HIST 190 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Kateri Tekakwitha, The Jesuit Relations
Document Summary
Although the fur trade was lucrative, the french saw canada as an inhospitable frozen wasteland, and by 1640, fewer than four hundred settlers had made their home there. The sparse french presence meant that colonists depended on the local native algonquian people; without them, the french would have perished. French fishermen, explorers, and fur traders made extensive contact with the algonquian. The algonquian, in turn, tolerated the french because the colonists supplied them with firearms for their ongoing war with the iroquois. In these wars, fighting between rival native peoples spread throughout the great lakes region. A handful of french jesuit priests also made their way to canada, intent on converting the native inhabitants to catholicism. Like the spanish franciscan missionaries, the jesuits in the colony called new france labored to convert the native peoples to catholicism.
