Suffering for Jesus: Penitential practices at Fort St. Joseph (Niles, Michigan) during the French regime

Catholic Historical Review

Volumn 94, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 476-499

  Brandão, José António ^a   Nassaney, Michael Shakir ^b  

^a Department of History ^*

^b WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61149181565     PISSN: 00088080     EISSN: 15340708     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/cat.0.0107     Document Type: Review

References (111)

1. See, for example, Etienne-Michel Faillon, Histoire de la colonie française en Canada [1534-1682], 3 vols. (Villemarie, 1865-66)
2. Lionel Groulx, Histoire du Canada français, 2 vols. (Montreal, 1976)
3. See, for example, Guy Frégault, La civilisation de la Nouvelle France, 1713-1744 (1944; repr. Ottawa, 1969), pp. 175-208
4. Robert-Lionel Séguin, La civilization traditionnelle de l'"Habitant" aux 17e et 18e siècles (Montreal, 1967), pp. 41-46
5. Cornelius J. Jaenen, The Role of the Church in New France (Toronto, 1976)
6. W.J. Eccles, "The Role of the Church in New France," in his Essays on New France (Toronto, 1987), pp. 26-37
7. Luca Codignola, "The French in Early America: Religion and Reality," in Visions of America since 1492, ed. Deborah L. Madsen (London, 1994), pp. 35-56
8. Peter N. Moogk, La Nouvelle France: The Making of French Canada - a Cultural History (East Lansing, 2000), pp. 235-64
9. Moogk has continued his exploration of the role of the Church in New France and concluded that Catholicism was a vital influence on the colony's criminal justice practices, especially in terms of the punishments meted out to the guilty. Peter Moogk, "The Liturgy of Humiliation, Pain, and Death:The Execution of Criminals in New France," The Canadian Historical Review, 88 (2007), 89-112
10. See, for example, James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (New York, 1985)
11. Lucien Campeau, La mission des Jésuites chez les Hurons, 1634-50 (Montreal, 1987)
12. François-Marc Gagnon, La conversion par l'image: un aspect de la mission jésuite auprès des Indiens du Canada au XVIIe siècle (Montreal, 1975)
13. Marc Jetten, Enclaves amérindiennes: les "reductions" du Canada, 1637-1701 (Sillery, Canada, 1994)
14. Luca Codignola, "The Holy See and the Conversion of the Indians in French and British North America, 1486-1760," in America in European Consciousness, 1493-1750, ed. Karen Ordahl Kupperman (Chapel Hill, NC, 1995), pp. 195-242
15. Allan Greer, Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekawitha and the Jesuits (New York, 2005)
16. The definitive work on seventeenth-century French missions, in Canada and elsewhere, is Dominque Deslandres, Croire et faire croire: les missions française au XVIIe siècle (Paris, 2003)
17. The role of the Catholic Church in the conversion process after the end of the French regime is taken up in Luca Codignola, "The Holy See and the Conversion of Aboriginal Peoples in British North America and the United States, 1760 to 1830," in Ethnographies and Exchanges: Native Americans, Moravians, and Catholics in Early North America, ed. A. Gregg Roeber (University Park, PA, forthcoming)
18. James Axtell, The Invasion Within, pp. 91-127, 271-86
19. Mark P. Leone and Parker B. Potter, Jr., eds., The Recovery of Meaning: Historical Archaeology in the Eastern United States (Washington, DC, 1988)
20. On the history, culture, and movement of these groups, see Ives Goddard, "Mascouten," in Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 15, The Northeast, ed. B. G. Trigger (Washington, DC, 1978), pp. 668-72
21. Charles Callender,"Miami," in ibid., pp. 681-89
22. James A. Clifton," Potawatomi," in ibid., pp. 725-42. Unless otherwise indicated, the movements of these groups, summarized in the following paragraphs, are taken from these sources
23. José António Brandão, "Your fyre shall burn no more": Iroquois Policy toward New France and Its Native Allies to 1701 (Lincoln, 1997)
24. On the demographic and geographic changes brought on by the Iroquois wars, see Lucien Campeau, S.J., Catastrophe démographique sur les Grand Lacs (Montreal, 1986)
25. Dunning Idle, The Post of the St. Joseph River during the French Régime, 1679-1761 (Niles, 2003), pp. 5-6
