Jesuits Conversion

In the opening scene of the movie the Frenchman Laforgue, whom repelled the Indian way of life, and the rest of the fathers deliver advanced tools, supplies, and weapons to the Algonquin Indians. Indians have the religious belief that those who can provide the best are the better leaders. The Frenchman used that to their advantage when providing the supplies. They used the supplies as a way to bribe the Indians to go on the journey with them and convert to Christianity. The supplies symbolized what they could have if they just accepted the Jesuits way of life and religious beliefs. On the voyage there was the Indian tribe, Laforgue accompanied by other Jesuits, as well a young non Jesuit male, Daniel. Daniel had no interest in going on the expedition to convert the Indians. Instead he was just bored and was looking for an adventure. Very early in the expedition Daniel caught interest in the

Before the Europeans came to Canada, Natives had their own culture, traditions and norms. These differences were obvious to the Europeans who sailed to Canada, their interactions with the Native peoples proved these vast differences. One major difference noted was that the Iroquois organized their societies on different lines than did the patrilineal western Europeans. Iroquois women “by virtue of her functions as wife and mother, exercised an influence but little short of despotic, not only in the wigwam but also around the council fire.” “She indeed possessed and exercised all civil and political power and authority. The country, the land, the fields with their harvests and fruits belonged to her … her plans and wishes modeled the policy and inspired the decisions of council.” The Europeans were astounded by this way of life.

When Jesus Came, The Corn Mothers Went Away gives an in-depth history of the Pueblo Indians before and after the Spanish conquest. It describes the forced changes the Spanish brought to the Indians, and also the changes brought to the Spaniards who came to “civilize” the Indians. The author's thesis is that the Pueblo Indians and other Indians were treated cruelly by the Spanish, who justified their crime by claiming they were civilizing an

The Indigenous people of America are called Native Americans or often referred to as “Indians”. They make up about two percent of the population in the United States and some of them still live in reservations. They once lived freely in the wilderness without any sort of influence or exposure from the Europeans who later came in the year of 1492, and therefore their culture is very different from ours. The Iroquois are northeastern Native Americans who are historically important and powerful. In the following essay we will discover some differences between the religious beliefs of the Native American Iroquois and Christianity to see if culture and ways of living have an effect on the view of religion, but we will also get to know some similarities. I am going to be focusing on the Iroquois, which are the northeastern Native Americans in North America.

When Europeans encountered the Native Americans, the encounter was fraught with difficulties for both sides, for the Native Americans more so than the Europeans. Europeans conquered the Native Americans, forced them into labor, and spread diseases which the Native Americans had no resistance to. In addition to this the Europeans considered themselves superior to the Native Americans. Despite this, the Europeans and Native Americans, both had things the other wanted and so they often engaged in trade with each other. However, the Native Americans thought that, despite not having the luxuries the Europeans had, they were better off than the Europeans. This sentiment is exemplified in “Your People Live Only Upon Cod” by French priest Chrestian LeClerq who was traveling with the Micmac Indians. It is a documented response by an unknown Micmac leader to European, particularly French, claims of superiority. In analyzing this document, we will find that the cultures of the French and the Micmac were vastly different. We will also discover what the Micmac and the French thought of each other.

that occured in social from 1492-1750 was the urge to convert the natives. This is because of the the G's, one of the most important tasks in

The main disease addressed within these documents is smallpox. Smallpox has been seen as the “most fatal of all the recurrent Indian killers.” Alfred W. Crosby claims that during the 1630s it was responsible for eliminating approximately half the people of the Huron and Iroquois populations within the Great Lakes region. Like other European diseases, smallpox had a devastating effect on the Aboriginal population because it was the first time it had been encountered. Thus, the Native American could not build up the immunities necessary to fend off the disease. The documents describe some of the appalling conditions the Indigenous peoples faced “When they turn them, a whole side will flay off at once as it were, and they will be all of a gore blood.” These documents are records depicting what the Europeans had seen when dealing with the Aboriginal’s sickness. In addition the documents also show what steps the Europeans took in trying to help the Native Americans, while showing how the Catholic Church had played an integral part in how the Europeans administered assistance to the Indigenous peoples. The people of the missionaries in New France believed that the only “true” path for healing was through the conversion of the Aboriginals to Christianity.

