This segment explores the experience of the French as they tried to make converts to Catholicism in New France.

Our Catholic Roots 1492—1865

2: The French Contribution
Spain, in the 1500s, could reach out confidently into the New World because it was both united at home and stronger than any other European country. France, on the other hand, was disunited and weak. Internal unity in France had suffered badly because of the Protestant Reformation. March 20 For many decades, France was a battleground for internal religious wars between French Catholics and French Protestants, known as Huguenots. Moreover, the country's wealth was wasted by the French kings on wars with Italy and Spain. When at last French internal peace and unity were restored at the end of the 1500s, the French nation was ready to explore the New World. This was a full century after the Spanish began to explore South and Central America.

 

 

Since their founding by St. Ignatius in 1534, the Jesuits had become a very powerful force in reforming and rebuilding the Catholic Church after the Protestant Reformation. In doing this they had. made many bitter enemies. These groups of enemies joined hands and arranged for the dissolution of the Jesuits In Portugal, France, and Spain. Finally, they persuaded the pope in 1773 to dissolve the order throughout the world. Many Jesuits were imprisoned, others were forbidden to function as priests any longer, with others managed to gain acceptance as diocesan priests. The Jesuits were not restored until 1814 when the traditional political arrangement was put back together again after the fall of Napoleon.

Jesuits in New France
The first of the new French colonizers was Samuel de Champlain. He traveled down the St. Lawrence River for the first time in 1605, accompanied by two priests. At first they settled in Maine, where they ministered to the few French colonists and to the Native Americans they found in the area. But before long, they were attacked and expelled by the English. English people viewed the French priests as enemies for two reasons: they were international rivals, and they were Catholic. This experience of having their work undone by the Protestant English would be repeated many times for the French missionaries in the next two centuries. However, the successful founding of a settlement at Quebec in 1608 did provide a somewhat more secure base for the future.

Many religious orders served in New France, but it was the Jesuits who had the greatest and most lasting influence. The first pair of Jesuit priests arrived in 1611 and found the Native Americans very difficult to deal with. One of them, Father Pierre Biard, reported to his superiors in France:

...The (Indian) nation is savage, ignorant, lawless and rude: they are wanderers, with nothing to attach them to a place, neither homes nor relationship, neither possessions nor love of country; as a people they have bad habits, are extremely lazy, gluttonous, profane, treacherous, cruel in their revenge, and given to all kinds of lewdness, men and women alike, the men having several wives and abandoning them to others, and the women only serving them as slaves, whom they strike and beat unmercifully... With all these vices, they are exceedingly vainglorious: they think they are better, more valiant and more ingenious than the French... All these things, added to the difficulty of acquiring the language, the time that must be consumed, the expenses that must be incurred, the great distress and toil and poverty that must be endured, fully proclaim the greatness of this enterprise and the difficulties which beset it. Yet many things encourage me to continue in it... We hope in time to make them susceptible of receiving the doctrines of the faith and of the Christian and Catholic religion...

The Jesuits refused to be discouraged and, although there were only fifty full-time European residents in New France, they sent five more of their members to Quebec in 1625. Among these was the famous Father Jean de Brêbeuf, who worked among the Huron Indians in what is now New York. Father Brêbeuf had to learn patience as he worked. In the first two years he made not a single convert; in the third year he was forced to return home when the English seized Quebec and gained control of New France. After waiting five years for the English to depart, he returned with enthusiasm and resumed his work. Before long, he was attempting to recruit other missionaries to join him. But he was brutally honest about the challenges they would face:

...During the day, the Sun burns you; during the night, you run the risk of being a prey to mosquitoes. You sometimes ascend five or six rapids in a day; and, in the evening, the only refreshment is a little corn crushed between two stones and cooked in fine clear water... We shall receive you in a Hut, so mean that I have scarcely found in France one wretched enough to compare it with...

But never did Father de Brêbeuf lose sight of the belief that had brought him to this rough and lonely place:

...You must have a sincere affection for the Savages, looking upon them as ransomed by the blood of the son of God, and as our brethren, with whom we are to pass the rest of our lives... As to the other numerous things which may be unpleasant, they must be endured for the love of God, without saying anything or appearing to notice them...

