Bitter Feast: Amerindians and Europeans in Northeastern North America, 1600-1664

J.R. Miller is a professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan,
the author of Skyscrapers Hide in the Heavens: A History of
Indian–White Relations in Canada, and co-editor of The Canadian
Historical Review.

First published in French in 1985 as Le Pays Renversé, Denys
Delвge’s study of relations between indigenous and immigrant peoples
in the northeastern woodlands of North America in the 1600–64 era is
now available to a wider audience in a serviceable translation by Jane
Brierley. Although this is a well-studied period, Bitter Feast is
nonetheless a welcome addition to the literature on early–17th-century
relations between Natives and newcomers.

The strength of Delвge’s contribution results from his approach,
which is to survey the economic relationship between Native peoples and
European traders without regard to what later became an international
boundary, and to examine that process against a background of economic
change in western Europe and the north Atlantic world. Such a framework
permits the isolation of those elements of cultural interaction and
change that were attributable to the dynamics of
capitalist/noncapitalist exchange, a process that in general the author
finds to be exploitative on the part of the newcomers. Although the
research underlying the analysis is thorough, more attention might have
been paid to ethnohistorical readings of the material on Native peoples.
On the whole, Delвge tends to interpret the evidence so as to emphasize
European exploitation and aboriginal victimization.

The weaknesses flow from the same source as the work’s strengths: its
dominant economic framework for interpreting events in the North
American forests. Given the theoretical assumptions that underlie Bitter
Feast, it is not surprising that the author both exaggerates and
underestimates the process that was taking place in forest commerce. He
exaggerates the degree of European exploitation of the indigenous
traders because he does not succeed in seeing the commercial process
from their perspective as well as that of the Dutch, French, and English
merchants. Simultaneously, he does not appreciate fully the subtlety and
ambiguity of aboriginal attitudes toward trade in furs. What might look
to a sociological historian of the late 20th century largely like a
commercial transaction, to the Huron and Montagnais also was laced with
cultural, social, and even spiritual elements. These Native perspectives
on the relationship do not figure as prominently as one might expect,
given the interpretive trend of recent literature.

Such criticisms notwithstanding, Bitter Feast is a welcome and
important contribution to 17th-century studies. All serious students of
Canadian history should regard it as essential.