The Indigenous Studies Program held a lecture with our guest, Scott Berthelette.Ěý Dr. Scott Berthelette, a Red River MĂ©tis, is an assistant professor specializing in the history of New France, Indigenous peoples, the fur trade, and Euro-Indigenous relations in North America. He holds a PhD in History from the University of Saskatchewan.
Description of Lecture:ĚýScott’s talk aims to situate seventeenth-centuryĚýHaudenosauneeĚýhistory in a wider Atlantic or global context.ĚýIn 1687, French forces capturedĚýHaudenosauneeĚýdelegates during a peace negotiation, sending some of them as captives to France. This presentation explores the harsh treatment, privation, and forced labour theseĚýHaudenosauneeĚýcaptives endured on the creaky on the wooden world of the galley ship.
Event Details:
LEA 429 1:30 pm
There will be snacks and beverages.
Scott Berthelette is Red River MĂ©tis and an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Queen’s University. He holds a PhD in History from the University of Saskatchewan. Dr. Berthelette’s research and teaching centres on the history of Indigenous peoples, the MĂ©tis, New France, the fur trade, and Euro-Indigenous relations in North America. Scott has published his research in the Canadian Historical Review, Ethnohistory, American Indian Quarterly, and Early American Studies. Recently, Scott’s book Heirs of an Ambivalent Empire: French-Indigenous Relations in the Hudson Bay Watershed, which was published with 91şÚÁĎÍř-Queen’s University Press in July 2022, was the recipient of the 2023 Mary Alice and Philip Boucher Book Prize from the French Colonial Historical Society, which recognizes the best book on the French colonial experience from the sixteenth century to 1815.
During Scott’s recent visit to 91şÚÁĎÍř, he presented some of his new research on Haudenosaunee captives forced into servitude and slavery on Louis XIV’s Mediterranean galleys in the 1680s. At Fort Frontenac (Kingston, Ontario) in the summer of 1687, a French army under the command of Governor Denonville arrested hundreds of Haudenosaunee men, women, and children in conjunction with the French army’s invasion of the Seneca homeland. Under the false pretences of a feast meant to facilitate peace negotiations, the French sprang a trap on the unsuspecting Haudenosaunee delegates, who were imprisoned in Fort Frontenac. 36 Haudenosaunee men were transported down the Saint-Lawrence River to Quebec where they were subsequently shipped to France and forced into servitude on Louis XIV’s Mediterranean galleys. Following this egregious French betrayal, the Haudenosaunee were outraged and retaliated against the French colony by besieging Fort Frontenac and raiding the parish of Lachine near Montreal. Haudenosaunee leaders had their own terms for peace with New France, which included the return of all prisoners in French custody. Subsequently, Louis XIV ordered the release and return of the Haudenosaunee captives to Canada, but many of them they had already succumbed to the harsh treatment, privation, and forced labour they had endured in the creaky wooden world of the galley ship. Of the original 36 galley slaves only 13 survivors accompanied Governor Frontenac to return to Canada in 1689. Scott’s new project aims to situate seventeenth-century Haudenosaunee history in a wider Atlantic or global context.
Scott was also able to share some of his preliminary archive research for this project including a hospital death record for a Haudenosaunee who unfortunately fell sick and died at the royal naval hospital of Rochefort on 31 May 1689:
« Un Irocois ayant esté apporté en tres grand danger à l’Hôpital royal de Rochefort et nous ayant donné toutes les marques d’un bon chrestien, Nous luy avons administrés les Sacrements des pétinences et l’extreme-onction le trente unième du mois de May mil six cent quatre vingt neuf est decedez le mesme jour et a esté inhumé le premier jour de juin… sousigné prêtre de la Cong[régation] de La mission dans Le Cimetière du dit hôpital, en présence de Jean Fonteneau et de Claude Phillipon suivant Signé ». Archives départementales de la Charente-Maritime, 2F1 534, Rochefort, Collection hospitalière, décès, 1683-1691.
Ěý
The document reads: “An Iroquois – having been brought in very great danger [of dying] to the Royal Hospital of Rochefort and having given us all the signs of being a good Christian we administered the sacraments of Penitence and Extreme Unction (final anointing of the sick) to him on the 31st of the month of May 1689. He died the same day and was buried the first day of June… undersigned [by a] priest of the Cong[regation] of the Mission in The Cemetery of the said hospital, in the presence of Jean Fonteneau and of Claude Phillipon Signed below.” So far this has been the only archival evidence Scott has found concerning the death and burial of the Haudenosaunee captives on French soil, but he hopes to return to the south of France this summer for further research.
Alex McComber from the Department of Family Medicine shared a territory acknowledgment and opening words for Scott’s talk; and Sandra-Lynn Leclaire from the Kahnawà :ke Education Center provided commentary on Scott’s talk. Sandra-Lynn shared cultural knowledge about the Grand Council, Condoled Chiefs, and the Kayaneren’kowa (Great Law of Peace) that helped to contextualize the narrative of the Haudenosaunee captives in the 1680s. By engaging and collaborating with Haudenosaunee community members and knowledge keepers from both Kahnawà :ke and his home in Cataraqui (Kingston, ON), Scott hopes to pursue this project in a way that centres, promotes, and protects Haudenosaunee history.
