The Betrayal of Faith

by Anderson, Emma

• ISBN13: 9780674026087
• ISBN10: 067402608X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-10-31
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

Emma Anderson uses one man's compelling story to explore the collision of Christianity with traditional Native religion in colonial North America. Pierre-Anthoine Pastedechouan was born into a nomadic indigenous community of Innu living along the St. Lawrence River in present-day Quebec. At age eleven, he was sent to France by Catholic missionaries to be educated for five years, and then brought back to help Christianize his people. Pastedechouan's youthful encounter with French Catholicism engendered in him a fatal religious ambivalence. Robbed of both his traditional religious identity and critical survival skills, he had difficulty winning the acceptance of his community upon his return. At the same time, his attempts to prove himself to his people led the Jesuits to regard him with increasing suspicion. Suspended between two worlds, Pastedechouan ultimately became estranged--with tragic results--from both his native community and his missionary mentors. An engaging narrative of cultural negotiation and religious coercion, Betrayal of Faith documents the multiple betrayals of identity and culture caused by one young man's experiences with an inflexible French Catholicism. Pastedechouan's story illuminates key struggles to retain and impose religious identity on both sides of the seventeenth-century Atlantic, even as it has a startling relevance to the contemporary encounter between native and non-native peoples.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Prologue: Pierre-Anthoine Pastedechouan, Voyager between Worlds	p. 1
"Thy God Has Not Come to Our Country": Innu Childhood	p. 11
"Do Not Take Me Back to Those Beasts Who Do Not Know God": Transformation in France	p. 63
"I Have Not a Mind Strong Enough to Remain Firm": Religious Ambivalence	p. 122
"God Has Let His Thunderbolts Fall": Apostasy and Death in the Canadian Woods	p. 165
Pastedechouan's Legacy	p. 207
Finding Pastedechouan: A Note on Sources and Methodology	p. 235
Notes	p. 243
Bibliography	p. 287
Index	p. 295
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