The Relations.
A few explorers like Champlain, Radisson, and Perrot have left valuable narratives behind them, which are of prime importance in the study of the beginnings of French settlement in America; but it is to the Jesuits that we owe the great body of our information concerning the frontiers of New France in the seventeenth century. It was their duty annually to transmit to their superior in Quebec, or Montreal, a written journal of their doings; it was also their duty to pay occasional visits to their superior, and to go into retreat at the central house of the Canadian mission. Annually, between 1632 and 1673, the superior made up a narrative, or Relation, of the most important events which had occurred in the several missionary districts under his charge, sometimes using the exact words of the missionaries, and sometimes with considerable editorial skill summarizing the individual journals in a general account, based in part upon the oral reports of visiting fathers. This annual Relation, which in bibliographies occasionally bears the name of the superior, and at other times of the missionary chiefly contributing to it, was forwarded to the provincial of the order in France, and, after careful scrutiny and re-editing, published by him in a series of duodecimo volumes, known collectively as The Jesuit Relations.
The authors of the journals which formed the basis of the Relations were for the most part men of trained intellect, acute observers, and practised in the art of keeping records of their experiences. They had left the most highly civilized country of their times, to plunge at once into the heart of the American wilderness, and attempt to win to the Christian faith the fiercest savages known to history. To gain these savages, it was first necessary to know them intimately,—their speech, their habits, their manner of thought, their strong points and their weak. These first students of the North American Indian were not only amply fitted for their undertaking, but none have since had better opportunity for its prosecution. They were explorers, as well as priests. Bancroft was inexact when he said, in oft-quoted phrase, "Not a cape was turned, not a river entered, but a Jesuit led the way." The actual pioneers of New France were almost always coureurs de bois, in the prosecution of the fur trade; but coureurs de bois, for obvious reasons, seldom kept records, even when capable of doing so, and as a rule we learn of their previous appearance on the scene only through chance allusions in the Relations. The Jesuits performed a great service to mankind in publishing their annals, which are, for historian, geographer, and ethnologist, among our first and best authorities.
Many of the Relations were written in Indian camps, amid a chaos of distractions. Insects innumerable tormented the journalists, they were immersed in scenes of squalor and degradation, overcome by fatigue and lack of proper sustenance, often suffering from wounds and disease, maltreated in a hundred ways by hosts who, at times, might more properly be called jailers; and not seldom had savage superstition risen to such a height, that to be seen making a memorandum was certain to arouse the ferocious enmity of the band. It is not surprising that the composition of these journals of the Jesuits is sometimes crude; the wonder is, that they could be written at all. Nearly always the style is simple and direct. Never does the narrator descend to self-glorification, or dwell unnecessarily upon the details of his continual martyrdom; he never complains of his lot; but sets forth his experience in phrases the most matter-of-fact. His meaning is seldom obscure. We gain from his pages a vivid picture of life in the primeval forest, as he lived it; we seem to see him upon his long canoe journeys, squatted amidst his dusky fellows, working his passage at the paddles, and carrying cargoes upon the portage trail; we see him the butt and scorn of the savage camp, sometimes deserted in the heart of the wilderness, and obliged to wait for another flotilla, or to make his way alone as best he can. Arrived at last, at his journey's end, we often find him vainly seeking for shelter in the squalid huts of the natives, with every man's hand against him, but his own heart open to them all. We find him, even when at last domiciled in some far-away village, working against hope to save the unbaptized from eternal damnation; we seem to see the rising storm of opposition, invoked by native medicine-men,—who to his seventeenth-century imagination seem devils indeed,—and at last the bursting climax of superstitious frenzy which sweeps him and his before it. Not only do these devoted missionaries,—never, in any field, has been witnessed greater personal heroism than theirs,—live and breathe before us in the Relations; but we have in them our first competent account of the Red Indian, at a time when relatively uncontaminated by contact with Europeans. We seem, in the Relations, to know this crafty savage, to measure him intellectually as well as physically, his inmost thoughts as well as open speech. The fathers did not understand him from an ethnological point of view, as well as he is to-day understood; their minds were tinctured with the scientific fallacies of their time. But, with what is known to-day, the photographic reports in the Relations help the student to an accurate picture of the untamed aborigine, and much that mystified the fathers, is now, by aid of their careful journals, easily susceptible of explanation. Few periods of history are so well illuminated as the French régime in North America. This we owe in large measure to the existence of the Jesuit Relations.
