Essay on Black Robe

 

The excerpt in Toibin from Black Robe, by Brian Moore, is taken from the beginning of Chapter Eight. The passage, taken as a whole, is indicative of the entire novel. It contains examples of the culture of the Jesuit missionaries, the French trappers and settlers, and the Algonquin and Iroquois natives. This excerpt involves the capture and subsequent torture of Father Laforgue, a Jesuit missionary; Daniel, a French settler; Chomina, an Algonquin warrior and leader; and Chomina’s daughter, Annuka, Daniel’s fiancée.

It is significant to note the culture of the Natives here, when the Natives capture their enemies they believe that it is necessary to “caress” them, that is, torture them, until they cry out in pain. If the captives cry out it is believed that the torturers will own the prisoner’s soul after they are killed and if they do not cry out they believe that bad luck will come upon the entire village of the torturers and that their gods will be angry. Thus, their culture makes it necessary for this brutality to take place. Unfortunately, the natives have little compassion and take pleasure in dealing pain to others. This is symbolic of the natives’ culture, as it is an accepted practice to simply kill or abandon anyone who is sick or too injured to do their share of the work. When fever, ear infection, and a swollen foot incapacitated Father Laforgue, he feared for his life among the Algonquin and hid his sickness from them, as his superiors had warned him that he must. It is interesting that this ruthlessness does not work its way throughout the natives’ entire lives, however. These instances are practically the only times when the natives act this way. The majority of the time, the natives exhibit a great deal of patience and good humor among their own tribe, readily forgiving anything that may occur, from murder to foolishness. The influence of the Europeans may be noted in the influx of alcohol among the natives and their reaction to it. The natives believe that anyone who is drunk has been possessed by a demon and thus, cannot be held accountable for anything that he does at the time, including killing someone. The natives’ patience and goodwill among their own tribe completely flabbergasted the French and Father Laforgue, who experienced it personally as he traveled with the Algonquin to a distant mission in Huron territory. When his hands were cold, the Algonquin leader switched his warm gloves with Laforgue’s and when dinner came around, the native in front of Laforgue put on the Jesuit’s plate the portion of meat that he had taken for himself. The apparent paradox of goodwill and enmity is more easily explained in a primal concept. Nature is both cruel and kind, depending upon which face is seen and the natives are closely attuned to nature. They hear the voice of the forest and honor the spirits of the animals and trees that live in it. To blend nature and humans, it may be taken as if the natives have divided everything into two distinct groups, friends and enemies, or ours and theirs. They have turned one face to those that they consider belong and the other to those that they exclude. The custom of dividing reality into differing groups based upon perceived differences is an old and well-known phenomenon. This is not to say the natives culture was better than the Europeans, or the vice versa, but merely to point out the differences. To the surprise of the Europeans, the Algonquin seemed incapable of planning ahead for winter. The natives lived in the moment, stuffing themselves with food and basically leading as hedonistic a lifestyle as possible, as least for the men. The women were the ones who performed all the tasks necessary except for those claimed exclusively by the men, such as hunting. The position of the Algonquin women was hard and they were often prematurely aged by thirty. An Algonquin male could also take and discard wives as often as he liked or found enjoyable. The Jesuits, unsurprisingly, tended to disagree with these sentiments.

 

The Jesuits tended to disagree with the natives on a lot of points, actually, not the least of which was religion. The natives where, well…native. They believed in the power of the forest and the spirits of the animals and trees that dwelled within as well as a world of the dead, night, in which the spirits of dead natives would walk the forest, hunting spirit creatures and basically doing everything that they had done in life. The holistic nature of the natives’ religion influenced every part of their lives, from their spirit of death, the She Manitou, the flesh eater, to the belief that their dreams had meaning. For instance, when the leader of the Algonquin group escorting Laforgue to the mission had a dream about their journey, they immediately headed to one of the natives’ shamans for an interpretation. The torture of prisoners was also a facet of the natives’ religion, in “caressing” their prisoners, it was believed that they gained the power of their enemies and became stronger. In opposition to this was the Jesuit’s religion, a version of Catholicism. The Jesuits followed a strict interpretation of the Bible and complete dedication to the will of God. Both religions demanding complete dedication, Catholicism also demanded that everyone else needed to be Catholic too. Such disparate beliefs could not last long in opposition. The Jesuits, more formally known as the Society of Jesus, wore black robes and thus the title of the novel and one of the appellations given to them by the natives. The Jesuits were not lenient about their beliefs, nor did they belief that lying was a bad thing as long as it served the perceived will of God. Thus came about one of the reasons the Jesuits were largely disliked; they believed that the ends justified the means. This belief was shown in the novel when Father Laforgue told Daniel, in reference to his fiancée Annuka, “If you marry her and do not convert her, it will destroy your soul.” As this is not an accepted part of Christian dogma, it would seem apparent that the good Father is employing his order’s time honored tradition. This approach was also noticeable when Father Laforgue finally reached the mission and met the old priest he had been sent to aid. The old priest cared only for getting as many souls for God as he possibly could, employing a fever that was in the village to scare the natives into accepting baptism, which they thought would kill them. Such a philosophy, anything for their souls, seems more appropriate to Satan than God in Christian dogma.

