The History of Catholic America
The Colonies Expand

On March 3, 1699, the exploratory party of Pierre le Moyne d'Iberville, commissioned by King Louis XIV of France to found a colony in Louisiana, erected a cross at a site later to be named New Orleans.

The Lower Mississippi Valley
The French were eager to develop their possessions in the Lower Mississippi Valley. After initial failures, the French authorities in Quebec commissioned John Law to colonize the area in present-day Louisiana, a project the wily entrepreneur accepted with gusto. The charter which was granted to Law and his Company of the Indies instructed him to procure "the salvation of the inhabitants, Indians, savages, and Negroes" by instructing them "in the true religion," to build churches at all the settlements and staff them with adequate clergy, and to guarantee that the settlers would have "divine service and... the Sacraments." A big order for a sparsely settled wilderness! But Law, like Americans before and after him, thought big.

Law added material blessings to accompany the spiritual. Beginning with his promotion in 1718, the year New Orleans was officially founded, he promised to populate the new colony with six thousand settlers and three thousand Black slaves. To the German farmers, he promised free land, fertile soil for four crops a year, fish and game of all kinds, mines of gold, silver, copper, and lead. He sweetened the come-on even further with the promise that the "savages" were friendly!

Like other "get-rich-quick schemes" which have lured unwary settlers to America, the reality in Louisiana was a far cry from John Law's promotional advertisement that suggested America was a paradise with "streets-paved-with-gold."

When Bishop Maurice Schexnayder of Lafayette spoke at the 250th anniversary celebration of the Parish of St. Charles Borromeo, Destrehan, Louisiana, on June 3, 1973, he told of the tribulations that plagued the emigrants:

"Only a few of ten thousand Germans reached the shores of Louisiana. Miserable fare and lack of drinking water on the ships took a heavy toll. It is said that only forty of two hundred Germans in one ship landed in Louisiana and two hundred out of twelve hundred in another. At the time of the settling of the German pioneers in 1721, there were no levees and only too often when the spring floods came, caused by the simultaneous melting of the snow in the vast region of the upper course of the Mississippi, not unknown even in our day, floods added to the already existing hardships. Besides, the whole country was a howling wilderness. Then came the great hurricane of September, 1721, plus the trouble with the Indians. The Germans needed assistance until they could help themselves, but Law had become bankrupt and a fugitive."

Incidentally, John Law became a Catholic before he died.

No one can describe or imagine the hardships the German pioneers in Louisiana suffered, even after they had survived the perils of the sea, the epidemics, and starvation.

Unlike many other individual immigrants who planned to make their fortunes and go back "home," the Germans came in family units with the intention of settling down and starting a new life. Most were Catholics from eastern and southern Germany.

In 1722-1723, a crude log chapel was erected by the first German Catholic settlers on the west river bank of the Mississippi, just thirty-eight miles above New Orleans. They called it St. Jean des Allemands (St. John of the Germans), here in this French colony where phonetic spelling of names by persons of differing languages would eventually obscure their origins. French Capuchin missionary priests cared for the tiny flock of faithful until a resident priest, Father Philippe de Luxembourg, arrived in 1728.

It was in 1727, when some Ursuline nuns came from Rouen, France, to begin their work in New Orleans, that our country's first convent, school, and later a hospital, were established. Thereafter, many religious orders of women would distinguish themselves in dedicated service to the people and the Church of God.

The Western Frontier
To the west, frontier missions had been coping with less settled territories and new centers of Christianity were being established.

On July 26, 1701, the same year that Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founded Detroit, the first Mass was celebrated there. It commemorated the Feast of St. Anne, and St. Anne's Church was to serve all of Michigan and Wisconsin until 1796 when a second parish was born.

The Spaniards came to Texas via Mexico, establishing Church-dominated missions that were far more than the chapels and pastoral residences that formed their nuclei. These were entirely self-sufficient communities, all under priestly supervision, serving as fortresses of the faith. There were schools, hospitals, irrigated farms, cattle ranches, granaries, textile shops, carpenters, tailors, and carefully planned sentry stands.

West
As the seventeenth century rolled into the eighteenth, Eusebio Francisco Kino, one of the most versatile and picturesque pioneer missionaries North America was to see, arrived in the Southwest desert. The Jesuit father left his post as royal cartographer in Mexico City to explore what was then assumed to be a massive island, lying just off the western shore of Mexico: Baja (Lower) California. In his travels there, Kino noted the blue shells on the Pacific side of Baja California, and years later on one of his excursions to the Gila and Colorado Rivers farther inland, the same type of blue shells convinced him that the long, skinny "island" was indeed a peninsula. Kino then redrew the map of Baja California which, when it was eventually published in Europe, corrected the original blunder.

Most of Kino's priestly work was in the northern part of the Mexican state of Sonora and what is now the dry, dusty desert of southern Arizona. In 1687, he set up his headquarters at Mission Dolores and proceeded to found a string of important missions in the river valleys of San Miguel, Magdalena, Altar, Sonoita, Santa Cruz, and San Pedro. Over the years he converted more than 4000 Indians. A compassionate priest, Kino opposed brutal enslavement of Native Americans who were then forced to work in the silver mines of northern Mexico.

Kino's tireless efforts among the Pimas brought them not only Christianity, but modern methods of crop diversification which greatly improved their economic base. The enterprising Jesuit has also been hailed as the first pioneer cattleman of the Southwest, launching what would become one of its major economic enterprises, and the foundation for an entire way of life, out of which would eventually emerge the great mythic hero: the American cowboy.

A farsighted pioneer and developer, Kino proposed a land route around the head of the Gulf of California to facilitate shipments of cattle and supplies to the missions established in Baja California. His dream, however, was not to be completed for another generation, and not by a Jesuit, but by the most famous Franciscan missionary in the old West, Father Junipero Serra.

Father Serra left a stunning career as a philosopher and scholar to come to North America as a missionary, where he worked in administration at the Apostolic College in Mexico City. While there, he served as missionary to the Dioceses of Mexico, Pueblo, Oaxaca, Valladolid, and Guadalajara. In 1769, Spanish troops marched into northern California in conquest of the fertile lands along the west coast. Serra accompanied them and set up the first mission in the territory that would become the state of California. He named it San Diego.

Serra made his permanent home at San Carlos in the Monterey-Carmel region. Over his years of tireless missionary work, he founded eight other missions, at San Carlos Borromeo, San Antonio, San Gabriel, San Luis Obispo, San Francisco, San Juan Capistrano, Santa Clara, and San Buenaventura, thus laying the foundation of some of the most important towns and cities in the far West.

As chief administrator for the Catholic missions in California, Serra was in frequent conflict with both Spanish military authorities and the civilian governments over treatment of the Indians. He consistently championed their rights in an age when most Europeans did not consider Native peoples worthy of rights. In the highly stratified society of the eighteenth century, with its rigid social classes, it was quite revolutionary for a member of a privileged class, like the clergy, to suggest that uneducated, "primitive" Natives should enjoy any rights whatsoever. But Father Serra believed otherwise, and in this wise padre, Native peoples found a dedicated champion.

In the course of his career, Serra converted over 6000 people, and also helped to improve their standards of living by introducing grains, fruits, and domesticated animals, such as cattle and sheep, from Mexico. He also promoted European trade which brought the latest material conveniences to the Western communities, which by this time were becoming increasingly composed of Native people.

Honored by beatification and with statues and memorials in many places where he lived and worked, Serra's reputation as a missionary and pioneer also won him a place in the Hall of Fame in Washington, D.C. In 1931 his heroic figure joined the replicas of other American greats in the nation's capitol.