Catholicism, Alliances, And Amerindian Evangelists During the Seven Years' war‪.‬

When Robert Eastburn was carried by a Canadian Iroquois war party to Kanesetake in April of 1756, the features of this community that most attracted his attention were the conspicuous and elaborate Stations of the Cross. They consisted of four houses, each decorated with a large painting of a scene from the Passion of Christ, located some distance outside the town and spaced at half-kilometre intervals. Beyond were a cluster of three more houses atop a prominent hill, with three tall crosses standing before them. In the course of his stay, Eastburn witnessed the procession on Good Friday when the residents of Kanesetake made their way along the Stations of the Cross, pausing at each one, then ascended the hill, which they called "Mount Calvary," for a final prayer.(2) The presence of the Stations provided Eastburn, an inveterate and unregenerate Protestant, with the clearest possible indication that when he arrived at Kanesetake he had come to a community that was Roman Catholic as well as Amerindian. The "Canadian Iroquois" who encountered Eastburn were the men and women of Akwesasne, Kahnawake, Kanesetake, and Oswegatchie.(3) Located along the upper St. Lawrence River near Montreal, hard against the westernmost French parishes of Canada, these communities were peopled by Catholic migrants from the Six Nations Iroquois and their descendants. In the later seventeenth century Catholic Mohawks and other Catholic Iroquois established the towns near Montreal that were ultimately located at Kanesetake and Kahnawake. The remaining Canadian Iroquois communities were founded just before the Seven Years' War, when Catholic Onondagas from the Six Nations relocated to Oswegatchie in 1749 and Mohawks from Kahnawake settled at Akwesasne in 1755.(4) From the time of their foundation, these communities were all allied to the French and all formally Catholic.