Symposium, Casa de Velasquez (Madrid), December 12 & 13, 2003

Cultural Transfer, mtissages and mimetism in Franco-Indian North

America

Gilles Havard

By situating ourselves in the marginal spaces of Franco-Indian America of the

17th and 18th centuries whether in the Great Lakes region, the Pays den Haut, or the
Louisiana interior and by taking up the broad theme of cross-cultural exchange, our aim
is to demonstrate how mtissages often constituted a colonial weapon (the principle of
conquest) for the French and, for the Indians, a way to assimilate the foreigner into their
own society (the principle of adoption).
We would like to begin our analysis by discussing historian Richard Whites
thesis (The Middle Ground, 1991) according to which the French and the Indians
established, in the Pays den Haut (Upper Country), patterns of intercultural
accommodation. The middle ground that he describes is not, in fact, a territorial, but a
cultural concept. It is a social space more so than a geographical space; a site of
interaction and adaptation between individuals and diverse cultures which establishes a
system of mutual understanding and accommodation. The middle ground is more
specifically defined by White as the propensity of social actors to act according to their

partners cultural referents in order to persuade him. Europeans and Indians had to
reach some common conception of suitable ways of acting, he writes. People try to
persuade others who are different from themselves by appealing to what they perceive to
be the values and practices of those others (White 1991: 50, x). The middle ground is an
especially pertinent analytical tool which allows White to re-read from a different angle
the history of the Frontier (a term which he carefully avoids, by the way).
For the French as well as for the Amerindians, there is a strong dynamic of
improvisation, allowing one to adapt to the Other. When trying to solve a crime of
pillaging or murder for which a native was found guilty, the French took into account the
Indian practice of compensation in addition to the balance of power, of course (White
1991 : 75-93; Havard 2003 : 459-472). The Indians also knew how to manipulate
European cultural categories. When the occasion called for it, they would thus avail
themselves of the missionaries religious discourse in order to persuade the French of a
number of things. Toward the end of the 17th century, for example, a French merchant in
a Miami village brandished his sword in order to obtain justice for a crime of larceny for
which he felt himself to be the victim. A Miami chief intervened and, in order to calm
down the Frenchman, showed him a cross stuck in the ground near his hut and said:
Here is the wood of the Black Robe [Jesuit]; he teaches us to pray to God and not to get
angry (JR 59: 222).
As White points out, people [] often misinterpret and distort both the values
and practices of [] others (White 1991: x). By definition, misinterpretations and,
hence, misunderstandings, are in fact at the heart of intercultural encounters. But does it
suffice to compare only the Native and the French attitudes of improvisation while

invoking the inevitable distortions which affect understanding the Other? It seems more
interesting, possibly, to explain thoroughly the mechanisms of intercultural exchange
which involve numerous factors, and whose analysis must take into account the fact that
natives and Europeans belonged to different cultural spheres and could not perceive one
another in the same manner. The greatest danger, in fact, for researchers studying EuroIndian relations, is to postulate the equivalency of these two universes; they are then led,
through a rationalistic perspective, to study a native cultural characteristic through the
filter of occidental culture the culture which appears in sources, or the historians
himself, which obviously does not escape his own ethnocentrism. There are of course
sociocultural bridges between Indians and Europeans, bridges that allow for establishing
areas of understanding, or for encouraging the acculturation processes, but these bridges
come (at least partly) from what C. Levi-Strauss has called universal laws or common
mental structures. The cultural gap between natives and Europeans (two categories
which also lend themselves to discussion) does exist in fact, and it is even quite large.
In a general manner, and while still emphasizing our admiration for Whites book,
we would like to make two important criticisms which both concern the concept of
middle ground. It seems to us, and this is the first point, that White, perhaps under the
influence of political correctness, underestimates the paradigm of conquest. He
mentions, rightly, the frustration of colonial authorities towards the natives spirit of
independence, but in the end he insists very little on the practice of empire. By
emphasizing the Franco-Indian balance, and by reifying the middle ground as a paradigm
of alliance, he mainly glosses over the process of conquest that was already at work
under the French regime. Without any teleology, we conclude with D. Delge (Delge