What are generally known as the Relations proper, addressed to the superior and published in Paris, under direction of the provincial, commence with Le Jeune's Brieve Relation du Voyage de la Nouvelle-France (1632); and thereafter a duodecimo volume, neatly printed and bound in vellum, was issued annually from the press of Sebastien Cramoisy, in Paris, until 1673, when the series was discontinued, probably through the influence of Frontenac, to whom the Jesuits were distasteful. The Relations at once became popular in the court circles of France; their regular appearance was always awaited with the keenest interest, and assisted greatly in creating and fostering the enthusiasm of pious philanthropists, who for many years substantially maintained the missions of New France. In addition to these forty volumes, which to collectors are technically known as "Cramoisys," many similar publications found their way into the hands of the public, the greater part of them bearing date after the suppression of the Cramoisy series. Some were printed in Paris and Lyons by independent publishers; others appeared in Latin and Italian texts, at Rome, and other cities in Italy; while in such journals as Mercure François and Annuæ Litteræ Societatis Jesu, occasionally were published letters from the missionaries, of the same nature as the Relations, but briefer and more intimate in tone.
It does not appear, however, that popular interest in these publications materially affected the secular literature of the period; they were largely used in Jesuit histories of New France, but by others were practically ignored. General literary interest in the Relations was only created about a half century ago, when Dr. E. B. O'Callaghan, editor of the Documentary History of New York, called attention to their great value as storehouses of contemporary information. Dr. John G. Shea, author of History of the Catholic Missions among the Indian Tribes of the United States, and Father Felix Martin, S. J., of Montreal, soon came forward, with fresh studies of the Relations. Collectors at once commenced searching for Cramoisys, which were found to be exceedingly scarce,—most of the originals having been literally worn out in the hands of their devout seventeenth-century readers; finally, the greatest collector of them all, James Lenox, of New York, outstripped his competitors and laid the foundation, in the Lenox Library, of what is to-day probably the only complete collection in America. In 1858, the Canadian government reprinted the Cramoisys, with a few additions, in three stout octavo volumes, carefully edited by Abbés Làverdière, Plante, and Ferland. These, too, are now rare, copies seldom being offered for sale.
The Quebec reprint was followed by two admirable series brought out by Shea and O'Callaghan respectively. Shea's Cramoisy Series (1857-1866), numbers twenty-five little volumes, the edition of each of which was limited to a hundred copies, now difficult to obtain; it contains for the most part entirely new matter, chiefly Relations prepared for publication by the superiors, after 1672, and miscellaneously printed; among the volumes, however, are a few reprints of particularly rare issues of the original Cramoisy press. The O'Callaghan series, seven in number (the edition limited to twenty-five copies), contains different material from Shea's, but of the same character. A further addition to the mass of material was made by Father Martin, in Relations Inédites de la Nouvelle-France, 1672-79 (2 vols., Paris, 1861); and by Father Carayon in Première Mission des Jésuites au Canada (Paris, 1864). In 1871, there was published at Quebec, under the editorship of Abbés Laverdière and Casgrain, Le Journal des Jésuites, from the original manuscript in the archives of the Seminary of Quebec (now Laval University). The memoranda contained in this volume,—a rarity, for the greater part of the edition was accidentally destroyed by fire,—were not intended for publication, being of the character of private records, covering the operations of the Jesuits in New France between 1645 and 1668. The Journal is, however, an indispensable complement of the Relations. It was reprinted by a Montreal publisher (J. M. Valois) in 1892, but even this later edition is already exhausted. Many interesting epistles are found in Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, écrites des Missions Étrangères, which cover the Jesuit missions in many lands, between the years 1702 and 1776; only a small portion of this publication (there are several editions, ranging from 1702-1776 to 1875-77) is devoted to the North American missions.
American historians, from Shea and Parkman down, have already made liberal use of the Relations, and here and there antiquarians and historical societies have published fragmentary translations. The great body of the Relations and their allied documents, however, has never been Englished. The text is difficult, for their French is not the French of the modern schools; hence these interesting papers have been doubly inaccessible to the majority of our historical students. The present edition, while faithfully reproducing the old French text, even in most of its errors, offers to the public for the first time, an English rendering side by side with the original.
