Arctic Madness : The Anthropology of a Delusion

Pierre Déléage

• Publisher: HAU Books
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781912808632
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

The French missionary-linguist Émile Petitot (1838–1916) spent twenty years near the Arctic Circle in Canada, publishing numerous works on First Nations languages and practices. Over time, however, he descended into delirium and began to summon imaginary persecutions, pen improbable interpretations of his Indigenous hosts, and burst into schizoid fury. Delving into thousands of pages in letters and memoirs that Petitot left behind, Pierre Déléage has reconstructed the missionary's tragic story. He takes us on a gripping journey into the illogic and hyperlogic of a mind entranced with Indigenous peoples against the backdrop of repressive church policies and the emergent social sciences of the nineteenth century. Apocalyptic visions from the Bible and prophetic movements among First Nations peoples merged in the missionary's deteriorating psyche, triggering paroxysms of violence against his colleagues and himself. Whoever wishes to understand the contradictions of living between radically different societies will find this anthropological novella hard to put down.

Chapter One

Persecution Mania

A Missionary among the First Nations

The Great Western and Erie Railroad train was pulling into Dunkirk, a small town in the westernmost part of New York State, where the train station was no more than a stone’s throw from the southern shore of Lake Erie. Night had fallen a few hours ago, and lightning bolts sliced across the horizon at increasingly frequent intervals. Alone in a poorly lit section sat a balding, thirty-eight-year-old man with a top hat by his side, his attention divided between the spectacle of the storm and the pages of the book resting on his knees. Visible on the metal frame of his elegant glasses was an incision, chiseled by a Parisian engraver, that spelled the name of his protectress, Madame the Marquise de Vatimesnil, who would die twenty years later, one of numerous victims burned alive in a massive fire that struck the Charity Bazaar of Paris in 1897.¹ As the train came to a stop, the man put his book down next to his hat and looked out the window at the lively crowd in the station.

At eight o’clock in the evening, an entire family of well-off artisans entered my train car and settled into a set of seats next to mine, leaving me by myself. I sprawled out on the velvet seats, one leg here, the other there, and enjoyed a cigar, adopting poses to make me look as much like a Yankee as possible.²

This traveler, a bit of a dandy, was on his way from New York City, where he had stayed at the home of a distant cousin to rest up after crossing the Atlantic. Returning to North America after a visit of almost two years in France, his native country, he was taking his time on the way back to where he had worked before his travel abroad. He knew how to savor long trips by train, with their intervals of half dozing, half reading and their unexpected events.

A girl about eighteen years old from this family did not hesitate to come to my section and take the corner seat facing me. Out of respect, I immediately assumed a less cavalier posture and threw my cigar out the transom window.

Since the train moving forward sent air and smoke into the face of my pretty neighbor, she asked if I would trade places with her, which I gladly deigned to do. In gratitude, my sweet neighbor launched right into conversation with me with charming ease and simplicity, all the while studying me from head to toe and back up again.³

Despite some discomfort, the man was not surprised by her manners, which would have seemed completely out of place in France. Although his work monopolized his attention and hardly gave him time to probe the young American’s psychology, his twelve years on the continent had given him sufficient insight into the country’s tradition of what he liked to call “the shocking overconfidence of the endearing sex.” He felt it was only proper to offer his neighbor some of the dates, chocolate, and oranges he had brought along and then, under the dim light of the oil lamps, to engage in a bit of conversation before returning to his book.

After a quarter of an hour, she stood up and leaned over the back of her seat to talk to her mother sitting right behind her and let her know in a soft voice, “Mother, he’s a gentleman. He’s very refined.” (This was more than flattering. ) “He must be rich—he has a top hat and a big gold chain for his pocket watch. I think he’s wonderful!”

