Lot 52: Le Jeune, Paul

Relation de ce qui s'est passé en la Nouvelle France en l'année 1633. Paris: Sebastien Cramoisy, 1634 8vo (6 3/8 x 4 in.; 163 x 102 mm). Woodcut device of 2 storks on title-page, woodcut headpiece of a cupid on p.3; scattered browning and foxing throughout. Later limp vellum, manuscript title on spine.

Church 424; European Americana 634/77; McCoy 4; Pilling, Algonquin 307; Sabin 39947. Not in Bell or in the Siebert sale

First edition of the second Jesuit relation, second variant, of extraordinary rarity, of the "sole chronicle, regularly published, of French Imperial expansion" (Wroth, Introduction to McCoy). The relations, long an adminstrative tradition of the Society of Jesus, comprised a series of private, internal letters and reports from the missionaries to their superior general in Paris, regarding their activities in New France that spanned from 1632 to 1673. Father Paul Le Jeune composed the first ten relations, which were instantly successful with the reading public; so much so that few copies of any given edition survive. Only two complete sets of all forty-one volumes have been assembled at Laval University, Quebec, and Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. The first edition is virtually unobtainable; the second relation is equally rare. There are six recorded copies in American institutions. In the twentieth century, three copies of the second relation were sold as part of sets, but only one copy, the Henry Huntington copy, was sold as a separate item (Rare Americana from the Library of Henry E. Huntington, Anderson Galleries, 11 December 1917, lot 127). The prolonged appeal of the Relations is largely due to Le Jeune's simple and vivid descriptions of the New World. In his second Relation, which documents a portion of his first year in Canada, Le Jeune provides an account of an early mission school for Indian children, descriptions of Indian superstitions and gods, and reports the return of Champlain as governor. He also describes his halting attempts to learn the indigenous language, which, once he had a reasonable command realized that the Indians had quite a repertoire of "potty mouth" phrases ("ils parlent avec une langue si puante ..."). Moreover, he remains confident in converting various tribes to Christianity. Of the relations, Charlevoix wrote: "As these fathers were scattered among all the nations with whom the French had any intercourse, and their missions obliged them to enter into all affairs of the colony, we may say that their memoirs contain a very detailed history. Indeed there is no other source to which we can resort to learn the progress of religion among the Indians, and to know those nations, all whose languages they spoke."