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From: reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.books
Subject: Re: Black Robe
Message-ID: <6277@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 8-Jul-85 15:52:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.6277
Posted: Mon Jul  8 15:52:44 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 13-Jul-85 10:14:03 EDT
References: <3015@decwrl.UUCP>
Reply-To: reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (Peter Reiher)
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Lines: 24
Summary: 

I haven't read "Black Robe", but Francis Parkman wrote an interesting
series of histories of the French and English in the New World, one of which
deals specifically with the Jesuits.  (An earlier one deals with, among other
things, the even earlier contacts with the Indians in what is today Canada.)
Parkman, who wrote in the mid to late 19th century, isn't totally free from
bias, but is a great deal more evenhanded than might be expected.  Actually,
he shows more bias against the Roman Catholic Jesuits than against the Indians.
He writes very well (though his books are fairly long).  His portrait of the
Indians of the Northeastern part of the continent sounds a great deal like
Moore's.  They were largely warlike, very cruel, sometimes surprisingly
acquisitive and sometimes ridiculously generous.  An interesting observation
by Parkman is their vague and changeable religion, which, in Parkman's
description, doesn't sound much like Ken's thumbnail version of Moore's
description.

The best edition of Parkman I've seen is the two volume Library of America
edition in hardback.  The books are $25-$30 each, but of very high quality.
I don't know if these works of Parkman are available in paperback, but a
good college or city library should have copies of them. 
-- 
        			Peter Reiher
        			reiher@ucla-cs.arpa
				soon to be reiher@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU
        			{...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher