The case of François-Xavier Tonsahoten and his wife Catherine Ganneaktena further illustrates the contexts and contingencies of migration and highlights the importance of persistent ethnocultural fault lines. Like many of those who trickled into the Saint Lawrence valley after the conclusion of the peace, the pair were New Iroquois: Tonsahoten was a Wendat who had been captured and adopted by the Oneida during the invasion of his homeland; Ganneaktena was born to the “nation des Chats” or Eries, and was probably adopted by the Oneidas in the mid-1650s at the time of her people’s demise. Both appear to have integrated well within their adoptive community, having entered it at a young age. When Father Jacques Bruyas arrived at Oneida in September of 1667, he quickly befriended Ganneaktena and came to depend on her. During the winter of 1667–68, both she and Tonsahoten accompanied Charles Boquet, one of the Jesuits’ ablest lay assistants, back to Montreal. The northward journey was undertaken for a variety of reasons. As a courtesy, the couple had volunteered to escort Boquet back home, for which they could expect the reciprocal advantage of being introduced by him to the missionaries, officials, and traders of the colony. Ganneaktena’s blossoming interest in Christian teachings reportedly represented a motivation for the journey. While Tonsahoten is said to have hoped to receive medical treatment among the French for an ailing leg, it is very likely that he also saw it as an opportunity for reconnecting with Wendat relatives from which he had long been separated. Finally, their Oneida community may have sanctioned the journey as a means of strengthening the peace with the French, in the spirit of the negotiations.27
Having reached the vicinity of Montreal, Tonsahoten and Ganneaktena’s seven-person band set up camp for the winter on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River facing the town, just below the rapids. This site corresponded to one end of a portage, the other end of which connected to the Richelieu River, and was thus a key position on the route between the Montreal archipelago and the Mohawk River. A wealth of archaeological material points to the fact that this was a site of occasional encampments well before European contact. Fish were abundant here, and the water had the advantage of freezing and thawing out earlier in the season than at other nearby points. And importantly, the small promontory on which the settlement would grow was surrounded by a prominent natural plain, a feature that attracted deer and that made it possible to work the land without needing to clear it first. To the Iroquois, the site was known as Kentake, meaning “at the meadow.” The French called it La Prairie de la Madeleine.28 Towards the end of the season the band was joined there by another one to which belonged Ganneaktena’s aunt. In mid-April – at which time the group had swelled to some thirty individuals, all from Oneida – Tonsahoten went on ahead to Quebec with Father Boquet. Having some Wendat relatives at Notre Dame des Anges, he naturally fell in with the community where he was eventually joined by his wife and eight or ten other relatives. There they stayed for a time, receiving religious instruction before being baptized with others in great pomp by Bishop François de Laval.29
Though Tonsahoten was pressured by his Wendat relatives to remain with them, and though it is said that Ganneaktena would have gladly stayed there owing to her blossoming interest in Christianity, he was “determined to return to his country” – Oneida country, that is. Ganneaktena’s aunt and other relatives must have been equally impatient, for they themselves “had no acquaintances at Quebec,” and it had been only with great difficulty that Ganneaktena had convinced them to accompany her there.30 These details remind us that the possibility of reconnecting with family and friends was the most powerful enticement to visit or join the Wendats at Notre Dame des Anges or, later, Notre Dame de Foy. In the absence of such bonds of kinship (as in the case of the aunt), or when such bonds had been weakened by time (as it must have been for Tonsahoten), there were few reasons to remain with that community. Between those who wished to stay in the Saint Lawrence valley and those who instead wanted to return home, a compromise was reached. As a result, ten to twelve Oneidas decided in the fall of 1668 to spend another winter at Kentake.31
Of the approximately two hundred individuals who travelled from Iroquoia to Quebec and spent time among the Wendat community during the peace negotiations and their immediate aftermath, only a fraction elected to remain. In 1668, the community numbered only 150 persons. In other words, it was barely more populous than it had been three years earlier.32
