"Black Robes and Buckskin is a valuable introduction to the Jesuit Relations, an extensive collection of documents crucial to understanding Jesuit history, Canadian history, particularly that of French Canada, and Amerindian culture. Catharine Randall offers a judicious selection of these seventeenth century reports to Europe from the New World, and places them in their historical context most effectively, with the background necessary for any study of these important works. This edition is an accessible and important contribution to the fields of early modern history, religious studies, and Native American studies, and will be particularly useful for introducing students to these fields." -- -Kathleen Long Cornell University "Catharine Randall's modern translation of selections from the Jesuit Relations brings to life an exciting chapter of the French exploration and settlement of North America. In their letters home, the intrepid Jesuits write of their relationships with Native peoples, whose traditional beliefs the missionaries struggle to translate into their own Catholic terms. Their letters also illuminate the lives of the courageous nuns who founded hospitals and created schools for the girls of early Quebec, both Native and white. Blackrobes & Buckskin makes accessible to contemporary readers a fascinating chapter of North American history." -- -Mary Jean Green Dartmouth College "This fascinating book is essential reading for anyone interested in the early modern exploration of French Canada. Black Robes and Buckskin offers a sample of letters, some famous, others never translated, from the Jesuit Relations. These field letters by Jesuit missionaries epitomize inculturation, a two-way process whereby Jesuits taught and learned from the indigenous peoples. Unlike the English, the French cohabited with the native peoples and sought to woo minds and hearts. Catharine Randall's expert translations recapture a world we have forgotten." -- -Anne Larsen Hope College "A reviewer of the 1991 film Black Robe commented that it was far easier for contemporaries to relate to the Native Americans in the film --to their nature mysticism and their easy morals, for example - than to seventeenth century Jesuits who were ready to sacrifice everything, including their lives - to spread the faith. In Black Robes and Buckskin Catharine Randall has helped immeasurably in this task of making the Jesuits comprehensible to us through her eminently readable, often colloquial translations of the great Jesuit Relations, the reports the Jesuit missionaries in New France sent back to their superiors in Paris and in Rome. She does this out of a personal appropriation of Jesuit spirituality and a sympathetic appreciation of Jesuit missionary strategy that brings the Jesuits especially, but also their Indians they were proselytizing, very much alive. This is both a scholar's book, but also a wonderfully human story about the encounter of cultures and their accommodation." -- -Jeffrey von Arx, S.J. President, Fairfield University
