Black Robe: A Journey of Love

Donald P. Goodman III

Director Bruce Beresford had read the novel by the name of Black Robe and sincerely wanted to make a movie. Finally, in 1991, that movie was released. With a few exceptions, it's a masterpiece, a tour-de-force that so beautifully protrays the Jesuit missions in North America that it cannot but inspire followers and prayers.

Despite our high praise for the film, readers will note that we gave it only three out of six stars. This is because of three very unfortunate scenes of sexual obscenity, borderline hard-core pornography, which make it very difficult to watch. It's impossible to give a film with such a problem a higher rating.

To make it safe to watch the film, one must skip through minute 21:00; minute 29:00; and minute 1:11:50-1:12:30. But it may well be better to skip the film entirely.

Background

In 1634, the Beaver Wars were ongoing. The French had arrived in Quebec not terribly long before; while Jacques Cartier had landed there in 1534, Samuel de Champlain did not found the first French colonies in North America until 1603. Quebec was primarily occupied by Algonquian tribes, who were historically bloody enemies with the powerful Iroquois Confederacy, centered in what is now Upstate New York. French alliances with the Algonquians, and later the Hurons, thus made France enemies of the Iroquois, as well, who allied on-and-off with the English to create a long-running conflict in the St. Lawrence region and throughout the North.

Into this situation came the Jesuits. While evangelization in Spanish colonies had been accomplished primarily by the Franciscans, and sometimes Dominicans, the Jesuits took the lead in French North America. Their garb was simple: a black robe. The Indians, therefore, customarily knew these men simply as Black Robes.

Indian religion in the northern regions varied considerably among tribes, and sometimes even among clans within tribes, but had generally the same outlines. Nature itself was worshipped; creatures had spirits, even plants and insects, and the only afterlife known to them was a spiritual version of their normal material lives. The ghosts of dead men would hunt the ghosts of dead animals in the forests. Many did believe in a “Great Spirit” who had made all the other spirits, like the ones that animated men themselves and the animals that they hunted; but this was often a very far-off notion. The non-material, spiritual religion preached by the Jesuits and believed by the French was something very alien to them.

It is important not to cast our modern racial notions back on this period. Nobody saw the situation as “Indians vs. whites”, or even “Indians vs. French”. The French were just one more tribe introduced into the political milieu of the area, just as were the British (still simply English at that time). It was, in other words, a situation of “Algonquin vs. Iroquois vs. Huron vs. French vs. English”; there were many tribes involved, and often the other Indian tribes were of greater concern than the Europeans, particularly in the early days when European numbers were still very low. Some tribes had significant advantages: the Iroquois were known for their large numbers, due to their confederacy, while the French were known for having firearms. But this was not, fundamentally, a racial conflict; it was a tribal one.

Finally, for those raised on a steady diet of Dances with Wolves mythology regarding our Native American brethren, this film will likely come as a shock. The Indians are violent, fantastically violent, violent in a way that makes the Europeans look like Ghandi-esque pacifists, even in a time when France had just recovered from its bloody religious wars and the Thirty Years War was still raging. The violence depicted in this film is accurate; Indians really were violent. Intertribal warfare was an integral part of their lives; indeed, many tribes could not have survived without the women and children that they stole from other tribes in these wars. Torture was a normal part of their warfare; prisoners had to be tortured, even those who would eventually be adopted into the tribe. Some Western tribes invested even more into their torture; for the Lakota, for example, the dead would often be mutilated because it would prevent their spirits from enjoying their afterlives. For these northern tribes, though, torture was a way to potentially break their prisoners; as is explained in one powerful scene in this film, if you cry out during your torture then you will lose your soul, and your enemy has won. Women or children might be murdered in front of you, as a way to break you. This was built into the societies of northern tribes.

This is not, of course, to say that the Indians were bad people. On the contrary, in many ways the Indians are superior to their European counterparts (who are themselves, of course, capable of their own brutal violence). The Indians are very loyal and faithful to one another; they will fight and die for one another without question; they share everything among each other without any signs of greed; and while their religion will seem very lacking to anyone with Christianity, they sincerely believe it and will act accordingly, even to their own great detriment.