1995) that the Great Lakes natives, beyond their own perceptions, and also beyond their
room to maneuver and even, until the middle of the 18th century, their ability to resist
the process of subjugation, even if that meant throwing the French out of their territory
were objectively involved in a colonial-type relationship, which eventually led to
dependency and subordination.
Power, in fact, is not only the ability to repress or direct in an authoritative
manner. There are intermediary forms of it which are more subtle, more insidious, and
including some based on the knowledge and the manipulation of the Other (Todorov
1982; Boccara 1998: 201-205). The manipulation of Christian signs, and thus their
assimilation, shows the natives ability to improvise, but there is no question of reifying
the middle ground as an egalitarian mode of objectification of the Others culture. If the
Amerindian demonstrates cultural relativism, he does not go as far as criticizing his own
culture by putting it in perspective and turning it into an object. To put things back into
the context of colonization, in the scene of power and power struggles, the middle ground
functions above all for the benefit of the French; the only ones who can, thanks to a larger
intellectual distance, manipulate their partner. Franco-Indian relations cannot be reduced
to the model of the middle ground which, on top of hiding the superiority of the
Europeans in terms of cultural manipulation, incorrectly leads one to believe that the
social actors systematically adapted to each another, when they would often actually
impose their own vision of things.
We will now focus on the second critique. Although White is very innovative in
his analysis of cultural relationships (research on arrangements and compromises
between the two societies), he quite paradoxically neglects the theme of acculturation:

The Middle Ground is a work dedicated to the motives of compromise, but not cultural
transfers. Yet Franco-Indian encounters do not necessarily lead to compromises: cultures
and individuals are not simply characterized by their adaptability and their flexibility,
they can also transform themselves through contact with the Other. White, in this
respect, does not discuss at all the theme of Indianization. Like the concept of power,
Indianization (or acculturation, generally speaking) should not be defined abruptly; its
intensity and forms are in fact extremely variable. We will first talk about the question
of cultural transfers and mixings, and then we will explore the question of mimetism as
an expression of a logique mtisse with regard to the natives.

Transfers and mixings

Degrees of acculturation
Many authors regard the word acculturation as being outdated; it has given rise
to multiple definitions. I will use N. Watchels definition - who was himself inspired by
American anthropologists from the 1930s (Redfield, Linton, Herskovits 1936) and not R.
Whites for example, for whom acculturation can only come from the domination of one
group over the other, and who therefore reduces it to the cultural influence of Europeans
over Indians. The term acculturation does not comprise, we believe, any idea of
supremacy of one culture over another, which in this case is the European model over the
Amerindian cultures. It is rather a mutual process, a reciprocal phenomenon of one
culture borrowing from another. Any cultural influence or borrowing, however
superficial, temporary or calculated it may be, is a product of acculturation according to

N. Watchels broad definition of this term: any phenomenon of interaction resulting

from the contact between two cultures (Watchel 1974: 174-175).
From here, various specifications must be added. Let us first note, as L. Turgeon
(Turgeon and al. 1996 : 11-17) does for example, that the cultural transfer made from one
group to another does not necessarily lead to the transformation of the recipient culture:
it is important to pay attention to the usual process of transformation and
recontextualization of borrowings which is at work in the host society, the transferred
objects (as well as other practices) changing meaning through this process. When Great
Lakes Indians, for example, put crosses in their villages after the first contacts during the
1670s (JR59 : 102), this does not necessarily represent proof of Christianization, but
rather a form of incorporation or even recycling. It is most likely the desire to integrate
the Christian god into the Amerindian pantheon that explains this behavior. This might
also be a ritual absorption. In fact, acculturating oneself does not necessarily mean
identifying with another culture, and Europeans and Indians were able to absorb external
elements without renouncing their own civilization.
This is especially true for the French (and this is a warning against anachronism)
who could find among the Indians, in certain respects, objectively or not, consciously or
not, familiar elements. The fact of an officer partaking in ritual dances with the Indians
can thus correlate to his noble education (theater, dance, etc.) which predisposes him to
master these gestures (Bly 1996 ; Muchembled 1998 : 77-122). In the same way, the
receptiveness to Indian magic must be understood in the context of European pagan
beliefs of the time. Catholicism itself was, in a certain way, polytheist it differentiated
itself from Protestantism on this point, and allowed a particular closeness between

