Andre Penicaut, a carpenter, sailed with Iberville to the French province of Louisiana in 1699 and did not return to France until 1721. The book he began in the province and finished upon his return to France is an eyewitness account of the first years of the French colony, which stretched along the Gulf Coast from Florida to Texas and in the Mississippi Valley from the Balize to the Illinois country. As a ship carpenter, Penicaut was chosen as a member of several important expeditions: he accompanied Le Sueur up the Mississippi River in 1700 to present-day Minnesota, and he went with Juchereau de St. Denis on the first journey from Mobile to the Red River and overland to the Rio Grande, to open trade with the Spaniards in Mexico. Penicaut helped to build the first post in Louisiana, at Old Biloxi, and the second post on the Mobile River. Penicaut was at his best when describing the lives and social customs of the Indians of the region. He saw them in realistic terms, showing no prejudice toward their native habits. Neither were his French colleagues cast in heroic or villainous molds—though their accomplishments must strike modern readers as truly epic. When first published, Fleur de Lys and Calumet was a major stimulus to scholarship in the field. This new edition will be welcomed by a new generation of scholars and readers interested in the colonial history of the Deep South and the Mississippi Valley.

"Despite increased research interest in the interaction of native North American peoples and Europeans, little attention has been directed toward Indian-French interactions--even though for more than a century the French controlled an area of the interior more than twice the size of the combined North American territories of Britain and Spain." "Calumet and Fleur-de-Lys focuses on historic Native American sites and archaeological evidence of native interaction with the French from the landing of Jean Nicollet in Green Bay in 1634 to the surrender of French America to the British in 1765. It integrates, for the first time, historical documents of the French politicians, explorers, priests, and traders with the archaeological record of numerous midcontinental native and French colonial sites. The essays cover the full range of French America--from the mouth of the Mississippi to the Great Lakes region--and examine topics as diverse as the protohistoric native cultures of the Midwest, French traders among the Sioux of northern Minnesota, Indian-French military relations in Louisiana and on the Wabash, the Indian deerskin trade of the Southeast, Huron refugees in Michigan, and Illini hunting camps and villages in Illinois." "Most previous research into French America, including Francis Parkman's classic histories, has centered on "great men"--LaSalle, Marquette, Joliet, and Nicollet. Calumet and Fleur-de-Lys demonstrates the potential of the archaeological record to expand the history of native cultures and Indian-French relations in the contact era."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Eyewitness accounts intended to introduce readers to a wide variety of primary literary sources for studying the Old South.

Loren's In Contact offers a fascinating synthesis of current knowledge of the contact period between Europeans and Native peoples in the American Eastern woodlands.