The figure of the Amerindian has inhabited the Québecois and French-Canadian imagination since the early days of the colony. Many well-known critics such as Maurice Lemire, Fernand Dumont and Gérard Bouchard have confirmed his presence—not to mention omnipresence—in political and cultural discourse in Québec. And yet, up to now, there have been very few studies on the nature and role of this figure in the economics of the identity issue in Québec. Within the context of research on the analysis of architextual and narrative constraints applied to figures of the Indian in nineteenth-century French-Canadian literature, we have developed a new interpretive model on the concept of reduction, a model inspired by the work of Jean-Jacques Simard concerning Canadian government policies and strategies in the file on aboriginal affairs. First, we briefly outline the heuristic potential of this notion of reduction, then go on to propose an analysis of two paratextual constraints that conditioned, in their way, the entry into discourse of the figure of the Indian in nineteenth-century French-Canadian literature, with the titles and intertitles of works highlighting Amerindian characters.