colonizers and natives in French America. Being cured by an Indian shaman comes from
a form of Indianization, but must also be related to the medical practices of the Ancien
Rgime, where it was common to see a healer or a witch. The French could therefore be
predisposed to behaving like the Indians. They reactivated, through their contact, certain
aspects of their culture, but also, probably, certain aspects of human nature. The
trappers and officers attraction to the relative sexual freedom that existed among
Indians is, we believe, part of this principle.
Third remark: two types of acculturation should be noted based on a criterion of
intensity. The first acculturation could be defined as being superficial, adaptive or
accommodating which is often related, on the European side, to manipulation.
Although minimal, this is certainly acculturation, at least when the adaptation becomes a
structural element of the intercultural relationship. This is particularly obvious in the
sphere of diplomatic relationships. The governor Frontenac, in 1690 at Montreal, took up
the hatchet and joined the Indians in their ceremonial dances (La Potherie 1753, 3: 9798). The same situation in Louisiana in 1754, during a congress in La Mobile where
governor Kerlrec received 2000 allied Indians. When they arrived, Choctaw medal
chiefs, singing and dancing the peace pipe, went to the governors mansion where he
was taken and carried into the barn which was set up for listening to orations and
exchanging presents. Then Kerlrec was given the title Tchacta Youlakly Mataha tehiho
anke achoukema, which he says means the King of Tchaktas and the greatest from the
race of the Youlakta and the very good father. The following eight days where used
for this party I had to appear to be very moved notes the governor, obliged, as we
can see, to adapt to the natives ceremonial and while at the same time becoming one of

them! (AC, C13A, 38: 122-124). The phenomenon of acculturation is adaptive in the
sense that this ceremonial is not used among Europeans the French and the English do
not smoke peace pipes or exchange wampum belts yet it was repeated for almost two
centuries during the history of New France!
In other cases we can talk about a more in-depth acculturation, and use without
hesitation, concerning Europeans, the term Indianization. For certain French
renegades, the resemblance with Indians is such that with their mindset they can only be
told apart by the color of their skin (P. Kalm, quoted by Jacquin 1987: 180). Those
who were called White Indians were assimilated to the Indian culture. Cavelier de la
Salle and his men met one in Lower Louisiana among the Cenis: he was naked, just like
them, says Joutel, a bourgeois from Rouen, and what was even more surprising, was that
he had almost forgotten his own language, and could not say two words consecutively
without stumbling (Margry 1876-1886, 3: 342). The phenomenon of acculturation
seems so strong that it leads to deculturation: this colonizer had fully become an Indian.
Le Sueur, around 1700, mentions the French who retired and mixed with the savage
Panis, on the Missouri; and this other one, married to an Iowa and who was going to war
with his brothers against the Panis, taking the risk of killing a Frenchman of this nation
(Le Sueur 1702, X9-4 : 93).
Between manipulative adaptation and complete assimilation can obviously be
found many different forms of acculturation. How to qualify, for example, the behavior
of an officer, Dumont de Montigny, who scalped an Indian enemy Chickasaw (Dumont
de Montigny 1747 : 162)? This is certainly not just accommodation. This native
behavior was well integrated. Yet it did not turn Montigny into an Indian. This

borrowing could be compared to the culture of violence that existed in France at that
time. This takes us back to cultural predispositions. The scalp, among other things,
refers in native culture to the profound nature of war it is a substitute for a prisoner
(Lafitau 1724, 2 : 85) which most likely escaped the attention of the French. This
cultural transfer was therefore accompanied by a transferred meaning.

