The Jesuit Missions

A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness

For seven years the colony which Champlain founded at the rock of Quebec lived without priests.Perhaps the lack was not seriously felt, for most of the twoscore inmates of the settlement were Huguenot traders. But out in the great land, in every direction from the rude dwellings that housed the pioneers of Canada, roamed savage tribes, living, said Champlain, 'like brute beasts.' It was Champlain's ardent desire to reclaim these beings of the wilderness. The salvation of one soul was to him 'of more value than the conquest of an empire.' Not far from his native town of Brouage there was a community of the Récollets, and, during one of his periodical sojourns in France, he invited them to send missionaries to Canada.