Catholics Writing the Nation in Early Modern Britain and Ireland Book

Karen Anderson explains how 2 native tribes could, in a span of 30 or so years, move from a culture of equality between males and females where neither side dominated the other to a culture where women were submissive and obedient to their husbands even when they did not want to be.

The Jesuits came to New France to bring a knowledge of Christianity to the natives. In the 16 and 17th centuries Christianity meant that men dominated and ruled the world and women were to be submissive to them. Women were thought of as weak and more easily led astray by the devil. Men NEEDED to dominate women or they would not be saved. This was the way God wanted society to be.

In the old world this kind of doctrine brought order to their society as well as witch hunts. In the new world the natives, especially the women, were not so keen on Christianity. Men had roles to perform in society and so did the women. Women cultivated the ground and so in order to eat, men had to be in favor with their wives or their mothers. Divorce was an option if the marriage was not working out.

So how did this change in such a short time?

It seems that there were a combination of factors, none of which had to do with native people's belief in Christianity: war, disease and famine were wiping out the native tribes too fast for them to regain their old customs. Christian men were given better trade deals, were sold guns and had the protection of France. Unbaptised Hurons had none of these advantages.

While in the early years, women could complain that Christianity's advent caused sickness and thus they wouldn't join, over the next few decades many natives came to have the Jesuit viewpoint that it was better to be a dead Christian than a live heathen. Christians went to heaven while heathens went to hell- a horrible place.

Not sure which is worse: the Christianization of the Natives so they learned it was good to dominate over their wives and children or the pre-Christian customs of the natives where they would go to war, capture some enemy, torture them and possibly eat them but treat the members of their own tribe and families very well.

I learned a lot about how the whole patriarchal society of Western Europe had a religious basis and why some churches thus still hold fast to those outdated and decidedly non-Christian practises.