LAFITAU, JOSEPH-FRANÇOIS – Method of preparing food among the American Indians. Engraving from the original edition – Roms, copy in the library of Civiltà Cattolica.
Miami, Montgomery, Newton, Pulaski, Randolph, Tippacanoe, Tipton, Warren White.
It has an area of 9,832 square miles and a population of 687,212 inhabitants, of whom 39,088 are Catholics. It has 58 parishes, 56 diocesan priests and 72 religious, 5 male and 7 female religious communities, one college, 3 diocesan and parish high schools, and 31 parish schools; in 1949 there were 440 conversions.
The diocese was created by Pope Pius XII by the apostolic constitution Ut sedulo studio of 21 October 1944, through the division of the diocese of Fort Wayne; the parish church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary was raised to the rank and dignity of a cathedral and assigned as a suffragan see of Indianapolis.
Returning to France in 1617 to plead the cause of the mission and to obtain a decree prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages to the Indians, he took advantage of the opportunity to make known the qualities and usefulness of a plant that he had discovered in Canada: Mémoires... concernant la précieuse plante Ging-Seng de Tartarie (Paris 1718; cf. Mémoires de Trévoux, 1718, pp. 485-509); but despite the great commotion aroused by the discovery, as though it concerned a new vein of gold for commerce, in the end nothing came of it, both because of the limited production and because of the depreciation of the commodity, prepared by excessively rapid drying processes. L. was to return to Canada (and was greatly desired there because of his knowledge of the Indians and their language); but they wished to keep him in France as procurator of the mission.
He then composed a work of great ethnological value: Moeurs des sauvages américains comparés aux moeurs des premiers temps (2 vols., there 1724; cf. ibid., 1724, pp. 1565-1609; 2001-29; 1725, pp. 197-239). Drawing on the extensive information supplied to him by Fr. Julien Garnier, a missionary for 60 years among the Algonquins, Hurons, and Iroquois, and adding to it the fruits of his careful studies in the field, he produced a work that makes him the true creator of the comparative ethnographic method, so fertile in results in the field of sociology. He maintains therein, in fact, for the first time that the study of the customs and rites of present-day primitive peoples explains the rites and customs of classical antiquity, because in the material collected one must distinguish what is common to all peoples, and therefore must be attributed to God’s primitive revelation to Adam, from what is instead more particular and more characteristic, which must be explained by direct or indirect relations among the various peoples. Another work of value is: Histoire des découvertes et conquêtes des Portugais dans le Nouveau Monde (2 vols., there 1733, cf. ibid., 1734, pp. 197-225; 505-21).