^1. le Petit, Mathurin, “Letter from Father le Petit, Missionary, to Father d'Avaugour, Procurator of the Missions in North America,” 12 July 1730, in The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (hereafter JR), ed. Thwaites, Reuben Gold (reprint, New York: Pageant, 1959), 68:201–7.Google Scholar

^2. Ibid.

^3. Boullenger, Jean Le, Miami-Illinois Dictionary, Ms, 42 (John Carter Brown Library, Providence, R.I.), microfilm.Google Scholar

^4. Important studies of these processes in different places and periods are Rafael, Vicente L., Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society under Early Spanish Rule (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Burkhart, Louise M., The Slippery Earth: Nahua—Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989)Google Scholar; and Larson, Pier M., ‘“Capacities and Modes of Thinking’: Intellectual Engagements and Subaltern Hegemony in the Early History of Malagasy Christianity,” American Historical Review 102 (October 1997): 969–1002CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Gray, Edward G., New World Babel: Languages and Nations in Early America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), 30–43Google Scholar; Gray, Edward G., “Introduction,” in The Language Encounter in the Americas, 1492–1800, ed. Gray, Edward G. and Norman, Fiering (New York: Berghahn, 2000), 1–2Google Scholar; Blackburn, Carole, Harvest of Souls: The Jesuit Missions and Colonialism in North America, 1632–1650 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2000), 101–4Google Scholar; and Axtell, James, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 80–83.Google Scholar

^5. Few scholars have attempted to analyze such Native language religious texts. Exceptions include Steckley, John, “The Warrior and the Lineage: Jesuit Use of Iroquoian Images to Communicate Christianity” Ethnohistory 39 (fall 1992): 478–509CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anderson, Jeffrey D., “Northern Arapaho Conversion of a Christian Text,” Ethnohistory 48 (fall 2001): 689–712CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Murray, Laura J., “Vocabularies of Native American Languages: A Literary and Historical Approach to an Elusive Genre,” American Quarterly 53 (December 2001): 590–623CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the impressive collaboration by Lassiter, Luke Eric, Ellis, Clyde, and Kotay, Ralph, The Jesus Road: Kiowas, Christianity, and Indian Hymns (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002)Google Scholar. The manuscripts that form the basis for this study are Allouez, Claude, Facsimile of Père Marquette's Illinois Prayer Book (Quebec: Quebec Literary and Historical Society, 1908)Google Scholar; Jacques Gravier, Dictionary of the Algonquian Illinois Language, Ms, American Indian MSS, Watkinson Library, Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., photocopy and microfilm copy; and Le Boullenger, Miami-Illinois Dictionary. Working with the religious texts from the Allouez prayer book and the Le Boullenger dictionary (which includes prayers and other religious writings) would be much more difficult without the outstanding linguistic analysis of Miami-Illinois conducted by David Costa. See Costa, David J., The Miami-Illinois Language (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Baldwin, Daryl and Costa, David J., Myaamia neehi peewaalia kaloosioni mahsinaakani: A Miami-Peoria Dictionary (Miami Okla.: The Miami Nation, 2005)Google Scholar; and Baldwin, Daryl Wade, “Myaamia iilaataweenki (The Miami Language)” (master's thesis, University of Montana, 1999)Google Scholar have also been helpful.

^6. Allouez, Claude, Relation of 1666–1667, in JR, 51:47–51.Google Scholar

^7. Marquette, Jacques, “Journal of the First Voyage,” in JR, 59:86–163Google Scholar; Dablon, Claude, “Account of the Second Voyage and the Death of Father Jacques Marquette,” in JR, 59:184–211Google Scholar; and Allouez, , “Narrative of a Third Voyage to the Illinois,” in JR, 60:148–67.Google Scholar

^8. Gravier, Jacques, “Letter by Father Jacques Gravier in the form of a Journal of the Mission of l'lmmaculée Conception de Notre Dame in the Ilinois country,” 15 February 1694, in JR, 64:158–237Google Scholar. On Marie Rouensa, see also Ekberg, Carl J., “Marie Rouensa-8cate8a and the Foundation of French Illinois,” Illinois Historical Journal 84 (autumn 1991): 146–60Google Scholar; Peterson, Jacqueline, “Women Dreaming: The Religiopsychology of Indian White Marriages and the Rise of a Metis Culture,” in Western Women: Their Land, Their Lives, ed. Lillian, Schlissel, Ruiz, Vicki L., and Janice, Monk (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988), 49–68Google Scholar; Sleeper-Smith, Susan, Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Cultural Encounter in the Western Great Lakes (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 23–37Google Scholar; White, Richard, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 70–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hinderaker, Eric, Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 59–64, and 110–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a somewhat problematic introduction to Illinois Christianity, consult Bilodeau, Christopher, “‘They Honor Our Lord Among Themselves in Their Own Way’: Colonial Christianity and the Illinois Indians,” American Indian Quarterly 25 (June 2001): 352–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Kaskaskias and the mission moved twice more after the dramatic turn to Christianity, finally settling in 1703 on the lower Kaskaskia River near its outlet to the Mississippi. Like the river on which they lived, the village too took the name of the Kaskaskias.

