As Canada fell to England and Louisiana to Spain, the work of the Jesuit missionaries in French North America ended. Their record is a chapter of American history full of personal devotedness, energy, courage, and perseverance; none can withhold the homage of respect to men like Jogues, Brebeuf, Garnier, Buteux, Gravier, Allouez, and Marquette. Men of intelligence and education, they gave up all that civilized life can offer to share the precarious life of wandering savages, and were the first to reveal the character of the interior of the country, its soil and products, the life and ideas of the natives, and the system of American languages. They made known the existence of salt springs in New York, and of copper on Lake Superior; they identified the ginseng, and enabled France to open a lucrative trade in it with China; they planted the first wheat in Illinois and the first sugar in Louisiana. Their missions did not equal in results those of the Franciscans in Florida, Texas, New Mexico, and California,—not from any lack of personal ability or devotion to their work, but because they were at the mercy of trading companies, which allowed them a stipend just sufficing for their moderate wants; but neither company nor government made any outlay for such mission-work as would have enabled the missionaries to carry out any general plan for civilizing the natives. The Spanish Government, on the contrary, dealt directly with the missionaries, and did all to insure the success of their teaching. When a mission was to be established in Texas, New Mexico, or California, with the missionaries went a party of soldiers to erect a presidio or garrison-house as the nucleus of a settlement. These soldiers took their families with them; civilized Indians from Mexico who had acquired some European arts and trades were also sent, as being able to understand the character of the Indians better. With the party went horses, cattle, sheep, swine, agricultural implements, grain and seeds for planting, looms, etc. Then a mission was established, and as converts were made in the neighboring tribes, they were brought into the mission, and there taught to read and write in Spanish, instructed religiously, and trained to agriculture and trades. The mission was under discipline like a large factory, and each family shared in the profit.
The defect of the system was that no provision was made for the gradual settling apart from the mission of those who showed ability and judgment, allowing them to manage for themselves, and replacing them by others. They were kept too long in the degree of vassals, with no incentive to acquire manhood and independence. Accordingly, when the missions were suppressed, the Indians, who had never acted for themselves, were left in a state of helplessness.
Such a system in Canada would have saved the Indians of the St. Lawrence Valley and Upper Canada. What was accomplished, was effected by the indomitable energy of individuals,—the Jesuits, laboring most earnestly and continuously, effecting most; the Sulpitians ranking next; then the Priests of the Foreign Missions, and the Recollects. In our time the work of winning the Indians to the Catholic faith, or retaining them among its adherents, has devolved almost entirely on the Oblates of Mary Immaculate in Canada and Oregon, the Jesuits and Benedictines in the United States.
CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.
THE works bearing directly or mainly on the history of the Catholic missions in Canada and the other parts of the northern continent once claimed by France embrace so large a collection, that, instead of the missions being an incident in the civil history, the civil history of French America for much of its first century has to be gleaned from the annals of its missionary work.
For the first Recollect mission,—1615-1629,—the main authority is Sagard, Le Grand Voyage du Pays des Hurons, situé en l’Amérique vers la Mer douce, és derniers confins de la Nouvelle France, dite Canada, Paris, Denys Moreau, 1632; enlarged a few years later, and published as Histoire du Canada et Voyages que les Frères Mineurs Recollects y ont faicts pour la conversion des infidelles, Paris, Claude Sonnius, 1636. To each of these works is appended a Dictionnaire de la Langve Hvronne, Paris, 1632. Sagard’s work is very diffuse, rich in details on Indian life and customs, but gives little as to the civil history of Canada.[681]
Le Clercq, Établissement de la Foi, 2 vols. 12mo, 1691, translated as Establishment of the Faith, 2 vols. 8vo, New York, 1881,[682] gives in the first volume a clearer and more definite account of the ecclesiastical history of Canada for the period embraced in the first Recollect mission.
The Voyages de Champlain, Paris, 1619, gives some account of the introduction of the Recollects into Canada.[683] In Margry, Découvertes et Établissements des Français, Paris, 1875, there are two memoirs by the Recollects, drawn up to obtain permission to return to Canada,—one made in 1637 (vol. i. p. 3), the other in 1684 (p. 18),—both bearing on their earlier labors.