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8 CHAPTER 1 THE COLLISION OF CULTURES PAUL LE JEUNE AND JEROME LALEMANT: FROM hundred men, called adventurers, encompassing artisans, soldiers, gentlemen, and a few farmers, sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and in May 1607 established a fort and plantation-a term that meant "settlement" to them-off of the Chesapeake Bay. They named both the river and their small settlement after their monarch instead of adopting the names in use by those already there. Naming signaled taking possession. Captain John Smith, admitted to the colony's governing council in June 1607 and then elected its president in the fall of 1608, strove to control the adventurers and subordinate the Native Americans. Powhatan (Wahunsonacock), the paramount chief (mamanatowick) of the Powhatan Chiefdom that encompassed hundreds of miles and about thirty tribes, including the Pamunkey, Chickahominy, and Mattaponi, however, expected the newcomers to acknowledge his authority and respect his people's property and privileges. From, ed., "The Proceedings of the English Colonie in Virginia," in Captain John Smith: Writings with Other Narratives of Roanoke, Jamestown, and the. Fi~st ~nglis~ Settlement .of America (New York: Library of America, 2007), pp. 83-84. [Ed1tonal msertwns appear m square brackets-Ed.] * * * Captaine Smithes discourse to Powhatan. Powhatan, though I had many courses to have made my provision, yet beleeving your promises to supply my wants, I neglected all, to satisfie your desire, and to testifie my love, I sent you my men for your building, neglecting my owner what your people had you have engrossed, forbidding them our trade, and nowe you thinke by consuming the time, wee shall consume for want, not having to fulfill your strange demandes. As for swords, and gunnes, I told you long agoe, I had none to spare. And you shall knowe, those I have, can keepe me from want, yet steale, or wrong you I will not, nor dissolve that friendship, wee have mutually promised, except you constraine mee by your bad usage. The king having attentively listned to this discourse; promised, that both hee and his Country would spare him what they could, the which within 2 daies, they should receave. Powhatans reply and flattery. Yet Captaine Smith, (saith the king) some doubt I have of your comming hither, that makes me not so kindly seeke to relieve you as I would; for many do informe me, your comming is not for trade, but to invade my people and possesse my Country, who dare not come to bring you corne, seeing you thus armed with your men. To deere us of this feare, leave abord your weapons, for here they are needlesse we being all friends and for ever Powhatans. With many such discourses they spent the day, quartring that night in the kings houses. The next day ... Whilst we expected the comming in of the countrie, we wrangled out of the king 10 quarters of come for a copper kettle .... Wherewith each seeming well contented; Powhatan began to expostulate the difference betwixt peace and war, after this manner. Powhatans discourse of peace and warre. Captaine Smith you may understand, that I; having seene the death of all my people thrice, and not one living of those 3 generations, but my selfe, I knowe the difference of peace and warre, better then any in my Countrie. But now I am old, and ere long must die, my brethren, namely Opichapam, Opechankanough, and Kekataugh, my two sisters, and their two daughters, are distinctly each others successours, I wish their experiences no lesse then mine, and your love to them, no lesse then mine to you; but this brute [information bruited about] from Nansamund that you are come to destroy my Countrie, so much affrighteth all my people, as they dare not visit you; what will it availe you, to take that perforce, you may quietly have with love, or to destroy them that provide you food? what can you get by war, when we can hide our provision and flie to the woodes, whereby you must famish by wronging us your friends; and whie are you thus jealous of our loves, seeing us unarmed, and both doe, and are willing still to feed you with that you cannot get but by our labours? think you I am so simple not to knowe, it is better to eate good meate, lie well, and sleepe quietly with my women and children, laugh and be merrie with you, have copper, hatchets, or The Jesuit Relations (1640) what I want, being your friend; then bee forced to flie from al, to lie cold in the woods, feed upon acorns, roots, and such trash, and be so hunted by you, that I can neither rest, eat, nor sleepe; but my tired men must watch, and if a twig but breake, everie one erie there comes Captaine Smith, then must I flie I knowe not whether, and thus with miserable feare end my miserable life; leaving my pleasures to such youths as you, which through your rash unadvisednesse, may quickly as miserably en de, for want of that you never knowe how to find? Let this therefore assure you of our loves and everie yeare our friendly trade shall furnish you with corne, and now also if you would come in friendly manner to see us, and not thus with your gunnes and swords, as to invade your foes. * * * REVIEW QUESTIONS 1. What did Smith accuse Powhatan of doing? Was his message a promise or a warning? 2. What suspicions did Powhatan have of Smith? 3. How did Powhatan try to promote peace? Was his message a promise or a warning? 