Henriette, la capuche

Midwifery must be reckoned as one of the most ancient and noble vocations, and we ail owe our presence here to the intervention, at one time or another, of some kindly midwife.The oldest known discourses on midwifery in America were those of Anne Hutchinson of Puritan, Massachusetts.This was privileged information which was transmitted viva voce, and because of its private nature and associated taboos, it remained shrouded by a profound veil of mystery.The midwife became the subject of préjudice and dérision, maligned by historians who were not privy to this knowledge.1In our time, she remains unstudied and unsung except in the memory of a few elderly folks.The study which follows is a modest tribute to one such humanitarian who laboured on the Madawaska frontier for some three score years.She was born Henriette Blier in 1861 at Sainte Alexandre, Quebec.When she was thirteen, her family moved to the Madawaska Territory where they took up a résidence in Saint Luce Parish, later named Frenchville, Maine.2At seventeen she married Damase Pelletier and together they repaired to a back settlement home where, in nature's good time, thirteen children were born to them.Ail of her children were born at home, delivered by an accomodating midwife.It was through her that Henriette acquired the knowledge of her vocation.*This paper was presentcd at the Conférence of the Northeast Council for Quebec Studies held at Yale University, Oct. 1-3.1981 and will appear in QuebecStudies,the Proceedings of the Conférence to be published in 1983.'For example, Harvey Wish states in Society and Thought in Early America: "The midwife,-whose ignorance frequently went beyond the limited field of abstetrics, accounted for many a prématuré death."New York

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