Origin from 1608
Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec in 1608. Recollet friars arrived to evangelise the Algonquin and other Indigenous nations from 1615, and Jesuit missionaries, including Jean de Brebeuf, settled from 1625, building the Catholic church that became New France's established religious institution. The missions' own annual reports, published in France as the Jesuit Relations, record both genuine efforts at cross-cultural relationship and, as across the Americas more broadly, missionary pressure against existing Indigenous spiritual practice that this atlas names rather than passes over.
Facts
Dates
End Year1625 is when Jesuit missionaries, including Jean de Brebeuf, settled in New France alongside the Recollet friars who had arrived a decade earlier in 1615, together building the Catholic church that became the colony's established religious institution. Learn More
How Catholic Missions Established New France
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec in 1608 as the anchor settlement of France's new colony in North America, and Catholic missionary work followed close behind it. Recollet friars, the first religious order on the ground, arrived to evangelise the Algonquin and other Indigenous nations from 1615, and Jesuit missionaries, including Jean de Brebeuf, settled from 1625 onward, gradually taking over as the mission field's more prominent and enduring presence and building the church that became New France's established religious institution.
The missions kept detailed annual reports, sent back to superiors and published in France as the Jesuit Relations, meant both to sustain financial support for the mission and to recruit new missionaries for it. Those reports recorded both genuine efforts at cross-cultural relationship between missionaries and Indigenous communities and, as across the Americas more broadly, missionary pressure exerted against existing Indigenous spiritual practice, a history this atlas names rather than passes over.
What this changed for Christianity's spread was the establishment of Catholicism as New France's official religious institution within a generation of the colony's own founding, carried by two successive religious orders working the same mission field. The Jesuit Relations that recorded that work survive today as one of the richest documentary windows historians have onto early contact between European missionaries and North America's Indigenous nations.
Connections
Associated With
This source names Americas directly: "relationship and, as across the Americas more broadly, missionary pressure against existing Indigenous spiritual practice that this atlas names rather than passes over."
Source The Jesuit Relations: Natives and Missionaries in Seventeenth-Century North AmericaAllan Greer, editor
This source names France directly: "the Catholic church that became New France's established religious institution."
Source The Jesuit Relations: Natives and Missionaries in Seventeenth-Century North AmericaAllan Greer, editor
This source names Samuel directly: "Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec in 1608."
Source The Jesuit Relations: Natives and Missionaries in Seventeenth-Century North AmericaAllan Greer, editor
Occurred In
Quebec, founded 1608, the seat of New France's Catholic missions.
Source The Jesuit Relations: Natives and Missionaries in Seventeenth-Century North AmericaAllan Greer, editor
Spread Event Of
Source The Jesuit Relations: Natives and Missionaries in Seventeenth-Century North AmericaAllan Greer, editor
Sources
1. The Jesuit Relations: Natives and Missionaries in Seventeenth-Century North America
Allan Greer, editor, Bedford Saint Martin's, 2000
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