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The Renewed, the Destroyed, and the Remade: The Three Thought Worlds of the Iroquois and the Huron, 1609-1650

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Carpenter follows the various ways the Hurons and Iroquois tribes adapted to the activities and growing power, and in some cases the example, of the French and English in northeastern America and southern Canada in the early period of contact between them. Carpenter gets behind the devastating effects of alcohol, disease, warfare, and displacement to disclose and understand how these tribes tried to make sense of and adjust to these by modifications of their mythologies and related cultural factors. For instance, when the Indians became involved in fur trading, they "had to transform the beaver from a creature they accorded a measure of respect" because of its place in their myths and lore into a commodity. Similarly, the author goes into how Christianity affected the Indians' outlook when they did not convert outright to this religion spread by French Jesuits. The coming of the Europeans also changed the Indians' manner of warfare, from mostly skirmishes with little loss of life to an form of total war where villages were destroyed and their inhabitants taken into captivity. Carpenter is an assistant professor of history at Canada's U. of Saskatchewan whose work sheds light on the impact of Europeans on the minds and behavior of Native American tribes. Most of the scholarship in this area has looked to the external consequences such as drunkenness or migration; whereas Carpenter's gets to the changes in the fundamentals of the Native American's culture.