Mixing of cultures
Acculturation can lead to the mixing of cultures: objects, institutions and
behaviors, with their hybrid or mixed character, testify to that. The term mtissage,
probably a little too fashionable, can seem overused, and it is even criticized by some
authors who strongly contest the notion of ethnicity and culture (Amselle 2001). In
mtissage I do not necessarily see the appearance of a mixed culture; that is, the fusion
and hybridization of identities, or what J.-L. Amselle defines as a mix in which it is
impossible to dissociate the different parts (Amselle 1990: 248). I understand the term
through its larger meaning as a dynamic: before it is an end, mtissage is a movement, a
dynamic and creative process of intercultural encounters which, through exchanges and
borrowings, generate the cultural characteristics or behaviors that are both mixed and
novel. Such creations of the Frontier, whether enduring or not, or whether they limit
themselves to certain aspects of culture or certain individuals, are all symptoms of
mtissage. It is a radical intercultural dynamic that leads to the creation of something
new. This said, mtissage in Franco-Indian America is not similar to a process of
bonding. We usually know where the Indian world starts and where the European world
begins, except when identifying a transcultural trait. There is no mix so strong that its

original traits vanish. It is important, in this respect, to establish a distinction made by

the philosopher R. Gunon, and to differentiate between syncretic creation and synthetic
creation (Gunon 1986 : 43-47).
Tattoos offer a primary example of practice tending towards hybridization. Some
French went so far in their Indianization as to have their body piqu. Tattoos, unknown
to Europeans, were common among the tribes of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi.
The Illinois and the Quapaws, for example, displayed on their skin animal heads or
objects as a sign of recognition for their military valor. J.B. Bossu, a mid-eighteenth
century officer, explains that these distinctive marks multiply gradually as they do brave
actions at war. He tells how the Quapaws tribe adopted him: they recognized me as a
warrior and as a leader and gave me the mark for it; they tattooed a deer on my thigh; I
willfully let them perform this painful operation. Tattoos, he mentions, are a mark
related only to military valor (Bossu 1980 : 76, 102-103). At the beginning of the
eighteenth century, another officer, H. Tonty, notes that the French from the Pays den
Haut like to be tattooed and many of them have their full body covered, apart from their
face (Tonti 1720 : 14). A certain Villeneuve, for example, who was living in Fort Saint
Louis, got tattooed on the back by his Illinois friends. On the Mississippi of the 1680s,
Mr. Joutel met a savage Frenchman, who had gotten piqu like them [his Indian hosts]
on the body and the face (Deliette 1934 : 328; Margry 1876-1886, 3 : 350-353). The
ritual of tattooing is, for the Frenchman, accompanied by a partial re-appropriation of
motifs, as Tonty describes about an officer who could be LeMoyne de Bienville himself,
the founding father of Louisiana.

Ive seen many, and especially a noble officer [], who, besides an image of the
Virgin with Jesus, a large cross on his stomach with the miraculous words that
appeared to Constantine, and a large number of marks in the Savages style, had
a snake which passed around his bodyand whose pointy tongue, ready to strike,
ended in an extremity that you might guess, if you can. (Tonti 1720 : 14)
This hybrid composition shows in an exemplary manner, and on an aesthetic level,
cultural mtissage. Through Christian symbols, the officer expresses his attachment to
European culture, while at the same time yielding to a fully assumed pagan iconography
(marks in the Savages style). The snake itself can be perceived as a biblical figure, as
well as an ode to the vital forces of Nature, to the savagery, if not the transgression of
Christian sexual morals of the time (an extremity that you might guess). This concerns
syncretic but not synthetic art. Pagan symbols, as well as Christian symbols, are simply
juxtaposed and clearly identifiable: no fusion is so radical that it would be impossible to
dissociate the original elements of the mix.
The duality is also present in the act of tattooing itself: the officer gives himself
over to an Amerindian custom, opening himself up to the Others culture, but this custom
takes on a particular meaning in his own culture. Bossu, who compares the tattoos to a
sort of chivalry where one is only accepted after brilliant acts, clearly finds in this native
ritual an echo of his ideology of nobility, and thus acquires a certain prestige for his
hosts. Dumont de Montigny, who was tattooed in the left arm, explains that this is the
mark of honor for all warriors, just like we have the military cross of Saint-Louis. Such
rituals increased integration into Indian society, but it also magnified the noble ethos of
French officers, for whom war and chivalric virtue were the pinnacle of human

