Cunning Pedagogics: The Encounter between the Jesuit Missionaries and Amerindians

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2005 55: 101Adult Education QuarterlyMichael WeltonNew France

Cunning Pedagogics: The Encounter between the Jesuit Missionaries and Amerindians in 17th-century

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10.1177/0741713604271853ADULT EDUCATION QUARTERLY / February 2005Welton / CUNNING PEDAGOGICS

CUNNING PEDAGOGICS: THEENCOUNTER BETWEEN THE JESUITMISSIONARIES AND AMERINDIANSIN 17TH-CENTURY NEW FRANCE

MICHAEL WELTON

The Jesuit encounter with the Amerindians of the St. Lawrence Valley in 17th-century NewFrance provides us with incalculable insights into the inner workings of the “colonial imagina-tion” that believes the objects of instruction have everything to learn and nothing of value toteach. This article explicates how the Jesuits got to know their learners, how they tried to dis-place indigenous adult educational leaders and gradually produced Euro-Catholicsubjectivities in their learners, and the pedagogical methods and techniques they used to under-mine the indigenous belief and action system.

Keywords: Jesuits; Amerindian; lifeworld; colonization; spirituality

The encounter between the Jesuit missionary and the Amerindians of New Franceis an excellent, if unusual, place to begin the Canadian story of adult learning in theage of conquest and discovery. The pedagogical encounter between the Jesuits andthe Amerindians of Canada highlights the way one society’s learning system candisrupt, often in radical ways, that of the other. Traditional Amerindian world ori-entations had to cope with changes to their way of symbolically ordering the worldand learning systems during many centuries. But Amerindian modes of subsistenceand production came under relentless assault. It began inconspicuously in the late15th century and continued inexorably through the 16th to 18th centuries as the furtrade penetrated the St. Lawrence Valley and onward to the west. Between 1632 and1670, approximately 100 Jesuit missionaries came to New France, made possibleby the French reoccupation of the St. Lawrence Valley in 1632 (Eccles, 1990;Grant, 1984; Jaenen, 1973; Moogk, 2000; Trigger, 1976, 1985; Trudel, 1973).

This article explicates how the pioneering Jesuits got to know their learners, howthey tried to displace indigenous adult educational leaders and gradually produced

101

MICHAEL WELTON recently retired from Mt. St. Vincent University where he taught courses inadult education history, critical learning theory, and lifelong learning. His latest book, Designing the JustLearning Society: A Critical Inquiry, is forthcoming.

ADULT EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Vol. 55 No. 2, February 2005 101-115DOI: 10.1177/0741713604271853© 2005 American Association for Adult and Continuing Education



Euro-Catholic subjectivities in their learners, and the pedagogical techniques theyused to undermine the indigenous belief and action system. The Jesuit Relations, a73-volume collection of letters and reports (1610-1791) that Jesuit missionarieswrote back to France, provide an invaluable archival resource for reconstructing thepedagogical encounter between the Jesuits and the Amerindians of New France(Thwaites, 1896-1901). This source is accessed primarily through English transla-tions and their usage in secondary sources. It will be referenced as Jesuit Relations.James Axtell’s (1985) text, The Invasion Within, is acknowledged as seminal forthis article.

GETTING TO KNOW YOUR LEARNERS

The Jesuit desire to understand the Amerindian other was motivated by an inter-est in exercising a symbolic, cultural domination over their student adversaries. TheJesuits were scathingly critical of earlier attempts to baptize Indians withoutinstruction and knowledge of indigenous languages. Forced into unaccustomedhumility, the Jesuits had to forgo quick converts to learn the vernacular languages.Placing oneself in a learning relationship with one’s adversary required courage,patience, and humility. Paul Ragueneau (1608-1680), a wily veteran of the Huronmission, advised newcomers to cultivate a “tried Patience, to endure a thousandcontumelies; an undaunted Courage, which will undertake everything; a Humilitythat contents itself with doing nothing, after having done all; [and] a Forbearancethat quietly awaits the moment chosen by Divine Providence” (Jesuit Relations, asquoted in Axtell, 1985, p. 80).

The Jesuits decided to learn indigenous languages (their founder, IgnatiusLoyola, had counseled them thus) to introduce their pedagogical program to theIndians. These learned priests, masters of many texts and languages, now faced theunpleasant thought of becoming like children, stumbling over words, making sillyphrases, being laughed at. Most challenging of all, they had to translate ideas from ahierarchical, patriarchal, technological, status-ridden Christian Europe into themental universe of the Indians. The Jesuits grappled with new throaty sounds andstruggled to find words for sheep, sin, prison, cannon, king, and Christ. They suf-fered endless ridicule. But the black robes persisted, many winning Indian names assigns of some acceptance.