In other words, the Indians are given dignity in this film; they are not whitewashed into hippie commune-dwelling nature-lovers, nor are they demonized as brutal savages. They are depicted, as closely as possible, as they really were—as are the French, for that matter. And that is a refreshing change.

Lastly, the beauty of the north country is depicted so powerfully in this film that it's impossible to do it justice. The cinematography is fantastic. Great swathes of the film are worth watching for no other reason.

Characters

There is a small number of characters that we really need to learn about, so let's go through them all, in what is probably the correct order of importance.

Father Paul LaForgue is the eponymous Black Robe that we're following throughout the film; there are very few scenes that do not involve him, either in front of the camera or providing its perspective. In the first half of the film, we are treated to scenes of Father LaForgue's background, and they are pretty critical to understanding the character, so we will go through a few of them here.

The first is a young man, clearly from a wealthy family, appearing in a church to serve the Mass of a priest, who is already vested. The priest, as LaForgue vests, says, “Good morning. You are to serve my Mass?” LaForgue notices that this priest is horribly disfigured, in both his face and hands. When the priest notices LaForgue observing these deformities, he says, “The savages did this to me.” “In New France?” asks LaForgue. The priest affirms this, and says something along the lines of, “They are savages, just as the English and Germans were savages before we brought our Faith to them.” He then tells LaForgue, “I am going back… what greater glory can there be?” This exchange clearly impacts LaForgue very deeply.

Next, we see LaForgue sitting with his mother, listening to a pretty young woman play the recorder. His mother remarks to him what a beautiful and talented girl she is, and from what a good family she comes. She is, indeed, a pretty girl, and she does play very well. But LaForgue will not be moved; he has already determined that he will go to New France and bring the Faith to those who do not know it.

And lastly, we meet LaForgue in his black robe, and his mother now praying before a statue of St. Joan of Arc. She tells him that she is praying to St. Joan to guide him, because she is certain that God has chosen him, her son, to die for the good of the Indians.

Next, we must consider Chomina, the Algonquin chief who is in the film nearly as much as LaForgue. Chomina is, as noted, a chief among his people; he is great and respected by all around him, including by Champlain, who meets him at one point with great pomp and circumstance. Chomina is fully and unreservedly one of his people, the greatest embodiment of all that is good about his culture that we see.

Annuka, Chomina's daughter, is a vital part of the story. As the chief's daughter, she is important, but her chief importance to our story is her relationship with a Frenchman, Daniel, and where that relationship leads him.

Daniel, a young French colonist, agrees to accompany Father LaForgue on his long voyage through the wilderness to the Huron mission, with the intent of eventually going back to France to study to be a Jesuit before returning. He is noted as speaking Algonquin nearly as well as a native (Father LaForgue's linguistic skills are good, but not nearly as good), and as being a reliable companion in the back country. He is good with a matchlock, can fight, and understands the Indian culture very well.

Other characters we will meet as we go along, but these four should be well known to the reader.

Plot

When the film opens, Father LaForgue has spent some time in New France learning the Algonquin and Huron languages, and he is now ready to leave Quebec and go to the Huron mission, hundreds of miles to the west through virgin wilderness subject to the incursion of hostile tribes, especially the Iroquois, about whom we will see much more later. Getting to this mission, therefore, is not an easy task. Champlain, the royal governer of New France, agrees to make sure that LaForgue can get there safely. He knows some Indians who can guide him; and, so it happens, they are right there in New France at that very moment.

But meeting with the Indians is often a delicate matter, so Champlain has to do it right. He and Chomina, the Algonquin chief we met above, will have to negotiate. The lead-up to this conversation provides one of the most poetic juxtapositions in all of film, and gives a counterintuitive lesson for us as we watch.

