�Behold
Glorious Harvests�: The Jesuit Catholic Infiltration of Amerindian Society in
New France According to Excerpts from the Jesuit Relations, 1626-1649.
Dave
Hackerson
"Father Jean de Brebeuf...
who, not having found there a single Savage who invoked the name of God,
labored there so successfully for the salvation of those poor Barbarians that
before his death he had the consolation of seeing nearly seven thousand baptized
there, and the cross of Jesus Christ planted nearly everywhere with glory, and
adored in a country which, from the birth of the world, had never been
Christian... He adapted his own
nature and temperament to the customs among these people, with so much ability;
becoming all things to all men, in order to win them to Jesus Christ; that he
had ravished their hearts, and was singularly loved there...
filled with the hopes that he had for the conversion of these
tribes."
During the initial stages of colonization in the St. Lawrence region of
New France, the Jesuits exercised a definitive role in fabricating relations
between Amerindians and their French counterparts.
This influence continued until 1650, when the remaining significant
Jesuit missions amongst the Hurons and Algonquins were laid to waste by the
Iroquois onslaught. The predominant
French motive in establishing a presence in Canada lay in generating revenue for
the royal treasury through the lucrative fur trade, thus supplying France with
the capital needed to pursue international hegemony.
However, the Jesuits viewed the infant wilderness of New France as a land
bristling with opportunities for the glories of Christendom, rather than a
reservoir for national exaltation through the procurement of material wealth.
The quote above was a posthumous commemorative by Father Paul Ragueneau
following Brebeuf's martyrdom amongst the Iroquois. It reflects the Jesuit
sentiments about their work amongst the Amerindians in New France.
Having encountered a land devoid of Christianity and rife with ignorance
and barbarism, Jesuit missionaries sought to infiltrate native societies, study
their social constructs, and subject them to the rigorous instruction of the
presumed one true faith in order to liberate their souls from the "vices of
the flesh." The Jesuit Relations
provides the modern historian with a unique firsthand account of this process
written by Jesuit priests as they documented their efforts to Christianize the
Amerindians. These documents provide insight into the manner in which the Jesuit
presence served to transfigure Amerindian society in New France and radically
alter traditional tribal dynamics. However, one must remember that
these accounts are the personal reflections of the Jesuits themselves.
Thus, the portrayal of the Amerindian is filtered through a
Judeo-Christian construct that continually disparages the traditional elements
of his culture as utterly corrupt and inferior to Christendom. However, despite
the Judeo-Christian bias of the Jesuit Fathers, one is able to derive an
understanding of the Amerindian reaction to the Jesuit presence and the arrival
of Christianity to their world through various conversations recorded in the Relations.
Contact with Europeans generated a demand for
unfamiliar manufactured products such as iron tools, cloth fabric, and
various other goods that the Amerindian could not produce themselves.
The Jesuits recognized that the lucrative fur trade which financed New
France afforded them a prime vehicle by which they could establish themselves
amongst the tribes and strengthen ties between the French and native societies.
"The merchants have not failed to send Frenchmen there (to the
tribes) to gain the good will of the Savages, and to induce them to come yearly
to the trading station." The Jesuits and the French soon realized
the vital importance of trade as an official delegation of
"gifting" that the Amerindians believed bound two parties together:
"... our gifts have a great impact on them."
Father Jean de Brebeuf commented on how the Hurons correlated the Jesuit
presence amongst them to the retention of trading privileges. Brebeuf
demonstrated how this intrinsic sense of reciprocity operated within the Huron
conscious:
"For-as they said- if you go elsewhere, we
have reason to fear not only for ourselves but for the whole country as our
interests are bound together. Now, however, that you take us as your hosts, we
need no longer be afraid as we might, for if you had chosen another place and
some ill-intended person had done you harm,
not only the French but the (other) Hurons also, would turn upon
us."
