ABSTRACT
Canada's earliest colonial roots are chiefly French. To modern Canadians, the expansive region that was la Nouvelle France has been lost for centuries, much of it absorbed into the boundaries of their land-hungry neighbor to the south. The adventure of the Jesuit and the fur trader reveals important features of France's colonial North American past. Opposing caricatures see the traders as the forerunners of the self-made man of the American West, rugged, self-sufficient, and untainted by the bigotry against Native American culture that infected most other early American people. Highly trained in missionary methods, members of the Society of Jesus were well prepared for the task of successfully bringing new souls to Christianity. Cultural forces, personality, and an early interest in the work of missionaries propelled Jacques Marquette in a far different direction. Ultimately, he chose the Society of Jesus. At nine, he entered his first Jesuit school which was about twenty miles southeast of Laon and relatively new.
