Colonial Cartography of Canadian Margins: Cultural Encounters and the Idea of <i>Métissage</i>

Abstract

Essential to the fur trade and to colonial expansion into Canada, métissage considerably marked Canadian history by creating new cultural spaces – Métis geographies – between Aboriginal and European societies. My objective here is to investigate the role of colonial maps – from the French regime up to the late nineteenth century – in the mental representation of these specific Métis geographies and in the development and evolution of the idea of métissage. The idea of métissage reveals colonial ambivalence. The idea is, in fact, built upon the dialectic between recognition and denial, the latter mostly fed by discourses of anti-métissage. Although colonial officials were often forced to acknowledge Euro-Indian métissage at colonial margins, they never completely accepted the idea that “primitive” and European cultures could be mixed. Métissage was acceptable insofar as it was marginal (socially and spatially speaking) and did not endanger the spread of “civilization.” Maps represent colonial ambiguity toward métissage. On the one hand, given their intent to be objective accounts of geographic reality and their dependence on the geographic information provided by Aboriginal peoples, maps record, at the margins of colonial reach, the nascent manifestation of Métis geographies. On the other hand, because they are sociocultural constructions, maps are components of the discourse of anti-métissage; while Métis geographies were sometimes visually silenced, at other times they were cartographically erased.