excellence. Bossu is pleased to describe himself as currently a noble of Akanas

[Quapaw]. These people believed they had given me, by this adoption, the honor
deserved by someone who defended their country. I saw it as the honor made to M. le
marchal de Richelieu when he was put down in the gold book of the Genoa Republic as
being one of the Genovese nobility (Dumont de Montigny 1747 : 369, 375; Bossu 1980 :
76-77). Could it be as prestigious to be adopted by the Indians as it was to be adopted by
the Genovese? There were no nobles among the Quapaw tribe, but the strange
comparison made by the author, hoping for some recognition, nonetheless expresses his
attraction toward the Indian world however imagined it may be.
There are many Indian-made objects that also follow this same syncretic
principle. The Muse de lHomme (in Paris, France) owns some painted buffalo skins
that came from the kings and other nobles- curiosity cabinets, dating back from the
end of the seventeenth to the eighteenth century, and whose images sometimes illustrate
Franco-Indian mtissages: they actually reveal the influence of European models. On
one of the skins, tulips, parrots and shields are inspired by the baroque style of Louis
XIVs time. Another piece features, along with two peace pipes, a red sun, a blue moon,
cone-shaped Indian huts, and geometric images on the sides. One notices the European
style houses with crosses on top of them and even transcriptions in capitalized letters of
an Indian idiom. A third skin associates peace pipes with stylized eagle wings and with
bird shapes of most likely European inspiration, as is confirmed by the shape of two stars
located on the border of the skins neck. The composite character is visible, making this
a syncretic type of mtissage, with integration of the European aesthetic within an Indian
piece. We could also cite parchments made of birch bark and decorated with European

objects and symbols (Moussette 2002); European inspired military lodges (Charlevoix
1994: 469) ; tattoos representing all kinds of devices Crosses, names of Jesus,
Flowers (Direville 1997 : 297), etc. Very early on, Amerindians ritually absorbed, as if
through cannibalization, certain aspects of the European aesthetic, and thereby created
syncretic objects or images.

Mimetism or manipulation: two distinct practices

These Savages take pleasure in imitating everything they see Europeans doing
We will now put into perspective this cannibalization and, to this end, distinguish
two cultural practices, that of the French and that of the Indians. The middle ground is a
intercultural domain where particular practices are in fact expressed. As mentioned
before, the manipulation of Christian signs proves the natives capacity for improvisation,
but the middle ground should not be analyzed as an identical mode of comprehending the
Others culture. The European practice is more clearly a practice of manipulation let us
remember the abovementioned governors Frontenac or Kerlrec favored by the
Frenchmens greater ability, compared with the Indians, to put their culture in
perspective which nevertheless comes with a certain acculturation. The Indian practice
is different. It is also a practice of improvisation, but it often appears as a borrowing
practice of the imitative kind.
Let us note that this does not change anything about the fact that Indians were
also attracted to the utilitarian value of European objects: in a rational way, they
integrated into their lifestyle the tools, utensils and weapons whose convenience they
appreciated (Havard 2003 : 568-576); the color of pearls and textiles also held for them a

