The Society of Jesus, also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits, is a religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rome. It was founded in 1540 by Ignatius of Loyola and six companions, with the approval of Pope Paul III. The society is engaged in evangelization and apostolic ministry in 112 nations. Jesuits work in education, research, and cultural pursuits. Jesuits also conduct retreats, minister in hospitals and parishes, sponsor direct social and humanitarian ministries, and promote ecumenical dialogue.
Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint-Exupéry, known simply as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, was a French writer, poet, journalist and aviator. He received several prestigious literary awards for his novella The Little Prince and for his lyrical aviation writings, including Wind, Sand and Stars and Night Flight. His works have been translated into many languages.
New France was the territory colonized by France in North America, beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Great Britain and Spain in 1763 under the Treaty of Paris.
A coureur des bois or coureur de bois were independent entrepreneurial French Canadian traders who travelled in New France and the interior of North America, usually to trade with First Nations peoples by exchanging various European items for furs. Some learned the trades and practices of the indigenous peoples.
Jean de Brébeuf, SJ was a French Jesuit missionary who travelled to New France (Canada) in 1625. There he worked primarily with the Huron for the rest of his life, except for a few years in France from 1629 to 1633. He learned their language and culture, writing extensively about each to aid other missionaries.
Samuel Eliot Morison was an American historian noted for his works of maritime history and American history that were both authoritative and popular. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912, and taught history at the university for 40 years. He won Pulitzer Prizes for Admiral of the Ocean Sea (1942), a biography of Christopher Columbus, and John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography (1959). In 1942, he was commissioned to write a history of United States naval operations in World War II, which was published in 15 volumes between 1947 and 1962. Morison wrote the popular Oxford History of the American People (1965), and co-authored the classic textbook The Growth of the American Republic (1930) with Henry Steele Commager.
Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix, S.J. was a French Jesuit priest, traveller, and historian, often considered the first historian of New France.
The Spanish missions in the Sonoran Desert are a series of Jesuit Catholic religious outposts established by the Spanish Catholic Jesuits and other orders for religious conversions of the Pima and Tohono O'odham indigenous peoples residing in the Sonoran Desert. An added goal was giving Spain a colonial presence in their frontier territory of the Sonora y Sinaloa Province in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and relocating by Indian Reductions settlements and encomiendas for agricultural, ranching, and mining labor.
Noël Brûlartde Sillery (1577–1640) was a French diplomat who, upon renouncing the world and taking holy orders, provided from his fortune for the establishment of a mission in New France.
The Jesuit Relations, also known as Relations des Jésuites de la Nouvelle-France , are chronicles of the Jesuit missions in New France. The works were written annually and printed beginning in 1632 and ending in 1673.
The Seminary of Quebec is a Catholic community of diocesan priests in Quebec City founded by Bishop François de Laval, the first bishop of New France in 1663.
Paul Le Jeune (1591–1664) was a French Jesuit missionary in New France. He served as the Superior of the Jesuits in the French colony of Canada from 1632 to 1639. During his tenure, he began a mission at Trois-Rivières, founded the community at Sillery, and saw the establishment of the Hôtel-Dieu de Québec.
Marie of the Incarnation, OSU was a French Ursuline nun. As part of a group of nuns sent to New France (Quebec) to establish the Ursuline Order, Marie was crucial in the spread of Catholicism in New France. She was a religious author and has been credited with founding the first girls' school in the New World. Due to her work, the Catholic Church declared her a saint, and the Anglican Church of Canada celebrates her with a feast day.
Jacques-François le Sueur, also known as François Eustache, Jacques François, and Jacques, was an 18th-century French Jesuit missionary and linguist, of the Abnaki missions in Canada.
Jesuit missions in North America were attempted in the late 16th century, established early in the 17th century, faltered at the beginning of the 18th, disappeared during the suppression of the Society of Jesus around 1763, and returned around 1830 after the restoration of the Society. The missions were established as part of the colonial drive of France and Spain during the period, the "saving of souls" being an accompaniment of the constitution of Nouvelle-France and early New Spain. The efforts of the Jesuits in North America were paralleled by their China missions on the other side of the world, and in South America. They left written documentation of their efforts, in the form of The Jesuit Relations.
17th-century missionary activity in Asia and the Americas grew strongly, put down roots, and developed its institutions, though it met with strong resistance in Japan in particular. At the same time Christian colonization of some areas outside Europe succeeded, driven by economic as well as religious reasons. Christian traders were heavily involved in the Atlantic slave trade, which had the effect of transporting Africans into Christian communities. A land war between Christianity and Islam continued, in the form of the campaigns of the Habsburg Empire and Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, a turning point coming at Vienna in 1683. The Tsardom of Russia, where Orthodox Christianity was the established religion, expanded eastwards into Siberia and Central Asia, regions of Islamic and shamanistic beliefs, and also southwest into Ukraine, where the Uniate Eastern Catholic Churches arose.
New Voyages to North America is a book by Louis Armand de Lom d’Arce, baron de Lahontan that chronicles his nine years exploring New France as an officer in the French Army. Published in two volumes in 1703 as Nouveaux Voyages de M. le Baron de Lahontan dans l’Amérique Septentrionale, it was translated into English the same year.
William P. Lonc was a professor emeritus of physics at Saint Mary's University in Canada and also the co-translator and co-editor of the series The Jesuit Relations, working assiduously in translating over 64 historical works by Lucien Campeau and other French Canadian Jesuit sources into English.
François Joseph le Mercier was a prominent French Jesuit in the early missions to New France and the Huron people. He was the rector of the Jesuit college in Quebec and superior of the whole Canada mission from 1653–56 and again 1665-70, during which period he authored The Jesuit Relations, as well as two published works concerning the Huron missions in the years 1637 and 1638.
Pierre-Philippe Potier, was a Belgian Jesuit priest, missionary to the Hurons in New France, and lexicographer.
Media related to The Jesuits in North America in the seventeenth century at Wikimedia Commons
The Jesuits in North America in the 17th Century public domain audiobook at LibriVox 
