United States

 ENTHUSIASM FOR THE MISSION. - SICKNESS OF THE PRIESTS. - 
 THE PEST AMONG THE HURONS. - THE JESUIT ON HIS ROUNDS. - 
 EFFORTS AT CONVERSION. - PRIESTS AND SORCERERS. - THE MAN-DEVIL. - 
 THE MAGICIAN'S PRESCRIPTION. - INDIAN DOCTORS AND PATIENTS. - 
 COVERT BAPTISMS. - SELF-DEVOTION OF THE JESUITS.

 HOPES OF THE MISSION. - CHRISTIAN AND HEATHEN. - BODY AND SOUL. - 
 POSITION OF PROSELYTES. - THE HURON GIRL'S VISIT TO HEAVEN. - A CRISIS. - 
 HURON JUSTICE. - MURDER AND ATONEMENT. - HOPES AND FEARS.

by Francis Parkman

 JEAN DE BREBEUF. - CHARLES GARNIER. - JOSEPH MARIE CHAUMONOT. - 
 NOEL CHABANEL. - ISAAC JOGUES. - OTHER JESUITS. - NATURE OF THEIR FAITH. - 
 SUPERNATURALISM. - VISIONS. - MIRACLES.

 THE CENTRE OF THE MISSIONS. - FORT. - CONVENT. - HOSPITAL. - CARAVANSARY. - 
 CHURCH. - THE INMATES OF SAINTE MARIE. - DOMESTIC ECONOMY. - MISSIONS. - 
 A MEETING OF JESUITS. - THE DEAD MISSIONARY.

Few passages of history are more striking than those which record the efforts of the earlier French Jesuits to convert the Indians. Full as they are of dramatic and philosophic interest, bearing strongly on the political destinies of America, and closely involved with the history of its native population, it is wonderful that they have been left so long in obscurity. While the infant colonies of England still clung feebly to the shores of the Atlantic, events deeply ominous to their future were in progress, unknown to them, in the very heart of the continent.

NEW ENGLAND NAMED. - While the London Company was planting its colony on the James River, the Plymouth Company sought to retrieve its failure on the Kennebec (p. 39). In 1614 Captain John Smith, who had returned to England from Jamestown, was sent over with two ships to explore. He made a map of the coast from Maine to Cape Cod, [1] and called the country New England.

TRADE, COMMERCE, AND THE FISHERIES. - The treaty of 1814 did not end our troubles with Great Britain. Our ships were still shut out of her West Indian ports. The fort at Astoria, near the mouth of the Columbia River, had been seized during the war and for a time was not returned as the treaty required. The authorities in Nova Scotia claimed that we no longer had a right to fish in British waters, and seized our fishing vessels or drove them from the fishing grounds. We had no trade treaty with Great Britain.

THE COMING OF THE DUTCH. - We have now seen how English colonies were planted in the lands about Chesapeake Bay, and in New England. Into the country lying between, there came in 1609 an intruder in the form of a little Dutch ship called the Half-Moon. The Dutch East India Company had fitted her out and sent Captain Henry Hudson in her to seek a northeasterly passage to China. Driven back by ice in his attempt to sail north of Europe, Hudson turned westward, and came at last to Delaware Bay.

THE PARTY ISSUES. - The issues which divided the Federalists and the Republicans from 1793 to 1815 arose chiefly from our foreign relations. Neutrality, French decrees, British orders in council, search, impressment, the embargo, non-intercourse, the war, were the matters that concerned the people. Soon after 1815 all this changed; Napoleon was a prisoner at St. Helena, Europe was at peace, and domestic issues began to be more important.