In this light, it behooved the Jesuits to utilize
this cultural peculiarity to exhort the Hurons to accept their presence in
accordance to the dictates of reciprocal obligation. Utilizing the fur trade,
the Jesuits were able to situate themselves in key villages of economic hegemony
in order to wield greater influence over the tribes of the trade network. �If
the Hurons were won over, the nation of the Neutrals, and others neighboring,
would hardly be slow to follow.�
Within Amerindian communities, Jesuit missionaries would parcel out gifts in
order to further reinforce their ties with key members of the village,
legitimizing their presence among the tribe as well as symbolizing the good will
of Catholic France.
Summarily
established amongst the Huron and Algonquins through the vehicle of trade, the
Jesuits set themselves to the task of mastering the language and acquainting
themselves with the elements of traditional society.
Without comprehensive command of the language, all efforts in working to
establish God's kingdom in the wilderness were for naught. Shortly after his arrival in 1626, Father Charles L'Allemant
stated: "During the work, the thought of acquiring a knowledge of the
language of this country was constantly in our minds; for it was said that we
could expect nothing from the interpreters." Reliance on interpreters would suffocate the labours of the
Jesuits and prohibit them from moving beyond the status of strangers living on
the fringes of Amerindian society.
Without the knowledge of language, the Jesuits were denied the means to
bridge the spiritual chasm they believed existed between the Amerindian and
European. Most notably, mastery of
the Huron language would prove invaluable in extending the ministry to the vast
majority of the tribes within the region, for theirs was the language of trade,
used by such nations as the Tobacco, Neutrals, Eries, as well as the Iroquois
confederation.
Empowered with the knowledge of language, the Jesuits were then able to
fully immerse themselves within the world of the Amerindian and study his
culture. "As to the customs of
the Savages, it is enough to say that they are altogether Savage. From morning
until night they have no other thought than to fill their stomachs... Vices of
the flesh are very common among them."
As missionaries, whose Christian duty entitled them to convert the heathen and
rescue them from these temporal chains, the Jesuits sought to understand native
culture only in respect to the obstructions that stifled the instillment of
Christian values. As a result, the
cultural values of the Amerindian were not depicted as legitimate social
constructs, but rather as multi-faceted facade that prohibited them from seeing
the merits of Christianity.
Amerindian society posed numerous obstacles that the Jesuits believed
diverted their religious fervor away from the true path of Catholicism.
"Their superstitions are unending-their feasts, their medicines,
their fishing, their hunting, their wars, in short, practically the whole of
their lives turn on this pivot." Superstition, according to the Jesuits, set the parameters of
their faith; they elaborated extensively on the absence of any pre-ordained
doctrine that governed their lives. The lack of any written text led the Jesuits
to discount these superstitions as the unfounded fabrications of human
speculation. They believed in
a divine being, but this being was merely a creator who fashioned the world
around them; the Amerindian felt little need to pay obeisance to this deity.
Each tribe possessed its own distinct version of an afterlife, but inherent in
all these was the common belief that the next world would be merely a
continuation of the present world, rather than the two distinct eternal
realities of Heaven and Hell. Though
they professed the immortality of the soul, Amerindians insisted that the
immortality and rationality of the soul extended to the animals as well. The
Fathers were quick to cite the lack of a moral impetus dictated by a system of
reward and punishments in native society; rather, they depicted their lives as
merely a quest to merely satiate the needs of the flesh and maintain the
continuity of the community.
The significantly varied belief system of Amerindian culture as depicted
by the Catholic prejudices of the Jesuit
Relations represents the diametrically opposed perspectives exhibited by
each respective culture. The
fundamental obstruction faced by the Jesuits in New France was the reluctance of
native societies to abandon the belief structure that they believed demystified
the chaos around them and proved relevant to their environment. Father Brebeuf
remarked: "And when we preach
to them about the one God, Creator of heaven and earth and all things, when we
speak of hell and of paradise and
others of our mysteries, the obstinate among them reply these things may be good
enough for our own people but not for them. Each place has its own way of doing
things." The Jesuits reasoned that if they could redirect the energies
of these natives towards the true faith of Catholicism, they would succeed in
producing definitive examples of the Christian individual in the midst of the
nefarious wilderness: a shining light for all the world to see.
