At dawn on May 5, 1702, Marc Bergier, a Missions Étrangères missionary, walked around the Tamaroa village in Illinois, sounding his bell to signal the call to mass. He was interrupted in his peregrination, however, by a Native man sounding his own bell, calling the Illinois to a different mass. This man, unnamed in Bergier's account, evidently worked on behalf of Pierre-François Pinet, a member of the Jesuit society that competed with the Mission Étrangères for the souls of the Illinois. When Bergier ordered the Native man desist, Pinet arrived and took over sounding the bell, cut off Bergier's path, and turned all the converts away from Bergier's chapel. Before Bergier had finished his rounds, Pinet began mass at the Jesuit chapel. Bergier was outraged: he was supposed to perform the morning mass, while Pinet offered the afternoon instruction, a compromise to avoid forcing the Catholic residents of Tamaroa to choose between Jesuit and Missions Étrangères services. Calling on his powers as Grand Vicaire, Bergier interdicted Pinet from the chapel, but Bergier could not disguise what this morning mass confrontation revealed about preferences in Tamaroa. Their clash that morning illustrates, on a small scale, the competition between the two missionary societies and begs the question of why all the Catholic converts went to Pinet's chapel—and none to Bergier's.Footnote 1
The answer to this question requires looking beyond the Jesuits who have monopolized much of the scholarship on French missionization in North America and taking into account the efforts of the Missions Étrangères (also known as Seminarians). The two missionary societies both established outposts among the Illinois but, as on that May morning in 1702, more Illinois patronized the Jesuits' churches than the Seminarians’. Understanding why Bergier ended up with no parishioners that morning also necessitates looking beyond decisions within the church hierarchy and French empire. Bishops and the king had given Seminarians permission to establish a mission in Tamaroa, but it was the Illinois who decided who would preach to them.
The Illinois included Kaskaskia, Peoria, Tamaroa, Cahokia, and Michigamea people, and they controlled the upper Mississippi Valley at the turn of the eighteenth century. The Tamaroa village where the morning mass showdown occurred was home to various Illinois people, of whom the Cahokia were the majority. Since both missionary groups evangelized to the same Indigenous nation, their relative success in attracting and maintaining converts offers a case study for exploring what might have attracted Native people to Christianity. Bringing documents from both missionary groups together shows Illinois converts who chose not just Catholicism, but a particular form of Catholic practice. The Illinois’ choice would ultimately shape French colonization in the upper Mississippi valley.
The competing missionary societies in Illinois country further offer an opportunity to move beyond questions of why or if Native people converted, and point to what Illinois people who did convert found attractive or unacceptable in Catholic practice—which in turn helps to explain why they may have turned to Catholicism originally. Early scholarship on the “new” Indian history tried to understand Native conversion from an Indigenous point of view,Footnote 2 though subsequent scholarship questioned the term “conversion” on the grounds that it played into missionaries' standards and did not adequately address what Christianity meant to Native people.Footnote 3 Recent scholarship has therefore focused on delineating Native practices of Christianity, noting how Indians developed “syncretic,” “hybrid,” or “translations” of Christianity useful to them and leaving aside questions of belief as unknowable.Footnote 4 This focus on Native Christian practice works well in Illinois country, where converts to Christianity ranged from Illinois wives of French men, who converted to Catholicism and adopted many of the legal and material trappings of a French lifestyle, to polygamous spouses who were baptized and married within the church.Footnote 5
Including Seminarians’ documents provokes the question of what exactly Jesuits meant when they claimed so many “converted,” and illuminates what such a process meant for the Illinois who did so. While Jesuit Relations ceased publication in 1673, Jesuits writing to their superiors and friends may have expected their writings to be shared, whereas Seminarians had no such expectation. Seminarians’ private letters thus reveal a more honest picture of how Illinois people interacted with Catholicism. However, in discussing Catholicism among the Illinois, scholars have relied on the more accessible Jesuits.Footnote 6 Central to that conversation has been the question of why the Illinois, particularly women, would convert to Catholicism, a question illuminated by differentiating between the versions of Catholicism offered to Native people and understanding why they preferred the Jesuits’ brand over that of the Seminarians.Footnote 7 The few histories that do mention the debate over which missionary society should evangelize among the Tamaroa place it in the context of a larger debate over Jesuits’ power in the world but do not follow the course of the mission after the metropole's decision or neglect the crucial component of Native choice.Footnote 8 Excluding the Seminarians elides the Tamaroa, Michigamia, and Cahokia, among whom the Seminarians worked, and depicts a dichotomy between those groups among whom the Jesuits did missionize: the Kaskaskia, who “nearly all” converted, and the Peoria, who did not. The reality was more complicated. Working with documents from other missionary societies like the Missions Étrangères provides an important check on Jesuit claims and demonstrates what Native people sought in Catholicism.
In fairness, Seminarians had a limited effect on the Illinois, but the reasons for Seminarians’ reduced influence in light of the Jesuits’ greater impact illuminate the Illinois’ ability to determine the success of a mission as well as converts’ priorities in meeting their spiritual needs. Participating in Illinois society, enhancing women's spiritual roles, coexisting within Native kinship systems, and connecting them to the secular French proved to be crucial factors for converted Illinois deciding whether to worship with the Jesuits or the Seminarians. While only a few missionaries of either society were present at any given time and thus the Catholicism presented was highly dependent on the personalities of the individual missionaries, the efforts each individual made to sway Native converts illustrate what worked (or did not work), and thus what certain Illinois people desired from Catholicism. While the French imperial context where missionaries bickered over the right to say morning mass occupies the first part of the article, the latter sections show how Illinois people decided what their Catholic conversion would look like in choosing between missionary societies.
I. History of the Two Societies
Before delving into how Illinois people distinguished between the two religious societies, some explanation is needed to understand how representatives from those societies found themselves at this outpost in the middle of North America. The missionaries who worked in Illinois country were emissaries of two religious societies with connections around the world. For them, the competition for Indigenous souls in Illinois was part of a larger battle for influence and funds that could in turn affect their successes on other continents.
