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A Tale of Two Missions: Illinois Choices and Conversions at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2022

Michaela Kleber
Michaela Kleber*
Affiliation:
History Department, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
*
Email: michaela.kleber@northwestern.edu
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Abstract

The Illinois, particularly the Kaskaskia, are well known to have converted in large numbers to Catholicism under the guidance of Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. However, another lesser-known missionary society, the Missions Étrangères, also evangelized among the Illinois. The juxtaposition of these two French Catholic missionary societies working among the same Native nation provides an ideal case study to understand what aspects of Catholicism Native people appreciated and rejected. Converted Illinois people chose a specific practice of Catholicism that upheld fundamental values, enhanced gender roles and kinship connections in Illinois society, and strengthened their relationship to the secular aspects of the French empire.

Keywords

Native AmericanIndigenousconversionmissionariesJesuitsMissions Étrangèresearly modern Catholicism
Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 91 , Issue 2 , June 2022 , pp. 286 - 305
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Society of Church History

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References

1 Marc Bergier, May 5, 1702, Archives du Séminaire de Québec (hereafter cited as ASQ), 12.1 Missions 69, 2–3. All translations are my own, unless otherwise noted.

2 Axtell, James, “Were Indian Conversions Bona Fide?” and “Some Thoughts on the Ethnohistory of Missions,” in After Columbus: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; , Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Henkel, Jacqueline M., “Represented Authenticity: Native Voices in Seventeenth-Century Conversion Narratives,” The New England Quarterly 87, no. 1 (March 2014): 5–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ronda, James P., “‘We Are Well As We Are’: An Indian Critique of Seventeenth-Century Christian Missions,” William and Mary Quarterly 34, no. 1 (January 1977): 66–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Richter, Daniel K., “‘Some of Them . . . Would Always Have a Minister with Them’: Mohawk Protestantism, 1683–1719,” American Indian Quarterly 16, no. 4 (Autumn 1992): 471–484CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Neal Salisbury, “Embracing Ambiguity: Native Peoples and Christianity in Seventeenth-Century North America,” Ethnohistory 50, no. 2 (Spring 2003): 247–259; Spiritual Encounters: Interactions between Christianity and Native Religions in Colonial America, eds. Nicholas Griffiths and Fernando Cervantes (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999); Native Americans, Christianity, and the Reshaping of the American Religious Landscape, eds. Joel W. Martin and Mark A. Nicholas (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010); Michael D. McNally, “The Practice of Native American Christianity,” Church History 69, no. 4 (December 2000): 834–859; and Kenneth M. Morrison, The Solidarity of Kin: Ethnohistory, Religious Studies, and the Algonkian-French Religious Encounter (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002).

4 David J. Silverman, “Indians, Missionaries, and Religious Translation: Creating Wampanoag Christianity in Seventeenth-Century Martha's Vineyard,” William and Mary Quarterly 62, no. 2 (April 2005): 141–174; Tracy Neal Leavelle, The Catholic Calumet: Colonial Conversions in French and Indian North America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012); Douglas L. Winiarski, “Native American Popular Religion in New England's Old Colony, 1670–1770,” in Native Americans, Christianity, and the Reshaping of the American Religious Landscape, eds. Martin and Nicholas; Linford D. Fisher, The Indian Great Awakening: Religion and the Shaping of Native Cultures in Early America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Allan Greer, “Conversion and Identity: Iroquois Christianity in Seventeenth-Century New France,” in Conversion: Old Worlds and New, ed. Kenneth Mills and Anthony Grafton (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2003); and Allan Greer, Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

5 For the purposes of this article, I use “conversion” to apply to this whole spectrum of Catholic adherents, including neophytes and those not yet baptized, who adopted Catholic practices. When I use variants of “convert,” I do not mean it in a western, Judeo-Christian sense, but rather in a broad sense meant to cover the range of Illinois engagement with Catholicism. I leave aside some of the terms that other scholars have used in order to not imply a doubt of Illinois religious experience or buy into European ideas of conversion as a total rejection of Native spirituality. See Griffiths, “Introduction,” Spiritual Encounters, 3; Greer, “Conversion and Identity,” 176; and Katharine Gerbner, “Theorizing Conversion: Christianity, Colonization, and Consciousness in the Early Modern Atlantic World,” History Compass 13, no. 3 (2015): 134–147.

