It was boasted in their behalf that they had taught the Indians "to mingle Jesus Christ and France together in their affections."[28:1] The cross and the lilies were blazoned together as the sign of French dominion.

The missionary became frequently, and sometimes quite undisguisedly, a political agent.
It was from the missions that the horrible murderous forays upon defenseless villages proceeded, which so often marked the frontier line of New England and New York with fire and blood.

It is one of the most unhappy of the results of that savage warfare that in the minds of the communities that suffered from it the Jesuit missionary came to be looked upon as accessory to these abhorrent crimes.

Deeply is it to be lamented that men with such eminent claims on our admiration and reverence should not be triumphantly clear of all suspicion of such complicity.

We gladly concede the claim[28:2] that the proof of the complicity is not complete; we could welcome some clear evidence in disproof of it--some sign of a bold and indignant protest against these crimes; we could wish that the Jesuit historian had not boasted of these atrocities as proceeding from the fine work of his brethren,[29:1] and that the antecedents of the Jesuits as a body, and their declared principles of "moral theology," were such as raise no presumption against them even in unfriendly minds.