The Jesuit attack pedagogy was aimed primarily at undermining the lifeworldfoundations of Indian ways of life. The lifeworld is the taken-for-granted source ofmeaning and action, and various spiritual-religious practices (animism) were inter-woven into everyday life. The shaman, a person of considerable spiritual power andtherefore of cultural authority, performed medicinal and psychotherapeutic func-tions in all tribes. The Jesuits sought to dislodge him from his place of lifeworldsupremacy through ridicule, mockery, and one-upmanship and to insert themselvesin his place. This was a brilliant, ruthless pedagogical strategy. They used their sci-entific knowledge of solar and lunar eclipses, tides, and the magical power of the

102 ADULT EDUCATION QUARTERLY / February 2005



printed word to de-authorize the shaman. They marshaled their own lifeworldresources (now increasingly penetrated by scientific forms of knowledge) to under-mine the Amerindian cultural foundations and create a native fifth column in theDevil’s Empire.

In the early stages in New France, the missionaries thought they should firstreach the children. They either sent them away to the Old World or had them cometo Quebec or other centers for instruction. But this strategy failed. The childrenwere restless and unhappy, and the Jesuits turned to adult education approaches.They imagined that by creating Christian villages such as Sillery, they would beable to “impose major reforms of native life with relative impunity, free from cos-mopolitan interference or colonial contamination” (Axtell, 1992, p. 163). “Letthese barbarians remain always nomads,” exclaimed Father Le Jeune, “then theirsick will die in the woods, and their children will never enter the seminary. Renderthem sedentary, and you will fill these institutions” (Jesuit Relations, as quoted inAxtell, 1985, p. 55).

THE TRIBAL WILDERNESS LEARNING SYSTEM

Amerindian cultures were primarily voice-and-ear oral cultures. Lacking thebook as storehouse of cultural memory, the historical experience of the tribe wascontained in “flexible units of memory, such as adages, proverbs, and repetitive,thematic formulas” (Axtell, 1985, p. 14). Myths (such as the notion of the earth heldon a turtle’s back) provided orientation points to the mysteries of the cosmos.Although orally transmitted knowledge was not static, it was slow to change.Because the existence of traditional knowledge depended on human memory, itwas more fragile, less authoritative. Within these oral cultures, which did not haveformalized schools, indigenous educators transmitted the traditions of tribal life tothe new members of the culture. The tribal wilderness learning society had to repro-duce the skills necessary to transform nature into energy and sustenance and thatwere essentially woven into life activities. These skills were learned through doing.The technical knowledge and skills of the Indians, embodied in objects and eco-nomic practices, experienced strains when Europe disrupted age-old patterns ofhunting, gathering, and farming. In fact, the European perception of fur-bearinganimals as commodities for exchange on the market radically contradicted Amerin-dian notions of the animal as equal, coinhabiter of the cosmos (Martin, 1978; Mer-chant, 1989). When the Amerindians neglected their ethical obligations to the ani-mal world, for whatever reasons, the way was opened up for the degradation of thesystem and the colonization of the lifeworld.

The shaman was, perhaps, the most significant adult educator in Amerindiantribal society. His role was to maintain the balance and order of a tribal society con-stantly threatened by bad spirits. In unusual times of trouble or foreboding, the sha-man was called on to restore order and good times. He could teach his people whatthe new signs and dreams meant and allay collective anxiety. But the shaman, as

Welton / CUNNING PEDAGOGICS 103



guardian of the traditional lifeworld (its sources of meaning, social stability, andpersonal coherence), was in a precarious situation. If his techniques failed (e.g., ifhe was not able to prevent disease from spreading), he could be easily discreditedand the traditional lifeworld as legitimate fund of meaning undermined.

Amerindians imagined that a “master spirit” brought the world into being. Everyplant, animal, and human had a “guardian spirit” (or boss or owner). One of themost significant learning occasions for indigenous men was the quest for the guard-ian spirit. This quest involved fasting and mutilation as the person sought to trans-form himself psychically to receive the spirit in trance-like dreams. Like early mod-ern Europe (Ginzburg, 1983; Thomas, 1971), Amerindian cultures believed inwitches who were capable of undermining the person’s, or culture’s, successfulachievement of the good life. The worlds of spirits and nature were closely inter-twined. God was the animating life force coursing through the cosmos. Amerindianspirituality was very individualistic; Catholic spirituality allowed little room forindividual expression. Amerindian spirituality was oriented to the present;Catholic spirituality to the future good life beyond the earth.

The Amerindians had considerable trouble comprehending some of the basictenets of Christian dogma, such as sin, guilt, and hell. The Huron recognized the“presence of certain evil forces and the dangerous consequences that might resultfrom failing to do proper service to a particular deity” (Ronda, 1981, p. 69). Butthey could not understand the idea of primordial fault or grasp the “Christian insis-tence that a person who lived a moral life might also be a great sinner” (Ronda,1981, p. 69). The Christian version of heaven and hell held little appeal for theAmerindians. “If thou wishest to speak to me of Hell, go out of my cabin at once,”exclaimed one Huron. “Such thoughts disturb my rest, and cause me uneasinessamid my pleasures” (Jesuit Relations, as quoted in Ronda, 1981, p. 70). TheAmerindians, too, anticipated an afterlife. But it was not a place of reward or pun-ishment for actions on earth. Baptism was another religious practice thatAmerindians had problems with. As smallpox and other diseases swept through thevillages, baptism was believed to cause death. Charles Meiachkwat, a Huron con-vert, was confronted by his wife who wailed disconsolately, “Dost thou not see thatwe are all dying since they told us to pray to God? Where are thy relatives, where aremine? The most of them are dead; it is no longer a time to believe” (Jesuit Relations,as quoted in Ronda, 1981, p. 72). Amerindians used the association of death andbaptism to resist Jesuit incursions into their lifeworlds.

