MISSION IN COLONIAL AMERICA, III (FRENCH MISSIONS)

The voyage undertaken by Giovanni da Verrazano in 1524 gave the French king Francis I a claim to certain areas in North America, but unlike Spain, France was slow in her New World colonization efforts because of her preoccupation with the so-called religious wars of the sixteenth century. Not unlike Spain and England, France envisioned a large colonial empire in North America, which, it was hoped, would bring economic benefits to the mother country. Between 1534 and 1542 Jacques Cartier undertook several voyages to North America, where he made extensive explorations with a view toward establishing a permanent French settlement. As a result of Cartier's first voyage, Francis I issued a royal commission for the founding of a permanent colony. In the commission to Cartier, the conversion of the native people of North America was mentioned as a prime incentive. This first attempt to plant a French colony ended unsuccessfully in 1542 because of the renewal that year of hostilities between Francis I and Emperor Charles V.

Early colonization efforts. Twenty years elapsed before a second attempt took place. Admiral Gaspard de Coligny planted a Huguenot settlement (1562) on the present Parris Island, S.C., but it was shortly abandoned in favor of Fort Caroline, near the mouth of the St. Johns River, Fla. In 1565 a Spanish contingent from St. Augustine under Pedro Menéndez de Avilés destroyed the fort. In 1605 a colony, originally established the year before on Saint Croix Island, was moved to Port Royal, Acadia (Nova Scotia). Abbé Jessé Fleché, who went there in 1610, carried on mission work among the Micmac tribes. Fleché was succeeded by two Jesuits, Pierre Biard (d.1622) and Ennemond Massé (1574–1646), who arrived at Port Royal in 1611 under the patronage of the Marquise de Guercheville. In 1613 Biard and Massé joined with two fellow Jesuits, Reverend Jacques Quentin and Brother Gilbert du Thet, to establish a new mission near present-day Bangor, Maine, but they never reached their goal. In a surprise attack by Captain Samuel Argall of Virginia, Du Thet was killed and the others taken prisoner.

To Samuel de Champlain belongs the credit for the first permanent French settlement in North America. In 1608 Champlain founded the colony of Quebec, which in its early years owed its existence to his courage, determination, and organizational ability. Ideally located as a trade center, Quebec provided easy access to the St. Lawrence River, the Mississippi River, and the Atlantic Ocean. The first missionaries to arrive in Quebec were the French Franciscans (Récollets), who came in 1615 and ministered to the Montagnais, Hurons, Wyandots, and the Micmacs. They enjoyed little success, however. By 1625 six Jesuits arrived under Charles Lalemant (1587–1674); among them were Massé and Jean de Brébeuf (1593–1649). Disputes between England and France, as well as intermittent warfare, disrupted life in the colonies and added to the difficulties of the missionaries. In 1629 the English captured Quebec, and it was not restored to the French until 1632. In that year the Jesuits were entrusted by the Company of One Hundred Associates with the North American missions.

Following the restoration of 1632, French rule made itself felt in varying degrees and at different times from the northeast corner of the future United States through the system of great inland lakes and south through the valley of the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. New France provided the base for missionary activity in many parts of what is now the United States.

Maine. After the failure of the colonization efforts in 1604 and of the Jesuit missions (1611–13), the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith commissioned the Capuchins to take up the missionary work in Acadia. Between 1632 and 1654 the Capuchins established seven missions in Acadia, New Brunswick, and Maine. Following the English seizure of Fort Pentagoet (Castine), Maine (1654), the Capuchins closed their missions. In the meantime, the Jesuit Gabriel Druillettes visited the Abenaki Indians on the Kennebec River in 1646 in response to the indigenous people's appeal for a priest. He remained for a year, during which he studied the native language and customs. Druillettes made two subsequent visits before the English attack in 1654. During the 20 years that the Capuchins spent in the northeast missions, many of the Native American converts were removed to tribal villages or reductions near Quebec, such as Sillery, St. François, and Becancourt, where it was hoped that they could be taught the elements of European customs and useful trades.

