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Monday, December 02, 2024

creature of empire

  

"In 2022, environmental historians Jennifer Bonnell and Sean Kheraf cited 

 Gabriel Sagard – and specifically his description of giving 

 a French domestic cat,  

which was exotic and non-indigenous creature North America,  

to his Indigenous Wendat hosts in 1632. 

 They suggested that Sagard's gift functioned as both a "tool of diplomacy" and a "creature of empire"  

and that it also "illustrate[d] the methodological challenges at the heart of the [growing] field of animal history."  


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Sagard

 


'Sagard arrived in New France 28 June 1623. He was sent to accompany Father Nicholas Viel, where they joined four other members of their Order who had been there since 1615, led by Father Denis Jamet.  

In August, Sagard traveled to a Huron village on the southern shore of Lake Huron, where he began his missionary work and study of the Huron language. 

 In July 1624, he was ordered by his superiors to return to France. All record of him ends some time around 1636. Sagard seems to have either left the Order or he may simply have died while still a friar. Sagard worked with the Hurons. 


Sagard is remembered for his writings on New France and the Hurons-Wyandot people, Le grand voyage au pays des Hurons (Paris, 1632).  

His L'histoire du Canada (1636) 

 included a revised and expanded Le grand voyage and Dictionnaire de la langue huronne (Dictionary of the Huron Language)." 


___ 



A french cat differs from the German, Italian, and Spanish cat by a hair 

The way they purr over a cup of mouse 

But they're of some note 

To people's who've only seen lynx 

Mountain lions, jaguar, bobcat 

The french cat isn't an acquired taste 

Like whisky, port, coffee 

It hunts proudly and brings down bird 

Lizard hare and rat 

Adapted to a feral existence to moment they exit the tipi 

It climbs trees faster than they sprout 

It's hair whiskers twitch at anything stirring night 

There's no borders the Belgian cat meows 

Heading to Holland or over Swiss alps or Niagaras tail 





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