Repeatedly, though, during the initial stages of conversion, the Jesuits
commented on the continued resistance of the Hurons and Algonquins to surrender
their beliefs and embrace the faith. "Le
Jeune could do much for the Indians there (mission at Three Rivers) were it not
for the wretched upper Algonquins; they cling to the superstitions, and torment
the Christians in every way." The key point of contention regarding this conflict of
beliefs lay in the universal perspectives of each respective religious
infrastructure: the temporal focus
of the Amerindian, contrasted by the eternally mindful Jesuit.
When discussing religious matters, the Jesuits refused to indulge the
cross-examinations of their Amerindian counterparts and dismissed them as
ill-founded postulates. Rather,
assuming the veracity of their religion to be indisputable, the Jesuits believed
it to be immoral to engage in such mindless debate.
One such characteristic example concerned the perceived superiority of
the Christian creation myth over the Huron creation myth:
"They tell us how the woman named
Eateanstic fell from heaven into the waters which cover the earth and that
little by little the earth became bare. I
ask them who created this heaven where this woman could not remain. They remain
silent and likewise when I press them to tell me who formed the earth, seeing
that it was beneath the waters before this woman fell. One man very subtly
asked in this connection where God was before the creation of the world.
The answer was made easier for me, following St. Augustine, that it was for them
to understand the question put to me."
This presumed superiority was continually reiterated
throughout much of the Jesuit Relations.
The Jesuits refused to entertain the notion that Catholic Christianity
was fallible in any regard, for to do so would be sacrilegious.
They denied the Indians the opportunity to analyze Christianity according
to their religious infrastructure. To
the Jesuit, their presence would serve to remove the curse of blindness that had
obscured the Amerindian vision of God and the universe.
The natives possessed the inherent acknowledgement of God, but the
ignorance of their forefathers had established a tradition that distorted this
once pure view.
According to the Jesuits, Amerindian society was enslaved by its belief
structure, founded in superstition, that dictated the routine of life.
These superstitions seemed to permeate every facet of native life and
were regarded by the Jesuits as proof of the dominion of Satan over these
people. Instead of a class of
priests that educate the people in the annals of the faith, the Jesuits
described the prominence of medicine men and diviners amongst the Amerindians
that call upon the devil for guidance. "I think these are the true
sorcerers allied to the devil... The
devil reveals some secrets to them but with so much obscurity that it is not
easy to call them liars...the devil amuses these poor people by putting his
impieties and supervisions in place of the acquiescence which they should have
to the Providence of God, and the worship they should offer Him." Jesuits considered the activities of medicine men and diviners to be merely the exercise of
baseless superstition in efforts to address the unexplained certainties of the future and the mysteries of disease.
Vague prophetic visions, elemental magic, and communal feasts all seemed
to reinforce this notion of Amerindian society dominated by wiles of the devil
striving to prolong the enslavement of these unfortunate individuals to the
carnal pursuits of the flesh.
In
spite of these innate obstacles to the Faith, the challenge the process of
converting the �Savages� entailed encouraged the Jesuits. Successful
conversion of the Savage, in the eyes of the Jesuit, would demonstrate the
all-encompassing power of Christ. Their
work would also compel them to rely on the divine intervention of God rather
than the merits of superior human intellect:
�Their
licentious and lazy lives, their rude and untutored minds, able to comprehend so
little, the scarcity of words they have to explain our mysteries, never having
had any form of divine worship will tax our wits.
And yet we do not lose courage, thank God; trusting in this truth, that
God will not have so much regard to the fruits that we produce, as to our good
will and trouble we take; and besides, the greater the difficulty in their
conversion, and the more distrust we have in ourselves, so much greater will be
our trust in God.�
Faced with seemingly insurmountable difficulties, the Jesuits realized
that their work amongst the natives would manifest the incalculable ways by
which the Lord established His kingdom in a hostile environment.
Not only would this procedure increase the ranks of citizens in
Christendom by utilizing the Jesuits as the instrument of evangelization, but it
would serve to refine their very faith as well.
