What Determined the Content of Missionary Reports?

The Jesuit
Relations Compared with the Iberian Jesuit Accounts
Abe, Takao.

French Colonial History, Volume 3, 2003, pp. 69-83 (Article)

Published by Michigan State University Press

DOI: 10.1353/fch.2003.0002

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/fch/summary/v003/3.1abe.html

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 WHAT DETERMINED THE CONTENT OF
MISSIONARY REPORTS? THE JESUIT RELATIONS
COMPARED WITH THE IBERIAN JESUIT ACCOUNTS
Takao Abé

Une étude isolée des Relations des Jésuites écrites dans la Nouvelle
France fait croire que ces documents découvrent seulement des dif-
férences entre les diverses personalités et opinions au sujet des méth-
odes missionaires, aussi bien que du zèle religieux et de l’érudition
profane. Pourtant, une comparaison entre Les Relations et les lettres
des Jésuites ibères écrites au Japon fait voir une autre perspective.
Cette étude démontre trois choses: d’abord, indépendent des personal-
ités des prêtres, la teneur de la correspondance des Jésuites changea et
se développa de la même façon au Japon et en Huronie.
Deuxièmement, peu importe que les relations semblent être person-
elles, les intérêts collectifs et religieux de la mission jésuite sont plus
importants. Finalement, en se doutant des images assez fixes de ces
Jésuites, cette étude essaie à reinterpréter ces personalités dans un con-
texte international.

or more than two centuries, The Jesuit Relations (in French, Les

F Relations des Jésuites) have been widely cited in historical studies. Most
often, they have been mined for facts about seventeenth- and eigh-
teenth-century North America.1 A few scholars, however—beginning with
Reuben Gold Thwaites, the editor of the monumental nineteenth-century
compilation and translation of The Relations—have adopted a more probing
approach to these invaluable documents. They have scrutinized The
Relations themselves in order to uncover confusions, misunderstandings,

Takao Abé is Associate Professor in The College for Women, Asahikawa University, Hokkaido,
Japan.

© French Colonial History

Vol. 3, 2003, pp. 69-84
ISSN 1539-3402

69
70 TAKAO ABÉ

even prejudices that the missionary authors introduced—usually inadver-

tently—into their accounts.2
A careful reading of The Jesuit Relations reveals that three main influ-
ences shaped them: (1) the purpose of the document, (2) the personality
and concerns of individual writers, and (3) the circumstances that affected
the missionaries’ observations of Native peoples. The second aspect is fre-
quently emphasized as particularly important, as, for example, in discus-
sions of four Jesuit priests’ accounts of the Huron mission in the first half
of the seventeenth century. Whereas Jean de Brébeuf and François Joseph
le Mercier report at length on Huron life, Jérôme Lalemant spares only a
few lines for the topic, preferring instead to elaborate on the development
of the missionary church, while Paul Raguenau discusses both Native cul-
ture and the growth of the Huron church. On the basis of this evidence,
historians postulate that Brébeuf and le Mercier had many warm, personal
dealings with the Hurons, and thus were able to acquire a deep knowledge
of Amerindian customs; Lalemant, possessing administrative skill but lack-
ing the same personal touch of his predecessors, produced descriptions of
limited value; and Ragueneau was a superb administrator and intelligent
observer who maintained an objective attitude toward the Hurons.3
Studying published Jesuit reports from colonial North America, there-
fore, can lead scholars to believe that the differences revealed in such doc-
uments arise chiefly out of the disparate personalities and opinions of the
various missionaries, as well as from their dissimilar religious zeal and sec-
ular learning.4 As long as scholars only consider the North American
accounts, in fact, no alternative explanations can be put forth. However, a
comparison between the The Jesuit Relations from North America and let-
ters from Jesuit missionaries working in other regions may shed new light
on these sources. By comparing reports from Iberian Jesuits in Japan with
those of their counterparts in North America, this paper reveals another
perspective that can help interpret the Jesuit documents.
Although not a perfect match, the Japanese mission, begun in 1549 by
the pioneer Jesuit missionary Francisco de Xavier, had much in common
with the Huron undertaking. Both were established and abandoned within
a short period. Both missions were shut down by a third-party power: the
Tokugawa clan and the Iroquois respectively. Both missions used ethnically
unified appellations for the non-Christians they encountered: Japanese
[japonêses] in Japan [Japão, Japam], Hurons [les Hurons] in Huronia
[Huronie]. Finally, several frequent and long-term correspondents had
charge of reports in both regions.
WHAT DETERMINED THE CONTENT OF MISSIONARY REPORTS? 71