Jesuit and Indian stood on common ground in their assessment of each other’sreligious leaders. Both believed that the other were devils, demons, witches, andsorcerers. One group of Huron leaders contended that Jesuits were “not men, theyare demons” (Jesuit Relations, as quoted in Ronda, 1981, p. 75). Within theirinspirited cultural horizon, the Indians easily imagined that the black robes hadgreat evil powers. They were rumored to harbor diabolical charms in their houses;these charms taking the form of disease-spreading domestic animals or serpents.There were many other charges, some obviously wild (such as equating the




Catholic Eucharist with the bringing of a corpse from France to spread the plague).But in an environment of so little respect and hostility, wild imaginings festered likeopen wounds in the tropical heat. “Huron and Montagnais religious leaders largelysucceeded,” claimed Ronda (1981), “in depicting missionaries as disease-bearingsorcerers who possessed horrible charms and displayed a sinister obsession withguilt, death, and punishment” (p. 75).

The Jesuit Relations records a fascinating theological disputation between PaulLe Jeune and Carigonan, a Montagnais holy man. Le Jeune had spent some time inthe winter of 1633-1634 with a nomadic band of Montagnais, learning the lan-guage, hunting moose, and trying out some evangelism. At night, seated withCarigonan in smoky cabins, Le Jeune and Carigonan matched their wits and intelli-gence. Le Jeune’s opening move asked Carigonan what his beliefs about the after-life were. “All souls travel on foot to a great village beyond the western edge of theworld,” Carigonan replied (Jesuit Relations, as quoted in Ronda, 1981, p. 77). Ridi-culed by Le Jeune, Carigonan retorted, “Thou art mistaken . . . either the lands areunited in some places, or there is some passage which is fordable over which oursouls pass” (Jesuit Relations, as quoted in Ronda, 1981, p. 77). Carigonan could notunderstand that Le Jeune would prefer to believe that souls floated upward. LeJeune then demanded to know what the souls ate on their long trip and was quicklytold that they “eat bark . . . and old wood which they find in the forest” (Jesuit Rela-tions, as quoted in Ronda, 1981, p. 77). Le Jeune thought it little wonder that theMontagnais feared death if that was what they had to eat on their soul journey. Un-perturbed, the Indian theologian described in more detail the activities of souls afterdeath: They eat, hunt, and sleep as they had in life. Le Jeune thought this idea ludi-crous. Le Jeune also thought that the Indian idea that all beings had souls wouldmean that heaven could not contain them all. Appalled at Le Jeune’s ignorance,Carigonan countered,

Thou art an ignoramus, thou has no sense. Souls are not like us, they do not see at allduring the day, and see very clearly at night; their day is in the darkness of the night,and their night in the light of the day. (Jesuit Relations, as quoted in Ronda, 1981,p. 77)

When accused of not answering the question, Carigonan cut him short. “Be silent.Thou askest things which thou dost not know thyself; if I had ever been in yondercountry, I would answer thee” (Jesuit Relations, as quoted in Ronda, 1981, p. 77).

Although this attempt at dialogue had little chance of success, both Jesuit andAmerindian believed in a supernatural realm and in its interaction with humans.Both acknowledged that human beings could be affected for good or ill by theactions of spirits and demons. Both theologians accepted the dualism of body andsoul. But unlike Father Le Jeune, Carigonan believed himself able to cure the sick,guarantee successful hunts, and kill faraway enemies. He even imagined that hissoul could leave his body at will. These assertions merely confirmed Le Jeune’s




perception that Carigonan was an enemy of the faith. In the end, Le Jeune, a giftedrhetorician, had to admit grudgingly that Carigonan was a worthy opponent, thatthe “Montagnais held to their faith as tenaciously as did any pious Christian” (JesuitRelations, as quoted in Ronda, 1981, p. 78).