No missionary activity of consequence resumed in Maine until the 1680s. In 1694 Sebastian rale, SJ, arrived, and Maine became the scene of his labors for the next 30 years. When Hudson Bay, Newfoundland, and Acadia were ceded to England in 1713, there followed a dispute between Quebec and Massachusetts over the boundary of Maine. In 1722 Governor Samuel Shute of Massachusetts attacked the French mission on the Kennebec River, and two years later Father Rale was murdered. In 1726 the Maine missions were reopened, but little headway was made because of a lack of priests and the uncooperative attitude of the Quebec authorities. With the passing of New France to the English in 1763, the Maine missions came under the jurisdiction of Bishop Richard Challoner, vicar apostolic of the London District.

New York. The story of missionary activity in New York began in a sanguinary fashion when, in 1642, a band of Mohawks (Iroquois Confederacy) surprised and captured a group of Hurons near Three Rivers. Father Isaac Jogues and two lay assistants, René Goupil and Guillaume Coûture, who had accompanied the Hurons, were taken to a tribal village near present-day Auriesville, where Goupil was murdered and Jogues and Coûture were tortured. Jogues managed to escape, but on a second trip in 1646 he and Jean La Lande were taken prisoners by the Mohawks, after which they were tomahawked to death (see north american martyrs).

An attempt to plant a French colony among the Onondagas near Lake Onondaga in 1656 ended in failure within the year because of Iroquois unrest. The next ten years witnessed intermittent warfare between the French and the five Iroquois nations, and it was not until 1668 that a mission could be established in the five cantonments of the Iroquois Confederacy. In the succeeding decade some 2,000 converts were made, among them Katharine Ganneaktena of the Erie tribe and Kateri teka kwitha of the Mohawks.

Following the 1665 grant of New Netherlands by Charles II of England to his brother James, duke of York, the deep and lasting rivalry that developed between England and France ended only with the cession of New France to England at the end of the French and Indian War (1763). The Jesuit missionaries were looked upon as French agents. Thomas Dongan, New York's Catholic governor (1683–88), afforded the Jesuits a modicum of protection on the northern frontier, but beginning in 1687 he forbade the Jesuits to work among the Iroquois. By 1709 the final chapter in the history of the French Jesuits in New York ended with the departure of Jacques de Lamberville for Quebec and the arrest of Pierre de Mareuil by Colonel Peter Schuyler.

Apart from the Jesuits' venture, the only other partially successful effort to establish a Catholic Christian community in New York centered at present-day Ogdensburg, where in 1748 the Sulpician François Piquet founded La Presentation. This mission came to an untimely end during the French and Indian War.

The Great Lakes. The missionary potential of the Great Lakes area became evident after the establishment of trade centers at Michilimackinac, Green Bay, and Sault Ste. Marie. During the 1640s and 1650s several Jesuits, including Charles Raymbault, Isaac Jogues, Leonard Garreau, and Gabriel Druillettes, penetrated this area. In 1661 René Menard, SJ, gave his life to spread the gospel among the native people in the Wisconsin wilderness. Menard was succeeded by Claude Jean allouez, SJ, who left a fine record as a missionary of the West. In addition to the mission known as La Pointe du Saint Esprit (Ashland, Wis.), established in 1665, Allouez established missions at Sault Ste. Marie and Green Bay. He also worked with Jacques marquette among the Illinois tribes at Kaskaskia. Bishop F. de M. laval of Quebec named Allouez vicar-general for the western country, where the Jesuit traveled widely and labored successfully among the Illinois, Nipissings, Ottawas, Pottawatomi, Sacs, Foxes, and Sioux. After three years, Allouez was joined by Louis Nicholas, Marquette, and Claude dablon. Dablon succeeded Allouez as superior of the missions in 1668. In 1671 La Pointe was abandoned because of a threat from the Sioux. During this same time, Dablon established the mission of St. Ignace some 50 miles west of Sault Ste. Marie; this mission was maintained until 1765.

Illinois country. During the latter part of the seventeenth century and the early decades of the eighteenth century, the French government encouraged missionary activity in the Great Lakes, Illinois, and Mississippi Valley areas. Experience proved that only the missionaries were able to control the unpredictable tribes. Furthermore, the presence of the missions provided the government with a firmer grasp on territory already claimed by Spain and England. In addition, exploration was stressed, and several commissions were given to such men as Louis Jolliet and R. C. de la salle to further the interests of France.

