FRANCIS PARKMAN AND THE JESUITS OF NORTH AMERICA

                           PART II

                       by JOHN CARRIGG 

     In Pioneers of France in the New World, Parkman stresses the
influential role of pious aristocratic ladies at the court of Henry 1V and
Louis XIII, particularly Madame de Querchcille, who contributed generously
to finance the first Jesuit mission to North America.  Fathers Enemond
Massie and Pierre Biard sailed for Acadia in 1611 and Parkman introduces
the Society of Jesus to his readers for the first time:

     Then first did this mighty Proteus, this many sided Society of
     Jesus, enter upon the rude field of toil and woe, where in after
     years the devoted zeal of its apostles was to lend dignity to
     their order and do honor to humanity.  Few were the regions of
     the known world to which the potent brotherhood had not
     stretched the vast network of its influence.  Jesuits had
     disputed in theology with the bonzes of Japan, and taught
     astronomy to the Mandarins of China; had wrought prodigies of
     sudden conversion among the followers of Brahma, preached the
     papal supremacy to Abyssinian schismatics, carried the cross
     among the savages of Caffaria, wrought reputed miracles in
     Brazil and gathered the tribes of Paraguay beneath their
     paternal sway.  And now with the aid of the Virgin and her
     votary at court, they would build another empire among the
     tribes of New France. The omens were sinister and the outset was
     unpropitious.  The Society was destined to reap few laurels from
     the brief apostleship of Biard and Masse.  Fr. Masse tried
     living among the forest Indians with signal ill success.  Hard
     fare, smoke and filth had reduced him to a lamentable plight of
     body and mind, worn him to a skeleton and sent him back to Port
     Royal without a single convert.

     Father Biard was captured by the English in the abortiveFrench colony
off Mount Desert, Maine, and after many adventures he was returned to
France where says Parkman he perhaps resumed "the tranquil honors of his
chair of Theology at Lyons."

     Parkman speculates on one of the might-have-beens of history if the
French colony in Maine had succeeded. Seven years after its demise the
Mayflower landed the Pilgrims at Plymouth: "What would have been the
issue" had New England been preoccupied with a Jesuit colony? "A collision
of adverse elements, a conflict of water and fire; the death grapple of
the iron Puritans with these indomitable priests."

     Although Parkman treats of Jesuits in all seven volumes of his France
and England in North America, it is volume II, Jesuits in North America in
the Seventeenth Century, which attracts most of the attention.  This
volume describes the activities of the famous North American martyrs, the