France and England in North America, Part II: The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century

France and England in North America
A Series of Historical Narratives
Part Second
BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 1867.
Entered According to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by Francis Parkman, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. CAMBRIDGE: STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON.

Few passages of history are more striking than those which record the efforts of the earlier French Jesuits to convert the Indians. Full as they are of dramatic and philosophic interest, bearing strongly on the political destinies of America, and closely involved with the history of its native population, it is wonderful that they have been left so long in obscurity. While the infant colonies of England still clung feebly to the shores of the Atlantic, events deeply ominous to their future were in progress, unknown to them, in the very heart of the continent. It will be seen, in the sequel of this volume, that civil and religious liberty found strange allies in this Western World.
In extracts given in the notes, the antiquated orthography and accentuation are preserved.
These form but a part of the surviving writings of the French-American Jesuits. Many additional reports, memoirs, journals, and letters, official and private, have come down to us; some of which have recently been printed, while others remain in manuscript. Nearly every prominent actor in the scenes to be described has left his own record of events in which he bore part, in the shape of reports to his Superiors or letters to his friends. I have studied and compared these authorities, as well as a great mass of collateral evidence, with more than usual care, striving to secure the greatest possible accuracy of statement, and to reproduce an image of the past with photographic clearness and truth.
The introductory chapter of the volume is independent of the rest; but a knowledge of the facts set forth in it is essential to the full understanding of the narrative which follows.