The premise of Allan Greer’s The Jesuit Relations is to relate the experiences of the Jesuit missionaries with the native peoples of North America during the seventeenth century. Greer does this by selecting various documents written by Jesuit missionaries in the field. At his disposal were over twenty thousand pages from forty-one years worth of primary documents. Supplementing the documents are Greer’s own interpretations and information from documents not included.
Greer begins with a lengthy introduction which serves to give a little background information on the Jesuits, the major native populations that appear in the documents, the French involvement in North America, and the role the missions played in the French colonization. Greer also relates who the intended audience of the original documents were, namely, European readers who were either supportive of the society or opposed and other readers who were just curious about North America. Additionally, Greer includes a cautionary section reminding the reader of not only the cultural gap between the Jesuits and the native population but the time gap between the modern reader and the era of history under study.
The main body of the book contains primary documents written by Jesuit missionaries describing their experiences during their missionary work. Regarding the Native Americans, which largely concentrated on the Huron, Algonquin, and Iroquois tribes, the selections focused on the culture, religion, folklore, government, and war practices. Other selections detailed the North American environment that the missionaries found themselves in, the effects of epidemics on the native peoples, and stories of the conversion of the natives to Catholicism.
Greer succeeds in bringing the experiences of the Jesuits to the modern reader. While the documents are a selection of the total produced by the missionaries, no less than eleven different Jesuit voices are contained in the selections. Within these eleven there are those missionaries who seem more sympathetic to the natives, such as Paul Le Jeune, and others like Jean Pierron who seem to have a harsher opinion of those they were sent to convert.
While one voice, that of the native population, is not represented as an author, the wide topics covered in the selections provide examples of the thinking of the Native Americans. In Jean de Brebeuf’s writings concerning religion and myths, we get a sense of the Huron’s world view. Barthelemy Vimont’s quotations of the Iroquoian leader Kiotsaeton during a peace treaty conference provide a clear example of the intelligence and political skill normally not attributed to Native Americans.
Greer’s organization of the material also aided in the understanding of the Jesuit experience. While Greer grouped the documents into distinct categories, his selections did conform to a rough chronological order. In Le Jeune’s early account of traveling with a winter hunting party we see a Jesuit uncertain of himself in a strange land. In contrast, Jacques Marquette’s account of his travels forty-one years later reveal a Jesuit who is confident in his environment and his mission. Greer also provides historical reference points in his comments preceding each document to help anchor the experiences.
One area that proved interesting was the myths and religious stories of the Hurons detailed by Brebeuf. The similarities to the biblical stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and a universal flood lead to some interesting questions. Was there prior contact with Europeans centuries before and these stories the result of faulty interpretations? Or were Native Americans originally from Europe/Africa and are their creation stories a reflection of this connection? It is also interesting to compare the methods employed by the Jesuits in North America (non-intrusive, working within the communities) with the methods used in South America (estate compounds, relocation).
The one point which made this reader convinced that Greer succeeded
in bringing the Jesuit experience to the modern reader was the fact that
I found myself asking questions like those above while reading the documents.
I was thinking about possible historical connections that went beyond what
the Jesuits were recording down in their observations. The audience
that would benefit most from this would be college students in an American
history course although it would be possible to use parts of the book for
a high school course which would devote less time to the topic. Like
many of the original readers of the Jesuit reports, the curious reader
of history would find the book interesting and, due to the short length,
would probably spur further reading on the topic.