Empire by Collaboration. Robert Michael Morrissey

and Christian wifehood as templates for their lives. Gravier’s conversations with the Illinois women featured discussions about important female saints like St. Cunegonde, who reluctantly married St. Henry and then convinced him to take a vow of chastity. Gravier encouraged his neophyte women to model their marital behavior after Cunegonde and other “Christian Ladies who have sanctified themselves in the state of matrimony—namely, St. Paula, St. Frances, St. Margaret, St. Elizabeth, and St. Bridget.” In a culture like that at Kaskaskia—violent and frequently oppressive to women—the role models of these pious saints were a means for women to resist.⁸⁸

      Soon there was a whole female subculture in Illinois that was built around Christianity. As Gravier observed, “most of the older girls confess themselves very well.”⁸⁹ Binneteau wrote that “the women and girls have strong inclinations to virtue.”⁹⁰ Thanks to Christianity, “the number of nubile girls and of newly-married women who retain their innocence is much greater” than among other groups, according to Gravier.⁹¹ Soon the Jesuits could generalize that Christianity was a means for the Illinois women to resist the gender expectations of their own people: “There are some among them who constantly resist, and who prefer to expose themselves to ill treatment rather than do anything contrary to the precepts of Christianity regarding marriage.”⁹²