The Celts

Ancient Roots of the Franco-Americans©
PART I
FRENCH CONNECTION
by Robert Chenard
Published May 14 and May 28, 1994
Central Maine Morning Sentinel

20th Century AD If you stopped a Franco-American on the street and asked about his or her French roots, chances are the reply would be something like: "My ancestors came here from Quebec" or perhaps from one of the Maritime Provinces. Most of them know this as a matter of fact since it was passed down to them from their parents or grandparents. Then ask them about their earliest Canadian ancestors and most of them will tell you that his or her ancestors came to North America from France. That happens to be the case about 97 percent of the time. However, about three percent of the early population of New France (Quebec & Acadia) were not originally from France but came from such diverse places as Italy, England, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, the Basque region of Spain, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, and even Poland. 17th Century AD The majority of Frenchmen who settled in New France in the 17th and early 18th centuries originated from the ancient French provinces of Normandie, Ile-de-France, Poitou, Aunis, Bretagne, and Saintonge. To be more precise, about 4,330 of them, out of a total of some 8,500 came from these provinces. These six old provinces are all located on the west coast of France except for the Ile-de-France whose geographical center is Paris. Now that we know where most of these early French-Canadian immigrants came from, we can find out where most of their roots originated. Many people are surprised when they find out who their ancestors were a few generations prior to the 15th century since most folks simply have not taken the time to dig into their ancient roots. 9th Century AD Going back some 800 to 900 years prior to the 17th century, a most significant event happened on the shores of both north-western France and the British Isles. Historians tell us that during the 9th and 10th centuries, about 850 ships loaded with thousands of Scandinavians arrived, overtook, and settled those shores. These were men, women, and children - entire families. They came to these regions because the land they left simply could no longer support their ever-expanding population; they looked for and found greener pastures. In France, these people were called the "Northmen" - eventually known as the Normans. That region, for hundreds of years since, has been known as Normandy. It is where our troops landed on D-Day in June of 1944. We probably landed on the very same beaches many of our own ancestors did around 1,100 years and 40 generations ago. Therefore, we French (and English) are partially descendants of these Scandinavian people - the Vikings, if you will - mostly folks from Denmark and Norway. Thus, if you were able to trace your French ancestors back to the 9th and 10th centuries, you'd find a very high percentage of them to be "Northmen." This is true for the English as well as the Irish. Thus, all these nationalities share common ancestors. They are all fairly close cousins to one other. 8th-10th Century AD During the 8th, 9th and 10th centuries, a large influx of people arrived and settled in south-western France near Spain. These were the Arabs (Moslems). Some of these were assimilated into the French population. 5th Century AD Since there were already people living in those parts of France when these Northmen arrived, we must go further back in time. In the 5th century AD, tribes known as the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and Burgundians invaded the area of France known as Provence. These people were also eventually assimilated into the population. From the 3rd to 5th centuries, there were several invasions and migrations of Franks and Saxons into what is now northeastern France. The Franks and Saxons originated from the area we call Germany. Eventually, these newcomers blended into the "French" population. 1st Century BC Let's go back even earlier in time to the late 1st century BC. This is when Julius Caesar's Roman legions conquered much of the region they called Gaul (France), but not without difficulty since they had to fight the people who were already there. They were, to the Romans, uncivilized tribes they called "Celts" (pronounced Kelts) and "Keltoi" by the Greeks. These Celts were fierce warriors, who, unlike the Romans who fought on foot, did so on horseback sometimes wearing in battle only their three usual weapons - a dagger, spear, and sword. The Celtic women fought right alongside their men and their blood-curdling battle screams sent chills up the spines of the Roman soldiers according to early Roman historians. After a victory, the Celts reportedly decapitated some of their victims and later drank their blood in celebration and also mounted their enemy's heads on poles in their villages. Eventually, the Romans, with their superior organization, tactics, and numbers, defeated those tribes and were ultimately able to "civilize" the survivors. By the 5th century, the Romans brought them Christianity after being themselves Christianized a century or two earlier. Many of these Roman soldiers, with roots from all parts of the world, were assimilated into the indigenous population of Gaul. Similar events transpired in Ireland since the Celts had also settled there and in the other British Isles many generations earlier. 7th Century BC Around 600 BC, another group of people known as the Phocean Greeks founded Massalia (presently Marseille, France). Their descendants also eventually blended in and were assimilated into the French population.

Our Celtic Ancestors
PART II

10th Century BC

Our Celtic ancestors were an Indo-European race that can be traced mainly to the Danube basin. They settled parts of Ireland, France, and England as early as 1,000 BC where they established townships and usually fortified them. These Celts eventually had two major dialects of which remnants still exist in parts of Wales, Ireland, and the Brittany region of France. This was the Gaelic tongue. It might interest some of you that the names Quirion, Quemeneur (now Laflamme), Caouette, Helie (now Breton) among others are names which are rooted in Gaelic (i.e., Celtic). In earlier times, these names were spelled with a "K" such as Kevilon, Kemeneur, and Ka-ouet. CELTIC WOMAN