In breadth of scope, also, this edition will, through the generous enterprise of the publishers, readily be first in the field. Not only will it embrace all of the original Cramoisy series, the Shea and O'Callaghan series, those collected by Fathers Martin and Carayon, the Journal des Jésuites, and such of the Lettres Édifiantes as touch upon the North American missions, but many other valuable documents which have not previously been reprinted; it will contain, also, considerable hitherto-unpublished material from the manuscripts in the archives of St. Mary's College, Montreal, and other depositories. These several documents will be illustrated by faithful reproductions of all the maps and other engravings appearing in the old editions, besides much new material obtained especially for this edition, a prominent feature of which will be authentic portraits of many of the early fathers, and photographic facsimiles of pages from their manuscript letters.
In the Preface to each volume will be given such Bibliographical Data concerning its contents, as seem necessary to the scholar. The appended Notes consist of historical, biographical, archæological, and miscellaneous comment, which it is hoped may tend to the elucidation of the text. An exhaustive General Index to the English text will appear in the final volume of the series.
PREFACE TO VOL. I
There is a dramatic unity in the Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, as they will be presented in this series. Commencing with a report of the first conversion of savages in New France, in 1610, by a secular priest, and soon drifting into the records of Jesuit missionary effort, they touch upon practically every important enterprise of the Jesuits, in Canada and Louisiana, from the coming of Fathers Biard and Massé, in 1611, to the death, in the closing decade of the eighteenth century, of Father Well, "the last Jesuit of Montreal."
I. The series fitly opens with Lescarbot's La Conversion des Savvages. Marc Lescarbot, a Paris lawyer, a Huguenot poet as well as historian, and in many respects a picturesque character in the early scenes of our drama, adroitly seeks in this document to convince the Catholic Queen of France that his Huguenot patrons, De Monts and Poutrincourt, are so wisely ordering affairs in their New World domain that not only will the glory of France be enhanced, but the natives be won to Christ through the medium of the Church; for it was part of the agreement entered into with the Crown, by these adventurers, that while their colonists should be permitted to have Huguenot ministers, the aborigines must be converted only by Catholic priests. To this end, Lescarbot describes with unction the sudden conversion by a secular priest, Messire Jessé Fléché, of old Chief Membertou and twenty other Micmacs, and their formal baptism on the beach at Port Royal. The object is, of course, to ward off the threatened invasion of New France by the Jesuits, by showing how thoroughly the work of proselyting is being carried forward without their aid.
II. By the same ship which, in the hands of Poutrincourt's son, Biencourt, carries to France this ingenious document, one Bertrand, a Huguenot layman, sends a message to his friend, the Sieur de la Tronchaie. In his Lettre Missive, M. Bertrand describes the conversion of Membertou and his fellow savages, and speaks with enthusiasm of the new country: as well he may, for in Volume II. we shall find Lescarbot testifying that in Paris the worthy Bertrand was "daily tormented by the gout," while at Port Royal he was "entirely free" from it.
III. Lescarbot's fervid description of Father Fléché's conversions did not succeed in keeping the Jesuits from New France. The present document is a letter written at Dieppe, by Father Pierre Biard, of the Society of Jesus, to his general at Rome, telling of the adventures which had befallen Father Ennemond Massé and himself, since they, the pioneers of their order in the New World, had been ordered from France to Port Royal. Certain Huguenot merchants of Dieppe conspired to prevent the passage of the Jesuits to America; but finally the queen and other court ladies, favoring the missionaries, purchased control of the Huguenots' ship and cargo, and the exultant fathers are now on the eve of sailing.
IV. In this letter, written by Biard to his provincial, a few weeks after the arrival at Port Royal, the missionary gives the details of his voyage, describes the spiritual and material condition of Poutrincourt's colony, and outlines plans for work among the Indians—only Huguenot ministers being, as yet, allowed under the charter to serve the spiritual needs of the colonists themselves.
V. In this letter, Biard notifies his general of the safe arrival of Massé and himself.
VI. A like duty is here performed by Massé.
VII. Father Jouvency, one of the eighteenth-century historians of the Society of Jesus, herein gives an historical account of the Canadian missions of his order, in 1611-13; and, by way of comparison, tells of the condition of the same missions in 1703, ending with a list of the Jesuit missions in North America in the year 1710, the date of original publication.
VIII. Herein, Jouvency gives a detailed account of the Indian tribes of Canada,—their customs, characteristics, superstitions, etc. Although not in strict chronological order, these chapters are given here as being from the same work as the foregoing.
In the preparation of several of the Notes to Volume I., the Editor has had some assistance from Mrs. Jane Marsh Parker, of Rochester, N. Y.
R. G. T.
Madison, Wis., August, 1896.