4. What does this exchange reveal about both leaders and the relations between their peoples? PAUl lE JEUNE AND jEROME lALEMANT FRoM 9 The jesuit Relations (1640) The Jesuit priests Paul LeJeune and Jerome Lalemant were missionaries to the native peoples in the territories claimed by France. In the Relation of 1640, Father L.e feune reported from Quebec while Father Lalemant corresponded from the misst~n ~mon~the Hurons. These highly educated and dedicated men, along with other mtsswnanes, learned the languages and gained an understanding of the cultures of the native peoples as they lived among them and worked to convert them to Christianity.. They wrote extensively of their experiences among the Algonquin and Iroquotan peo?les. While the missionaries expressed some appreciation of certain aspects of nattve cultures, such as a lack of avariciousness, they did not see the PAUL LEJEUNE AND JEROME LALEMANT: FROM 10 CHAPTER 1 The Jesuit Relations (1640) 11 THE COLLISION OF CULTURES cultures as civilized. Their observations thus reveal not only native ways but also how Europeans thought of Indians in comparison to themselves. In 1639 and 1640, a smallpox epidemic spread through the St. Lawrence Valley and into the interior of Canada. Reports on the contagion show not only its fatal course but also how women in religious orders were integral to the mission. On the other hand, the reports also show how the spreading sickness increased the animosity of many natives toward the priests in their midst. Some Native Americans saw the "Black Robes" as evil sorcerers while the missionaries, in turn, often denigrated the natives' spirits and spiritual leaders as demons. From Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610-1791. Volume XIX: Quebec and Hurons: 1640 (Cleveland: The Burrow Brothers Co., 1898), pp. 9-13, 21-25, 87-97, 115-17. [Editorial insertions appear in brackets-Ed.] age, and sex, can agree so well. In France, a Nun has to be on her guard every day in our houses, to prevent disputes among our poor, or to quell them; and all winter we have not observed the least discord among our sick Savages,-not even a slight quarrel has arisen. "The remedies that we brought from Europe are very good for the Savages, who have no difficulty in taking our medicines, nor in having themselves bled. The love of the mothers toward their children is very great, for they take in their own mouths the medicine intended for their children, and then pass it into the mouths of their little ones." Thus the good Mother wrote to me. * Of the Hospital. The hospital Nuns arrived at Kebec on the first day of the month of August of last year. Scarcely had they disembarked before they found themselves overwhelmed with patients. The hall of the Hospital being too small, it was necessary to erect some cabins, fashioned like those of the Savages, in their garden. Not having enough furniture for so many people, they had to cut in two or three pieces part of the blankets and sheets they had brought for these poor sick people. In a word, instead of taking a little rest, and refreshing themselves after the great discomforts they had suffered upon the sea, they found themselves so burdened and occupied that we had fear of losing them and their hospital at its very birth. The sick came from all directions in such numbers, their stench was so insupportable, the heat so great, the fresh food so scarce and so poor, in a country so new and strange, that I do not know how these good sisters, who almost had not even leisure in which to take a little sleep, endured all these hardships .... All the French born in the country were attacked by this contagion, as well as the Savages .... In brief, from the month of August until the month of May, more than one hundred patients entered the hospital, and more than two hundred poor Savages found relief there, either in temporary treatment or in sleeping there one or two nights, or more. There have been seen as many as ten, twelve, twenty, or thirty of them at a time. Twenty poor sick people have received holy Baptism there; and about twenty-four, quitting this house of mercy, have entered the regions of glory.... ... Father Claude Pijard, who has had charge of the instruction of the poor of this house, during the entire winter, has given me a little relation, couched in these terms: "In the morning, we had the Savages say prayers, and, some time after, the holy Mass was celebrated, at which those who had been baptized were present; after dinner, we had them recite the catechism, and then gave them a little explanation of it, usually adding some pious story that one of the Savages repeated. In the evening, they made their examination of conscience; they confessed and received communion every two weeks, and would have done so oftener if we had permitted them. They showed their devotion by often visiting the most holy Sacrament, by saying their rosary several times a day, by singing spiritual canticles, which have succeeded their barbarous songs,-in short, by fasting throughout the sacred forty days, for those who could do so ...." * * * "I have often wondered," says the Mother [Superior], "how these persons, so different in country, * * The Savages who leave the hospital, and who come to see us again at St. Joseph, or at the three Rivers, say a thousand pleasant things about thes~ good Nuns. They call them "the good," "the liberal," "the charitable." The Mother Superior having fallen sick, these poor Savages were very sorry, the