Carpenter, Roger M. 1956–

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Carpenter, Roger M. 1956–

PERSONAL:

Born 1956.

CAREER:

Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA, visiting assistant professor of history.

WRITINGS:

The Renewed, the Destroyed, and the Remade: The Three Thought Worlds of the Iroquois and the Huron, 1609-1650, Michigan State University Press (East Lansing, MI), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS:

Historian Roger M. Carpenter's The Renewed, the Destroyed, and the Remade: The Three Thought Worlds of the Iroquois and the Huron, 1609-1650 looks at the ways in which two major Native American groups of the northeast reacted to their encounters with Europeans at the beginning of the seventeenth century. "Much has already been written about the creation of the fur trade, the Haudenosaunee's destruction of Wendake, and the rise of the Great League of Peace and Power as an important player in colonial New France and New England," related James Taylor Carson in the Canadian Journal of History. "Carpenter's contribution is to explain the contours of this familiar history in reference to ritual practice whereby the Wendat lost themselves in a world renewed and remade by the Haudenosaunee's pursuit of captives and furs."

Carpenter's point, according to Lisa E. Emmerich in the Historian, is that the Iroquois (or Haudenosaunee) were able to change their worldview and the rituals that affirmed it in ways that the Huron (or Wendat) were not able to do. Between 1601 and 1603, the French explorer Samuel de Champlain established the foundations of a firm relationship between France and the members of the Huron nation. By 1610, the relationship was strong enough that French soldiers participated in a Huron attack against the Iroquois. At the same time, however, the Iroquois (centered in what is now New York state) were cementing a relationship with the Dutch in the Hudson River valley, who presented their Native American partners with gunpowder weapons and encouraged them to expand the trade in beaver pelts (an extremely valuable commodity at the time).

By the 1640s, however, the supply of beaver was nearly exhausted in Iroquois territory, and the nation's search for new sources of pelts brought them into conflict once again with the Huron and their French allies. In 1649 the Iroquois struck at Huron settlements in what is now Canada, killing hundreds and forcing thousands of others to flee westward to the Great Lakes. Carpenter suggests that Iroquois success in these efforts was at least in part the result of the nation's ability to reinvent itself on European terms—and the Huron's failure to do so. "Between 1609 and 1650, the former renewed Iroquois culture in accordance with their evolving thought world and the exigencies of the period," Emmerich stated. "The Huron, according to Carpenter, were neither as flexible nor as fortunate. Their near total annihilation, ironically, paved the way for Iroquois redemption."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, June, 2006, Daniel K. Richter, review of The Renewed, the Destroyed, and the Remade: The Three Thought Worlds of the Iroquois and the Huron, 1609-1650, p. 821.

Canadian Journal of History, March 22, 2006, James Taylor Carson, review of The Renewed, the Destroyed, and the Remade, p. 204.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, November, 2005, B.A. Mann, review of The Renewed, the Destroyed, and the Remade, p. 555.

Historian, summer, 2006, Lisa E. Emmerich, review of The Renewed, the Destroyed, and the Remade.