Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-nmvwc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-06T23:25:02.517Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Seven - Fear, Desire, and Material Strategies in Colonial Louisiana

from Section II - Engaged Bodies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Barbara L. Voss
Affiliation:
Stanford University, California
Eleanor Conlin Casella
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
Get access

Summary

Introduction

The history of intimate relations in eighteenth-century Louisiana is a familiar colonial story. Through historical documents we learn of the commonplace nature of interracial and interethnic sexual relations in the colony, the frustrations of missionaries regarding the lack of legitimate Christian marriage, concerns regarding Native American and African concubines, and the very real threat (at least in the eyes of colonial officials and missionaries) of French men leaving behind their cultural traditions and their spiritual selves to “go native.” Numerous academic publications have emphasized the complex nature of colonial métissage and an increasing number of authors continue to draw out the lived experiences of women and their mixed-race children in these entanglements (e.g., Hodes 1997; Spear 1999, 2003, 2009; Stoler 2001). Spear (1999, 2003) and Dawdy (2006) have used historical documents to detail some of the intimate relations that existed between the Native American and French occupants of colonial Louisiana. Drawing from this same body of literature, Usner (2003: 22) notes that “intimate border crossing” was common in the colony, especially because young Native American women could freely engage in sexual relations before marriage without social sanction. Additionally, Hodes (1997: 39) highlights the sexual and material aspects of intimate encounters, indicating that Native American women may have sought out relationships with French men to allow themselves access to more European-manufactured goods, thus enabling them to gain status within their communities. These contemporary writings that examine eighteenth-century documents reveal the central role of sex and intimate relationships in the Louisiana colony: sexual attractions of unfamiliar bodies, policing of those desires, maintenance of social hierarchies and skin color, and material strategies used in dressing one's body in this context of colonization, desire, and fear.