Before examining the French and Iberian reports, it is necessary to

realize that the Jesuit “letters” were of two basic kinds: private, confidential
letters; and synthetic accounts that were explicitly composed for publica-
tion and circulation in Europe. The first category, which included private
letters from the French territories in North America, remained confidential
until the second half of the twentieth century, when the Jesuit archives in
Rome became more tolerant about disseminating such documents, and
Lucien Campeau, a Jesuit historian in Quebec, started compiling and pub-
lishing the manuscript letters.5 The Jesuit Relations belong to the second,
public category, which, however, can be further subdivided into a) reports
intended for public circulation and b) private, but not confidential, letters
that were compiled in contemporary publications because their contents
were appropriate both for the edification of European readers and for seek-
ing support from them.
By comparing Iberian and French Jesuit documents from all these cat-
egories, this study tests two hypotheses that historians have drawn from
their studies of the French reports:

1. Individual missionaries’ personalities and opinions about their work and about
their involvement with non-Christians can be apprehended clearly from their
reports published in Europe.
2. The thematic and interpretive descriptions in the missionary reports published
in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries were influenced both by priests’ personal
initiatives in evangelical works and by their individual sentiments about local
non-Christians.6

Analysis of the Iberian reports will indicate whether these general hypothe-
ses are applicable to the Japanese case. If not, the hypotheses may need
revision.

THE IBERIAN REPORTS FROM JAPAN

European Jesuit missionaries in Japan began to document their cross-cul-

tural experiences as early as the sixteenth century, when Spaniards,
Italians, and Portuguese operated under the Portuguese padroado. Five
major correspondents reported from Japan:

• Francisco de Xavier, who described the initial contact in the mid-sixteenth

century;
72 TAKAO ABÉ

• Francisco Cabral, vice-superior, who bore witness to the Jesuits’ struggles to

establish Catholicism in the 1570s;
• Luis Frois, an ordinary priest but a master of the Japanese language and culture,
who lived through the peak of the mission in the 1580s and its decline in the
1590s;
• Alessandro Valignano, padre visitador and a skillful administrator in the 1580s
and 1590s; and
• Pedro Morejón, vice-superior, who endured the severest persecutions visited on
the Japanese mission before it was abandoned toward the 1620s.

The first reporter from Japan, Father Francisco de Xavier (1507–52),

was a pioneer missionary who distinguished private letters addressed to
specific individuals from public accounts that were to be printed and cir-
culated in Europe. His descriptions of the Japanese mission cover three
main topics: (1) hardship in his trips; (2) the people, the language, and,
particularly, the spirituality of Japan; and (3) the progress of his evangeli-
cal efforts. In his public letters,7 he began by recounting the harsh weather
at sea on his voyage to Japan, and his thanks for God’s help for a safe trip,
before announcing hopefully that the Japanese people were a suitable tar-
get for the missionary enterprise. Praising them as the most marvelous
among all non-Christians ever discovered, he lauded the Japanese as socia-
ble, friendly, good-natured, thirsting for knowledge, and deeply concerned
with honor. They were, he emphasized, rightly noted for integrity, frugal-
ity, and courtesy. Though initially ignorant of the Japanese language, he
came to admire it; more importantly, he learned enough to explain the Ten
Commandments. The central theme in his reports was the spirituality of
the Japanese. He regarded Buddhist priests as bad religious exemplars,
though he acknowledged that they played a major religious role. With
respect to the achievements of his mission, he boasted of the number of
converts he had won in the domains he visited, not to mention his success
in obtaining official approval for missionary activity.
Xavier’s personal letters emphasize themes found in his public reports.
One, however, has a different purpose. When he sailed from Japan back to
Cochin, India, he apparently received information about Spanish coloniz-
ers who were about to leave the Philippines for Japan, where they hoped
to obtain silver. In response, he wrote a 1552 letter to Father Simon
Rodriguez, in which he represented the Japanese as bellicose and greedy
enough to exterminate foreign intruders.8 Hence, Xavier urged Rodriguez
to ask the Portuguese king and queen to warn their Spanish counterparts
WHAT DETERMINED THE CONTENT OF MISSIONARY REPORTS? 73

about the poor prospects for exploiting Japan. This much more negative
characterization of the Japanese people reveals that the purposes for which
correspondence was written could result in quite disparate depictions of
the same object.
Father Francisco Cabral (1528–1609), one of Xavier’s successors, had
charge of the Japanese mission in the 1570s. Because the Jesuits in Japan
did not send an annual report until 1582, most of Cabral’s letters are
addressed to specific individuals, and many of Cabral’s letters—in contrast
to Xavier’s, which were designed for a broad public—remain in manu-
script. Nevertheless, Cabral’s confidential missives, like Xavier’s private let-
ters, assessed the Japanese in ways quite different from the picture he
presented in his reports that became public. And like Xavier’s, Cabral’s pri-
vate descriptions of the Japanese people were unflattering. For example, in
a letter to João Alvarez, a Portuguese assistant in Rome, he listed three rea-
sons for opposing the admission of Japanese converts to the Society of
Jesus:

