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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
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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
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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 Euro-
Indian 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
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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:
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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
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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
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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: 97-
98). 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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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: 823-
824). 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
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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).
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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 auto-
ethnonymy (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 Lvi-
Strauss 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 non-
humans (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 Lvi-
Strausss 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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