Given that intimate border crossings were so ordinary, part of the everyday rhythm of life in French Louisiana, here I explore archaeological and archival perspectives of intimate relations in French Colonial Louisiana. What do these sources have to say about the ways in which intimate relations were materialized? When viewed together, how to they provide insight on colonial conceptualizations and constructions of desire? My study focuses on Natchez dress and adornment. Natchez people incorporated aspects of Native American- and European-manufactured material culture into their dressing practices. Although these practices allowed Natchez people to create new colonial identities that would enable further intimate border crossings, these dressing practices created a colonial body that was so sensorially different from European bodies that it was simultaneously feared and desired by French colonizers.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Archaeology of Colonialism
Intimate Encounters and Sexual Effects
, pp. 105 - 121
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barnett, Jim. 2007 http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/index.php?id=4
Beaudry, M. C. 2006 Findings: The Material Culture of Needlework and SewingNew Haven, CTYale University PressGoogle Scholar
Brain, Jeffrey P. 1988 Tunica Archaeology, Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography, Volume 78Cambridge, MAHarvard University PressGoogle Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1990 Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of IdentityLondonRoutledge PressGoogle Scholar
Chaplin, Joyce E. 1997 “Natural Philosophy and an Early Racial Idiom in North America: Comparing English and Indian BodiesThe William and Mary Quarterly 54 229CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chaplin, Joyce E. 2003 Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500–1676Cambridge, MAHarvard University PressGoogle Scholar
Dawdy, Shannon Lee 2006 “Proper Caresses and Prudent Distance: A How-To Manual from Colonial LouisianaStoler, Ann LauraHaunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American HistoryDurham, NCDuke University Press140CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deagan, Kathleen. 2002 Artifacts of the Spanish Colonies of Florida and the Caribbean 1500–1800, Volume 2: Personal Portable PossessionsWashington, DCSmithsonian Institution PressGoogle Scholar
Delâge, Denis. 1993 Bitter Feast: Amerindians and Europeans in Northeastern North America, 1600–1664Vancouver, CanadaUniversity of British Columbia PressGoogle Scholar
Eicher, Joanne B. 1995 Dress and Ethnicity: Change across Space and TimeOxfordBergCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eicher, Joanne B.Roach-Higgins, Mary Ellen 1992 Definition and Classification of Dress: Implications for Analysis of Gender RolesBarnes, RuthEicher, Joanne BDress and Gender: Making and MeaningOxfordBerg Press9Google Scholar
Entwistle, Joanne. 2000 The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress, and Modern Social TheoryCambridgePolity PressGoogle Scholar
Father le Petit 1730
Gosden, ChrisKnowles, Chantel 2001 Collecting Colonialism: Material Culture and Colonial ChangeOxfordBergGoogle Scholar
Greenblatt, Stephen. 1984 Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to ShakespeareChicagoUniversity of Chicago PressGoogle Scholar
Grosz, E. 1994 Volatile Bodies: Toward Corporeal FeminismBloomingtonIndiana University PressGoogle Scholar
Hackett, Charles Wilson. 1934 Pichardo's Treatise on the Limits of Louisiana and Texas (5 volumes)AustinUniversity of Texas PressGoogle Scholar
Hamell, George R. 1983 Trading and Metaphors: The Magic of BeadsHayes, Charles F.Proceedings of the 1982 Glass Trade Bead ConferenceRochester, NYRochester Museum and Science Center Research Record5Google Scholar
Hodes, Martha 1997
Joyce, Rosemary A. 2005 Archaeology of the BodyAnnual Review of Anthropology 34 139CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joyce, Rosemary A. 2007 Embodied Subjectivity: Gender, Femininity, Masculinity, and SexualityMeskell, LynnPruecel, Robert WA Companion to Social ArchaeologyOxfordBlackwell82CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karklins, Karlis. 1985 Glass Beads: The Nineteenth-Century Levin Catalogue and Venetian Bead Book and Guide to Description of Glass BeadsOttawa, CanadaEnvironment Parks CanadaGoogle Scholar
Karklins, Karlis. 1992 Trade Ornament Usage among the Native Peoples of Canada: A Source BookOttawaEnvironment Parks CanadaGoogle Scholar
Keane, W. 2005 Signs Are Not The Garb of Meaning: On the Social Analysis of Material ThingsDurham, NCDuke University Press182Google ScholarPubMed
Kidd, Kenneth A.Kidd, Martha A 1970 A Classification System for Glass Beads for the Use of Field ArchaeologistsCanadian Historic Sites: Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History 1 45Google Scholar
Le Page du Pratz, A. S. 1758 http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/∼gsayre/LPDP.html
Le Page du Pratz, A. S. 1975 The History of LouisianaBaton RougeLouisiana State University PressGoogle Scholar
Liebersohn, Harry. 2001 Aristocratic Encounters: European Travelers and North American IndiansCambridgeCambridge University PressGoogle Scholar
Lindman, Janet MooreTarter, Michele Lise 2001 The earthly frame, a minute Fabrick, a Centre of WondersLindman, Janet M.Tarter, Michele LA Centre of Wonders: The Body in Early AmericaIthacaCornell University Press1Google Scholar
Loren, Diana DiPaolo. 2001 Social Skins: Orthodoxies and Practices of Dressing in the Early Colonial Lower Mississippi ValleyJournal of Social Archaeology 1 172CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loren, Diana DiPaolo. 2007 In Contact: Bodies and Landscapes in the 16th and 17th-Century Eastern WoodlandsWalnut CreekAltamira PressGoogle Scholar
Loren, Diana DiPaolo. 2008 Beyond the Visual: Considering the Archaeology of Colonial SoundsInternational Journal of Historical Archaeology 12 360CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loren, Diana DiPaolo. 2010 The Archaeology of Clothing and Bodily Adornment in Colonial AmericaGainesvilleUniversity PressGoogle Scholar
