It would probably take many books to tell about pre-colonial America, the one where the Columbus, Cartier or Champlain set foot without really knowing where they were going, without knowing the languages, the mores, the cultures.
Before breathing his last in 2021, anthropologist, animator and writer Serge Bouchard dug into his great erudition to bring to light from the history of great Aboriginal characters that the colonial narrative hastened to bury and to forget.
This is how it seems They were Americathe third volume in the series inspired by the radio program Remarkable forgottenwhich he began with Marie-Christine Lévesque, who died a year before him.
With this book, Bouchard aims to give back to the leaders, such as the Iroquoian Donnacona, the Algonquin Tessouat, the Wendat Kondiaronk, or the Outaouais Pontiac, the luster and the influence that official history deprived them of. Donnacona, for example, whom Cartier took to France after kidnapping him and several other Iroquoians. Died in Paris, in the boredom of his country of lakes, forests and rivers, Donnacona, a tragic character, would have ended up buried in a common grave, rue des Andouilles, according to what Rabelais has his character Pantagruel say.
The company is ambitious. From the colonization of America, we essentially retained the written point of view of the Europeans. However, Cartier and Champlain not speaking Aboriginal languages, their story telling is necessarily hazardous. Thus, notes Bouchard, the Europeans did not understand the essential political role of the clan mothers in the Aboriginal communities.
Thirsty for gold more than for friendship
Anyway, the European explorers that Bouchard describes are much more thirsty for gold than for friendship. And our ignorance today testifies to their indifference.
Of this pre-colonial America, essentially absent from history books, Serge Bouchard nevertheless shares a few secrets with us. He says, for example, that the island of Montreal was called by the natives the Isle of the Dead, in particular because the mountain would have played a role in the ascent of the dead to the afterlife. “Archaeologists have also found ancient Aboriginal burials near what is now Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery,” he wrote.
Frustrated by our lack of recognition of the Aboriginal presence when the Europeans arrived, Serge Bouchard regrets that Saint-Laurent was named this fabulous waterway, one of the rare gateways to the interior of the lands in from the Atlantic.
“This grandiose river could have retained the beautiful Amerindian names of Hochelaga or Canada, but the French would instead baptize it Saint-Laurent. […] This river will forever be misnamed. »
For ever ? Who knows if an aboriginal word will one day reclaim its rights on the river? Serge Bouchard unfortunately did not live long enough to see it. Neither did his very dear Marie-Christine Lévesque.