Women of New France - Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project Booklet Series, No. 1

The women of New France—French, Native, and métis—were active agents in a global process of colonization that led to interaction, conflict, and cooperation among peoples who participated in different cultural traditions, social institutions, and daily practices.
In the course of migration from the Old World across the Atlantic, women helped to create the social, economic, and political conditions that fostered a French presence over a vast region for nearly two centuries. Documentary and material evidence clearly indicate the roles they played in forming and sustaining communities in the settler society of New France, none of which were exact replicas of the places that nurtured them in their homeland. Native women were selective in the choices they made as they sometimes embraced, often rejected, and frequently reinterpreted all that French culture had to offer.
As the Empire expanded, women of all ethnic backgrounds and social categories took advantage of the opportunities that New France provided as they struggled, traded, formed alliances, married, and raised children in the process of making history and producing a material world that shaped the future of North America.
The outcome for both Natives and newcomers was truly a new world and a blending of cultures that demonstrated the human potential for change, persistence, and accommodation, while underscoring women’s contributions as mothers, sisters, daughters, and so much more.