For more than 400 years, Jesuits working in Canada have written about their daily life and mission. Originally, their letters were published as The Jesuit Relations (Relations des jésuites). This blog, igNation, continues that tradition with a new series entitled: Getting to Know the Relations.
Using excerpts chosen from the first 200 hundred years of these documents, the series presents vignettes which speak to the timeless heart of Jesuit endeavour: the promotion of discernment in order to help people find God in all things.
These excerpts are found in The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents – Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in North America (1610 – 1791), selected and edited by Edna Kenton, and published in 1954 by the Vanguard Press. That edition uses the word “savages” throughout. In these excerpts that word has been replaced by “the people who were here before we arrived” or “the people here.”)
Today: When a carpenter “is not one”
The year is 1632 and Paul Le Jeune SJ offer his superiors back in France this inside glimpse of the living conditions in the early days of the mission. Clearly this was an initiative with a long-term plan, despite some pesky English arsonists. And please send additional skilled help, and/or more funds because it’s expensive to feed these construction workers.
Let us speak of the condition of our house at the present time. We have a house which contains four rooms below; the first serves as chapel, the second as refectory, and in this refectory are our rooms. There are two little square rooms of moderate size, for they are proportioned to a man's height; there are two others, each of which has a dimension of eight feet; but there are two beds in each room. These are rather narrow quarters for six persons; the others, when we are all together, sleep in the garret.
The third large room serves as kitchen, and the fourth is the room for our working people; this is our entire lodging. Above is a garret, so low that no one can dwell there; to this we mount with a ladder. There was another building of the same size, opposite this one. The English burned half of it, and the other half is covered only with mud; it serves us as a barn, a stable, and a carpenter's room.
Our workingmen this year have made boards, have gone to the woods to get the trees, have placed doors and windows throughout, have made little rooms in the refectory, some furniture, tables, stools, credence-tables for the chapel, and other similar things; they have enclosed our house with large poles of the fir tree, making for us a fine court about a hundred feet square, being superintended in this work by Father de Noue. These poles are fourteen feet high, and there are about twelve hundred of them. It looks well, and is quite useful.
We have placed some gates therein, which Louys has bound with iron. In addition to all this, we have cultivated, tilled, and seeded our cleared lands. So these are the more important works of our people, and the condition of the house.
The following is what must be done in the future: We must erect a small house upon a point of land which is opposite. We need only cross the river to reach it; the water almost surrounds this point, forming a peninsula. We have begun to enclose it with stakes on the land side, and we shall keep there our cattle; that is, our cows and pigs; for this purpose we must build a little house, for those who will care for them, and also soon good stables sheltered from the cold. Last year they sent us a carpenter who was not one; and for this reason there has been no building this year, which has done us great harm.
We must also repair the damages in the building burned by the English. They have been doing this since the coming of the ship, which brought us a carpenter; we must have planks with which to cover it, and make doors and windows, etc. We must make a barn in which to put our crops. We must have a well, we have to go for water two hundred steps from the house, which causes us great trouble, especially in the winter, when we have to break the ice of the river in order to get it.
We must repair and enlarge our cellar, which until now we have kept in good order. We must rebuild more than half of the building where we are now, and put a new roof on it, for the rain and snow penetrate everywhere; at first, our Fathers made only a miserable hut in which to live; the English neglecting it, it would have fallen to the ground if we had not returned to preserve it; it is made only of planks and small laths, upon which some mud has been plastered. We must have people to look after the cattle; the little ground that we have must be tilled and sown; the harvest must be cut and gathered in. We must prepare firewood, which we have to get at some distance away without a cart. We must have some lime made.
There are a thousand things which I cannot mention, but Your Reverence may see whether ten persons are too many for all of this. We would ask for twenty or thirty, if there were anything with which to feed and maintain them; but we restrict ourselves to ten, with three of our Brothers; and even then I do not know if they will be able to furnish, in France, what will be necessary for these for us, so great are the expenses.
(38-40)