ristian Indians, accorded more honorable treatment, sold European goods at lower prices, and allowed to buy guns" (Salisbury, 506). Thus, a very clear linkage between Jesuit missionary activity and economic imperatives shaping the entire French colonial effort can be identified.
Michael Welton (2-3) examined the encounter between French Jesuits and Canadian Indians and suggested that it is fallacious to regard missionary work as essentially benevolent or as focused on inducing Native Americans to embrace the French version of Christianity. Indeed, Welton (2) sees the Jesuit missionary enterprise as ôa revolutionary enterprise, designed to bring about a radical transformation of Indian culture.ö To that end, the French Jesuits accepted the premise that the Amerindians could be habituated to a new type of belief and life. They rejected the notion that the people they encountered were natural slaves who were doomed to subservience and sought very real synergies between Roman Catholicis
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