great importance (Miller, Hamell 1986). Let us also highlight the fact that borrowing
can, at its extreme, lead to a certain deculturation of Indians. During the eighteenth
century for example, the Hurons from Lorette, were living in Canadian wood houses,
having thus abandoned the traditional long house (Beaulieu 1996 : 270). But we should
not forget about mimetism which, we believe, activates important mechanisms in
Amerindian society.
Various authors from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have noted that
Indians manifested a great willingness to imitate the French, their manners, their
movements, their attire, their costumes, their artistic manners and their objects. Father
Charlevoix wrote These savages take pleasure in imitating anything they see Europeans
doing (Charlevoix 1976, 1 : 222). Everywhere in New France, they particularly liked
wearing hats or sometimes wigs (both privileged objects of the European culture of
appearances), or even doing the musketeer salute in front of the French. During the years
1630-1640, the Montagnais chiefs of Tadoussac, when they came to Quebec, would
arrive dressed the French way linen shirt, lace folds and crimson tabard and they
would salute the governor with their hat, practicing a gentile, French-style bow (Back
2002). The Iroquois chief Garakonthi, in the same manner, usually saluted Frontenac
the French way, and he would even remove his hat every time he would give a
speech (JR 44: 288). Father Hennepin wrote that another Iroquois chief, Outrouti, ate
with us just like the French: he would wash his hands, would be the last one to sit at the
table, would untie his napkin very carefully, would eat with his fork, actually he would
do everything we did, often in order to mock us mischievously, and to receive some sort
gift from the French (Hennepin 1683 : 56-57). Was this imitation just mockery, as the

Rcollet thinks it was? During the middle of the eighteenth century, the Swedish botanist
P. Kalm, who was attending a conference in Montreal, noted that these savages are
usually very inclined to observe the forms of politeness during such occasions (Kalm
1977 : 845). Similarly, during a council held in 1757 with Governor Vaudreuil, two
Indians brought to Paris by Abbot Picquet were dressed in the French style from head
to toe. Pierre, one of them, was wearing the jacket sent to him by the Crown Prince. I
had the impression of seeing a savage Harlequin wearing a blond wig and a striped
outfit (Bougainville 1993: 157).
By wearing a hat or a wig, or by imitating French mannerisms, Indians were
acculturating themselves, but in a ritualized and superficial manner. In Louisiana,
among the Tonicas and Natchez, the great chief would completely dress the French
way in the presence of the colonizers (Dumont de Montigny 1747 : 388). In 1721,
Father Charlevoix, welcomed by the Tonicas, spoke about the great chief in these
terms: This Chief received us very politely; he was dressed the French way, and was
absolutely not embarrassed in the outfit He has not appeared dressed as an Indian in a
long time, and is even very proud of always being well dressed (Charlevoix 1994: 823824). Was this just a way of distinguishing himself from other Indians?
As a final salient example, let us travel to Green Bay around 1670, to a council
held by two Jesuits and their Pouteouatamis hosts. Various members of this tribe had
visited Montreal and, upon returning home, imitated the military men they had met in the
colony, who had visibly made a strong impression on them: Father Allouez relates that
these soldiers of a new kind [the Indians] started doing to us, out of honor, what
they had observed us doing during a similar meeting; but in a savage manner, in a

ridiculous way, not being accustomed to it; When the time came to gather everyone
together, two of them came over to talk to us, guns on their shoulders and tomahawks on
their belts, instead of swords; during the assembly, they stayed in front of the door of the
cabin as if on guard duty, trying to be as presentable as possible, walking around (which
savages never do) with their gun on one shoulder then on the other, in very surprising
positions, and all the more ridiculous that they were trying to do it seriously. We could
barely refrain from laughing, even though we were dealing with important matters (JR
55: 186-188).

