Who were the Jesuits of New France?

Ever since the first of the second born of this continent arrived here, religious transformation of the continent had been at the forefront of a new destiny for North America.  The Spanish and French would bring with them an exclusive Roman Catholicism.  The English, Dutch, Swedes, and Danes would bring with them a Protestantism that excluded this Catholicism in return.  The Russians would bring their Orthodox Christianity.  In any case, the soldiers and merchants came hand in hand with various missionaries.  Nearly all of them were as concerned with replacing as much of the culture as the religions of the peoples they encountered.  The loving message of Christian transformation for the world, sadly, often came hand in hand with a pointed gun.  The missionaries would cry out "shame, shame" or at least shake their heads in silent disapproval, but nothing really changed as a result of their weak disputes with colonial domination.

One group, however, was quite different.

Ever since their foundation in 1534, the Jesuits were drawing some of the keenest and brilliant minds in Europe into their world.  These men were scientists, philosophers, politicians, artists, even warriors, but they all shared an intense zeal for spreading their faith and love of Jesus Christ to others.  They were explorers as well, just as much concerned with evangelization as with roaming about the world and embracing its beauty and offerings.  Very often, this brought them into conflicts not only with non-Catholics Christians, but also with the other missionary orders within the Catholic Church.  By the early 1600's, such was the negative attention that they had received that other missionaries made active efforts to keep them out of new territories.  One notable exception was New France.

The Franciscans in Quebec were finding that the rough country and alien cultures of the Algonquins and Montagnais were a far cry from the so-called civilized frontiers of the Arab and Oriental worlds that they had thus far been called upon to engage in conversion efforts.  Though they had started to gain experience with the first born of North America in Mexico, such evangelization efforts in the Spanish New World were augmented with steel and gun-smoke.  French efforts to colonize and economize on the New World were an altogether different affair; the native peoples were trading partners rather than subjects, and the missionaries were warned not to get in the way of the bottom line.  As the Jesuits were certainly available, willing, and capable of engaging cultures on their own terms, the Franciscans called them in for assistance.  Pretty soon, they were running the missionary effort, as well as the exploratory and diplomatic efforts on behalf of the French expedition.  They were among the first Europeans to learn the languages of the first born, and among the only to report back to the mother countries about a richness to cultures otherwise considered savage and backward.  They did, however, heavily impact any people they came across.  New France, from Quebec to Louisiane, as well as the deserts of northern Mexico and the southwestern United States, and the upper Missouri river basin were all regions that bore the mark of passing Jesuits: native peoples who had a somewhat neutral meeting with Europeans.  Their churches still stand and are in use, monuments to healthy missionary efforts:

http://www.sanxaviermission.org/