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The Shattered Cross - French Catholic Missionaries on the Mississippi River, 1698-1725 (Hardcover)
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The Shattered Cross - French Catholic Missionaries on the Mississippi River, 1698-1725 (Hardcover)
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In The Shattered Cross, Linda Carol Jones explores the lives and
work of five priests of the Seminaire de Quebec, the first French
Catholic missionaries to serve along the Mississippi River between
1698 and 1725. Using an array of archival holdings in Quebec and
France, Jones provides deep insight into the experiences of these
pioneer priests and their interactions with regional Native peoples
and cultures. Encounters between early French Catholic missionaries
and Native peoples were always complex, often misunderstood, and
typically fraught with an array of challenges. As Jones
demonstrates, these priests faced a combination of environmental,
personal, economic, and leadership difficulties that, along with
cultural misunderstandings and poorly designed strategies, made
their missionary work arduous. Nevertheless, their efforts led, in
some instances, to assimilation of select Christian elements into
Native cultures, albeit through creative, mutual adaptation, not
solely through Catholic efforts. In describing the challenges the
Seminaire priests faced in their Christianization efforts, Jones
reveals patches of middle ground that served to transform both
missionary and Native cultures when least expected. She relates the
story of Father Marc Bergier, who took the openness and compassion
he felt for the Native peoples he encountered in Quebec with him as
he descended the Mississippi River and worked among the Tamarois.
Bergier revealed a willingness to reject certain aspects of
Catholic teaching in order to accept various Native traditions.
Jones also investigates the case of Father Jean-Francois Buisson de
Saint-Cosme, strongly suspected by church leaders of having an
inappropriate interest in women while serving as a priest in
Acadie, several years before his departure down the Mississippi.
Jones suggests that Father Saint-Cosme's subsequent sexual
relations with the sister of the Great Sun of the Natchez may have
been an attempt to step into a middle ground with her so as to end
the Natchez tradition of human sacrifice upon the death of a Great
Sun. Expectations of Seminaire leaders in Quebec and Paris meant
that those with the best chance for success on the Mississippi were
internally driven, acknowledged a sense of calling to be a part of
the overarching mission of the seminary, and adhered to the advice
of its leadership. The missionary experiences of these five men -
their varied encounters with Native peoples, Jesuit missionaries,
and French coureurs de bois - align and diverge in unexpected ways,
presenting a mosaic that adds to our understanding of both the
tribulations French Catholic missionaries faced and the
consequences of their efforts along the Mississippi River in the
early eighteenth century.
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