 

From the earliest times, the Catholic Church has taken care to identify Christians of specialness and heroism and to present these persons as models for the whole community. After an especially holy person's death, he or she may be proposed for this honor. Years of study of the candidate's life then follow. Finally, if found worthy, he or she is progressively advanced through the ranks of venerable, blessed, and finally to saint.

North American Martyrs
One of the young Jesuits who responded to Father de Brêbeuf's call for help was the newly ordained Father Isaac Jogues. Working among the Huron for four years, Father Jogues experienced the same slow progress described by others. But he recognized that the process of evangelization and true conversion should take time, and he refused to baptize those who were not fully ready and sure in their faith. He and his fellow Jesuits had all seen Indians who had accepted baptism casually and later had abandoned their faith under the slightest pressure. Better, he thought, to be patient and to help the Indians build strong foundations for their belief, than to deceive himself with meaningless numbers of Christians in name only.

As he traveled among the Huron in 1642, Father Jogues was ambushed by a band of the Huron's enemies, the fierce Iroquois, (sometimes called Mohawk, or the Five Nations). These Indians carried him off into captivity in upstate New York. There, for a full year, he was treated as a slave and was tortured endlessly. Eventually, he was ransomed by the Dutch at Albany and taken back to France. His thumb and forefinger, which are used by a priest to hold the consecrated host at Mass, were so mutilated from the Indian torture that he thought it improper to celebrate Mass. However, Pope Urban VIII praised him as a living martyr and gave him special permission to celebrate Mass with his damaged hand.

Still Father Jogues would not rest, and after a short recuperation he returned to his beloved Huron. Longstanding hostilities between the Huron and the Iroquois had not abated in his absence, so Father Jogues assumed the role of peacemaker. Once again, however, he fell into the clutches of the Iroquois who were determined to be finished with him. The deed was quickly done with a tomahawk. Father Jogues, only 39 years old, had spent his entire priesthood working for the Indians. His voice had been silenced, but his message had not.

Between 1642 and 1649, six other Jesuits, including Father Jean de Brêbeuf, and one layman volunteer gave up their lives at the hands of the Indians whom they had served as brothers. All eight were canonized as saints in 1930, and are known as the North American Martyrs. Every year the Church observes their memory on October 19.

The French missionaries had little success among the Iroquois, who were allied with the English and viewed the French mainly as rivals in the fur trade. One notable exception was the case of Kateri Tekakwitha, sometimes referred to as the Lily of the Mohawks. Undeterred by the ridicule and the pressures exerted by her Indian friends and elders, this young orphan girl listened to the teaching of a Jesuit missionary and took the Christian message to heart. Through a long New York winter she begged the priest for baptism only to be told to wait and make certain she was fully ready and committed.

When at last she was baptized on Easter Sunday, 1676, Kateri found her troubles had only begun. On every side she was harassed, threatened, and jeered at. At every step she found roadblocks thrown up by the hardhearted, who wanted to prevent her from praying in peace or from being faithful to Christian moral teaching.

Eventually, the missionaries concluded that Kateri and other Iroquois converts like her could not be expected to survive in so hostile an environment. So they created several Christian Indian settlements around Montreal. Here they assisted the persecuted converts in creating new lives for themselves. This was the only instance in which the French missionaries ever attempted to create for the Indians a European-style way of living like the mission system of New Spain. Kateri made her way to one of these villages, La Prairie, where she stayed the rest of her life. In recognition of her heroic commitment to her faith, Pope John Paul II gave her the title Blessed in 1980.

 

St. Rose Philippine Duchesne, a sister in the order of the Society of the Sacred Heart, and several companions came to the United States in 1818. They founded schools, orphanages, and missions to the Indians.

After a long and heroic life, St. Philippine died in 1842. Her order continues her work in Catholic education today.

The Society of Saint Sulpice (Sulpicians) was founded by a French priest, Father Jean -Jacques Olier (1608-57) who named the group after his parish church in Paris.

In the, United States, the Sulpicians are best known for operating colleges and seminaries for the training of priests.

Western French Missions
Continued harassment from both the Protestant English and their Iroquois allies caused the French missionaries to shift their attention to the western Great Lakes region. The Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette mastered at least six of the Indian languages, and brought Christianity to many in both the Wisconsin and the Illinois territories.