The Jesuits realized that the mind of the Amerindian must be
rehabilitated in order to render him receptive to the redeeming graces of the
Faith. Thus, their efforts to
comprehend the Amerindian belief structure enabled them to develop methods to
supplant these cultural precepts. However, these deeply ingrained beliefs could
only be deconstructed through patient endurance in the selfless labor to
vigorously reeducate the Amerindian mind through Catholic instruction. �The
conversion of the Savage takes time. The first six to seven years will appear
sterile to some; and, if I should say ten or twelve, I would possibly not be far
from the truth. But is that reason why all should be abandoned? Are not
beginnings necessary everywhere?� The Jesuits remained optimistic, relishing the divine
sanctity of their cause; willing to labor diligently without the promise of
immediate results in order to acclimate the �Savage� mind and ready it for
the message of those who would inherit their work in the following years.
Initially, the Jesuit strategy of conversion bore a limited scope of
focus. In order to more
aggressively pursue the conversion of each tribe as a whole, it was necessary to
first establish a core base from which to expand and gradually envelope the
entire nation. Often, when first
settling in a village, priests would makedaily visits to local cabins to
instruct the children in the rudimentary basics of Catholic catechism.
�We derived considerable advantage from this little exercise, by
improving ourselves in the language� these talks, however, were not very long;
one must learn to put one foot before the other before he can walk.�
These activities served to acquaint the Jesuits with the families of the village
and establish camaraderie with the children and gain a greater mastery of the
language. Though these short talks did not achieve any significant progress,
they did sow the seeds of the faith and established a foundation upon which to
build.
Such
preliminary methods reflected the foresight of the Jesuits in their conversion
strategy. First and foremost, they
sought out the children as the initial converts to be won to the faith.
Their young and impressionable minds proved to be the most pliant to the
Jesuit teachings, for the traditional beliefs of native culture had not yet been
firmly fixated. �The children who have been Baptized at years discretion,
have given evidences of a good mind; they quickly apprehend, retain easily, and
have become very diligent in the Catechism.�
The Jesuits believed that the conversion of the young would ensure that the
wiles of Amerindian culture would be eradicated upon the death of the preceding
generation. A core group of
Christian youth, rejecting these traditional values, would guarantee that in the
following generations these tribes would be exhibit strong Christian leadership.
The conversion of the young initiated the confrontation
between the traditional values of the parents and the Christian learning of
their children. In a communal
society in which tribal cohesiveness necessitated family stability, this tension
would only be heightened by the chastisement of Christian children by their
�heathen� parents. Thus, in
order to maintain family unity, the parents would often request Baptism into the
faith. Le Mercier, a Jesuit priest
observing this phenomena, commented on how the presence of converted children
worked to coerce the parents to embrace the Faith.
�This Savage had often meditated upon his conversion; it was already a
great advantage for him to have a son so well instructed in all the mysteries of
the Faith.�
Here again, the fundamental foundation in establishing a Christian contingent
within Amerindian society, in the eyes of the Jesuits, proved to be the
conversion of the youth, the future of the tribe. Once a child converted, the
parents soon followed.
Equally
as important in converting the children of the tribe were the prominent
individuals of the village and their family members.
Concerning a promising young man, Father Vimont wrote:
�The Baptism of this young
man causes us to hope for the Conversion of many others; for, besides that he is
very exemplary and very zealous, he belongs to one of the largest and most
numerous families of the Hurons, which is already thoroughly attached to the
faith, and which awaits, it seems, only the Baptism of this young man in order
to plunge after him into those blessed waters.�
Converting these individuals would greatly facilitate the process of
evangelizing the community. The
Jesuits recognized that Amerindian leaders lead by example and were emulated by
those of the community. Successful
conversion of these individuals would encourage the people to convert and
exercise the wisdom demonstrated by their leaders. Rehabilitating these leaders
by means of Catholic instruction would circumvent traditional values governing
Amerindian society and effectively establish Christian leadership.
The Jesuits were often frustrated by their inability to elucidate the
spiritual plight of the Amerindian and his urgent need to abandon the folly of
Satan in order to gain salvation through the Faith.
