1. Listening as an Innu-French Contact Zone in the Jesuit Relations

Acoustemologies—or ways of listening and knowing the world through sound—are culturally specific; they have had a role in histories of colonial interaction and integration within sense-based ‘contact zones’. This chapter illustrates the role of contact and acoustemologies with a case drawn from the history of missionization in Nitassinan (Innu territory in eastern Quebec/Labrador), as documented in the Jesuit Relations (1632–1673). Especially in the earliest field reports, the priests' minute documentation of song, sound, and listening outlines distinct Innu and French Jesuit acoustemologies, whose differences clearly mattered for all sides. Focusing on these listening ‘bodies in contact’ (Ballantyne and Burton, 2005) offers a unique perspective on the close, improvisatory engagement of Indigenous and European people in a period of enormous regional upheaval. It also directs our attention to the larger stakes that are attached to sonic micro-interactions in world history.