An Introduction to the Archaeology of Francophone Communities in the Americas

Author(s):  
Elizabeth M. Scott

This chapter provides a historical and geographical background and situates the volume’s contributions in the context of previous archaeological research into the French in the New World. The chapter discusses the ways in which French settlers made their presence felt on the landscape and on Native groups through a wide range of settlement types, economic and social networks, and successive generations of habitation. The chapter reviews both the well-studied French colonial period and the lesser known post-Conquest period, after the Treaty of Versailles and after the ancien régime fell, during which communities of Francophone peoples (ethnic French, Native American, and African) continued to live in the New World.

This collection offers a new understanding of communities of French heritage in the New World, drawing on archaeological and historical evidence from both colonial and post-Conquest settings. It counters the prevailing but mistaken notion that the French role in New World histories was confined largely to Québec and New Orleans and lasted only through the French and Indian War. Some chapters in the volume reveal new insights into French colonial communities, while others concern the post-Conquest Francophone communities that thrived under British, Spanish, or American control, long after France relinquished its colonies in the New World. The authors in this collection engage in a dialogue about what it meant to be ethnic French or a French descendant, Métis, Native American, enslaved, or a free person of color in French areas of North America, the Caribbean, and South America from the late 1600s until the late 1800s. The authors combine archaeological remains (from artifacts to food remains to cultural landscapes) with a rich body of historical records to help reveal the roots of present-day New World societies. This volume makes clear that, along with Spanish, British, and early American colonial influences, French colonists and their descendant communities played an important role in New World histories, and continue to do so.


1992 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeanne E. Arnold

The Chumash of the Santa Barbara Channel region were among the most economically and politically complex hunter–gatherer cultures of the New World. In recent decades, rich ethnohistorical documents pertaining to Chumash culture were analyzed, thus providing an excellent foundation for understanding the simple chiefdom that was in place as explorers and missionaries arrived in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Current archaeological research on the Channel Islands focuses on the emergence of ranked society in Chumash prehistory, with special emphasis on political developments and environmental stresses that contributed to cultural evolution. A wide range of data acquired from the Channel Islands illuminates a new model of the rise of complexity. This model of chiefdom emergence is based on population-resource imbalances, political opportunism, and the manipulation of labor by rising elites. Diverse lines of evidence must be employed to evaluate the timing, causes, and consequences of increasing complexity.


Author(s):  
Andrés Reséndez

This essay explores the historiography of Indian slavery in various borderlands of the hemisphere and argues that even though the Spanish Crown prohibited Indian slavery after 1542, several coercive labor arrangements akin to enslavement allowed owners to retain mastery over indigenous workers while formally complying with the law. These labor arrangements, including encomiendas in certain circumstances, repartimientos, convict leasing, debt peonage, and other forms of coercion, continued to function until the end of the colonial period and beyond. This chapter employs comparative methods and a wide range of empirical data to make a preliminary attempt to quantify the number of Indians held in bondage in different regions of the New World from the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries.


Author(s):  
Michael S. Neiberg

Although primarily a diplomatic document, the Treaty of Versailles covered a wide range of subjects. Many of the articles of the treaty had little to do with Germany. The point was to reestablish a new world order based on a shared understanding of global ideals. However, “Drafting the treaty” explains that the core of the treaty dealt with ways to reduce the power of the new Germany—reducing its territory and its military power. The treaty’s first part dealt with Wilson’s prized League of Nations, with the remainder of Part 1 and some of Part 2 of the treaty fixing Germany’s new borders. An important part involved the setting of Germany’s reparations payments.


2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Cook

Beginning with Columbus’ 1493 report of kings among the “Indians,” European expeditionaries regularly perceived Indigenous leaders as kings during the first century of colonialism in the Americas. English and French narratives of the sixteenth century, following the models of early Spanish and Portuguese accounts, brought to light the existence of Aboriginal monarchs throughout the Americas, from the Arctic to Brazil and from New England to California. Popular compilations of travel accounts only cemented the trope in the European imagination. The ubiquity of such kings in early English and French colonial writing reveals the conceptual frameworks through which colonizers perceived the New World and the logic of the strategies they devised to conquer it. Toward the end of the sixteenth century, English and French views diverged, with the latter demonstrating a general reluctance to use the term “king” for Native American leaders. By contrast, English sources would continue to employ the vocabulary of kingship for this purpose into the nineteenth century.