The provisions of Heaven did little to dissuade the stubborn resistance
to Christian instruction. Rather,
the Jesuits sought to instill fear in the heart of the Savages by relating the
horrific imagery of Hell. This
method was especially effective in entreating those in the throngs of illness to
abandon their traditional beliefs and accept the mandates of Heaven. Observing a
native anguishing in sickness, one Jesuit Father remonstrated with him that
�the pains which he suffered, and accounted intolerable, were nothing in
comparison with the horrible tortures that he would suffer in Hell, if he
continued in his treacheries� that
made an impression on his mind, and he entreated the Father to pray to God for
him and to teach him.�
The Jesuits likened the fires of Hell to the vengeful torture fires reserved for
captured enemies, an image with which all Amerindians could readily identify.
Depicting Hell as one continuous torture fire accentuated Amerindian fear
of the horrible wrath of the French God, and proved to be the most effective Jesuit instrument in the conversion process.
The Jesuits carefully scrutinized the motives of those �Savages� who
professed a desire to be converted. If
they discovered that these individuals were motivated by mere material gains of
the temporal world, rather than the eternal blessings of Heaven, they would fain
extend the rites of Baptism and reject their seemingly earnest supplications for
conversion.
Due to their notion of the deep-seated depravity of the Amerindian mind,
the Jesuits continually deferred the Baptism of potential converts until they
determined whether or not they had received sufficient instruction to remove the
impurities of superstition, as demonstrated by the following account:
�The half have been
baptized; all the others are Catechumens, and exceedingly desirous of the same
blessing. But they are put off for good reasons; it is well to try the Savages a
long time, especially when one suspects that temporal interest moves them, or
that they are more attached to their errors��
Ultimately, those who wished to convert had to exhibit genuine divine motivation
in order to receive the faith. The Amerindian had to demonstrate sincere
abandonment of temporal pursuits in exchange
for the �burden of the Cross� in order to convince the Jesuits of their
earnestness.
However, there was an exception to this standard of conversion
by means of subjection to rigorous instruction.
The Jesuits believed that the rites of Baptism should always be granted
to those who requested them on the verge of death. Numerous accounts within the Relations
describe Amerindians, namely those who fell victim to the ever-increasing
epidemics that ravaged native communities, who received Baptism at the moment of
death. The Jesuits believed that
the nearness of death, combined with the overt fear of intense torment within
the eternal fires of Hell, instilled a sense of urgency in the soul, as in this
instance recorded by Father Le Mercier:
�When the Father Superior
(Father Chastellain) went to see her and found her quite sick, he had no sooner
made overtures of Baptism to her, than she replied that she would be very glad
to receive it� This good
disposition, together with the bad condition of her health, which threatened
death, induced the Father Superior to instruct her fully�
The chief point is that she died a Christian.�
The epidemics and illnesses that afflicted Amerindian
communities were attributed to the divine hand of God working
clandestinely to advance his kingdom. Stirring the soul to consider their
eternal destination in light of the horrific nature of Hell the Jesuits related,
it seemed logical for the Amerindian to accept the Faith at the threshold of
death. The ultimate goal of the
Jesuits, as stated by Father Le Mercier, is that the �Savage� dies a
Christian, regardless of when conversion occurred during the course of their
lives.
Amerindian
converts were continually commended by the Jesuits for their complete rejection
of their traditional practices and their willingness to chastise their heathen
brethren for stubbornly clinging to the very customs and rituals that assured
their eternal damnation. One native
convert commented to one of the Fathers: �What
they teach us is of importance; they forbid us everything that is bad� all our
wicked customs which betray us and cast us into a fire after death� terrible
in its duration.�
Acquiescence of the convert to Jesuit instruction manifested a complete
transformation of the individual and succeeded in replicating Jesuit Catholic
ideology within the mind of the native. The
convert renounced the temporal chains that held him captive to the lusts of the
flesh and turned his eyes upon the spiritual realm, completely indifferent to
the affairs of the present world lest they merit reward in heaven.