sick blaming themselves for it. "It is we who have made her sick," they said; "she loves us too much; why does she do so much for us?" When this good Mother, having recovered, entered the hall of the poor, they knew not how to welcome her enough. They have good reason to love these good Mothers: for I do not know that parents have so sweet, so strong, and so constant an affection for their children as these good women have for their patients. I have often seen them so overwhelmed that they were utterly exhausted; yet I have never heard them complain, either of the too great number of their patients, or of the infection, or of the trouble they gave them. They have hearts so loving and so tender towards these poor people that, if occasionally some little present were given them, one could be very certain that they would not taste it, however greatly they might need it, everything being dedicated and consecrated to their sick. This charity had to be moderated, and an order was given them to eat at least a part of the little gifts that were made to them, especially when they were not strong. I am not surprised if the Savages, who recognize very clearly this great charity, love, cherish, and honor them. Father Buteux wrote, some days ago, to the Reverend Father Superior that a woman who had remained a long time at the hospital did a great deal of good among the Savages of her nation, instructing them with much fervor. This is the common practice of those who have passed the winter in this holy house; they afterwards preach to their compatriots with great zeal. * * * [Of the Condition of the Country.] Let us come to the disease which, having put everything in desolation, gave us much exercise, but was also an occasion of much consolation to us,-God having given us hardly any other harvest than from that quarter. It was upon the return from the journey which the Hurons had made to Kebec, that it started in the country,-our Hurons, while again on their way up here, having thoughtlessly mingled with the Algonquins, whom they met on the route, most of whom were infected with smallpox. The first Huron who introduced it came ashore at the foot of our house, newly built on the bank of a lake,-whence being carried to his own village, about a league distant from us, he died straightway after. Without being a great prophet, one could assure one's self that the evil would soon be spread abroad through all these regions: for the Hurons-no matter what plague or contagion they may have-live in the midst of their sick, in the same indifference, and community of all things, as if they were in perfect health. In fact, in a few days, almost all those in the cabin of the deceased found themselves infected; then the evil spread from house to house, from village to village, and finally became scattered throughout the country. 12 CHAPTER 1 PAUL LEJEUNE AND JEROME LALEMANT: FROM THE COLLISION OF CULTURES Of the Persecutions Excited Against Us. The villages nearer to our new house having been the first ones attacked, and most afflicted, the devil ,did not fail to seize his opportunity for reawakening all the old imaginations, and causing the former complaints of us, and of our sojourn in these quarters, to be renewed; as if it were the sole cause of all their misfortunes, and especially of the sick. They no longer speak of aught else, they cry aloud that the French must be massacred. These barbarians animate one another to that effect; the death of their nearest relatives takes away their reason, and increases their rage against us so strongly in each village that the best informed can hardly believe that we can survive so horrible a storm. They observed, with some sort of reason, that, since our arrival in these lands, those who had been the nearest to us, had happened to be the most ruined by the diseases, and that the whole villages of those who had received us now appeared utterly exterminated; and certainly, they said, the same would be the fate of all the others if the course of this misfortune were not stopped by the massacre of those who were the cause of it. This was a common opinion, not only in private conversation but in the general councils held on this account, where the plurality of the votes went for our death,there being only a few elders who thought they greatly obliged us by resolving upon banishment. What powerfully confirmed this false imagination was that, at the same time, they saw us dispersed throughout the country,-seeking all sorts of ways to enter the cabins, instructing and baptizing those most ill with a care which they had never seen. No doubt, they said, it must needs be that we had a secret understanding with the disease (for they believe that it is a demon), since we alone were all full of life and health, although we constantly breathed nothing but a totally infected air,-staying whole days close by the side of the most foul-smelling patients, for whom every one felt horror; no doubt we carried the trouble with us, since, wherever we set foot, either death or disease followed us. In consequence of all these sayings, many had us in abomination; they expelled us from their cabins, and did not allow us to approach their sick, and especially children: not even to lay eyes on them,-in a word, we were dreaded as the greatest sorcerers on earth. Wherein truly it must be acknowledged that these poor people are in some sense excusable. For it has happened very often, and has been remarked more