Kennebec Rivers as well as on the
shores of Lake Champlain. Archeological evidence suggests that in pre-historic
times such settlements could at times
consist of several thousand individuals. There they fished, gathered fruits and
planted their crops of corn and squash. These were probably not permanent
settlements in the sense of places that they returned to year after year but
were used in rotation depending on the
agricultural and hunting offerings available or their security from intrusions
by enemies in the Iroquois tribes such as, in particular, the Mohawks or, later, the Europeans as they
expanded from their initial colonies on the coasts. In the winter, however,
they broke up into small bands to seek their sustenance deep in the forest wilderness. It was a tough
life but intimate compared to life in large
settlements.
The Jesuit father Paul Le Jeune wrote about his winter travels with a small band of Montagnais in the hunting grounds of the northern Appalachian Mountains, east of Quebec and south of the St. Lawrence, in 1633-1634.
The Indians pass the winter in these woods, ranging here and there to get their living. In the early snows, they seek beaver in the small rivers and porcupines on the land; when the deep snows come, they hunt moose and caribou. From the 12th of November, when we entered these vast forests, to the 22nd of April, when we returned to the banks of the St .Lawrence, we camped at 23 different places. Sometimes we were in deep valleys, then upon lofty mountains, sometimes in low flat country, but always in the snow. We crossed many torrents of water, some rivers, several beautiful lakes and ponds, always walking over the ice.
Upon entering these regions, there were three cabins in our company: nineteen persons being in ours, sixteen in the cabin of the Indian named Ekhennabamate, and ten in that of the newcomers. This does not included the Indians who were encamped a few leagues away from us. We were in all forty-five persons, who were to be kept alive on what it should please the holy providence of God to send us, for our provisions were getting very low.
This is the order we followed in breaking up our camps, in tramping over the country, and in erecting our tents and pavilions. When our people saw that there was no longer any game within three or four leagues (7-10 miles) of us, an Indian who was best acquainted with the way to the next place we were going cried out in a loud voice one fine day, “Listen men, I am going to mark the way for breaking the camp tomorrow at daybreak.”
When there are a number of things to be carried, as often happens when they have killed a large number of moose, the women go ahead and carry a portion of these things to the place where they are to camp the following day. When the snow is deep, they make sledges of wood which splits and which can be peeled off like leaves in thin, very long strips. These sledges are very narrow, because they have to be dragged among masses of trees closely crowded in some places. One day, seeing the sledge of my host standing against a tree, I could scarcely reach the middle of it, stretching out my arm as far as I could. They fasten their baggage on these, and, with a cord that they pass over their chests, they drag these wheel-less chariots over the snow.
But not to wander too far from my subject, as soon as it it day each one prepares to break camp. They begin by having breakfast, if there is any; for sometimes they depart without breakfasting, continue on their way without dining, and go to bed without supping. Each one arranges his own baggage, as best he can, and the women strike the cabin, to remove the ice and snow from the bark, which they roll up in a bundle. Once packed, the baggage is thrown on their backs or loins in long bundles, which they hold with a cord that passed over their foreheads, beneath which thy place a bit of bark so that it will not hurt them. When everyone is loaded, they mount their snowshoes, which are bound to the feet so that they will not sink in the snow, and then they march over plain and mountain. They make the children start early, but even so they often do not arrive until quite late. These little ones have their packs, or their sledges, to accustom them early to fatigue; the adults try to stimulate them by making a contest to see who will drag or carry the most.
To paint for you the hardships of the journey, I have neither pen nor brush equal to the task. You would have to see them to understand, as this is a meal that must be tasted to be appreciated. We did nothing but go up and down. Frequently we had to bend over double to pass under partly fallen trees, and step over others lying upon the ground whose branches sometimes knocked us over, gently enough to be sure, but always coldly, for we fell upon the snow. If there happened to be a thaw, oh God, what suffering! It seemed to me I as walking over a road of glass that broke under my feet at every step. The frozen snow, beginning to melt, would fall and break into blocks or big pieces, into which we often sank up to our knees, and sometimes to our waists. Falling was painful enough, but pulling oneself out was even worse, for our snowshoes would be loaded with snow and so heavy that, when we tried to draw them out, it seemed as if somebody were tugging our legs to dismember us. I have seen some who slid so far under the logs buried in the snow that they could pull out neither their legs or snowshoes without assistance. So imagine someone on these paths, loaded down like a mule, and you mat judge how easy is the life of the Indian.