26. Joseph L. Peyser, ed. and trans., Letters from New France: The Upper Country, 1686-1783 (Urbana, 1992), pp. 43-44
27. Frontenac to Ministre, October 20, 1691, Rapport de l'Archiviste de la Province de Québec pour 1927-1928, p. 69
28. Brandão, "Your fyre shall burn no more," pp. 117-31
29. W. J. Eccles, Frontenac: The Courtier Governor (1959; repr. Ottawa, 1972), pp. 273-94
30. Robert C. Myers and Joseph L. Peyser," Four Flags over Fort St. Joseph," Michigan History Magazine, 75, no. 5 (1991), 11-21
31. Gilles Havard, "Postes français et village indiens: un aspect de l'organisation de l'espace colonial français dans le Pays d'En Haut" (1600-1715), Recherches amérindiennes au québec, 30, no. 2 (2000), 11-22
32. Joseph Zitomersky, "The Form and Function of French-Native Settlement Relations in Eighteenth-Century Louisiana" in his French Americans-Native Americans in Eighteenth-Century French Colonial Louisiana: The Population Geography of the Illinois Indians, 1670s-1760s (Lund, 1994), pp. 359-87
33. Baptismal records designate one father as a "farmer." Marthe Faribault-Beauregard, La population des forts français d'Amérique (XVIIHe siècle), 2 vols. (Montreal, 1982 and 1984), 1:184
34. Father Marest to Father Germon, November 9, 1711, in The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, 1610-1791, 73 vols., ed. R. G. Thwaites (Cleveland, 1896-1901), 66:281 (hereafter, JR)
35. Pierre Charlevoix, Journal of a Voyage to North America, 2 vols. (London, 1761), 2:99
36. Anonymous, "Memoire sur la partie occidentale du Canada, depuis Michillimakinac jusqu'au fleuve du Mississipi," Bulletin des Recherches Historiques, 26, no. 2 (1920), p. 56. Father Charlevoix mentioned that cleared fields surrounded the post, but their extent, and what crops were planted, is unknown. Charlevoix, Journal, 2:100. An English visitor in 1762 observed that the residents raised Indian corn and hay. [Thomas Hutchins], "A TOUR from Fort Cumberland North Westward round part of the Lake Erie, Huron and Michigan, including part of the Rivers St. Joseph, the Wabash, and Miamis, with a Sketch of the Road from thence by the Lower Shawanoe Town to Fort Pitt. [1]762." Nor is a lack of extensive farming out of the ordinary. Residents of Fort Michilimackinac were routinely chided for their lack of farming and for relying on Natives to supply them, while those at Fort Ouiatanon were also castigated for failing to exploit the land for anything but small garden plots
37. For Michilimackinac, see Michel Chartier de Lotbinière, in Fort Michilimackinac in 1749: Lotbinière's Plan and Description, ed. and trans. Marie Gérin-Lajoie (Mackinac Island, 1976), p. 9. For Michilimackinac and Fort Ouiatanon, see [Hutchins], "A TOUR from Fort Cumberland... [1762]."
38. Joseph Peyser, ed. and trans., The Fort St. Joseph Manuscripts: Chronological Inventory and Translations (Niles, 1978), document 44
39. [Louis-Antoine de Bougainville], "Memoire de Bougainville sur l'état de le Nouvelle-France a l'époque de la guerre de sept ans (1757)" in Relations et mémoires inédits pour servir à l'histoire de la France dans les pays d'outremer, ed. Pierre Margry (Paris, 1867), p. 53
40. Although others are listed in records as interpreters for specific conferences with the Indians, especially in times of war, François Mainard (also rendered as Meinard, Mesnard, and similar versions) is listed as resident of the post and interpreter. Faribault-Beauregard, La population, 1:183
41. Peyser, Fort St. Joseph Manuscripts, documents 99(2), 121, 123(2), 130
42. Peyser, Fort St. Joseph Manuscripts, document 99
43. For a comprehensive list of missionaries to the fort, see Peyser, Letters from New France, pp. 229-30. No priest seems to have lived at the fort. Up to about the year 1712 priests were assigned to the Indian mission and, as best that can be determined, lived among their charges. After that period, priests appear in the records mostly as regular visitors to the fort and mission
44. Idle, The Post of the St. Joseph River, pp. 5-6, 31-40, 64
45. Gérard Malchelosse, "Le Poste de la Rivière Saint-Joseph (Mich.) (1691-1781)," Les Cahiers des Dix, 23 (1958), 148