After observing local natives, the first Spanish conquistadors came to the conclusion that the Native Americans were barbaric and in dire need of Christian teachings. Thus, Spanish colonists made it their mission to convert the local natives to Christianity, using violence when there was resistance. In 1597, there were a series of uprisings by the Guale Indians in present-day Florida. They destroyed many missions, explaining that the Spanish missionaries had attempted to eliminate their religious practices such as feasts and celebrations. The Spanish also oppressed the Native Americans, and used them as a labor force under the encomienda system. The French, on the other hand, are known for their peaceful alliances with the Native Americans. Colonists established trade agreements with the local natives, obtaining raw goods such as fur and timber. Their peaceful relationship may in fact be attributed to the Spanish; the “Black Legend” of Spanish cruelty towards Native Americans made other European countries eager to prove themselves different. The French took pride in the fact that they treated the Native Americans more humanely than their Spanish counterparts. In addition, the French were not interested in expanding their territory, unlike the Spanish. They were simply looking for trade opportunities, and a mutual relationship with the Native Americans was advantageous. The primary goal of Spain

The Jesuits also faced difficulty in conversion during disease epidemics. During the years of 1634-1637 the Huron experienced various epidemics of small pox and the influenza that resulted a 20% population loss. Again in 1639 the Huron underwent another disease epidemic of smallpox, which ended with a 40 to 60% population loss. Due to the French presence coinciding with the disease epidemics, the Huron and Algonquian associated the disease with the French. The Huron noticed that many of the Jesuits did not get sick or if they did they recovered, and therefore interpreted this as the Jesuits trying to kill the Huron population. The correlation between the French presence and the diseases lead to the First Nations people to resent the Jesuits and not want to associate with them. Father Jerome Lalemant, one of Le Jeune’s colleagues, acknowledged that the Huron’s were accurate in their observations that the Huron who maintained the

When the French came to the New World, they went further up north to Canada rather than staying in the south like the Spanish. When they found the natives, they were friendly with the natives and respected them. The French learned the natives’ language, and taught the natives their language. The French showed the natives their religion, and a good deal of the natives converted to Christianity. Considering that most of the French were men that travelled to the New World, they would marry the newly Christian women, and have families with them. The natives also helped the French with their fur trading business, showing them where to go to obtain the fur. The French people were the most accepting of the natives and their cultures than the other countries that travelled to the new world.

Most colonists that came in the early 1600’s were Christians, a religion that has very specific rules and rigid regulations that must be followed to be a “saved” person destined for a paradisiacal after life. Within these restrictions were the directions to “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). It seems clear that from the first the Christian religion was telling the colonists to “help” the natives by making them conform to the culture of the colonists and destroying their own. This was always done with a sense of Native American natural inferiority. In most cases, the Native Americans were not told the entire nature of their conversion. A Jesuit described the tactics used in converting Native Americans, “The outward splendor with which we endeavor to surround the Ceremonies of the Church…with a magnificence surpassing anything that the eyes of our savages have ever beheld – all these things produce an impression on their minds” (Le pays reneverse by denys delage 168). For those truly religious souls, coming to the New World meant a chance to bring salvation and Christianity to new

For example, in the 1690’s Jesuit priests introduced the Virgin Mary to a group of Indians where they emphasized the already existing notion of chastity, therefore assimilating Christianity with an already present concept. Other non-forcible means of spreading Christianity also existed. Puritan minister, John Eliot, translated the Bible into the local Indian language to gain converts. In these regards, the spread of Christianity fundamentally dismantled the inherent culture of Native Americans.

Religion and spirituality have been complex issues in the United States of America. This is especially true when it comes to Native Americans. Since the 16th century, contact between Native Americans and Europeans has been filled with both good and bad. In this paper, the issue of religion and spirituality and how they figure into the story of Indian-European contact between the 16th and 21st centuries will be discussed.

Associated with their attention to the spiritual needs of conversion, the priests endeavored to eliminate ‘heathen’ practices among those Indians that they baptized.[x] The non-Christian people of the Americas were not simply to be converted; they were to be civilized, taught, humanized, purified and reformed. The Indians to be converted were strangers speaking in many unfamiliar tongues. In most cases, when the Friars first encountered them, they had been only recently conquered and subjugated, and even if not actively hostile they were likely to retain covert antagonisms. In their experience all Spaniards were exploitative.

The long history between Native American and Europeans are a strained and bloody one. For the time of Columbus’s subsequent visits to the new world, native culture has