archaeological and textual records - eCommons@Cornell - Cornell ...

these marriages would want to continue to instill their strong religious beliefs?
(Mandzy 1986:51)
Even though none of the rings described in the ossuary appears to be a Jesuit-
style design, and the obvious problem of trying to correlate the number of rings with
Brebeuf’s number of burials, Mandzy continues to press his case. He jumps from
historical accounts of marriages to typology, and as Cleland did, Mandzy attempts to
erroneously correlate ring style and time period—and in that, he ignores any real
question of meaning.
However, we cannot solely criticize Mandzy for simply ascribing the rings to
“Christianization.” Although he does not cite her work, his ideas echo Hauser’s who
basically stated in her piece on Ft. Michilimackinac that the rings were brought to
New France by the Jesuits to spread Christianity (Hauser 1982:1). Still, the literal
grandfather of the idea that the rings were used somehow as a conversion tool may
very well be Beauchamp, who claimed that the rings “came and went with the Jesuits”
(Beauchamp 1903:37). Nonetheless, even if one is not looking to use the rings for
chronological purposes, it is still hard to separate their existence from their
longstanding association with the Jesuit missions, their conversion activities and the
dates of each mission’s establishment (Mason 2003:239).
Conversely, it has also been suggested that the rings in themselves, regardless
of their decoration, were secular trade items or became such after a certain point in
time. Cleland states: “Jesuit rings seem to have been used primarily in religious
contexts, but it is, of course, possible or even probable that they may have also been
used simply as trade items. That very few Jesuit rings have been recovered
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