Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 1.djvu/351

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ALGIERS
311
ALGONQUINS

first to the seventh session. It contains 20 parishes, 71 secular priests, 54,300 inhabitants.

Cappelletti, Le chiese d'Italia (Venice, 1866), XIII. 141; Gams, Series episcoporum ecclesiæ catholicæ (Ratisbon, 1873), 832; Matthæi, Sardinia Sacra (Rome, 1758), 171.

Algiers (Icosium), The Archdiocese of, comprises the province of Algérie in French Africa. Its suffragans are the Sees of Oran and Constantine. In 1632, several missions were established in Algeria; soon after, an apostolic-vicar was installed there, who, towards the end of the seventeenth century had under him the pro-vicar of Tunis and the prefect of Tripoli. The episcopal See of Algiers, founded in the second century at Icosium did not survive the Arabic conquest. It was re-established in 1838 as a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Aix. Mgr. Antoine Adolph Dupuch (d. 1856) was its first bishop until 1845, when he resigned and was succeeded by Mgr. Antoine Pavy (1846–66). On the death of the latter, Algiers become an archdiocese, with two newly-created sees (1867), Oran and Constantine, for suffragans. Mgr. Charles Martial Allemand Lavigerie, Bishop of Nancy, become its first archbishop (d. 1893). The church of Algiers honours in a special manner the memory of several holy confessors of the Order of Our Lady of Mercy for the Redemption of Captives founded in 1232 by St. Peter Nolasco. Among them are St. Peter Armengaud (thirteenth century), confessor at Algiers. It cherishes also a particular veneration for the memories of Blessed Raymond Lully who died at Bougie in 1325, and the Venerable Geronimo, buried alive at Algiers in 1569. The Diocese of Algiers contained (end of 1905), 220,843 inhabitants of European birth (exclusive of the army), 8 first-class; 101 second-class parishes and 25 vicariates, formerly with State subventions. There were also 24 auxiliary priests.

Dupuch, Fastes de l'Afrique chrêtienne (Bordeaux, 1849); Grussenmeyer, Vingt-cinq années d'épiscopat en France, et en Afrique: documents biographiques sur le Cardinal Lavigerie (Algiers, 1888); Chevalier, Topo-bibl. (Paris, 1894–99), 52.

Algonquins.—The Indians known by this name were probably at one time the most numerous of all the North American tribes. Migrations, inter-marriages, political alliances, wholesale absorption of captives and desertions, however, make it impossible to fix the tribal limits with any degree of exactness; yet the Algonquins may be said to have roamed over the country from what is now Kentucky to Hudson Bay, and from the Atlantic to the Mississippi and perhaps beyond. The Micmacs, Abenakis, Montagnais, Penobscots, Chippewas, Mascoutens, Nipissings, Sacs, Pottowatomies, and Illinois, the Pequods of Massachusetts, the Mohegans of New York, the Lenapes of Pennsylvania and Delaware, with many other minor tribes, may be classed among them. Linguistically and physically they have many unmistakable traits in common. John Eliot and Cotton Mather had a very poor idea of them and spoke of their condition as "infinitely barbarous". The early French missionaries gave more flattering accounts of their intellectual power, their poetry, their oratory, their nobility of character, and even their mechanical skill.

Page from Algonquin Dictionary

In his "Indian Tribes of the United States", though referring to somewhat more modern Indians, Drake rather shares the latter view, at least with regard to the Algonquins of Lake Superior. The name Algonquin seemed to be a general designation, and it is not certain that they were united in a confederation at least in one as compact and as permanent as that of the Iroquois, who supplanted and crushed them. Whatever union there was had given way before the whites arrived. It is regarded as one of the mistakes of Champlain that he espoused the cause of the Algonquins, whose power was not only waning but who were actually vassals of the Iroquois, and made war against the Iroquois, their enemies; a policy which, besides, threw the Iroquois with the English and resulted in so many bloody wars. In his Preface to the "Jesuit Relations", Thwaites is of the opinion that they have made a larger figure in our history than any other family, because through their lands came the heaviest and most aggressive movement of white population, French and English;