Women of New France
Without Indigenous and non-Indigenous women, free and slaves, there would have been no New France. This study examines the roles and the powers of First Nations women and of French women in the successful establishment of French settlers and in the development of the colony. Women’s family networks, the important duties they took on, their de facto autonomy in the absence of men, all testify to the exercise of female power, recognized at the time by the greater part of the society, pragmatically adapting to hierarchical and patriarchal prescriptions imposed by civil and religious authorities. In the colony, most French and European-descended women were in constant contact with First Nations women and girls. Over time, through gender relations and socio-economic hierarchies, interethnic — or rather inter-national — female relations thus developed, illustrating how tightly indigenous and allochthonous colonial female worlds were woven together.