Empire by Collaboration. Robert Michael Morrissey

able to understand the Illinois, the Jesuits now learned that they were not as universally enthusiastic about Christianity as Marquette and Allouez had said. As his dictionary makes clear, Gravier had a much more sophisticated understanding of the spiritual worldview of Natives. “Manitou” was not an equivalent concept to the Christian God, “feasting” was not the same as communion, and “traditionalism” was still strong.⁴¹ One word in Gravier’s dictionary meant “I still have my old superstitions.”⁴² Jugglery, or what the Jesuits identified as Indian traditionalism, was still widespread among the Illinois, and Gravier knew it. As he wrote in a Relation of 1694, there were many non-Christians in the villages, and he spent much more time now “disabus[ing] them of the senseless confidence they have in their manitous.”⁴³ His dictionary showed a much more sophisticated understanding of Illinois spirituality. In many ways, better understanding destroyed old naïve accommodations.

Figure 10. Illinois-to-French dictionary by Jacques Gravier, 1690s. Like Liette’s 190-page ethnography, Gravier’s dictionary was a 590-page monument to his sophisticated understanding of the Illinois.

      Courtesy of the Watkinson Library Special Collections, Trinity College, Hartford, Conn.

      This might have produced pessimism as the Jesuits realized that the Illinois were far from Christianity and that Native spirituality remained strong. And yet there was another consequence of improved communication. As they learned more about the Illinois, they became expert observers of a culture in the process of transformation. Even as they learned about the persistence of Illinois’s non-Christian spirituality, the Jesuits could tell that the lifeway of the Illinois was full of tension and contradictions. And they especially understood the costs of these tensions for one group of people in Great Kaskaskia: women.

      The Grand Village of the Kaskaskia, and now Pimitéoui, had been built on bison and slaves and exploitation. In Iroquois attacks and other warfare throughout the second half of the seventeenth century, the Illinois had lost lots of people and had used slavery and adoption as a means of replacing lost kinsmen with outsiders. As we have seen, this strategy allowed the Illinois to experience strength during a period when many Algonquians were reeling. Arriving right at the height of the Illinois’s power, Gravier became a kind of sociologist observing this community’s strategy and its result: the might and dominance of the Illinois in the borderlands. And yet Gravier and his partners could also see something else: the way that this system of exploitation produced tension. Gravier and his partners realized how slavery and adoption failed to create a fully integrated society.

      As a social strategy, the Grand Village was based on certain assumptions and ideas. Most important, it was premised on a borderlands faith in the flexibility of identity and in the potential for assimilation of outsiders. Illinois-speakers at the Grand Village welcomed outsiders as they had always done throughout their protohistoric migration into the Illinois prairies: by adopting and assimilating them into patrilineal kinship lines. This is what it meant when Oumahouha adopted Father Membré or La Salle “became” Ouabicolcata. Behind this practice was an ideal: fictive kinship and adoption would allow for complete identification and assimilation of newcomers and captives within Illinois familles. But if this was an old strategy, in the 1680s and 1690s, the Illinois-speakers did it on a much greater scale.

      Gravier and other second-generation Frenchmen in Illinois understood the logic of assimilating outsiders. Gravier’s dictionary contained many terms that express these ideals of assimilation. “Relatives who I hardly remember are not my real relatives” was the sentiment expressed by a word for “relative” in the Illinois language.⁴⁴ Liette described how the expansive Illinois kinship system was designed for solidarity and inclusion: “It should be stated that they almost all call each other relatives.”⁴⁵ All of the Illinois were supposed to feel connected to powerful men, identifying as “sons and relatives of chiefs.”⁴⁶ Adoption was meant to incorporate newcomers and strangers fully as kin.

      But if the Illinois hoped to make strangers into kin in the mixed-up world at Grand Village, there were people in this society who were not so well integrated. As words in Gravier’s dictionary make clear, not everybody felt assimilated. Examples include words that meant “I don’t love him like a real brother” or “I don’t regard him as a relative.” There were kinsmen who were totally powerless: “They don’t notice me. I am not the master of it being a stranger.” Another Illinois term could express alienation from a family lineage: “I am regarded in my family like a stranger. The others are more beloved.” Gravier’s list of such expressions was extensive: “Here I am like a stranger. I am not the master of anything.”⁴⁷ And finally: “I am out of my country, of my village.” “You don’t treat me as a relative.”⁴⁸ As these “definitions” suggest, in the mixed-up, slavery-dominated world at the Grand Village, there were many divisions. Although adoption and shapeshifting were supposed to turn strangers into family, some kinsmen continued to feel as “strangers” or simply as second-class kinsmen. Furthermore, fictive kin lines, and even real kin lines, did not always produce such strong bonds. As Liette said, “I have got men to agree a hundred times that their fathers, their brothers, and their children were worse than dogs.”⁴⁹

      As Gravier and other Frenchmen learned, some men felt alienated from their kin lines. But if this produced a level of anomie for certain men of the Illinois society, it was nothing compared to the alienation experienced by many women. By the 1690s, Frenchmen like Gravier had a fuller understanding of how slavery affected women in Illinois society, especially through the polygamous and violent relationships that were part of the slave system.

      Polygamous households among the Illinois seem frequently to have contained great tension. For instance, according to terms in Gravier’s dictionary, one wife in a polygamous household was “the best loved wife” and one was “the wife who is the master of all the others.”⁵⁰ One word in the dictionary, “onsam8eta,” referred to “jealousy” and alluded to conflict, such as “she prevents him from going to her rival, to his second wife.”⁵¹ It seems clear that some Illinois women resisted marriage to a man already married, suggesting that the practice had clearly recognized downsides. Later in the contact period, a Frenchman noted that “The husband has full power and authority over his wives, whom he looks upon as his slaves, and with whom he does not eat.”⁵²

      In addition to polygamy, Frenchmen understood that some Illinois women endured oppression and even violence in their relationships in the 1690s. Whether slaves or free, many women in Illinois had very little control over their own bodies.⁵³ According to Liette, brothers at the Grand Village made marriage arrangements on their sisters’ behalf, forcing them to marry into families that they did not want.⁵⁴ Father Julien Binneteau put it this way: “According to their customs, [Illinois women] are the slaves of their brothers, who compel them to marry whomsoever they choose, even men already married to another wife.”⁵⁵ Perhaps worse, as Hennepin noted, parents frequently pressured their daughters (possibly slaves) to use their sexuality for material gain.⁵⁶ Brothers even used their sisters to cover wagers “after having lost all they had of personal property.”⁵⁷ Liette also noted how Illinois women were seduced and abused by powerful medicine men, “who they dare not refuse.”⁵⁸ This produced strong alienation on the part of Illinois women.

      If women could not choose their mates or avoid unfavorable polygamous marriages, these were not the only downsides of the Illinois gender order in the Grand Village. For women also endured a double standard when it came to fidelity. Several French eyewitnesses by the 1690s noted that Illinois husbands were free to have sex with other women but that women were expected to remain faithful and chaste. Some Illinois husbands abandoned their wives, and several terms in Jesuit dictionaries reflect the pain of a scorned wife.⁵⁹ For instance, Gravier listed words to express “I believe that he loves another; [said by] a wife who suspects him of loving a woman other than his wife.” Another term meant “I believe that he wants to leave me. I believe that he loves another