THE ROYAL COLLECTIONS FROM NORTH AMERICA
About CRoyAN
The Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac preserves a unique collection of objects from the present-day territories of Canada and the United States, collected between 1650 and 1850. These items, first integrated into the royal and then the national collections, attest to the cultural and diplomatic exchanges between Native Nations and Europeans.
The multi-disciplinary and collaborative CRoyAN Project – The Royal Collections from North America – was initiated to gain a deeper knowledge of these collections. It combines historical research, scientific analysis and collaboration with Native American communities to better understand and preserve this heritage.
The CRoyAN Project : Royal Collections from North America - Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac
The French Royal Collections
Making Maps Speak
How can a colonial map, despite its biases, reveal valuable insights into Indigenous understandings of a territory? By shifting our methods of analysis and decentering the colonial gaze. This is the approach we adopted as part of the CRoyAN project, through a study devoted to the vast region stretching from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, referred to by the Kingdom of France in the 18th century as “Louisiana.” Our team brings together a wide range of expertise: historians specializing in archival collections, environmental historians, and cultural knowledge bearers from the Choctaw, Quapaw, Miami, and Peoria Nations. These contributors are recognized within their communities for their knowledge of language, oral traditions, and ancestral homelands.
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The Royal Collections (2)
The French Revolution destroyed this system linking cabinets de curiosités and arts and science collections to the Crown, the aristocracy, and the clergy. The collections were seized, nationalized and, for those considered to be items of value as national heritage, sent to new conservation institutions.
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The Royal Collections (1)
The first French contacts with Native populations in North America date back to the sixteenth century, when whalers, mariners and merchants made periodic forays into these territories by sea or overland, from Newfoundland in today’s Canada, to the Mississippi Delta in today’s Gulf of Mexico. Some rare accounts and descriptions of the barter and trade between these indirect agents of the French Crown and a variety of Native inhabitants have come down to us.
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Exhibition resources and archives "An Inquisitive Prince" in Versailles (2025)
Entrez dans les coulisses de l’exposition 1725. Des alliés amérindiens à la cour de Louis XV à…
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1725. Native american allies at the court of louis XV
Présentée au Château de Versailles, l’exposition 1725. Des alliés amérindiens à la cour de…
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From Paris to Oklahoma (March 2024)
In March 2024, after welcoming our partners from the Choctaw, Quapaw, Miami, and Peoria Nations to…
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Les nations du Grand fleuve. Une histoire partagée de la Louisiane coloniale
À l’occasion de la parution du nouveau numéro de Gradhiva consacré à la Louisiane française…
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Sharing collections, co-writing history New Collaborative Practices within Indigenous North American Contexts
Organisé dans le cadre du projet CRoyAN à l’occasion de l’ouverture de l’exposition « 1725.…
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Resources and archives for the "An Inquisitive Prince"
In collaboration with the Versailles Municipal Library and the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, this…
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RESOURCES
Gradhiva n°40,
"The Nations of the Great River. A Shared History of French Colonial Louisiana"
musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac
November 19, 2025