The records do not show any great numbers of slaves owned by the missionary explorers. There are certain reasons why this was so. Abnegation of self was a part of the Jesuitic doctrine, so the monk could have no need for any considerable number of personal attendants. He possessed no mines or lands for the working of which slaves could be used. What services the fathers could not perform in the extension of their faith, were performed partly by servants brought from France, and partly by “donnés,” or those who voluntarily gave their labor. At the missions[171] and in the Indian villages where the missionaries stayed, the Indians rendered them free service and furnished them with supplies. Then, too, the Indian domestic did not prove very satisfactory.[172] The slave was a subject for conversion, but the French missionary did not spend much time on the conversion of single individuals. He aimed rather to collect the heathen in groups about a religious center, and to guide and teach them somewhat after the manner of his brethren in Paraguay. Yet we find that the French missionaries possessed some Indian slaves.[173] It would not do to refuse to save any soul, neither was it advisable to risk the chance of offending any Indian, whatever his rank, who might make them the gift of a slave. Most of the slaves held by the missionaries appear to have been gifts. Sometimes to accept such a slave was to save the person from death. Some of the slaves were purchased. By teaching them the French language, and the principles of the Christian Church, the clergy hoped to make missionaries of some of them, and so extend the scope of their religion.