6 For example, Leavelle's Catholic Calumet uses “missionary” to mean Jesuit and only mentions the Missions Étrangères once—to note that a Jesuit noted in 1750 that the society was present. Catholic Calumet, 188.

7 Carl J. Ekberg and Anton J. Pregaldin, “Marie Rouensa-8cate8a and the Foundations of French Illinois,” Illinois Historical Journal 84, no. 3 (Autumn, 1991): 146–160; Susan Sleeper-Smith, Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Cultural Encounter in the Western Great Lakes (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 160; Leavelle, “The Catholic Rosary, Gendered Practice, and Female Power,” in Native Americans, Christianity, and the Reshaping of the American Religious Landscape, eds. Martin and Nicholas; and Leavelle, “Why Were Illinois Women Attracted to Catholicism, 1665–1750?” (Binghampton: State University of New York, 2007).

8 Noël Baillargeon, Le seminaire de Quebec sous l'episcopat de Mgr de Laval (Quebec: Presses de l'Université Laval, 1972), 45–51; Baillargeon, “La vocation et les réalisations missionnaries du Séminaire des Missions-Étrangères de Québec au XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,” Rapport-Société canadienne d'histoire de l’Église catholique, 30 (1963): 35–52; Marcel Giraud, A History of French Louisiana (orig. 1953, 1991) 1:52–61; Charles Edwards O'Neill, Church and State in French Colonial Louisiana: Policy and Politics to 1732 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966); Robert Michael Morrissey, “The Terms of Encounter: Language and Contested Visions of French Colonization in the Illinois Country, 1673–1702,” in French and Indians in the Heart of North America, 1630–1815, eds. Robert Englebert and Guillaume Teasdale (Michigan State University Press, 2013), 43–75; and Linda Jones, The Shattered Cross: French Catholic Missionaries on the Mississippi River, 1698–1725 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2020).

9 Allan Greer, introduction to The Jesuit Relations: Native and Missionaries in Seventeenth-Century North America (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000); Jean-François Lozier, Flesh Reborn: The Saint Lawrence Valley Mission Settlements through the Seventeenth Century (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2018); and Bronwen McShea, Apostles of Empire: The Jesuits and New France (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019).

10 Mandements, Lettres pastorales et circulaires des Evêques de Québec, eds. H. Tetu and C.-O. Gagnon, (Quebec: A. Coté, 1887), 1:274–275; Binneateau, [January] 1699, in Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed. and trans., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610–1791. . .(Cleveland, Ohio, 1899) (hereafter cited as JR) 65:64–69; Marest, 29 April, 1699, JR 65:81–83; Axtell, The Invasion Within; Greer, introduction to The Jesuit Relations; Micah True, Masters and Students: Jesuit Mission Ethnography in Seventeenth-Century New France (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2015); and McShea, Apostles of Empire.

11 Adrien Launay, Histoire générale de la Société des Missions-Etrangères, I:39–40; Baillargeon, “La vocation,” 36, 42; Baillargeon, Séminaire de Québec, 387; and Jones, Shattered Cross, chap. 1.

12 Tonty to Monseigneur, 14 Jul., 1699, ASQ 12.1, Missions 49; O'Neill, Church and State, 33–37; Gravier to Laval, Sept. 20, 1698, ASQ 2.1, Lettres N, 132; Saint-Cosme to Laval, Jan. 2, 1699, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 26, 4; Tremblay to Laval, Mar. 12, 1700, ASQ 2.1, Lettres N 109, 9–10; Marest, April 29, 1699, JR 65:81–83; Gilbert J. Garraghan, “New Light in Old Cahokia,” Illinois Catholic Historical Review 11, no. 2 (October 1928), 105–107; and Jones, The Shattered Cross, chap. 3.

13 Saint-Cosme to Laval, Mar., 1700, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 29, 7; Bergier to Saint-Vallier, Feb. 29, 1700, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 42, 1–3; Gravier to Lamberville, 1700, JR 65:101–103; Montigny to Saint-Vallier, Aug. 25, 1699, ASQ 12.1, Missions 41, 2; Garraghan, “New Light,” 108–109; O'Neill, Church and State, 27–37; and Baillargeon, Le seminaire de Quebec, 45–51.