The Meeting of Champlain and Chomina

The Indians prepare Chomina very carefully for this meeting; Chomina, after all, is a great chief, and must look the part to the great chief of the French, Champlain. They help him put on his paint; they dress him in great furs, including a great bear fur as a cloak, and a tall headdress complete with pelts and feathers, so that all will know what a great hunter and warrior he is, and how many great warriors follow him.

As we watch Chomina ready himself for this meeting, we also see Champlain. Champlain, too, is a great chief; he is the royal governor of the French in North America, and he must look the part. He put on his shining iron breastplate; he puts on his royal pendant depicting his authority as governor; he puts on his broad hat with its great plume; and, most poignantly, he puts on a great bear skin much like Chomina's as a cloak.

Then, as the Indians wait outside the walls of the fledging colony, Champlain's soldiers line up. Though in less finery, they too are in the most impressive best: breastplates, plumed hats, swords, matchlocks, and a drummer and fifer proceed Champlain and the soldiers in solemn procession down the hill to the Indian encampment. As Champlain processes, Chomina likewise is led to the meeting place by his warriors, who are beating drums and singing along with their women.

As Champlain and Chomina negotiate, the men not specifically participating stand aside. The Indians are around the fire at their encampment, dancing and singing their songs; the French, though they don't have a fire, pass the time similarly, dancing and singing their songs.

This juxtaposition is a powerful reminder: in many ways, no matter how different our cultures are, we are very much the same. But it displays something that most films will not, and that perhaps this film didn't really intend to: we are still very different. But the differences are not in externals, which are surprisingly pretty similar. Rather, the differences are deep and abiding: our spirituality, our ways of viewing the world. It is that which marks the difference between the French and the Indians here; the externals, the pageantry, are really very much the same.

In any case, the negotiation is a success; Champlain offers Chomina some of the French's most useful items—knives, tools, beads, pots—in exchange for escorting Father LaForgue and Daniel to the Huron mission. Chomina takes the items; the pact is made. Father LaForgue can reach his people.

The Journey Begins

They begin to travel, canoeing mostly, and we watch Father LaForgue and Daniel interact with their Indian guides. At first, everything seems to be going well; Father LaForgue takes his own part in the travel, and he rows with the others, works with the others, eats and sleeps with the others, and seems to be accepted by them as an equal, albeit a rather strange one. But things do take a turn for the worse before long, when Father LaForgue shows them something that they can't understand. Surprisingly, it's not anything spiritual: but it is one of the greatest contributions of the Old World to the New.

Chomina is watching Father LaForgue writing in a journal; he is familiar, of course, with drawing pictures, but has never before seen writing, and since LaForgue does not appear to be drawing, Chomina asks him what he is doing. “I am making words,” he responds, and Chomina, confused, responds, “You're not speaking.” So LaForgue asks Chomina to tell him something that he doesn't know; Chomina responds, “My woman's mother died in the snow last winter.” LaForgue writes it down and brings it to Daniel; he hands him the book and asks Daniel to read it, and he does. The Indians are utterly shocked; the acting work here is impressive, as being shocked by something as mundane to us as writing cannot be an easy task.

This is true to reality; it's often true that illiterate peoples are amazed when they first encounter writing, and consider it some form of magic, sometimes black magic. The Indians here consider it to be such. Father LaForgue, though, misinterprets their shock as amazement rather than as concern; “There are still greater things than this that I can teach you,” he tells them, meaning that he can teach them to read and write as well as greater things. But the Indians are already contemplating whether they will have to kill him, since only a demon could impart knowledge to others without speaking, as men must do. Before long, they will consult a medicine man along the way (Mestigoit, remarkably well played by Yvan Labelle), about what to do.

Meanwhile, Daniel has been developing a relationship with Annuka, Chomina's daughter, and initiates a sexual relationship with her. This leads us to our first sex scene, which like all such scenes is totally unecessary, and really spoils the film. Father LaForgue sees some of this, and prays and does penance for Daniel; Daniel, under Annuka's influence, increasingly “goes native”, and before long is expressing contempt for LaForgue, his mission, and the faith that until recently they shared.