Despite the
fact that traditional native society respected the autonomy of the individual in
governing their personal activities, Christian natives were critical of each
other and prudently reproved their Christian brethren for subsequent faults in
matters of the Faith. �One who shall understand the Savage will be astonished
at the liberty that he took in
reproving his comrade; for I will say, in passing, that it is astonishing, what
respect the Savages show to one another in this regard.�
This particularly delighted the Jesuits, for it represented the victory
of Christian doctrine over traditional �savage� dogma within the hearts of
the converts: it demonstrated the ability of the Faith to eradicate the dictums
of traditional culture and implant the principles of Christianity.
The Jesuits
commended the native converts for their pious behavior and complete devotion to
the faith, often commenting that the piety of these natives would discredit the
testimonies of the majority of the professed Christians of Europe. Native converts were continually pursuing the
mortification of the flesh by fleeing temptation and seeking God through
meditation. One account records how a young Christian native, when confronted by
a woman seeking to have sex with him, repeatedly resisted her and ultimately
fled into the snow in the dead of winter. Stripping
himself naked, he proceeded to whip himself with a reed for having placed
himself in a situation presenting an opportunity for sin.
He earnestly appealed to the Jesuit Fathers, entreating them as to what
must he do in order to dissuade the anger of God for his negligence.
Such incidents served to convince the Jesuits that the Faith truly
reigned supreme in the hearts of their Neophytes, and that the evils of the
flesh could be conquered through the power of God even in the midst of a most
barbaric land.
However,
these exemplary acts of piety did not remove doubt from the minds of the Jesuit,
for these converts where still human, and
apt to fall victim to the resurgent guiles of the flesh.
Thus, in order to preserve the perpetuation of the faith amongst the
Christian natives, the Jesuits believed they needed to personally supervise
their lives at regulated Christian missions.
Due to the continual conflict with traditional superstitions and the
corrupting practices that governed native communities, the Neophytes needed to
be isolated from these influences in order to strengthen their faith.
Absent from their instructing presence, the Jesuits feared the converts would
soon abandon the faith and embrace the former depravity of Savage culture due to
indirect communal reproach. The converts were well aware of this risk and even
professed the frailty of their own human nature in resisting the vices of their
traditional culture. �For, while we shall be here among you, it is hardly
possible for us to offend God, seeing so many good examples of virtue, and no
vices: but in our own country, it is quite the contrary, one knows not what it
is to do right; it is chaos confusion and disorder.�
Thus, out of necessity of preserving the faith of the converts, isolation
from their heathen brethren was the only feasible means by which to guard them
from the debasing facets of native culture that proved to be detrimental to the
progression of the Faith.
The
fundamentally opposed values that the Catholic faith brought to the Amerindian
by the Jesuits sowed the seeds of discontent within native communities.
Tribal unity disintegrated as Christian factions became established in
Amerindian society. Christian
Indians, reiterating the teachings of the Jesuits, abhorred every facet of
traditional society and exhorted their fellow tribesmen to embrace the faith.
However, traditional advocates earnestly believed that the arrival of
Christianity presented a cruel paradox; the very faith that was supposed
to provide salvation only succeeded in initiating the degeneration of tribal
existence. One Algonquin said the
following to one of the Jesuit Fathers:
�It is a strange thing, that
since prayer has come into our cabins, our former customs are no longer of any
service; and yet we shall die because we give them up� Now our dreams and our
prophecies are no longer true, prayer has spoiled everything for us��
Traditionalists believed that the faith had emasculated their
mores and rituals; yet, converting failed to lift the hand of affliction from
their tribes. In their eyes, the
Jesuits were the evil that fostered their misfortune by stripping their society
of the power to maintain and safeguard itself from the maladies that assailed
it, namely, pervasive epidemics and the increasing incursions of the Iroquois.
These natives were confounded by the absence of religious uniformity
amongst the French; they questioned the Jesuit Fathers as to why they
persistently rebuked Amerindian society when their fellow Frenchmen scoffed at
the faith the Jesuits sought to establish in their midst.