Other points of strife between the Jesuits and natives included the natives' hedonistic lifestyle. The natives never planned ahead for winter or did anything that did not please them if they could possibly avoid it. They would stay in one area and hunt in out, glutting themselves on the meat from the animals they killed and upon other food every night, until they were forced to move on by hunger. When the natives cooked their food they simply threw everything into giant iron kettles they had received from the French, corn meal, hunks of meat (skin and bone and hair included), and anything else they could find. They would not even bother to gut and clean the animals before butchering them and tossing them into the pot, nor wait for the food to be fully cooked, eating it when it was still half raw. Every night the natives would build a habitation to sleep in, or rather, the women of the natives would build the habitation while the men went out hunting, and they would all pile into the longhouse type structure on top of each other, lying in piles of bodies amid frequent copulation. Obviously, this upset the Jesuits a bit. Further irritation to the Jesuits included the natives’ truly foul mouths, not three spoken sentences in the novel went by without the natives swearing at least once. Thus the natives displayed constant sins, in Catholic dogma, for the priests to harp on: including lust, gluttony, and sloth, three of the Seven Deadly Sins. Mix this with the priest’s egomaniacal attitude and problems should be readily apparent. The natives didn’t think there was anything wrong with their lifestyle of course; they viewed sex as simply part of life, just something to do for fun, a common pleasure. The French trappers who were acquainted with the natives didn’t mind this too much either, going native, as the priests’ complained.

The natives didn’t particularly think much of the Europeans either, to balance things out. Frequently referring to them as “hairy pigs,” due to the natives’ lesser portion of body hair, which they considered ugly and pulled out, to the frequent complaints of the natives in referring to the European’s bad habits of not sharing what they had. This basically included everything: from a couple of gallons of altar wine that Laforgue had been carrying with him; to tobacco for trade goods; to not letting the natives live in the missions, which they considered to simply be houses; to not sharing food that the French had grown and stored for winter. The natives, of course, would have simply glutted themselves on everything that they could get their hands on and everyone would have starved to death, except perhaps the natives, who would simply pick up and move elsewhere where the hunting was better. In juxtaposition, it hardly seems fair for the French to do this, but the natives didn’t see it that way. They simply wanted everything that they could get their hands on, giving in to another of the Seven Deadly Sins, avarice, otherwise known as greed. It is hardly surprising that the two cultures did not get along that well, or that the Europeans and natives constantly argued and warred over land years later. Nor is it particularly surprising that the Europeans won, seeing as bows and javelins tend to have difficulty measuring up against firearms.

The natives’ hedonistic attitude was apparent when the Algonquin escort abandoned Father Laforgue and Daniel to continue on to the mission alone, having decided that it was too much trouble and too far out of their way to go on any farther. One of the natives, Chomina, was more apprehensive of the European Commandant’s, Champlain’s, anger and retribution if he ever found out what it was that they had done than the others and was upset because he had broken his word to the Commandant and had also accepted a musket, a rare item among the natives, seeing as the Europeans typically knew better than to give away their weapons than that, as payment, or present, as the natives referred to such things. As Daniel chased after the Algonquin, or rather he as he chased after his fiancée Annuka, Chomina’s daughter; Chomina let his conscience get the better of him and he turned around with his family and Daniel to go back and aid Laforgue in getting to the mission. This is where the excerpt in Toibin begins. When they return they are ambushed by the Algonquin’s tribal enemy, the Iroquois, and are taken captive. Chomina’s wife and son are killed and the rest of them are wounded. It is somewhat ironic that Father Laforgue, who had been hiding from the Iroquois, and the one they had returned to help, believing him incapable of surviving on his own, was the only one of them who didn’t particularly need help. Although Father Laforgue was hiding he came out of concealment on the off chance that he could baptize some of the Algonquin before they died, or confess Daniel before he died.

Apparently the sentiments behind the Geneva Convention weren’t well known among the natives, but fortunately for Laforgue and Daniel, greed was. The Iroquois had decided to trade the priest and Daniel back to Champlain for ten muskets each, an afore agreed upon hostage price for any European. By this time the Algonquin Chomina and his daughter, somewhat averse to dying under torture, had decided to hatch a plan for her to seduce the guard and then club him to death, a remarkably blunt ploy. Seeing as the Iroquois had just boiled and eaten his son though, there do seem to be extenuating circumstances. Cheating the Iroquois out of both muskets and tomorrow night’s dinner, they left and headed for the mission where, apparently, everyone was dying from a fever they thought caused by the Jesuit “sorcerer” who wanted to work the water sorcery, baptism, on them. The old Jesuit would have made a good demon, as he was particularly hungry for the souls of the natives, and for claiming them for his God, deathbed baptism or not. It is necessary to point out that the fever was indeed the Jesuit’s fault, although not intentional, as he had previously caught it in Europe and carried it with him to the natives, who had no immunity to it, as he did. This didn’t bother him much, as all he was truly interested in was baptizing the natives so he could claim them for his God, and well, if they weren’t around to cause trouble after that…guess what, they were in heaven serving God.

With this kind of incentive it is hardly surprising that the two cultures did not ultimately survived. By their very nature the two were mutually exclusive. Each believed that their religion was best and was opposed to changing it. The natives were more amenable to change though and would accept baptism if they though it would save their lives, which the priest had led them to believe. The Jesuit’s religion was far more intractable, however, the Jesuit’s believed that not only was their religion the best, they had to force everyone else to believe it as well, because of course, it was for their own good and weren’t they good people for making good little Christians out of all those bad pagans.

With such disparate beliefs, it was inevitable that one of the two cultures would have to collapse and be subsumed beneath the other. Whether or not the better culture won is an academic point, as there were good points and bad points to both cultures, so suffice it to say that the stronger and more stubborn culture won, although this is hardly a recommendation, but is good for survival. As Father Laforgue’s story ended with the baptism of the village and was more tolerant than the old priest who had suffered a stroke and then a hatchet in his head by one of the natives going rogue, at least it may be considered to have been a bit of an improvement over the old priest and, perhaps, was symbolic of more tolerant times approaching.