The ritual massacre committed by the Natchez against several hundred French colonists in Louisiana, on November 28, 1729, is the starting point for colonial violence exerted on a tribe until its almost space.
Gilles Havard, research director at Cnrsspecialist in the history of New France, publishes a major work to grasp the history of mass violence. Since the XVIe century, a significant part of historical production denounced the violence and abuses of European colonization, of the Brief destruction of India From Bartolomé de Las Casas to contemporary works which apply the genocidal paradigm. Also, the virtual period of the Indian Natchez nation, living in the lower Mississippi valley, near the French colony of New Orleans, would be yet another illustration of this process of imperialist domination. By succeeding in discovering the points of view of the Amerindians, this survey shows, on the contrary, the relative hybridization of this colonial society and the specific violence which ensued.
Contextualize violence
The massacre of 237 settlers, including 36 women and 56 children, on November 28, 1729 by the Natchez was at the origin of the tragedy. This killing was a surprise, breaking with the coexistence between the two communities, established for thirty years. French reprisals led to the dispersion of the Natchez. The contemporaries interpreted the killing as a revolt, which passed to posterity thanks to the pen of Chateaubriand. “” Now, inventory all the Amerindian warrior acts directed against the colonists under the generic labels of “resistance” or revolt, underlines Gilles Havard, prevents to think about the properly cultural forms of the exercise of violence (P. 31).
To all eras, in the testimonies about the massacre, the amazement before the event deemed unexpected and the singular atrocities are highlighted. Faced with this amazement, the historian must re -register the suddenness of the event in a longer socio -political history, in search of the underground tensions of the communities. Also Gilles Havard inscribes the killing in the long history of the Natchez under the culture “ Platemine »Mississippi Indians (XIe–XVIe century), defined by temples built on mounds, in that of the European culture of the colonists and finally in that, much shorter, of the French colony. Three methodological convictions guide his investigation: reconstructing the cultural thickness of the Aboriginal world ; characterize the interrelations sometimes peaceful, sometimes destructive between Natchez, French and Amerindian and African slaves, also mentioned ; Finally, examine settlement accounts, through the rivalry of their authors and their European perception. Four chronological sections organize the work: the French establishment (1699-1729) ; The French massacre ; The wars of governors Étienne Perier and Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville provoking the dispersion of Natchez (1730-1776) ; deportation and invisibilization of natchez. The historian thus recounts the fate of a people of 4000 individuals, from the end of XVIIe century to the present day.
A bloody shine
At the heart of this story, the massacre of November 28, 1729. Gilles Havard reveals the springs, which are extraordinary. The strength of the work is to inscribe this killing in the ritual violence of the Natchez religion. When one of their chiefs died, the sun, relatives and domestic people must be self-signing to accompany the deceased in the afterlife, a “ delicious and abundant country ». Now the last great sun, the supreme sovereign of the suns of each village, died in 1728. The victims of the massacre would thus have constituted “ accompaniment dead », Mark of a relative integration of settlers into the Aboriginal company. However, the historian does not underestimate the more classic tensions of cohabitation between the two parties, chanted by episodes of confrontation, quickly peaceful. The killing would thus be a hybridization of religious violence and an act of civil war. The massacre, writes Gilles Havard, “ is similar to a domestic war and a ritualized act aimed at asserting a close relationship with a parent subject to the group rules of the groups (P. 235).
To achieve such a demonstration, the historian deploys his art on his corpus, a documentary miracle by the information he offers. He confronts the testimonies, shows the competition of their authors and identifies the European stereotypes of the massacre: revolt, conjuration and civil war. For example, the Antoine-Simon tobacco planter The Pratz page interprets the massacre as a long-prepared plot against the colonists. He justifies the thesis of this conspiracy by relying on what a mother of a sun king would have secretly revealed to him. According to Du Pratz, as a woman explains the Amerindian, she could not take part in the blow of radiance and moreover, she added, if she had been informed, she would have protested this terrible project. The apparently coherent story argument does not correspond to family relationships in Natchez society. There is no privileged link between a sovereign and his mother in the name of blood. In other words, the notion of “ queen mother Is absent from this Indian society. On the other hand, this interpretative scheme of a political crisis based on intra -family conflict is central in the tragedy of the great century. Our Pratz witness therefore gives us a Western projection on events.