The Jesuits’ mission in Illinois constituted a small part of their global operations, which extended across North and South America, Asia, and all the way up to Louis XIV's innermost circle. Jesuits' extensive experience missionizing led them to begin adapting to indigenous cultures as the best way to encourage conversion, though that method sometimes brought censure.Footnote 9 Jesuit missionaries had been evangelizing in New France since 1632, reaching Illinois in 1673. The mission became fully operational in the 1690s, coinciding with Bishop Jean-Baptiste de Saint-Vallier's grant giving Jesuits control of missions among “the Illinois, and their neighbors.” Among those who lived and worked their multiple bases in Illinois country at the turn of the century were Jacques Gravier, Julien Binneteau, Gabriel Marest, Sebastien Rasles, and Pinet.Footnote 10 Their main base was in the large mixed Illinois village of Pimitéoui, though they followed the Kaskaskia when they moved closer to the Mississippi River at the turn of the century.
The first bishop of Quebec, François de Laval, sympathized with Jesuit aims in North America but in 1663 founded a new missionary society. The Séminaire des Missions Étrangères de Québec was meant to prepare priests to work in North America, with the “unique goal of the propagation of faith to infidels,” and was connected to the Parisian Missions Étrangères. Careful to avoid the “trouble and a jealousy” of the Jesuits, Laval sent the first missionaries the Séminaire produced far from Jesuit missions, but in 1688 the new bishop, Saint-Vallier, changed the power dynamics in New France.Footnote 11
Saint-Vallier, fearing the Jesuits’ missionary enterprise had independent imperial ambitions, authorized the Séminaire to begin missionizing in the Mississippi Valley in 1698. Seminarians had previously served largely French congregations in New France, so this marked the institution's first attempt to create missions among Native populations. Believing that Tamaroa was critical to their connection to New France, Seminarians requested specific permission to locate one of their missions there. The first group of missionaries, which included François de Montigny, Antoine Davion, and Jean-François Buisson de Saint-Cosme, arrived in Illinois in December 1698, but they continued down the Mississippi to learn the lay of the land, ultimately ministering to the Taensas, the Natchez, the Quapaws, and the Tunicas as well. Jesuits welcomed their fellow missionaries initially, believing them to be passing through, but their attitude changed when Saint-Cosme returned in 1699 to establish a permanent mission.Footnote 12
Protests promptly poured into Quebec and Paris: the Tamaroa were Illinois, Jesuits argued, and the Jesuits’ missionary jurisdiction extended over the Tamaroa village. The Jesuits had a point: the Tamaroa were a member group of the Illinois, and though some French sources labeled the village “Tamarois,” Cahokia, Michigamia, Peoria, and Missouri people also resided there. Not only was the town a mix of various Illinois people, it would be impossible for missionaries to only minister to the residents of specific towns when they intermingled during seasonal hunts. The matter was sent off to Paris for a decision but, in the meantime, Saint-Cosme and Binneteau both built churches in Tamaroa.Footnote 13
The Seminarians’ attempts in Illinois began well: On arriving at the Tamaroa village in 1699, Saint-Cosme was told by the chief that venturing farther south was not “apropos,” indicating the residents of Tamaroa wanted the missionary to remain with them. The Illinois seemed at first to believe the Seminarians were the same as the “mahkateehkolay,” or “black robes.” Not only did Seminarians sport the same long black robes for which Jesuits were named, but the French commander Henri de Tonti, acting as the Seminarians’ interpreter, apparently told the Illinois that the Seminarians were “mahkateehkolay.”Footnote 14 Though the Illinois by no means universally accepted Jesuits, they tolerated the missionaries who had been visiting the Illinois for almost three decades and who spoke the Illinois language and engaged with Illinois cultural practices.
However, the Seminarians’ actions soon differentiated them from the Jesuits. Even using Tonti as an interpreter marked them as not-Jesuits, since the Seminarians “appear[ed] as his envoys” instead of distinguishing themselves as missionaries. Gravier warned them of this possible misconception, but they left too soon for Gravier “to compose a short speech in Illinois, as an introduction” for them to say for themselves. As they spent more time with the Seminarians, the Illinois learned the two missionary societies did not have “the same method of instruction,” as Bergier put it.Footnote 15
A council of bishops in France appointed by the king decided the matter in the Seminarians’ favor in 1701. Though the Society of Jesus was an older and more powerful institution, they had had a number of public scandals in recent years, of which the Chinese Rites controversy was the most famous. The dispute over who missionized to a Native village on the outskirts of the French empire was thus one front in a larger war over missionary groups’ methods and jurisdictions globally. When word of the decision reached Illinois in 1702, Pinet, then presiding in Tamaroa, gave a farewell service and retreated.Footnote 16 In the service, Pinet had to clarify that Seminarians and Jesuits were “but one Prayer.” Despite Pinet's words, the Illinois discerned through the missionaries’ actions a choice between “prayers.”
As early as 1701, superiors in Quebec as well as missionaries on the ground doubted Tamaroa had been worth the fight with the Jesuits. The situation deteriorated as the Illinois acclimated to the presence of the Seminarians: Bergier reported in 1704 that “by unhappiness and by my fault the Religion does not make great progress here. There are even many Christians and Cathucumens who have quit the Prayer.” Five years later, only one Catholic cabin remained. Seminarians not only failed to attract converts to Catholicism, but they appeared to drive them away. As the governor of Louisiana put it in 1708, Bergier had “a lot of zeal and merit, but he does not have the talent for instructing well, or making himself liked by the sauvages.” When Bergier died, the Illinois danced around the cross he had placed in Tamaroa, broke it apart, and fought over credit for killing him.Footnote 17
The years between 1699 and 1702, when both Jesuits and Seminarians lived in Tamaroa, as well as the years immediately following the Jesuits’ removal, best illustrate the Illinois’ evaluation of each societies’ missionaries. When Pinet lived in Tamaroa, “his Church could not contain the multitude of Sauvages who came to it in crowds.” And yet, with Pinet's departure, Marest predicted “these missions will receive rude shocks.” Nonetheless, Marest prayed “God grant that [the Seminarians] may leave them in a better condition than we have done.” The Seminarians did not: not only were Saint-Cosme, Bergier, and those Seminarians who followed unable to improve on the Jesuits’ numbers, they did not even manage to maintain the Tamaroa mission at the same level. Writing in 1708, Gravier summarized “the people here are greatly dissatisfied with these gentlemen.”Footnote 18 Gravier's observation pointed towards the real balance of power in Illinois. The bishops in France and Quebec thought they decided the matter of who could missionize to the residents of Tamaroa in 1701, but the choice was never in their hands. Ultimately, Illinois converts decided which missionary group would share in their Catholic practice.