The Indians are already very suspicious of LaForgue, thinking he might be a demon; Annuka, with her relationship with Daniel, decides to just ask him. “Is the Black Robe a demon?” Daniel is amused by the question and replies in the negative. Annuka says, “He must be a demon; Black Robes never have sex with women.” Daniel tells her that it's a promise they make to “their God”; he has already distanced himself from his own religion. Annuka, confused, asks, “Why would you make a promise like that?” At this point, Daniel has no answer.

The Indians become further convinced of the Black Robe's otherworldly nature when they discuss tobacco, an interesting exchange that puts their borderline-materialist religion into the spotlight. Tobacco, not yet well known in France, was certainly familiar in North America; Daniel knows it and smokes it when offered. He then offers some to LaForgue, who coughs and says that it might take him some time to get used to it. The Indians then ask LaForgue, “Black Robe, tell us: will we have tobacco in your Paradise?” LaForgue responds, correctly, that they will have no need of tobacco; they will have God Himself, and want nothing. Their shocked response: “No women?” Contemplating a paradise in which the normal material pursuits of the material world are not necessary is very alien to them, and the Black Robe's putting aside of these pursuits further entrenches their notion that he must be, in some sense, otherworldly, and thus suspect.

We then meet Mestigoit, the medicine man, who lives alone but consults with Chomina and the other Indians about how to handle this magical Black Robe. Mestigoit is a fascinating character. At one point, for example, he notes that both Daniel and LaForgue have hair on their faces, “like a dog's face”; clearly, he has not encountered these strange white-skinned, bearded tribesmen before. He also overhears Daniel and LaForgue speaking in French, and he demands to know what these weird sounds they're making might be; Chomina tells him, “They have their own tongue; it is like the singing of birds.” Mestigoit is nearly immediately convinced that LaForgue is a demon, and that Daniel is at least demon-adjacent, given that they are obviously from the same tribe. And another event convinces him further.

One of the Indian women is pregnant, and she gives birth to the child at night; sadly, the child does not survive. The Indians sing a mourning song, and the woman takes the child into the woods and leaves the body in a tree. LaForgue follows her; when all have left, he christens the child himself. However, the Indians are watching, including Mestigoit, who says that clearly LaForgue is casting a spell on the infant and trying to steal his soul. This is enough; Chomina, against his better judgment, agrees that they will abandon LaForgue in the woods, abandon the trip to the Huron mission, and head to their winter hunting grounds.

The Abandonment

The next day, they do so, and LaForgue watches as the Indians row away, leaving him neither canoe nor provisions. Daniel, being demon-adjacent, is also abandoned; however, he has gone so native that he pursues the Indians, grabbing a canoe and paddling after them through the night, and leaving LaForgue alone in the woods. LaForgue sleeps without shelter under a tree, thanking God for his suffering, and asking for still more if it will bring salvation to the Indians.

As Daniel pursues the Indians, one decides that he must be killed, and draws his bow to shoot him. When Daniel rounds a corner, however, Chomina intervenes, pushing the bow away, narrowly saving Daniel's life. (Annuka, it is worth saying, does not seem particularly concerned about Daniel's impending death, and she does not visibly dispute the decision to abandon him as well as LaForgue.) It appears for a moment that Chomina and this other Indian may come to battle; however, Chomina makes his decision clear.

“I may be stupid,” he says, “but I agreed to take him to the Huron mission.”

Chomina is an honorable man; he had been convinced against his nature to abandon LaForgue, but he made an agreement and he will follow it. He, his wife, his daughter, and his son (who appears to be about ten years old, and is not named as far as I can tell) return to LaForgue, while the others proceed to the hunting grounds.

The Iroquois

When they reach LaForgue, they find him more or less in the same place, as he doesn't know how to get to the Huron mission from that location. But very soon, they are ambushed by a war party of Iroquois, who introduce themselves by putting an arrow through Chomina's wife's neck.

LaForgue, without fear, strides directly into the battle, where Chomina and Daniel are fighting valiantly against the far more numerous Iroquois, and baptizes her as she dies; he is then clubbed on the back of the head and loses consciousness.

