FRENCH TERRITORY CEDED TO ENGLAND. 77 restless, roving Canadians, scattered abroad on their wild vocation, allied themselves to Indian women, and filled the woods with a mongrel race of bush-rangers." * The Jesuits were every-where present; many Indian tribes were converted to the papal faith, and, in process of time, their dusky neophytes descended the river to New Orleans, reciting beads, and chanting prayers and hymns. Two Illinois chiefs, Chicago and Mamantonenza, went to France. As the people multiplied the soil received more attention, and, about 1746, six hundred barrels of flour, besides hides, tallow, wax, and honey, were shipped from the Wabash country alone to New Orleans annually. The condition of morals was low, as might be expected from the strange mixture of the population : fur-traders, a hare-brained, reckless class; vagabond Indians and easy-tempered Creoles, a debauched and drunken rabble. Such was the condition of these early communities, after many years of Jesuit influence. The intrepidity and enterprise of the Jesuits have drawn forth our encomiums,but the moral results were meager and full of blemishes. Copious lists of conversions were reported, but they were reckoned by the number of baptisms, and La Clercq observes, "an Indian would be baptized ten times a day for a pint of brandy or a pound of tobacco." Crucifixes and medals were beautiful trinkets which pleased his fancy, but his heart was as thoroughly unchanged as when he wore a "necklace of the dried fingers of his enemies." But "the lilies of France" grew where the cross declined. The Jesuits reported the movements of Indian tribes, won them to French allegiance, and fostered their hatred of the English. A single Jesuit missionary was sometimes counted by the government as" equal to ten regiments." Notwithstanding the unparalleled facilities and resources of the Mississippi Valley, these settlements possessed in themselves no impulse of growth, so thriftless were the populations. In the middle of the last century the missions were stagnant, if not declining. The inconstancy of the French Government at home, and the mismanagement in Louisiana affected the whole valley. With these things came the French and Indian wars, from 1755 to 1763, the defeat of France, and the surrender of all her territory east of the Mississippi, including all the Canadas, to England, and west of the river, to Spain. The wars of the Revolution and of Pontiac followed. Thus in rapid succession the flags of France, England and the United States floated over the Valley of the West. * Parkman. Section 4.-Resumé of Papal Movements. * In Florida.-We have before noticed that, early in the seventeenth century, villages of converts directed by Franciscans existed along the Apalachicola, Flint and other rivers. But the English colonies planted in the Carolinas rapidly extended their bounds. Conflict arose with their Spanish neighbors and also with the Indians, resulting disastrously to the missions. Indian wars followed, and when Charlevoix visited this region, in 1722, many of the missions had been abandoned, and the influence of the others had seriously waned. "From this period, few details of the missions have reached us, down to the time when Spain ceded Florida to England by the treaty of Paris (1763). This was the death-blow of the missions. The Franciscans, with most of the Spanish settlers, left the colony; the Indians, who occupied two towns under the walls of St. Augustine, were expelled from the grounds cultivated by their toil for years, and deprived of the church which they had themselves erected. All was given by the governor to the newly-established English Church. In ten years no native was left near the city. The Indians thus driven out became wanderers, and received the name Seminoles, which has that meaning. By degrees all traces of their former civilization and Christianity disappeared, and they have since been known only by their bitter hatred of the successors of the Spaniards." + When the Spaniards left Florida, the English found little to possess but the country. "The whole number of its inhabitants," says Bancroft, "men, women, children and servants, was three thousand; and of these the men were nearly all in the pay of the Catholic king. The possession of it had cost him nearly two hundred and thirty thousand dollars annually; and now, as a compensation for Havana, he made over to England the territory which occasioned this fruitless expense. Most of the people, receiving from the Spanish treasury indemnity for their losses, migrated to Cuba, taking with them the bones of their saints and the ashes of their distinguished dead, leaving at St. Augustine their houses of stone, and even the graves without occupants." Texas. The missions in Texas during the earlier period were not successful. In 1688, fourteen Franciscan priests and seven lay * See Chapter I of Colonial Era. + Shea's History of Roman Catholic Missions Among the Indians, p. 75. ↑ Bancroft's History of the United States, Centennial Edition. Vol. III, p. 403. THE PACIFIC COAST. 79 brothers, with fifty soldiers under Don Domingo Teran, entered this region and founded eight missions. Two fathers, a lay-brother, several families of civilized Indians from Mexico, a supply of stock and agricultural implements, and a small guard of soldiers as a protection, were assigned to each mission. One father attended exclusively to spiritual affairs, and the other taught agriculture and the various arts of life. Indians joining the colony were instructed, and their labor went to the common stock, from which they drew food, clothing, etc. When capable of self-direction, fields were allotted to them and houses erected. If single, they were urged to select wives from the Christian women. Each mission thus grew to a village, Spaniards and Indians intermarrying. Reverses soon came— crops failed, cattle died, the soldiers became offensive, and the field was abandoned. The missions were re-established in 1717, but abandoned again in two years. Between 1721 and 1746, missions were established in the center of Texas and extended northward to the borders of New Mexico. These missions continued until within the present century, when the country was unsettled by the AngloAmerican colonization, the revolt of Texas, etc. New Mexico.