A Tale of Two Missions: Illinois Choices and Conversions at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century

The Illinois, particularly the Kaskaskia, are well known to have converted in large numbers to Catholicism under the guidance of Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. However, another lesser-known missionary society, the Missions Etrangeres, also evangelized among the Illinois. The juxtaposition of these two French Catholic missionary societies working among the same Native nation provides an ideal case study to understand what aspects of Catholicism Native people appreciated and rejected. Converted Illinois people chose a specific practice of Catholicism that upheld fundamental values, enhanced gender roles and kinship connections in Illinois society, and strengthened their relationship to the secular aspects of the French empire.