The Jesuit Relations

The Jesuits began to shape the Relations for the general public, in order to attract new settlers[2] to the colony and to raise enough capital and political support to continue the missions in New France.

[5] Recent scholarship illuminates how these documents may have been re-circulated back to Jesuit colleges in New France, which changes how one can understand their ethnographic and knowledge-producing value.

[10] In France, the political and religious debates over the accommodation approach practised by the Jesuits in their overseas missions probably also resulted in the cessation of its publication.

[11] When examined critically, The Jesuit Relations can function as an important resource in the study of cultural exchange that occurred between the settlers of New France and Native Americans, because many of these missionaries attempted to immerse themselves within Indigenous societies and understand their cultures and practices to a greater extent than other European settlers.

Although the Jesuits tried to avoid disclosing any compromise in their principles, "it is possible to detect evidence of soul-searching and shifting points of view"[13] relative to their success at converting Indigenous peoples.

The issue concerns less the basic accuracy of the Jesuit Relations than the "manipulative literary devices"[14] employed by the editors.

Prominent Jesuit Relations scholar Allan Greer notes that European writings were popularly documented in one of two forms, as travel narratives or as encyclopedic catalogs.

[1] Additionally, the Jesuits often wrote about the fighting that took place between Indigenous tribes from a perspective of horror, despite the consistent warring in Europe at the time.

[17] One prominent example, Jean de Brébeuf, was known for his attempts to immerse himself in the language, culture, and religious customs of the Huron peoples.

The relations included descriptions of Jesuit missionaries being killed or maimed, for example, the death of Isaac Jogues, who died after being captured by the Mohawk in 1646.

[21] The text describes the self-mortification of Kateri Tekakwitha, an Algonquin-Mohawk woman who converted to Catholicism and lived in a Jesuit mission in Sault Saint-Louis.

[17] The Jesuit Relations also provide evidence for early European settlers' attitudes toward nature and Eurocentric bias in terms of how they believed this land should be used.

[15] The editing journey "began with detailed letters from priests in the field, the most important usually being the one brought down by the summer canoe brigade from the Huron Country.

The superior at Quebec would compile and edit these letters, paraphrasing some parts, copying others verbatim, and forwarding the whole package to France.

He included many other papers, rare manuscripts, and letters from the archives of the Society of Jesus, spanning a period from the founding of the order, or the colonization of Acadia in the 1610s to the mission in the Illinois Country in 1791.

Lucien Campeau SJ (1967–2003) discussed the texts which he included as well as the historical events they refer to; his work is considered to give the most detailed and exhaustive general overviews available.

“Such powerful attacks on Christianity and its effects on traditional ways of life were repeated constantly by native priests throughout New France.