The Jesuit Relations (Relations des jésuites) are a collection of the letters and reports which Jesuit missionaries wrote back to France from New France and other parts of the New World. Covering a period of 200 years and beginning in 1611, the works were written annually and appeared in print beginning in 1632.
The Jesuit Relations present a highly literate account of life in New France. The letters represent both a personal chronicle of firsthand experiences and an impersonal, encyclopedic catalogue of the customs and beliefs of some unfamiliar culture about life in New France, in particular, the Native way of life.
The Jesuit Relations were avidly and widely read along with the works of Cartier and Champlain, as exciting travel literature. If Twitter, email, Facebook and Blogs had been around at that time, no doubt the Jesuits would have used them. And thus the name of our Blog – The Relations 2.0