Part 1. The First Steps of Roman Catholicism on the Continent of North America (Cont.) (8)

The Jesuit Marquette arrived in Quebec in 1666, labored for several years in missionary work among the tribes scattered in the vicinity of the great lakes, and there too first heard of the great river, ‘the father of waters.’ He resolved to penetrate to its banks and earnestly prayed that the honor of being the first to discover and spread the gospel among the peoples dwelling on its banks would fall to him. To his great good fortune he found support in the governor of Canada, who took his idea warmly to heart, gave him as an assistant the learned Frenchman Joliet, with whom Marquette began making preparations for an expedition, sketched out a rough map of the river on the basis of accounts from the Indians, and on May 17, 1673, two canoes with Marquette, Joliet, and five companions set out on Lake Michigan into unknown waters. The Indians told all sorts of horrors about this remote region and said: ‘These peoples never spare foreigners; their mutual wars fill the river banks with parties of warriors; the Great River abounds in monsters that devour both men and canoes; excessive heat causes death.’ But the courageous Jesuit replied to all these warnings: ‘I shall joyfully lay down my life for the salvation of souls.’[1] A month later the travelers finally entered the long-desired Mississippi River, ‘with such joy,’ Marquette notes, ‘as I cannot express.’ The learned Jesuit was a very observant man, and in his letter he records all the peculiarities of the river and its banks, and this record is of the greatest natural historical interest. Their canoes sped rapidly down the current of the great river, passing through a wilderness, ‘terrible for its complete absence of humans.’ Finally on June 25, they saw a footprint on the bank and a path leading into a beautiful prairie. There they landed and set out to find a village. These were the first white men who had ever set foot on the soil of present-day Illinois. In the distance they saw an Indian village. Placing themselves under the protection of Divine Providence, they resolved to announce themselves with shouts. The Indians heard, and an old Indian came out to meet them and greeted them with signs. But this tribe’s language proved understandable to Marquette. The Indian invited the travelers into his lodge and they passed under the devouring gaze of a crowd of savages. Marquette declared that he was an emissary of the Great Spirit, who had entrusted him with teaching them to know Him, and his companion (Joliet) was the representative of the great chief of the French people in Canada, who had chastened the Iroquois and grants peace to all peoples. The Indian chief listened carefully and then addressed them with a magnificent speech, which was recorded by Marquette and represents an interesting specimen of the Indians’ natural eloquence.[2] After this reception, the Indians prepared a great feast for the guests. ‘It consisted of four courses,’ writes the Jesuit, ‘and we had to partake in it according to all their rules. The first dish was a large bowl of sagamite—an Indian dish, boiled in water and seasoned with fat. The master of ceremonies, taking a spoonful of sagamite, brought it three or four times to my mouth, as is done with children among us. He did the same with Joliet. For the second course, he brought a dish containing three fish; he took care to remove the bones and, blowing on them to cool them, put a piece in my mouth, just as we feed birds. For the third course, they brought a large dog that had just been killed; but learning that we did not eat it, they removed it. Finally, the fourth course consisted of a piece of wild buffalo, and the fattest parts of it were placed in my mouth.’[3] The Indians so liked the white men that six hundred of them accompanied them to their canoes.

The travelers sailed on, and after many adventures and dangers reached the mouth of the Arkansas River. There they met Indians who already knew Europeans and traded with the Spanish, and were able to finally determine where the mouth of the Mississippi lay. At first they had supposed that this river flowed into the California Gulf, but now they were convinced that ‘the Mississippi undoubtedly has its mouth in the Mexican Gulf.’ This was all they were seeking, and therefore they decided to return, especially since continuing further they might fall into the hands of the Spanish, who were then at war with the French. On July 17, they turned their canoes back and began the difficult journey against the current of the river. All this journey, attended by many hardships and dangers, is remarkable if only for its length. In their frail canoes these travelers covered more than 2,700 miles. ‘If all this journey,’ says Marquette, ‘had resulted in the salvation of even one soul, I would consider all its hardships repaid; and I have reason to think so, for when I was returning and passing the Peoria Indians, they brought me to the bank a dying child, whom I baptized shortly before he died.’[4]

The fame of the discovery made by Marquette spread throughout the world and aroused the ambition of the French, who hastened to derive trading and political advantages from it. But for the missionary himself, the salvation of souls was dearest. He soon returned to the newly discovered region, preached the gospel to the Indians, who proved to be a peaceful and simple-hearted people, and there died in 1675. ‘The good missionary,’ a historian remarks on this occasion, ‘died on the banks of the stream bearing his name. Near the mouth, the boatmen dug a grave for him in the sand. But afterward, forest wanderers, when in danger, invoked his name. The peoples of the west will raise him a monument.’[5]

