Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 4 (of 8): French Explorations and Settlements in North America and Those of the Portuguese, Dutch, and Swedes 1500-1700
History
Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 4 (of 8): French Explorations and Settlements in North America and Those of the Portuguese, Dutch, and Swedes 1500-1700
America -- Discovery and exploration; America -- History; United States -- History
When Bishop Laval was appointed for Canada in 1658, he founded a
seminary at Quebec, which was aggregated to the Seminary of the Foreign
Missions in Paris. The Jesuits then resigned all the parishes which
they had directed in the colony, and confined themselves to their
college and their Indian missions. The priests of the Seminary of
Quebec, beside their parish work, also undertook missions among the
Indians in Acadia, Illinois, and on the lower Mississippi.
A collision between the Governor of Canada and the Bishop with his
clergy and the Jesuits, in regard to the sale of liquor to the Indians,
led the Government to send back the Recollects to resume their early
labors. They did not, however, undertake any important missions among
the Indian tribes. Their efforts were confined almost exclusively
to the period and course of La Salle’s attempts at settlement and
exploration, and to a mission at Gaspé and a shorter one on the
Penobscot.
When the colony of Louisiana took form, the Indian missions there were
confided to the Jesuits, who directed them till the suppression of the
order terminated their existence in the dominions of France. Spain, in
her colonies, sent other orders to continue the work of the Jesuits,
and this was done successfully in some places; but there was no effort
made to sustain those of the Jesuits in Canada and Louisiana, and amid
the political changes which rapidly ensued the early French missions
gradually dwindled away.
These Jesuit missions embraced the labors of the Fathers among the
Micmacs, chiefly on Cape Breton Island and at Miscou; the missions
among the Montagnais, Bersiamites, Oumamiwek, Porcupine Indians,
Papinachois, and other tribes of the lower St. Lawrence and Saguenay,
the centre being at Tadousac; the missions of which Quebec was
the immediate centre, comprising the work among the Montagnais
of that district and Algonquins from the west. Of this Algonquin
mission, Sillery soon became the main mission; but as the Algonquins
disappeared, Abenakis came to settle there, and remained till the
chapel was removed to St. François de Sales. Then Three Rivers was
a mission station for the Indians near it, and for the Attikamegues
inland, till a separate mission was established for that tribe. Beyond
Montreal was the mission to the Nipissings, and the great Huron
mission, the scene of the most arduous and continued labors of the
Fathers among the palisaded towns of the Wyandots and Dinondadies.
After the ruin of these nations, the Jesuits led one part of the
survivors to Isle Orleans, and subsequently gathered a remnant of
them at Lorette, where their descendants still remain. The rest fled
towards the Mississippi, and were zealously followed by the energetic
missionaries, who gathered them at Mackinac, whence they removed in
time to Detroit, and ultimately to Sandusky, the last point where the
Jesuits ministered to them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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