I have never seen a people that is so haughty, avaricious, unreliable, and

insincere as the Japanese . . . . This proud, grasping, ambitious, and insin-
cere disposition is also to be found in their monks, and bonzes . . . . It is
a matter of honor and a sign of prudence with the Japanese to keep their
thoughts hidden and prevent anyone from reading them. From child-
hood they are taught to do so, and are trained to be uncommunicative
and hypocritical.9

In sum, according to Cabral, the Japanese were unqualified by nature to be

admitted into the Society of Jesus. In his opinion, in fact, Japanese
Christians were at most appropriate as domestic assistants, or dojuku.10
Cabral’s unfavorable attitude was remarked upon by his successor,
Alessandro Valignano. In a confidential report from 1595,11 Valignano
wrote that Cabral instructed European Jesuits to treat Japanese brethren (or
irmãos) severely and as subordinates, used offensive and impolite expres-
sions about the irmãos, and spoke harshly and angrily to them, calling
them low-class men. Indeed, Cabral treated the Japanese brethren as infe-
rior to Iberians in every respect, including the clothing, food, sleep, and
training he allowed them. Furthermore, Valignano wrote, Cabral never
adopted Japanese customs and instructed his subordinates to follow his
example. For instance, he ordered people in the Jesuit residence to eat
Western foods at high tables covered with tablecloths, and to use napkins.
74 TAKAO ABÉ

During his thirteen-year stay in Japan, Cabral never tried to improve his
ability to speak Japanese and did not assist anyone else in doing so.
Valignano’s report presents the sharpest contrast to Cabral’s public let-
ter of 1576, which was included in a 1598 Jesuit publication.12 In it,
Cabral wrote nothing negative about the Japanese. Instead, he emphasized
Jesuits’ proselytizing efforts and neophytes’ exemplary conduct. He also
described Jesuits’ efforts to approach the ruling class, soliciting support for
the conversion of their subjects. Focusing on a few Japanese converts,
Cabral praised the solidity of their belief in God in the face of persecution,
and their contribution to the growth in the number of converts. Reading
only this published account would leave the unsuspecting reader in the
dark about Cabral’s jaundiced and insulting view of the Japanese people in
his confidential letters.
In 1582–87, 1590, 1595, and 1596, Father Luis Frois (1532–97)
wrote the annual report, the Carta annua de Japão, together with several
supplementary relations. Like Cabral’s, Frois’s public correspondence and
confidential accounts are sharply discrepant. His yearly reports, which
were based on letters sent from missionary stations throughout central and
western Japan, were intended for publication in Europe. They deal with
three main topics: negotiations with the ruling class, the development of
the Christian church, and the political and religious situation. While Frois’s
detailed descriptions show a thorough knowledge of Japan, they rarely
betray explicit personal opinions about Japanese people and culture.
In contrast, Frois’s confidential notes, which compare European and
Japanese cultures (and which remained in manuscript until the twentieth
century), refute his published accounts’ professed admiration of neophytes
and of the Japanese church’s growth.13 The unpublished text reveals a
xenophobic view of Japan that is absent from his annual relations. For one
thing, he repeatedly characterized non-Christians as different or strange,
comparing them unfavorably to Europeans. Never praising Japanese cul-
ture, he often actively despised it. In one passage, for instance, he wrote,
“To us it is contemptible for a nobleman to clean his room. In Japan, gen-
tlemen clean their room and, by this act, consider themselves respectable.”
He went on: “We regard writing between the lines as uneducated while the
Japanese do so on purpose,” and, “For us, wearing a patchwork is
extremely dishonorable, but in Japan noblemen value a completely
patched kimono or dohbuku without any shame.”14 Frois’s familiarity with
the Japanese people and culture did not, in short, signify that he liked
them.
WHAT DETERMINED THE CONTENT OF MISSIONARY REPORTS? 75