II. Participating in Illinois Life
Illinois people wanted missionaries who participated in their society and culture, including speaking their language, working with them, and sharing in their material possessions. Many converts already understood those values did not contradict Catholic practice, and were often exemplary of Catholic principles, and so they expected a Catholicism that incorporated such principles, and missionaries who engaged in them as well.
Converted Illinois could not, and would not, change their subsistence and work patterns; doing so would not only provoke the censure of the wider community, but it was understood as unsociable, working against the good of all the community's members. These values actually aligned quite well with aspects of Christianity that asked believers to think of and work for the good of others but sometimes clashed with the demands of the Catholic calendar. Though at first Seminarians expected converts to rest on the Sabbath, those who did were threatened by their unconverted elders, such that Bergier changed his mind in 1704 and proposed allowing converts to join in the rest of the Tamaroa village's work. Seminarians were less willing to join the Illinois on their seasonal hunts, though Jesuits often did since, as Marest observed, “a Missionary does no great good to the Sauvages unless he live with them, and continually watch their conduct.” In the absence of any Seminarians and with different villages intermingling during these occasions, the seasonal hunts became another opportunity for Jesuits to minister to residents of Tamaroa, in response to which Bergier exclaimed in a letter, “Have we ever seen anything like this!” Bergier did accompany Tamaroa residents on the winter hunt in 1702, but he left after five weeks when he received word that seventeen French men were approaching the village and wanted to celebrate Easter. Bergier wrote that, though he wanted to join the summer hunt of 1703, he needed to remain behind because “I don't have anyone to guard my house.” To the Illinois, Seminarians’ reluctance to participate in communal work made them seem against the communal good, an attribute that was heavily censured in Illinois and many other Native societies.Footnote 19
The Illinois also noticed Bergier's concern for his material possessions, another value that contradicted Illinois—and Catholic—ideals of sharing and community. The Illinois, like many Native groups, expected generosity from their leaders and did not accept hoarding material goods. This expectation should have aligned well with Christian principles, but Bergier's property practices made him seem both a hypocritical missionary and a bad participant in Illinois society. Residents of Tamaroa explained that they “take [Seminarians] first for traders, and rich people, more than for poor, and disciples of J.C.” “You are hard,” the Illinois accused Bergier, “You are stingy, you are miserly, you regret your riches, you lie when you say that you are poor. It is we who are poor, you are rich you, you have everything, you are lacking nothing, and you preach poverty to us. You are fooling us.”Footnote 20 Not only did residents of Tamaroa recognize Bergier's hypocrisy, but they were able to put their criticism in a Catholic context. The Catholicism they expected was one where people did not hoard material things, as well as one with religious leaders who practiced what they preached.
In order to participate in Illinois society, missionaries also needed to learn the Miami-Illinois language, a process that was dependent upon Illinois people agreeing to help them learn it. The Illinois were more disposed to converse with the Jesuits because the Jesuits arrived speaking their language—literally. The Jesuits began building their language skills before they ventured down the Mississippi: many who came to Illinois already knew the related Algonquian language, and Jacques Marquette began constructing a prayer book before his 1673 voyage. Over their years in Illinois, Illinois interlocutors helped Jesuits to write three dictionaries, two of which Pinet and Gravier compiled in the 1690s. The third, constructed in the 1720s, included a translation of Genesis and readings for each Sunday.Footnote 21 Jesuit efforts to learn the Miami-Illinois language indicated to the Illinois a desire to understand the people they hoped to convert as well as a recognition of where the balance of power actually lay in the encounter; by the time Seminarians arrived, the Illinois expected Catholic services and instruction in their own language.
Just as important as the ability to speak the language was what missionaries said. Bergier promised the first thing he would say to the Tamaroa was “whoever does not believe in crucified Jesus will burn eternally,” a sentiment unlikely to inspire many converts and one that, moreover, failed to take into account the Illinois practice of burning prisoners of war. Generations of Jesuits, on the other hand, continued working on their language skills in order to engage the Illinois in terms that made sense to them. As Tracy Neal Leavelle demonstrated in his detailed translations of Catholic prayers in the Miami-Illinois language, Jesuits tried to make Christianity intelligible to the Illinois, to create “hybrid religious texts, undeniably Christian in conception and form, yet infused with Illinois cultural concepts and sensibilities.” Jesuits also adjusted the form Catholic instruction took in order to better serve their Native parishioners: for example, they worked Catholic instruction into song, “which [Illinois converts] retain more easily because the words are set to airs which they know, and which are pleasing to them.” Converts gathered independently in separate-sex meetings and “far on into the night they sing Hymns.”Footnote 22 Illinois people had actively engaged with the Jesuits, allowing the Jesuits to highlight the aspects and practices of Catholicism that aligned with Illinois ideas.
