1. The Jesuit
Relations
Heather Rocca

2. Introduction
 The Jesuit Relations contains the
most important set of
documentary materials during
the 17th century with the
encounter of the Europeans &
Native Americans
 The Jesuits were members of a
religious order, they took special
vows of poverty & obedience
that distinguished them from
regular parish priests
 The Jesuits’ activities were
multifaceted, encompassing
education, literary & scientific
activities, pastoral cave, &
overseas missions

3. Introduction Continued
 In 1625, French Jesuits were
entering a continent still very
much under Indian control, even
though the effects of European
Colonization were being felt all
along the Atlantic Coast & into
the Great Lakes region
 Over the course of nearly two
centuries of missionary work, the
Jesuits had dealings with almost
every Indian Nation of the
Northeast but in the 1600s they
directed most of their
evangelizing efforts toward a
handful of groups
 Long before the Jesuits
appeared on the North
American scene, French
fishermen, explorers, & fur traders
had already had extensive
contact with the natives of the
Northeast
 Samuel de Champlain founded
Quebec in 1608, when the Jesuits
returned in 1625 they made
Quebec their head quarters. The
Jesuits appeared as apart of a
broader French presence to the
native North Americans

4. Chapter one
The first published Jesuits
Relations book was written by
Father Paul Le Jeune (1592-
1664). These hunting-gathering
people had experienced
considerable contact with the
French by the time Le Jeune
encountered them. The
intimate knowledge of the
landscape & its seasonal
resources & amazing technical
sophistication are required in
an life of a Montagnais &
Algonquins

5. Chapter one
continued
Jeune writes that the Indians
believe a certain being named
Atahocam created the world
and it was stored by Messou.
They also believe in
Khichikouai, the spirit of light or
air. Jeune received an early
lesson in how the Algonquians
handled assaults and injuries
and how their children were
disciplied

6. Chapter two
 The Hurons’ large population &
stable village habitat made them
a more promising target for
evangelization.
 Language: the greater part of
their words is composed of
vowels. They lack vowels, which
explains why they open their lips
awkwardly. Compound words
are more often used by them &
have the same effect as an
adjective & a noun joined
together
 All their words are universally
conjugated
 It is astonishing to see so much
blindness in regard to the things
of Heaven
 There are some Hurons whose
imaginations do not soar so high
and who are not so ambitious as
to believe that they derive their
origin from Heaven
 A saying, “The wolf dodged the
shot, and that is why, they say,
they have great difficulty in
hunting him.”

7. Chapter two
continued
Indians maintain such perfect
harmony by visiting one another
frequently, by helping one
another in time of sickness & by
their feasts & their marriage
alliances
None of them are incapable of
conversing or reasoning very well
on matters within their knowledge
Thieves are not tolerated; they
also punish sorcerers severely, &
this punishment is authorized by
the consent of the whole country

8. Chapter three
 The Jesuits of New France knew
nothing of germs, viruses, and
immunity. Though
knowledgeable by the standards
of their day, they lived centuries
before modern science
systematically classified diseases,
discovered how they spread, &
developed preventive & curative
drugs
 They did not see themselves as
doctors, their priority was saving
lives & when epidemics struck,
they put most of their efforts into
baptizing the dying rather then
relieving the suffering of the living
 Native people such as the Hurons
also attributed illness to both
natural & supernatural cause,
though they did not separate the
two as rigidly as did the Christians
 Their spiritual & medical
specialists had no aim other then
to help the sick recover, & they
approached the task with a wide
array of therapeutic techniques
 Many Huron medical procedures
involved the mind as well as the
body, for these natives did not
see illness as purely a physical
problem

9. Chapter three
continued
In Europe illness was an individual
problem, and the sick person
inhabited a narrowly bounded
sphere into which, ideally, only the
doctor & family caregivers were
admitted.
The Hurons, by contrast, kept their
sick in the midst of the busy
longhouse environment; they
conceived of the patient as an
integral part of larger collectivities:
family, household, clan, village.

10. Chapter four
 The Jesuit missions of New France
were conducted throughout the
17th century in an atmosphere of
tension, war, shifting alliances
involving the French & the various
native nations
 What makes the “Relations”
uniquely valuable sources on
Indian war & diplomacy is the
captivity stories, & the verbatim
accounts of rave Europeans
fighting & subduing faceless
“savages,” but rather stories in
which the natives themselves
feature centrally
 After a brief truce, war, resumed
in the spring of 1647, it began
when a Huron-French diplomatic
mission to the Mohawk country
was accused of treachery & evil
magic & the emissaries, including
the Jesuit Isaac Jogues, were
killed
 Jerome Lalement: Such Charity is
not common among barbarians.
They added that a certain
disease had broken out among
the caribou, which made them
vomit blood from their mouth &
remain quite still when pursued.

11. Chapter four continued
 The Jesuit Relations contain many
passages on the North American
environment- its flora, fauna, &
landscape. As with the
ethnographic writings, these texts
are intriguing both for what they
tell us about nature at the time of
contact & for what they reveal
about 17th century European
attitudes & approaches to the
subjects
 Looking up from earth & its
creatures, the Jesuits also
commented on the stars above
& on the appearance of unusual
objects in the night sky.
 Whereas Europeans of the 17th
century tried to understand the
world around them in both
natural or religious terms,
Algonquian and Iroquian
peoples of the time were not so
inclined to separate natural and
supernatural frames of reference