This was said in a way to ensure I would hear everything. This saved her from having to make a declaration of love.⁴

Despite the apparent levity of his tone, the traveler, more surprised than shocked, felt a growing unease. He let himself discreetly contemplate the girl’s features, mentally sketching one of those conventional portraits in the outdated academic style commonly used to depict the advent of spring. She caught his reticent, persistent gaze two or three times and seized each opportunity to stare back at him, immediately making him avert his eyes. These silent exchanges distracted the traveler from his reading. Upon reflection, he realized that a detail of this absurd situation dismayed him more than anything else, a detail that would not escape a clockmaker’s son: the naïve creature sitting across from him had no idea about the value of watch chains, his having been bought for a mere ten francs on the modest Boulevard Poissonnière.

Soon the impressionable American sat down again and returned to her conversation. Note that she earnestly took me to be one of her fellow citizens.

“Where are you going to?” she asked me.

“To Saint Paul, in the state of Minnesota,” I replied.

“Is that really far?”

“Not too far. Aren’t you familiar with your country?”

“I don’t have enough education for that. I’m a poor Irish girl.”

“Catholic?”

“Oh, my Lord, no! I’m a Methodist and born in America.”

“Ah, all right.”

“And I should tell you, Sir, that I don’t care for any creed, d’you see? But tell me,” she continued, “where is that, Saint Paul? Is it farther than Sandusky?”

“Sandusky, you say? Sandusky? Who on earth knows where Sandusky is?!”

She grimaced in horror. “Sandusky? That’s the city where we live!” she retorted. “What, you don’t know about Sandusky?”

“Not a bit. . . . I swear this is the first time I’ve ever heard of it.”

“Well, you absolutely must get to know Sandusky. You must come along with us! Oh, you will come, won’t you?”⁵

The girl, hands clasped, adopted a pleading tone, and the traveler was momentarily struck dumb, seeking to regain his composure. He was troubled by her childlike frankness, her relaxed manners, her nonchalant atheism, her naïve certainty of occupying the center of the world.

I smiled sadly without answering but shook my head no. I didn’t want the sweet child to notice that my emotions were beginning to well up, so I just kept quiet.

She became disconcerted, her mouth forming a charming little pout. While I pretended to watch the countryside in the moonlight, the weather having cleared up, I could see she was studying my face and trying to read my thoughts.

However, as we approached Cleveland. . . . her delicate Romanesque head understood that she had to hurry if she wanted to succeed.

“You’re getting off in Cleveland, aren’t you, Sir?” she inquired.

“No, Miss”. . . .

“But we have to get off here to change to the train going to Sandusky. Oh, listen, you absolutely must come to Sandusky, it’s pretty, so very pretty!”

“I’m very sorry, Miss, but I can’t.”

“What? You have a tour ticket. That gives you three months to travel wherever you want. You can stop anywhere you like. Don’t deny it, I saw your ticket when the conductor punched it.”

“Yes, but unfortunately I won’t be getting off the train until I reach my destination.”

“At your destination? Well, then, what are you, Sir, an officer?”

“No, Miss, I’m a Catholic priest,” I replied, dropping the bomb to put an end to this sickening melodrama.⁶

On April 12, 1876, Émile Fortuné Stanislas Joseph Petitot, the addled traveler on the Great Western and Erie train, began the journey that was to bring him back to Our Lady of Good Hope Mission, just below the polar circle, where his beard would grow back and he would once again don his ecclesiastical attire. His fleeting encounter with the girl—who immediately left to rejoin her family after discovering he was nothing but a common priest—made such an impression on his emotions and imagination that, a decade later, he was able to recount it in detail in the first volume of his Mémoires d’un missionaire.⁷ For a brief interval, he had been taken for a Yankee, a gentleman, and an eligible bachelor. A priest though he was, he let himself be charmed and, while flirting between Dunkirk and Cleveland, enjoyed embracing a new identity. Languidly reflecting on his mixed desires, he took the opportunity to fantasize about a parallel life.

