: In Maine, a thousand Catholic Indians still remain, to remind
one of the time when, as it is boldly claimed, the whole Indian
population of that province were either converted or under Jesuit
training.[23:1] In like manner, a scanty score of thousands of Catholic
Indians on various reservations in the remote West represent the time
when, at the end of the French domination, "all the North American
Indians were more or less extensively converted" to Catholic
Christianity, "all had the gospel preached to them."[23:2] The splendid
fruits of the missions among the Iroquois, from soil watered by the
blood of martyrs, were wasted to nothing in savage intertribal wars.
Among the Choctaws and Chickasaws of the South and Southwest, among whom
the gospel was by and by to win some of its fairest trophies, the French
missionaries achieved no great success.[23:3] The French colonies from
Canada, planted so prosperously along the Western rivers, dispersed,
leaving behind them some straggling families. The abundant later growth
of the Catholic Church in that region was to be from other seed and
stock. The region of Louisiana alone, destined a generation later to be
included within the boundaries of the great republic, retained
organized communities of French descent and language; but, living as
they were in utter unbelief and contempt of religion and morality, it
would be an unjust reproach on Catholicism to call them Catholic. The
work of the gospel had got to be begun from the foundation. Nevertheless
it is not to be doubted that remote memories or lingering traditions of
a better age survived to aid the work of those who by and by should
enter in to rebuild the waste places.[24:1]

There are not a few of us, wise after the event, who recognize a final
cause of this surprising and almost dramatic failure, in the manifest
intent of divine Providence that the field of the next great empire in
the world's history should not become the exclusive domain of an
old-world monarchy and hierarchy; but the immediate efficient causes of
it are not so obvious. This, however, may justly be said: some of the
seeming elements of strength in the French colonization proved to be
fatal elements of weakness.

1. The French colonies had the advantage of royal patronage,
endowment,[24:2] and protection, and of unity of counsel and direction.
They were all parts of one system, under one control. And their centers
of vitality, head and heart, were on th