^9. The premier study of the linguistic work of the French Jesuits is still Hanzeli, Victor Egon, Missionary Linguistics in New France: A Study of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Descriptions of American Indian Languages (The Hague: Mouton, 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Miami-Illinois, see Costa, , The Miami-Illinois Language, 1Google Scholar; and Goddard, Ives, “Central Algonquian Languages,” in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15, Northeast, ed. Trigger, Bruce G. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978), 583–87.Google Scholar

^10. Pouliot, Léon, “Claude Allouez,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography (hereafterDCB), 1:57Google Scholar; Monet, J., “Jacques Marquette,” in DCB, 1:491Google Scholar; Marquette, , Relation of 1669–1670, in JR, 54:185–95Google Scholar; and Jacques Marquette to Rev. Father Pupin, 4 August 1667, in Some Hitherto Unpublished Marquettiana, ed. Gilbert J. Garraghan, reprinted from Mid-America 18 (n.d.): 8–9.

^11. Gabriel Marest to Barthélemi Germon, 9 November 1712, in JR, 66:245–47; and Deliette, Pierre, “Memoir of De Gannes Concerning the Illinois Country,” in Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library, vol. 23, The French Foundations, 1680–1693, ed. Pease, Theodore Calvin and Werner, Raymond C. (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1934), 361Google Scholar. The actual authorship of the Illinois prayer book remains uncertain. See the introduction to the facsimile edition in Illinois Prayer Book, 7–13; Sasseville, J. and Shea, John Gilmary, Notes on the Two Jesuit Manuscripts Belonging to the Estate of the Late Hon. John Neilson of Quebec, Canada (New York: n.p., 1887)Google Scholar; Goddard, Ives, “The Description of the Native Languages of North America Before Boas,” in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 17, Languages, ed. Ives, Goddard (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1996), 19–22Google Scholar; and Costa, , The Miami-Illinois Language, 10–12.Google Scholar

^12. Julien Binneteau to another Jesuit Father, [January] 1699, in JR, 65:69–71; Le Petit, in JR, 68:211; Hanzeli, Missionary Linguistics, 25–31; and Costa, “The Miami-Illinois Language,” 10–12.

^13. Gray, , New World Babel, 30–43Google Scholar; Gray, , “Introduction,” in The Language Encounter in the Americas, 1–2Google Scholar; Blackburn, , Harvest of Souls, 101–4Google Scholar; Leahey, Margaret J., “‘Comment peut un muet prescher l'évangile?’: Jesuit Missionaries and the Native Languages of New France,” French Historical Studies 19 (spring 1995): 105–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Merritt, Jane T., “Metaphor, Meaning, and Misunderstanding: Language and Power on the Pennsylvania Frontier,” in Contact Points: American Frontiers from the Mohawk Valley to the Mississippi, 1750–1830, ed. Cayton, Andrew R. L. and Teute, Fredrika J. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press), 60–87.Google Scholar

^14. André, Louis, “Relation of 1672–1673,” in JR, 57:269–71.Google Scholar

^15. Louis Châtellier notes the importance of the Pater Noster, Ave Maria, and Credo in European missionary work during the same period in The Religion of the Poor: Rural Missions in Europe and the Formation of Modern Catholicism, c. 1500–c. 1800, trans. Brian Pearce (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 200.Google Scholar

^16. Gravier, Dictionary, 53, and 145; Boullenger, Le, Miami-Illinois Dictionary, 54, 126, and 136Google Scholar; Baldwin, “The Miami Language,” 48, 123, 68, and 150; and Baldwin and Costa, Miami-Peoria Dictionary, 71. Transcriptions of Illinois words remain as they appear in the Illinois language texts. The symbol “8” represents the phonemes o, oo, or w.

^17. Le Boullenger, , Miami-Illinois Dictionary, 53, and 157Google Scholar; and Gravier, , Dictionary, 133.Google Scholar

^18. For an overview of Illinois culture, see Callender, Charles, “Illinois,” in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15, Northeast, ed. Trigger, Bruce G. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978), 673–80Google Scholar; and Brown, Margaret Kimball, Cultural Transformations among the Illinois: An Application of a Systems Model (East Lansing: Publications of the Museum/Michigan State University, 1979), 233–45Google Scholar. Kinietz, W. Vernon, The Indians of the Western Great Lakes, 1615–1760 (reprint, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1965), 161–225CrossRefGoogle Scholar, contains information on the Illinois and on the culturally and linguistically related Miamis. Consult Hallowell, A. Irving, “Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior, and World View,” in Contributions to Anthropology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 357–90Google Scholar, for an analysis of the relationship between human and other-than-human persons among the Ojibwa. Deliette provides many details on Illinois ritual practices in his “Memoir,” 302–96.

^19. Gravier, , Dictionary, 246Google Scholar; and Le Boullenger, , Miami-Illinois Dictionary, 78, 116.Google Scholar

^20. Spanish missionaries in the Philippines also tried to maintain the purity of some central Christian teachings in a similar manner. See Rafael, , Contracting Colonialism, 20–21, 29–30.Google Scholar

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