Book description
In 1730 a delegation of Illinois Indians arrived in the French
colonial capital of New Orleans. An Illinois leader presented two
ceremonial pipes, or calumets, to the governor. One calumet
represented the diplomatic alliance between the two men and the other
symbolized their shared attachment to Catholicism. The priest who
documented this exchange also reported with excitement how the
Illinois recited prayers and sang hymns in their Native language, a
display that astonished the residents of New Orleans. The
"Catholic" calumet and the Native-language prayers and hymns
were the product of long encounters between the Illinois and Jesuit
missionaries, men who were themselves transformed by these sometimes
intense spiritual experiences. The conversions of people, communities,
and cultural practices that led to this dramatic episode all occurred
in a rapidly evolving and always contested colonial context.
In The Catholic Calumet, historian Tracy Neal Leavelle
examines interactions between Jesuits and Algonquian-speaking peoples
of the upper Great Lakes and Illinois country, including the Illinois
and Ottawas, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Leavelle
abandons singular definitions of conversion that depend on the
idealized elevation of colonial subjects from "savages" to
"Christians" for more dynamic concepts that explain the
changes that all participants experienced. A series of thematic
chapters on topics such as myth and historical memory, understandings
of human nature, the creation of colonial landscapes, translation of
religious texts into Native languages, and the influence of gender and
generational differences demonstrates that these encounters resulted
in the emergence of complicated and unstable cross-cultural religious
practices that opened new spaces for cultural creativity and mutual adaptation.
"With great detail and imagination, Leavelle brings a nuanced
approach to conversion as cross-cultural practice, paying balanced
attention to missionaries and Indians, analyzing behavior and action,
song and speech, rituals and relationships, and considering plural
conversions in the context of a volatile colonial world. One of the
best studies I have read on the subject."-Colin G. Calloway,
Dartmouth College
Tracy Neal Leavelle is Associate Professor and Chair of the
Department of History at Creighton University.