Illinois interlocutors were necessary for anyone wanting to understand the language, but Seminarians turned to the Jesuits for aid, blaming those missionaries when Seminarians made little progress with the language. Jesuits were reluctant to share their accumulated knowledge, but nonetheless offered the Seminarians “a collection of prayers, and a translation of the catechism,” which included the Our Father and the Apostle's Creed. While both societies inhabited Tamaroa, Pinet allowed Bergier to use his dictionary when he asked. However, Bergier complained it had been “impossible for me to take” a copy of the Jesuits’ catechism translations, and so he had had to create his own, with limited success.Footnote 23
Their inability to speak Illinois not only hindered Seminarians from communicating with their target audience but also held them back from performing critical components of priests’ work, like hearing confessions or preparing acolytes for baptism. Bergier therefore surrendered care of the Illinois in Tamaroa to Pinet at first. He decided against baptizing anyone until he learned Illinois (except for children on the brink of death) for fear of baptizing children multiple times or that baptizing improperly instructed adults “would be to give that which is sacred to the dogs,” both of which he characterized as “great dangers inconveniences.” Seminarians also could not perform services in the Illinois language, so when Jesuits were absent, Bergier could only offer an evening prayer consisting of the “Pater, Ave, Credo, the Commandments of God, and an act of faith”—translations of which the Jesuits had given him.Footnote 24 As Bergier's words indicate, these prayers, and mass itself, were said in Latin at the time in Catholic Europe; the Illinois demanded an understanding of Catholic faith denied most French people at the time. Without the ability to perform the Catholic services in the Illinois language that residents of Tamaroa had come to expect, Bergier seemed to have a less powerful connection to the spirit world than the Jesuits. Bergier reached the same conclusion, writing that the Tamaroa's access to Catholic services “are reduced to dry breasts. God render them abundant by His infinite mercy.”Footnote 25 Bergier's phrasing was dramatic, but he was not wrong: the Illinois expected the Catholic rites in their own language. Being left with Bergier must have seemed very dry indeed.
Seminarians were forced to turn to Illinois women to teach them Catholic prayers. However, for reasons discussed in the next section, many Illinois women had already decided they preferred the Catholic practice offered by the Jesuits and were thus reluctant to teach the Seminarians. The women who did help in the Seminarians’ instruction clearly did not wish to: once it became clear Seminarians were not Jesuits, Bergier was left with just one instructrice, who had refused to share her knowledge multiple times. He at least had an easier time than did Saint-Cosme, whose only help came from a woman in Pimitéoui—and he only managed to gain her aid because she was married to a French man who disliked the Jesuits. However, the woman did not seem to share her husband's prejudice, as Saint-Cosme complained she “no longer instructs me with the same affection.”Footnote 26 Despite Seminarians' insistence that Jesuits were to blame for their slow progress with the Miami-Illinois language, Illinois people also clearly refused to instruct.
For Catholicism to prosper among the Illinois, converts needed religious leaders who spoke their language and adhered to their values regarding work and material possessions. Even as Seminarians' words remained largely incomprehensible to the Indigenous residents of Tamaroa, their actions spoke volumes. As Bergier and Saint-Cosme's difficulties finding women to help them learn Miami-Illinois hint, Seminarians had made missteps early on in their encounter that alienated this crucial population.
III. Native Women and Marriage
Illinois women were critical to determining the success of French missionaries. Though Illinois society was patrilineal and men served as chiefs, they were often away at war or on hunts and, in missionaries’ view, “live[d] in excessive licentiousness, which renders them utterly averse to virtue, and incapable of listening to their missionaries.” Two-Spirit people, meanwhile, had significant religious roles in Illinois spirituality, and were therefore unlikely candidates for conversion to Catholicism. Illinois women, on the other hand, controlled family and home life, connected kinship networks through exogamous marriages, and possessed spiritual capabilities they were eager to enhance.Footnote 27 For the Illinois, women's roles were part of a larger structure of gender norms and sexuality practices that Illinois converts weighed when deciding whether to pray with the Jesuits or the Seminarians.
Native women had been an important population for missionizing in New France.Footnote 28 Scholars have noted the gender imbalance in Native conversion, explaining it as a tool women used to combat oppression.Footnote 29 Scholarship on the Illinois has argued that women converted because they were fleeing Illinois patriarchy, with its slavery, polygamy, and sanctions against adultery, an explanation that seemingly forgets that French society was also patriarchal, embraced slavery, sanctioned adultery, and did not necessarily protect wives from the problems inherent in Illinois polygamy while depriving them of its advantages. Scholars have overemphasized the empowering nature of patriarchal Catholicism for Native women without taking into account the authority that Illinois women already held over their bodies, their marriages, and their spiritual experiences.Footnote 30 The Catholicism that Illinois women did practice offers an opportunity to better understand what promise Catholicism may have held for Native women in general because Illinois women were offered multiple kinds of Catholicism, and because their gender structures, in terms of patrilineality, were relatively similar to the French, so Illinois women who did convert usually would not expect a major change in their gender role within society.Footnote 31
Though the Illinois were patrilineal, that did not mean that women were powerless in their society. Women had exceptional capabilities in moments that highlighted their ability to give life: men avoided women when they were pregnant or nursing and refrained from heterosexual sex prior to hunts or war expeditions because of women's spiritual potential at those moments. Women lived in separate cabins when that potential was strongest—when menstruating or giving birth. Women also served as spiritual leaders, particularly for other women, holding separate-sex feasts and religious instruction. As in many Native and European societies, marriage played an important role in connecting families; because Illinois was an exogamous society, Illinois women connected and could spread their influence through their marriages.Footnote 32 The Illinois also practiced polygamy, which multiplied or strengthened familial connections. Such a marital arrangement could enhance some women's influence over the members of her family, though other wives might in turn lose influence.