Amerindians lacked an aggressive missionary impulse, and the idea of a “singlereligion shared by all peoples seemed to the Indians an absurdity” (Ronda, 1981, p.81). A Huron explained it to Jean Brébeuf this way: “Do you not see that, as we in-habit a world so different from yours, there must be another heaven for us, and an-other road to reach it?” (Charlevoix, 1870, p. 79). Pressed to convert to Christianity,Hurons and Montagnais provided these answers: “Such is the custom of our coun-try,” or “Such is not our custom; your world is different from ours; the God who cre-ated yours did not create ours” (Jesuit Relations, as quoted in Ronda, 1981, p. 81).In 1637, elders in the Huron village of Wenrio met with Jesuits to discuss the impactof the mission on their town. Aenons, an esteemed indigenous leader, responded,

When you speak to us of obeying and acknowledging as our master him whom yousay has made Heaven and earth, I imagine you are talking of overthrowing the coun-try. Your ancestors assembled in earlier times, and held a council, where they resolvedto take as their God him whom you honor, and ordained all the ceremonies that youobserve; as for us, we have learned others from our own Fathers. (Jesuit Relations, asquoted in Ronda, 1981, p. 82)

COLONIZING THE AMERINDIAN LIFEWORLD

The Jesuits came from a Europe steeped in hierarchy. Men dominated women,parents their children, an emergent absolutist state demanded loyalty and obedi-ence from its subjects, nobles and merchants ruled the artisans and peasants below,the Catholic Church lay under the authority of the Holy Father: all were under theFather-God. When the Jesuits encountered the fluid and relatively egalitarian Am-erindian societies, they were confused and puzzled. The Jesuit Father Bressanicould not understand that the Amerindians had “neither King nor absolute Prince.”Nor could he fathom that

even the Fathers do not exercise over their sons in order to correct them, as they usewords alone; and, thus brought up, the more the sons increase in age, the more theylove and respect their fathers. Therefore both the former and the latter obtain every-thing precario by eloquence, exhortation, and entreaties. (Jesuit Relations, as quotedin Anderson, 1991, p. 122)

The Jesuit invasion of the Amerindian lifeworld was directed with fierce aggres-sion and hostility toward women. Women posed considerable threat to the Jesuitproject. Like other elements of their intellectual system, the Jesuits’ perceptions ofwomen were shaped by Aristotelian ideas (Pagden, 1982). Women were passiveand men active, they were deemed to be men’s helpmates, they were more feeble




than men, they possessed less capacity to reason, and it was natural that they be gov-erned by men. Within Catholic teachings, women’s sexual nature was threateningand dangerous, always poised to subvert service to God by luring men into bodilypleasure. For these dedicated celibate men, the open manifestation of sexuality andbodily display (one Jesuit spoke of the ease with which he could reach out to touchthe “apples of sin”) in Amerindian culture must have been excruciating.

The Jesuit project of undermining traditional relations between men and womenrequired a cultural revolution. Women had considerable power, authority, and pres-tige in Amerindian tribal life. Although there was a sexual division of labor, Indiancultures lacked the moral vocabulary to conceive of women as “bad” or “evil.”Father Allouez, who worked with the Ottawa mission in 1667, was plainly shockedat men and women’s control over their own sexual practices. Jesuit missionariesthought that this “freedom of sexual expression denoted a lack of control, a certainwildness that appeared to threaten civilization itself” (Anderson, 1991, p. 86). TheJesuits also thought the Indian ease of divorce scandalous. Pierre Boucher, a gover-nor of Trois Rivières and resident of New France from 1635 to 1717, was aston-ished that divorce did not appear to trouble the Indians very much. He imagined thatwomen could simply tell their husbands to leave and they would skulk away(Devens, 1992, p. 26).

Women had considerable power in the matrilineal and matrilocal Iroquoian andAlgonquian-speaking tribal cultures. The women essentially managed thelonghouse. They made crucial decisions about crops, food consumption and distri-bution, and crafts. They made clothing and tended to the children. The Jesuits wereastounded that the Indians did not use physical coercion to discipline their children.Priests such as Le Jeune thought that Indian children were freer than wild animals.They were also astonished that no one appeared to accept the rule of the other. How-ever, there were asymmetries in Amerindian culture. In the spiritual realm, theHuron myth of Aataentsic recognized women’s creative powers but also theirdestructive potentialities (Anderson, 1991, pp. 166-168; Davis, 1994; Trigger,1976). Women did not play the role of shamans, but through dreams, individualwomen could set in motion a “sequence of collective religious action” (Davis,1994, p. 248). Women also played significant roles in dances to placate bad spirits.In the political realm, their voices carried the day mainly in lodge and longhouse.

Village and tribal governance, in contrast, were in the hands of male chiefs andcouncils. Women’s influence in these deliberative learning spaces was informal.Male chiefs presided over frequent local meetings (young men and women werenot usually in attendance); in larger assemblies, young men, and sometimeswomen, were invited. In Iroquoian matrilineal communities, women had a moreformal role in political decision making through their right to select chiefs. Historyrecords only one instance of an Indian woman speaking before the large and unrulyassembly of Ataronchronons. During a smallpox epidemic in 1640, a woman roseto denounce the Jesuits as disease-bearing devils (Davis, 1994).