Meanwhile, Chomina uses his Indian weapons, especially a spear, to fight; Daniel uses his matchlock, shooting one Iroquois dead, and proceeds to utilize the weapon as a club afterwards in very period-accurate form. (Normally, a sword would be employed, but he does not have one. This is long before the development of the bayonet.) All of them—Chomina, Daniel, LaForgue, Annuka, and Chomina's son—are taken captive and returned to the Iroquois village, where they find that their trials have just begun.

As they are lead to the village, Daniel has repented, and asks LaForgue to hear his confession. Inexplicably LaForgue responds, “God is with us; He is the one who forgives us.” True, of course; but the sacrament exists for a reason. This is a very strange choice for LaForgue here, and one of the movie's few real failings, especially since confession is remembered later on in a correct light.

At the village, they are forced to run the gauntlet, as all prisoners are: they must run between two rows of warriors, who are free to do whatever violence to the individuals between it they wish, without regard to age or sex. LaForgue is hit on the head and falls; Daniel, who is recovering his European sensibilities, braves the Iroquois clubs and goes back, helping LaForgue up and leading him through the rest of the gauntlet. But for bruises and pain, LaForgue, Daniel, Chomina's young son, and Annuka come through without serious harm; Chomina, however, is badly wounded. They are then dragged into a longhouse, stripped naked, and presented to the chief.

The chief, in his fearsome headdress and war paint, speaks to them in Algonquin. LaForgue is brought forward; Chomina warns him not to cry out, because this will enable the Iroquois to steal his soul. LaForgue doesn't believe this, of course, but he recognizes the importance of the advice; as the Iroquois chief selects a mussel shell and uses it to cut off Laforgue's finger, LaForgue does not cry out, and he is sent back into the line with the others.

Chomina tells LaForgue and Daniel that they should sing, and he, Annuka, and his son begin to sing one of their Algonquin songs; LaForgue and Daniel sing the Ave Maria together. The Iroquois chief is unamused, and an Iroquois steps forward, grabs Chomina's young son, and unceremoniously slits his throat in front of them and the rest of the village gathered in the longhouse, throwing his body to the side without ever batting an eye. Again in Algonquin, the Iroquois chief tells them that only more pain is in store for them, and that they would die slowly. They are left under guard for the night, and the Iroquois retire to decide how their captives will be killed.

Chomina, still badly wounded, says to Daniel, “You wanted to be one of us. What do you think now?” Daniel wants to defend his Algonquin friends; he responds, “That the Iroquois are not men; they are beasts.” But Chomina shakes his head. “No, they are the same as us. If they show pity, they seem weak.” And this is, again, true to reality; this is really how the northern tribes conducted warfare and treated prisoners. There is nothing abnormal about what has happened so far, as the torments that will likely be inflicted on them the next day are almost too horrible for description. Indians were known to slit open abdomens, tie prisoners' intestine around trees, and make them walk around; cut out pieces of their livers, or chunks of flesh, and make them eat; skin and flay them alive. The Indian perfection of the art of torture would make the most hardened jailer at the Tower of London, the most innovative torturer of an Inquisition prison, blush in shame. This is history, and this film does not shrink from it.

But now we have another unfortunate sex scene, which at least does advance the plot but could have been done without explicit visuals. Annuka, seeing a means of escaping, asks the guard for water, who releases it on condition of sexual intercourse. To effect that intercourse, he cuts her bonds, and after a few moments she bashes him over the head with his own club, and the four of them escape, heading again toward the Huron mission together.

The Dreams

Throughout the film, though, we have seen that Chomina is having dreams, and in Indian culture dreams are very important, very real, and in some ways even more real than the waking world. In his dream, he sees himself dying in the snow at a very specific and well-defined place; and as they flee the village, Chomina sees a spot that matches his dream. Therefore, he has to stop there and die. The dreams are real, and since he dreamed he would die there, he must die there; it's that simple. He lays himself down in the snow to die.

