{"product_id":"2940148127307","title":"The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, Vol. I: Acadia, 1610-1613 (Illustrated)","description":"The story of New France is also, in part, the story of much of New England, and of States whose shores are washed by the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. It may truly be said that the history of every one of our northern tier of commonwealths, from Maine to Minnesota, has its roots in the French régime. It is not true, as Bancroft avers, that the Jesuit was ever the pioneer of New France; we now know that in this land, as elsewhere in all ages, the trader nearly always preceded the priest. But the trader was not often a letter-writer or a diarist: hence, we owe our intimate knowledge of New France, particularly in the seventeenth century, chiefly to the wandering missionaries of the Society of Jesus. Coming early to the shores of Nova Scotia (1611), nearly a decade before the landing of the Plymouth Pilgrims, and eventually spreading throughout the broad expanse of New France, ever close upon the track of the adventurous coureur de bois, they met the American savage before contact with civilization had seriously affected him. With heroic fortitude, often with marvellous enterprise, they pierced our wilderness while still there were but Indian trails to connect far-distant villages of semi-naked aborigines. They saw North America and the North Americans practically in the primitiveviii stage. Cultivated men, for the most part,—trained to see as well as to think, and carefully to make record of their experiences,—they left the most luxurious country in Europe to seek shelter in the foul and unwelcome huts of one of the most wretched races of man. To win these crude beings to the Christian Faith, it was necessary to know them intimately, in their daily walks. No coureur de bois was more expert in forest lore than were the Jesuit Fathers; and the records made by these soldiers of the Cross,—explicit and detailed, while familiar in tone,—are of the highest scientific value, often of considerable literary interest. The body of contemporary, documentary material which, in their Relations and Letters, the Jesuits of New France have bequeathed to the historian, the geographer, and the ethnologist, entitles them to the enduring gratitude of American scholars. For forty years, these documents have, in part, been more or less familiar to Americanists as a rich storehouse of material. But, hitherto, they have existed only in rare and costly forms, when in print at all,—as original products of ancient French, Italian, and German presses, or as reprints issued in sparse number for small circles of bibliophiles; while many important papers, capable of throwing light upon certain portions of Canadian history hitherto in shade, have as yet remained in manuscript.\u003cbr\u003eWe cannot promise for this series the entire body of existing Jesuit documents, either printed or in manuscript, which illustrate the history of New France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This would carry us, even were they all obtainable, far beyond the necessary limits of this series; for the fathers were profuse writers, and their papers are inix many archives. It is of necessity a matter of selection. We shall, however, reissue all of the documents usually designated as Relations,—the Cramoisys, the Quebec reissue, the Shea and O'Callaghan reprints; and to these will be added a very considerable collection of miscellaneous papers of importance, from printed sources and from manuscripts, in order to fill the chronological gaps and round out and complete the story. It is the purpose of the Editor to present this mass of selected material in chronological order, so far as proves practicable, and to furnish such scholarly helps as will tend to render it more available than hitherto for daily use by students of American history. To this end will be given an English translation, side by side with the original text. While translations of many of the briefest documents, and of portions of others, have already appeared in one form of other, this is the first attempt to translate the entire body of the Relations. In many cases, where corruptions in text have crept in, we shall be enabled, by recourse to original manuscripts, to restore correct renderings; this care has been taken, wherever practicable, even to the examination of manuscripts in European archives; but occasionally we shall be obliged to follow our predecessors blindly in this regard, either from inability to discover the whereabouts of the original, or to obtain access to it, when found. In the case of each document, we shall invariably state the source whence we obtained our copy, and shall give additional bibliographical data as to other editions known to us. All maps and other illustrations appearing in previous editions will be reproduced in this; and these will be supplemented by other important contemporaryx aids of like character. At the end of each volume will appear such Notes as seem necessary to the elucidation of the text.","brand":"Lost Leaf Publications","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47111045939440,"sku":"2940148127307","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940148127307_p0.jpg?v=1763697190","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940148127307","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}