Throughout the seventeenth century, numerous Indigenous girls and young women in Canada were educated in the convents of the Ursulines of Quebec and the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame of Montreal. The primary objective was to “civilise” and Christianise Indigenous youth so that they might someday marry French settlers, to contribute to the colony’s demographic growth. Several Indigenous family leaders welcomed this initiative, viewing it as a way to reinforce political and commercial alliances with the French; thus, they granted their daughters to the care of the nuns. Other Indigenous converts, however, paged the convents of their own volition, often to escape husbands or relatives opposing the Catholic faith.
The nuns provided instruction in French, Latin, prayer, sacred history, Catholic doctrine, and politeness. In return, the nuns learned Indigenous languages such as Huron, Algonquin, and Montagnais to produce catechisms, prayer books, and hagiographies in the local languages. A relationship marked by mutual fascination and curiosity gradually developed between the nuns and the Indigenous pupils. The sisters took note, sometimes with surprise, of the animal skins or blankets worn by the girls’ garments, which, as Ursuline Marie de l’Incarnation once wrote in a letter, “certainly do not carry the same fragrance as the dresses of ladies in France!” Similarly, the Indigenous girls were intrigued by the nuns’ austere clothing and reclusive lifestyle.
Through close daily contact, the sisters developed a deeper understanding of Indigenous lifeways. Marie de l’Incarnation noticed that Indigenous women were accustomed to living in forests, navigating rivers, hunting, and that they held a notable status within their communities. The education provided to Indigenous girls yielded tangible results: some became literate in French, acquired writing skills, and developed deep devotion to images of the Virgin Mary. Notably, in 1654, during the visit of several Iroquois ambassadors, a group of Indigenous girls educated by the nuns impressed those present by performing a trilingual sacred hymn in Latin, French, and Huron.
Nevertheless, over time, the broader project of assimilating Indigenous girls into French colonial culture proved difficult to sustain. In most cases, after spending time in the convents, the girls returned to live with their families. This recurring pattern led Marie de l’Incarnation to reflect on the distinction between religious conversion, which was often successful and complete cultural assimilation, which remained more elusive.