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zelanator's review
3.0
In the early eighteenth century, Marie Rouensa lived in a house that conformed to the vertical log construction of most French colonial settlements, complete with a picket fence. Nearby residences featured the prominent galerie, or wrap-around porch. She and many neighbors used French silverware and armoires. Rouensa might cook dinner in an outdoor oven and relax with her husband by the fireplace on cold winter nights. Ignon Ouacomsen and her husband Dubois enjoyed French bedding and decorations, twenty-eight napkins, and a large mirror. Marie Ma8ennakoe, who died in 1740, possessed a vaisselier to display her fine plates, platters, and copper candlesticks. These women lived in Kaskaskia, a French colonial settlement in Illinois Country. They were not Frenchwomen by birth, but Illinois Indians who married Frenchmen. French officials and missionaries apprehended the ethnic identity of Native American women through their “manner of living” well into the eighteenth century (33). As the French Caribbean imported proto-biological racism into New Orleans and the Lower Louisiana Colony, French missionaries used the success of “Frenchification” in Kaskaskia as an argument against further racialization in Illinois Country. Sophie White traces these processes in her detailed study of material culture, Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians.
White focuses on cross-cultural exchanges between French colonists and Native Americans and argues that both groups adopted clothing and goods for their usefulness and because those objects expressed their ethnic and social identity to others. Because French officials and missionaries and Illinois Indians believed that “Frenchness” and “Indianness” originated from cultural practice and behavior, material culture made possible fluid and dynamic “conceptions of difference” in the Illinois Country (12). Likewise, many Illinois Indians premised captive adoption and intermarriage on the flexibility of identity. The Kaskaskian women who possessed French goods and modeled appropriate body care, layering of clothes, and tasteful deportment were signaling their permanent transformation into Frenchwomen.
French missionaries, charged by the Crown to make French subjects of Native Americans through cultural and religious conversion, became crucial to “Frenchification” policies because they taught Kaskaskian women how to use their French goods. Kaskaskians first learned of French dress and deportment from copper-plate engravings of the Gospel that were disseminated by missionaries. The plates presented ideal Frenchwomen and European standards of “sartorial performance” (56). While catechumen studied these engravings extensively they also observed first-hand how missionaries wore the “body-concealing conventions” of European dress. Hence, after Marie Rouensa converted to Catholicism she wore a fine-spun mantelet and gown to convey her genteel French identity. Missionaries subsequently championed Rouensa’s religious sincerity to argue that Native Americans were capable of “Frenchification.”
If at first “Frenchification” implies the total elision of indigenous traditions, White persuasively argues that these women were actually fulfilling a traditional expectation of intermarriage: assuming the identity and culture of their husbands. Kaskaskian responses to the French presence—namely conversion, intermarriage, and acculturation—represented a sophisticated response to cross-cultural exchange that cemented alliances, secured trade, and extended kinship networks. Many Illinois Indians believed in “covering the dead,” or adopting captives who literally embodied the spirit and identity of a deceased tribal member. French assumptions that identity stemmed from cultural practice were compatible with the Illinois belief that ritual stripping and re-dressing of captives signaled their inner transformation. Taken as a whole, exogamy required that Kaskaskian wives assume the identity of their spouse—whether Illinois, non-Illinois, or French—and thus their acculturation was a natural extension and fulfillment of indigenous processes that potentially enriched tribal political and economic connections.
There were limits to “Frenchification” benefits as Native women traveled from Illinois Country into New Orleans. Marie Turpin hailed from a mixed-parentage Kaskaskian family and journeyed to New Orleans in 1747 to become a Catholic nun in the Ursuline Order. Her neighbors and religious mentors testified to her piety and Frenchness. Although Turpin symbolized the ideal convert, the Ursulines barred Turpin from the esteemed “choir nun” rank by inducting her as a “converse” nun with circumscribed educational opportunities. On one hand, Turpin’s subordination stemmed from the Order’s failed “Frenchification” experiment in Quebec and from the growing resonance of racial essentialism in Lower Louisiana—an ideology that expanded alongside the burgeoning African population. On the other hand, the widespread successes of “Frenchification” in the Illinois Country sustained fluid conceptions of identity and made possible Turpin’s remarkable career with the Ursulines.
On the whole, White has crafted an important work that demonstrates the materiality and meaning of clothing was fundamental to how individuals navigated conceptions of difference. White admits that her approach is thematic and rooted in case studies that explain more about what objects meant to “Frenchified” tribes like the Kaskaskia than those who rejected French overtures. Nevertheless, White’s attention to what goods meant in different cultural and spatial contexts illustrates how individuals based mutable, fluid identities on material culture—a source base with the potential to supplement scarce written sources and expand our knowledge of Native American life.