In the discomforts of a journey in France, there are villages whereon can refresh and fortify oneself, but the only inns that we encountered were brooks. We even had to break the ice in order to get some water to drink. It is true that we did not travel far each day, for that would indeed have been absolutely impossible for us.
When we reached the place where we were to camp, the women went to cut the poles for the cabins, and the men to clear away the snow. Now a person had to work at this building, or shiver with cold for three long hours waiting until it was finished. Sometimes I put my hand to the work to warm myself, but usually I was so frozen that fire alone could thaw me. The Indians were surprised at this, for they were working hard enough to sweat. Assuring them now and then that I was very cold, they would say to me, “Give us your hands so that we may see that you are telling the truth’; and finding them quite frozen, they were touched with compassion and gave me their warm mittens and took my cold ones. This went so far that my host, after having tried it several times, said to me,” Nicanis, do not winter any more with the Indians, for they will kill you.” I think he meant that I would fall ill, and because could not be dragged along with the baggage, they would kill me. I began to laugh and old him he was trying to frighten me.
When the cabin was finished, about nightfall or a little before, they began to talk about dinner and supper all in one, for as we had departed in the morning with only a small morsel to eat, we had to have patience to reach our destination , and wait until the hotel was erected, in order to lodge and eat there. Some days our people did not go hunting and so it was for us a day of fasting as well as a day of work…
Certainly this is an incomplete account of the daily life of the Montagnais in their winter abodes and treks. The sense of its difficulty comes through clearly, though one can easily imagine that father Le Juene’s weakness had its own causes, Jesuit acetic practices of those times and his disdain for Algonquin culinary habits which he elsewhere characterizes as gluttony. In flush times there was hardly an end to their eating: everything must be consumed whatever in excess of biological satiety there might have been. Perhaps this reminded him of the habits of the rich back in France, who had their own excesses while the poor lived hand to mouth, very often subject as the result of inconstant crops and requisitions to famine. And what, it must be asked, was life like before the introduction of the white man’s hatchets, knives and gunpowder or the skin trade was globalized? Was life in ‘old times’ worse or possibly even better- or more leisurely? At any rate, right up until the middle of the 2Oth century remnant bands seemed content to live without many modern amenities, and live, as it were, among themselves without the compelling authority of the ‘invaders’, inured to the hardships that were only generally erased for large portions of the white population with the coming of the New Deal.
In another passage father Le Jeune remarks on the minds and civil society of the Montagnais
. . . it is of good quality. I believe that souls are made of the same stock and that they do not differ substantially. Hence, the well-formed bodies and well-regulated organs of these barbarians suggest that their minds too ought to function well. Education and instruction alone are lacking. Their soul is a naturally fertile soil, but it is loaded down with all the evils that a land abandoned since the birth of the world can produce. I naturally compare our Indians with European villagers, because both are usually without education, although our peasants are slightly more advanced in this regard. Nevertheless, people who come to this country always confess and frankly admit that the Indians are more clever than our ordinary peasants.
At the time Jesuits also had missions in some of the more ‘backward’ areas of France itself such as Brittany. But the father continued:
Moreover, if it is a great blessing to be free from a great evil, our Indians should be considered fortunate. For there are two tyrants, ambition and avarice, who distress and torture so many of our Europeans but have no dominion over these great forests. Because the Indians have neither civil regulation, nor administrative offices, nor dignities, nor any positions of command – for they obey their chief only through goodwill towards him – they never kill one another to acquire these honors. Also they are content with basic subsistence, and not one of them gives himself to the devil to acquire wealth.
