French Canadians in Vermont: Not Quite Gone, Not Quite Welcomed, and Only Barely White

by Robert Grant

Primary advisor: Philip Chasler

Graduation date '06

Abstract:
This paper will examine various aspects of the history of people of French descent in Northern New England, and in particular, in Vermont. The paper will include the historical and contemporary discourse regarding their identity, from the early colonial period, the French and Indian War, Vermont's statehood, and up to the present. At various times throughout their history, Francos have been overlooked, positioned as an underclass, and have viewed with demographic anxiety by Yankees, Vermonters of predominantly English descent. The consistently disparaging attitudes of the numerically and economically dominant Yankees has had and continues to have enduring social and economic consequences for American of French descent in Vermont.

After their defeat in the French and Indian War in 1756 -1763, the New England, "Yankee" settlers generated what became the dominant narrative: that the French and their Indian allies were evicted from the part of New France that became Vermont, and returned in the second half of the 19th Century to work in Vermont industries. This narrative was prescribed by all of the major historical works of the 19th and even late into the 20th centuries, and was subscribed to by the Old Stock Yankees and their growing tourist constituency. I will show that this eviction was not complete, and that many French and Indian communities continued to be a part of the rural community throughout Vermont's history.

I will argue that the early antagonism and to a degree the enduring disdain for French "Canadians" was the result of the French interaction with Native Americans. The cultural and genetic exchange between these two groups was just as manifest as was the Anglo Vermonters' fixation upon it. Thus can the "whiteness" of Franco-Vermonters be seen as contested, and even the "nativeness" of Abenaki Vermonters. This has been played from both ends, usually in an attempt to diminish the claims of these two non-dominant groups. The Catholicism of both French and Abenaki served as another source of tension with Yankees, as well as an illustration of the closer relationship between the two minority communities.

The presence of so many Vermonters who were not old stock pioneer Yankees elicited considerable demographic anxiety within Vermont's elite. This peaked with the Vermont Eugenics Project in the 1930's. French and Abenakis were the principal targets of a sterilization program, and the turning away of this policy nightmare by one of the researchers under the director, Harry Perkins is an inspiring chapter in the struggle for tolerance and even a sort of celebration of diversity that would become both popular and contested in the 1990's.

During their considerable migration from Quebec to Vermont in the mid 19th Century, French Canadians formed an industrial underclass, and comprised as much as 15% of the state's population. They were often strike breakers (esp. in 1929 and 1934) and were as a result the object of scorn among organized Italian and Irish workers in the marble, textile, and lumber industries. While this overt antagonism has diminished, and Franco Vermonters are now considered entirely white, their economic disadvantages remain, as reflected by a structural poverty in areas where Franco Vermonters constitute a significant part of the population, such as in the North East Kingdom, the upper parts of the Champlain Valley. And in Southwestern Vermont. Even prosperous tourist and university towns in Vermont, dominated by Yankees, will often have as a neighbor a poorer community where disproportionately French Vermonters reside, and serve in the service sector to their more wealthy neighbors. Intolerance is shown to be easier to overcome than its economic legacy.

Who might be interested in reading this work?
This work might be of interest to those doing Whiteness Studies in New England, to those who are examining the creation of dominant historical narratives, or the history of Vermont.