14 Saint-Cosme to Laval, Jan. 2, 1699, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 26, 9; Tremblay to Laval, Mar. 12, 1700, ASQ 2.1, Lettres N 109, 9–10; Jean-Baptiste le Boullenger, French and Miami-Illinois Dictionary, c. 1720s, John Carter Brown Library, Providence, RI, 147; Jacques Largillier and Gravier, Kaskaskia-to-French Dictionary, c. 1690–1700, Watkinson Library, Trinity College, Hartford, CT, 231; and Pinet, French-Miami-Illinois Dictionary, c. 1696–1702, MS IN-8 MS 010, Archives des jésuites au Canada, Montréal, 394.

15 Binneteau, [January] 1699, JR 65:57–59; and Bergier, Jun. 25, 1702, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 56.

16 O'Neill, Church and State, 37; Garraghan, “New Light,” 101; Morrissey, “The Terms of Encounter”; and Marest to Lamberville, July 5, 1702, JR 66:35–37.

17 Tremblay to Des Maizerets, Apr. 2, 1701, ASQ 2.1, Lettres O 31, 18, 24; June 7, 1702, O 38, 3; July 9, 1703, O 41, 1; to Glandelet, May 28, 1702, O 36, 38; Bergier to Sup. Sem. Queb., Mar. 30, 1704, ASQ, Lettres R 64; Tremblay to Laval, Mar. 31, 1702, ASQ 2.1, Lettres N 117, 8–9; Bergier to Brisacier, Oct. 26, 1704, ASQ, 2.1, Lettres R 71, 2–3; Marest to de la Vante, Apr. 25, 1709, ASQ 12.1 Missions 48, 1; Bienville to minister, Feb. 25, 1708, Archives nationales d'outre-mer, fonds ministeriels (hereafter cited as ANOM FM) C13 A2, 109–110; and Marest to Germon, Nov. 9, 1712, JR 66:262–265.

18 Marest to Germon, Nov. 9, 1712, JR 66:255; Marest to Lamberville, July 5, 1702, JR 66:35–37; and Gravier, Feb. 23, 1708, JR 66:129.

19 Bergier to Charles de Glandelet, 1704, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 66, 1–2; Marest to Germon, 9 Nov., 1712, JR 66:262–265; Marest, 9 Nov., 1712, ANOM FM C13 A2, 794; Pinet, 24 Mar., 1700, ASQ 12.1, Missions 57; Marest, 29 April, 1699, JR 65:81; Gravier to Lamberville, 1700, JR 65:99–103; Bergier, 25 Jun, 1702, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 56; Bergier to Tremblay, 12 Oct, 1704, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 70; Bergier, 17 Nov., 1702, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 58; and Bergier to Tremblay, 3 Jul., 1703, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 62, 1.

20 Bergier, 21 Jun., 1704, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 65.

21 Le Boullenger, French and Miami-Illinois Dictionary, JCB; Largillier/Gravier, Kaskaskia-to-French Dictionary, Watkinson Library; Pinet, French-Miami-Illinois Dictionary, Archives des jésuites au Canada; JR 59, 60:162–163; Claude Allouez, Facsimile of Père Marquette's Illinois Prayer Book (Quebec: Quebec Literary and Historical Society, 1908); McShea, Apostles of Empire, chap. 6; and Morrissey, “The Terms of Encounter.”

22 Bergier to Saint-Vallier, 29 Feb., 1700, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 42, 10; Marest to Germon, 9 Nov., 1712, JR 66:241; Tracy Neal Leavelle, “‘Bad Things’ and ‘Good Hearts’: Mediation, Meaning, and the Language of Illinois,” Church History 76, no. 2 (June 2007): 365, 376–377; and Leavelle, Catholic Calumet, 102–110.

23 Gravier to Laval, 20 Sept., 1698, ASQ 2.1, Lettres N 132, 2; Gravier to Maizerets, 10 Jul, 1702, ASQ 2.1, Lettres N 133, 2; Bergier, 25 Jun., 1702, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 56, 1; and Tremblay to Laval, 31 Mar., 1702, ASQ 2.1, Lettres N 117, 8–9.

