Jesuit missions in North America

[1]: 43  On October 25, 1604, the Jesuit Father Pierre Coton requested his General Superior Claudio Acquaviva to send two missionaries to Terre-Neuve.

A fourth mission was established in 1625, made by Fathers Charles Lalemant (as Superior), Enemond Massé, Jean de Brébeuf, and assistants François Charton and Gilbert Buret.

Also, from 1687 to 1704 the Jesuits established twenty-three missions in the Sonoran Desert, in the Provincias Internas of New Spain, present day northwestern Mexico and southern Arizona.

Within thirteen years, the Jesuits had missions among all five Iroquois nations, in part imposed by French attacks against their villages in present-day New York state.

[1]: 73  Some converted Iroquois and members of other nations migrated to Canada, where they joined the Jesuit mission village of Kahnawake by 1718.

[1]: 80  After first successes, the seminary failed as the young Indians proved reluctant to be educated, and died in great numbers due to infections brought by the Westerners.

When the Iroquois spiritual value seemed to increase through war victories, this is what caused traditionalist shamans and headmen to win back disciples in the same way that priest had first won them.

In the late 1670s, the wars with Susquehannocks and Mahicans ended, causing the Iroquois to have a return to the perceptions of their own spiritual strength.

In 1668 Father Jacques Marquette was moved by his Jesuit superiors to missions farther up the St. Lawrence River in the western Great Lakes region.

[10] In June 1735, Father Jean-Pierre Aulneau de la Touche received an assignment as chaplain and set out for Fort St. Charles on Lake of the Woods in an area now in Ontario, Canada and Minnesota, United States.

He sailed through the Great Lakes to Fort St. Charles along with Pierre Gaultier de La Vérendrye, commander of the western district.

On June 8, 1736, their first night out and within several kilometres of the fort, all members of the expedition were killed by "Prairie Sioux" warriors on a nearby island in Lake of the Woods.

[11] Great Britain took over colonial rule of Canada and the lands east of the Mississippi River in 1763 after the Seven Years' War.

Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, who started working in Missouri in 1830, would eventually build strong relationships with leaders of numerous tribes of the West, including Sitting Bull, war chief of the Sioux.

Through the nineteenth century, Jesuit priests founded missions and schools among Native tribes in present-day Montana and Idaho.

The residential schools that the Jesuits took part in functioned in a way so as to bring about indigenous assimilation and to gain their lands.

In 1838, to raise funds Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. sold 272 African-American slaves to plantation owners in Louisiana for the current-day equivalent of three million dollars.

"[16]: 42–43  To gain the Indians' confidence, the Jesuits drew parallels between Catholicism and Indian practices, making connections to the mystical dimension and symbolism of Catholicism (pictures, bells, incense, candlelight), giving out religious medals as amulets, and promoting the benefits of the cult of relics.

[16]: 43 The Jesuits were surprised and even indignant toward the Natives' refusal to adapt to what they believed as God's law and nonetheless their continual practicing of what they saw as time-honored customs.

A prominent French Jesuit, Father Brebeuf, was one priest who tried to find similarities between the cultures, but ultimately decided to fall back to Catholic theistic practices when he couldn't comprehend Native behaviors.

With regard to Jesuit Father Francois Le Mercier, he strongly suggested that it was the Natives' having “recourse” to St. Joseph and their vowing to have said a novena of masses which prompted God to save his and Brebeuf's lives and their mission.

Le Mercier thus was unable to find a natural explanation, which formed a large part of the Jesuits' writings, for his and Brebeuf's deliverance from danger.

This inability is one example that shows how the Jesuits moved beyond the natural explanations and explained events theistically when facing the incomprehensibility of an alien culture.

French Jesuit Father Paul Le Jeune, who arrived on Iroquois land in 1632, was one such priest who used this fear tactic.

[18] In 1600, in the Acaxee territory within Sinaloa, Mexico, Jesuit Father Alonso Santaren, alongside Captain Diego de Avila, used physical punishment and in at least one case, execution, to root out the practices that they believed allowed Satan to maintain a hold on the Indian mind.