Loren, Diana DiPaoloBeaudry, Mary C 2006 Becoming American: Small Things RememberedSilliman, Stephen W.Hall, MartinHistorical ArchaeologyOxfordBlackwell Press251Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1989 Phenomenology of PerceptionLondonRoutledgeGoogle Scholar
Meskell, Lynn. 1999 Archaeologies of Social Life: Age, Sex, Class et cetera in Ancient EgyptOxfordBlackwellGoogle Scholar
Meskell, Lynn. 2004 Divine ThingsDeMarrais, E.Gosden, CRenfrew, CRethinking Materiality: The Engagement of the Mind with the Material WorldLondonOxbow Books249Google Scholar
Miller, D. 2005 MaterialityDurham, NCDuke University PressCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mississippi Provincial Archives, French Dominion [MPAFD] 1929
Mississippi Provincial Archives, French Dominion [MPAFD] 1984
Moore, Henrietta L. 1994 A Passion for Difference: Essays in Anthropology and GenderCambridgePolity PressGoogle Scholar
National Park Service 2008 http://www.nps.gov/history/NR/travel/mounds/gra.htm
Neitzel, Robert S. 1983 The Grand Village of the Natchez Revisited: Excavations of the Fatherland Site, Adams County, Mississippi, 1972JacksonMississippi Department of Archives and HistoryGoogle Scholar
Neitzel, Robert S. 1965 Archaeology of the Fatherland Site: The Grand Village of the NatchezNew YorkAnthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural HistoryGoogle Scholar
Orser, Charles E. 2007 The Archaeology of Race and Racialization in Historic AmericaGainesvilleUniversity of Florida PressGoogle Scholar
Pagden, Anthony. 1982 The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative EthnologyCambridgeCambridge University PressGoogle Scholar
Phillips, Ruth B. 1998 Trading Identities: The Souvenir in Native North American Art from the Northeast, 1700–1900SeattleUniversity of Washington PressGoogle Scholar
Pinney, C. 2005 Things Happen: Or, From Which Moment Does That Object Come?Miller, D.MaterialityDurham, NCDuke University Press182Google Scholar
Quimby, George I. 1966 Indian Culture and European Trade GoodsMadisonUniversity of Wisconsin PressGoogle Scholar
Roche, Daniel. 1994 The Culture of Clothing: Dress and fashion in the “ancien régimeCambridgeCambridge University PressGoogle Scholar
Sala-Molins, Louis. 2006 Dark Side of the Light: Slavery and the French EnlightenmentDuluthUniversity of Minnesota PressCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sayre, G. M. 2005 The Indian Chief as Tragic Hero: Native Resistance and the Literatures of America, from Moctezuma to TecumsehChapel HillUniversity of North Carolina PressGoogle Scholar
Shannon, Timothy J. 1996 Dressing for Success on the Mohawk Frontier: Hendrick, William Johnson, and the Indian FashionWilliam and Mary Quarterly 53 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spear, Jennifer M. 2009 Race, Sex, and Social Order in Early New OrleansBaltimoreJohn Hopkins University PressGoogle Scholar
Spear, Jennifer M. 2003 Colonial Intimacies: Legislating Sex in French LouisianaThe William and Mary Quarterly 60 75http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/wm/60.1/spear.htmlCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spear, Jennifer M. 1999 They Need Wives’: Métissage and the Regulation of Sexuality in French Louisiana, 1699–1730Hodes, MarthaSex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American HistoryNew YorkNew York University Press35Google Scholar
Stoler, Ann Laura. 2001 Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and Colonial StudiesThe Journal of American History 88 829CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Swanton, J. R. 1911 Indian Tribes of the Lower Mississippi Valley and Adjacent Coast of MexicoWashington, DCBureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 43Google Scholar
Thomas, Brian W. 2002 Struggling with the Past: Some Views of African American IdentityInternational Journal of Historical Archaeology 6 143CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turgeon, Laurier. 2006 The Cartier Voyages to Canada (1534–1542) and the Beginnings of French Colonialism in North AmericaRothstein, MarianCharting Change in France around 1540Mount Carmel, PASusquehanna University Press97Google Scholar
Turgeon, Laurier. 2004 “Beads, Bodies and Regimes of Value: From France to North America, c. 1500–c. 1650Murray, TimThe Archaeology of Contact in Settler SocietiesCambridgeCambridge University Press19Google Scholar
Turgeon, Laurier. 2001 French Beads in France and Northeastern North America during the Sixteenth CenturyHistorical Archaeology 35 58CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Usner, D. H. 1992 Indians, Settlers and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley before 1783Chapel HillUniversity of North Carolina PressGoogle Scholar
Usner, D. H. 2003 American Indians in the Lower Mississippi Valley: Social and Economic HistoriesLincolnUniversity of Nebraska PressGoogle Scholar
Voss, Barbara L. 2008 Poor people in silk shirts’: Dress and Ethnogenesis in Spanish-Colonial San FranciscoJournal of Social Archaeology 8 404CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiner, A. 1985 Inalienable WealthAmerican Ethnologist 12 210CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiner, ASchneider, J 1989 Cloth and Human ExperienceWashington, DCSmithsonian Institution PressGoogle Scholar
White, Carolyn. 2005 American Artifacts of Personal Adornment, 1680–1820: A Guide to Identification and InterpretationWalnut Creek, CAAltamira PressGoogle Scholar
White, Sophie. 2003 Wearing three or four handkerchiefs around his collar, and elsewhere about him’: Slave's Constructions of Masculinity and Ethnicity in French Colonial New OrleansGender and History 15 528CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilkie, Laurie A. 1995 Magic and Empowerment on the Plantation: An Archaeological Consideration of African-American worldviewSoutheastern Archaeology 14 136Google Scholar
Wilkie, Laurie A. 1997 Secret and Sacred: Contextualizing the Artifacts of African-American Magic and ReligionHistorical Archaeology 3 81CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, E. 2003 Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and ModernityNew BrunswickRutgers University PressGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×