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

(A sketch of the missionary activities of the Jesuits among the Indians in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries).

I. The Indians, their intellectual, moral, and religious condition. – II. The first attempt at missionary work and its failure. The penetration of the Jesuits into the interior and the establishment of permanent missions. The missionary methods of the Jesuits and their fruits. – III. Epidemics and their harmful effect on the success of missionary work. Dangers and hardships. – IV. The destruction of the tribe converted to Christianity and the loss of the fruits of missionary work. – V. Christianity in the state of New York. – VI. The penetration of the Jesuits into the Mississippi valley and the fruits of missionary labors. – The loss of the fruits of missionary efforts.

Roman Catholicism, during the storm of the Reformation movement, which deprived it of half of Europe, hastened to compensate itself in other parts of the world. The newly discovered continent presented a vast field. The very discovery of it, according to the common conviction of Roman Catholic publicists, has a providential significance for compensation to the Roman Catholic Church for the losses it suffered during the Reformation.[1] Across its immeasurable expanses lived pagan peoples. The gaze of the head of Catholicism turned there, and he sent his spiritual warriors to conquer these peoples. This field was fraught with many dangers and hardships; but Roman Catholicism had people capable of overcoming anything difficult and dangerous. The Order of Jesuits, born amid the very storm of the Reformation and having sworn to despise all dangers and hardships, was the most reliable instrument for this purpose. Northern America it chose as its exclusive domain, and the exploits of missionary activity by its members there represent one of the astonishing pages in the history of the country.

Exploration and colonization of the country proceeded slowly. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, European colonies began timidly to settle the shores of North America. From the south colonization was conducted by the Spanish, from the north by the French, and from the east by the Dutch and English. At the site of present-day New York in the seventeenth century stood a poor Dutch colony called New Amsterdam, and further north on the St. Lawrence River stood the tiny French fort of Quebec. Beyond the coastal strip lay an unknown country inhabited by unknown peoples. Behind the walls of the colony began impenetrable forests, into the depths of which settlers did not venture despite their great greed for valuable furs which they saw among the Indians. The first pioneers who brought Christian civilization into the interior were Christian missionaries, the ‘black robes,’ as the Indians called the Jesuits because of their long black garments, and to them belongs exclusively the credit for exploring the interior of North America. The most valiant among them were French Jesuits. Their exploits constitute an almost legendary epic in the history of the country, and the more remarkable because all its features are composed of real historical facts.[2] If this missionary activity is not unparalleled in the force of Christian self-sacrifice, it is nonetheless unique in the environment in which the Jesuits had to work. Here Christianity met the lowest level to which humanity had descended in religious and moral respects, and the highest Christian culture in the person of highly educated Jesuits collided with its antithesis—in the person of beast-like savage Indians.