One footnote on the writing (some may find this pedantic):
Sophie White's writing style, with its penchant for obscure, vague, and confounding language, will deter most scholars and educated readers. She uses a number of historical buzzwords like complicate, mediate, materiality, or subjectivity that usually obscure rather than clarify the meaning of sentences. She uses the phrase that Native Americans or French used material culture to apprehend the "three-dimensional figures before them" rather than saying that they used clothing to recognize whether a person was French, Indian, or someone else. There is simply no reason to substitute "three-dimensional image/object/figure" for a much clearer word—Indian, Frenchmen, woman, person, house, shirt, fence. Many of White's most compelling points are unfortunately obscured or muddied by her over-reliance on jargon and verbose passages.
White focuses on cross-cultural exchanges between French colonists and Native Americans and argues that both groups adopted clothing and goods for their usefulness and because those objects expressed their ethnic and social identity to others. Because French officials and missionaries and Illinois Indians believed that “Frenchness” and “Indianness” originated from cultural practice and behavior, material culture made possible fluid and dynamic “conceptions of difference” in the Illinois Country (12). Likewise, many Illinois Indians premised captive adoption and intermarriage on the flexibility of identity. The Kaskaskian women who possessed French goods and modeled appropriate body care, layering of clothes, and tasteful deportment were signaling their permanent transformation into Frenchwomen.
French missionaries, charged by the Crown to make French subjects of Native Americans through cultural and religious conversion, became crucial to “Frenchification” policies because they taught Kaskaskian women how to use their French goods. Kaskaskians first learned of French dress and deportment from copper-plate engravings of the Gospel that were disseminated by missionaries. The plates presented ideal Frenchwomen and European standards of “sartorial performance” (56). While catechumen studied these engravings extensively they also observed first-hand how missionaries wore the “body-concealing conventions” of European dress. Hence, after Marie Rouensa converted to Catholicism she wore a fine-spun mantelet and gown to convey her genteel French identity. Missionaries subsequently championed Rouensa’s religious sincerity to argue that Native Americans were capable of “Frenchification.”
If at first “Frenchification” implies the total elision of indigenous traditions, White persuasively argues that these women were actually fulfilling a traditional expectation of intermarriage: assuming the identity and culture of their husbands. Kaskaskian responses to the French presence—namely conversion, intermarriage, and acculturation—represented a sophisticated response to cross-cultural exchange that cemented alliances, secured trade, and extended kinship networks. Many Illinois Indians believed in “covering the dead,” or adopting captives who literally embodied the spirit and identity of a deceased tribal member. French assumptions that identity stemmed from cultural practice were compatible with the Illinois belief that ritual stripping and re-dressing of captives signaled their inner transformation. Taken as a whole, exogamy required that Kaskaskian wives assume the identity of their spouse—whether Illinois, non-Illinois, or French—and thus their acculturation was a natural extension and fulfillment of indigenous processes that potentially enriched tribal political and economic connections.
There were limits to “Frenchification” benefits as Native women traveled from Illinois Country into New Orleans. Marie Turpin hailed from a mixed-parentage Kaskaskian family and journeyed to New Orleans in 1747 to become a Catholic nun in the Ursuline Order. Her neighbors and religious mentors testified to her piety and Frenchness. Although Turpin symbolized the ideal convert, the Ursulines barred Turpin from the esteemed “choir nun” rank by inducting her as a “converse” nun with circumscribed educational opportunities. On one hand, Turpin’s subordination stemmed from the Order’s failed “Frenchification” experiment in Quebec and from the growing resonance of racial essentialism in Lower Louisiana—an ideology that expanded alongside the burgeoning African population. On the other hand, the widespread successes of “Frenchification” in the Illinois Country sustained fluid conceptions of identity and made possible Turpin’s remarkable career with the Ursulines.
On the whole, White has crafted an important work that demonstrates the materiality and meaning of clothing was fundamental to how individuals navigated conceptions of difference. White admits that her approach is thematic and rooted in case studies that explain more about what objects meant to “Frenchified” tribes like the Kaskaskia than those who rejected French overtures. Nevertheless, White’s attention to what goods meant in different cultural and spatial contexts illustrates how individuals based mutable, fluid identities on material culture—a source base with the potential to supplement scarce written sources and expand our knowledge of Native American life.
One footnote on the writing (some may find this pedantic):
Sophie White's writing style, with its penchant for obscure, vague, and confounding language, will deter most scholars and educated readers. She uses a number of historical buzzwords like complicate, mediate, materiality, or subjectivity that usually obscure rather than clarify the meaning of sentences. She uses the phrase that Native Americans or French used material culture to apprehend the "three-dimensional figures before them" rather than saying that they used clothing to recognize whether a person was French, Indian, or someone else. There is simply no reason to substitute "three-dimensional image/object/figure" for a much clearer word—Indian, Frenchmen, woman, person, house, shirt, fence. Many of White's most compelling points are unfortunately obscured or muddied by her over-reliance on jargon and verbose passages.
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