French missionaries needed to stretch beyond their ethnocentric bias in order to recognize that baptizing women could be as, if not more, potent as baptizing male chiefs. French women at the time were experiencing “an irresistible trend towards patriarchy” and the enclosure of female religious houses was more strictly enforced after the Council of Trent, though those that managed to remain uncloistered became centers of religious power.Footnote 33 Jesuits had learned from experience to prioritize missionizing to Native women for the influence they could exert on their families, as well as their broader role in the transmission of culture, despite the patriarchal nature of the religion and culture that missionaries were advocating.Footnote 34 The Seminarians, however, had little to no experience with Native women, and their previous experience did not incline them to adapt to Native gendered practices or emphasize women's roles: Bergier and Foucualt had prohibited French people from their churches in New France for not strictly adhering to Catholic marriage rules, and it was strongly hinted that Saint-Cosme had affairs with young women.Footnote 35
A patriarchal religion like Catholicism featuring male gods might seem to have dubious attraction to women, but Illinois women learned from their early encounters with missionaries from each society how their gender was valued in their offering of Catholicism. Jesuits made an effort early on to emphasize women's roles in Catholic practice. During his second visit to the Illinois in 1677, Marquette introduced Catholicism to the Illinois in a large open-air assembly with four large pictures of the Virgin Mary hung on Chinese taffeta, so she was visible to all the gathered Illinois. The image of the mother of Jesus, instead of Jesus or a male representation of God, portrayed Catholicism as less patriarchal than it was while intimating an important role within the religion for Illinois women. Further, since Marquette was not yet fluent in Illinois, the images were probably more intelligible than his speech. Notably, while Marquette “took possession” of Illinois in the name of Jesus and planted a cross, he named the mission “Immaculate Conception of the blessed virgin.” The Virgin Mary was Marquette's particular patron saint, so he might have intended to name the mission after Mary anyway, but the Illinois would not have known this.Footnote 36 To the Illinois, the presence of multiple images of Mary likely seemed a promising effort on the part of the missionary to add women.
Illinois women did not observe a prominent role for women in their first encounters with the Seminarians, however. The first group of Seminarians arrived across the Mississippi from Tamaroa on the eve of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, but when the chief invited them to visit, the Seminarians put it off so they could celebrate the holiday the next morning alone. Further, they brought Tonti with them, which led the Illinois to believe they came with violent intentions, such that women and children fled at their approach. When Saint-Cosme returned a few months later, he erected first a presbytery for himself, then a chapel and a cross for the use of the community. Compared to Marquette's initial encounters with the Illinois, Saint-Cosme and the other Seminarians were emphatically male, from the makeup of their party to the symbols they employed.Footnote 37 Possibly, the Seminarians were relying on the patrilineal nature of Illinois society and hoped to win chiefs first, assuming the rest of the village would follow, but this initial misstep revealed to Illinois women that the Seminarians' Catholicism had a smaller role for women than did the Jesuits’.
Illinois people expected female religious leaders, particularly for female practitioners. They expressed hope, on first encountering nuns, that a few would come to live in Illinois country. No convent was ever established in Illinois, so some Illinois women instead took on a leadership role in worship and evangelizing, thus continuing their former practice of separate gender worship and allowing them some autonomy from the missionaries, though what they said remains unrecorded. The leadership role women played hints at continuity among Illinois gender roles, even among converts; conversion did not give Illinois women control, because women's spiritual and gendered authority was already a part of Illinois society. Jesuits permitted and even encouraged Illinois women in their unconventional role as religious instructors because of their skill in evangelizing and their relative openness to Christianity, but Seminarians limited women's roles in their church.Footnote 38
Many of the Jesuits' early converts were brought to Catholicism through the efforts of one Illinois woman. Marie Rouensa, the daughter of a Kaskaskia chief, managed to convert her family and 206 Kaskaskia through her negotiation over her marriage to the French man Michel Accault, as well as re-convert her husband, a man “famous in all this Illinois country for all his debaucheries.” Marie herself became a spiritual leader among Illinois women, a status in keeping with Illinois societal standards and likely inherited from her parents' leadership roles. She memorized the stories Gravier told and borrowed the pictures attached to those stories so she could preach to the Illinois herself, doing so “more intelligibly” than Gravier. The Jesuit admitted she had “marvelous authority”: she also held independent prayer meetings for Illinois women to guide them in prayer and “confessed” the young women herself, only bringing to him those ready for baptism. In order to increase her spiritual power, she made herself a belt of thorns, hoping mortification would allow the Virgin Mary to “teach” and “protect” her.Footnote 39 Marie's wish for Mary to guide her, in addition to adopting her name, suggests Marquette's initial emphasis on Mary had worked.Footnote 40 Though Marie's conversion predated the Seminarians' arrival by several years, her use of Catholicism to enhance her spiritual practices and authority illustrates what Illinois women looked for in Catholicism, as well as how the Jesuits were able to attract so many of them to this patriarchal religion.
Illinois women could also have been crucial to the conversion of residents in Tamaroa, but Seminarians resisted their leadership. In a particularly telling incident, Domitille, an Illinois woman, was to lead the evening prayer at the Jesuit church in Tamaroa while Pinet was away, since Bergier had refused to perform the service in the Jesuit church. When he heard this, Bergier protested that surely it would be more “seemly that a Priest would be preferred to a woman to say the evening prayer?” Bergier observed that his response was “not at all to the taste” of Pinet, and he seemed to think he had scored a point against the Jesuit, failing to recognize how alienating leading converts like Domitille scored among the residents of Tamaroa. Bergier did not report on whether his disregard for women's religious leadership was to the taste of Domitille and her companions, but their patronage of the Jesuit church over his spoke volumes. Illinois women did at first constitute the largest part of the converted population in Tamaroa, but they soon abandoned the Seminarians, likely because they did not see a leading role for themselves in the Seminarians’ mission. Neither Bergier nor the other Seminarians had taken steps to make patriarchal Catholicism seem open to Illinois women, instead importing the top-down, male-dominated hierarchy that characterized much of Catholicism in Europe.Footnote 41
Pinet's willingness to allow Domitille lead prayer, on the other hand, evidenced Jesuits’ inclination to delegate some religious authority to Native women. Jesuits encouraged Illinois women, whom they called “instructors. . .because it is not in the Church but in the cabins that they instruct the catechumens and the Neophytes.”Footnote 42 That Jesuits’ Catholicism allowed Illinois women to continue their roles as spiritual leaders and deepen their spiritual practices likely swayed them to engage in the religion the Jesuits offered.
