Colonial intimacies: Legislating sex in French Louisiana

William and Mary Quarterly

Volumn 60, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 75-98

  Spear, Jennifer M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0348245340     PISSN: 00435597     EISSN: 1933-769     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3491496     Document Type: Review

References (85)

1. My understanding of the sexual politics of colonialism has been greatly influenced by Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York, 1995)
2. Ann Laura Stoler, "Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and (Post) Colonial Studies," Journal of American History, 88 (2001), 829-65
3. Margaret Strobel, European Women and the Second British Empire (Bloomington, Ind., 1991)
4. and Robert J. C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race (New York, 1995)
5. Tocqueville, Journey to America, ed. J. P. Mayer, trans. George Lawrence (London, 1962), 71-72, 164-65
6. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Baton Rouge, 1992)
7. Carl A. Brasseaux, "The Moral Climate of French Colonial Louisiana, 1699-1763," Louisiana History, 27 (1986), 27-41
8. The use of "inevitable" is explicit in Donald E. Everett and implicit in most other interpretations; Everett, "Free Persons of Color in Colonial Louisiana," La. Hist., 7 (1966), 33
9. Ira Berlin, Matty Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, Mass., 1998)
10. Laura Foner, "The Free People of Color in Louisiana and St. Domingue: A Comparative Portrait of Two Three-Caste Slave Societies," Journal of Social History, 3 (1970), 406-30
11. Kimberly S. Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1769-1803 (Durham, N. C, 1997)
12. Thomas N. Ingersoll, Mammon and Manon in Early New Orleans: The First Slave Society in the Deep South, 1718-1819 (Knoxville, 1999)
13. Cornelius J. Jaenen, "Miscegenation in Eighteenth-Century New France," in New Dimensions in Ethnohistory: Papers of the Second Laurier Conference on Ethnohistory and Ethnology, ed. Barry Gough and Laird Christie (Hull, Que., 1991), 79-115
14. Freyre, The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization, trans. Samuel Putnam (New York, 1956)
15. quotation on 84. See also Carl N. Degler, Neither Black Nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States (New York, 1971)
16. and Magnus Mörner, Race Mixture in the History of Latin America (Boston, 1967)
17. See also Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill, 1968), 136-78
18. W. J. Eccles, "Sexual Mores and Behavior: The French Colonies," in Encyclopedia of the North American Colonies, 3 vols., ed. Jacob Ernest Cooke et al. (New York, 1993), 2:699
19. For an attempt to include female agency in a demographically determined framework, see Hanger, "Household and Community Structure among the Free Population of Spanish New Orleans, 1778," La. Hist., 30 (1989), 67
20. and B. W. Higman, Slave Population and Economy in Jamaica, 1807-1834 (Cambridge, 1976), 143-46
21. For an argument that almost credits the colonizing impulse to male sexuality, see Ronald Hyam, Empire and Sexuality: The British Experience (Manchester, 1990)
22. For a critique, see Mark T. Berger, "Imperialism and Sexual Exploitation: A Response to Ronald Hyam's 'Empire and Sexual Opportunity,'" Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 17 (1988), 83-89
23. See, for example, George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (New York, 1994)
24. See Kathleen M. Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill, 1996)
25. Kirsten Fischer, Suspect Relations: Sex, Race, and Resistance in Colonial North Carolina (Ithaca, 2002)
26. Trevor Burnard, "The Sexual Life of an Eighteenth-Century Jamaican Slave Overseer," in Merrill D. Smith, ed., Sex and Sexuality in Early America (New York, 1998), 163-89
27. Eccles, France in America (East Lansing, Mich., 1990; orig. pub. 1972), 3
28. Daniel H. Usner, Jr., Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley before 1783 (Chapel Hill, 1992), 277-78
29. [Jean Bochart, chevalier de Champigny], The Present State of the Country and Inhabitants, Europeans and Indians, of Louisiana, on the North Continent of America (London, 1744), 26
30. Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy, 32, 47
31. James Thomas McGowan, "Creation of a Slave Society: Louisiana Plantations in the Eighteenth Century" (Ph.D. diss., University of Rochester, 1976), 125