Intertribal leagues (or political federations) were essential communicativelearning spaces. At the dawn of modern Canadian history, the Jesuits were actuallyattempting to subvert a relatively democratic learning process that proceededthrough communicative processes. Amerindians developed procedures for

styles of communication that operated around the council fire, on embassies to rousefor war or make amends for a murder, at large assemblies, where many opinions weregiven, matters opened with the leader’s appreciative words about the men’s safe ar-rival, no one lost in the words or fallen in the stream or slain by an enemy. (Davis,1994, p. 252)

Those participating in these deliberations had to learn how to use special tones fortheir comments and opinions—called acouentonch by the Hurons—to modulatetheir voices and speak

slowly, calmly, and distinctly, each person reviewing the issues before giving his opin-ion. No one ever interrupted anyone else, the rhythm of taking turns aided by thesmoking of pipes. No matter how bitter the disagreement—as when some Huron vil-lages wanted to rebury their ancestors’bones in a separate grave—courteous and gen-tle language was sought. The Hurons said of a good council, Endionraondaone, “evenand easy, like level and reaped fields.” (Davis, 1994, p. 252)

Before large assemblies or at treaty-making gatherings, men had to adopt a“Captain’s tone,” as one Jesuit put it. Speakers also learned to use mnemonic de-vices—such as marked sticks or shells on a wampum belt—as teaching (or instruc-tional) devices. They used dramatic gestures and paced the stage, making their ar-guments “like an actor on a stage,” as another Jesuit expressed it. Political speechwas poetical, full of metaphors and circumlocutions. Oratory was the primelifeworld curriculum for men who wanted to deliberate with other men in the tradi-tional political sphere; the main learning mode was through mentoring andapprenticeship.

The Jesuit program for women promoted premarital chastity, male courtshipand governance, and marital fidelity. Left to their own persuasive and coercive de-vices, the Jesuits could not succeed easily in breaking women’s power and author-ity. Traditional society provided women with power to influence men and keep thechildren from being taken away by the missionaries. The transformation of a rela-tively egalitarian tribal, preliterate society to a hierarchical, European-oriented,Catholic society required force from outside the indigenous lifeworld. Left on theirown, Amerindians would probably not have freely chosen to live settled lives. Theywould have continued to be as “free as the wild animals that roam in their greatforest” (Jesuit Relations, as quoted in Etienne & Leacock, 1980, p. 35). The sys-tem force that incapacitated and pathologized the Indian lifeworld was the Euro-dominated fur trade. This was a cataclysmic force that turned the Amerindian worldupside down and disordered the gender system. Incorporation into the emergent




global world system gradually shifted Amerindian cultures from subsistence (pro-duction for use value) to market-oriented trapping (production for exchange).

CUNNING PEDAGOGICS:METHOD AND TECHNIQUE

Jesuit pedagogy was in the service of an apocalyptic, otherworldly mission toestablish Christ’s kingdom on earth before his return. Achieving this end justifiedtheir usage of coercive means to convert their pedagogical subjects. They hadlearned to adapt “themselves to the capacities of children [and] simple persons” andappeal to “all five senses in their preaching and catechizing” (Axtell, 1985, p. 76).As startling as this may be to present-day teachers, the Jesuits conducted an assaulton their learners’ beliefs, practices, and priests. They used ridicule and verbalattacks as a teaching device, mocking their learners’ gods and rituals. They shat-tered Indian etiquette—jesting in the victim’s presence was a European practice—throwing the Indians “on the defensive by the very act of having their beliefs ques-tioned, a process,” claimed Axtell (1985), “that no culture can long withstand” (p.94). Perhaps the Indians lacked an “armour of self-consciousness strong enough torepulse the Jesuits’ unseemly irruptions” (Axtell, 1985, p. 95), particularly as theIndian lifeworld was undermined by war, famine, and disease. The Jesuits wereeducational warriors and not neutral facilitators. So once they sensed that the tradi-tional lifeworld was eroding, they focused their attacks on the inadequacy of theindigenous meaning system. They remonstrated against the shamans’ songs andincantations, easily demonstrating their inadequacy to ward off smallpox,diphtheria, influenza, and measles, and rushed in to replace them at the nadir ofshamanic power.

The indigenous knowledge system—as learning resource for problem solv-ing—did not provide the besieged Indians with a way of explaining what was, infact, happening to them. The shaman was discredited as the focal adult educator (orhermeneutical expert). The lifeworld abhors a vacuum, and Jesuit argument that“misfortunes” were due to an “omnipotent God’s just punishment of native sin”(Axtell, 1985, p. 97) gained a foothold in indigenous epistemology. The Jesuitsbecame “Christian shamans” and colonized a central cultural category within thenative lifeworld. They even appeared to possess the “ability to summon wildlife andto control the weather to the natives’ advantage” (Axtell, 1985, p. 100). These wilyJesuits knew the laws of probability and wagered that they had a 50% chance ofsucceeding. It was worth the gamble, apparently, and no doubt reflects their ambiv-alence to the interplay of supernatural and natural orders.

