French Pathfinders in North America Part 8

These Jesuit priests commonly were highly educated men, accustomed to all the refinements of life--some of them of n.o.ble families--and we can only measure their devotion to the cause of religion when we realize the contrast between their native surroundings and the repulsive savagery into which they plunged when they went among the Indians. Think of such a man as {150} Father Le Jeune, cultivated and high-minded, exiling himself from his white brethren for a whole season, which he spent with a band of Algonquins, roaming the wintry forests with them, sharing their hunger and cold and filth, sometimes on the verge of perishing from sheer starvation, at other times, when game chanced to be plentiful, revolted by the gorging of his companions, at all times disgusted by their nastiness. "I told them again and again," he writes, "that if dogs and swine could talk, they would use just such speech;" a remark which shows, by the way, that the good friar did not think so highly of dumb animals as we do in these more enlightened days.

But he had abundant charity, and he noted that underneath all this coa.r.s.e rudeness there was genuine fellowship among these savages; that they cheerfully helped one another, and when food was scarce, fairly distributed the smallest portion among all. Such observations helped him to endure his lot with serenity, even when he was himself made the b.u.t.t of the coa.r.s.est jokes. He survived his hard experiences and, after five months of roaming, exhausted and worn to a shadow, rejoined the brethren in the rude convent at Quebec.

{151}

There was much of this fine spirit about the best of the Jesuits. But, besides this individual devotion, there was another important circ.u.mstance: they were only private soldiers in a great army. They had no will of their own, for one of the first principles of the Order was absolute obedience. Wherever their superiors might send them they must go without a question. Whatever they might be ordered to do, they must do it without a murmur.

It became the policy of the leading men of the Order in Canada to establish missionary posts among the Hurons who, living in fixed habitations, were more hopeful subjects than the roving Algonquins of the St. Lawrence region. It would be a great gain, they reasoned, if these people could be brought within the pale of the Church. At the same time that so many souls would be saved from everlasting flames, the immensely lucrative fur-trade of a vast region would be secured to the French, and the King would gain thousands of dusky subjects. Canada would flourish, the fur-traders would grow richer than ever, and France would be in the way of extending her rule ever farther and further over the western forests and waters--all through the {152} exertions of a few faithful and single-hearted men who went to preach religion.

The three men chosen for the work among the Hurons were Fathers Brebeuf, Daniel, and Davost. On their journey to their post, if they could have followed a direct line, they would have gone up the St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario, traversed the length of the lake, and then by a short overland journey reached their destination. But this route would have exposed them to the ferocious Iroquois, whose country bordered Lake Ontario on the south. Therefore, it was necessary to take the long and circuitous canoe-voyage which Champlain had taken fifteen years earlier (_See map_).

At last, after many pains and perils, half-dead with hunger and fatigue, they reached a village of the Huron country. Soon they settled down to the routine of their daily life, of which they have left us a very readable account. Every day they had numerous visitors, some from long distances, who came to gaze in silent wonder at their domestic arrangements. For instance, there was the clock. They squatted on the floor for hours, watching it and waiting to hear it strike. They thought it was alive and asked what it ate. {153} They listened in awe when it struck, sure that they heard the voice of a living being. "The Captain"

they called it.

Sometimes one of the French soldiers who accompanied the Jesuits, when "the Captain" had sounded his last stroke, would cry out, "Stop!" Its immediate silence proved that it heard and obeyed.

"What does the Captain say?" the Indians sometimes asked.

"When he strikes twelve times, he says, 'Hang on the kettle,' and when he strikes four times, he says, 'Get up and go home.'"

This was a particularly happy thought; at the stroke of four their visitors would invariably rise and take themselves off.

In spite of the lack of outward signs of success, the good men were making a conquest of the savage people's hearts. Their unwearied patience, their kindness, the innocence of their lives, and the tact with which they avoided every occasion of ill-will, did not fail to gain the confidence of those whom they sought to win, and chiefs of distant villages came to urge that they would take up their abode with them.

Soon the Huron country contained no less than {154} six different points where faithful priests preached the gospel.