32. Most slaves resided and worked on small holdings with fewer than 20 slaves per concession (a quarter had fewer than 5) and were within 25 miles of New Orleans. See John G. Clark, New Orleans, 1718-1812: An Economic History (Baton Rouge, 1970), 26-27, 53
33. McGowan, "Creation of a Slave Society," 99, 119
34. and Brasseaux, "The Administration of Slave Regulations in French Louisiana, 1724-1766," La. Hist., 21 (1980), 143-44
35. Morgan, "British Encounters with Africans and African-Americans, " 163-64
36. Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 7-14
37. Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy, 50-56
38. James F. Traer, Marriage and the Family in Eighteenth-Century France (Ithaca, 1980), 22-47
39. Sarah Hanley, "Family and State in Early Modern France: The Marital Law Compact," in Marilyn J. Boxer and Jean H. Quataert, eds., Connecting Spheres: European Women in a Globalizing World, 1500 to the Present, 2d ed. (New York, 2000), 61-72
40. Malick Walid Ghachem, "Sovereignty and Slavery in the Age of Revolution: Haitian Variations on a Metropolitan Theme" (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 2001)
41. Bienville to Pontchartrain, July 28, 1706, MPAFD, 2:26
42. [André Pénicaut], Fleur de Lys and Calumet: Being the Pénicaut Narrative of French Adventure in Louisiana, ed. Richebourg Gaillard McWilliams (Tuscaloosa, 1988; orig. pub. 1953), 25, 30, 67-68, 73-79
43. For more on women's motivations for marrying European traders, see Sylvia Van Kirk, Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur-Trade Society in Western Canada, 1670-1870 (Winnipeg, [1980]), 75
44. Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (New York, 1991), 69, 324
45. and Hatley, The Dividing Paths: Cherokees and South Carolinians through the Revolutionary War (Oxford, 1993), 34, 44, 96-97
46. Owing to bad harvests between 1709 and 1713, France had little to spare for its colony. The high cost of transporting grains combined with a treasury weakened by the War of Spanish Succession also contributed to France's inability to provide Louisiana with enough provisions and supplies. See Marcel Giraud, "France and Louisiana in the Early Eighteenth Century," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 36 (1950), 657-74
47. [Pénicaut], Fleur de Lys and Calumet, ed. McWilliams, 105
48. Cadillac to Pontchartrain, Oct. 26, 1713, MPAFD, 2:168-69
49. From the 16th to the 20th centuries, European women were often seen as having a "civilizing" influence on both native populations and European male colonizers who, it was often feared, were "degenerating" in the colonies. See Jennifer M. Spear, '"They Need Wives': Métissage and the Regulation of Sexuality in French Louisiana, 1699-1730," in Hodes, ed., Sex, Love, Race, 35-59
50. and Strobel, European Women and the Second British Empire
51. Eccles, France in America, 81
52. Montigny to Pontchartrain, Dec. 25, 1715, MPAFD, 2:207
53. [Louis XIV] to Cadillac, Dec. 27, 1710, AC, C13a, 3:716
54. Minutes of the [Navy] Council, Sept. 1, 1716, MPAFD, 2:218n2
55. Jaenen, "Miscegenation in Eighteenth-Century New France," 102
56. See, for example, "Petition for New Marriage Contract," Feb. 15, 1725, in "Records of the Superior Council," Louisiana Historical Quarterly, 2 (1919), 110-11, in which the council noted that the wife's maiden name had "an Indian semblance," and "Nuncupative Will of Charles Hegron, Surnamed Lamothe," 1745, in "Cabildo Archives," ibid., 3 (1920), 564-66, in which a New Orleans resident named Hegron bequeathed half his estate to "Françoise, an Indian woman, his legitimate wife," with the remainder "divided between his two children, the issue of his legitimate marriage."
57. Wood, "Changing Population of the Colonial South," 66-79
58. Paul du Ru, Journal of Paul du Ru (February 1 to May 8, 1700), Missionary Priest to Louisiana, trans. Ruth Lapham Butler (Chicago, 1934), 37
59. Raphaël, 1725, cited in Marc de Villiers du Terrage, The Last Years of French Louisiana, ed. Brasseaux and Glenn Conrad, trans. Hosea Phillips (Lafayette, La., 1982), 21n68
60. and Sauvole, The Journal of Sauvole: Historical Journal of the Establishment of the French in Louisiana by M. de Sauvole, trans. Jay Higginbotham (Mobile, Ala., 1969), 50
61. See also Brasseaux, "Moral Climate," 28, who argues that the Louisiana "wilderness" offered young men freedom from paternal and governmental oversight and authority
62. On Canadians' acceptance of an "Indian way of life," including food, dress, transportation methods, and tobacco use, see Eccles, The Canadian Frontier, 1534-1760 (New York, 1969), 89
