Fascinating historical excursion into the mind-set we imagine and can reconstruct from historical documents. The switch from intermarriage as a way to gain new recruits for France ,to the banning intermarriage as sullying the bloodlines is a change of thinking of culture vs biology as accounting for differences. The old "nature vs nurture" argument goes far back. I wonder about the reluctance of folks to adopt Frenchification after experiencing "native" culture and the inference that the French way was "better". Perhaps the native ways were in fact better and preferable to the European customs. So they had to ban intermarriage to prevent folks from adopting the superior culture......so much to think about. Thank you!
Very interesting. My maternal side is half French, half German. Family legend has it that our ancestor was one Louie Barbeau who came down the Mississippi to St. Louis. Away back in the 1700s he sailed down the river in a big voyageur canoe and married a Native American woman. My grandmother's old photo album has a strikingly handsome portrait of a clearly indiginous woman in a high-collared european dress, obviously a woman of substance and dignity. And some of the previous generations are quite dark. Assimilation! This is great, I'll make the time to listen to the next 2
Very very interesting. I’m going to have to re listen a couple times to fully understand it all.
Fascinating historical excursion into the mind-set we imagine and can reconstruct from historical documents. The switch from intermarriage as a way to gain new recruits for France ,to the banning intermarriage as sullying the bloodlines is a change of thinking of culture vs biology as accounting for differences. The old "nature vs nurture" argument goes far back. I wonder about the reluctance of folks to adopt Frenchification after experiencing "native" culture and the inference that the French way was "better". Perhaps the native ways were in fact better and preferable to the European customs. So they had to ban intermarriage to prevent folks from adopting the superior culture......so much to think about. Thank you!
Very interesting. My maternal side is half French, half German. Family legend has it that our ancestor was one Louie Barbeau who came down the Mississippi to St. Louis. Away back in the 1700s he sailed down the river in a big voyageur canoe and married a Native American woman. My grandmother's old photo album has a strikingly handsome portrait of a clearly indiginous woman in a high-collared european dress, obviously a woman of substance and dignity. And some of the previous generations are quite dark. Assimilation! This is great, I'll make the time to listen to the next 2