Illinois women looked for not only female religious leaders in their spiritual practice but also support in maintaining their kinship systems—or changing them in key ways. Some missionaries worried leaving converted people to live amongst their unconverted families and friends, not to mention licentious French men, would lead to apostasy. For this reason, Seminarians questioned the utility of baptizing single women in particular, who might later be swayed by new husbands to recant. Since the Illinois were “strongly subject to Polygamie and Repudiation,” Bergier wondered if missionaries should ever marry or, indeed, baptize the Illinois. Jesuits observed the opposite was true; that, as Gravier wrote, “the young women here greatly contribute to bring prayer into favor.”Footnote 43 The decision to bless unions or not was left to missionaries on the ground: in 1648, the pope had given missionaries wide latitude to sanctify marriages that did not strictly adhere to Catholic rules in the colonial context.Footnote 44
Just as Jesuits trusted Native women as religious instructors, so they trusted them among their unconverted kin, whom Illinois women in turn led to Catholicism. Binneteau wrote that “there are many households where husband and wife live in great fervor, without heeding what the jugglers or the young libertines may say,” they “courageously support our side.” These Christian couples moreover helped to support those single converts or children whose family disapproved. Jesuits saw great advantage in baptizing those already married to unconverted spouses. Binneteau noted Catholic Illinois wives “manifest extraordinary care in maintaining piety in their families; they themselves teach their children; they exhort their husbands to be virtuous; they ask them at night whether they have said their prayers; they urge them to approach the sacraments frequently; and, for their own part, they confess at least every week, and often receive communion.”Footnote 45 By not forcing Illinois people to choose between Catholicism and their families, Jesuits recruited more converts who could in turn persuade their kin.
Seminarians, however, cited Illinois marriage practices as reasons to restrict access to Catholic services, questioning whether women married to unconverted men should be baptized and whether they should marry Illinois couples, since they might divorce or marry again. When a baptized couple named Michel and Cecile married outside the church, Bergier argued exceptions should not be made for the Illinois since, as he put it, “how can one hope reasonably that they will be firm without receiving the sacrament and the grace that must strengthen them?” However, the Jesuits reasoned it would be best to ensure the couple was “firm in their marriage” before performing the rite within the church, thus ensuring Michel and Cecile did not break the holy sacrament of matrimony.Footnote 46 The case was particularly important, for both Michel and Cecile were children of Illinois chiefs: Michel of Rouensa and Cecile of Mantouchensa, the Peoria chief. The Seminarians’ policies for this and other marriages contradictorily demanded Illinois converts be baptized and married within the church while questioning whether they even should be allowed to do so, a policy bound to alienate potential converts. Bergier ultimately recognized this, and decided against enforcing the Holy See's decision that couples composed of one converted and one unconverted person married outside the church should be separated, recognizing that doing so might expose them to violence and result in “driving from the Church people who acted in good faith, and who moreover live with much restraint and piety.”Footnote 47
Polygamous marriages were of particular concern for Seminarians, Jesuits, and potential Illinois converts. Even if polygamous spouses converted and agreed to monogamy, that decision provoked further complications, since it was not clear how to decide which marriage was legitimate: could the husband choose whom he wanted as his wife, Bergier wondered, “first or last, whether she wants to convert or not?”Footnote 48 A polygamous marriage among three converts demanded a solution to this problem. Michel Parefleche had joined the church with his second marriage. His first wife, Cecile, had converted before their marriage, but when his second wife, Sabine, was excluded from prayer meetings for being a second wife, Michel converted in order to rectify the situation. He claimed to Gravier that he had permanently left Cecile and now wished to be baptized and married to Sabine within the Catholic Church. Eager to gain another soul for heaven and enticed by the possibility of sanctifying a previously sinful union, Gravier believed Michel. For Sabine and Michel, the Jesuits’ willingness to work around Illinois marriage practices removed an obstacle to their conversion. Rasles observed that “there would be much less difficulty in converting the Illinois, if Prayer permitted them to practice Polygamy.” By waiting until later to allow Michel to marry in the church and allowing him to do so with his second wife, the Jesuits gained another convert.
Despite what he told Gravier, Michel continued to live with both wives. Cecile therefore abandoned Catholicism since it had failed to prevent her husband from marrying a second wife. She confronted Bergier publicly, demanding why Sabine was accepted at prayer if only first wives were legitimate, as the missionaries had promised her. “Thus you would rob me of my husband and give him to another,” accused Cecile, “I who am a Christian, after having lived eight years together and having had five children, one of whom is still in my arms and nursing?” Jesuits like Sebastien Rasles interpreted women's actions such as those of Cecile and Marie Rouensa as indications they would “prefer to expose themselves to ill treatment rather than do anything contrary to the precepts of Christianity regarding marriage.” For Cecile, it would be more accurate to say that the whole point of Christianity was to change Illinois precepts regarding marriage; without that guarantee, Cecile saw little point in attending prayer. Cecile may have preferred stricter rules around sexual practices, but, notably, Gravier's actions brought him more converts by attracting both Sabine and Michel, even as he lost Cecile.
Cecile's actions—calling Bergier out in a public space and his subsequent embarrassment—incited other Illinois parishioners to continue her line of questioning, demanding an explanation for the hypocrisy. Were second wives allowed at prayer or not? Finally, Bergier decided Cecile was correct because, as the Catholic Church preached, marriage was indissoluble. However, the Jesuits disagreed: Cecile and Michel's marriage had been illegitimate since Michel had not been Christian at the time, and no dispensation from Rome had allowed a Christian to marry a non-Christian. Which marriage the missionaries decided was legitimate in the eyes of the church would determine which spouse remained Catholic.Footnote 49 Meanwhile, Michel claimed to be willing to quit either Sabine or Cecile, as soon as the missionaries could reach an agreement. As the Parefleche marriages makes clear, all Illinois women did not want Catholic practice to affect their marriage practices in the same way.