Cannibal cultures
Let us specify that we can find similar forms of mimetism elsewhere in America as if
this were a behavior common to all Indians. Christopher Colombus was the first to notice
the natives capacity for imitation, which S. Greenblatt interpreted as a willingness to
enter into contact and engage in exchanges (Greenblatt 1996 : 156, 163). S. Gruzinski,
concerning the Indians of Mexico, speaks about a frenzy of copying and a
reproductive talent in the domain of the arts furniture, musical instruments, bell
casting, calligraphy, etc. and on the religious level reciting prayers and the catechism,
bell ringing or even the production of Biblical history (Christian theater). But this
mimetism was always controled by the Spaniards. Gruzinski explains this as being the
inexhaustable ingenuity of the Indians, and as the response (regarding the making of
objects) to the demand of a clientele He talks about it as being a dynamic rather
than a principle because this mimetism could, in reality, be a mark of Westernization
(Gruzinski 1999: 94-103).

Mimetism in Franco-Indian America could, we believe, arise from a principle and

a pure rationality consisting, for the natives, of denying the new and of reducing
otherness. The goal of the savage motive [le calcul sauvage], to quote M. Sahlins
(Sahlins 1985: 13-14, 43-44), is to neutralize, rationalize and work through the events
and other realities of unpredictability by subjugating them to the categories of their
own culture. This reasoning echoes the savage mind [la pense sauvage] as defined
by Lvi-Strauss: a thought that classes and weakens nominally the disparity of the world.
We will attempt to demonstrate that the natives tried to cannibalize otherness, since for
them it did not constitute an operative category.
Let us begin with the relationship to native myths. As M. Sahlins demonstrated in
the case of Polynesians, myths are renewed in moments of crisis and urgency in order to
deal with the subversion of time, and this all the more during contact with other
societies and in agitated historical times (Salhins 1985: 7). Historical traditions in
particular, as with all so-called myths or traditional tales (Barbeau 1994: 1-2) come
from a permanent construction, in the sense where culture is transformed historically
through action (Sahlins 1985: 7). In the nineteenth century, the Ojibwas oral tradition,
for example, describes how the arrival of the first French in the region of the Great Lakes
might have been predicted by shamans inspired by visions (Kohl 1985: 244-245; Delge
1992: 101-116; Havard 2003 : 717-719). The function of such an historical tradition is
double. The storyteller first needs to prove the spiritual power of the shamans. But there
is more: prophetic dreams, like the wonders that preceded the arrival of Cortez in
Mexico, also function in order to neutralize the event by reasoning, thereby integrating it
into their mythology. The tales from the oral tradition constitute retrospective prophecies

designed to rationalize the arrival of the Europeans. In the cold societies (socits
froides, as defined by Lvi-Strauss), in fact, novelty does not exist. The extraordinary
and the incredible do not correspond to Indian categories in the sense that the present is
only the daily reiteration of the past, an ideal of perpetuation which dominates these
societies. Myths thus appear as a malleable substance that help to respond to the
challenges of time and novelty by setting into motion the prophetic capacity of
shamans and by emphasizing the power of the manitous.
We can suppose that this theme was present from the era of contact because the
Indians, confronted with the shock of encounters and faced with epidemics were
careful in gaining back confidence in their manitous and in their capacity to communicate
with them. During the years 1650-1660, the Indians had to rationalize the emergence of
French trappers and missionaries by integrating them into their system of reasoning and
by erasing their noticeable otherness. They did not assimilate them as the Other human
being Other, that is but, at least during the very first years, they assimilated them as
manitous who, like animals, were part of a familiar otherness (B. White 1994;
Dsveaux 2001: 279).
This incorporation of Europeans through Indian semantics can also be illustrated
through the image of the Master of Life [Matre de la Vie] which the Indians often
turned to beginning from the second half of the seventeenth century (JR 51: 42-44;
Delge 1991: 56). This image is actually quite problematic since it is difficult to tell
whether it was of native origin or created by the French missionaries, or even whether it
was a syncretic product of encounters. If not concocted by the missionaries to facilitate
their monotheistic approach, the image of the Master of Life could have been invented by

