The astonishing growth of our hierarchy, with the multiplied divisions which such growth calls for—overrunning, as they do, and intersecting the boundaries of ancient mission-fields—seems to make the renowned past of missionary labor on this continent recede more and more into indistinctness. We propose to make some brief mention of prominent incidents in the history of those missions, and to do so not only that we may awaken in a generation of superficial readers an interest in the achievements of the great pioneers of our faith on this soil of America, but that we may base thereupon some suggestions we wish to make to the future historian of those times and those men. We trust that the day will come when a taste for studies of this kind will have spread from the few to the many, and create a necessity for some work more extended than a sketch or a compend. Meanwhile, of such historical materials as we have, which are accessible to the ordinary reader, we propose to make mention, for the benefit of those who may now desire to know what materials we possess; nay, more, that they may be encouraged to appreciate these materials at their value, we shall reproduce from them alone all the statements we have to present to the reader.
The period of time embraced by these early missionary enterprises comprehends no less than eight and a half centuries, dating from the first mention in history of the Norse missions, in the tenth century, to the establishment of the last of the missions of California in 1823. In the chronological order of their inception, they range as follows:
I. The missions to the adventurous Norsemen, whose settlements in the middle ages extended from Labrador to the southern coast of New England. Although the light of faith gleamed but for a time on our shores, leaving us only the memory of the Bishop of Garda—so happily embalmed in the pages of Mr. R. H. Clarke’s Deceased Bishops—the Norse missions did not entirely die out on the eastern coast of Greenland until 1540. At this date, the intrepid missionaries of Spain had already advanced from Mexico into the borders of our present Southern territory. The extinction of the Catholic settlements at the north was due to the physical revolution caused by a change in the course of the Gulf Stream. Thereupon, that once smiling and fertile shore became the bleak and inhospitable region that it has ever since continued to be, and no race of Europeans now disputes with the rugged Esquimaux a foothold on the land.
II. The Spanish missions alluded to above. The history of these missionary enterprises, in their alternating successes and defeats, is one that renders the soil of Florida, Texas, and New Mexico a land of sacred memories. In New Mexico, the Christian settlements under our American Bishop of Santa Fé perpetuate these ancient missions. In the other states named they exist only in the material monuments they have left behind them.
III. The French missions. These were the vast Christian enterprises which, from New France, sent into New York and the states west of it so many apostles and martyrs. The present Christian Indians of Canada owe their faith, and indeed their continued existence, to these missions, which have also bequeathed to us within our own limits the Abnakis of Maine and the Christian Indians who within a few years have been removed from Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, etc., to the Indian Territory.
IV. The missions of Maryland. These missions carried the light of faith to the aborigines of that colony, and if the latter have ceased to exist, the Jesuits still subsist, and inhabit the ancient manors where their brethren of old gathered around them the docile children of the forest, ere the torch of religious and political persecution was lighted by stranger hands in the “Land of the Sanctuary.” Yet, even the missions of Maryland are not without a living succession, for the Jesuits of Maryland planted a colony of their brethren in the West, and have carried the Gospel to vast multitudes of new subjects among the Indian tribes, and have besides aided to sustain the faith of those expatriated from the former limits of other mission fields. Perhaps the most serious blow to the perpetuity of some of these missions is threatened in the government’s plan of “improvement” in its Indian policy. While the measures comprehended under this new policy aim at eradicating some abuses, the plan is also ingeniously aimed to operate in a direction where no abuses can be alleged, and to substitute among Catholic Indians the “Evangelical” preacher for the “Black-gown,” whom the Indians feel to be their best and most disinterested friend, at whose feet they have learned the rudiments of Christianity, and at whose feet alone they will condescend to sit for instruction in the way of eternal life.
V. The missions of Louisiana. Within the former limits of these missions, the area of the present states of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi was embraced. By the removal of the native tribes, the missions of Louisiana have become practically merged in those which now embrace the Western States. Nevertheless, some Christian Indians still linger on the soil of Louisiana proper.
VI. The missions of California. In so far as the hostility of the whites has permitted the Indians to live in peace, these missions may be said still to subsist. Such remains of them as Mexican rapacity had spared descended to us at least on the cession of California to the United States.
Should the full history of these missions come to be written, the more perspicuous arrangement—we beg to suggest to the historian—would be to divide the whole into epochs. Thus, the Norse missions would constitute an epoch by itself, to be designated, let us say, as the Ante-Columbian—missions before the discovery by Columbus. When the Catholic Historical Society shall be formed (even if it owe its origin to this suggestion for its formation), its first care, after gathering into its fire-proof cabinets the books, pamphlets, newspapers and magazines, manuscripts, charts, portraits, sketches, and other memorials or illustrations of the Catholic history of America, should be to draw from Northern Europe materials for a more extended history than we now possess of an epoch so full of interest to the antiquary and the Catholic. Until recently, indeed, the Norse missions bid fair to be reckoned as among myths. If they are no longer so regarded, this result is due to the investigations of a few scholars only.
The second, or Post-Columbian, epoch should commence with the history of the missionary efforts which succeeded the discovery by Columbus. This epoch, after displaying the inception and progress of these great religious enterprises, might terminate appropriately with the establishment of one of the last series of missions, that of San Francisco, erected on the site of the present city of that name in 1776, seven days before the date of our Declaration of Independence.