ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by the caste system,

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the complex method for setting broken bones.

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All right.

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How did French colonists benefit from relationships like the one seen in the image?

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And here are your potential answers.

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[ mumbles ]

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[ mumbling continues ]

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All right, well it wasn't just the Spanish who practiced

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intermarriage with Native Americans.

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French settlers in North America formed these kinds of relationships, as well.

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Let's see which answer best describes those

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French friendships with benefits.

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Was a plus side of these relationships that the French

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A - established a strict racial hierarchy within their colonies?

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Well, no, that was the Spanish, who were pretty far south

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of the French colonial border. So it's not A.

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Did French colonies benefit from interracial relationships because

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C - they gathered knowledge from the study of mixed races?

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Well, the French may have been studying landscapes and nature in their

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colonial exploits, but they didn't really turn the lens on

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the population in that way. So that knocks out C, as well.

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Would French colonists have profited from these

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pairings because D - they developed a large network for slave labor?

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Well, actually, the Atlantic slave trade was more the realm of

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the English, not the French.

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So it jolly well isn't D.

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That means French colonies benefitted from

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interracial relationships because B -

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they set up trade alliances that included relatively few Europeans.

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Though the mission of the French was still to gather and send goods overseas to Europe,

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they did so by creating strong alliances with

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the Native Americans through intermarriage. So B is the right answer.

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And you know those strong alliances were

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probably made even stronger by the fact that

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most of these couples had only one set of in-laws nearby.

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[ uh-huh ]

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