Empire by Collaboration. Robert Michael Morrissey

Rasles.¹³ Jacques Largillier, a lay brother who lived in the Illinois Country from 1676 to 1714 and who copied Gravier’s dictionary into the final form that survives today, was also an impressive linguist.¹⁴ Together this group of priests achieved mastery of the language, as surviving sources demonstrate.¹⁵

      How they mastered the Illinois language matters for our story. Like other Jesuits throughout North America, Gravier and his partners practiced, by necessity, a kind of “total immersion” language acquisition program in Illinois.¹⁶ One aspect of their method consisted of constant practice and a great deal of solitary study.¹⁷ Upon his arrival in the Illinois colony in the late 1690s, Gabriel Marest demonstrated the typical dedication to language learning: as one of his fellow Jesuits described it, Marest threw himself into the task.¹⁸ In addition to working “excessively during the day,” he reportedly sat “up at night to improve himself in the language.”¹⁹ Sébastien Rasles worked hard to master pronunciation, noting the various phonetic sounds in Illinois that were difficult for French-speakers.²⁰ Other Jesuits worked tirelessly to master the mechanics of the language, to comprehend rules of grammar, and to master the operation of verbs.²¹

      But independent study and practice were not enough. As Rasles wrote, learning Indian languages like that of the Illinois was “very difficult; for it is not sufficient to study its terms and their signification, and to acquire a supply of words and phrases—it is further necessary to know the turn and arrangement that the Savages give them, which can hardly ever be caught except by familiar and frequent intercourse.”²² They simply had to go and live with the Indians, since “there are no books to teach these languages, and even though we had them, they would be quite useless; practice is the only master that is able to teach us.”²³

      The second generation of Jesuits lived and traveled with the Illinois throughout their yearly cycle. This had always been Allouez’s plan, to “live among them in the beginning … after their own mode.”²⁴ But while Allouez seems to have spent just one winter traveling with Illinois hunters,²⁵ Gravier and his partners pursued the Illinois wherever they went, all year long, for years on end. As Marest wrote, the winter bison hunt was a major challenge.

      “It is then that we wish that we could multiply ourselves, so as not to lose sight of them. All that we can do is to go in succession through the various camps in which they are, in order to keep piety alive in them, and administer to them the Sacraments.”²⁶ But if this was “all they could do,” it was a lot. Following the Illinois, the Jesuits traveled through the country in order to maintain constant relations: “During the winter we separate, going to various places where the savages pass that season.”²⁷ Rather than hanging back at the fort at the Grand Village or returning to Michilimackinac, Gravier and Marest followed the Indians through the prairies nearly every year, sometimes splitting time between two different camps. As Gravier recalled of the Kaskaskias, “One of our missionaries will visit them every 2nd day throughout the winter and do the same for the Kaoukia, who have taken up their winter quarters 4 leagues above the village.”²⁸ Marest once traveled thirty leagues (seventy-five miles) to the winter quarters of some of his neophytes.²⁹ With tasks like these he was thankful that he was “fitted to travel over the snow, to work the paddle in a canoe,” and that he had, “thanks to God, the necessary strength to withstand like toils.” But it was all in the life of the Illinois missionary: “I range the forests with the rest of our Savages, of whom the greater number spend part of the winter in hunting.”³⁰ As Marest concluded, “These journeys which we are compelled to take from time to time … are extremely difficult.”³¹

      In addition to travel, the Jesuits adopted many other aspects of Indians’ lifestyle. For example, the Jesuits embraced the Indian diet and used mealtimes as an opportunity to converse with the Illinois. As Rasles wrote, an exotic diet was the price they paid to remain close to the Illinois. Rasles related how a chief urged him to stay for a meal: “I answered that I was not accustomed to eat meat in this manner, without adding to it a little bread.” But Rasles learned that he would have to adapt. “Thou must conquer thyself, they replied; is that a very difficult thing for a Patriarch who thoroughly understands how to pray? We ourselves overcome much, in order to believe that which we do not see.” Rasles realized that he had to accommodate some of the Indians’ lifeways if he wanted them to accommodate Christianity: “We must indeed conform to their manners and customs, so as to deserve their confidence and win them to Jesus Christ.”³²

      The Jesuits were extremely enthusiastic about this collaborative project. After all, the ideal of Jesuit missionary activity was to live with the Indians in order to make a version of Christianity that was, as Loyola put it, “accommodated to those people.”³³ Perhaps the most visible and important part of this project was language. The Jesuits had to translate their ideas into terms that made sense to the Indians. Surviving Jesuit dictionaries from the Illinois mission reveal the important intercultural cooperation that enabled them to learn and to translate as they lived together with the Indians. Le Boullenger’s dictionary, for example, suggests a happy collaboration between the priests and the Natives: “I help him to think, to speak.”³⁴ Gravier’s dictionary reflects the assistance he received from Native instructors: “I try to speak; examine what I say.”³⁵

      Through such collaboration, Jesuits cultivated the ability to thoroughly converse in the Illinois vernacular. Not content just to read translations and preach to the assembled Indians—simply to “make myself understood,” as Allouez had put it—the Jesuits’ goal now was to both “understand and be understood.”³⁶ Sébastien Rasles spoke of the challenges of understanding Indian speech, which required, in effect, becoming a student of the Illinois: “I spent part of the day in their cabins, hearing them talk. I was obliged to give the utmost attention, in order to connect what they said, and to conjecture its meaning; sometimes I caught it exactly, but more often I was deceived, because, not being accustomed to the trick of their guttural sounds, I repeated only half the word, and thereby gave them cause for laughter.”³⁷

      Gabriel Marest, arriving in his first mission assignment in 1695, emphasized the importance of being able to comprehend what the Indians themselves said about their religious experience. This was an extra challenge: “I have still more difficulty in understanding the Savage tongue than in speaking it, [even though] I already know the greater number of the words.”³⁸ To help himself, Marest created a dictionary of the language: “I have made a Dictionary of all these words according to our alphabet, and I believe that, considering the short time that I could spend among the Savages, I had begun to speak their language easily and to understand it.”³⁹

      It is worth considering the form of the dictionary Marest made. Although it did not survive, his description of it implies it was similar in form to Gravier’s dictionary that is extant. Significantly, this was an “Illinoisto-French dictionary,” not a “French-to-Illinois dictionary.” Such a dictionary would likely have been useless for a Frenchman who was trying to speak Illinois, or translate concepts from French into the Illinois language. Instead, its more appropriate use would be to listen and understand what the Indians were saying in their own language. This reflects the idea that, for these Jesuits, learning language was not simply about introducing new ideas into the Illinois culture but fundamentally being able to understand the language in all its complexity. The form of the Gravier dictionary (and presumably Marest’s as well) thus signals that the Jesuit often was a passive listener, struggling to understand. Such language tools differed fundamentally from prayer books such as the one carried by Marquette and Allouez and reveal the much greater comprehension that the second generation of Jesuits was able to attain in their mission over the course of time. Gravier’s dictionary is a 590-page testament to the increased sophistication of his abilities as a listener.

      By the early 1700s, one observer noted that the Illinois priests “speak [the Illinois] language perfectly.”⁴⁰ With this ability, the Jesuits were no longer clumsy observers of Illinois lifeways and culture, misunderstanding all they witnessed. Instead they became, over time, almost like modern-day anthropologists—participant observers in the foreign culture that they increasingly