Once at their stations in the upper country, the missionaries regularly sent down to the Superior of the Order at Quebec their full reports of progress, difficulties, and hopes, all mingled with interesting descriptions of Indian customs, folklore, and life.  It is no wonder that these narratives, “jotted down hastily,” as Le Jeune tells us, “now in one place, now in another, sometimes on water, sometimes on land,” were often crude, or that they required careful editing before being sent home to France for publication.  In their printed form, however, these Relations des Jesuites gained a wide circle of European readers; they inspired more missionaries to come, and they drew from well-to-do laymen large donations of money for carrying on the crusade.

The royal authorities also gave their earnest support, for they saw in the Jesuit missionary not merely a torchbearer of his faith or a servant of the Church.  They appreciated his loyalty and remembered that he never forgot his King, nor shirked his duty to the cause of France among the tribes.  Every mission post thus became an embassy, and every Jesuit an ambassador of his race, striving to strengthen the bonds of friendship between the people to whom he went and the people from whom he came.  The French authorities at Quebec were not slow to recognize what an ever-present help the Jesuit could be in times of Indian trouble.  One governor expressed the situation with fidelity when he wrote to the home authorities that, “although the interests of the Gospel do not require us to keep missionaries in all the Indian villages, the interests of the civil government for the advantage of trade must induce us to manage things so that we may always have at least one of them there.”  It must therefore be admitted that, when the civil authorities did encourage the missions, they did not always do so with a purely spiritual motive in mind.

As the political and commercial agent of his people, the Jesuit had great opportunities, and in this capacity he usually gave a full measure of service.  After he had gained the confidence of the tribes, the missionary always succeeded in getting the first inkling of what was going on in the way of inter-tribal intrigues.  He learned to fathom the Indian mind and to perceive the redskin’s motives.  He was thus able to communicate to Quebec the information and advice which so often helped the French to outwit their English rivals.  As interpreters in the conduct of negotiations and the making of treaties the Jesuits were also invaluable.  How much, indeed, these blackrobes achieved for the purely secular interests of the French colony, for its safety from sudden Indian attack, for the development of its trade, and for its general upbuilding, will never be known.  The missionary did not put these things on paper, but he rendered services which in all probability were far greater than posterity will ever realize.