Degree Type
Honors Capstone Project
Date of Submission
Spring 5-1-2018
Capstone Advisor
Junko Takeda
Honors Reader
Tessa Murphy
Capstone Major
History
Capstone College
Arts and Science
Audio/Visual Component
no
Capstone Prize Winner
no
Won Capstone Funding
no
Honors Categories
Social Sciences
Subject Categories
Arts and Humanities | History | United States History
Abstract
For thousands of years, Native Americans lived in North America, including the Great Lakes region. In this specific area, they would create their own unique customs, traditions, and ways of living. In addition, they would experience times of great turbulence, as violence, slavery, and torture all existed in this region. In this midst of this complex sociopolitical world, the French entered. They colonized this area and called it New France. They called the Great Lakes area, the pays d’en haut. Both the French and the Native Americans living in New France and the pays d’en haut learned to accommodate and adapt themselves to one another. The Jesuits, an order of Catholic priests who came to New France as missionaries, came alongside their French companions. Of these Jesuit missionaries, I will focus on the North American Martyrs, a group of six Jesuit missionaries and their two lay companions. By focusing on three case studies within the North American Martyrs and utilizing their writings in The Jesuit Relations, I will show how the North American Martyrs are representative of this cultural accommodation that occurred in New France and in the pays d’en haut. In addition, my primary sources will be supported through extensive secondary research. By doing so, this will shed light on the development of this cultural accommodation, early modern globalization, agency in colonial and Native American historiographies, the differences in European colonization, the reality of pre-Columbian North America, and early modern Jesuit missionaries and evangelization techniques. Ultimately, the goal is to bring the North American Martyrs back to the historiographical forefront and to show that the North American Martyrs are unique amongst early modern Jesuit missionaries given their cultural, social, political, religious, linguistic, and economic contexts.
Recommended Citation
Stranahan, Andrew, "Rethinking Colonization: A Case Study of the North American Martyrs and the Middle Ground" (2018). Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All. 1193.
https://surface.syr.edu/honors_capstone/1193
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
