Towards a Comparative Study of Jesuit Missions and Indigenous Peoples in Seventeenth-Century Canada and Paraguay 1

This chapter focuses on systematic comparative research in the Jesuit archives, considers the seventeenth-century Jesuit missions of Paraguay and New France. One of the founders of the Jesuit missions of Paraguay, Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, entitled his account of the enterprise Conquista espiritual', implying an association between the conversion of souls and the violent seizure of territory. The mission militias emerged in the first half of the eighteenth century as the most potent armed force in the region, assisting the Spanish crown in opposing Portuguese expansion into the area and in mastering Paraguayan revolts. The Jesuits came to the Hurons at an earlier stage in the latter's contact history than was the case with the Guaran mission. In an atmosphere of demoralization and internal dissention, many Hurons accepted Catholic baptism and joined the pro-Jesuit faction that favored closer ties with the French.