The Catholic Calumet: Colonial Conversions in French and Indian North America by Tracy Neal Leavelle (review)

In 1730, in an audience with the French governor in New Orleans, Illinois leaders Chicagou and Mamantouensa presented Jesuit missionaries with two calumets, or ceremonial pipes. The pipes symbolized the shared French-Illinois attachment to Christianity and the diplomatic and military alliance between the two groups (pp. 1-2). In The Catholic Calumet: Colonial Conversions in French and Indian North America, Tracy Neal Leavelle uses this indigenous cultural vessel as a symbol for the ways in which the Illinois incorporated Catholicism into their lives. In a broader sense, it also is a symbol that aptly describes the results of many decades of encounter and cultural translation, particularly the exchange of spiritual gifts, among Native Americans and French missionaries in the Upper Great Lakes region. The Calumet existed among many cultural vessels—both indigenous and French—that took on new meanings as native and French peoples interacted across the long seventeenth century. Indian peoples assigned Mass, Catholic songs, and prayers indigenous meanings as they performed them more and more in their own spaces. French missionaries baptized and converted, but were themselves moved to different expressions of their own religion due to close interactions with Indian peoples, traditions, and culture (p. 10).

Leavelle shows the importance of human relationships, showing that the trade in ideas—not just the trade in skins and iron implements—was crucial to Native-French alliances. Trade between the Ottawas and the French, for example, was not based solely on material goods. Ottawa worldviews had long valued cooperation and exchange. When the French arrived in the seventeenth century, they brought with them (from the Ottawa perspective) new opportunities for cooperation and idea exchange. The Ottawas developed strategic positions in the Great Lakes region to take advantage of the French presence in North America (p. 27).

Leavelle uses his sources in fresh ways. His use of Illinois dictionaries produced by Jesuit linguists furthers his discussion by showing how language served as another cultural vessel. Scholars have long used The Jesuit Relations to supply historical and ethnographic detail for this period. Leavelle utilizes the Relations as a religious text. In this way, he is able to ascertain particular historical expressions of spirituality—both on the part of French missionaries as well as on the part of Native peoples. Leavelle also teases out how the ways missionaries practiced their religion often was different from how they idealized their religion and how they expressed religious doctrine. Leavelle argues for a clear understanding of Jesuit spirituality in the early-modern era to appreciate fully their cultural encounters within Indian communities. Additionally, to represent better the diverse nature of the Jesuit writings and their individual authors, Leavelle uses full citations of the Thwaites edition of the Relations. The Thwaites narratives are much less polished than the widely publicized Jesuit Relations, and they have individual authors. Thwaites's unpolished and frank narratives add a depth and dimension that serves Leavelle's story well by enabling him to represent better the diversity of Jesuit writings and their individual authors.

Leavelle pays balanced attention to the French and indigenous peoples, and complicates ideas about Catholicism and expressions of Indian culture and tradition. He considers how Catholicism was, for many Indians, an authentic expression of their lives. This results in a rich and engaging story about the expanding, retracting, and ever-evolving relationships between the missionaries and various Algonquian-speaking nations of the Upper Great Lakes and Illinois country.