I

The Indians inhabiting North America consisted of a multitude of small tribes scattered across the entire continent. Among them the principal ones were the tribes living in the vicinity of the Great Lakes, in the basins of the St. Lawrence, Hudson, and Mississippi rivers, namely: the Hurons, who lived in the southern parts of present-day Canada, the Iroquois, who occupied the area of present-day New York state, and the Illinois, who lived along the Mississippi River. All of them were at the lowest level of development, in a state of primitive savagery and barbarism. Some of them led a wandering life across immense forests and plains, moving from one place to another and carrying all their possessions on their backs. Others already showed the beginnings of settled life. The Hurons and Iroquois lived in villages consisting of a fairly large number of huts, of the most primitive construction, though sometimes quite large in size, like barns with only an opening at the top for the escape of smoke from a fire lit in the middle of the hut. Men occupied themselves exclusively with hunting, fishing, and war, while women conducted all domestic work, which consisted in planting corn and tobacco, raising children, sewing leather clothing by means of threads made from plant roots, and preparing various things necessary for the wretched savage household. With particular skill they made small boats from birch bark, so light that the Indians usually carried them on their shoulders from one river to another. Clothing was prepared with some ornamentation, with fringe, for which they used porcupine quills. Men, however, in the summer time took little thought for clothing and are ordinarily described by the Jesuits as being ‘as naked as your hand.’[3] Children resorted to clothing only when needed in winter cold, but women were always clothed and always as modestly as ‘the most pious ladies in France.’ War was considered the most honorable occupation. Indian weapons consisted of bows and arrows, spears, clubs, and tomahawks. Since the Indians before the seventeenth century were not acquainted with the use of iron, their arrows and spears had points of sharpened stone, and the tomahawks themselves resembled stone axes. This primitive weapon they used with astonishing skill. Pitched battles, however, were unknown to the Indians. Their warfare consisted of bands of warriors making unexpected attacks on enemies or hostile villages, burning and killing, taking scalps, and carrying off captives. All the glory and valor of warriors was based on the number of scalps taken from the heads of slain enemies.[4] Prisoners were subjected to savage torture.[5] They were tortured with every conceivable affliction, limbs were cut off gradually, they were burned with slow fire, and finally hacked to pieces, boiled in kettles, and eaten. The cries and wails of the sufferers delighted the torturers, and stubborn silence enraged them. Sometimes, however, no torture could force even a sound of pain from the unfortunate victim. To their last breath, amid the flames, the sufferers continued to revile their torturers and sing their war songs. This drove the torturers to despair, since it was considered an ill omen for the people. When attacking a village all was subjected to fire and destruction, women and children were indiscriminately killed, and sometimes the latter were eaten before the eyes of their mothers. After a successful raid all that remained of the village were heaps of ashes and dead bodies. Wars became especially destructive in the middle of the seventeenth century, when the coastal tribes received firearms from the Europeans, which gave them an advantage over other tribes unfamiliar with their use. Some of the latter were literally wiped from the face of the earth by their opponents.

Morally the Indians were complete savages, and the unwritten natural moral law barely made itself known under the dominion of animal passions. They recognized no law, and this independence, according to the expression of one Jesuit, ‘enslaved them to the most base passions.’[6] ‘They are lazy, deceitful, fickle and inconstant, liars and natural thieves, so that theft is considered glory among them; cruel, dishonorable, ready to promise everything to those who are generous toward them, and at the same time ungrateful. Generosity and favor toward them only increases their natural audacity. He fears me because he looks after me, they say. Gluttony and love of pleasure are stronger than all the vices prevailing among the Indians. They indulge in the most shameful way of life even before reaching the age to understand the shame of what they do.’[7] Polygamy was the prevailing custom, though not among all tribes. Marriage consisted of a simple transfer of a gift to the bride or her parents. Divorce was accomplished at the whim of one of the parties. Among the Hurons there existed a form of temporary marriage, or trial marriage, lasting two to three days or a week. Some beauties changed husbands up to twenty times before making a final choice.[8] The position of women was most wretched. Before marriage her life was mired in animal passions, and after marriage it became a life of constant hard labor. ‘Their women were their mules,’ says a contemporary observer.[9] Despite the wretchedness of Indian life, they nonetheless had joyous feasts consisting of singing, dancing, contests of various kinds, and the serving of meat from slain buffalo, bear, or dog. Smoking tobacco was the highest pleasure. Often meals had a religious character. Then guests were given a fixed portion which each had to eat, however large it might be.[10] Otherwise misfortune threatened the host. Gluttony was considered a virtue and often competitions were organized between eaters for a package of tobacco. The Indians made no provision for food, eating what the hunt gave them; therefore sometimes they wallowed in plenty, and sometimes, especially in winter, died of hunger, subsisting on bark and roots.[11] But in the moral character of the Indians there were nonetheless some bright traits showing the human nature. They had their own code of courtesy, whose rules could not be violated without fear of public censure. A defenseless and unarmed traveler could in most cases count on hospitable welcome, and prisoners who distinguished themselves by particular bravery in defense were sometimes given the privilege of being spared from burning, if not from torture. When needed they readily helped each other. When a family found itself without shelter, the inhabitants of the village together built it a hut. When a young woman married, other women of the village provided her with firewood for a whole year, thereby freeing her from one of the hardest tasks of an Indian woman—gathering wood in the forest for the fire. They had a division into noble and common, rich and poor; but even the poorest Indian, in case of lack of his own food, could consider himself secure from hunger. He needed only to enter the nearest wealthy hut, sit by the fire, and the women without a word would give him food.[12] But these traces of humanity were mere glimmers in the murk of a beast-like existence.