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Tonsahoten and Ganneaktena’s band was one of many moving beyond the Iroquois homelands to the north shore of Lake Ontario and to the upper Saint Lawrence in the years that followed the peace of 1667. The temporary establishments of Seneca, Cayuga, and Oneida hunting bands along the northern shore of Lake Ontario would result, by the end of the decade, in the formation of a number of stable settlements, the inhabitants of which the French would collectively describe as “Iroquois du Nord” or North Iroquois. By the mid-1670s, there existed six or seven such Iroquois villages on the north shore of Lake Ontario: Ganneious, an Oneida community on the Bay of Quinte; Kenté, a Cayuga community near the isthmus of the Quinte peninsula; Ganaraské, another Cayuga community at the mouth of the river of the same name; Quintio, on Rice Lake; Ganestiquiagon, a Seneca village near the mouth of the Rouge River; Teyaiagon, a Seneca community near the mouth of the Humber River; and Quinaouatoua, on the portage between the western end of Lake Ontario and the Grand River, likely another Seneca community. In parallel, Mohawk and Oneida hunters and traders journeyed on a regular basis into Algonquin and French territories on the Ottawa and Saint Lawrence Rivers.33
The Montreal region was a familiar country to these easternmost Iroquois. Just as it was for the Algonquins and Hurons, it was an ancestral territory. Potsherds found in the Mohawk River valley indicate that a century earlier its people, like the Algonquins and the Wendats, had absorbed some Saint Lawrence Iroquoians refugees or captives. Like the Wendats, the Iroquois called the Island of Montreal “Tiotiake.” The meaning of this name remains obscure, but the leading interpretation is that it refers to something “breaking up,” conceivably in reference to the dispersion of the Iroquoian peoples who had lived there until the late sixteenth century. Mohawk oral tradition holds that this was the northern edge of their nation’s traditional territory.34
Like the region which stretched along the north shore of Lake Ontario, the Island of Montreal and its vicinity was a point of passage to lands further north, not to mention a conveniently situated hunting ground. Evidence of the area’s persistent appeal as a settlement site has been outlined in previous chapters. Shortly after the founding of Ville Marie, Algonquins and Wendats had shown an interest in resettling there as long as the French were willing and able to provide them with assistance against their Iroquois enemy; passing through a little less than a decade later during their exodus from Huronia to Quebec, the first contingent of refugees had given some thought to establishing themselves there, but decided against it owing to the region’s exposed situation. Another reminder of the region’s attractiveness can be perceived in the ruse that an Onondaga diplomat tried to employ in 1655: in an effort to effect the migration of the Wendats of the Island of Orleans, he secretly proposed to the leaders of the refugee community that they “allege that they were attracted by the beauty of Montreal and wished to make their home there” (the idea being that, come spring, they would undertake the journey there with their people, only to be met by several hundred warriors and spirited away to Onondaga Country).35
The region was also plentiful in game, as wildlife had the opportunity to thrive there during decades of intermittent war. With the conclusion of the peace, the French observed that many bands now came from Iroquoia “to hunt in the region of Montreal and settle aimlessly in various areas on the island.”36 A century later, one resident of Kahnawake recalled that “our forefathers going to hunt chiefly in this neighbourhood was one of the principal reasons for our setting upon the River St. Lawrence near Montreal.”37 The region’s enticing commercial possibiliti
es was another principal cause of this population movement. Montreal, by this time, was a town of almost seven hundred inhabitants. From its pious origins as Ville Marie, it had evolved into a hub of the fur trade. Meanwhile, the 1664 surrender of New Netherland to the English upset existing networks. As Father Bruyas noted, the price of cloth had become so dear at Fort Orange (Albany) that the Iroquois were now determined to obtain it in Montreal.38
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The northward movement from Iroquoia to the Saint Lawrence valley coincided with a crucial shift in the French Crown’s attitude toward Indigenous peoples. The suppression of the Company of New France paradoxically marked a return to its charter principles as far as this population was concerned. The act establishing the Compagnie des Indes Occidentales, or French West India Company, created by Louis XIV and Colbert in 1664 to take over the colony’s commerce, echoed Louis XIII and Richelieu’s earlier charter in its specification that “those who shall be born […] to Natives converted to the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman faith, [shall be] deemed French subjects [régnicoles] and naturals.”39 The instructions issued to colonial officials by the king and his chief minister