In planting settlements in Canada (or New France, as it was then called), the French had two principal objects in view: the fur trade with the Indians, and the conversion of these Indians to the Christian religion. Roman Catholic missionaries from France therefore accompanied the first settlers, and were always prominent in the affairs of the colony. Governor Champlain brought to Quebec some missionaries of the Recollect order, a branch of the Franciscans; but after a few years, the difficulties of their task proved so great that the Recollects asked the Jesuits, a much stronger order, to come over and help them. It was not long before nearly all the Franciscans returned home, and the Jesuits were practically the only missionaries in New France. During the first few years, these missionaries spent their winters in Quebec, ministering to the colonists, and each spring went out to meet the Indians in their summer camps. It was soon found, however, that greater persistence was needed; and after that, instead of returning home in the autumn, they followed the savages upon their winter hunts. In order to convert the Indians, the missionaries studied their many languages, their habits, and their manner of thought, lived as they lived, and with them often suffered untold misery, for life in a savage camp is sometimes almost unbearable to educated and refined white men, such as the French Jesuits were. They did not succeed in winning over to Christianity many of their savage companions; indeed, the latter frequently treated them with great cruelty, and several of the missionaries were tortured to death. Such were the ignorance and superstition of the Indians, that every disaster which happened to them, poor luck in hunting, famine, accident, or disease, was attributed to the "black gowns," as the Jesuits were called because of their long black cassocks. When the missionaries were performing the rites of their church, baptizing children or sick people, or saying mass, it was thought by these simple barbarians that they were practicing magic for the destruction of the red men. Thus the Jesuits, during the hundred years or more which they spent in traveling far and near through the forests of New France, seeking new tribes to convert, while still laboring with those already known, were in a state of perpetual martyrdom for the cause of Christianity. No soldier has ever performed greater acts of heroism than these devoted disciples of the cross. Several of the best and bravest of them were among the pioneers of the Wisconsin wilderness.