Sounds like the germ of Rousseau’s notion of the “Noble Savage”. It cannot have been literally true. Every society has norms of social performance, however they might be honored in the breach, which are by degrees as compelling as the commands of a haughty bureaucrat. Chains of authority might not be immediately recognizable to an outsider even though their very lives often depended on them working properly. In the case of Marquette’s travels down the Mississippi, on many occasions, his life was only saved from ferocious young braves by the circumspection of elders. On a few occasions, in “Relations' the fathers themselves were often surprised by the haughty presumptions of women who they regarded as mere ‘wizen old hags.’ Anthony Wallace himself noted, in his historical account of the Iroquois ( though they be different than the Algonquin in many ways) that the power of aged matriarchs (mothers) was generally underestimated and that it was often their interests that held sway over the minds of the famous orators playing the role of chiefs in public councils. To father Lejuene’s eternal credit, however, his “Noble Savage” prejudice- more relevant to his criticism of French society than accurate with regards to ‘The Indians” does not fatally interfere with his compelling observations, especially in the stories of his interactions with individuals and reflections on their theology and language; very useful to an historian of our own age. The paragraph that immediately follows the former invoking the “Noble Savage”, a qualifying gem in the constellation of the book in hand:
They profess never to get angry, though not because of the beauty of this virtue, for which they have not even a name, but rather for their own contentment and happiness. In other words, they want only to free themselves from the bitterness cause by anger. The sorcerer said to me one day, speaking of one of our Frenchmen,
“He has no sense, he gets angry; as for me, nothing disturbs me. Let hunger oppress us, let my nearest relations pass to another life, let the Iroquois, our enemies, massacre our people, for he is haughtier than any other Indian; I never get angry.”
The Jesuit father Paul Le Jeune wrote about his winter travels with a small band of Montagnais in the hunting grounds of the northern Appalachian Mountains, east of Quebec and south of the St. Lawrence, in 1633-1634.
The Indians pass the winter in these woods, ranging here and there to get their living. In the early snows, they seek beaver in the small rivers and porcupines on the land; when the deep snows come, they hunt moose and caribou. From the 12th of November, when we entered these vast forests, to the 22nd of April, when we returned to the banks of the St .Lawrence, we camped at 23 different places. Sometimes we were in deep valleys, then upon lofty mountains, sometimes in low flat country, but always in the snow. We crossed many torrents of water, some rivers, several beautiful lakes and ponds, always walking over the ice.
Upon entering these regions, there were three cabins in our company: nineteen persons being in ours, sixteen in the cabin of the Indian named Ekhennabamate, and ten in that of the newcomers. This does not included the Indians who were encamped a few leagues away from us. We were in all forty-five persons, who were to be kept alive on what it should please the holy providence of God to send us, for our provisions were getting very low.
This is the order we followed in breaking up our camps, in tramping over the country, and in erecting our tents and pavilions. When our people saw that there was no longer any game within three or four leagues (7-10 miles) of us, an Indian who was best acquainted with the way to the next place we were going cried out in a loud voice one fine day, “Listen men, I am going to mark the way for breaking the camp tomorrow at daybreak.”
When there are a number of things to be carried, as often happens when they have killed a large number of moose, the women go ahead and carry a portion of these things to the place where they are to camp the following day. When the snow is deep, they make sledges of wood which splits and which can be peeled off like leaves in thin, very long strips. These sledges are very narrow, because they have to be dragged among masses of trees closely crowded in some places. One day, seeing the sledge of my host standing against a tree, I could scarcely reach the middle of it, stretching out my arm as far as I could. They fasten their baggage on these, and, with a cord that they pass over their chests, they drag these wheel-less chariots over the snow.
But not to wander too far from my subject, as soon as it it day each one prepares to break camp. They begin by having breakfast, if there is any; for sometimes they depart without breakfasting, continue on their way without dining, and go to bed without supping. Each one arranges his own baggage, as best he can, and the women strike the cabin, to remove the ice and snow from the bark, which they roll up in a bundle. Once packed, the baggage is thrown on their backs or loins in long bundles, which they hold with a cord that passed over their foreheads, beneath which thy place a bit of bark so that it will not hurt them. When everyone is loaded, they mount their snowshoes, which are bound to the feet so that they will not sink in the snow, and then they march over plain and mountain. They make the children start early, but even so they often do not arrive until quite late. These little ones have their packs, or their sledges, to accustom them early to fatigue; the adults try to stimulate them by making a contest to see who will drag or carry the most.