Father Alessandro Valignano (1530–1606), who oversaw the Japanese

mission as padre visitador, presents another type of correspondent, one who
had a fair appreciation of the Japanese people, yet made only brief refer-
ences to them. Most of Valignano’s letters are personal; he wrote only two
annual relations, in 1589 and 1599.15 Both of these accounts deal with
three subjects common to many of the yearly reports: political change in
Japan, negotiations with powerful rulers, and the progress and condition
of the church. Unfortunately, they offer nothing more than summaries of
the situation in late sixteenth-century Japan and in the Japanese church.
From his dry and objective accounts, therefore, one cannot learn anything
about Valignano’s dealings with the people or his opinions of them. As a
result, a reader of his public reports might imagine that his personal deal-
ings with non-Christians were cool and detached. Yet, perusal of his
Sumario de las cosas de Japón forces a revision of this impression.
Sumario de las cosas de Japón, a confidential report submitted to the
superior general in Rome, was not published until the twentieth century.16
In it, Valignano put forth his observations on Japan and on administrative
matters that did not appear in his published annual relations. The Sumario
includes a description of the people, land, and culture; an evaluation of the
Jesuit mission; and finally, Valignano’s proposals for ensuring evangelical
success. Devoting no less than one-third of his text to a delineation of
Japan, he discussed not only aspects he disliked, as did Cabral and Frois,
but also characteristics of the people that he admired.17
The final correspondent of note was Pedro Morejón (1562–1639),
who witnessed the Japanese authorities’ bitterest persecution of the
Christian church in the 1610s and 1620s. In his several special public
reports,18 Morejón analyzed the causes of the Christians’ afflictions, and
recounted persecutions and martyrdoms in each region of Japan. His only
reference to Japanese culture, unfortunately, came when he explained the
relationship between Buddhist temples and the ruling class, because his
reports focus on the suppression of the Jesuit mission.
The reports written by these five Iberians19 present a crucial problem to
the hypotheses, cited above, which are based on relations from the French
missions in North America. It is clear that these propositions can be sus-
tained only if the documents published in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries comprise all the evidence that is consulted. However, now that the
confidential accounts, which remained in manuscript during the missionary
centuries, have been made available to historians, the French reports from
Huronia require fresh analysis. Though few confidential letters from
76 TAKAO ABÉ

Huronia exist, the Japanese case raises important questions about how The
Jesuit Relations should be understood.

THE FRENCH REPORTS FROM HURONIA

The accounts written between 1635 and 1638 by Father Jean de Brébeuf
(1593–1649), the first Jesuit reporter, concentrate on three aspects of the
Huron mission: Native culture, the disasters suffered by the Native people,
and the priests’ endeavors in preaching the gospel and winning converts.
Like Xavier, the first Iberian reporter, Brébeuf began by recounting Huron
myths, customs, and behavior that he had personally heard and
observed.20 After outlining the Huron concept of the deity; the role of sor-
cerers, feasts, and games; and the governmental system, Brébeuf, who
viewed the Amerindians as potential Christians, went on to discuss their
vices and virtues. Then he narrated the effects of drought on the Hurons,21
telling in particular about the disasters of the late spring and early summer
of 1636, when Native sorcerers failed to bring rain. With evident satisfac-
tion, he was able to announce that, due to the Jesuits’ prayers, the Hurons
had finally enjoyed repeated rainfall and a harvest. Third, like the Iberian
missionaries’ reports, the main purpose of Brébeuf’s relations was to
emphasise the enormous efforts put into evangelizing.22 Throughout the
journals, therefore, he listed the baptisms and conversions that were the
results of ceaseless efforts.
François Joseph le Mercier (1604–90) succeeded Brébeuf as the
reporter of the Hurons. His contributions appear in the relations of 1637
and 1638.23 Le Mercier portrayed the people and the Jesuit mission along
the same lines as Brébeuf, but he devoted a larger portion of his texts than
Brébeuf did to his personal observations of the Natives. Most of all, he
depicted the treatment of prisoners, epidemics, sorcerers, and councils,
along with the Jesuits’ struggle to proselytize and to encourage individual
conversions.
Do Brébeuf’s and le Mercier’s extensive dealings with the Hurons, and
their detailed writings about them, mean that they were sympathetic to the
Hurons? Hasty conclusions should be resisted; instead, their reports need to
be compared with those of Xavier, Cabral, and Frois. Brébeuf’s and le
Mercier’s writings are similar to the Iberian missionaries’ observations of the
Japanese people and spiritual practices, and to the missionaries’ struggle for
converts. However, despite their admiration of the Japanese in their public
reports, in their private documents, as we have seen, Xavier strategically
WHAT DETERMINED THE CONTENT OF MISSIONARY REPORTS? 77

