Early Encounters
To what extent is our perception of American history that of a specifically Anglo-American history? Who were the French who traveled to North America in the seventeenth century, and how were they culturally distinct from early English settlers? How might their difference from the English help us to nuance a monolithic perception of “whiteness” in America?
In what ways was Franco-America shaped by the forced migration of enslaved African Americans during the seventeenth and eighteen centuries? How was the “otherness” of Native American populations understood by the French to be distinct from the “otherness” of African American populations? How did encounters with Native Americans and African Americans contribute to French settlers’ thinking about their own identity as settlers and as French?
What purposes did European travel writing about the early Americas serve? How do the depictions of Native Americans in missionaries’ writings support or contradict the assumptions underlying their missions? How do Native American testimonies formulate racial and ethnic difference in their encounters with settlers? How are the narrative styles different in missionary and Native American accounts of encounter?
Père Marquette and the Indians, Wilhelm Lamprecht (1869)
Reading Guides for Primary Readings:
Selected Native American testimony
Selections form The Jesuit Relations
Homework: