The Champlain Society Findings/Trouvailles May 2018
“[I]nsulting him mightily”: Gabriel Franchère’s Retelling of the Destruction of the Tonquin
The Editorial Committee of Findings/Trouvailles occasionally draws on the Society's many publications to share a "find" from one of our volumes. Patrice Dutil did this in January with "Demanding to be Involved: Black Volunteers in the First World War," an adaptation of Barbara Wilson's publication, and for our May post I have enjoyed revisiting the work of W. Kaye Lamb to bring you "'[I]nsulting him mightily': Gabriel Franchère’s Retelling of the Destruction of the Tonquin."
In Lamb's volume, Journal of a Voyage on the North West Coast of North America during the Years 1811, 1812, 1813 and 1814, he compiled the writings of Gabriel Franchère, which he "found" in the Canadian History & Manuscript Section of the Toronto Public Libraries. The excerpt in this month's Findings/Trouvailles post includes a lightly edited version of Lamb's introduction to the Tonquin and Franchère’s account of its destruction, as reportedly told to him by the only survivor, an Indigenous interpreter named Joseachal. Lamb's Champlain Society volume appeared in 1969 and since then several historians have revisited Joseachal's account, as told by Franchère, and citations for their work appear in the Further Reading section, as does a media account that includes twenty-first-century Indigenous perspectives on the event.
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Read this post at: http://bit.ly/Findingsm18
Thank you for reading!
Posted by T Hawkins, UTP Journals