In 1673, Marquette and the explorer Louis Joliet traveled 2,500 miles, charting much of the interior of North America and paddling far down the Mississippi in a birchbark canoe. Several dedicated Franciscans, Fathers Louis Hennepin, Gabriel Ribourde, and Zenobe Membre, also came to work among the Indians in the Illinois country at this time.

While these Jesuits and Franciscans were trying to convert the Native Americans, the Sulpician fathers were caring for the spiritual needs of the tiny French population in the northern parts of New France. In order to organize all these efforts at establishing the Church in the New World, Rome created the Diocese of Quebec in 1674. Its boundaries were set to include the whole of New France.

During the first century of the history of New France, activity focused upon the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. In 1700, however, that began to change when the first Jesuits arrived in America via the Gulf of Mexico. Four years later, the first resident pastor in the region was installed at Fort Louis, which would later become Mobile, Alabama.

New Orleans itself was founded in 1718. The French government attempted to make the work of the Church more efficient by dividing spiritual responsibility for the whole Louisiana territory between the Jesuits and the Franciscans. The Jesuits were assigned to care for the Native Americans throughout the region. The Franciscans' responsibilities centered upon the city of New Orleans. There they worked among the French, founded a school for boys, and also gave special attention to the Black slaves. At the invitation of the Jesuits, a group of Ursuline sisters came from France to New Orleans in 1727 and founded a school for girls, as well as an orphanage and a hospital. Not only were the Ursulines the first order of women religious to enter the United States, but they have continued to the present day to serve the people of New Orleans.

At the end of the French and Indian War of 1763, France had lost most of its holdings in the New World. The terms of the peace treaty divided New France in half. Everything to the east of the Mississippi was given to England; while New Orleans and everything to the west went to Spain. This meant the end of almost all Catholic missionary work in that half of New France acquired by England. As for the rest of the area, the work of the Church was dealt a cruel blow. The French and Spanish governments decided to banish the Jesuits. Before long, there were only seven priests, all of them Franciscans, remaining in the whole Louisiana territory.

In 1793, Rome tried to organize what was left of the local church by creating the Diocese of Louisiana and the Two Floridas. A Spanish bishop came to live in New Orleans, and was assisted by several dozen Spanish priests. The beautiful Church of St. Louis, which still serves as New Orleans' cathedral, was completed the following year. In 1803, however, the Spanish gave the Louisiana territory back to France; the French government immediately sold the whole thing to the United States. Sensing they would not be welcomed by the U.S. Government, most of the Spanish clergy departed. The Church in that vast area was once again faced with the necessity of starting over.

End of the French Missions
The lasting religious impact of two centuries of French Catholic colonization in North America is slight. In comparison to either New Spain or New England, very few colonists ever migrated to New France. The only group of French colonists who might have come in large numbers were the Huguenots who were expelled from France. They were denied entry to New France, however, because of their Protestantism. Thus, very few French people and very few Catholics ever inhabited the vast expanses of New France. Equally unsuccessful were French missionary efforts at converting any significant numbers of Indians to Christianity. In the opinion of more than one missionary, this was true because the French Catholic immigrant population was too small to provide a stable Christian community into which the Indians could be integrated.

When the French finally abandoned New France, they took their priests home with them. Behind them, they left little more than a vast empty space with a few Indian converts and a long list of French place names such as Marquette, Joliet, and La Prairie de la Madeleine. Within the future territory of the United States, only in the area around New Orleans did French Catholicism and Catholic institutions such as the Ursuline schools take firm root. They remain strong to this day.

Terms

canonize: to declare a person a saint

ransom: to pay for the release of a capture person

evangelize: to proclaim Christ and his gospel through word and example

Questions for Reflection

What was the lasting religious impact of French colonization in the United States?

What was the contribution of women religious in New France?

What similarities and what differences are found when comparing the Spanish and the French missionary efforts in North America?

Both the Spanish and the French showed a great deal of concern about bringing the Good News of Christianity to the peoples of the New World. To what extent do you think American Catholics show this kind of concern today? Whom do you think most needs to hear the Good News of Christianity at this time? What do you think American Catholics could do to help?

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