To paint for you the hardships of the journey, I have neither pen nor brush equal to the task. You would have to see them to understand, as this is a meal that must be tasted to be appreciated. We did nothing but go up and down. Frequently we had to bend over double to pass under partly fallen trees, and step over others lying upon the ground whose branches sometimes knocked us over, gently enough to be sure, but always coldly, for we fell upon the snow. If there happened to be a thaw, oh God, what suffering! It seemed to me I as walking over a road of glass that broke under my feet at every step. The frozen snow, beginning to melt, would fall and break into blocks or big pieces, into which we often sank up to our knees, and sometimes to our waists. Falling was painful enough, but pulling oneself out was even worse, for our snowshoes would be loaded with snow and so heavy that, when we tried to draw them out, it seemed as if somebody were tugging our legs to dismember us. I have seen some who slid so far under the logs buried in the snow that they could pull out neither their legs or snowshoes without assistance. So imagine someone on these paths, loaded down like a mule, and you mat judge how easy is the life of the Indian.
In the discomforts of a journey in France, there are villages whereon can refresh and fortify oneself, but the only inns that we encountered were brooks. We even had to break the ice in order to get some water to drink. It is true that we did not travel far each day, for that would indeed have been absolutely impossible for us.
When we reached the place where we were to camp, the women went to cut the poles for the cabins, and the men to clear away the snow. Now a person had to work at this building, or shiver with cold for three long hours waiting until it was finished. Sometimes I put my hand to the work to warm myself, but usually I was so frozen that fire alone could thaw me. The Indians were surprised at this, for they were working hard enough to sweat. Assuring them now and then that I was very cold, they would say to me, “Give us your hands so that we may see that you are telling the truth’; and finding them quite frozen, they were touched with compassion and gave me their warm mittens and took my cold ones. This went so far that my host, after having tried it several times, said to me,” Nicanis, do not winter any more with the Indians, for they will kill you.” I think he meant that I would fall ill, and because could not be dragged along with the baggage, they would kill me. I began to laugh and old him he was trying to frighten me.
When the cabin was finished, about nightfall or a little before, they began to talk about dinner and supper all in one, for as we had departed in the morning with only a small morsel to eat, we had to have patience to reach our destination , and wait until the hotel was erected, in order to lodge and eat there. Some days our people did not go hunting and so it was for us a day of fasting as well as a day of work…
Certainly this is an incomplete account of the daily life of the Montagnais in their winter abodes and treks. The sense of its difficulty comes through clearly, though one can easily imagine that father Le Juene’s weakness had its own causes, Jesuit acetic practices of those times and his disdain for Algonquin culinary habits which he elsewhere characterizes as gluttony. In flush times there was hardly an end to their eating: everything must be consumed whatever in excess of biological satiety there might have been. Perhaps this reminded him of the habits of the rich back in France, who had their own excesses while the poor lived hand to mouth, very often subject as the result of inconstant crops and requisitions to famine. And what, it must be asked, was life like before the introduction of the white man’s hatchets, knives and gunpowder or the skin trade was globalized? Was life in ‘old times’ worse or possibly even better- or more leisurely? At any rate, right up until the middle of the 2Oth century remnant bands seemed content to live without many modern amenities, and live, as it were, among themselves without the compelling authority of the ‘invaders’, inured to the hardships that were only generally erased for large portions of the white population with the coming of the New Deal.
In another passage father Le Jeune remarks on the minds and civil society of the Montagnais
. . . it is of good quality. I believe that souls are made of the same stock and that they do not differ substantially. Hence, the well-formed bodies and well-regulated organs of these barbarians suggest that their minds too ought to function well. Education and instruction alone are lacking. Their soul is a naturally fertile soil, but it is loaded down with all the evils that a land abandoned since the birth of the world can produce. I naturally compare our Indians with European villagers, because both are usually without education, although our peasants are slightly more advanced in this regard. Nevertheless, people who come to this country always confess and frankly admit that the Indians are more clever than our ordinary peasants.
At the time Jesuits also had missions in some of the more ‘backward’ areas of France itself such as Brittany. But the father continued:
Moreover, if it is a great blessing to be free from a great evil, our Indians should be considered fortunate. For there are two tyrants, ambition and avarice, who distress and torture so many of our Europeans but have no dominion over these great forests. Because the Indians have neither civil regulation, nor administrative offices, nor dignities, nor any positions of command – for they obey their chief only through goodwill towards him – they never kill one another to acquire these honors. Also they are content with basic subsistence, and not one of them gives himself to the devil to acquire wealth.