The intertwined issues of marriage and women's roles determined which Catholic practice Illinois converts chose. The extent to which this was so becomes clear through the Seminarians' letters—notably, incidents like Domitille's leadership role and the Parefleches' polygamous marriage only appear in the Missions Étrangères' archive. Adding the Seminarians' documents offers not only glimpses of those Illinois people's relationship to Catholicism but also reveals the extent to which Jesuits allowed Illinois converts to continue practices that might not adhere to strict Catholic regulations. Ultimately, Illinois converts shaped their Catholic practice. Returning to Marie Rouensa's leadership, her example illustrates not only how important converted women were to the success of the mission but also how working within Native gender and sexual practices could cause Illinois converts to opt for a Catholicism led by Jesuits over Seminarians. Marie married Michel Accault in 1693, before any Seminarian set foot in Illinois. Despite the significant role she played in converting Kaskaskia, Seminarians would have argued against her baptism because her family had not converted and her future husband, though French, was not a practicing Catholic.Footnote 50 And yet, the precedent of Marie's marriage to a French man allowed Jesuits to continue attracting Illinois people to their mission through their roles as the arbiters of “true marriage” to secular French men, which opened up a wider world of French connections.
IV. French Connection
Illinois converts choosing their religious practice did not do so in a vacuum; many factors in addition to spirituality influenced their decisions. Missionaries came to Illinois not only as spiritual leaders but also as agents of the French empire, along with soldiers, traders, and farmers. Relationships between individual missionaries and their secular countrymen varied and missionaries could be antagonistic toward French men, whom they often saw as corrupters of their missions. Whether or not the missionaries welcomed secular French men, the Illinois did; for the Illinois deciding where to live, connections to secular French people could be a key factor.Footnote 51 Yet again, Illinois women proved crucial to creating those connections through intermarriage.
With the marriage of Marie Rouensa and Michel Accault, Illinois converts had come to see Jesuits as facilitators of connections between French colonists and Illinois villages. The Illinois understood the distinction between religious and secular French colonists and had used marriages à la façon du pays, or in the manner of the country, as one tool in accessing alliances and trade with the French since the mid-seventeenth century. The Rouensas had wanted just such a connection with the trader and landowner Accault and had been willing to sacrifice their relationship to the Jesuits to get it. However, through the machinations of Marie, her marriage established the Jesuits as the arbiters of “true marriage.” Sanctifying intermarriage was a departure for Jesuits, who often complained about the corrupting influence of secular French men, but through Marie's influence, Illinois became the rare place in the French empire known for its Catholic marriages between Native women and French men.Footnote 52 By the time the Seminarians arrived in the area six years later, more and more French men and Illinois women were following Rouensa and Accault's lead and having their marriages sanctified by the Jesuits.
Attracting French men with wives and Illinois families with kinship alliances to French men allowed Jesuit missions in Illinois to grow. After Marie Rouensa's success, Jesuits condoned intermarriage in Illinois, a change in policy they saw as advantageous for three reasons: “the first was to stop the scandal and the seduction, then to assure by this method the fidelity of these Sauvages and finally to be able more easily to inculcate the principles of Christianity to all this nation.” Moreover, Marest argued intermarriage and the Christianity of the Illinois “brought many Frenchmen to settle here,” noting three recently intermarried couples. The products of intermarriage—children with kinship connections among both the French and the Illinois—could also further the reach of Catholic missionaries. The first son of Marie and Michel was meant to do just that when he was sent to the Séminaire de Québec, for “if the little boy can succeed and be one day a missionary that without doubt will affect well the people and will be a great support for the missions,” wrote Saint-Cosme as he sent Pierre Accault off at the age of five. The Seminarians’ hopes were dashed, however: Pierre did eventually return to the Mississippi Valley, but he does not seem to have entered missionary life.Footnote 53
Seminarians were not against intermarriage but, as with their expectations for baptism, they demanded intermarried couples adhere strictly to French Catholic codes. On first visiting the Jesuits’ mission in Illinois, Saint-Cosme complimented the Jesuits’ progress, particularly the Native “women married to the french who edify us by their modesty and the assiduity with which they go to prayer.” Bergier married at least one Native woman to a French man but worried coureurs de bois, who had taken “publicly sauvagesses for wives,” now “do not know the feast days or Sundays, or Fridays, or Saturdays, or Lent, and lead a totally animal life.” He had “hoped to be supported” by the Jesuits in reigning in the disorder, but the Jesuits replied it was “for the secular Powers” to ensure that their own orders were obeyed and continued to admit sinners to the sacrament. Bergier's decision to criticize the coureurs de bois for their libertine lifestyle, as well as for disobeying the recent order that they return to colonial metropolitan centers for clemency, had succeeded in convincing some French men to return but had also attracted the “hatred” of most coureurs de bois.Footnote 54 Bergier was left with little local secular French support, and thus little appeal to the Illinois who wanted him to serve as a conduit to French trade and connections.
Connections to secular French men proved a key determinant when the Kaskaskia moved away from Pimitéoui in 1700 to a spot closer to the Mississippi—and only four miles from Tamaroa. The village of Kaskaskia became a town where Catholic intermarriage flourished, drawing both Illinois and French populations, which in turn increased the converted populations in the Jesuits’ mission. Seminarians believed the Jesuits had moved their mission on purpose to lure residents of Tamaroa, Native and French alike, to their own mission. Bergier complained that, while the Jesuits had lamented “so much once upon a time against french men as against the Plague of the Missions,” they were now trying to attract secular French men in Kaskaskia. By attracting all the French men to Kaskaskia, the Jesuits were “easily destroying little by little our [mission], because the Sauvage loves to live with the French man.” Bergier struck back a few years later by claiming the Jesuits could only minister to their Native residents, “solely with the view of taking the french from us,” but his argument does not seem to have worked.Footnote 55 As they had with language learning, Seminarians assumed Jesuits orchestrated this blow to their mission instead of recognizing Illinois agency.