24 Bergier to Saint-Vallier, 29 Feb., 1700, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 42, 8–9. Bergier's exact words were “seroit de donner Sanctum Canibus,” a partial quotation of Matthew 7:6, “nolite dare sanctum canibus.”

25 Bergier to Saint-Vallier, 13 Mar., 1702, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 50, 3; Bergier, 5 May, 1702, ASQ 12.1 Missions 69, 2–3; Marest to Germon, 9 Nov., 1712, JR 66:233, 261; and Bergier, 15 Jun., 1702, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 55.

26 Saint-Cosme to Laval, Mar., 1700, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 29, 2–3; Bergier to Tiberge, 15 Apr., 1701, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 45, 5; and Bergier to Saint-Vallier, 13 Mar., 1702, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 50, 4.

27 Marest, 29 April, 1699, JR 65:77; Binneateau, [January] 1699, JR 65:64–69.

28 Lozier, Flesh Reborn, 112; Greer, Mohawk Saint; Mary Dunn, “Neither One Thing Nor the Other: Discursive Polyvalence and Representations of Amerindian Women in the Jesuit Relations,” Journal of Jesuit Studies 3, no. 2 (2016): 179–96.

29 Carol Devens, Countering Colonization: Native American Women and Great Lakes Missions, 1630–1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Karen Anderson began this discussion, though she argued the opposite. Anderson, Chain Her by One Foot: The Subjugation of Native American Women in Seventeenth-Century New France (New York: Routledge, 1991).

30 Ekberg and Pregaldin, “Marie Rouensa-8cate8a and the Foundations of French Illinois”; Morrissey, Empire by Collaboration, 64; Sleeper-Smith, Indian Women and French Men; Leavelle, Catholic Calumet, esp. chap. 7; and Leavelle, “Why Were Illinois Women Attracted to Catholicism, 1665–1750?”

31 Gravier to Father General, JR 66:122–123. See also Marest to Germon, JR 66:230–231.

32 Claude Charles Bacqueville de la Potherie, Histoire de l'Amerique septentrionale (Paris: Jean-Luc Nion and François Didot, 1722), 32–33, 227–228; Pierre Charles Deliette, memoranda on French colonies in America, including Canada, Louisiana, and the Carribean [sic], Newberry Library, Ayer MS 293 vol. 3, 317–318; Antoine Denis Raudot, Relation par lettres de l'Amérique Septentionalle (années 1709 et 1710), Camille de Rochémonteix and Antione Silvy, eds. (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1904), 149; and Sarah M.S. Pearsall, Polygamy: An Early American History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), chap. 2.

33 Rapley, Elizabeth, The Dévotes: Women and Church in Seventeenth-Century France (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Merry Weisner-Hanks, Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World: Regulating Desire, Reforming Practice, 75.

34 Steckley, John, “The Warrior and the Lineage: Jesuit Use of Iroquoian Images to Communicate Christianity,” Ethnohistory 39, no. 4 (Autumn 1992): 478–509CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Greer, Mohawk Saint.

35 Jones, Shattered Cross, chaps. 2 and 8. Saint-Cosme would go on to father a child with the sister of the Natchez chief. The son, also called St-Cosme, participated in the Natchez Revolt and was subsequently sold into slavery in the West Indies.

36 Claude Dablon, 1677, JR 59:188–189, 190–1, 206–207; and Claude Allouez, 1677, JR 60:164–165.

37 Saint-Cosme to Laval, 2 Jan., 1699, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 26, 12.

38 Lahontan, Nouveaux voyages, 129; Marest to Germon, 9 Nov., 1712, JR 66:246–247; Leavelle, “The Catholic Rosary, Gendered Practice, and Female Power.”

39 Gravier, 13 Feb., 1694, JR 64:180–181, 213–219, 226–229, 232–3; JR 63:224–227; and Hennepin, A New Discovery, 1:195.

40 For a more extensive discussion on Marie Rouensa, see Ekberg and Pregaldin, “Marie Rouensa-8cate8a and the Foundations of French Illinois”; Sleeper-Smith, Indian Women and French Men; and “Women, Kin, and Catholicism: New Perspectives on the Fur Trade,” Ethnohistory 47, no. 2 (Spring 2000), 425; Sophie White, Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians, esp. pt. 1; Leavelle, Catholic Calumet, chap. 7.

