Oral Tradition," Ethnohistory (in press, forthcoming 2003). While traveling around Lake Superior in the 1850s, German explorer Johann Georg Kohl met many retired and elderly French Canadian voyageurs and their Aboriginal wives and families. A constant theme in his discussions with them was privation. One old voyageur reflected that "In my utter misery, I have more than once roasted and eaten my mocassins." 1 Stories about starvation often led to stories about cannibals, such as that of a man who killed and ate his two wives and all his children in succession; another who turned on his friend; and a third who wandered about the forests like a hungry wolf, preying on unsuspecting humans. 2 Much as in the stories of werewolves in European and Euro-American communities, cannibals were frequently portrayed as humans transformed into monsters, terrorizing any that crossed their paths. Kohl reported that in 1854 on Île Royale, close to the north bank of Lake Superior, a "wild man" hunted humans, and was thought to be a windigo. 3 Windigos were specifically Algonquian monsters who ate human flesh and had hearts of ice. 4 Human beings could be transformed into windigos by witchcraft or famine cannibalism. 5 In one story told to Kohl, A Canadian Voyageur, of the name of Le Riche, was once busy fishing near his hut. He had set one net, and was making another on the beach. All at once, when he looked up, he saw, to his terror, a strange woman, an old witch, une femme windigo, standing in the water near his net. She was taking out the fish he had just caught, and eating them raw. Le Riche, to his horror, took up his gun and killed her on the spot. Then his squaws ran out of the adjoining wigwam and shouted '[R]ish!' ... '[R]ish! cut her up at once, or else she'll come to life again, and we shall all fare ill.' 6 2 What can we learn from these stories? On first glance it seems that the French Canadian voyageurs who chose to spend their lives in the pays d'en haut (literally translates as "the country up there") adopted the cultural ways of their Algonquian wives and kin, which included a fear of windigos. Yet the stories reflect more complex cultural movement, a mingling of cosmologies, and oral technologies, distinct to French Canadian voyageurs. The cannibal monster stories that voyageurs told each other reveal many aspects of their lives and cosmology, such as starvation, mental illness, and metamorphosis. In addition, the French Canadian belief in werewolves (loups garoux) provided voyageurs with a framework to understand windigos in French Canadian terms, and in the narratives about cannibal monsters, the motifs of windigo and werewolf mingled. These points of cultural conjunction became a form of métissage outside of the practice of marriage and the birth of métis generations. French Canadian voyageurs came from an oral world where systems of knowledge and meaning were shared through stories and songs. When French peasants crossed the Atlantic to settle in the St. Lawrence valley starting in the first quarter of the seve...

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Les relations des Jésuites, datant du XVIIe siècle, sont habitées par les voix des autochtones que les Jésuites ont tenté de convertir au catholicisme. Ces voix peuvent révéler beaucoup de l’histoire des autochtones et de leur rencontre avec les européens, une fois que l’on saisit la nature du point de vue jésuite. Cet article explore la dualité de la vision du jésuite Jean de Brébeuf dans ses relations de 1635 et 1636, au sujet des hurons Wendat de Nouvelle France. Ses écrits révèlent son approche scientifique comme ethnographe, ainsi que sa nature mystique profondément engagée dans sa vocation missionnaire. Dans ses descriptions de la politique, de la religion et de la cosmologie wendate, on constate la difficulté qu’a Jean de Brébeuf à considérer les Wendats comme un peuple intelligent, et le fait qu’il les considère comme des êtres dégénérés qu’il faut sauver.

Dans cet article, l’auteure avance que des récits peuvent voyager sur de très grandes distances au cours de longues périodes de temps, et servir de véhicules pour la transmission de messages entre cultures. Elle retrace en particulier l’histoire sacrée anishinaabe (aansookaan) du héros culturel Nene-bush voyageant dans les airs en se tenant au bâton que tiennent dans leur bec deux oies, et découvre qu’elle origine de l’Asie du Sud. Apparaissant dans les Jātakas bouddhistes et le Pañchatantra sanscrit (environ 300 avant notre ère jusqu’à 500 de notre ère) dans un récit mettant en scène une tortue qui ne pouvait s’arrêter de parler, cette histoire se propagea à travers le monde. De la Perse médiévale à la France de l’époque moderne dans le cercle de Jean de La Fontaine, elle atteint l’Amérique du Nord pour se retrouver dans la région des Grands-Lacs au milieu du XVIIIe siècle, soit par l’entremise des marchands de fourrures ou celle des missionnaires, avant d’être partagée avec les Anishinaabegs.This article argues that stories can travel great distances over long periods of time and can serve as vehicles to communicate messages across cultures. It traces the particular Anishinaabe sacred story (aansookaan) about the culture hero Nene-bush travelling through the air holding on to a stick carried between the beaks of two geese, discovering that its origins lie in South Asia. Appearing in the Buddhist Jātakas and the Sanskrit Pañchatantra of c. 300 BCE ‒ 500 CE as a story about a turtle who could not stop talking, it spread throughout the globe. It made its way to the Great Lakes by the mid-eighteenth century through medieval Persia to early modern France and Jean de La Fontaine’s circle, and then came to North America with fur traders or missionaries, before being shared with Anishinaabeg