Black Robes and Buckskin: A Selection from the Jesuit Relations

‘‘We [Engage Them] In Devout Conversations’’

‘‘we [engage them] in devout conversations’’ At the request of Samuel de Champlain, who wanted to pacify the native tribes through conversion to Christianity for the purposes of colonial expansion and commercial activity, King Louis XIII sent the Récollets, a very strict branch of the Franciscan order, to missionize New France. However, since the Récollets were an itinerant and mendicant order, they had no funds of their own and very little resources; their mission was not very successful. Six friars established five missions; they went to the principal French outposts of Tadoussac, Quebec, Montreal, and Trois-Rivières, said mass, and tried to preach to the natives. They were not received with much enthusiasm. They also ran into opposition from the Huguenots, or French Protestant, traders, who refused to comply with King Henry’s demand not to practice their faith in the New World. The Huguenots were prone to bellowing out psalms or hymns whenever the Récollets offered an open-air mass, drowning out the words of the priests. In 1621, two Huguenot traders were given monopoly over the fur trade in the area: William and Emery, brothers from Caen. Their appointment only caused further harassment of the friars by the Protestants. Further hindering conversions, in the summer of 1622, a war party attacked the Récollets at Quebec. Finally, the Crown sold control of the area to the Duke of Ventadour, a devout man who had entered holy orders and who wanted to purchase the land grant so that he could save the souls of Native Americans in New France. His confessor was a Jesuit. At this point, the Récollets requested that the Jesuits come help them. However, there was tension right from the beginning between the two orders, which had very different approaches to the job at hand. Some of these differences had to do with the disestablished nature of the Récollet order; wanderers themselves, they did not perceive a need to settle the nomadic tribes so that they could better be taught, cared for, and ministered to. Settlement, however, was a Jesuit priority. Father Charles L’Allemant, the author of the following letter, was one of the first three Jesuits, accompanied by Enemond Masse and Jean de Brébeuf of martyr’s fame. Although Canada had already existed officially for eighteen years, very little had been done in terms of proselytizing the natives. With Cardinal Richelieu having come to power in France, however, things were about to change: he was an autocratic minister whose authority was not to be questioned. Opposed to Protestantism, he quickly revoked the trading rights of all French Protestants, starting with the Caen brothers, and formed a Company of one hundred associates, the Company of New France, which he himself directed and which controlled the monopoly of all trade and any other affairs, secular or spiritual, for the colony of New France. He required the Company to write in its bylaws that by 1643 at least four thousand men and women would have been sent to the colony; each person must be both French and Catholic, and at least three priests must be posted to each new settlement. Of course, England was infuriated by this move. The British colonists in the New World were Puritans, bitterly opposed to any sort of episcopal (bishop-governed) church polity and even more adamantly set against Rome, the Pope, and the Jesuit order. They, too, wanted the fur trade routes for themselves. The Indian tribes had not changed much since their initial contact with the white man, and Father L’Allemant records the differences in lifestyle between natives and Frenchmen, their mutual incomprehension , and his objection to some of their qualities (such as their lack of hygiene), and others he admires. Most of all, he describes the struggle to cross cultural boundaries and to translate Christianity into concepts 58 ‘‘We [Engage Them] in Devout Conversations’’ comprehensible to the Indians. Other Jesuit Fathers describe this challenge as well, but Father L’Allemant stresses more heavily the issues of available interpreters, their skill or lack of it, their faithfulness to sense or distortion, and the whole process of interpreting as not only a linguistic skill but also as an exercise in learning about a different culture (and, in the process, reflecting on one’s own). Another characteristic of the Jesuits comes out in Father L’Allemant’s style: his careful...