The French in North America

Matthew McHolland

History 140

Professor Arguello

***Canada And Iroquoia*** Chapter # 5

• The Iroquois were an association of several tribes of indigenous people of North America.

• They were also known as “Haudenosaunee” or “People of the Longhouse.”

• When Europeans first arrived in North America, the Iroquois were based in what is now the northeastern United States, primarily in what is now referred today as upstate New York.

• Today Iroquois live primarily in New York. • The Iroquois league is also known as Iroquois Confederacy.

***Canada and Iroquoia*** Chapter # 5

• The name of this tribe implies that the nations of the league should live together as families in the same longhouse. Symbolically, the Mohawk were the guardians of the eastern door, as they were located in the east closest to Hudson.

• The name has various possible origins , both learned by the French from tribes that were enemies of the Haudenosaunee.

***Canada and Iroquoia*** Chapter # 5

• Members of the league speak Iroquoian languages that are distinctly different from those of the Iroquoian speakers. This suggests that while the different Iroquoian tribes had a common historical and cultural origin , they diverged as peoples over a sufficiently long time that their languages became different , and they distinguish themselves as different people.

• The Iroquoian invaded the Ohio River Valley in present-day Kentucky to seek additional hunting grounds.

***Canada and Iroquoia***

• Indians normally wanted shiny objects. As a result, they begin trading.

• They value all objects. • They were good at fur trade. • The French claimed St. Lawrence Valley because was in

a perfect location. In other words, they were able to explore and discover new untouched territories in the west.

***French America*** • French America is the French-speaking

community of people, notably those tracing origins to New France, the early French Colonization of the Americas.

• Quebec is the center of the community, but it may also include the rest of Canada

***French America***

• At the end of the 17 century, once France was in the United States, they founded a colony that was later named Louisiana.

• LOUSIANA- the Cajuns of Louisiana have a unique heritage. Their ancestor settled Acadia, in what is now the Canadian provinces of Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Islands.

• French Louisiana, when it was sold by Napoleon in 1803, covered all or part of the fifteen current U.S states and contained French and Canadian colonist dispersed across it.

***French America***

• Colonial Era- In the 17th and 18th centuries there was an influence of a few thousand Huguenots, who were protestant refugees fleeing religious persecution in France.

• For nearly a century they fostered a distinctive French Protestant identity that enable them to remain aloof from American society. By the time of the American Revolution they had generally intermarried and merge into the larger Presbyterian community

***French America***

• Many of the early immigrants worked in the lumber industry.

• French Canadian immigrants women saw the United States as a place of opportunity and possibility where they could create alternatives for themselves distinct from the expectations of their parents and their community.