Empire by Collaboration. Robert Michael Morrissey

      It is precisely this kind of opportunism that the Illinois used to welcome the French when they showed up in the Illinois Country during the 1670s. The Jesuits Marquette and his partner, Claude Allouez, were among the first Frenchmen to travel to the Illinois’s new homelands. Arriving at Illinois villages on the Mississippi and Illinois rivers, the Frenchmen met a powerful Indian group, whose “traditions” were all about innovation, flexibility, and conquest. As they reveal in their earliest writings for the Jesuit Relations from Illinois, the Jesuits thought that the Illinois were very eager Christians. What is more accurate to say is that the Illinois were extraordinarily opportunistic and willing to experiment with the Jesuits’ ideas just as they had done in their recent cultural, ecological, and social adaptations while moving to the prairies. They had a “tradition” of innovation, and it was the cornerstone of their history.

      From Allouez’s very first meeting with the Illinois at St. Esprit, he singled them out as exceptionally enthusiastic about Christianity. As he wrote in 1670, the Illinois “offer[ed] a fine field for Gospel laborers, as it is impossible to find [a group of Indians] better fitted for receiving Christian influences.”¹³⁵ Unlike many other Indian groups, the Illinois were not hostile to missionaries and were open to prayer. “If they do not all pray as yet, they at least esteem prayer. They are far from having an aversion to it, or from dreading it as a dangerous thing, as all the other Savages of this New France did when we began preaching the Gospel to them.”¹³⁶ Their speeches had “no savor of the Savage,”¹³⁷ and they listened attentively to the priests’ lengthy sermons.¹³⁸ Not only did the Illinois at St. Esprit eagerly await Allouez’s lessons, they also promised to become evangelists in their own right.¹³⁹

      The Illinois began to experiment with Christianity willingly in almost every one of the early encounters between themselves and the Jesuits. In 1673, Marquette proudly watched Indians worshiping the cross with animal skins.¹⁴⁰ Allouez noted that the Illinois mixed Christianity into a spiritual practice featuring dreams and thrilled at how the Illinois reported seeing Jesus in their dreams.¹⁴¹ During their visit to the mission of St. Francis Xavier in 1674, Allouez observed some Illinois burning tobacco at the altar.¹⁴² Especially interesting was the Indians’ treatment of the church building itself. As Allouez noted, Illinois chiefs began to pray to the church, “address[ing] their speeches to this house of God, and speak[ing] to it as to an animate being.” Then they began to do something even more unusual: “When they pass by here they throw tobacco all around the church, which is a kind of devotion to their divinity.” Finally, the Illinois Indians “also [came] sometimes and offer[ed] presents [to the church], to beg God to have pity upon their deceased relatives.”¹⁴³ Combined with their feasts honoring Jesus and the fasts that they conducted in order to find God in their dreams, these gestures suggested an idiosyncratic, but positive, embrace of Christianity. The priests proudly boasted about the “honors they pay to our Holy Church, after their fashion.”¹⁴⁴ The Illinois approached the priests and the other-than-human spirits they represented in typical fashion, opportunistically.

      It is almost certain that Christianity became another additive to a diverse and complex Illinois spiritual worldview.¹⁴⁵ The Illinois practiced Christianity alongside more traditional manitou worship, itself likely newly tailored to the Illinois environment. The Illinois were flexible and adaptive, and this is what made them such good pupils. “They honor the lord among themselves in their own way,” as Marquette noted.¹⁴⁶ Of course, it is hard to imagine them doing it any other way. After all, they were powerful and not desperate. Indeed, Marquette himself seemed to acknowledge the Illinois’s own agency in the creation of a hybrid version of Christianity. Recognizing the Illinois’s active participation in appropriating Christianity to their own needs, Marquette noted how an Illinois man on his deathbed went “to go take possession of paradise in the name of the whole nation.”¹⁴⁷ If a “spiritual conquest” was happening here, the Illinois were the ones conquering Christianity, on their own terms.

      To the Jesuits, the Illinois’s openness and curiosity were encouraging, though the priests surely did not fully understand the Illinois’s engagement with Christianity. For instance, Allouez and Marquette considered the Illinois to be almost monotheistic, which was not true.¹⁴⁸ Allouez perceived that the Illinois recognized one spirit—the “maker of all things”—above all others.¹⁴⁹ This was optimistic—and false. The Jesuits interpreted the Illinois custom of feasting as similar to communion.¹⁵⁰ And in general, the early Jesuits thought that the Illinois were nearly Christian, writing that missionizing here was a matter of exploiting close parallels between Christianity and indigenous spirituality. As Marquette wrote, “we keep a little of their usage, and take from it all that is bad.”¹⁵¹ However, rather than true similarities between Christian and Illinois worldviews, what the Jesuits were actually perceiving was the Illinois’s willingness to experiment. Their engagement with Christianity really reflected their openness, their flexibility, and their interest in gaining an advantage. Almost certainly they were hoping to capitalize on the newcomers’ power—spiritual or, if that proved useless, at least material. The Illinois were opportunistic.