Sounds like the germ of Rousseau’s notion of the “Noble Savage”. It cannot have been literally true. Every society has norms of social performance, however they might be honored in the breach, which are by degrees as compelling as the commands of a haughty bureaucrat. Chains of authority might not be immediately recognizable to an outsider even though their very lives often depended on them working properly. In the case of Marquette’s travels down the Mississippi, on many occasions, his life was only saved from ferocious young braves by the circumspection of elders. On a few occasions, in “Relations' the fathers themselves were often surprised by the haughty presumptions of women who they regarded as mere ‘wizen old hags.’ Anthony Wallace himself noted, in his historical account of the Iroquois ( though they be different than the Algonquin in many ways) that the power of aged matriarchs (mothers) was generally underestimated and that it was often their interests that held sway over the minds of the famous orators playing the role of chiefs in public councils. To father Lejuene’s eternal credit, however, his “Noble Savage” prejudice- more relevant to his criticism of French society than accurate with regards to ‘The Indians” does not fatally interfere with his compelling observations, especially in the stories of his interactions with individuals and reflections on their theology and language; very useful to an historian of our own age. The paragraph that immediately follows the former invoking the “Noble Savage”, a qualifying gem in the constellation of the book in hand:
They profess never to get angry, though not because of the beauty of this virtue, for which they have not even a name, but rather for their own contentment and happiness. In other words, they want only to free themselves from the bitterness cause by anger. The sorcerer said to me one day, speaking of one of our Frenchmen,
“He has no sense, he gets angry; as for me, nothing disturbs me. Let hunger oppress us, let my nearest relations pass to another life, let the Iroquois, our enemies, massacre our people, for he is haughtier than any other Indian; I never get angry.”
What he (the sorcerer ) says cannot be taken
as an article of faith , for he is haughtier than any other Indian, so I have seen him annoyed more often than any of
them. It is true he often restrains and governs himself by force, especially
when I expose his foolishness. I have only heard one Indian pronounce this
word, Nincatihn, ‘I am angry”, and
he said it only once. But I notice that people were wary of him, for when these
barbarians are angry, they are dangerous and unrestrained.
It was perhaps a matter of faith to the sorcerer that he be not angry, as inconstant and badly he performed his own idea, something he had to force himself to do, and even had a special performance in that regard in the band as a whole. Many social performances are a sort of ‘anger management’. Father Le Juene as his own ideas on what ends and means are suited to anger management in the eyes of God- the ‘Kingdom’ of Christ- as opposed to secular rulers- and the adoration of the Virgin and Saints together with obedience to the Jesuit Brothers.
“The problem of the coercion of political authority is to buttress consent rather than to destroy it. There is no sacrifice without a seething undercurrent of ressentiment, no meek obeisance to the governing powers that does not harbor a smouldering animus against them. Since a being who confers his favors on you demonstrates his superiority by doing so, your gratitude for his largesse is bound to be laced with a certain disgruntlement. It is partly to assuage the guilt of this animosity that we must repair to the alter once more, in search of that pure, unspotted self-abnegation before the Law that lies perpetually beyond our reach.” [1)
[1] Terry Eagleton, Radical Sacrifice, page 18
It was perhaps a matter of faith to the sorcerer that he be not angry, as inconstant and badly he performed his own idea, something he had to force himself to do, and even had a special performance in that regard in the band as a whole. Many social performances are a sort of ‘anger management’. Father Le Juene as his own ideas on what ends and means are suited to anger management in the eyes of God- the ‘Kingdom’ of Christ- as opposed to secular rulers- and the adoration of the Virgin and Saints together with obedience to the Jesuit Brothers.
“The problem of the coercion of political authority is to buttress consent rather than to destroy it. There is no sacrifice without a seething undercurrent of ressentiment, no meek obeisance to the governing powers that does not harbor a smouldering animus against them. Since a being who confers his favors on you demonstrates his superiority by doing so, your gratitude for his largesse is bound to be laced with a certain disgruntlement. It is partly to assuage the guilt of this animosity that we must repair to the alter once more, in search of that pure, unspotted self-abnegation before the Law that lies perpetually beyond our reach.” [1)
[1] Terry Eagleton, Radical Sacrifice, page 18
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