emphasized negative characteristics, and Cabral and Frois frankly disliked

the Japanese. The paucity of confidential letters from Huronia make it
impossible to state whether Brébeuf and le Mercier held similar private
views. It may be, however, that Jesuits in both Japan and Huronia were, in
the early years of their missions, unable to establish a large following among
non-Christians, and thus were forced to focus their accounts on their obser-
vations of the people. Moreover, during the initial years, they tried to justify
their local missionary activity, their religious vocations, and their choice of
objectives by emphasizing the positive aspects of their prospective converts.
The Jesuit reports were, after all, tools for seeking both protection from the
royal court and financial support from the nobility, as well as ways to dis-
seminate news about little-known non-Christian peoples and the efforts
being undertaken to evangelize them.
Brébeuf’s and le Mercier’s confidential letters addressed to the general
superior in Rome (which were written later than their contributions to the
annual relations) do, however, deal with additional aspects of the mission.
In Brébeuf’s letter of 1637 to Father Mutius Vitelleschi, general superior,
the author emphasized other topics besides epidemics and baptisms.24 He
took this opportunity to report on two administrative themes: the success-
ful establishment of the missionary residence in the Huron country and of
the seminary in Québec, as well as his request for personnel who would
work among the Natives. Similarly, le Mercier, in his letters of 1642 and
1643 to Rome, described not only the priests’ efforts to instruct and bap-
tize the Hurons but also the increase of the missionary workforce in
Huronia.25 These two priests’ thematic emphasis corresponds with that of
Jérôme Lalemant, who wrote the yearly reports during the period corre-
sponding to the dates of these confidential letters.
Lalemant (1593–1673) was the superior of the Huron mission between
1638 and 1645. During these years, the Jesuit enterprise expanded, as
Lalemant centralized the missionary operation in the fortified settlement of
Sainte-Marie, introduced the use of lay workers called donnés, and under-
took the first population census. Like Frois and Valignano in Japan,
Lalemant sent missionary reports back to his superior (in this case in
Québec). He devoted most of his letters from 1640 to 1643 to recording
efforts of the various missionary chapters in Huronia and its neighbouring
regions.26 Epidemics were but a minor topic in his accounts; he viewed
them merely as obstacles to the priests’ work of conversion. His correspon-
dence focused instead on religious issues. On the one hand, he traced the
physical growth of the Native Christian community, and dutifully recounted
78 TAKAO ABÉ

each year’s baptisms and conversions. On the other hand, he described

Huron spirituality, notably Native beliefs relating to dreams and feasts (in
the 1639, 1642, and 1645 reports), 27 and (in the1640 relation) the priest-
like roles that Native magicians and sorcerers fulfilled.28
Lalemant’s writings provide an excellent comparison with the Iberian
documents in two ways. First, his attitude in the public accounts resembles
that of Cabral and Valignano. As administrators, they all concentrated on
missionaries’ efforts and accomplishments, and referred little to the lives of
the Native people. In Japan, Frois—who never held an administrative posi-
tion—gave more detailed information about the Japanese, while the two
administrators, Cabral and Valignano, devoted more attention to the devel-
opment of the church. In Huronia, the Jesuit administrator Lalemant’s
observation on the Hurons mainly concerned the expansion of the mission,
in contrast to Brébeuf’s and le Mercier’s reports during the early years of the
mission, which spotlighted individual converts and their lives.
Second, in both Japan and Huronia, the degree of missionary develop-
ment determined the content of the reports. During the years of Xavier’s and
Cabral’s initial activity, Jesuits and Japanese converts enjoyed only limited
success in making further converts. It was not until the 1580s that the
Jesuits in Japan were finally able to write about the strength of the church’s
organization. In Huronia, during the 1630s (Brébeuf’s and le Mercier’s
years), only a few Jesuits were working in a few villages, and their preach-
ing had limited results. Thus these first two Jesuit reporters inevitably based
their relations on their experience with individual Hurons. Later on, in
Lalemant’s years, when the Huron mission expanded, the Jesuit accounts
could finally describe the growth of their mission; by the same token, they
no longer had much time for details of Native customs. Given limited space,
Lalemant’s religious vocation led him to focus on Huron spirituality to the
exclusion of other aspects of Native life. Xavier and Frois similarly consid-
ered the spirituality of the Japanese to be their most important subject.
There is at least one example that indicates that this thematic shift in
The Jesuit Relations was not due to personal interests or biases. Le Mercier,
Lalemant’s predecessor, adopted the same topical emphasis as did Lalemant
during his later years. In his confidential letter of 1645 to the general supe-
rior in Rome, le Mercier no longer dealt with Native life, instead focusing
on Jesuit efforts to gain converts, and on the overall progress of missionary
work among the Hurons.29
After Lalemant returned to Québec in 1645, Paul Ragueneau
(1608–80) took over his position as superior and reporter for the Huron
WHAT DETERMINED THE CONTENT OF MISSIONARY REPORTS? 79