the Indians in order to integrate and cannibalize the Christian message, in reference or
not to their own pantheon (Havard 2003 : 693-695).
The Indians strong ethnocentrism provides us with yet another clue. He who
says Illinois, it is as if he were saying in his language, men, as if the other Savages
around them were only beasts, a Jesuit writes (JR 59: 124). Father Hennepin makes the
same remark about the Iroquois, who refer to themselves as men par excellence, as if all
the other Nations were only beasts next to them (Hennepin 1683: 61-62). This autoethnonymy (real men, human beings, etc.), which consists of denying the Other any
humanity, can be found all over the American continent and even beyond. As LviStrauss explains, primitive societies set the boundaries of humanity at the tribal group,
outside of which they only see strangers, dirty and unrefined subhumans, or even nonhumans (Lvi-Strauss 1962: 201). Such a vision of the Other, taken from the most
basic discourse of identity (the collective Us situates itself through opposition), is
grounded more fundamentally in the practice of war, which is the most normal mode of
relations with others, even if the enemy, once adopted, can also become an ally.
As anthropologist E. Dsveaux remarks, the sociological arrogance expressed
by this ethnonymy is also tied to the nature of the group itself a realm of alliance
which implies that one considers himself to be superior to others because one usually
chooses his mate among them. The friend of Cavelier de La Salle, H. Tonty,
substantiates this interpretation: Rarely, he writes, do savages marry outside their
nation. The few alliances that exist between these Nations is the cause of this: hate and
jealousy are so prevalent that the only thing they try to do is to make war with others
(Tonti 1720: 18). It is as if the Other, symbolically, did not exist, as if he were denied

the status of human being. The enemy is, in fact, doomed to disappear either physically
(he is killed and sometimes tortured and eaten according to a ritual of dissolution which
in some way relegates him to vacuity), or socially (he is adopted, he becomes one of our
own, and thus he is reborn) (Dsveaux 2001 : 229-306). Dsveaux notes that the enemy,
who does not belong to the group and belongs therefore to a sort of sociological
nothingness, is finally not any different from us. In stating this, he borrows from LviStrausss idea of an intrinsic transitivity of the transformational system (at work on the
level of myth, but also, Dsveaux believes, at the level of rituals and social
organizations): a group, whichever it may be, finds itself incapable of perceiving the
culture of a neighboring group as being different from his as it is completely intelligible
to him (Dsveaux 2001: 279).
Taking into account this interpretative framework, one first notices that Indian
mimetism is usually not mocking. The imitation of European gestures does not aim at
sarcasm. The only real laughs are the (muffled) ones coming from the French, who
sometimes deride the fact that Indians, in their urgency to imitate them, behave like
clowns. Mimetism, more fundamentally, constituted a kind of game of mirrors for
establishing a dialogue with the Other: Indians thus created a very radical way of
communicating. To imitate the Other is to appropriate difference by cannibalizing it.
This practice, also found at work in the phenomenon of war, expresses the Indians
propensity to dissolve and absorb foreigners adopting them one way or another. Indian
cultures are cannibalistic cultures: they are not concerned with recognizing difference,
but with suppressing it since assimilating the Other the enemy one wishes to annihilate,
the European one tries to imitate is to cancel out ones primary identity as Other. By

assimilating the European aesthetic (as illustrated by the painted buffalo skins), Indians
rationalized European difference by appropriating it symbolically, as if otherness were
simply not conceivable.
We can thus schematically distinguish two pratices at work in the intercultural
arena of Franco-Indian America: a practice of manipulation, which comes from the
paradigm of conquest; and a practice of mimetism which aims to destroy and absorb
differences. The Indian, unlike the Frenchman, does not wish to manipulate, but just to
imitate. This does not mean that he is more naive (this would be to judge him from a
Western point of view), but that his culture does not drive him to subjugate his partner.
By imitating the Frenchman, he is attempting to establish contact, to turn him into an ally
and, to this end, to absorb and melt his culture into his own.

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