Nicolas (ca 1700)

[Nicolas, Louis (1634-après 1678)]. Les Raretés des Indes. Fac-similé de l'édition originale. Montréal: Éditions du Bouton d'or, 1974.

Les Raretés des Indes is a collection of 180 drawings of the Indians of North America as well as of the fauna and flora of New France in the late seventeenth century. This album, commonly called Codex canadiensis, was first published in Paris in 1930. The original drawings, on parchment in brown ink or in brown ink and watercolour, are now in the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

All of these drawings, none of them dated or signed, were for a long time attributed to Charles Bécart de Granville, who lived in Quebec City from 1675 to 1703. However, the recent discovery of an unpublished document made it possible to attribute the Codex to Louis Nicolas. Born in Aubenas, France in 1634, he served as a Jesuit missionary in New France from 1664 to 1675. In 1678, shortly after his return to France, Nicolas left the Society of Jesus, and it is not known what became of him afterwards.

Pictorial representations of New France in the seventeenth century are extremely rare, which makes Codex an invaluable document. The collection contains 53 plates devoted to natural history, illustrating 18 plants, 67 mammals, 56 birds, 33 fishes, as well as about 10 reptiles, batrachians and insects. In addition, a large number of sketches and drawings depict objects made by the Indians of North America: pipes, tobacco pouches, clubs, moccasins, snowshoes, megaphones made of birch bark, canoes and huts of various shapes.

Another feature, which makes Codex even more interesting, is the portraits of Indians of North America belonging to some 15 different nations. No other iconographic document of such antiquity illustrates with such exactness the paintings and tattoos with which the Indians of North America covered their bodies at the time.