After Marquette came a succession of other missionaries who, using the path already opened, could boldly carry the preaching of the cross. Among them was particularly remarkable Gravier, who was the first to establish an organized mission, studied the Illinois language, and brought it under grammatical rules.[6] Thanks to the efforts of a series of missionaries, the Illinois were already in the early eighteenth century mostly Christians, zealously observing the rites of the Roman Catholic Church. In a letter from 1712, the Jesuit Marest wrote of them as follows, which at the same time generally characterizes the missionary methods of the Jesuits:

‘Christianity has softened the wild customs of the Illinois, and their behavior now is distinguished by pleasantness and propriety, so that some Frenchmen have begun to marry their daughters. We find in them, moreover, obedience and zeal in the performance of Christian virtues. In our mission we observe the following order every day. Early in the morning we gather the catechumens in church, where they pray, receive instruction, and sing some hymns. When they leave, mass begins, at which all the Christians are present, men on one side and women on the other; then they pray, are given a sermon, after which each goes to his work. We then spend our time visiting the sick, give them necessary medicines, instruct them, and comfort those who are in grief. In the afternoon, there is catechetical instruction, at which all are present—Christians and catechumens, men and children, young and old—and each, without distinction of age or status, answers the questions posed by the missionary. Since these people have no books and are by nature careless, they would soon forget the principles of religion if reminders were not provided through these almost continuous instructions. Our visits to the lodges occupy the rest of the day. In the evening, all gather again in church, hear the instruction given them, pray, and sing some hymns. On Sundays and feast days, in addition to the usual pious exercises, there is instruction given after evening prayer. The zeal with which these good neophytes go to church at all hours is wonderful. They interrupt their work and run from distant places to arrive in time. They usually end the day with private meetings in their own dwellings, men separately from women, where they repeat prayer with singing, sing hymns, until late at night. These hymns are the best instruction for them; they retain them most easily, as the words are set to tunes to which they are accustomed and which they like. They frequently approach the sacraments, and among them it is customary to confess and receive communion once every two weeks. We were forced to appoint special days on which they must confess, otherwise they would not give us time to perform our own duties. These are Friday and Sunday of each week, when we hear their confessions, and on these days we are besieged by a crowd of penitents. The care we take of the sick inspires them with confidence in us, and it is in such moments we especially reap the fruits of our labor. Their obedience is perfect, and we generally have the consolation of seeing them die in peace and with firm hope soon to be united with God in heaven.[7]’

Thus Christianity succeeded in transforming the savages, those very ones of whom the same Jesuit says that ‘they must first be converted into humans, and then we must work to make them Christians.’[8]

By the beginning of the eighteenth century, Roman Catholicism, thanks to the extraordinary energy and enterprise of the sons of Loyola, had thus managed to spread itself among most of the tribes inhabiting the continent of North America. It seemed that this vast continent was forever brought under the submission of the Roman Curia, seeking compensation for the lands lost in Europe, and it hoped to rely upon it when volcanic upheavals shook its historical throne in the Old World. But this hope was not destined to be realized. Soon began an intensified migration of Europeans to the new continent, and a bitter struggle broke out between the newcomers and the natives, and for the latter it was fatal. Relying on their superiority in battle, the colonists ruthlessly exterminated the Indians, so that entire tribes either perished from bullets or withdrew into the wilderness.[9] With the Indians perished also the fruits of the Jesuits’ missionary labor. At last came a difficult time for the Jesuits themselves. With the increase of the Protestant population, which constituted the majority of the settlers, and with the establishment of English rule in the country, severe laws began to be enacted against Roman Catholicism in general and against the Jesuits in particular, which finally deprived them of the possibility of activity, so that it became not only impossible to develop missionary work, but even impossible to preserve the fruits gained by previous labors. It was clear that on the native population, doomed to death by the incoming culture, Roman Catholicism could not establish its power on the new continent. Then it attempted to turn to the incoming element to achieve the same goal through its mediation. But here it encountered such obstacles—in the form of popular prejudice and the stern anti-Catholic laws expressing it—that one had to await a great historical upheaval in the country before one could openly undertake a new field of activity. The clarification of the state of the religious spirit which for a time halted the development of Roman Catholicism, and the origin of the upheaval which again gave it freedom to grow, constitutes the subject of the next section. Since this section, by the nature of its subject, includes the question of the relation of church and state in a country that presents an example of the most complete realization of the principle of separation of these two orders and the proclamation, according to general understanding, of complete freedom of religious conscience, then in view of both the importance and interest of the subject itself, and especially the prevalence of unclear understanding of this relation in Russia, we believe it necessary to dwell on this question with greater detail and thoroughness than even our direct task would require.

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