Le Clercq refers in two places[684] to “an ample Relation given to the public” by the Recollects of Aquitaine for an account of their labors in Acadia; but the work is still unknown to bibliographers and students.
For the later Recollect missions, the sources to be consulted are Father Christian Le Clercq, Nouvelle Relation de la Gaspésie, Paris, 1691, and the second volume of his Établissement de la Foi. Hennepin, in his Description de la Louisiane, Paris, 1683, 1688, translated as Description of Louisiana, New York, 1881, gives an account of his own missionary career; but his Nouvelle Découverte expands his former work, and introduces matter of doubtful authenticity, while his Nouveau Voyage is based on the second volume of Le Clercq.[685]
As bearing on the Recollect missions, cf. the Voyage au Nouveau Monde of Father Crespel, Amsterdam, 1757; in English in Perils of the Ocean and Wilderness, Boston.[686]
On the Jesuit missions, the works to be consulted are, for the first attempt in Acadia, Biard, Relation de la Nouvelle France, de ses Terres, Naturel des Terres, et de ses Habitans, Lyons, 1616, reprinted in the Relations des Jésuites, Quebec, 1858, and in fac-simile by Dr. O’Callaghan; the accounts in the Annuæ Litteræ Societatis Jesu for 1612, Lyons, 1618, and for 1611, Douay, 1618; Biard’s letter in Carayon’s Première Mission des Jésuites au Canada, pp. 1-105; and an adverse view in Lescarbot, Histoire de la Nouvelle France, 3d ed., Paris, 1618.
For the missions of Canada proper, the series of Jesuit Relations, as they are generally called, volumes issued in Paris, beginning with the “Lettre du Père Charles l’Allemant,” Paris, 1627 (also vol. xiii. of the Mercure Français), as Relation de ce qui s’est passé en la Nouvelle France en l’année MDCXXVI, and continued annually from the Briève Relation du Voyage de la Nouvelle France, by Father Paul le Jeune, printed by Cramoisy at Paris in 1632, down to the year 1672, comprising in all a series of forty-one volumes. Besides the religious information which it was their main object to convey, in order to interest the pious in France in their mission work, the Jesuits in these Relations give much information as to the progress of geographical discovery, the resources and fauna of the country, the Indian nations, their language, manners, and customs, their wars and vicissitudes. The volumes have been much sought by collectors, and the whole series was reprinted by the Canadian Government at Quebec in 1858, in three large octavo volumes, under the title of Relations des Jésuites. Though some Relations were reprinted and translated into Latin, complete sets have never been common. In Le Clercq’s Établissement de la Foi there is a bitter and satirical review of these Jesuit Relations, but the writer evidently had only eight or nine of the volumes; and Arnauld, the great enemy of the Jesuits, having his attention drawn to them by Le Clercq’s work, found great difficulty in getting copies of any, but finally discovered fourteen in “a great library.” Dr. E. B. O’Callaghan drew attention to them in a paper before the New York Historical Society, and several collectors endeavored to complete sets. Mr. James Lenox obtained nearly all, reprinting two that exist in almost unique copies. Matter was prepared for subsequent volumes by the Superiors of the Canada missions, and the Relations for 1672-73, 1675, 1673-79, 1696, and separate Relations bearing on the Abenaki, Illinois, and Louisiana missions have been printed to correspond with the old Relations; and many of these were reprinted under the title of Relations Inédites de la Nouvelle France, 2 vols., 12mo, Paris, 1861. The autobiography of the missionary Chaumonot has also been issued (New York, 1858; Paris, 1869); and Lives of Father Isaac Jogues and Brebeuf, by Father Felix Martin (Paris, 1873, etc.). One work called forth by the Jesuit missions in Canada is the Mœurs des Sauvages Amériquains comparées dux mœurs des premiers Temps, by Father Lafitau, long a missionary at Sault St. Louis, and author also of a treatise on the Ginseng.[687]
IROQUOIS FIVE NATIONS AND MISSION SITES,
1656-1684 (John S. Clark, 1879).