during these years elaborated on this point. In 1665, Governor Courcelle was told that the king had two principal aims with regards to the “Indiens naturels.” The use of the term, a borrowing of the Spanish “Indios naturales,” rather than the habitual “Sauvages,” betrays Louis XIV’s imperialistic frame of reference. At the same time as he drew inspiration from his Iberian counterparts, he was defining himself against them and the accusations of exploitation and usurpation of land that were commonly levelled their way. The first of these aims was “to procure their conversion to the Christian and Catholic faith as soon as it will be possible,” and the second was that “subsequently, these Indians be made his subjects, contributing usefully to the growth of trade.” However, the king requested that religion and subjecthood not be forced upon anyone. Officials and colonists were to treat Indigenous peoples “with gentleness, justice, and equity, without ever doing them wrong or violence,” and the land on which they lived was not to be appropriated under pretext that settlers would make better use of it. The king’s intention was that Indigenous peoples would embrace subjecthood willingly, recognizing it to be in their own interest.40
“Francization” became policy. Viewed from court it seemed like a sensible way of addressing the chronic shortage of immigrants. “To increase the colony,” Colbert wrote Intendant Talon in 1666, “[…] it seems to me that, instead of waiting to benefit from the new settlers who could be sent from France, the most useful way to achieve it would be to try to civilize the Algonquins, the Hurons, and the other Natives who have embraced Christianity; and to persuade them to come to settle in a community with the French, to live with them, and educate their children in our ways and our customs.”41 This assimilation would, like the immigration policy undertaken to send hundreds of marriageable Filles du Roi from the metropole to the colony, have the specific benefit of remedying the marked imbalance of the sexes still persisting among settlers. Writing with further instructions shortly after the previous, Colbert instructed Talon that he should “try to attract these peoples, especially those who embraced Christianity, in the vicinity of our habitations, and if possible to have them live there so that after some time, having one law and one master, they may form one people and one blood [un mesme peuple et un mesme sang].”42 Louis XIV and his chief minister, in essence, were rekindling the assimilative aspirations that Champlain and the Recollets had entertained half a century earlier.
A first step towards fusing Indigenous and French peoples was to place the two groups under the same juridical regime. Propelled by the Crown’s directives, the colony’s Sovereign Council – a body composed of the intendant, governor, bishop, and several leading inhabitants, just recently established at Quebec as part of the Crown’s administrative reforms – adopted measures to remove some of the distinctions that had until then been made. In April of 1664, the council decreed that France’s Indigenous allies would henceforth be submitted to French criminal laws.43 In November of 1668, the council lifted the state’s longstanding ban against the sale of intoxicating beverages to Indigenous people. The king’s officials, Governor Courcelle and Intendant Talon, thus prevailed over Bishop Laval and the missionary lobby which remained staunchly opposed to this trade. The council’s decree explained that by sanctioning this trade, Indigenous peoples would be “introduced […] to the company and commerce of the most honest people,” instead of being encouraged to keep on “living in the woods” where colonists of a lesser sort were free to take advantage of them.44
Laval and the community’s religious orders acknowledged the king’s intentions and went through the motions of complying with them. The Jesuits assured Talon that they would “work hard to change the ways of the Natives.”45 However, by this time, having laboured in the colony for a half century, they understood the Crown’s expectations to be unrealistic. “It is a very difficult thing,” Marie de l’Incarnation expressed the feeling, “not to say impossible, to francisize or civilize them.”46 Louis XIV and Colbert, urged on by Talon, asked the religious orders to contribute to the objective of assimilation by focusing on young Indigenous children, teaching them the French language and ways of life. It had been many years since the Jesuit college at Quebec had welcomed any Indigenous boys, and while the Ursulines had taken in a few girls as pensioners in recent decades, few had stayed long. Bishop Laval responded to royal pressure by expanding the mission of the seminary he had founded at Quebec, creating a primary school, the “Petit Séminaire,” where half a dozen Wendat students were mixed in with French ones. However, the results were not encouraging. Indigenous children showed little enthusiasm for the substance and style of teaching, and their parents were reluctant to turn them over. The last Wendat pupil left the Petit Séminaire in March of 1673.47