mission, continuing the relations until the abandonment of the Jesuit mis-
sion in Huronia in 1650. After that, the Jesuits no longer sent a report from
this Native country. Because many martyrs suffered at the hands of the
Iroquois during his time among the Hurons, Ragueneau was well posi-
tioned to underline the difficulty and hardship of the mission. He covered
four major topics throughout his correspondence: warfare between the
Hurons and the Iroquois, the situation of Native converts, Jesuit martyr-
dom, and the Huron political system. In addressing these four themes, he
created a distinctive type of account, one peculiar to the situation of
Huronia in the later 1640s.
Writing about hostilities between the Hurons and the Iroquois, and the
final destruction of the Huron country in 1649, Ragueneau gave detailed
descriptions of a number of topics—from the capture of Christian villages,
such as Saint-Joseph and Saint-Ignace, to the final abandonment of fifteen
settlements.30 In his 1646 report, he devotes no fewer than five out of eight
chapters to praising the zeal and devotion of Native converts. As a result,
his portrayal of the Huron defeat is matched by a portrait highlighting the
converts’ piety and devotion.31 The 1640s saw a number of Jesuits suffer
martyrdom, and Ragueneau devoted almost one whole chapter to each
martyr: Fathers Antoine Daniel, Jean de Brébeuf, Gabriel Lalemant, Charles
Garnier, and Noël Chabanet.32 Finally, like the other French correspon-
dents, he depicted Huron culture, particularly the political system,
explaining Native peace negotiations and some of the activities of their
councils, including a feast, the decisions leading up to a ritual dance, and
reconciliation with other nations.33
Like Morejón, Ragueneau wrote a relation whose style and content dif-
fered from his predecessors’, but resembled that of his counterpart in
Japan. In both instances, the dissimilarities from the reports of the other
members of their missions, and the similarities across time and space, were
due to the church’s situation. What Ragueneau witnessed resembled what
the Japanese church had endured during Morejón’s reporting. Both
churches were declining, with even their survival in doubt due to attacks,
whether by non-Christian Japanese rulers or by the Iroquois. In both
regions, too, the Jesuits ultimately had to abandon their mission. Both
Morejón and Ragueneau experienced the destruction of the Christian com-
munities, and both were forced to leave the country. These crises seem to
have persuaded both Morejón and Ragueneau to alter the style and content
of their annual reports in the same way. Faced with warfare, both Jesuits
gave a detailed account of the attacks against the Christian communities,
80 TAKAO ABÉ

and both sought possible causes for the misfortunes of the missionary
church. In both regions, persecutions and martyrdom dominated the
Jesuits’ accounts; both devoted themselves to relating the hardships and
deaths bravely faced by the Jesuits and their converts.

CONCLUSION

By comparing the first several decades of the correspondence issuing from

two missions—one in Canada in the first half of the seventeenth century,
and the other in Japan in the second half of the sixteenth/early seventeenth
centuries—the following revised theses can be advanced:

1. One cannot entirely count on the published official reports to reveal each priest’s
profound personality and ideas, especially about non-Christian peoples.
2. Regardless of individual priests’ personalities, the content of the Jesuit public
and private correspondence shifted and developed in a similar way in Japan and
Huronia. However personal the written observations may appear to be, the the-
matic and interpretive descriptions were influenced more by the interests of the
Jesuit mission as a religious order than by personal initiatives.

When the missions were young and had as yet had little effect on the
indigenous populations, Brébeuf and le Mercier—like Xavier and Cabral—
were obliged to justify their activity by praising the local people as poten-
tial Christians. Regardless of their personal feelings about the Japanese or
the Hurons, all their accounts focused on various aspects of local culture,
including spirituality. When the number of conversions remained low and
mass conversion remained impossible, the only way for the reporters to
claim success was to refer to individual converts and to praise their exem-
plary conduct. When the missionary churches subsequently expanded and
became involved in the politics of the host nations, Lalemant—like Frois
and Valignano—could finally announce the growth of the enterprise. At
the same time, these later letters had little room for detailed descriptions of
the indigenous peoples and their culture; only Native spirituality remained
as an important topic in the later reports. And when the churches were in
their final crisis, the growth of the mission was no longer an appropriate
subject, so Ragueneau—like Morejón—dealt with the tribulations of the
mission, described the warfare, and analyzed the political systems.
After comparing two kinds of reports from one country and public
reports from two different regions, it becomes clear that the shifting
WHAT DETERMINED THE CONTENT OF MISSIONARY REPORTS? 81