-We have previously noticed that, in 1608, eight thousand Indians in New Mexico had received the papal faith, and in 1626 the twenty-seventh Roman Catholic mission was founded in that country. Villaseñor, in 1748, gave a flattering picture of the state of this country. The Indians were clothed with materials woven by women, and industry was the prevailing habit, rewarded with peace and plenty. Religious edifices of a high order, "even rivaling those of Europe," had been erected, and the people were not much inferior to their Spanish neighbors. Twenty-two missions averaged one hundred families each. The political changes which more recently occurred have not seriously affected the condition of the Roman Catholic Church. Since the cession of the country to the United States, New Mexico has been made a vicarate apostolic, and finally a bishopric, by the erection of the see of Santa Fé. The first California missions were founded on the peninsula, from which point, at a later period, they were extended into the more northern portion. The Jesuits and the Franciscans shared in the former, but the Franciscans alone achieved the latter. Father Juniper Serra, an Italian Franciscan, the apostle of the missions in Upper California, was early trained in the missions of Mexico. With the assistance of eleven brothers of his order, on the 16th of July, 1769, he founded the mission of San Diego, in a long, narrow valley, formed by chains of parallel hills embosoming a delightful prairie. Favorable omens encouraged the missionaries, and buildings were erected; but just as they were congratulating themselves upon the prospects they were attacked by the Indians and six persons were killed, among whom was Father Viscaino. Amicable relations were soon restored and the mission continued. The establishment of another mission at San Carlos, in 1770, occasioned great joy and the ringing of bells in the City of Mexico. Thirty new auxiliaries were immediately sent to the missions, the Dominicans also asking permission to enter the promising field. Proceeding to a beautiful site on the River San Antonio, in the bosom of Sierra Santa Lucia, where a towering cañada encircles the stream, on the 14th of July, 1771, Father Serra founded the mission of St. Anthony of Padua, in the wide territory of the Telames. The missions of San Gabriel and San Luis Obispo were soon after planted. A bloody Indian massacre occurred in 1775, and the mission of San Diego was the scene. A thousand Indians attacked and pillaged the mission, and many fell, among whom was Father Louis Jayme, whose body was terribly hacked and mangled. "Thank God! the field is watered!" exclaimed the intrepid Serra, as he proceeded, though broken in health, to inspire his co-laborers. After a short delay San Diego rose from its ruins. The mission of San Francisco was founded June 27, 1776, at the time when the Continental Congress was discussing the great question of American Independence. Other missions were commenced at Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, San José, San Miguel, etc., etc., and the Indian converts were soon numbered by thousands. numerous. The Indian missions of the Roman Catholics in the North were Missions among the Hurons began in 1615, among the Iroquois and Ottaways in 1642; the Winnebagos, at Green Bay, in 1660; the Chippeways in 1661; the Sioux, west of Lake Superior, in 1661; the Miamis in 1680. Sault St. Mary, Mackinaw and Green Bay were mission centers for many years. Father Gravier, a distinguished Jesuit, was superior of the missions in Illinois from 1687 to 1706. EARLY PAPAL MISSIONARIES TO THE INDIANS.* 22 Period of Service. | Indian Tribes. Missionaries. Indian Tribes. Period of Service. ..... ..... 30 1642 to 1781 * For a full list of these missionaries, with names, dates, etc., see History of Catholic Missions Among the Indians of North America, by J. Gilmary Shea. 1857. New York: Edward Dunigan & Bro., pp. 499-502. HOSTILITY AGAINST THE JESUITS. Results. 81 Of the thirty-three missionaries who had entered the Illinois country from the visit of Marquette, in 1673, to 1750, only three or four remained at the latter date. At this time, also, a deep hostility was rising in Europe against the Jesuits, and the order was formally expelled from France, Naples and Spain in 1763. The French Court confiscated all their property, and the royal officers in New Orleans, without waiting for the king's decree, dispersed the Jesuits at the point of the bayonet, and confiscated their property, appraised at $186,000, prior to February, 1764. Nine years later, this celebrated order was formally suppressed by the pope. At the close of the French war, more than eighty years had elapsed, of exclusive French and papal sway, since La Salle established his first military post on the Mississippi; but the population of this new and attractive region was very inconsiderable. According to Fraser, as quoted by Bancroft,* there were in Illinois, in 1765, of white men able to bear arms, 700; of white women, 500; of their children, 850; of negroes of both sexes, 900. One hundred and ten French families were at Vincennes and along the banks of the Wabash. At St. Genevieve there were "at least five and twenty families," and at St. Louis "about twice that number." New Orleans, according to the census of 1769, had a population of nearly thirty-two hundred, and Detroit was a village of little more than one hundred houses. Prior to 1771, Irish Catholics had not settled much in America, only in Pennsylvania and Maryland. Those settling elsewhere generally gave up their religion. A considerable number of German Catholics settled in Pennsylvania, but their priests were few in number. "It is asserted that more than half of the regular troops furnished by Pennsylvania during the war of the Revolution, or, as they are now called, 'the Pennsylvania lines,' were Irish Catholics; from which it may be inferred that, though the Church had suffered enormous losses, . . . it still presented, at the time of the Revolution, an imposing mass, composed in a great measure of Irish, of whom, perhaps, a third were born in Ireland." The number of Catholic priests in the United States when the Revolution commenced was twenty-six. * History of the United States, Centennial Edition. Vol. III, p. 511. + Letter to the Lyons Propaganda, by Dr. England, Catholic Bishop of Charleston, S. C. See Am. Quart. Reg., 1841, p. 141. |