2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-258
Author(s):  
Daniel I. Wasserman-Soler

Abstract Born in New Spain, fray Juan Bautista Viseo (b. 1555) authored perhaps a dozen books in Nahuatl, Castilian, and Latin, making him one of the most prolific writers of the colonial period in Mexico. While many are lost, his available texts provide a valuable window into religious conversion efforts in the Spanish monarchy around 1600. This paper investigates his recommendations regarding how priests and members of religious orders ought to use indigenous languages. In the sixteenth-century Spanish territories, Church and Crown officials discussed language strategies on several fronts. This paper also compares Juan Bautista’s ideas about language use in Mexico to similar discussions elsewhere in the Spanish kingdoms. Existing scholarship has highlighted parallels in how the Spanish monarchy dealt with Native American and Islamic communities. However, an examination of Juan Bautista’s writing, together with that of contemporary churchmen, suggests fundamental differences in the ways that Spanish officials thought about and approached Amerindians and Moriscos.


Semiotica ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (221) ◽  
pp. 143-173
Author(s):  
Steven Bonta

AbstractHaving identified previously (Bonta 2015) the Peircean Category Firstness as the semiotic basis (or cultural Prime Symbol) for Australian Aboriginal culture, this paper examines the “lens” of Firstness as it is manifest in a variety of aboriginal (or “Shamanic”) cultures worldwide. By studying the semiotic contours of religion, language, social organization, and art, we find systemic prioritization of Firstness in its various manifestations, across a wide range of aboriginal cultures from Australia to the Indian Subcontinent to aboriginal Siberia and the New World. Shamanic culture, despite its ethnic and geographic variety, may therefore be represented as a semiotic type – and, in addition, one that, in its pristine form, is nearly extinct.


1961 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon R. Willey

AbstractArchaeological developments in the zone extending from Mesoamerica to the Andes are summarized in terms of the following topics: early man, the origins of agriculture, the interrelationships of the Nuclear American cultures, the ethnic identification of archaeological complexes, horizonal and tradition formulations, the place of Nuclear America in the hemisphere, relationships between the New World and the Old World, the rise of native American civilizations, and main trends since 1935. These trends include increasing chronological control, greater awareness of context, growing interest in culture process, and more clarity and precision in definitions.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 621-640 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic ◽  
Dave Winsborough ◽  
Ryne A. Sherman ◽  
Robert Hogan

Almost 20 years after McKinsey introduced the idea of a war for talent, technology is disrupting the talent identification industry. From smartphone profiling apps to workplace big data, the digital revolution has produced a wide range of new tools for making quick and cheap inferences about human potential and predicting future work performance. However, academic industrial–organizational (I-O) psychologists appear to be mostly spectators. Indeed, there is little scientific research on innovative assessment methods, leaving human resources (HR) practitioners with no credible evidence to evaluate the utility of such tools. To this end, this article provides an overview of new talent identification tools, using traditional workplace assessment methods as the organizing framework for classifying and evaluating new tools, which are largely technologically enhanced versions of traditional methods. We highlight some opportunities and challenges for I-O psychology practitioners interested in exploring and improving these innovations.


1995 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 288-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip A. May ◽  
James R. Moran

Purpose. The purpose of this review is to provide an overview of a wide range of potentially useful strategies to address the prevention of alcohol misuse among American Indians. This broad approach to the review is useful because the extreme heterogeneity of the American Indian population requires that health promotion professionals explore many options and tailor their activities to specific communities. Search Method. A literature search was initiated through MEDLINE using the following key words: prevention, alcohol, substance abuse, American Indian, and Native American. The search yielded 29 articles from the years 1982 through 1994. These articles, along with 45 previously identified in three overview articles, form the basis of the review and discussion in this paper. Summary of findings. As a group, American Indians experience many health problems that are related to alcohol misuse. Comparison of Indians to non-Indians shows that the age of first involvement with alcohol is younger, the frequency and amount of drinking is greater, and negative consequences are more common. Health promotion programs that address these issues must take into account American Indian heterogeneity and should use a comprehensive approach that addresses both heavy drinking and the sequelae of problems related to alcohol misuse. Major Conclusions. Important concepts for providing health promotion services to this population are: cultural relevance must be carefully planned and monitored; individuals in the local community must be involved; the drunken Indian stereotype must be addressed; and community empowerment should be an important goal.


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