The Jesuits also used their skills at predicting eclipses of the sun and moon andtheir ability to read and write to create a spiritual aura around themselves. In 1683,Thierry Beschefer informed his French provincial that the prediction of eclipseshad “always been one of the things that have most astonished our Indians; and it hasgiven them a higher opinion of their missionaries” (Jesuit Relations, as quoted in




Axtell, 1985, p. 101). It was relatively easy for the Jesuits to disabuse the Indians ofthe fanciful notion that a divinity resided in the sun, a heavenly body. On January31, 1646, an eclipse occurred. Just as the Jesuits had predicted, the Huron convertsof Ossossane rushed from their lodges. They awakened the village’s remaining“pagans,” insisting that they “come and see how truthful are our preachers; andstrengthen yourselves, by this argument, in the belief of the truths which theypreach to us” (Jesuit Relations, as quoted in Axtell, 1985, p. 102).

For oral peoples whose only libraries are the collective memory deposited in theelders, the Jesuit’s second skill—reading and writing—was “perhaps more awe-inspiring than any other and may have contributed to the Indians’ reception ofChristianity as much as any single method or argument employed by the missionar-ies” (Axtell, 1985, p. 102). The manner in which the Jesuits used their literacyspeaks volumes of their cunning pedagogics. They argued that just as the writtenword was superior to the spoken, Christianity was superior to the native religion.The written word was solid, stable; the oral was variable, porous. According toAxtell (1985), Francesco Bressani reported that one of the three most compellingarguments used by the Jesuits with the Indians was that “scripture does not vary likethe oral word of man, who is almost by nature false” (p. 103). Axtell said that afteradmiring the excellent handwriting, and “how much more accurately it could trans-mit words than could fallible memories, ‘they began to discern the certainty of thedivine word’” (p. 103).

The Jesuits had considerable success in instituting a new ground of authority—the written word. In 1647, at an important tribal council meeting, a Huron convertchallenged the speaker, who was relating tribal legends for the younger genera-tion’s benefit. “Where are the writings which give us faith in what thou sayest?” heasked.

If each one is permitted to invent what he will, is it strange that we know nothing true,since we must acknowledge that the Hurons have been liars from all time? But theFrench do not speak by heart; they preserve from all antiquity the Sacred books,wherein the word of God himself is written, without permission to any one to alter itthe least. (Jesuit Relations, as quoted in Axtell, 1985, p. 103)

The Jesuits took advantage of the Amerindian ignorance of the vicious disputesabout the meaning of the sacred book in Europe (multiple interpretations, schisms,disputes, endless religious rivalries, secular doubts) to implant their ideology withgreat certainty in a disintegrating oral culture (Grafton, 1992).

The Jesuits used visual images to teach the faith. “Conversion by the image”(Gagnon, 1975) has its roots in Loyola’s “Spiritual Exercises.” The Jesuit founderencouraged his novices to practice mental representation of central biblical themes;to use relics, images, and adornments as sensory aids to spiritual learning; and toextend their imaginations to encompass the entire world of lost souls. Jesuit peda-gogues sought to transform the perspectives of their pupils by appealing to the full




range of the sensorium. Archaeological evidence indicates that the Jesuits gavetheir native proselytes oval brass or bronze medals (of Christ as an infant, for in-stance) bearing such inscriptions as “Good and infinite Jesus have mercy on us.”Writing from Sillery in 1676, Father Jean Enjiran requested “things which mayhelp us to win those poor Indians” and specified

medals; small crucifixes a finger in length, or smaller still; small brass crosses andbrass rings, also some in which there is the figure of some saint, or the face of JesusChrist or the Blessed Virgin [and] wooden rosaries, very black and very thick, whichthey wear hanging from the neck or about the head. (Jesuit Relations, as quoted inAxtell, 1985, p. 113)

It is not stretching matters to assume that these Christian images replaced (or addedto) the traditional amulets worn for protection and good fortune.

The Jesuits believed that their Indian pupils learned best at moments of height-ened emotion and melodrama. Believing that perspective transformation requiredshock treatment, Jesuit educators painted frightening verbal portraits of hell, thefiery underworld. Loyola believed that potential converts ought to be able to see the“vast fires, and the souls enclosed . . . in bodies of fire”; hear the “wailing, howling,cries, and blasphemies” of the damned; smell the “smoke, the sulphur, the filth, andcorruption”; taste the “bitterness of tears, sadness, and remorse of conscience”; andtouch the “flames which envelop and burn the souls” (as quoted in Axtell, 1985, p.114). Indian catechumens were encouraged to use the see-hear-taste-touch mode ofpedagogy to instruct novice Christians. According to an 18th-century Jesuit histo-rian, some Indians thought the Jesuits were perpetrating a fraud because how couldthere be enough wood to keep a fire burning forever? Had not the Jesuits told themthat the fires of the underworld burned by themselves? An ingenious Jesuit priestfigured out a way to undermine the doubters. He invited the leading men of the vil-lage and others to come to an object lesson demonstration. Passing a lump of sulfuraround to the villagers, they felt it in their hands. Then the priest crumpled some ofthe lump into a kettle full of coals. The “earth” burned and emitted a sickening odor.Axtell tells us that a historian noted that they “believed in the word of God that thereis a lower world” (Jesuit Relations, as quoted in Axtell, 1985, p. 114).

