Part 1. The First Steps of Roman Catholicism on the Continent of North America (Cont.)

Their religious worldview stood at one level with their moral, and represented crude fetishism. For the childish consciousness of the Indian, the entire world was an animate being, all objects were spirits (oki or manitou) which according to their disposition could bring him harm or show mercy. The river, mountain, lake, forest, beast, bird, snake—all was full of spirits, all could listen to the Indian’s requests and fulfill them. Often a hunter, wounding an animal, would humbly ask its forgiveness. A fisherman, before casting his net into the water, would address speeches both to the net itself so that it would catch fish, and to the fish so they would not fear to enter the net, assuring them that the greatest respect would be shown to their bones. Each Indian had his own special guardian spirit, in the form of some animate or inanimate object, which was acquired through dreams, and to which he prayed, offering sacrifice in the form of tobacco or the spoils of the hunt. ‘It would be difficult to say,’ says Jesuit Maret, ‘what consists the religion of our Indians. It consists entirely of superstitions which nourish their faith. Since all their knowledge is limited to familiarity with animals and the necessary needs of life, their idolatry is also limited to these.’[1] But traces of abstract religious thought were also noticed among them. The spirits were not considered inseparable from objects, but on the contrary constituted a separate realm and only manifested themselves in the form of different objects. By preference they were embodied in animal forms, sometimes they also took human form, and sometimes lived in stones; but they took all their forms freely, by their own choice, and therefore often changed them. The savage’s thought clearly attempted to rise higher along the path of abstraction; but here it became lost in obscurities and dissolved in mist. The idea of monotheism dimly slumbered in the Indian’s consciousness, and with all the efforts of his mental capacity could not rise higher than the crude form of the master of all beasts or the so-called Great Hare (Monabozho), to whom the world owes its origin.[2] Conceptions regarding the essence of this Great Hare differed among different tribes: sometimes he appeared as an actual hare of enormous size, sometimes as some extraordinary man. According to one tradition, after creating the world, he flew to heaven, from where he influences the fates of men.[3] Here with greater clarity glimmers forth a theistic idea, although to the Jesuits it seemed so obscure that they denied the Indians any concept of God.[4] In any case, it is remarkable that among the Indians the missionaries found no word which could express the idea of God and therefore resorted to descriptive form: ‘The Great Master of Men,’ ‘He Who Lives in Heaven,’ and the like. But at the same time the structure of Indian worldview, by which each group of beings had its chief or master, gave the missionaries the opportunity to lead the consciousness of savages to the concept of God as the Great Master of all things,[5] so that among them there could easily develop the concept of that Great Spirit under which they even now understand the idea of God. In the realm of other religious questions the Indian’s thought as if groping wandered in darkness. The creation of the world, although attributed to the Great Hare, was not creation in the absolute sense, but rather a transformation of a disorderly or even destroyed by flood world. The Indians traced their own existence not to a general Creator of the world, but to animals, the different species of which different tribes considered their ancestors. Thus some traced themselves from the bear, others from the carp or other fish, and so on,[6] and found in themselves the virtues and qualities characterizing these animal ancestors. They believed in the immortality of the soul, in future life—with reward and punishment, the first being assigned to the best hunter and warrior, who had killed the most animals and enemy men, and the latter awaiting the lazy and cowards. Relations between men and spirits were direct. Each himself worshipped his guardian spirit and offered it sacrifice. An organized class of intermediaries or priests did not yet exist; but the beginnings of such a class were already appearing in the form of shamans, who stepped forward as men most closely connected with spirits, and thanks to this close connection with the higher world possessed special means for saving people from various evils and illnesses. These shamans very often turned out to be the worst enemies of the missionaries, all the more because the latter in their preaching first of all sought to undermine the confidence of the Indians in these self-appointed intermediaries between them and the spirits.[7]

Such was the soil on which the Jesuits had to sow the seeds of Christianity. It was stony soil, which in order to be brought to a state to receive and grow the seed sown upon it required not only long and stubborn labor, but skilled and tireless laborers. ‘Nothing can be more difficult than the conversion of these Indians. They must first be transformed into humans, and then made into Christians,’ wrote one of the laborers on whom this task fell.[8] ‘Reason in this people is completely suppressed and they are almost incapable of submitting to the yoke of the Gospel. But the farther they are from the kingdom of God, the stronger our zeal should be to bring them near to it and give them the opportunity to enter it,’ says the same zealous missionary.[9] And indeed, the missionaries undertook the work with the zeal that only the force of Christian genius could inspire, and accomplished exploits before which pale the legendary deeds of heroes of ordinary culture.[10] At the same time these exploits show that the renowned order can fulfill its motto—Ad majorem Dei Gloriam—even apart from the political intrigue which principally earned it historical fame.

II

The starting point for the Jesuits’ missionary activity was the fort of Quebec. Around it lived Indians more or less accustomed to the French.[11] With them the Jesuits began their preaching. The first thing necessary was to learn the Indian language, and this was no easy task. In the absence of any literary aids, and given the originality and fragmentation of the Indian language, it was difficult even to approach its study, and difficult to make oneself understood by the Indians. But the Jesuits were accustomed to overcoming all difficulties, and began the study of the language through Indian children. They lured these human-like creatures, naked and red-skinned, to them, caressed them, and through them gathered the necessary stock of words.[12] By fortunate chance, there was in the fort an Indian who had previously been captured by the French and taken to Paris, where he had managed to become acquainted with the French language. The Jesuits turned to him as an instrument of Divine Providence especially sent to acquaint them with the Indian language; but the Frenchified savage was extremely lazy and fickle, and his attention could be maintained only by packages of tobacco.[13] Having barely managed to gather a meager stock of words, the Jesuits immediately set about translating into the Indian language the most necessary prayers and set out to preach.[14]