46. Charles A. Hülse, An Archaeological Evaluation of Fort St. Joseph: An Eighteenth Century Military Post and Settlement in Berrien County, Michigan (MA thesis, Department of Anthropology, Michigan State University, 1977); Michael Shakir Nassaney and José António Brandão," The Materiality of Individuality at Eighteenth-Century Fort St. Joseph: A Mission-Garrison-Trading Post Complex on the Edge of Empire," in The Materiality of Individuality, ed. Carolyn White (New York, forthcoming)
47. Charlevoix, Journal, 2:94, 102
48. [Bougainville],"Memoire sur l'etat de le Nouvelle-France a l'époque de la guerre de sept ans (1757)," p. 53
49. Anonymous, "Memoire sur la partie occidentale du Canada, depuis Michillimakinac jusqu'au fleuve du Mississipi," p. 56
50. [Hutchins], "A TOUR from Fort Cumberland... [1762]."
51. Peyser, Fort St. Joseph Manuscripts, document 123(2)
52. Joseph L. Peyser had, however, made a compelling case for the location of the fort on the east side of the river in the area where it was eventually located. See his Letters from New France, pp. 71-78
53. Michael S. Nassaney and William Cremin, "Fort St. Joseph Is Found," Michigan History Magazine, 86, no. 5 (2002), 18-27
54. Michael S. Nassaney, William Cremin, Renee Kurtzweil, and J. A. Brandão, "The Search for Fort St. Joseph (1691-1781) in Niles, Michigan," Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology, 28, no. 2 (2003), 5-15
55. Nicole Genêt, Luce Vermette et Louise Décarie-Audet, Les objets familiers de nos ancêtres (Montreal, 1974), pp. 100-01
56. Suzanne Tardieu, La vie domestique dans le mâconnais rural préindustriel (Paris, 1964), pp. 296-98 and photos 286-89 on unnumbered pages following p. 540
57. "Hairshirt" in The Catholic Encyclopedia: An International Work of Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline, and History of the Catholic Church, ed. Charles G. Habermann, et al., 15 vols. (New York, 1907-14), 7:113- 14
58. The definition has changed little and not at all in substance in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC, 2003), 6:618
59. Edmond Huguet, Dictionnaire de la langue française du seizième siècle (Paris, 1932)
60. e siècle jusqu'a nos jours (Paris, 1926)
61. e siècle (Paris, 1977)
62. Denis Diderot, Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers... (Paris, 1751)
63. Bressani in JR, 39:260-01. Bressani wrote cilicij in Italian, and Thwaites translated the word as "haircloth." We have restored the original word
64. An inventory of material artifacts specifically related to Jesuits in North America lists, among the usual silver finery, more mundane items such as cutlery, books, and chairs, but no cilices. Marius Barbeau, Trésor des Anciens Jesuites, Bulletin no. 153 (Ottawa, 1957)
65. There are many editions, in a variety of languages, of these seminal works. We have relied on George E. Ganss, S.J., trans., The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius (Chicago, 1992)
66. And his The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus (St. Louis, 1970). Saint Ignatius's teachings, as they have been codified in these two texts, are often cited by reference to specific paragraph numbers that were added by later scholars preparing the definitive versions of his works. In what follows, for the sake of conformity with accepted historical practice, we refer to the page where a passage can be found and not to the paragraph number
67. Ganss, The Constitutions, p. 80. Superiors also "have the duty of moderating those who go to excess" in matters of penance and mortification
68. Joseph de Guibert, S.J., The Jesuits, Their Spiritual Doctrine, and Practice: A Historical Study, ed. George Ganss, S.J. (Chicago, 1964), p. 242
69. Ganss, The Spiritual Exercises, pp. 49-50, quote at 50
70. Ignatius Loyola to Francis Borgia, September 20, 1548, in Ignatius of Loyola: Spiritual Exercises and Selected Works, ed. George Ganss, S.J. (New York, 1991), p. 348
71. Guibert, The Jesuits, Their Spiritual Doctrine, and Practice, p. 586
72. See, for just two of many examples, JR, 39:261
73. JR, 63:205. Women religious also practiced mortification. Marie de l'Incarnation, head of the Ursulines in Quebec, "wore a penitential shirt with knots and thorns, slept on a hair mattress that kept her always half awake, and sometimes rose at night to chastise herself, first with thongs, later with a whip of nettles."
74. Joyce Marshall, ed. and trans., Word from New France: The Selected Letters of Marie de L'Incarnation (Toronto, 1967), p. 5