Jolliet-Marquette Expedition. In 1672 Louis Frontenac, governor of New France, commissioned Jolliet to explore the Mississippi River to determine its source in the hope of finding a waterway to the Orient. The historic trip began in the spring of 1673, and among the party was Father Marquette. The journey, which proved that the Mississippi emptied into the Gulf of Mexico, had two important effects for Marquette. On the return passage, he became acquainted with the Kaskaskia tribes, for whom he established the mission of the Immaculate Conception near Utica, Ill., two years later. But the expedition also irreparably harmed his health, and he died on May 18, 1675.

La Salle's Explorations. One of the most colorful, if ill-fated, laymen whose influence on Church affairs was strongly felt in New France was Robert Cavelier de La Salle. Like his friend Governor Frontenac, La Salle disliked the Jesuits and invariably employed the services of the Sulpicians and Franciscans in his explorations. One of his early associates was the Flemish friar Louis hennepin, who joined him in the establishment of Fort de Conty on the Niagara River near the falls (1678). Shortly thereafter Fort Miami (Mich.) and its chapel (the first Catholic Church in the lower peninsula of the future state), as well as the fort of Crevecoeur near Peoria, were built. The latter was abandoned in 1680 following an attack by the Iroquois on the Illinois tribes.

La Salle, who regarded the Mississippi as the lifeline of a French domain in the interior, established Fort St. Louis (1682) on the upper Illinois River. From there he began his famous descent of the Mississippi River that same year. The result of that trip was the claim to a vast territory to be known as Louisiana. Two years later King Louis XIV commissioned La Salle to plant a colony in Louisiana, which La Salle located on the Texas coast near Matagorda Bay. The elaborate plans collapsed within four years with the murder of La Salle by his own men and the destruction of the colony by the Cenis tribes.

Jesuits in the Illinois Country. After Marquette's death in 1675, Allouez took over the Immaculate Conception mission among the Kaskaskia, where he labored until his death in 1689. It has been estimated, with some exaggeration, that Allouez instructed almost 100,000 native people and baptized some 10,000. Among the Jesuits who succeeded Allouez in the Illinois country were Jacques Gravier, Sebastian Rale, François Pinet, and Jean Mermet. In 1663 Bishop Laval set up in Quebec a missionary seminary whose students served in the Illinois area among both natives and whites. Unfortunately, minor disputes arose between the secular priests and the Jesuits over jurisdiction.

During the eighteenth century, several villages were established along the Illinois River and were generally ministered to by the Jesuits. These communities thrived until the end of the French and Indian War. The heroic work reaped proportionately small rewards, however, and the brandy trade between the natives and French traders was noted as a primary cause of the Jesuits' failure to make lasting converts. In the 1730s the mission at Vincennes was founded; a century later it was named a diocese.

Franciscans at Detroit. Fort Pontchartrain was built on the site of present-day Detroit, Mich., in 1701 under the leadership of Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac (d. 1730). Like Frontenac and La Salle, Cadillac was of the anti-Jesuit party, and much to the annoyance of the Jesuits, he concentrated the various native tribes around Detroit. Fort Pontchartrain itself was well served by two Franciscans, Bonaventure Lienard and Simplicius Bocquet. In 1749 the Hurons in Detroit moved across the Detroit River and settled at Pointe de Montreal (Sandwich, Ontario), where they were ministered to by the Jesuits Armand de la Richardie and Pierre Portier. In 1755 Bishop Henri Dubreuil de Pontbriand of Quebec (1741–60) went to Detroit for a church dedication; he was thus the first bishop to visit that area of the future United States.

Louisiana. In 1698, a decade after La Salle's death, Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, was authorized to lead an expedition to Louisiana and there to establish a settlement at Biloxi. Iberville's first contingent was accompanied by Reverend Anastase Douay, a survivor of La Salle's tragic venture of 1687. On Iberville's second trip to Louisiana, he was accompanied by Paul du Ru, SJ, although the latter remained only briefly. The Biloxi settlement was moved in 1702 to Fort Louis on Mobile Bay (Mobile, Ala.). A conflict that erupted at this time between the Jesuits and the secular priests from Quebec's missionary seminary resulted in the departure of the Jesuits—an exile that lasted for 20 years.

