Modernization Theory is Hokum.

[jmm99]

You can quote 10,000 statements by Jesuits and other religious administrators about Indians - which boiled down to the difficulties in converting them and keeping them on the "right path".

The French regime's civil administrators in Quebec and the Great Lakes (where civil and military administration were often combined) often disliked the missionaries; and as amply proved, followed a "hands off" policy. That doesn't mean there were no nasty altercations with Indians, the Iroquois being front and foremost until just after 1700. The Fox in the Great Lakes were another avowed French-Canadian enemy. Both were enemies because the French-Canadians formed early alliances with Indian groups that were at war with either the Iroquois or Fox. More than one of my geneological entries has "tue par les Iroquois" for cause of death. Militarily, both sides gave as well as they took.

The Jesuits tended to catch it from both sides. The French-Canadians knew the Jesuits would do anything for the greater glory of God and obtaining converts; and the Quebec civil and military establishments were far down the Jesuits' list of priorities. Many Indians would have shared to some extent the Iroquois sentiments that you quote:

He adds that the black-gowned men are here only as spies, and convey all information to Onnontio,—that is, to Monsieur the Governor; or that they are sorcerers, who effect by disease what Onnontio cannot accomplish by his arms. I know with certainty that my death has been proposed, on the ground that I am a spy, and more or less a sorcerer; and that our host himself, Onnonkenritaoui, the most influential Chief of this great Nation, has often proposed to his sister to kill me as a sorcerer, when she declared to him her great distrust of me because of her daughter’s frequent fits of sickness.

As to Garnier's "rumor of war", a French army advancing, I'm not aware of any French attacks in 1672. An uneasy truce was in effect then. But, I did some research and found this, Temporary Peace (by Francis Jennings):

... in 1672 France and England joined in war against the Netherlands. In the same year Canada and New York suppressed the feud between the Mohawks and the Mahicans. When the Mahicans proposed an expedition against the Mohawks, the French rejected it. The Mohawks heard of the proposal and ran to Albany. "We have accepted the peace which has been made by you people," they said. "Speak with the Mahikanders so that they come and do as we do." Albany's magistrates promised to "take care that the peace will remain steadfast" and to "force the Mahikanders to come here," continuing with the promise of explicit sanctions: "if they come to slay one of you, then they will see that they will have to deal with us, and we will revenge it." Peace ensued. It was indeed so reliable a peace that Mohawks could afford to get roaring drunk in Albany and stagger back home along paths formerly overrun by Mahican bushwhackers. On the French side, missionary Father Lamberville thought it was a "baleful peace" that created such opportunities for continued drunkenness, but Governor Frontenac enforced it. Thus the Indian allies of France's colony and England's colony were pacified immediately when the empires leagued.[64]

The alliance between Stuart and Bourbon was not matched by amity between Stuart and Calvert. Intermittent and desultory war continued between James Stuart's Iroquois and Charles Calvert's Susquehannock's, to the apparent disadvantage of the Iroquois. In 1672 a war party of Senecas and Cayugas was routed by equal numbers of Susquehannock adolescents. In 1673 the Iroquois appealed for help from their new friends in Canada; they "earnestly exhorted" Governor Frontenac to assist them against the Susquehannock's because "it would be a shame for him to allow his children to be crushed, as they saw themselves about to be . . . they not having the means of going to attack [the Susquehannock's] in their fort, which was very strong, nor even of defending themselves if the others came to attack them in their villages." Frontenac put them off without a commitment, and the odds are long that he did not arm them covertly: first, because it was no time for the French to be meddling with Indian conflicts deep within English territory; secondly, because Frontenac's government was suffering from an acute shortage of munitions for its own defense, as he reported to France in November, 1674.[65]

This is a significant date. According to the usual sort of comment about the Susquehannock's, they are supposed to have been badly beaten by the Iroquois sometime between 1672 and 1675. We have seen what shape the Iroquois were in until 1672. The French records make it clear that the Iroquois could not possibly have launched a successful attack before July, 1673, when they met with Frontenac; and they could not have obtained any considerable supply of arms from the French thereafter through November, 1674. Even if we suspect Frontenac of wanting to arm the Iroquois clandestinely, we must conclude that he could not have done so through the winter of 1674/1675; because of the winter freeze on the St. Lawrence, it was impossible for Frontenac's appeal for an arms shipment from France to be answered before the spring thaw. The importance of all this arises from the fact that the Susquehannock's abandoned their old village and fort on the Susquehanna River in February, 1675, to retire into Maryland.[66] Assuming, only for the sake of argument, that the retirement had been forced by Iroquois pressure the Iroquois would have had to get arms from somewhere besides Canada. Was it Albany, then? There are excellent reasons for rejecting this possibility also, but they must be seen as part of the whole pattern of events at Chesapeake and Delaware bays.[66]

Notes:

64 Treaty minutes, Albany, 23 July, 1672, Livingston Indian Records, pp. 35-37; Jean Dc Lamberville, "Relation of 1672-73," Jesuit Relations 57: p. 81.

65 Pierre Raffeix, June, 1672, Jesuit Relations 56: pp. 55-57; Frontenac's journal, 17-18 July 1673, N. V. Col. Does. 9: pp. 108, 110-111; Frontenac to Colbert, 14 Nov., 1674, ibid. 9: pp. 116117.

66 Minutes, 19 Feb., 1675, Md. Arch. (Upper House) 2: pp. 428-429.

From all that, we can conclude that Garnier was not in the know about the true state of Quebec-Iroquois civil and military relations in 1672.

Creighton is a good source for the JR in English, The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents 1610 to 1791.

Regards

Mike