Baptism and Alliance: The Symbolic Mediations of Religious Syncretism

This article studies the meaning baptism had for Jesuits and Canadian Montagnais. It outlines changing Jesuit policy for baptizing Native Americans; weighs the economic, political, medical, and social variables behind the emerg- ing Montagnais view that baptism offered a way of coping with historical crisis; assesses the shared religious and ideological ground which resulted; and, finally, demonstrates that individualistic Catholicism undercut the goal of solidarity that the Montagnais sought. Studies of Christian missions among Native Americans must seek to understand the symbolic transmission of religious knowledge as grounded in controversial conversations about the nature of reality. Because The Jesuit Relations richly details the baptisms of Canadian Montagnais be- tween 1632 and I642, it is possible to isolate the major symbolic factors which initially impeded and then facilitated religious dialogue. The initial barriers to religious change included the terrifying cultural devastation of epidemic disease, a burgeoning fear of witchcraft as an inverted form