By 1718 Iberville's brother and the new governor, Jean Baptiste le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, succeeded in planting a settlement on the Mississippi itself, naming it New Orleans in honor of the prince regent of France, and four years later the capital of Louisiana was moved there from Fort Louis. The Code Noir, introduced in 1724, regulated race relations and was in effect a transference to France's colonies of the union of Church and State that existed in the mother country.

Difficulties over ecclesiastical jurisdiction hampered the work of the Church in Louisiana. A division of the territory (1722) into three ecclesiastical districts, under the Capuchins, the Jesuits, and the Carmelites respectively, proved unworkable. The Carmelites withdrew, and the Capuchins were given jurisdiction on both sides of the Mississippi River south of Ohio, at which point the Jesuit vicar-general's jurisdiction began. In 1723 the area between the Natchez and Ohio rivers was turned over to the Jesuits. Three years later, the Jesuits were given charge of all native missions in Louisiana, while the Capuchins were responsible for the white colonists. The latter complained bitterly, and Bishop Louis de Morney of Quebec, himself a Capuchin, placed the New Orleans Jesuits under interdict. The troubles between the two orders did not end until the Society of Jesus was suppressed in 1763.

Because of the lack of funds, the missionaries were forced to live in extreme poverty; the conditions at the native missions were especially pitiful. New Orleans itself had no real church until 1727 when St. Louis' Church was established. That same year eight Ursuline nuns from Rouen opened a girls' academy in New Orleans, although there was no similar school for Catholic boys until the nineteenth century. Immorality was so prevalent in New Orleans that Bishop Jean Baptiste de St. Vallier of Quebec issued a sharp rebuke in his 1721 pastoral letter. In addition, troubles arose over the brandy trade and mixed marriages. By the terms of a secret treaty in 1762, Louisiana was ceded to Spain, and that vast territory returned to French administration for but a brief period (1800–03) before its purchase by the United States in 1803.

Results. In examining the overall record of French missionary activity in North America, it must be judged a failure in terms of lasting results. Hundreds of priests and lay assistants—Jesuits, Franciscans, Sulpicians, Carmelites, Capuchins, and secular priests—devoted all or a major portion of their adult lives to this disappointing apostolate. The soil of New France was enriched with the blood of numerous martyrs, but the number of lasting converts was relatively small. Blame may be justly laid at the door of uncooperative and often irreligious authorities at home and in the colonies. jansenism and gallicanism, then prevalent in France, affected the colonial missions. The brandy trade and questions of immorality among both the Europeans and Native Americans were sources of keen disappointment. Although the heroic missionaries were well trained in adversity and the example of a Kateri Tekakwitha was consoling, perhaps the real cause for the failure of the French missions was beyond the missionaries's control. The missionaries were unfamiliar with native customs and were unprepared for the inter and intra-tribal warfare that took place. Also, the continuous friction between England and France made it unlikely that the native peoples could be Christianized until the white man himself set the example.

Bibliography: n. baillargeon, Le Séminaire de Québec de 1685 à 1760 (Québec 1977). r. baudier, The Catholic Church in Louisiana (New Orleans 1939). l. campeau, Les Cent-Associés et le peuplement de la Nouvelle-France (1633–1663) (Montréal 1974); L'Evêché de Québec (1674). Aux origines du premier diocese érigé en Amérique française (Québec 1974); La Mission des Jésuites chez les Hurons (Rome 1987). g. r. conrad, ed., Cross, Crozier, and Crucible: A Volume Celebrating the Bicentennial of a Catholic Diocese in Louisiana (New Orleans 1993). j. delanglez, The French Jesuits in Lower Louisiana (1700–1763) (Washington, DC 1935). j. t. ellis, Catholics in Colonial America (Baltimore 1965). c. e. nolan, A History of the Archdiocese of New Orleans (Strasbourg 2000). c. e. o'neill, Church and State in French Colonial Louisiana: Policy and Politics to 1732 (New Haven, Conn. 1966). f. parkman, La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West (Boston 1910). r. g. thwaites, ed. Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France 1610–1791, 73 v. (Cleveland 1896–1901). c. l. vogel, The Capuchins in French Louisiana (1722–1766) (New York 1928).

[j. q. feller/eds.]