Borderlands, Primary Sources, and the Longue Durée: Contextualizing Colonial Schooling at Odanak, Lorette, and Kahnawake, 1600–1850

• Published in: Historical Studies in Education / Revue d'histoire de l'éducation
• Main Author: Peace, Thomas
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Canadian History of Education Association / Association canadienne d'histoire de l'éducation 2017
• Subjects: Lorette; Odanak; Kahnawake; colonial colleges; Jesuits; day schools; collèges coloniaux; jésuites; externat; abenaki
• Online Access: http://historicalstudiesineducation.ca/index.php/edu_hse-rhe/article/view/4498; https://doi.org/10.32316/hse/rhe.v29i1.4498

ABSTRACT The historiographies of Indigenous engagement with colonial-style schools and colleges in New England, New York, and New France have different trajectories. In New England and New York, as colonial settlers expanded onto their lands over the eighteenth century, members of the Mohegan, Narragansett, Pequot, and Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) nations built schools. In New France — where colonial expansion happened much more slowly — historians suggest that interaction with formal schooling stopped as the demographic balance shifted to favour the French settlers occupying Abenaki, Algonquin, Innu, Kanien'kehá:ka, and Wendat lands. By examining the deployment of colonial schooling over an Indigenous landscape during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this paper makes some tentative arguments about how these divergent historiographies might be stitched together, emphasizing how access to school- ing has been a continuous and central site of contest between Indigenous and colonial societies since the very beginning of the colonization of northeastern North America by England and France. Only in the late eighteenth century—when colonial pressures on land and resources were acutely felt — were these ideas taken up directly within Indigenous communities to such an extent that schools were built and teachers trained. RÉSUMÉ Les historiographies de la relation des Autochtones avec les écoles et collèges coloniaux de la Nouvelle-Angleterre, de New York et de la Nouvelle-France ont emprunté des trajectoires différentes. En Nouvelle-Angleterre et à New York les membres des nations Mohegan, Narragansett, Pequot, et Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) ont construit des écoles au fur et à mesure que les colons empiétaient sur leurs terres au cours du XVIIIe siècle. En Nouvelle-France, où l’expansion coloniale s’est produite beaucoup plus lentement, les historiens suggèrent plutôt que l’interaction avec l’enseignement scolaire s’arrête lorsque l’équilibre démographique bascule en faveur des colons français occupant les territoires ...