The story of an Innu boy 400 years ago may have been the template for residential schools

• taken from his family and community to be relocated far away
• immersed in a new language, faith and culture
• unable to fit in, and can’t reintegrate into his original community
• falls into alcohol abuse
• dies young

As contemporary as the tragic story may appear, it actually occurred 400 years ago. And it may well have been the template for what would later become residential schools. 

Origins

The story begins in 1620. The Mayflower lands in what’s now New England, as religious wars were tearing Europe apart. Later that same year, another ship leaves the “New World,” bound for France.

On it was a young Innu boy. We know his name: Pastedechouan. 

The fact that we know it is the result of the historical detective work by Professor Emma Anderson, at the University of Ottawa. She scoured the 17th-century records of French missionaries, notably the chronicles by the Récollets (a wing of the Franciscans) and the Jesuit Relations, and in 2007 published a book, Betrayal of Faith: The Tragic Journey of a Colonial Native Convert.  

In 2019, she teamed up with former CBC Radio producer, Kevin Burns to retrace the journey of Pastedechouan — a project interrupted for over three years by the pandemic. The two eventually travelled to Angers, France where Pastedechouan was baptized (thus acquiring his baptismal name: Pierre Anthoine Pastedechouan), and inculcated over five years into the Catholic faith. 

Leaving

It’s not entirely clear if Pastedechouan’s parents gave permission for him to go, but what is clear is that he was instrumental to the missionary enterprise. The Récollets, a branch of the Franciscan order, wanted to learn the Innu language from him, so they could return and carry out more conversions. 

So they started with Pastedechouan, baptizing him in the large Cathedral of Saint Maurice, right in the centre of Angers.

As a packed crowd of locals looked on, Pastedechouan was stripped naked, as was the custom, and baptized by aspersion until he was soaking wet, with water splashing onto the stone floor that’s still in place today.

The Récollets wanted to show that they were capable of transforming him, religiously, culturally — even linguistically — as a kind of exemplar of what they would do to an entire culture across the Atlantic.

Religious training

Pastedechouan spent five years in France, from 1620-1625, all of them at a friary called La Baumette, situated on the outskirts of Angers. His life there assumed that of a Récollet friar, with daily rounds of prayer punctuated by ritual obligations.

They taught him French, Latin and theology, while he taught them the Innu language.

At one point, Pastedhouan fell seriously ill as he had no natural immunity to common European diseases and nearly died. It’s known that he was married four times but there’s no record of having had any children, so Professor Anderson speculates tentatively that he may have contracted the mumps as the disease can inhibit male fertility.

When he later started bragging about how his adaptation into his new environment was putting him on the verge of losing his language, the Récollet decided to return with him to New France.

But by this point, Pastedechouan was almost completely deracinated. According to a Récollet source, when he was told about the upcoming voyage back to Innu territory, he reportedly replied: “But my fathers, why would you have me go back among those beasts who do not know God?”

Troubled returning

On April 24, 1625, Pastdechouan sailed back across the Atlantic, accompanied by a Récollet missionary, and a small group of Jesuits who had missionary plans of their own. For the next three years, Pastedechouan would struggle unsuccessfully to reintegrate into his Innu community.

Money was running out for the Récollet missionaries, so they decided to return to France, and encouraged Pastedechouan to work with the Jesuits — and he did, with one particular Jesuit: Father Paul Le Jeune. 

But there was one pivotal stumbling block in the way of any further conversions: Pastedechouan was no longer accepted by his own people. He’d missed crucial initiation rites, and the Innu — including his own brothers — were unimpressed by the Latin and French prayers he’d learned to recite.

Hunting was a spiritual practice for the Innu, who believed that it’s the animals which decide whether the hunter is worthy of their suffering and death, and the gifts of their meat, bones, and fur. Because Pastedechouan had no hunting skills, and was therefore unable to inveigle the animals to die for him, his people saw him as a moral failure.

Growing tensions 

At this point, Pastedechouan became trapped in a no-man’s-land between two cultures and their mutually exclusive worldviews. And almost inevitably, he discovered alcohol, which would plague him for the rest of his brief life.

One such incident was recorded by Le Jeune.

“Being drunk as a lord, he fell into the water and was nearly drowned. Finally, he got out, after considerable scrambling, screaming and howling like a demon.”

While Professor Anderson couldn’t find any records written by Pastedechouan himself, she suggests we may come close to hearing his despairing voice through Le Jeune’s records of one specific evening:

“One night, when everyone had sunk into a deep sleep, I began to talk to this poor, miserable renegade. I showed him that … he had rushed into the life of a brute and it would finally end in Hell if he did not open his eyes. ‘I see clearly,’ he replied, ‘that I am not doing right… Would to God that I had died when I was sick in France and I would now be saved. When I want to stay with you, my brothers tell me I will rot, always staying in one place, and that is the reason I leave you to follow them.”

Eventually, a discouraged Le Jeune wrote to his superiors in France to be discharged from his duties, leaving Pastedechouan with virtually no connection to any person, or community.

Tragic ending

Pastedechouan’s brothers were his only thread – and it was a tenuous one – to his former community. But after two of them died — the eldest burning to death in a house fire; the second, drowning — Pastedechouan’s fate was virtually sealed.

Writing in his Jesuit Relations report in 1634, Le Jeune explains that he heard from local Indigenous contacts that they’d found Pastedchouan’s body. He’d starved to death in the woods.

“The wretch died this year of hunger,” he noted, “abandoned in the woods like a dog.” To this day, it is not known where Pastedechouan spent his final moments.

Legacy

Neither the Récollets nor the Jesuits intended to construct a model for the residential school system.

But looking back, Professor Anderson finds there’s a crucial difference between original intentions and historical impact.

“I really do see Pastedechouan as being a very sad template for what comes later… because it’s children who are targeted,” Anderson said.

History has a long arm as Canada continues to wrestle with the fallout of residential schools and the entire colonial enterprise.

And if what happened to Pastedechouan was the seed that would later grow into the residential system, then Pastedechouan’s story, now four centuries old, is still very much with us.
 

Guests in this episode:

Emma Anderson is an historian in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa. This episode was based on her book, Betrayal of Faith.

Dominique Deslandres teaches European and comparative history at the Université de Montréal.

Mark Bourrie is a lawyer and historian based in Ottawa. Two of his books have been featured on IDEAS: Bush Runner: the Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson, and Big Men Fear Me: The Fast Life and Quick Death of Canada’s Most Powerful Media Mogul.

Alan Greer is a professor and Canada Research Chair in Colonial North America at McGill University.

Allen Deleary is the chief administrative officer of the Caldwell First Nation whose ancestral territories include Point Pelee and Pelee Island.
 

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