Between 1634 and 1655, the Jesuits established a home and a settlement in New France along the Saint Lawrence River. They soon moved deeper into the colony’s territory in order to live with and convert the local Wendat (Huron) population. During this time, however, their missionary efforts were fraught with disappointment and frustration. In other colonies, such as in Latin America, the Jesuit missions had found a more eager and receptive audience to Christianity, the result of a chaotic atmosphere of violence and conquest. But in New France, where French authority and coercive powers did not extend far and where French settlement was sparse, the Jesuits found conversion far more difficult."New Voyages to North-America" Page 17, 1703 Nevertheless, the French missionary settlements were integral to maintaining political, economic, and military ties with the Wendat and other native peoples in the region. The contact between the two had important consequences in lifestyle, social and cultural attitudes, as well as in spiritual practice. The French Jesuits and Wendat found they had to negotiate their religious, social, and cultural differences in order to accommodate one another.
The Wendat lived modest lives, but nevertheless, before their encounter "with the French, the Huron knew of no culture that they had reason to believe was materially more successful than their own."Trigger, 32. The Wendat traded with the French and other tribes for food, European tools, and other supplies, which proved to be crucial to their survival. But the Wendat mainly practiced a form of sedentary agriculture, which appealed to the French, who believed that cultivating the land and making it productive was a sign of civilization. The Wendat women worked primarily with crops, such as maize, which they planted, tended and harvested. Entire villages would relocate once the fertile soil in a certain area was depleted after several seasons of use.Trigger, 36. Women also gathered plants and berries, cooked, and made clothing and baskets. Women did not participate in the autumn hunts, however.Trigger, 38. Men cleared the fields, hunted deer, fished, and erected their multi-family longhouses.Trigger, 43. Men were also responsible for the defense of the village and would fight during wartime. For instance, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat fought many times amongst themselves. Revenge was the major reason Wendat went to war, but the decision to resort to violence was made only after lengthy discussion.
The Wendat government system was very different from that in Europe. One major difference was that individuals belonged to a matrilineage.Von Gernet, 164. Furthermore, Wendat peoples would discuss an issue together until a general consensus was reached. Their government was based on clan segments and each segment had two headmen: a civil leader and a war chief.Trigger, 55. Wendat law centered around four major areas: murder, theft, witchcraft (of which both men and women could be accused), and treason. The Wendat did not have a religion similar to that of Europeans; Rather, "the Huron lived in a world in which everything that existed, including man-made things, possessed souls and were immortal."Trigger, 75. Dreams and visions were a part of Wendat religion, influencing almost all major decisions.Von Gernet, 167.
Methods of Conversion
The Jesuit missionaries who came to New France in the seventeenth century aimed to both convert native peoples such as the Wendat to Christianity and also to instill European values within them.James P. Ronda, "The European Indian: Jesuit Civilization Planning in New France," Church History 41, no. 3 (1972): 385. Jesuit planners believed that by creating European social institutions and patterns, conversion would become easier: linking European lifestyle as the foundation for proper conceptions of Christian spirituality.Peter A. Goddard, "Converting the 'Sauvage': Jesuit and Montagnais in Seventeenth-Century New France," The Catholic Historical Review 84, no. 2 (1998): 220.
Compared to other native populations in the region such as the hunter-gatherer Innu or Mi’kmaq peoples, the Wendat already fit in relatively well with the Jesuits’ ideas of stable societies. For instance, the Wendat had semi-permanent settlements and actively practiced agriculture—with maize as their major staple crop.Margaret J. Leahey, "'Comment peut un muet prescher l'evangile?' Jesuit Missionaries and the Native Languages of New France," French Historical Studies, no. 1 (1995): 112. Nonetheless, the Jesuits often found it hard to bridge the cultural divide and their religious and social conversion efforts often met with stiff resistance from the Wendat.
War and violent conflict between tribes, on the other hand, helped create a far more receptive audience to Christianity and increased the Jesuits' potential for successful conversion.Daniel K. Richter, "Iroquois versus Iroquois: Jesuit Missions and Christianity in Village Politics, 1642-1686," Ethnohistory 32, no. 1 (1985): 46. Nevertheless, natives were also converted by other means. Father Paul Le Jeune advocated fear tactics to convert natives to Christianity, such as showing them frightening pictures of Hell or drawing upon the natives’ own fears, such as losing a child, in order to create horrifying mental images and encourage the natives to consider their own mortality and salvation.John L. Steckley, "The Warrior and the Lineage: Jesuit Use of Iroquoian Images to Communicate Christianity," Ethnohistory 32, no. 4 (1998): 482-3.
