Family Romance or National Romance?
This two-part article testifies to certain biases in our “national romance” concerning the role of Native-French relationships in the establishment and social advancement of the French colonists. The intent is to interrogate the meaning and historical significance of this Indigenous presence in and around my family tree, that is my “family romance”. Indeed, when I trace the female lines, intimate relations with Natives clearly appear in marriages, cousins, friendships and ... imperialist exploitation and slavery. In this first part, the cases of female Native ancestors allow us to revisit what we know of the French imperial plan to “make only one people,” by highlighting, on the one hand the project of “frenchification” of the Natives, and on the other hand the “ensauvagement” of the French, that so alarmed French civil and religious authorities of the 17th and 18th centuries.