objectives of the Jesuit missions had more to do with the content of their
public correspondence than did personal ties and interests. To be sure,
the French reporters’ personal feelings and impressions are buried deeply
within their published accounts and are hardly visible in the available
published documents. But the cases of the Iberian Jesuit writers compel
reconsideration of the image of each correspondent in Huronia, images
that were constructed in the absence of documents hitherto inaccessible.
Though until recently there have been few confidential sources available
on the Jesuits in New France, historians must now begin to look beyond
The Jesuit Relations.34

NOTES
I want to thank four individuals for their assistance on this paper: Professor Peter Moogk of
the University of British Columbia, who commented on the first version, presented at the
2000 meeting of the French Colonial Historical Society; Doctor R. B. Fleming, who helped
me revise the handout for my presentation at that meeting; the Reverend Adrian Tanner, who
carefully read the first draft and pointed out some errors; and Mrs. Susan Moogk, who
helped me revise a later draft.

1. The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites, et al., 73 vols.
(Cleveland: Burrows Brothers, 1896–1909) [henceforth JR].
2. Joseph P. Donnelly, S.J., Thwaites’ Jesuit Relations:Errata and Addenda (Chicago: Loyola
University Press, 1967); Michael Pomedli, “Beyond Unbelief: Early Jesuit
Interpretations of Native Religions,” Studies in Religion/Sciences religieuses 16 (1987):
275–87; Maureen Korp, “Problems of Prejudice in the Thwaites’ Edition of the Jesuit
Relations,” Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques 21 (1995): 261–76.
3. See Bruce G. Trigger, The Huron: Farmers of the North (New York: Holt, 1969; rev. ed.,
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 4–5. Trigger postulates that Brébeuf and le
Mercier had personal involvement with the Natives and therefore wrote fully about
Huron culture, whereas Lalemant, new to America, “did not have as many personal
dealings with the Huron and found their way of life dirty and unpalatable.”
Consequently, Lalemant devoted most of his attention to describing the growth of the
Huron mission. As for Ragueneau, Trigger does not establish a clear cause and effect
relationship between the Jesuit’s attitude towards Hurons and his accounts.
4. Wilcomb E. Washburn and Bruce G. Trigger, “Native Peoples in Euro-American
Historiography,” in The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 1:71.
5. Monumenta Novae Franciae, ed. Lucien Campeau, S.J., 8 vols. to date (Rome:
Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu; Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 1967–).
Although this edition contains numerous letters that remained confidential, it provides
few other letters by the correspondents of the Huron mission.
82 TAKAO ABÉ
6. More than a few studies have been undertaken based on this premise. See, for instance,
Joseph P. Donnelly, Jean de Brébeuf, 1593—1649 (Chicago: Loyola University Press,
1976); Jean-François Beaudet, “Les Relations de Jean de Brébeuf de 1635 à 1636:
Rencontre de deux spiritualités,” Cahiers d’histoire 10 (1989): 49–67; Martin Fournier,
“Paul Lejeune et Gabriel Sagard: Deux visions du monde et des Amérindiens,” Canadian
Folklore/Folklore canadien 17 (1995): 85–102.
7. Sei furansisuko zabieru zen shokan, trans. Yoshinori Kohno, S.J. (Tokyo: Heibon-sha,
1985), Epistolae [henceforth Ep.] 90 and 96; Epistolae S. Francisci Xavierii aliaque eius
scripta, ed. Georg Schurhammer, S.J. and Joseph Wicki, S.J., 2 vols. (Rome:
Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu, 1944–45), Ep. 90 and 96.
8. Kohno, Ep. 108, 616–18; Schurhammer and Wicki, Ep. 108.
9. Though the letter, dated 10 December 1596, remains in manuscript, Josef Franz
Schütte, S.J., quotes a part of it in his Valignanos Missionsgrundsätze für Japan, 1 vol. in
2 parts (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1951–58), 1:309–11. An English trans-
