Jesuits such as Jean de Brébeuf were children of privilege, indulging their hunger for adventure in foreign places. The Hurons saw them as idiots, unable to fend for themselves.
In the early 1600s, the Jesuits tried to create their own nation on the Great Lakes and turn the Huron (Wendat) Confederacy into a model Jesuit state. Missionary Jean de Brébeuf was the mystic at the centre of these efforts, living among a people who struggled to cope with the norms of the religious order he represented. Ottawa author Mark Bourrie's Crosses in the Sky: Jean de Brébeuf and the Destruction of Huronia, is the first secular biography of Brébeuf. Following is an excerpt from the book. Read More