The Fathers had abundant opportunities of observing the habits of the natives. They have left a most interesting description of the great Feast of the Dead, which was held at intervals of ten or twelve years, and the object of which was to gather into one great burying-place all the dead of the tribe, these being removed from their temporary resting-places on scaffolds and in graves. It was believed that the souls of the dead remained with their bodies until the great common burial, then they would depart to the spirit-world.[1]

This practice, of a great common burial, explains the occurrence, in various parts of the country once occupied by the Hurons, of pits {155} containing the remains of many hundreds of persons all mixed together promiscuously, together with belts of wampum, copper ornaments, gla.s.s beads, and other articles. One of these deposits is said to have contained the remains of several thousand persons.[2]

The story of Isaac Jogues is a good example both of the Jesuit missionaries' sufferings and of their fort.i.tude. He had gone to Quebec for supplies and was returning to the Huron country with two young Frenchmen, Goupil and Couture, and a number of Hurons. Suddenly the war-whoop rang in their ears, and a fleet of Iroquois canoes bore down upon them from adjacent islands, with a terrific discharge of musketry.

The Hurons for the greater part leaped ash.o.r.e and fled. Jogues sprang into the bulrushes and could have got away. When he saw some of the converted Indians in the hands of their enemies, he determined to share their fate, came out from his hiding-place, and gave himself up. Goupil {156} was taken prisoner. Couture had got away, but the thought of the fate that probably awaited Jogues decided him to go back and cast in his lot with him. In the affray, however, he had killed an Iroquois. In revenge, the others fell upon him furiously, stripped off all his clothing, tore away his finger-nails with their teeth, gnawed his fingers, and thrust a sword through one of his hands. Jogues broke from his guards, ran to his friend, and threw his arms about his neck. This so incensed the Iroquois that they turned upon him, beat him with their fists and war-clubs till he was senseless, and gnawed his fingers as they had done Couture's. Goupil next received the same ferocious treatment.

The victorious Iroquois now started off with their captives for their country. Their route lay up the river Richelieu, through the length of Lake Champlain, and through the greater part of Lake George to a point where they were wont to leave it and cross over to the Hudson. There was picturesque scenery by the way. But what charm had the beauties of Lake Champlain and distant glimpses of the Adirondacks for the poor prisoners, hara.s.sed by the pain and fever of their wounds, in the day cruelly beaten by their captors and at {157} night so tormented by clouds of mosquitoes that they could not sleep? In time they pa.s.sed the sites of Crown Point and Ticonderoga, sighted romantic Lake George, which these three lonely white men were the first of their race to see, and landed from their canoes at the place where afterward rose Fort William Henry, the scene of one of the most shocking tragedies of the Colonial Wars.

Thirteen dreadful days the journey occupied, from the St. Lawrence to its termination at a palisaded town on the banks of the Mohawk. On Lake Champlain they had met a war-party of Iroquois, and the prisoners, for their delight, had been compelled to run the gauntlet between a double line of braves armed with clubs and th.o.r.n.y sticks. When Jogues fell drenched in blood and half-dead, he was recalled to consciousness by fire applied to his body. Couture's experience ill.u.s.trates a singular trait of the ferocious Iroquois. There was nothing that they admired so much as bulldog courage; and though he had exasperated them by killing one of their warriors, they punished him only by subjecting him to excruciating tortures. His fort.i.tude under these still further increased their admiration and they ended by adopting him {158} into the tribe. Many years later we read of him still living among the Mohawks. Jogues and Goupil they dragged from town to town, in each place exposing them on a scaffold and subjecting them to atrocities contrived to cause the utmost suffering without endangering life. Yet, in an interval between tortures, Jogues seized an opportunity to baptize some Huron prisoners with a few rain-drops gathered from the husks of an ear of green corn thrown to him for food.

Three of the Hurons were burned to death, and the two Frenchmen expected the same fate. Goupil did indeed meet with his death, but in a different way. He was once seen to make the sign of the cross on the forehead of a grandchild of the Indian in whose lodge he lived. The old man's superst.i.tion was aroused, having been told by the Dutch that the sign of the cross came from the Devil. So he imagined that Goupil had bewitched the child.

The next morning, as the two Frenchmen were walking together, talking of the glory of suffering for the sake of Christ, they met two young Indians, one of whom buried his hatchet in Goupil's head. Jogues gave absolution to his dying friend and then, kneeling calmly, bowed his neck to the blow {159} which he expected. Instead, he was ordered to get up and go home.

For a time his life hung on a thread. He would have welcomed death. But the very indifference to it which he showed was probably the reason why the Iroquois spared him. Now he led an existence of horrible drudgery.