At the core of this shift in policy and practice was a struggle over the division of State and Church. The Society of Jesus, in particular, had stirred the envy and resentment of key figures in the colony and at court. In light of complaints that the Jesuits had appropriated in the colony “an authority that surpasses the boundaries of their true profession,” Louis XIV instructed Talon to look into their affairs. Other intendants and governors would thereafter be instructed along similar lines. Frontenac was asked to “be very considerate with regard to them” in light of their contribution to the development of the colony, but told that if they overstepped their authority, he should “make known to them with courtesy [avec douceur] the line of conduct they are expected to follow, and, in case they do not yield, he will diplomatically oppose their designs without appearance of rupture or partiality, and he will advise His Majesty of all so that he may be in position to apply the proper remedy.”48 The near monopoly that the Jesuits seemed to hold over Indigenous affairs was among the bones of contention. So too was the abundance of land that their order had been granted over the years. The Crown’s regularization of the seigneurial system, though it was not specifically targeted at the Jesuits, left them scrambling to justify and protect their extensive holdings, several of which remained unsettled and unimproved.49
These years also saw a new set of actors step onto the missionary stage. In 1663, the heavily indebted Société de Notre Dame relinquished its title to the seigneury of the whole island of Montreal in favour of the Société de Saint Sulpice, which six years earlier had established a parish and a seminary at Ville Marie. Headquartered in Paris, the latter society was a free association of secular priests, meaning that it did not demand of its members the vows of poverty and obedience typical of regular orders like the Society of Jesus. Also in contrast with the Jesuits, the Sulpicians were Gallican in ideology, meaning that its members tended to value the authority of the monarch and the state as much as that of the pope and the Church – and indeed Louis XIV and Colbert came to view them as a valuable counterweight to Jesuit power in the colony.50 Although they too entertai
ned missionary ambitions, the Sulpicians attached to the newly formed Seminary of Montreal lacked the collective expertise to launch themselves in the wider missionary field, and instead concentrated on serving the area’s settler population: during the decade stretching between their arrival in 1657 and 1667, the sacramental registers of the town’s parish, Notre Dame, recorded the baptism of only eleven Indigenous individuals.51 The Iroquois peace, however, and the Crown’s assimilative fervor, created new opportunities. In October of 1668 two Sulpician priests, François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon and Claude Trouvé, travelled to Lake Ontario and founded a mission at the Cayuga village of Kenté on its north shore. At around the same time, a few other Sulpician priests, including René de Bréhant de Galinée, began to minister on an irregular basis to the Algonquin and Wendat families that now encamped at various points on the upper Island of Montreal, above the Lachine rapids, for the purpose of hunting and trading.52
While the Jesuits were not about to establish a new mission on the Island of Montreal, as it was the Sulpicians’ prerogative, they aimed to do so on one of their neighbouring seigneuries. In 1636, they had been granted Île Jésus, a large island of about half the size of Montreal, from which it was separated by the Rivière des Prairies. In 1647, they were granted the seigneury of La Prairie on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence (not to be confused with the aforementioned river), and in 1657 they were gifted that of L’Assomption, on its north shore just upriver from the Montreal archipelago. Though these grants were made with the understanding that as seigneurs the Jesuits could settle there “such persons as they shall please,” they had not occupied them on account of the war.53 With the conclusion of a solid peace in 1667, and in the context of the Crown’s tightened regulation of the seigneurial system, the Jesuits were eager to develop at least one of these seigneuries and establish a missionary presence there. The sites to the north of the Island of Montreal were briefly considered. In the summer of 1667, Father Dablon and Louis Thaondechoren, one of the leading figures among the Wendats of Quebec, toured the Rivière des Prairies and L’Assomption rivers, returning “with great satisfaction.” But for whatever reason – the inclinations of Ganneaktena and Tonsahoten’s band, quite possibly – the Jesuits decided to instead invest their human and material resources at La Prairie.54
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