Where Do You Find A Three Hundred Year Old Jesuit Ring?

ILLINOIS STYLE: Newly found artifacts recall Cahokia's French days
By GEORGE PAWLACZYK Sunday, August 12, 2007 1:44 PM CDT

WOOD RIVER, Ill. - A small brass ring lay recently on a long table lined with a sampling from hundreds of French Colonial relics excavated in March and April near the Jarrot mansion in Cahokia.

There were musket flints, colorful, glazed pottery shards, pieces of hand-blown bottles, a belt buckle and imported-glass trade beads not much bigger around than a pencil lead. All had been excavated from a strip of ground about 45 feet wide and 250 feet long.

But it was the ring, darkened, brownish green, made of brass and probably intended for a child, that excited cultural archaeologist Patrick Durst of the Illinois Transportation Archaeological Research Program. Known as a "Jesuit ring," it is probably about 300 years old. Only about 30 such rings have been found in Illinois, Durst said.

When it was found by one excavator, others gathered to see the treasure.

"I definitely thought it was one of the more interesting artifacts that we'd found at that site. You could definitely tell it had an importance to it," Durst said as he discussed the items displayed at the research program's storage site and laboratory in Wood River.

In the Metro East, discoveries concerning the mound-building Mississippians, American Indians who lived about a thousand years ago, dominate local archaeological news. Everyday items from the region's first European settlers and historic-era Indians seldom generate publicity.

Durst said he hopes that by studying relics left by French settlers and Indians found mixed together in buried structures, such as cellars and the remains of early French post-and-sill buildings, he can contribute to evidence that relations between the groups were remarkably peaceful. That would be a contrast to relations of about the same period between the warring Iroquois and French on the East Coast, in which six Jesuit priests and two laymen were martyred in an eight-year period between 1642 and 1649. The surviving priests and about 300 Huron Indians fled to Quebec in 1650.

"This was the edge of the frontier," Durst said of the fledgling community of Cahokia, which dates from 1699. "This was an outpost for New France and Quebec."The rare ring was probably given as a peace symbol or as a trade item by Catholic priests assigned to Cahokia from the Seminary of Foreign Missions in Quebec. However, the term "Jesuit ring" is used for all such rings because many were found in Canada and New York State, where the Jesuits were among the first European emissaries.

The ring is marked with the Roman numeral II, which is surrounded by an incised and braided border. Other Jesuit rings have contained other unexplained numbers and letters, including the numeral VI and the letters NN and sometimes a cross. Some archaeologists believe the rings can be used to date a site; others discount this theory.

It may have been fear of the far-ranging Iroquois that hastened an alliance between the local Cahokia and Tamaroa Indians and priests and settlers, Durst said.

"They're living together in the settlement of Cahokia. They're living in the same setting in close proximity to one another. The native Americans would have everyday interaction with the French and vice versa," he said, "They definitely both benefited from each other's presence. Once they became settled, they definitely lived among each other."
A service of the Associated Press(AP)

Original article (here)