63. Cadillac to Pontchartrain, Oct. 26, 1713, MPAFD, 2:167, 171. It is highly likely that coureurs des bois were also attracted by native women's skills in processing deerskins and other assistance in their trading endeavors
64. Vaughan Baker, Amos Simpson, and Mathé Allain, "Le Mari est Seigneur: Marital Laws Governing Women in French Louisiana," in Louisiana's Legal Heritage: Studies in Louisiana Culture, ed. Edward F. Haas (Pensacola, Fla., 1983), 7
65. Charles Gayatreé, History of Louisiana: With City and Topographical Maps of the State, Ancient and Modern (New Orleans, 1965), 392-94
66. Stoler, "Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Gender, Race, and Morality in Colonial Asia," in Micaela di Leonardo, ed., Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge: Feminist Anthropology in the Postmodern Era (Berkeley, 1991), 57
67. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (New York, 1974), 196
68. Marriage of Jean Baptiste Raphael and Marie Gaspart, 1725, St. Louis Cathedral (hereafter SLC), Marriages, 1720-1730, Archives of the Archdiocese of New Orleans (hereafter Archdiocesan Archives), 89, entry 201
69. In 1723, a white locksmith and his wife, noted as a "neé gress," were charged with robbery, and in 1727, a French gunsmith and his "mulâtresse" wife arrived from Senegal. "Robbery Reported," July 13-14, 1723, in "Abstracts of French and Spanish Documents concerning the Early History of Louisiana," LHQ, 1:1 (1917), 110-11
70. Raphaël to Raguet, May 19, 1726, MPAFD, 2:521
71. See SLC, Baptisms, Marriages, and Funerals, 1731-1733, Archdiocesan Archives (July 13, 1732, for the first use of mulâtre)
72. "Report on Legal Freedom," Nov. 14, 1745, "Records of the Superior Council," LHQ, 14 (1931), 598
73. A strictly demographic interpretation is also challenged by the evidence that nonmarital métissage between Afro-Louisianan women and Euro-Louisianan men became both more frequent and more socially acceptable during the last third of the 18th century despite the fact that sex ratios among both populations were less unbalanced and the number of Euro-Louisianans was increasing relative to that of Afro-Louisianans. See Spear, "'Clean of blood, without stain or mixture': Blood, Race, and Sexuality in Spanish Louisiana," in A Centre of Wonders: The Body in Early America, ed. Janet Moore Lindman and Michel Lise Tarter (Ithaca, 2001), 95-108
74. Vaudreuil to De Velle, Jan. 2, 1744, Vaudreuil Letterbooks, Huntington Manuscript Loudoun, Huntington Library and Art Gallery of San Marino, California, LO 9, 3:32
75. Duclos to Pontchartrain, Dec. 25, 1715, MPAFD, 2:207-08
76. Nancy Shoemaker, "How Indians Got to Be Red," American Historical Review, 102 (1997), 625-44, argues that the idea of Indians as red emerged first in the Southeast, perhaps even from Indians themselves for whom the colors red and white had important symbolic meanings
77. Le Page du Pratz, Histoire de Louisiane, Contenant la Découverte de ce vaste Pays, 3 vols. (Paris, 1758), 1:333, 343-45
78. [Michel René Hilliard d' Auberteuil], Considérations sur l'état présente de la colonie fraņaise de St. Domingue: Ouvrage politique et législatif, 2 vols. (Paris, 1776-1777), 2:73
79. On metropolitan France, see Sue Peabody, "There Are No Slaves in France": The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Régime (New York, 1996)
80. John D. Hargreaves, "Assimilation in Eighteenth-Century Senegal," Journal of African History, 6 (1965), 178, 183
81. By the early 19th century, the company changed its policy and began advocating marriages to local African women to prevent desertion and to further its assimilationist policy for the creation of a "loyal local elite with French blood flowing in its veins"; Rita Cruise O'Brien, White Society in Black Africa: The French in Senegal (London, 1972), 33
82. Hall, "Saint Domingue," in Neither Slave Nor Free: The Freedmen of African Descent in the Slave Societies of the New World, ed. David W. Cohen and Jack P. Greene (Baltimore, 1972), 172-73
83. Elsa V. Goveia, The West Indian Slave Laws of the Eighteenth Century (Barbados, 1970), 42
84. The crown continued to try to limit manumissions in St. Domingue, issuing an ordinance in 1736 forbidding priests from baptizing enslaved children as free, a "dangerous abuse" slaveowners had been practicing as a form of manumission. See "Ordonnance Concernant les Affranchissemens and le Baptême des Esclaves Nègres," June 15, 1736, in Recueils de Reglemens, Edits, Declarations et Arrests (Paris, 1765), 2:168-70
85. Emilien Petit, Traité sur le gouvernement des esclaves, 2 vols. (Paris, 1777), 2:69