41 Saint-Cosme to Laval, Mar., 1700, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 29, 2–3; Bergier to Louis Tiberge, 15 Apr., 1701, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 45, 5; Bergier to Saint-Vallier, 13 Mar., 1702, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 50, 4, 14; and Bergier to Charles de Glandelet, 1704, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 66, 1–2.

42 Marest to Germon, 9 Nov., 1712, JR 66:246-7; and Gravier, 13 Feb., 1694, JR 64.

43 Gravier, JR 64:174–177.

44 McShea, Apostles of Empire, 172–177.

45 Binneteau, JR 65:64–67; and Marest to de la Vante, 24 Apr., 1709, ASQ 12.1 Missions 48, 1–2.

46 Saint-Cosme to Saint-Vallier, 7 Mar., 1700, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 30, 4; Bergier to Saint-Vallier, 29 Feb., 1700, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 42, 9; Bergier to Glandelet, 1704, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 66, 2; and Bergier to Foucault, 27 April, 1701, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 47, 2.

47 Bergier to Saint-Vallier, 15 Apr., 1705, ASQ Lettres R 73, 3.

48 Sebastien Rasles to his brother, 12 Oct., 1723, JR 67:173; and Bergier to Glandelet, 1704, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 66, 2.

49 ASQ 12.1 Missions 78, [1686–1706].

50 Bergier to Saint-Vallier, 29 Feb., 1700, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 42, 9.

51 Marest to Germon, 9 Nov., 1712, JR 66:291.

52 White, Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians, 8–10.

53 Étienne Martin de Vaugine de Nuisement, Journal de Vaugine de Nuisement, éd. S. Canac-Marquis & P. Rézeau (Québec: Les Presses de l'Université Laval, 2005), 43; Marest to Germon, 9 Nov., 1712, JR 66:230–1; ANOM 04 DFC 1721, 3–3v; Saint-Cosme to Laval, Mar., 1700, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 29, 12; and Kaskaskia Manuscripts, Randolph County Courthouse, Chester, IL, 39:2:7:1.

54 Saint-Cosme to Laval, 2 Jan., 1699, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 26, 7–8, 10; Bergier to Tremblay, 18 Oct., 1703, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 63, 1; de La Vente to Brisacier, 4 Jul., 1708, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 83, 17–18, 19–20; and Bergier to Tiberge, 15 Apr., 1701, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 45, 5–8.

55 Bergier, 15 Apr., 1701, ASQ 2.2, Lettres R 46; Bergier to Tiberge, 15 Apr., 1701, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 45, 2–3; and Gravier, 23 Feb., 1708, JR 66:125.

56 Gravier to Lamberville, 1700, JR 65:99–103; Gravier, 1701, JR 66:101–103; and Bergier to Saint-Vallier, 13 Mar., 1702, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 50, 15–16.

57 Gravier, JR 66:122–123; Marest to Germon, JR 66:230–231; Saint-Cosme to Laval, 2 Jan., 1699, ASQ 2.1, Lettres R 26, 7; post-1721, ANOM FM C13 C1, 353; and “Etat de la Loüisiane au mois de Juin 1720,” ANOM MG4 B1, 28.

58 Vivier, 17 Nov., 1750, JR 69:199.

59 Baillargeon, “La vocation et les réalisations missionares,” 49; Relation de Penicaut, 1711, in Pierre Margry, comp., Découverte et établissements dans l'ouest et dans le sud. . .(Paris, 1876–1886) V:491; Gravier to Father General, JR 66:122–123; Marest to Germon, JR 66:230–231; Mermet, 2 Mar., 1706, JR 66:50–1; Marest, 9 Nov., 1712, ANOM FM C13 A2, 782; and Bisaillon, [1715], ANOM FM C11 A35, 99–99v.

60 Bienville and Salmon, 30 Aug., 1739, ANOM FM C13 A24, 30; and Bienville and Salmon, 24 Jun., 1740, ANOM FM C13 A25, 9.

61 Bergier, ASQ, Lettres R 50, 11.

62 Leavelle, Catholic Calumet; White, Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians. For examples in other places, see Fisher, The Indian Great Awakening; and Silverman, David J., Red Brethren: The Brothertown and Stockbridge Indians and the Problem of Race in Early America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010)Google Scholar.