catholic church - Indiana Catholic History

TRADITION AND HISTORY.
spoken of, connecting her possessions in Canada
with those of Louisiana, of which Fort Wayne and
Vincennes, in Indiana, were most important ones,
with a view to securing and possibly increasing her
her dominion .. yet it was not the military subjection
alone of the western country that France had ih
view. There was another and a higher consideration.
It was the establishment of Catholicity , which
she wished to introduce into her possessions on the
continent. Wherever, therefore, she sent a detachment
of her troops, she acc:ompanied it with a
missiopary of the cross; and while the aborigines
were kept in awe by the force of her arms, it is no
less true that the child of the forest was led to obedience
by the milder but not less powerful influences
of Christianity, which the" Black Robes," as they
called them, introduced to them.
"It is an historical fact," says Judge Law in his
history of Vincennes, "whatever we Protestants
may say to the contrary, that the influence of
Catholic' priests, particularly the Jesuits, in the
eighteenth century, over the tribes which surrounded
them, and for whose conversion to Christianity
they labored with increasing devotion and
energy, was much greater than those of any other
religious denomination that ever ministered to their
spiritual wants. This is particularly the case with
those tribes dwelling in that portion of the northwestern
territory out of which has been created the
State of Indiana. No class of men endured greater
sufferings. or made greater sacrifices for the cause
they were engaged in. From the time when Mar-
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