de tout cela, sur quoi neanmoins il est bon que l'on agisse et que
l'on me donne tous les advis qui seront necessaires."]

The king and the minister, in their instructions to Frontenac, had
dwelt with great emphasis on the expediency of civilizing the Indians,
teaching them the French language, and amalgamating them with the
colonists. Frontenac, ignorant as yet of Indian nature and
unacquainted with the difficulties of the case, entered into these
views with great heartiness. He exercised from the first an
extraordinary influence over all the Indians with whom he came in
contact; and he persuaded the most savage and refractory of them, the
Iroquois, to place eight of their children in his hands. Four of these
were girls and four were boys. He took two of the boys into his own
household, of which they must have proved most objectionable inmates;
and he supported the other two, who were younger, out of his own
slender resources, placed them in respectable French families, and
required them to go daily to school. The girls were given to the
charge of the Ursulines. Frontenac continually urged the Jesuits to
co-operate with him in this work of civilization, but the results of
his urgency disappointed and exasperated him. He complains that in the
village of the Hurons, near Quebec, and under the control of the
Jesuits, the French language was scarcely known. In fact, the fathers
contented themselves with teaching their converts the doctrines and
rites of the Roman Church, while retaining the food, dress, and habits
of their original barbarism.

In defence of the missionaries, it should be said that, when brought
in contact with the French, the Indians usually caught the vices of
civilization without its virtues; but Frontenac made no allowances.
"The Jesuits," he writes, "will not civilize the Indians, because they