By such a fine method, this time ethnographic, Gilles Havard gives meaning to certain massacre acts. For example, the killers ventured from pregnant Europeans. The researcher could interpret this cruelty in the light of the wars of religion where the perpetrators inflicted such a torture to publicly display their refusal of a descendants of heretics. In truth the ventilatration refers to the Amerindian motive of anti-birthday: the baby to be born is also entitled to his own death and his salvation in the other world. Likewise, Gilles Havard shows how the exposure of the decapitated heads of “ officers »With regard to those of the simple« residents “Replies the company Duale Natchez which distinguishes nobles and stinks.
Colonial violence
Colonial reprisals are analyzed in the same perspective of characterization of warlike practices, this time European. Gilles Harvard shows the tilting of a systematization of violence, resulting from the “ Carnage culture “, As it asserts itself in military tactics on the old continent at the end of XVIIe century. The historian notes the French strategy of the Talion law against hostile Amerindians. The fugitives, notably refugees in the Chicacha villages are tracked down as in a “ manhole ». However, captive natchez are not summarily executed as the German schenappans were in the Palatinate in the 1680s. The ethical and legal notion of people’s law asserted itself in the Age of Enlightenment. In the colonial space, it is also much more profitable to make defeated slaves deported to the plantations of Santo Domingo. From 1743, the Natchez were no longer a French question. They dispersed to the northwest, under British domination. From now on, they constitute a diaspora in other Indian nations, mainly the Cherokee in North Carolina and the Creek in Alabama.
A missing memory ?
In the last part of his investigation, Gilles Havard discovers the traces of “ last natchez »In American history. If Hutke Fields, the last highly self -proclaimed living sun, says that 211,000 Creek and Cherokee are likely to claim his nation, those who claim this origin are, in reality, a few hundred. Not being recognized as an official tribe and having shared during the XIXe A century, the deportations of the host Indian nations, in the current Oklahoma, the initial dispersion was covered by the subsequent historical traumas. In other words, the massacre of 1729 and the war of the years 1730 and 1740 are not founders in the historic memory Natchez.
In the first XXe century, the collaboration between anthropologist John Reed Swanton and Natchez speakers, then the Amerindian Identity Renewal from the 1960s to the 1980s, led to the revitalization of Natchez ceremonies, like the dance of “ Mosquitoes “, Practiced formerly during the Harvest of Corn Festival.
However, at the start of XXIe A century, the Natchez has still not obtained official recognition. Paradoxically, the historian shows how this competition within the Amerindian world now revolves around “ Indian degree of blood “, While this ideology of blood is originally foreign to Amerindian culture. The dispute of the genealogical inheritance “ racialized Go so far as to hit Hutke Field. The historian concludes in an epilogue, in a more optimistic way. A Franco-Natchez reconciliation ceremony is envisaged on the site of the Grand Village, in Natchez, in the state of Mississippi. This commemoration would restore a past largely erased by the subsequent trauma that the Natchez endorsed in the midst of other Indian nations, during the XIXe century.
The interdisciplinarity of anthropology and history
This work is essential in the historiography of New France, Amerindian civilizations but also for that of mass violence. It restores not only the complexity of the massacreur event, but also a social totality. The rigor of the treatment of the corpus allows the deployment of a multiplicity of points of view where we find the perpetrators, the Bystanders And the victims, always seized in their agentity. The interpretation which brings to light the predominant role of the religious factor in the initial massacre, is based on a most fine social and ethnographic description. Finally, the author is also a historian, sensitive to the chronological dynamic of violence and his memories. The rich critical device of the work illustrates the method: many cards, biographical appendices and a chronology.
The author also has a style. He takes us into the world of travel accounts, from an enigma which he unfolds during his narration. Its exotic and pathos descriptions remind us of the adventures of John Smith and Pocahontas, but also those, terrible, of Charles Marlow in At Heart of darkness. With the help of a rich iconography, the reader accompanies the great sun, the governors and Hutke Field, but also the most humble of the Natchez who survive, during successive dispersions. At no time does the author judge the protagonists, but presents the logics of their acts, in a scientific manner.
Finally, the survey is a model of interdisciplinarity between anthropology and history. The first nourishes the eschatological thesis of the bloody shot of 1729. In this regard, this grammar will recall the fundamental work of Denis Crouzet about the massacre of Saint-Barthélemy thanks to which the sacred part of the killing was revealed. As for history, the causal sequence of violence and the accumulation of their memories, at the heart of the work, significantly illuminate the future of the Natchez.