1991, Directed by Bruce Beresford and adapted by Brian Moore from his 1985 novel Black Robe. 101 minutes. Can be found on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMcUG2YDeu8.

Black Robe focuses on the trials and travels of a 17th century French Jesuit and his young companion as they travel 1500 miles from Quebec City to a Huron mission by canoe. The film, adapted from a 1985 novel of the same name, is a fictional account, but does utilize the Jesuit Relations, which are the collected writings of Jesuit missionaries in North America from the 17th century through the 19th century. While using primary sources, the Jesuit Relations are notoriously difficult to use as they were primarily accounts highlighting the trials and tribulations and successes and sacrifices of the Jesuits as they worked among the sauvages for the “greater glory of God.”

When looking at Black Robe through the lens of historical thinking, we can see a couple major themes that are useful to consider, which are the way the creators depict both the similarities and differences between the cultures. This can be seen in two key scenes in the movie. Early on in the film, as the Jesuits and their First Nations guides are preparing to leave Quebec City for their journey to Huronia, we see celebrations and ceremonies of both the French colonists and Indigenous peoples. Both groups are shown alternatingly dancing to their own music. Furthermore, we see their leaders, Champlain for the French and Chomina for the Algonquians, putting on their own ceremonial garb. So the actions are the same, but the details of culture, clothes, music, dancing, etc, are different. The two groups and their leaders meet so the French can give the Algonquians goods–axes, knives, tobacco, cloth–in exchange for escorting the Jesuit and his young companion to the Huron mission 1500 miles inland. There is a line from what appears to be a French nobleman who witnesses the dancing and the ceremony. He says “We’re not colonizing the Indians, they’re colonizing us (12:19).” This sums up a key argument that historian James Axtell made in his 1985 monograph The Invasion Within: The Contest for Culture in Colonial North America and further explored in Colin Calloway’s 1998 monograph New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans the Remaking of Early America, which is how the various forms of exchange in colonial North America–economic, cultural, biological–was a two way street between Europeans and Indigenous peoples.

This theme of the back and forth of cultural exchange as well as the tensions between the two groups can further be seen in the person of Daniel Davost who serves as Fr. LaForgue’s companion. Daniel speaks Algonquian and while he says he is interested in becoming a Jesuit, he soon finds himself drawn to the young Algonquian woman Annuka, the daughter of Chomina and part of the obligatory love interest of the film. He learns of Algonquian religious beliefs and explains their ideas of an after life to Fr. LaForgue who calls them childish. Daniel’s response is “Is it harder to believe than a paradise where we all sit on clouds and look at God (44:10).” Again we see the sameness in having understandings of an afterlife and creator but the differences in those beliefs create the tensions between the two.

Visually I enjoy how the director juxtaposes the religious environments of the two groups. Fr. LaForgue is lost in the woods and the director shoots from a low perspective looking up and alternating between panning through the trees of the North American forest and then the high arches of European cathedrals. Both sacred spaces that take the eyes of the viewer to the skies but where LaForgue, who is home in a cathedral, is lost and afraid in the forest (39:30).

Black Robe was hailed by many as a film from an Indigenous perspective, but there are several issues with the veracity of this, and this is probably where many of the historical inaccuracies are. One of the biggest issues is the depiction of the Mohawks as bloodthirsty savages. Of course, this is how they are portrayed in the Jesuit Relations. The director tries to mitigate this with Chomina saying that the Mohawks are no different than the Algonquians, but the actions of the Mohawks speak louder. Chomina’s son is killed in front of him by the Mohawks and his daughter, Annuka, gives herself sexually to their Mohawk guard in order for Chomina, Annuka, Daniel, and LaForgue to escape. Neither of these events are likely to have happened, but they make for good cinema. You need a bad guy, and, unfortunately, the Mohawks continue to serve that stereotyped purpose well into the 20th century.

Black Robe allows for several different questions regarding historical thinking. I would ask students to look for those moments where not only the past was a foreign country to us, and their are many, but how the film depicts the sameness and differences among the First Nations and the French. The two groups had to negotiate the same tensions of foreignness that we do today when looking back historically. I would also like for the students to look at the Jesuit Relations and see how they were used in the film. Here we get into all sorts of issues of using primary sources. As stated above, the Relations are notoriously problematic. How does the director deal with those issues? To answer that, first students would have to look into the Jesuit Relations themselves and understand those texts as historical evidence and not just information. I also would want students to ask questions regarding the depiction of Algonquian thoughts and Mohawk practice, as well as the character of Mestigoit, a Montagnais shaman who was cast as a spiritual counter to LaForgue. If some of the depictions are not accurate, I want students to research what is accurate? Do the inaccuracies take away from the historical value? Lastly, I would want students to view the film as a primary document itself. It was filmed in 1991, a year before the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the “New World.” How does that fact affect our understanding of the film’s message?