f heathendom. In later times it
sent other men to meet other needs and accomplish other purposes.

Before the end of the seventeenth century the functions of the Canadian
Jesuit had become as much political as religious; but if the fires of
his apostolic zeal burned less high, his devotion to the Order in which
he had merged his personality was as intense as before. While in
constant friction with the civil and military powers, he tried to make
himself necessary to them, and in good measure he succeeded. Nobody was
so able to manage the Indian tribes and keep them in the interest of
France. "Religion," says Charlevoix, "is the chief bond by which the
savages are attached to us;" and it was the Jesuit above all others who
was charged to keep this bond firm.

The Christianity that was made to serve this useful end did not strike a
deep root. While humanity is in the savage state, it can only be
Christianized on the surface; and the convert of the Jesuits remained a
savage still. They did not even try to civilize him. They taught him to
repeat a catechism which he could not understand, and practise rites of
which the spiritual significance was incomprehensible to him. He saw the
symbols of his new faith in much the same light as the superstitions
that had once enchained him. To his eyes the crucifix was a fetich of
surpassing power, and the mass a beneficent "medicine," or occult
influence, of supreme efficacy. Yet he would not forget his old rooted
beliefs, and it needed the constant presence of the missionary to
prevent him from returning to them.

Since the Iroquois had ceased to be a danger to Canada, the active
alliance of the Western Indians had become less important to the colony.
Hence the missions among them had received less attention, and most of
these tribes had relapsed into heathenism. The chief danger had shifted
eastward, and was, or was supposed to be, in the direction of New
England. Therefore the Eastern missions were cultivated with
diligence,--whether those within or adjoining the settled limits of
Canada, like the Iroquois mission of Caughnawaga, the Abenaki missions
of St. Francis and Becancour, and the Huron mission of Lorette, or those
that served as outposts and advance-guards of the colony, like the
Norridgewock Abenakis of the Kennebec, or the Penobscot Abenakis of the
Penobscot. The priests at all these stations were in close
correspondence with the government, to which their influence over t