Module 1 Homework

Please respond to each of the following questions (approximately 250 words each). Please choose one question to answer at greater length (approximately 500 words). Answers should be thoughtful and demonstrate serious reflection on course readings and class discussion. Each short answer will be worth 10 points; the long answer will be worth 20 points.

1. In what contexts do the narrators of "Silmoodawa Gives a Complete Performance" and "The Frenchman Dreams Himself Home" tell their stories? How can you read that context back into the stories? Choose one of the two and explain how you think the situation in which it was told changes or informs the story's significance--how the "contact" of the storytelling is related to the contact described in the story.

2. How do Paul Le Jeune and Jean de Brébeuf think about the Native Americans with whom they live, in relation to "civilization" and Christianity? Where do Native Americans fit in their understanding of the world? Are they the opposite of "civilization" and Christianity? Do they represent a point before "civilization" and Christian revelation, or even a point after it?

3. What can you glean from the Jesuit Relations we read about how the Native Americans with whom the missionaries lived viewed their French visitors? To what extent did they welcome them as part of the community, and to what extent did they see them as foreigners? What seems to have set the French apart for their hosts? Do the Native Americans seem to have asserted as much difference between themselves and the French as the French did? How (or how not)?