Provides a brief account of early French contacts with various north and south American natives. Includes a reproduction of an early woodcut depicting Brazilian natives and a statement by Father Charles Lalement which characterizes the American Indians as filthy, violent savages. (JDH)

Uses examples from literature and history to discuss the persistence into the eighteenth century, generally considered the time of the Enlightenment, of traditional French literary concepts and intellectual constructs for understanding the New World and its people.

Explores the French colonization in North America. Presents background information on New France, focusing on the French in Canada. Covers topics, such as how the French became interested in North American expansion, the French in Louisiana, colonial economics, and the reasons for the collapse of New France. Includes a bibliography. (CMK)

Discusses the seventeenth-century French missionary and bureaucratic attempt to "francisize" (to make French) Canadian Indian children, so they would eventually be assimilated into the French expatriate colony, an effort based on the idea that contact with Europeans and education would convert Amerindians to Catholicism and make them…