lation is available in Josef Franz Schütte, S.J., Valignano’s Mission Principles for Japan, 2
parts (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1980–85), 1:242–47.
10. For dojuku, see Takao Abé, “A Japanese Perspective on the Jesuits in New France,” in
Proceedings of the Twentieth Meeting of the French Colonial Historical Society, Cleveland,
May 1994, ed. A. J. B. Johnston (Bowmanville: Mothersill Printing, 1995), 14–26, esp.
20.
11. The report, dated 23 November 1595, has never been officially published, but it is cited
in Valignanos Missionsgrundsätze für Japan, 1:325–28, and Valignano’s Mission Principles
for Japan, 1:255–60. Schütte fails to state clearly to whom it was addressed, but the con-
text indicates that the addressee was the superior general in Rome.
12. Cabral to Jesuit brethren in Portugal, from Kuchinotsu, 9 September 1576, included in
Cartas que os Padres Irmãos da Companhia de Iesus, que andão nos Reynos de Iapão & China
escreuerão aos da mesma Companhia da India & Europa, desdo anno de 1549 até o de 1580
(Evora: Manoel de Lyra, 1598). A Japanese translation is available in Iezusukai nihon
tsuhshin, trans. Naojiroh Murakami, 2 vols. (Tokyo: Yuhshoh-doh, 1968–69),
1:297–320.
13. Tratado em que se contem muito susintae abreviademente algumas contradições e diferenças
de custumes antre a gente de Europa e esta provincia de Japão, 1585, no. 9–7236 (Madrid:
Bibliotheca de la Real Academia de la Historia). This was first identified as Frois’s
account and published as Kulturgegensätze Europa-Japan, trans. Josef Schütte (Tokyo:
Sophia University, 1955). It was published in Japanese as Furoisu-no nippon oboegaki:
Nippon-to yohroppa-no fuhshuh-no chigai, trans. Ki-ici Matsuda (Tokyo: Chuh-oh-
kohron-sha, 1983).
14. Furoisu-no nippon oboegaki, chap. 11, art. 17; chap. 10, art. 15; chap. 1, art. 41.
15. Juhroku juhshichi-seiki iezusukai nippon hohkokushuh, First series, ed. Ki-ichi Matsuda, et
al., 5 vols. (Kyoto: Doh-hoh-sha, 1987–88), 1:113–38; 3:115–50.
16. The first publication was Sumario de las cosas de Japón, 1583, ed. José Luis Alvarez-
Taladriz (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1954), which covers only the first half of the report.
WHAT DETERMINED THE CONTENT OF MISSIONARY REPORTS? 83
The complete report is available only in Japanese: Nippon junsatsuki, trans. Ki-ichi
Matsuda, et al. (Tokyo: Heibon-sha, 1965).
17. Nippon junsatsuki, 5–27.
18. For example, Historia y relación de li svcedido en los reinos de Iapan y China, en la qual se
continua la gran persecución que ha auido en aqlla Iqlesia, desde el año de 615. hasta el de
19 (Lisbon: Iuan Rodriguez, 1621); Relación de la persecución qve vvo en la yglesia de
Iapon: Y de los insignes Martyres, que gloriofamente dieron fu vida en defenfa de nra fanta Fè,
el Año de 1614. y 615 (Mexico City: Ioan Ruyz, 1616).
19. Strictly speaking, Valignano was Italian and should not be called Iberian.
20. JR, 8:117–53; 10:125–73, 193–209.
21. JR, 10:35–43.
22. JR, 8:141–53; 10:11–85; 20:103–5.
23. JR, 13:5–267; 14:5–111; 15:9–145.
24. Ihonatiria, 20 May 1637, to Rome; in Monumenta Novae Franciae, 3:491–95.
25. One letter, dated 5 June 1642, is from Sainte-Marie des Hurons to Rome; the other,
dated 13 May 1643, is from La Conception to Rome. These documents are compiled in
Monumenta Novae Franciae, 5:267–72 and 574–75.
26. JR, 19:167ff.; 20:19–77; 21:141–249; 23:19–233; 26:201ff.; 27:21–61.
27. JR, 16:191–207; 23:151–77; 28:53.
28. JR, 19:81–87.
29. Dated 23 July 1645, this letter from Sainte-Marie des Hurons is addressed to Father
Mutius Vitelleschi. It is compiled in Monumenta Novae Franciae, 6:267–68.
30. JR, 29:247–55; 33:81–89; 34:87–89, 123–57, 197–213.
31. JR, 29:257ff.; 30:19–107; 33:91–101, 161–87; 34:101–21.
32. JR, 34:87–99, 139–95; 35:107–61.
33. JR, 33:205–9, 229–49.
34. Campeau’s ongoing Monumenta Novae Franciae covers numerous letters not included in
The Jesuit Relations, but even the current eight volumes of this compilation do not pro-
vide enough confidential letters to compare with and possibly contradict the relations
by the Huron reporters published in the seventeenth century.