One can try to imagine oneself actually hearing the wailing of tormented souls.But the Jesuits went one step further by creating a play to celebrate the birth of theDauphin. Sponsored by Governor Montmagny in Quebec in 1640, the Jesuits cre-ated a scenario to strike the Indians’ eyes and ears. In this gruesome bit of populartheatre, an unbeliever’s soul was chased by two Algonquin-speaking demons who,on capturing it, hurl it shrieking into a “hell that vomited forth flames.” Perhaps theearliest Canadian form of using drama as a teaching tool, this scenario sent morethan one “native spectator . . . home to terrifying nightmares” (Jesuit Relations, asquoted in Axtell, 1985, p. 114). These spectacles appeared to work—a spectacularpedagogy of fear designed to dynamite traditional mindsets—but they were not




universally appropriate or applicable in the settings in which most missionariesactually worked.

The Jesuits had used pictures to instruct their pupils when they first landed inAcadia in 1611. They continued to learn how to meet the visual preferences of theirlearners. In 1637, Father Le Jeune used pictures of hell featuring enchained souls“mad with pain.” Rather sadistically (meant, perhaps, to trigger real-life memoriesof Iroquois torture practices), Le Jeune desired pictures for the Hurons that clearlydepicted

three, four, or five demons tormenting one soul with different kinds of torture—oneapplying to it the torch, another serpents, another pinching it with red-hot tongs, an-other holding it bound with chains—it would have a good effect, especially if every-thing were very distinct, and if rage and sadness appeared plainly in the face of the lostsoul. (Jesuit Relations, as quoted in Axtell, 1985, p. 115)

The Jesuits studied the aesthetic preferences of their students to increase the ef-fectiveness of their pedagogy. After working with the Hurons for several years,Charles Garnier became very attuned to native aesthetic preferences. In approxi-mately 1645, he wrote to his brother, a Carmelite monk, requesting pictures that in-cluded an 18-year-old beardless Jesus, Jesus on the cross, damned and happy souls,and an uncluttered Judgment. The Hurons’ favorite was a picture of the child Jesusclutching the knees of the Virgin, regally crowned and holding a scepter in her righthand and the earth in her left. The Indians preferred illuminated paintings to high-light the sacred mysteries. But Garnier had learned that what mattered most to theIndians were the cultural details. Amerindians imagined, at least for a long time,that pictorial people were actually alive, capable of watching them. The Jesuits pro-vided pictures with people with their eyes closed. Bodies had to be semicovered,heads uncovered, hair straight and well combed, with no beards. The Jesuits evenlearned the symbolical significance of Indian color schemes. Happy souls shouldbe white; others dressed in bright red or blue, not green or yellow. Portrayals ofdamned souls, Garnier thought, should be “grilled and blackened” by the flames,hair shaggy, eyes flashing and mouth agape with agony, and hands, feet, and middlegirdled by red-hot chains. If that did not work to good effect, then the scaly dragonstrangling the lost soul’s body, poked by horrific demons with harpoons, would dothe trick (Rapport de l’Archivisite de la Province du Quebec, as quoted in Axtell,1985, pp. 115-116). The Jesuits grounded their pedagogical practice in thelearners’ needs with a vengeance.

The Jesuits imported a European aesthetic into Amerindian culture. ClaudeChauchetière, a priest at Sault Saint-Louis, crafted illustrated books for his villag-ers by doing sketches for Michel Le Nobletz’s catechetical lessons (Nobletz was amissionary in Brittany in the early 17th century). Chauchetiere thought that thesewordless books served as “mute teachers,” able to travel with the Indians into thebush to hunt. This pictorial pedagogical experimentation encouraged Jean Pierron,




a missionary to the Mohawks, to try his hand at religious artistry. In a bizarre paint-ing that had as its didactic purpose to stop a number of older men and women fromplugging their ears when the priests spoke, one of his paintings included, in thelower portion, an image of an old woman who was stopping her ears before a blackrobe attempting to show her paradise:

But there issues from Hell a Demon, who seizes her arms and hands, and puts his ownfingers in the ears of this dying woman, whose soul is carried away by three Demons;while an Angel, coming out of a cloud, sword in hand, hurls them down into thedepths. (Jesuit Relations, as quoted in Axtell, 1985, p. 116)

Once explained to the villagers, “not another person was found who dared to say, ‘Ido not hear’” (Jesuit Relations, as quoted in Axtell, 1985, p. 116). Pedagogical in-ventiveness and ingenuity were in the service of a puissant war against paganism.