Contrary to Seminarians’ suspicions, the move was not orchestrated by Jesuits but was instead prompted by Kaskaskias’ desire to be closer to the Mississippi. Moreover, Chief Rouensa played a leading role in attracting residents of Tamaroa to Kaskaskia, again pointing back to the significance of intermarriage and Illinois women in either mission's success. He sent twenty-three pirogues to bring the Tamaroa across the river, as well as many presents. Bergier tried to stop the flow of emigrants by giving the Tamaroa an enslaved Native, but twelve cabins left along with their chief, leaving Bergier with only twenty-two cabins of possible parishioners. The remaining Tamaroa were thinking of moving as well but remained when Bergier bribed them with gun powder, vermillion, glass, and knives. Bergier heard different reasons from the Tamaroa for why they wanted to move: the “many presents” promised by Rouensa, that “all the french will abandon my mission” and establish themselves in Kaskaskia, “that there they will have all the trade, and that . . . they won't fear the Scioux their most redoubtable enemy, either because of Rouensa with whom they are allied, or because of the great number for Frenchmen who defend” Kaskaskia.Footnote 56 The imbrication of French and Native concerns represented in his list illustrates how attractive a French connection was to many Illinois people and that Illinois converts' choice between the Seminarians and the Jesuits could not easily be divorced from more secular concerns.
In choosing between Seminarians and Jesuits, Illinois converts were not only deciding their religious practice but also in which town they would settle: Tamaroa or Kaskaskia. Marie Rouensa's marriage to a French man initiated a pattern of Illinois women marrying French men, with Jesuits serving as the link between the two groups. Kaskaskia, in turn, became a more attractive place to live for both secular French men and Illinois people, even if they had not converted. When Seminarians drove away secular French men, Tamaroa could not offer the same kinship, trade, or security Kaskaskia could. The imbrication of the sacred and the secular that led to the multicultural town of Kaskaskia not only shows that Illinois people chose with whom to worship for intertwined reasons but also how conversion could serve as a gateway for European colonialism. In the long term, the inroads the Jesuits made and the knowledge they collected while trying to convert the Illinois allowed the French to settle in the region with limited violence and to expand their influence through the center of the North American continent. That the Jesuits’ practice of working in particular within Native gender and sexual structures prospered points to the ways other imperial states mobilized knowledge of Indigenous gender and sexuality norms to colonize and control populations.
The Seminarians’ and Jesuits’ actions at the turn of the eighteenth century set the stage for their future among the Illinois. The Illinois never came back to the Missions Étrangères in any significant numbers, even as other Seminarians replaced Bergier. Jesuits in Kaskaskia, meanwhile, maintained a large following, largely due to the stability intermarriage had brought to the town. Marest claimed in 1712 that out of 2,200 inhabitants, at most forty Kaskaskia “do not profess the catholic faith with the greatest piety and constancy,” an observation Gravier confirmed, saying “nearly all the inhabitants are Christians.”Footnote 57 By 1750, a Jesuit claimed the Kaskaskia were “all baptized excepting five or six.”Footnote 58 Though Jesuits overexaggerated their success in Kaskaskia, when Illinois people did convert to Catholicism, they chose a practice that enhanced women's existing place in Illinois society, worked within Illinois kinship systems, and enabled connections to secular French people—a choice that most often led them to Jesuits.
Throughout the years, a number of Seminarians cycled through their mission in Tamaroa, though few stayed for long; for those who remained, “it is to die soon of destitution,” according to Noël Baillargeon, a historian of the Séminaire who was a Seminarian himself. Bergier and Jean-Paul Mercier did die in Tamaroa, but they offer the few examples of long service that gave the mission some stability. After each died, the mission went unmanned for years at a time. The Jesuits, with more missionaries available across the continent, were better able to maintain a continuous presence and remained in the area even after the British had claimed the territory. Nonetheless, Jesuit claims to success fell short as well: the Peoria in particular maintained their distance and one of their arrows ultimately killed Gravier.Footnote 59 The missionaries of both societies returned to friendly relations with each other after their initial dispute, though their disagreement over who was allowed to missionize to which groups of Illinois flared up again in 1739.Footnote 60 The dispute proved evergreen because arbiters in church and state centers could not effectively make this decision; Native converts decided who would missionize to them.
The morning before the showdown that opened this article, Marest came from Kaskaskia to ask Bergier to borrow some wine in order to perform mass. Bergier told Marest “If you need wine, I need Illinois . . . we could accommodate each other.” Marest asked Bergier which Illinois, to which Bergier replied “the Illinois who need a missionary”—at which point, Marest pointed out that he “had no Illinois.”Footnote 61 Marest was correct, in the sense that Native people were not congregations to be disposed of by the missionaries. While Seminarians blamed Jesuits for drawing away converts and Jesuits blamed Seminarians for failing to convert many, both ignored the Illinois people's agency in practicing Catholicism with the Seminarians, Jesuits, or not at all. Instead of following the missionaries' examples, we can read between the lines of both societies' letters to infer what aspects of Christianity were most meaningful to the Illinois who practiced it. The Illinois not only had a choice between converting to Catholicism or not but also a choice in their practice of Catholicism; including Seminarians’ letters alongside Jesuit sources allows a clearer picture of what Illinois conversion and Catholicism actually looked like. Most who did choose Catholicism developed a practice in their own language with Native leaders and Indigenous kinship systems—which turned them towards the Jesuits in Illinois instead of the Seminarians. Moreover, when Illinois people did convert to Christianity, they preserved fundamental Indigenous values.Footnote 62 The divergent fates of the two missions illustrate how European success in early American colonization and missionization often hinged on knowledge of and willingness to work within Indigenous structures. The Illinois, not the council in Paris or the bishop in Quebec, decided who would evangelize to the residents of Tamaroa, offering further evidence that decisions in early America were made on the ground, usually by Native people, far from metropolitan or colonial centers.
Acknowledgements
Research for this article was funded by grants from the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and the William & Mary Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ Research Fund. For comments on drafts of this article, I am indebted to the anonymous readers for Church History, as well as Kristen Beales, Jessica Blake, Caylin Carbonell, Sara Damiano, Joshua Piker, Brett Rushforth, Casey Schmitt, Christine Sears, Joanna Jahnke Wegner, and Holly White. I also want to express my gratitude to the archivists and staff at the Archives du Séminaire de Québec (ASQ) and in particular to Guillaume Aubert, who first suggested visiting ASQ.
