What's that you say? You weren't aware that Franco-Americans, Americans of French-Canadian descent, even were an immigrant group? Not a real immigrant group? That may be because though the term Franco-American isn't new according to Vermette, it is more common in New England than in other parts of the country. Like him, I never heard the word Franco-American until I was an adult, though I grew up in New England and even around French speaking family and neighbors. (I had only a few American-born French-speaking cousins. By our generation, the language was pretty much gone, but my American-born father didn't learn to speak English until he went to school.) The lack of a well-known unifying name may help explain why we are a very low-profile group. That's in spite of the fact that in early days the French were all over North America. It's also in spite of the fact that, as Vermette explains, in the United States in the late nineteenth and even early twentieth centuries, French Canadian immigrants were...maybe reviled is too strong a word. Something like reviled.
How the Press Treated Franco-Americans in the Nineteenth Century
The press in the nineteenth century had a great deal to say about the French-Canadians moving into the United States according to Vermette. He quotes British-American Citizen from 1889:
"The French number more than a million in the United States...The number of their children is unimaginable for Americans...They are kept a distinct alien race subject to the Pope in matters of religion and politics. Soon, with the Irish, they will govern you, Americans."
Well, the British have always had a thin about the French, haven't they? Should we expect them to feel any differently about French-Canadians?
The New York Times also had things to say about French-Canadian immigrants in the late nineteenth century.
May 1, 1881. "They are, for the most part, ignorant and unenterprising, subservient to the most bigoted class of Catholic priests in the world...They care nothing for our free institutions, have no desire for civil or religious liberty or the benefits of education.,,[T]he feeling which they excite...is not fear or jealousy, but a sort of contempt."
French-Canadian immigrants were believed to be temporary here. They'd only come to the U.S. to make some money and go home with it. The New York Times, 1885, Canadians in New England:
"In such towns as Fall River and Holyoke the French Canadians have nearly shouldered out the native American operatives, who a generation ago impressed foreign observers by their superiority to any persons engaged in similar occupations elsewhere...he [French Canadians] cannot be brought to take any interest in the life around him of a community in which he regards himself as merely a sojourner. He maintains his own churches and no schools. Add to this feeling of alienism that he is absolutely unenterprising, and it becomes evident that he must be a troublesome element in the population."
Notice the term "native American" in the above quote. Vermette says that the descendants of English Protestant settlers in the United States managed to establish themselves as the native, original people here, even though the French had been on the North American continent as long as they had and the original native people had been here for thousands of years.
Going back to 1878, Vermette quotes another New York Times article:
"...beyond dispute that there is hardly a French Canadian family...that does not inherit strongly-marked traces of Indian blood."
This is a reference to a belief, which Vermette discusses, that French Canadians were mixed race because of intermarriage with native people in earlier years. While I had not actually heard that, I wasn't surprised. Years ago, I'd read that the French settlers in Canada were far less brutal towards the native people there than the English settlers were toward them in the United States. Certainly, there was violence there. But, as I heard it, the French were often more interested in trapping than farming, which meant they didn't feel a need to take as much land, and sometimes married native women. It never occurred to me that that would have some kind of impact generations later. It would come into play during the twentieth century eugenics movement. But that is another blog post.
One attitude toward Franco-Americans in the nineteenth century is particularly interesting for us today. At the end of that century, there was a fear that French Canadians wanted to take New England to create a French Catholic country. The New York Times was on this in January, 1889:
"The tradition is that within a period not included within the present century there will be a country in North America called New France. It is to be constituted of Quebec, Ontario as far as Hamilton, such portions of the maritime provinces as may be deemed worth taking, the New England states, and a slice of New York. No effort is to be made to realize this tradition until the French race in America reach a certain number."
This appears to have been quite a widespread belief, and you can read more about it in an article by Vermette in Smithsonian Magazine, When an Influx of French-Canadian Immigrants Struck Fear Into Americans.
Vermette says that in a region/culture where there aren't clear physical differences between people, language and religion become far more important in classifying others. You can see that with almost all immigrant groups, but it seems to have been happening in spades with Franco-Americans in the nineteenth century. The attitudes toward Franco-Americans in the past that Vermette reports are so extreme that it's amazing to me that now we are pretty much invisible.
Given the fear of a French-Canadian plot to take over a section of the United States a hundred and fifty years ago, more or less, it is jaw-dropping to me that there are U.S. folk (at least one, anyway) who now want to push the issue of making Canada a fifty-first state. The reversal is just amazing.
Coming up next: Little Canadas