How, they asked, could their societies survive when the Jesuit presence
and their Christian teaching had destroyed the communal contingency that had
sustained them?
The Jesuits
viewed this conflict within Amerindian society as pertaining to the pains of
cultural transformation and God�s testing of native resolve. Conflict arose as
a consequence of the traditionalists� stubborn resistance to the faith and
their continued allegiance to Satan. Christian
Indians were at odds with their heathen brethren because they had exchanged
their temporal perspective for divine understanding; they refused to tolerate
their iniquity in their presence for fear of the corrupting influence of
barbaric customs.
Hostility erupted when Christian natives confronted the traditionalists: though
they were of the same tribe, they considered each other to be of two completely
different worlds. This only reinforced the disjunction within the community,
thus furthering weakening the tribe and rendering it vulnerable to the
increasing aggression of the Iroquois. Still,
the accounts found within the Jesuit Relations reveal that the Jesuits
perceived this conflict to be physical manifestation of the spiritual warfare
that was being waged between the terrestrial schemes of Satan to preserve his
dominion over native societies and legions of Heaven fighting to liberate them
from imminent eternal damnation. Nonetheless, this conflict reflects the indomitable strain
endured by Amerindian society as the result of the slowly growing acceptance of
Jesuit teaching.
In the
1640�s documented the increasing frequency of Iroquois raids into New France,
resulting in the annihilation of entire villages and threatening to sever the
trade that sustained the economy of New France.
However, though the Jesuits were dismayed by the misfortune that befell
the native converts and their fellow tribesmen, these attacks served to
facilitate their efforts amongst these tribes.
The Iroquois threat succeeded in driving the Huron and Algonquin people
out of the forest to the asylum and safety of the French settlements and the
Jesuit missions:
�We have recently seen that
Mont-real has been the asylum of the refugee Hurons, and the salvation of many
others of various nations in which the people have been to know it, and to
desire the happiness of being there�
They send word that they are perpetually speaking of it (Mont-real), and that
sooner or later they will all come thither, notwithstanding the dread of the
Iroquois, if there is strong temporal succor against the enemy. Behold glorious
harvests.�
The Jesuits viewed these misfortunes as a blessing in disguise, for their
pressing predicament softened the hearts of the �Barbarians� and made their
minds more receptive to the Gospel. Christianity
could only thrive in midst of adversity; the Jesuits attributed the suffering of
these people to ability of the Christian faith to abound in the season of
persecution.
In the end, the Jesuits welcomed the Iroquois aggression as the divine
instrument of God implemented in producing the bountiful yield of harvested
souls. This reflected their
sentiment of preservation through destruction.
The annihilation of Huron and Algonquin societies served to gain their
eternal enrichment through the grace of Faith.
Though dismayed by the disintegration of their missions through the
Iroquois blitzkrieg, the Jesuits gloried in the knowledge that their
Christian presence on the eve of tribal obliteration provided a means to
salvation for these forsaken masses. The
definitive goal of their mission was to gain souls for Christ, and they
reconciled themselves to accept whatever divine means He might employ in
achieving this endeavor.
At the conclusion of the Relations examined here, the glaring
paradox evident is how each party perceived the consequences of arrival of
Christianity to the Amerindian world. For
the Jesuits, the Amerindian was forever blessed with the endowments of heavenly
grace; the destruction of his traditional society removed the temporal chains
that would prohibit him from delighting in this eternal reward: �And if Christ
be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of
righteousness.�
However, to the Amerindian, Christianity removed the very traditions by which he
defined his existence; without these, he ceased to be anything.
Christianity turned him against himself and shattered the unity that
underscored every facet of life; in short, the Faith succeeded in deconstructing
his reality.
Works
Cited
Thwaites, Reuben
Gold, ed. The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents,
1610-1791 [collection on-line] (Cleavland, OH.� The Burrow Brothers
Company, latter part of 19th century, accessed 28th
October 2001, accessed 11th November, 2001) ; available from http://puffin.creighton.edu/jesuit/relations
MacDougall,
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