Accommodation
Jesuits often used existing native customs and social structures in order to enter and settle in villages and convert the people there. Thus, missionary methods of conversion often juxtaposed aspects of Christian practice with certain elements of Wendat culture. For instance, missionaries carefully studied native languages and spoke to the Wendat about Christianity on their own terms. They translated hymns, prayers such as the Pater Noster, and other liturgical texts into the Wendat language, which they would then recite in front of large groups.Steckley, 106. De Religione was written entirely in Wendat in the seventeenth century. This book was intended to be a guide to Christianity for the Wendat. The lengthy religious tract covered information on Christian religious practice such as baptism, a discussion on different types of souls, Christian conceptions of the afterlife, and even the reasoning behind the Jesuits’ missionary work itself.Steckley, 481.
The type of Catholicism that the Jesuits preached to Wendat was radicalized by decades of violent conflict in France and could be intolerant of non-Catholic spirituality.Emma Anderson. "Blood, Fire, and ‘Baptism’: Three Perspectives on the Death of Jean de Brébeuf, Seventeenth-Century Jesuit ‘Martyr.’" Native Americans, Christianity, and the Reshaping of the American Religious Landscape. Ed. Joel W. Martin and Mark A. Nicholas. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 128. This Catholicism demanded an all-or-nothing commitment from converts, which meant that the Wendat were sometimes forced to choose between their Christian faith and their traditional spiritual beliefs, family structures, and community ties.Allan Greer. "Introduction: Native North America and the French Jesuits." The Jesuit Relations: Natives and Missionaries in Seventeenth-Century North America. Ed. Allan Greer. (Boston and New York: Bedford / St. Martins, 2000), 12.
At first, many Wendat were interested in the Jesuits’ stories of the origin of the universe and about the life and teachings of Jesus Christ and some were baptized. Others—though curious about the European faith—were prevented from baptism by the Jesuits out of the concern that these Wendat were dangerously combining traditional practices with Christian concepts. Finally, a group of traditionalists, preferring Wendat methods of conciliation and dialogue, were disquieted by the confrontational nature of Jesuit preaching and conversion methods. They feared the consequences of converts breaking all their ritual, familial, and communal ties, and so, began to actively oppose the missionary program.Anderson, "Blood, Fire, and ‘Baptism,’" 129.
Christianity and Wendat’s Social Weakening
The factionalism dividing Christian converts and traditionalists seriously weakened the Wendat confederacy in the 1640s. Due to Jesuit insistence on emphasizing the incompatibility of Christianity and traditional spirituality rather than noting convergences, Wendat Christians tended to distance themselves from the traditional practices of their people and threatened ties that had once bound communities together.Anderson, 143. Converts refused to participate in shared feasts, Christian women rejected traditionalist suitors, they carefully observed Catholic fasts, and they also withheld Christian remains from the Feast of the Dead, which was an important ritual of disinterment and collective reburial. The Jesuit missionary Jean de Brébeuf described the spectacle in The Jesuit Relations, explaining that,
Many of them think we have two souls, both of them being divisible and material, and yet both reasonable. One of them separates itself from the body at death yet remains in the cemetery until the Feast of the Dead, after which it either changes into a dove, or according to a common belief, it goes away at once to the village of souls. The other is more attached to the body and, in a sense, provides information to the corpse. It remains in the grave after the feast and never leaves, unless someone bears it again as a child.Jean de Brébeuf. "Of the Solemn Feast of the Dead, 1636." The Jesuit Relations: Natives and Missionaries in Seventeenth-Century North America. Ed. Allan Greer. (Boston and New York: Bedford / St. Martins, 2000), 64-65.
The Feast combined notions of Wendat spirituality, the life of souls, and a community engaged in life, death, and reproduction. The Christian refusal to participate in key community rituals such as this was a direct threat to traditional spiritual and physical unity.Anderson, "Blood, Fire, and ‘Baptism.’" 143.
Religion and Illness
Physical violence, the widespread dispersal of the remaining people, and waves of Old World diseases such as smallpox, influenza, and measles, to which the native populations had no built-up immunity, meant that the Wendat population was heavily afflicted.Alfred W. Crosby. "Virgin Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aboriginal Depopulation in America." The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 2 (April 1976), 289-290. When these epidemics struck, however, many Wendat blamed the Jesuits.
Within the religious context, the Jesuits had found themselves in competition with native spiritual leaders, and so often presented themselves as shamans capable of influencing human health through prayer. Aboriginal conceptions of shamanistic power were ambivalent and it was believed that shamans were capable of doing both good and ill. As a result, the Wendat easily attributed their boons as well as their problems of disease, illness, and death to the Jesuit presence.Bruce Trigger. Natives and Newcomers: Canada’s "Heroic Age" Reconsidered. (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1985), 246-247.
Many Wendat were particularly suspicious of the rite of baptism. The Jesuits frequently performed surreptitious baptisms on ailing and dying infants, in the belief that these children would be sent to heaven since they did not have the time to sin.Greer, "Introduction," 12-13. Similarly, deathbed baptisms became common during these times of widespread disease. But the Wendat interpreted baptism as a sinister piece of sorcery that marked an individual for death.Trigger, Natives and Newcomers, 249-250. Resistance to the Jesuit missions grew as the Wendat took repeated blows to their population and their political, social, cultural, and religious heritage.
Conceptions of Martyrdom