Black Robes and Buckskin
Catharine Randall
The Jesuit Relations, written by new world jesuit missionaries from 1632 to 1673 back to their Superior in France, have long been a remarkable source of both historical knowledge and spiritual inspiration. They provide rich information about Jesuit piety and missionary initiatives, Ignatian spirituality, the Old World patrons who financed the venture, women’s role as collaborators in the Jesuit project, and the early history of contact between Europeans and Native Americans in what was to become the northeastern United States and Canada.
The Jesuits approached the task of converting the native peoples, and the formidable obstacles it implied, in a flexible manner. One of their central values was “inculturation,” the idea of “coming in by their door,” to quote a favorite saying of Ignatius, via a creative process of syncretism that blended aspects of native belief with aspects of Christian faith, in order to facilitate understanding and acceptance. The Relations thus abound with examples of the Jesuits’ thoughtfully trying to make sense of native—and female—difference, rather than eliding it.
The complete text of the Jesuit Relations runs to 73 volumes. Catharine Randall has made selections from the Relations, some of which have never before appeared in print in English. These selections are chosen for their informative nature and for how they illustrate central tenets of Ignatian spirituality. Rather than provide close translations from seventeenth-century French that might sound stilted to modern ears, she offers free translations that provide the substance of the Relations in an idiom immediately accessible to twenty-first-century readers of English.
An extensive introduction sets out the basic history of the Jesuit missions in New France and provides insight into the Ignatian tradition and how it informs the composition of the Relations. The volume is illustrated with early woodcuts, depicting scenes from Ignatius’s life, moments in the history of the Jesuit missions, Jesuit
efforts to master the native languages, and general devotional scenes.
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About Catharine Randall
Reviews for Black Robes and Buckskin
-Kathleen Long Cornell University "Catharine Randall's modern translation of selections from the Jesuit Relations brings to life an exciting chapter of the French exploration and settlement of North America. In their letters home, the intrepid Jesuits write of their relationships with Native peoples, whose traditional beliefs the missionaries struggle to translate into their own Catholic terms. Their letters also illuminate the lives of the courageous nuns who founded hospitals and created schools for the girls of early Quebec, both Native and white. Blackrobes & Buckskin makes accessible to contemporary readers a fascinating chapter of North American history."
-Mary Jean Green Dartmouth College "This fascinating book is essential reading for anyone interested in the early modern exploration of French Canada. Black Robes and Buckskin offers a sample of letters, some famous, others never translated, from the Jesuit Relations. These field letters by Jesuit missionaries epitomize inculturation, a two-way process whereby Jesuits taught and learned from the indigenous peoples. Unlike the English, the French cohabited with the native peoples and sought to woo minds and hearts. Catharine Randall's expert translations recapture a world we have forgotten."
-Anne Larsen Hope College "A reviewer of the 1991 film Black Robe commented that it was far easier for contemporaries to relate to the Native Americans in the film
to their nature mysticism and their easy morals, for example - than to seventeenth century Jesuits who were ready to sacrifice everything, including their lives - to spread the faith. In Black Robes and Buckskin Catharine Randall has helped immeasurably in this task of making the Jesuits comprehensible to us through her eminently readable, often colloquial translations of the great Jesuit Relations, the reports the Jesuit missionaries in New France sent back to their superiors in Paris and in Rome. She does this out of a personal appropriation of Jesuit spirituality and a sympathetic appreciation of Jesuit missionary strategy that brings the Jesuits especially, but also their Indians they were proselytizing, very much alive. This is both a scholar's book, but also a wonderfully human story about the encounter of cultures and their accommodation."
-Jeffrey von Arx, S.J. President, Fairfield University