than a hundred times, that where we were most welcome, where we baptized most people, there it was in fact where they died the most; and, on the contrary, in the cabins to which we were denied entrance, although they were sometimes sick to extremity, at the end of a few days one saw every person prosperously cured. We shall see in heaven the secret, but ever adorable, judgments of God therein .... The reasons which we have thus far adduced, on account of which the barbarians suspect us of being the cause of their diseases, seem to have some foundation; but the devil did not stop there,-it would be a miracle if he did not build the worst of his calumnies on sheer lies. Robert le Coq, one of our domestics, had returned from Kebec in a state of sickness which caused as much horror as compassion to all those who had courage enough to examine the ulcers with which all his limbs were covered. Never would a Huron have believed that a body so filled with miseries could have returned to health; regarding him then as good as dead, there were found slanderers so assured in their falsehood that they publicly maintained that this young Frenchman had told them in confidence that the Jesuits alone were the authors and the cause of the diseases which from year to year kept depopulating the country.... * * * But let us return to our Savages, excited against us on account of the disease, and to those impostors who had maintained that Robert le Coq had so confidentially informed them of the black magic arts and the execrable spells with which we were causing them all to die. It was not very difficult to refute these calumnies, since he who was said to have been the sole source of all these rumors-not being dead, as they had supposed, but having recovered perfect health-could belie all those who previously maintained they had heard the thing from his lips. But what? falsehood gets the better of the truth; the slanderers find more credit than the one who justifies us ... but the demons are like thunders, which make more noise than they do harm,-for all these threats have had but little effect. We are alive, thank God, all full of life and health. It is indeed true that the crosses have been stricken down from above our houses; that people have entered our cabins, hatchet in hand, in order to deal some evil blow there; they have, it is said, awaited some of ours on the roads, with the intention of killing them; the hatchet has been lifted above others, and the blow brought within a finger-length of their bare heads; the Crucifixes which were carried to the sick have been violently snatched from us; blows with a club have been mightily inflicted upon one of our missionaries, to prevent him from conferring some baptism. Sed nondum usque ad sanguinem restitimus; our blood and our lives have not yet been poured out for him to whom we owe all our hearts. Our soul is in our hands, and this is the greatest favor that we hope to receive from the great Master who employs us,namely, to die for his holy name, after having suffered much. Not that I do not forever praise this great God of goodness, for having thus far protected us with so much love: for it is truly an unspeakable happiness for us, in the midst of this barbarism, to hear the roarings of the demons, and to see all hell and almost all men animated and filled with fury against a little handful of people who would not The Jesuit Relations (1640) 13 defend themselves; to see ourselves shut up in a place fifteen hundred leagues from our native land, where all the powers of the earth could not warrant us against the anger of the weakest man who might have designs on our lives, and where we have not even a bag of corn which has not been furnished us by those who incessantly parley about killing us; and to feel at the same time so special a confidence in the goodness of God, so firm an assurance in the midst of dangers, a zeal so active, and a courage so resolute to do all and to suffer all for the glory of our Master, so indefatigable a constancy in the labors which increase from day to day. So that it is easy to conceive that God is the one who espouses our cause; that it is he alone who protects us, and that his providence takes pleasure in manifesting itself where we see least of the human. REVIEW QUESTIONS 1. Was saving the sick or saving souls the first pri- ority for the missionaries? How did the former affect the latter? 2. How did LeJeune describe the Indians, nuns, and priests? What did those descriptions reveal of his beliefs about the three groups? 3. How does Lalemant believe the disease spread? What did the Hurons believe caused and spread the disease? What do those sentiments reveal about how these people explained catastrophe? 4. How did Lalemant react to the increasing animosity and aggressiveness of the Hurons? What does that say about the influence of religious beliefs in European expansion?
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The article is about missionary activities that were done to French natives in the 15th
century. It narrates the day to day activities that missionaries undertook to ensure that
evangelism spread as anticipated. It also enumerates a number of challenges encountered while
doing the great work of God. The missionaries learned languages and cultures of the native
people. They were dedicated to convert people into Christianity. As they were doing this, the...


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