VICTORIOUS PEDAGOGY:THE NEW FAITH TAKES HOLD

Eventually, this unceasing, persistent, fanatical assault on the Amerindianlifeworld, assisted by the ironic twists of history (disease and the fur trade), hadgathered enough neophyte Christians together to create factions within many of theIndian villages. Between 1632 and 1672, the Jesuits claimed to have baptized morethan 16,000 natives (of which one third were infants, children, and adults who soondied). Early converts faced the taunts and threats from nonbelievers, and the power-ful pull to return to the old ways was always a nagging presence. The Jesuits thenmoved to the second phase of pedagogical instruction. They had to educate theirfragile converts in the mysteries of faith and create a stable, deep Euro-Christiansubjectivity in their converts. Although Catholic churches appeared in every con-ceivable style, the Jesuits sought to create a lavish, sensual, sacred pedagogicalspace to exert influence over their followers. They conducted their services and rit-uals with flash and pomp to provide the believers with a spiritual ambience thatwould awaken the senses and cast a spell over them. Their brocaded vestments andsparkling altar vessels, liberally endowed by two French noble women, added tothe spell. And the Jesuits used chants and hymns, with their lovely lilting cadencesand melodies, as mnemonic devices to anchor Christian verities (Axtell, 1985, pp.118-121).

The Jesuits worked hard to create a moral regime that put considerable coercivepressure on women to see themselves as the cause of domestic disputes. Young girlswere even cloistered and guarded by male relatives and bells to ensure that younglovers did not crawl into their beds (Jesuit Relations, as quoted in Anderson, 1991,p. 96). Feminist historian Karen Anderson (1991) is astonished that the Huron andMontagnais moved from “resistance to compliance, to self-policing” (p. 96). Theconverts were actually behaving as if the Jesuit conception of the world were true.




One might speculate that the erosion of the foundations of the lifeworld under-mined women’s autonomy, self-esteem, and confidence, leaving them vulnerableto the external judgment that they were flawed human beings who could beaffirmed only when they obeyed the rule of their superiors.

In the context of French political power, economic imbalance, persistent war-fare, death and disease, crisis of faith, and Jesuit persistence, native men andwomen had very little room for maneuver. In situations of radical disempower-ment, men and women will struggle to find ways to retain their dignity and exercisemastery over their life situations. Men sought power through identification witheconomic ends of the global fur trade, entering, however, into a Faustian bargain.For some disempowered Indian women, 17th-century Roman Catholicism pro-vided some channels for their affirmation of identity and voice. Catholicism em-ployed female imagery—the Virgin Mary, female saints—and could be “co-optedby women as symbols of power” (Shoemaker, 2002, p. 18).

In conclusion, the Jesuit encounter with the Amerindians of the St. LawrenceValley in 17th-century New France provides us with insights into the inner work-ings of the colonial imagination (an imagination that is still present in the 21st cen-tury). As exquisitely educated Euro-intellectuals, the Jesuits simply took forgranted that their vision of truth and the ordering of material and spiritual worldsmust, and would, prevail in the future. Their apocalyptic, intolerant faith animatedtheir pedagogical project. They were brilliant popular educators: resourceful, cou-rageous, and culturally attuned. Indeed, one is taken aback at how contemporarytheir methods seem. Yet this brilliant marshalling of pedagogical energy was ulti-mately in the service of a worldview that divided humankind into (Christian)friends and (Satanic) enemies. The Jesuits had nothing important to learn andeverything important to teach. The political context of pedagogical instruction inthe early Jesuit era and our own are neglected at our peril.

REFERENCES

Anderson, K. (1991). Chain her by one foot: The subjugation of women in seventeenth century NewFrance. London: Routledge.

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Charlevoix, P. F. X. (1870). History and description of New France (J. G. Shea II, Ed. & Trans.) NewYork: J. G. Shea.

Davis, N. (1994). Iroquois women, European women. In M. Hendricks & P. Parker (Eds.), Women,“race,” and writing in the early modern period (pp. 243-258). London: Routledge.

Devens, C. (1992). Countering colonization: Native American women and Great Lakes Missions, 1630-1900. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Eccles, W. J. (1990). France in America (Rev. ed.). Markham, Ontario, Canada: Fitzhenry and White-side.




Etienne, M., & Leacock, E. (Eds.). (1980). Women and colonization: Anthropological perspectives. NewYork: Praeger.

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Grant, J. W. (1984). Moon of wintertime: Missionaries and the Indian of Canada in encounter since1534. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.

Jaenen, C. (1973). Friend and foe: Aspects of French-Amerindian cultural conflict in the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries. Toronto, Canada: McClelland and Stewart.

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Shoemaker, N. (2002). Kateri Tekakwitha’s torturous path to sainthood. In V. Strong-Boag, M. Gleason,& A. Percy (Eds.), Rethinking Canada: The promise of women’s history (pp. 15-46). Oxford, UK:Oxford University Press.

Thomas, K. (1971). Religion and the decline of magic: Studies in popular beliefs in sixteenth andseventeenth-century England. Middlesex, UK: Penguin.

Thwaites, R. G. (1896-1901). The “Jesuit Relations” and allied documents, travels and exploration ofthe Jesuit missionaries in North America (1610-1791). Cleveland, OH: Burrows.

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Cunning Pedagogics: The Encounter between the Jesuit Missionaries and Amerindians

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