The Jesuits at Onondaga, 1656-58
Date
1976
Authors
Gowers, Ruth Edith Lebens
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Abstract
The Jesuit settlement at Onondaga in 1656 has been little considered by historians of New France. This thesis is an attempt to look afresh at the mission and to set it against the background of the Jesuits' wide interests and far-ranging activities in New France before the imposition of royal government.
Such conclusions as have been drawn about the mission have been based largely on Jesuits' own account of it, given in the Relations: this is the starting-point of the present enquiry, but objections to the simplistic picture that it offers are also raised. A survey of the economic position of New France in the 1650's follows (Chapter II), and Jesuit involvement in matters like the securing of a charter for the Communaute des Habitants inevitably comes to our notice in this context. Next the relations between Jesuits and Iroqois before 1656 are examined, and several important points emerge: contacts between the two groups before this date were as often based on commerce as evangelism; the Jesuits acted in the early days of New France in the closes collaboration with the temporal authorities, so that the two are often indistinguishable in their aims and methods; and contacts were initiated more often by the French than by the Iroqois - which is interesting in view of the statement in the Relations that the Jesuits settled in Onondaga only after years of pleading by the Iroqois.
There is plentiful evidence of clerical involvement in the fur trade of New France, and this is summarised in Chapter IV. The fortunes of the party in Onondaga are viewed in relation to developments in the political life of the colony in the mid-1650's. It is noticeable that the Jesuit retreat took place just as their influence in ruling circles at Quebec was being severely challenged. Finally, the changed role of the Jesuits in New France after 1658 is considered, and the Onondaga mission placed in perspective at a high point -- perhaps the highest -- of Jesuit influence in New France in the seventeenth century.