What does anyone know about French / Amerindian contact?

Question

Benefits and negative outcomes

Answer 1

The French, unlike the British, made a concerted effort to build lasting alliances with the native tribes through culture and trade. This was done not only for trade purposes, but also as a means of building a military force to counter the British in North America. The French/Quebecois, as the other poster mentioned, frequently intermarried with the native americans and attempted to merge the beliefs of the two groups. Additionally, it appears that many of the French, in the course of spreading Catholicism, were of the belief that the Indians might be one of the lost tribes of Israel, and thus have a favored place in God's view. This contributed to their more humane (than the British) view of the Indians.

Answer 2

Well, the French wee more interested in trade, but there were also zealous French missionaries such as Jean de Brebeuf who came to convert the natives. These missionaries didn't hesitate to adapt Indian practices to Christian worship (read a translation of 'The Huron Carol' for a wonderful example of this--it retells the story of Christ's birth using settings and situations the Huron Indians were familiar with. It's also called 'The Time of the Winter Moon.'); moreover, the French didn't have any scruples about intermarrying with the indigenous peoples, which made relations between the two groups a bit smoother than it might otherwise have been.

But of course, just as in any situation such as this, there were diseases that each introduced that were unknown to the other group. Something like measles, for example, was known to Europeans and wasn't normally deadly, but since the Native Americans had no immunity built up to it (as the Europeans had), it could be and frequently was fatal. The same went for illnesses endemic to North America that were unknown to Europeans.

All in all, I think the French tended to think of the Native Americans as people who were quite different from themselves, but still people.