We remember Chateaubriand’s Natchez de l’Atala (1801), tragic characters evoking a wild, romantic Louisiana lost by the French.
In this conference, Gilles Havard gives historical depth to this people from the banks of the Mississippi, describes an organization, a culture and the most sophisticated traditions of the time and gives an account of the ethnohistory of a Native American nation at the end of the 17th century to the present day.
He recalls how their destiny changed in two hours, on November 28, 1729, when Natchez warriors killed nearly three hundred European settlers to whom, three decades earlier, they had granted hospitality and with whom they had established kinship relations. .
As soon as the massacre became known, a logic of reprisals began on the part of the French administrators which transformed “Louisiana into a laboratory of modern colonial war”.
Gilles Havard is a doctor in History, director of research at the CNRS and a specialist in the history of New France.
Registration: on the France-Amériques website at the member rate (€25), specifying in the “Function” line: “HEC member”
Speaker: Gilles Havard
Price: €25 per participant
Correspondent: Alain GERMILLON (M 71)