75. For a full discussion of these points, see Nassaney and Brandão, "The Materiality of Individuality," forthcoming
76. JR, 29:35
77. The issue of less than priestly conduct after 1763 is discussed in Luca Codignola, "Roman Catholic North America, 1763-1846: The Issue of Clerical Misbehaviour in a New Multiethnic Community," in Multiculturalism and the History of International Relations from the 18th Century to the Present..., ed. Pierre Savard and Brunello Vigezzi (Milan and Ottawa, 1999), pp. 181-89
78. JR, 71:167
79. George Brown, et al., eds., Dictionary of Canadian Biography (Toronto, 1966-), 3:444 (Hereafter, DCB)
80. JR, 68:281
81. DCB, 4:241-42
82. JR, 70:277
83. DCB, 3:347
84. [Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre], Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre: Officer, Gentleman, Entrepreneur, ed. and trans. Joseph L. Peyser (East Lansing, 1996), pp. 182-83
85. [Jacques-François Forget Duverger,] Rélation D'un voyage Intéressant au Canada, [26 juin 1753-22 novembre 1754], Variétés Philosophiques et Litteraires, Bibliothèque Universitaire de Rennes, Miscellanea, Tome VII, ms. 213, fol. 79v
86. DCB, 1:490-93
87. [Forget Duverger,] Rélation D'un voyage Intéressant au Canada, fol. 79v
88. Moogk, La Nouvelle France, pp. 235-64 discusses the various sources used to try to assess the role of religion and the state belief of the people of New France. They include but are not limited to estate inventories, wills, and, of course, official acts of the church and state
89. DCB, 2:439-44
90. [Louis Armand Lom d'Arce de Lahontan,] New Voyages to North America, 2 vols, ed. and trans. R. G. Thwaites (New York, 1905), 2:534-38
91. [Peter Kalm,] Peter Kalm's Travels in North America, 2 vols., ed. and trans. Adolph B. Benson (New York, 1937), 2:449-56
92. Voyageurs came in for special opprobrium. See, for example, Father Etienne Carheil to Louis Hector Callières, August 30, 1702, JR, 65:193-99
93. On use of civil authorities to achieve Church aims, see Séguin, La civilization traditionnelle de l'"Habitant," p. 41. The aims of the church and state were not, however, necessarily different
94. Jaenen, The Role of the Church in New France, p. 161
95. Charlevoix, Journal, 1:267
96. Governor Hocquart and Intendant Beauharnois quoted in Séguin, La civilization traditionnelle de l'"Habitant," p. 42
97. JR, 26:119
98. Greer, Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekawitha and the Jesuits, pp. 111-24, 137-38
99. Dupuy quoted in Pierre-Georges Roy, "Les Deux Leverrier," Bulletin des Recherches Historiques, 23, no. 1 (1917), p. 7
100. [Ludovic] Le Comte de Colleville et François Saint-Christo, Les ordres du roi: repertoire general contenant les noms et qualities de tous les chevaliers des ordres royaux militaries et chevaleresques ayant existé en France de 1099 a 1830... (Paris, 1924), p. ii
101. Comte Garden de Saint-Ange, Code des ordres de chevalrie du royaume [Paris, 1819] (France, 1979), p. 174
102. On Le Verrier's need to prove that he was Catholic, see Pierre-Georges Roy, "Notes Sur MM. Leverrier, Père et Fils," Bulletin des Recherches Historiques, 35, no. 5 (1929), p. 290
103. JR, 27:191-201
104. JR, 33:33-35
105. JR, 58:63, 37
106. [Bougainville], "Memoire sur l'état de le Nouvelle-France a l'époque de la guerre de sept ans (1757)," p. 53
107. Father François Watrin in JR, 70:245
108. "Success" in missionary work reflects a state of mind less than any set "target number" of converts and optimism is more pronounced at the start of missionary efforts than at their end. Still, well into the 1800s, the Indians of Michigan remembered the teachings of the French priests and still venerated their first pastor, Jacques Marquette. See John Augustine Hill, O.P. to Benedetto Olivieri, O.P., January 27, 1822, Archives of the Sacred Congregation "de Propaganda Fide," SOCG, vol. 929, fols. 446rv-451rv. We are indebted to Luca Codignola for the above observation and reference
109. W.J. Eccles, The French in North America, 1500-1783 (Markham, Canada, 1998), pp. 150-51
110. Judith Ann Hauser, Jesuit Rings from Fort Michilimackinac and Other European Contact Sites (Mackinac Island, 1982)
111. Marcel Moussette, "Les médailles religieuses: une forme de l'imagerie baroque en Nouvelle-France," Les Cahiers des Dix, 55 (2001), 295-329