For more than thirty years, histories of colonial interactions between Native American and European peoples in the French Northeast have benefited from the prominent inclusion of religious encounters. However, the majority of these narratives have diminished the relevance of religious considerations and relegated religion to a secondary role as a veneer or veil for motivations that scholars have deemed more rational, relevant, or pragmatic.
Erik R. Seeman addresses this historiographical deficiency by recognizing the impact of religiously rooted cosmologies and motivations and seriously considering the impact of religious exchange for the peoples of colonial New France. Through the metaphor of the Feast of the Dead and with special attention to each peoples' relation to bones, the text posits that similar customs and associations with death allowed both Wendats and French Catholics to recognize the common humanity of the other and served as a medium for communication throughout the history of Indian-Jesuit encounter. The Feast of the Dead offers a window through which Seeman reveals nuanced changes in the religious worlds and cultural relations of Native Americans by presenting the augmented meanings, conflicting identities, and social rifts that characterized their colonial experience. The text depicts the history of the Wendake, the Wendat homeland, through the dynamic relationship between Wendats and Jesuits, and their shifting understandings of proper interactions with the dead. Seeman narrates the experiences of French and Indian subjects as they navigate changing perspectives and missionary strategies, the waves of epidemics that ravaged the region, rising internal tensions caused by divergent native commitments to French alliances, and the increasing threat and violence of Iroquois encroachment.
Throughout this history, Seeman's analysis shows that cultural parallels and analogous practices in the deathways of each people enabled dialogue and encouraged the permeability of cultural boundaries. Such similarities led both peoples to frequently take seriously the spiritual realities of the other and initiate cultural exchange. Wendats and Jesuit missionaries each employed deathway commonalities intentionally and unconsciously to express cultural values and ideals, manipulate political situations, and compel change in the religious worldviews of their colonial counterparts. Through a discourse dominated by concerns for mortuary practices and the ritualized interaction with human remains, Wendats were led to experience the potential appeal of Catholicism, fashion new hybridized avenues for interaction with the supernatural world, or articulate their rejection of Jesuit attempts to effect their conversion.
The text does not dismiss the relevance of material goods or other social considerations. However, the scholarship consistently maintains that “Wendats interpreted almost every aspect of French religion and material culture with this question in mind: how will it affect our relationship with the dead (39)?” According to Seeman, as the Wendat encountered French material artifacts, situated Jesuits within adaptive cosmologies, sought to make sense of plagues, or negotiated between the potential destruction posed by Iroquois aggression and alliance with French Catholics, the Native American inhabitants of Wendake evaluated nearly everything within a context that prioritized their relation to the dead. If the centrality or preeminence of deathways remains unconvincing when supported, its significance and influence is not. Seeman's work advances the recent scholarly trajectory that seeks to temper the academic reliance upon the potentially limiting Western category of religion by incorporating the perspectives and understandings of his Native American subjects. In framing his analysis by the term “deathways,” he is able to reveal priorities and associations for his subjects that may not have been readily apparent otherwise. Although the prominence attributed to bones remains less convincingly demonstrated for the French characters of his history, deathways nonetheless present the author with an avenue to deftly and holistically weave a variety of concerns and ideas into his narrative.
As with most investigations of early French colonial encounter, this work is built primarily upon a close read of the Jesuits Relations, the written accounts of the Jesuit missionaries serving in New France, and the works of early French explorers. After necessarily assuming that the Jesuits had sufficient incentive to depict their efforts and interactions relatively accurately, the text valiantly pushes the boundaries of what may be concluded from such a paucity of sources by bringing those accounts into periodic dialogue with the archaeological record. After admitting the difficulties facing the historical analysis, Seeman offers a consistent and interesting interpretation of the extant material that does not belabor the account with constant reflection upon the filtering gaze or biased intent of the European authors. Situated as an introductory text intended primarily for novice scholars, it is in his historical narrative that Seeman's contribution to the field and his prowess truly shines. This work fills a much need niche in Native American studies and in the historiography of colonial North America by offering a brief, coherent, and accessible account of a Native American-European encounter in which religious or spiritual understandings are illuminated as genuine, relevant, and integrated components of French and Indian interactions in the region.
