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

archaeologically from the church or priests' house at Fort Michilimackinac would
support the theory that these rings had become secular trade items by the second
quarter of the eighteenth century” (Cleland 1972:202). While one cannot and should
not apply Cleland’s idea to the findings in and history of Seneca territory, what is even
more problematic is that he fails to suggest exactly how the rings could have gone
from potentially sacred, or at least important enough to be buried with people, to
secular. Of course, metal trinkets had their everyday practical uses, whether they were
somehow sewn onto clothing for decoration or were melted down and made into
projectile points or other desired objects. However, based the numbers of rings with
their original designs (religious or not) left intact that I examined, it seems logical that
the rings, even if they were cheap trinkets, likely held some kind of significance to
their wearer.
Unfortunately, a more thorough meditation of what kind of significance
appears to get lost in the drive to link Jesuit rings with dates, missions and converts.
Mason perhaps summarizes the scholarly conundrum best: “in spite of this repeated
litany linking Jesuit priests to the rings and inferring the presence of priests from the
presence of rings and the presence of rings from the presence of priests, almost all
students of Jesuit rings show a powerful ambivalence about this association and
manage to question it even as they ultimately accept it” (Mason 2003:240).
Mason’s 2010 article, however, challenges scholars to move beyond this mere
acceptance. She consulted several French jewelry experts who relay the multi-faceted
meanings of the rings and what the wearers may have intended to convey. Recalling
the religious wars that took place in France during the sixteenth-seventeenth century,
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