★

As briefly as possible, to get it out of the way, let me summarize Émile Petitot’s early life. He was born in 1838 and grew up in the city of Marseilles. His family moved often, since his father, a clockmaker, went from job to job in different shops at a steady pace. He was educated at a Catholic school on Rue Saint-Savournin, an institution that taught young people “whose place was in between the aristocracy and the lower classes and who went into administration, the arts, commerce, finance, industry, and the affluent professions.”⁸ He was fascinated by books he read by Arctic explorers and, most likely, by the Annales de la propagation de la foi (Annals of the Propagation of the Faith), a periodical that twice a month published accounts of the glorious sufferings of new martyrs whose adventures took them to the frontiers of Christendom. When he was seventeen, his father died, whereupon he discovered his calling as a missionary. He became a novice at the congregation of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. Upon being ordained as a priest, he boarded the Norwegian, a ship sailing to Canada, where he would work for twelve years, from 1862 to 1874. He spent most of this time around the mission situated at Fort Good Hope on the banks of the Mackenzie River, which had its source in the Great Slave Lake and flowed into the Arctic Ocean. During the many years he spent there, he successfully improvised as a cartographer, linguist, ethnographer, and folklorist. He returned to France for two years, mainly in Paris, where he was fêted by the ultramontane bourgeoisie and aristocracy. He then went back to the missions in the Far North for another six years, from 1876 to 1882, which ended when he was locked up in an “insane asylum” in Montreal. After thirteen months of confinement, he was repatriated across the Atlantic, where he was relieved of his vows. Living in nostalgic, bitter solitude at the parish of Mareuil-lès-Meaux, he wrote seven volumes of his memoirs and several other works. He died in 1916.⁹

At the mission at Fort Good Hope, it was dark all winter, and temperatures in January almost never went above –22 degrees Fahrenheit. Émile Petitot became the missionary to a First Nations people called Peaux-de-Lièvre by the French (and, by the English, Hareskins), while his mission partner Jean Séguin dedicated himself to the evangelization of a group they called the Loucheux or Dindjié (whom the English called Kutchin).¹⁰ These First Nations belong to the broad Dené (Northern Athapaskan) language family and are southern neighbors of the Inuit. During Émile Petitot’s time, they were nomadic hunters whose lives were governed by the alternation of the seasons. They dispersed in small bands during the winter and then gathered in larger groups during the summer for big-game hunting and collective ceremonies. From the end of the eighteenth century to the first half of the nineteenth, their traditional way of life had gradually adapted to the presence of permanent trade posts run by Hudson’s Bay Company. They became accustomed to stopping there twice a year, after the winter and summer hunts, for several weeks. They exchanged fur pelts for Western goods, such as guns, metal containers, tobacco, flour, clothing, and alcohol, at set rates that were systematically unfavorable to them. A few of them settled near Fort Good Hope and sometimes frequented the mission of Our Lady of Good Hope (Notre Dame de Bonne Espérance), where Jean Séguin and Émile Petitot were waiting for them, anxious about the salvation of their infidel souls and always happy to acquire some new provisions through bartering.

★

The first time Émile Petitot saw the Dené, he could not suppress his repulsion. Through many years of reading of adventure novels and evangelistic propaganda, he had formed a fairly precise image of Native North Americans, commonly called “Indians” at the time. He thought he knew their customs, skills, appearance, and way of life. The encounter disappointed all his expectations:

A horde, dressed in leather and exceptionally stinking, was camped at Frog Portage. At first glance, I was surprised by the peculiar appearance of their features. Their head is small, conical, and narrow; their chin, jutting forward, is so sharp that it looks ridiculous, taking on the appearance of a fox or weasel. But their demeanor is serious, reserved, and honest, almost morose. Their eyes, very close to the bridge of their nose, which is large and aquiline, express an anxiety that grips them. Their mouth is subdued and relaxed. No outcries, no expansiveness, no enthusiasm whatsoever. They stand in line single file, take off their cap...

Table of contents

• Frontispiece
• Illustrations
• Chapter 1