The 1875 Quarrel
The first International Congress of Americanists, held in Nancy in 1875, was the scene of a violent quarrel between Léon de Rosny, a positivist philologist, with Émile Petitot, Oblate missionary of the Congregation of Mary Immaculate. The stakes were many: if the defining of the criteria of legitimate knowledge was the main objective of the conference organizers, proponents of Christian doctrine came to defend it against the polygenism of the emerging science of anthropology, that is, the claim to the Adamic unity of the human race and the Asian origin of Native Americans. However, it is during the discussion of an allegedly Iroquois manuscript that suddenly was crystallized the challenges of a quarrel tied to the origin and authenticity of a Native American writing: the inadequacy of the scholarship acquired by the philologist in the library was then joined by the blindness resulting from the proselytizing relationship the missionary had established with the Indians. The article concludes with the restoration of historical truth: the manuscript was actually Mi’gmaq.