The Jesuits’ move away from their unsuccessful efforts at residential schooling did not mean that this style of education was completely abandoned, for the black robes were soon succeeded by new groups of female religious who arrived on the banks of the St. Lawrence in 1639. Indeed, the education of Indian girls had long been a particular concern of the male orders. Unfortunately, in the opinion of the Jesuits, the limited attempts at residential schooling of girls by boarding them in the houses of French families did not completely change the young ladies while the black robes were in control.

      Not surprisingly, then, the Jesuits, who found it unthinkable to teach young girls themselves, were delighted in the summer of 1639 to see a ship arrive at Quebec carrying both Hospitaller sisters and a group of Ursulines. Scarcely a month after their arrival and installation in makeshift quarters, the Ursulines were reporting that they had ‘six pensionaires sauages’ to instruct alongside the French girls. In spite of the fears that the loss of four girls from smallpox would prejudice the parents of others against the institution, the Ursulines were able to increase their enrollment rapidly. Within two years they were instructing forty-eight pupils, and by 1642 they had moved into a three-story convent in Quebec’s upper town.

      For the Ursulines, as for the male orders before them, the passage of time brought disillusionment with the residential school experiment. By 1668, Ursulines, who had more experience than anyone else in the colony, had to admit that ‘de cent de celles qui ont passé par nos mains à peine en acons nous civilisé une.’