The Performance of the Meal in 17th-century French Travel Accounts to New France

Abstract

This article uses the travel accounts of Recollet missionary Gabriel Sagard, and the Jesuit Paul Le Jeune in New France to explore food as a powerful means of communication and exchange, particularly during first contact between European travelers and indigenous peoples, in the absence of a linguistic community. The meal appears as a central and decisive scene in travel accounts, a crucial place for creating, reinforcing or contesting alliances, a (dis)placement from conversation to conversion, and a theatrical location for rites of passage. Acceptance or refusal of food, meals and table manners determined the relationships between European travelers and Indians, serving as a space between reinforcing one party's identity and appropriating the other's culture.

Keywords:

• meal
• hospitality
• travel writing
• Amerindians
• New France