The Catholic Calumet: Colonial Conversions in French and Indian North America

Abstract

The Catholic Calumet: Colonial Conversions in French and Indian North America. By Tracy Neal Leavelle. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. Pp. 256, appendix, notes, index. Cloth, $39.95).The Catholic Calumet: Colonial Conversions in French and Indian North America is a recent addition to the field published by the McNeil Center and the University of Pennsylvania Press. In this work, author Tracy Neal Leavelle (Associate Professor of History at Creighton University) examines the relationship between Jesuits and Algonquian-speaking people in the pays d'en haut and Illinois Country in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In particular, Leavelle focuses on the missionary efforts of the Jesuits, using the aspect of conversion as a way to study the changing world of native peoples. The result is an important new work that draws attention to an often-overlooked region.According to Leavelle, the study of Jesuit conversion in North America is often limited to the history of the Huron in the last half of the seventeenth century. By focusing on that timeline have too easily perceived a gradual decline in fervor... a decline that only accelerated in the eighteenth century (p. 200). But for the Ottawa, Ojibwe, Illinois, and other Algonquian-speaking Indians the encounters with Jesuits were far from over. By the 1660s Jesuits were rebuilding churches in the Upper Great Lakes. Missionary Gabriel Marist arrived in Illinois Country in 1698 and worked until his death in 1712. Jesuits established a formal parish in the area in 1719 and from there the Jesuits worked out into the countryside trying to convert the Illinois and Peoria Indians. Clearly the work of the Jesuits did not end with the decline of the Huron.Leavelle also suggests that scholars have been too rigid in their definition of conversion. Previous scholars have reduced conversion efforts into black and white categories: success or failure, Christian or native. Levealle argues that this framework is too rigid. In reality, Jesuit missionaries approached native peoples with a varying degree of understanding while native peoples' view of Christianity also changed over time. This was a period of great turmoil. Intertribal conflict intensified as native groups competed for dwindling resources. Disease killed entire families and villages. Groups were forced to migrate west in order to find hope for the future. In these cases the message of conversion was not simply about belief in a new deity; the act and meaning of conversion represented the possible end to chaos and confusion. …