After a while, as he showed no disposition to escape, he was allowed to come and go as he pleased. So he went from town to town, teaching and baptizing whenever he could get a chance. The gangs of prisoners whom the Iroquois brought home from the Huron country, and whom they almost invariably burned, furnished him an abundance of subjects to work on.

Once it happened that he went with a party of Indians to a fishing-place on the Hudson. Thence some of them went up the river to Fort Orange, a miserable structure of logs, standing within the limits of the present city of Albany. The Dutch settlers there had heard of Jogues's captivity and, strenuous Protestants though they were, had striven to secure his release by offering goods to a large value. Now that he was among them, they urged him not to return to his captors, but to make his escape, since his death was certain, if he went back. They offered to smuggle him {160} on board a vessel that lay in the river and pay his way to France. He resolved to seize the tempting opportunity.

It would make our story too long if we should tell at length the narrow escapes that he still experienced before he succeeded in getting away.

At his first attempt to slip away at night, he was severely bitten by a savage dog belonging to the Dutch farmer with whom he and the Indians lodged. When he got off he lay two days hidden in the hold of the vessel that was to carry him away. Then the Indians came out and so frightened its officers that he was sent ash.o.r.e and put under the care of a miserly old fellow who ate the most of the food that was provided for Jogues.

While he was hidden in this man's garret he was within a few feet of Indians who came there to trade. Finally the Dutch satisfied the Indians by paying a large ransom and shipped Jogues down the river. He received nothing but kindness from the Dutch everywhere and, on his arrival at Manhattan (New York), was furnished by the Governor with a suit of clothes, instead of his tattered skins, and given a pa.s.sage to Europe.

At last he landed on the coast of Brittany. In due time he reached Paris, and the city was stirred {161} with the tale of his sufferings and adventures. He was summoned to court, and the ladies thronged about him to do him reverence, while the Queen kissed his mutilated hands.

Would not one think that Jogues had had enough of the New World, with its deadly perils and cruel pains? But so it was not. His simple nature cared nothing for honors. His heart was over the water, among the savages whom he longed to save. Besides, he was only a private soldier in that great army, the Jesuit brotherhood, of which every member was sworn to act, to think, to live, for but one object, the advancement of religion as it was represented by the Order. And who was so fit for the work among the Indians as Jogues, who knew their language and customs?

So, in the following spring we find him again on the Atlantic, bound for Canada. Two years he pa.s.sed in peaceful labors at Montreal. Then his supreme trial came. Peace had been made between the French and the Mohawks, and Couture still lived among the latter, for the express purpose of holding them steadfast to their promises. But, for some reason, the French apprehended an outbreak of hostilities, and it was {162} resolved to send envoys to the Indian country. At the first mention of the subject to Jogues he shrank from returning to the scene of so much suffering. But the habit of implicit obedience triumphed, and he quickly announced his willingness to do the will of his superiors, which to him was the will of G.o.d. "I shall go, but I shall never return," he wrote to a friend.

He started out with a small party carrying a load of gifts intended to conciliate the Iroquois, and followed the route that was a.s.sociated in his mind with so much misery, up the Richelieu and Lake Champlain and through Lake George. At the head of this water they crossed over to the Hudson, borrowed canoes from some Indians fishing there, and dropped down the river to Fort Orange. Once more Jogues was among his Dutch friends.

Glad as they were to see him, they wondered at his venturing back among the people who had once hunted him like a noxious beast. From Fort Orange he ascended the Mohawk River to the first Indian town. With what wonder the savages must have gazed at the man who had lived among them as a despised slave, and now had come back laden with gifts as the amba.s.sador of a great power! They received {163} him graciously, and when his errand was done, he returned safe to Quebec.

It would have been well for him if his superiors had contented themselves with what he had already done and suffered. But they had a grand scheme of founding a mission among the Iroquois. They knew its perils and called it "The Mission of Martyrs." To this post of danger Jogues was sent. The devoted man went without a murmur. On the way he met Indians who warned him of danger, and his Huron companions turned back, but he went on. Arrived among the Mohawks, he found a strong tide of feeling running against him. The accident that aroused it ill.u.s.trates Indian superst.i.tiousness. On his former visit, expecting to return, he had left a small box. From the first the Indians suspected it of being, like Pandora's box in the old mythology, full of all kinds of ills. But Jogues opened it and showed them that it contained only some harmless personal effects. After he was gone, however, some Huron prisoners wrought on their terror and at the same time reviled the French, declaring that the latter had almost ruined the Huron nation by their witchcraft and had brought on it drought, plague, pestilence, and famine.