Bronze head found at Finthen, near Mainz, Germany.
It is Gallo/Roman and suggests an idea of Celtic feminine beauty.
(Photo from "The Celts") The Celtic religion was one of the first to evolve a doctrine of immortality. The good of the community was their basis of their laws. Their chieftains were elected as were the tribal officers. And their women had equal rights (something only recent to we Americans). The Celts could own property and inherit. They were farmers and craftsmen, artists and poets, musicians and warriors. They built two and four-wheeled chariots, great road networks, weaved woolen clothes (which the Romans cherished), and they cared for their sick, poor, and aged. They had hospitals as early as 300 BC - some 700 years before their more "civilized" Roman enemies. They preferred to settle warfare by means of single-handed combat between the chieftains or tribal champions rather than by massive forces. And if you didn't bother them, they didn't bother you. You might say they were really nice people. And the Romans also reported that they were an attractive-looking people, often tall in stature with blond or light hair and blue eyes, muscular, intelligent, and almost foolishly courageous in battle. In that regard, we descendants can look back with a measure of pride on our early Celtic ancestors.

Now, I surely don't like believing any more than you that some of our early ancestors were a rowdy bunch of uncivilized blood-drinkers. That event was just something reported by a few of my biased Roman ancestors who considered themselves more civilized than my Celtic fathers. And in human history, the winners are usually the "good" guys who get to write about what happened and how "bad" the losers were. Clearly, this was not representative of the Celts as a whole any more than some of the attrocities committed in wartime by a few of our own "civilized" troops. When you think about it, those people were no less civilized than we are today. In fact, the opposite may be the case. Take away all our modern gadgets and we are no different. Remember the Acadian Expulsion, the Holocaust, Stalin's purges, Sadam Hussein, etc.? Man's cruelty to man continues. The only thing that has changed from the days of the Celts is that we don't drink our enemy's blood - instead, we vaporize it instantly. We have now advanced to the point where we can annihilate an entire nation, even the world, in a matter of minutes without anyone even looking into the eye of a single enemy. It's a lot cleaner and easier to kill someone at a distance by remote control since you can't see it happening to them. They become only statistics like inanimate objects that have no feelings, no families, no pain. And we think we are civilized today?

Surely, it was much safer walking through the forests and hills of France 2,200 years ago (even with its wolves) than walking the streets of Miami or New York or Washington, DC today. And there are other considerations. Back then, there was no pollution, no taxes, no credit cards, no Department of Human Services bureaucracy, no sexual harrassment, and no greedy lawyers, corrupt judges or slick back-stabbing cut-throat politicians. The Celts surely would have mounted some of their heads on poles. Then try to imagine the pristine lakes and rivers that were brimming with fish and the forests teeming with wildlife. The Celts had no need for a Fish & Game Department with biologists who can't figure out why the fishing is so bad. Those lucky Celts ate fresh food with no chemical preservatives and didn't worry about their cholesterol level. Neither were they concerned about their plant closing and relocating to Mexico or losing their health insurance and getting ulcers from it. Furthermore, our ancestors were not destroying their environment - their basic life-support system. We've "come a long ways, baby" - or have we, really? Perhaps we should envy our forebears of 2,500 years ago.

100 to 4,500 Centuries BC Going back to pre-historic times, France was populated by Paleolithic and later by Neolithic man (Stone Age man 40,000 to 10,000 BC) as evidenced from the recent discoveries in the caves of Lascaux, Mas d'Azil, Les Eyzies and others. In fact, the earliest traces of man found in France date back 450,000 years. These very ancient pre-historic people are therefore also the ancestors of the Franco-Americans and all of European stock plus the rest of the world. Some of the ones who painted the 1,500 assorted animals and human figures on the cave walls at Lascaux about 30 thousand years ago are undoubtedly our ancestors. It is no wonder these pre-historic discoveries are so precious to each one of us and must be preserved. CAVE DRAWING

Detail of a prehistoric tragedy - bison, man with bird-mask, javelin, and bird.
(Photo from the book, Lascaux)
Who am I? vs. Who are you? I am a natural-born American with French-Canadian roots from both parents, whose ancestors trace primarily to 17th century France, whose ancestors, in turn, were Vikings, Romans, Celts, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Arabs, Hebrews, Greeks, neolithic and paleolithic man, and a blend of all the unknown others from time immemorial whose genes now make up the living organism I refer to as "me.". For all practical purposes, even though I can't prove it for lack of records, some of my direct ancestors include Egyptian Pharoahs and many of their slaves who built their pyramid tombs; also Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob from the Bible, and surely King David (he had many many wives); and probably also Mohammed, Bhuda, and even Confusius (if they had descendants). A mathematician and demographer once determined that, statistically, 90% of all the people who were living on earth in the 5th century AD are your ancestors. And from there on back, there's always about 10% to whom you are never related because they never passed on their genes via any children. The answer as to who you are is exactly the same as to who I am since we all tie back to the same pool of genetic material, the same ancestors. The only difference between any of us is in the combinations that were used to get us here. In a geometric diagram, your pedigree (i.e., complete ancestry) is essentially diamond-shaped. With you at the tip of the diamond, the number of unique ancestors in each generation back increases steadily until it reaches a maximum and then steadily begins decreasing until it again comes to a point at the bottom. That point represents the father and mother of all mankind which we call Adam and Eve. Like this web page, we come in a variety of colors, but our earliest roots are theoretically 90% identical from the 5th century AD and that commonality increases slowly over the next several thousand years until we get to the mother of mankind - Eve.

NOTE: I have edited the above articles slightly from the ones originally published.

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