Document Analysis #1 Jean de Brebeuf was a French missionary born in 1593 in Normandy, France. He joined the Society of Jesus at age 24, and two years later, became a teacher at the college of Rouen. After three years of teaching, he was chosen as a missionary to travel to New France. In 1625, he and other missionaries arrived in Quebec and were assigned to a tribe of Montagnais. The next year he was reassigned to the Huron peoples, where he failed to convert any to Catholicism. After a threat to the colony by the English, the French missionaries returned to France, where Brebeuf was reinstated at Rouen, serving as a preacher and confessor. He took his final Jesuit vows in 1630, and then returned to New France in 1633 to continue his work with the Huron. He educated himself in the language of the Huron and taught it to other missionaries. His prime purpose with the Huron was to teach, and in turn he learned a lengthy amount about the culture…show more content… It begins in stating the overall condition of the living conditions and geography of the area. Brebeuf goes on to describe the tribe; the numbers, the diversity, and the language, that he implies he has mastery of. He comments in disgust that the Huron do not possess any temples or priests, then recounts a Huron creation myth. He tells the story told by the Huron of Eataensic and Jouskeha, a woman who is in charge of creation of man and Earth, as well as death, and a man who governs the world. He tells of his conversion efforts, and the Huron response that each country has its own creation theories, he then makes a smug comment about a point he makes to the people in which “they have no reply.” Brebeuf compares their marriage customs and values to that of Christianity, and goes on to describe the belief of immortality and the superstitions of the