{164}

The Iroquois were well-nigh wild with rage and fright. At any moment the small-pox or some other horror might step out of the little box and stalk abroad among them. The three clans that made up the tribe were divided.

The clans of the Wolf and the Tortoise were for keeping the peace; but the clan of the Bear was for making war on the French. Just then, by ill fortune, Jogues, approaching the Mohawk villages, encountered a band of Bear warriors. They seized and dragged him to their town. Here he was savagely attacked and beaten with fists and clubs. In vain he reminded them that he had come on an errand of peace. They tortured him cruelly.

The Wolf and Tortoise clans protested against this violation of the peace, but the others carried everything before them.

The next day Jogues was bidden to a feast. He did not dare refuse to go.

As he entered the lodge of the Bear chief, in spite of the efforts of an Indian who exposed his own life in trying to save him, a hatchet was buried in his brain. Thus died a singularly pure and unselfish man, a Pathfinder, too, for he was one of the three white men who first saw Lake George.

Shortly after the death of Jogues, war broke {165} out again. Nothing could have exceeded the ferocity of the Five Nations. They boasted that they intended to sweep the French and their Indian friends off the face of the earth. No place seemed too remote for them. At the most unexpected moments of the day or the night they rose, as it seemed, out of the earth, and, with their blood-curdling war-whoop, fell upon their intended victims with guns and tomahawks. The poor Algonquins were in a state of pitiable terror. Nowhere were they safe. Even when they retired into the wilderness north of the St. Lawrence, they were tracked by their ruthless foes, slaughtered, burned, and drowned.

We might go on and tell the story of other priests who all fell at the post of duty and died worthily. But of what use would it be to prolong these horrors? Enough to say that the Huron nation was almost annihilated, the feeble remnant left their country and went elsewhere, and the once promising work of the Jesuits among them ended in fire and blood.

A small party of the Hurons accompanied the returning priests to the French settlements and became established, under French protection, near Quebec, at a place called New Lorette, or Indian {166} Lorette, and fought by the side of their white friends in later wars. There, to this day, their descendants, mostly French half-breeds, may be seen engaged in the harmless occupations of weaving baskets and making moccasins.

Another band wandered away to the far Northwest, came into conflict with the warlike and powerful Sioux, and, driven back eastward, finally took up its abode near the sites of Detroit and Sandusky. Under the name of Wyandots, its descendants played a conspicuous part in our border wars.

[1] The faith of the Indians in a future life was very sincere and strong. Jonathan Carver tells a touching story of a couple whom he knew who lost a little son of about four years. They seemed inconsolable.

After a time the father died. Then the mother dried her tears and ceased her lamentations. When he asked her the reason of this, as it seemed to him, strange conduct, she answered that she and her husband had grieved excessively, because they knew that their little boy would be alone in the other world, without anybody to provide for his wants, but now, his father having gone to join him, her mind was at rest in the a.s.surance that the little fellow would be well cared for and happy.

[2] This usage seems to have been quite general. Jonathan Carver, in 1767, tells of a common burying-place of several bands of the Sioux, to which these roving people carefully brought their dead at a given time, depositing them with great solemnity. These bodies had previously been temporarily placed on rude scaffolds on the limbs of trees, awaiting the general interment.

{169}

Chapter XI

JEAN NICOLLET, LOUIS JOLIET, AND FATHER JACQUES MARQUETTE

THE DISCOVERERS OF THE MISSISSIPPI

Jean Nicollet's Voyage on the Wisconsin.--Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette are sent by Count Frontenac to follow the Course of the Mississippi.--On the Wisconsin.--The "Great Water" reached.--Hospitably entertained in an Indian Camp.--An Invaluable Gift.--The Mouth of the Missouri and the Mouth of the Ohio pa.s.sed.--The Outlet of the Arkansas reached.--Hardships of the Return Voyage.--Death of Marquette.--Joliet's Mishap.

A notable _coureur de bois_ (a French-Canadian wood-ranger) was Jean Nicollet. He had lived for years among the savages and had become thoroughly Indian in his habits. He was sent by the French Governor, about 1638, as an amba.s.sador to the Winnebagoes, west of Lake Michigan.

He had heard among his Indian friends of a strange people without hair or beard who came from beyond the Great Water to trade with the Indians on the Lakes. Who could these beardless men be but Chinese or j.a.panese?