Axtell (248) has pointed out that the Jesuits were outlawed in the English colonies in North America in part because of a Protestant rejection of Catholicism and in part because of English antipathy toward the French as political and military rivals. The English, according to Axtell (254-255), tended to view the Jesuits as driven by a desire to seduce Indians living in English territories in order to move them to French colonial territory and to convert them to Catholicism. The Jesuits in New France differed in their approach to proselytizing from the strategy used by Puritans in New England. Neal Salisbury (501) asserts that the Jesuits facilitated the development of trade relations with groups such as the Huron because those Native Americans who converted to Roman Catholicism were granted special trade privileges. For example, ôthey were separated from non-Christian Indians, accorded more honorable treatment, sold European goods at lower prices, and allowed to buy guns" (Salisbury, 506). Thus, a very clear linkage between Jesuit missionary activity and economic imperatives shaping the entire French colonial effort can be identified. own life world resources (increasingly penetrated by the new sciences) to undermine the Amerindian cultural foundations.ö George Anderson (13û14) also discussed the martyrdom of French Jesuits, including Jean de Brebeuf and Gabriel Lalement, two of the eight Jesuit missionaries killed in the 1640s in New France. While Anderson (13) noted that the Jesuits enjoyed relatively good relations with the Huron û their primary focus in their missionary work û the more hostile Iroquois were less receptive to Jesuit efforts. Welton, Michael R. ôCunning Pedagogics: The Encounter Between the Jesuits and the Amerindians of 17th Century New France.ö 2003. Available at www.oise.utoronto.ca/CASAE/cnf2003/2003_papers/mweltonCAS03a.pdf. impunity. æLet these barbarians remain always nomads,Æ exclaimed Father Le Jeune, æthen their |