But LaForgue tries one more time to convert him, telling him that God loves him and wants to welcome him to Paradise. Behind him, Annuka demands that LaForgue leave Chomina to die on his own, that LaForgue is a fool to try to disregard the dream. Daniel, again in the Faith, tells Annuka, “No; he [LaForgue] loves him [Chomina].” Chomina refuses baptism; but he does say goodbye to LaForgue and calls him “friend”. LaForgue, honoring Chomina's wishes, leaves with Annuka and Daniel.

They travel for an indeterminate time; winter has fully fallen, and the river freezes, preventing their canoes from going any further. Annuka then insists that she and Daniel should again abandon LaForgue; she reminds them both that, in her father's dream, “the Black Robe walks alone.” Daniel, however, has remembered his faith; he tells LaForgue, “Father, I will go with you.”. But LaForgue refuses. “She needs you; she has lost everything because of us.” He tells Daniel to stay with Annuka and see her safely back to her people; he proceeds on his way to the Huron mission alone.

The Huron Mission

When he reaches the mission, he finds it nearly abandoned, or at least apparently so; we do see some Indians carefully observing his approach. Father LaForgue finds that one of the two priests at the mission has been killed; his body lies unburied in the nave of the small wooden church inside the village. Father LaForgue buries this priest; as he does so, several of the Hurons are watching him, and they speak to one another.

One says, “The Black Robes want us to stop obeying the dreams, to have only one wife, to stop killing our enemies. If we do this, we will no longer be Hurons.” Another says, “We will cut pieces of their flesh from them and make them eat.” Obviously, things do not look good for Father LaForgue, though he is unaware that they are watching him.

The other priest Father LaForgue finds still alive; Fr. Jerome is very old, and at death's door himself. A plague had come to the village, and many Indians had died; convinced that the Jesuits had brought it with them, to punish those who didn't accept the Faith, they had murdered the other priest. Fr. Jerome thinks that they will likely murder the two of them, as well.

There is one hope, though, Fr. Jerome says; they may believe that baptism will save them, and thus ask to be baptized. Father LaForgue protests this, saying that they should not baptize the Indians unless they understand. The two priests hear each others' confessions; Fr. Jerome dies during the night.

The next day, LaForgue stands before the altar of God and begs Him to help him teach the Indians. He then rings the church bell and comes outside. The Indians come outside, as well; it is the first time they have seen LaForgue, other than the ones who had watched him burying his fellow priest.

The chief steps forward. “Many want to kill you, Black Robe,” he says, and Father LaForgue nods.

“I know.”

“If we take your water sorcery, will it heal us?”

Father LaForgue shakes his head; it will not heal you, but it will open up for you a place in Paradise. To be healed, you must pray, and God may listen to your prayers.

“Black Robe, do you love us?”

And here is a deeply moving sequence. Father LaForgue reflects on all his experiences in the film. We see go through his head the kindnesses he had received from the Indians. We also see all the tortures and abuse he had received; the beating in the gauntlet, the amputation of his finger, Mestigoit attempting to expel him as a demon, his abandonment in that vast wildnerness by his friends. Do I love you? Do I love the people who abandoned me, abused me, tortured me?

But Father LaForgue is a Christian; he does love them. And he nods. “Yes.”

The chief is satisfied. “Then baptize us.” LaForgue does so, baptizing the whole village.

Conclusion

And that, dear reader, is what this movie is about: it is about love. It is not about the conflict between tribes and nations, the Beaver Wars, the hatred of the Iroquois and the Algonquins, the culture of the Huron, the evils of colonialism. It is about love. It is never questioned, throughout the whole film, that Father LaForgue is in New France, risking his life, enduring incredible hardships and pains, solely for love: love of the Indians, so badly in need of englithement, like the English and Germans and French before they had been taught the Faith. Daniel finally understands that, when he rebukes Annuka concerning LaForgue's final attempt at conversion: “No, he loves him.” Missions make no sense whatsoever, except in the light of this indescribable love.

Praise be to Christ the King!