The Jesuit Missions Part 2

Brebeuf then advised the Indians to try the effect of an appeal to his G.o.d. In despair they consented. A procession was formed and the priests said Ma.s.ses and prayers. The result was dramatic. Almost immediately a sudden refreshing rain deluged the ground; the crops were saved and the medicine-men humiliated. Still, no perceptible religious progress was made. Though children came to the residence to be instructed by the black-robes, they were attracted more by the 'beads, raisins, and prunes' which they received as inducements to come back than by the lessons in Christian truth. For the most part the elders listened attentively to the missionaries, but to the question of laying aside their superst.i.tions and accepting Christianity they replied: 'It is good for the French; but we are another people, with different customs.'

Winter was the season of greatest trial. The cabins, crowded to suffocation, were made the scenes of savage mirth and feasting. The Hurons were inveterate gamblers; sometimes village would challenge village; and, as the game progressed, night would be made hideous with the beating of drums and the hilarious shouts of the spectators.

Feasts were frequent, since any occasion afforded an excuse for one, and all feasts were accompanied by gluttony and uproar. The Dream Feast was a maniacal performance.

It was agreed upon in a solemn council of the chiefs and was made the occasion of great licence. The guests would rush about the village feigning madness, scattering fire-brands, shouting, leaping, smiting with impunity any they encountered. Each one would seek some object which he pretended to have learned about in a dream. Only when this object was found would calmness follow; if it was not found, there would be deepest despair. Feasts, too, were prescribed by the medicine-men as cures for sickness; the healthy, not the sick, would take the medicine, and would take it till they were gorged. To leave a sc.r.a.p of food on their platters might mean the death of the patient.

Only one of the social customs of the Hurons had any real religious significance. Every ten or twelve years the great Feast of the Dead took place. It was the custom of the Hurons either to place the dead in the earth, covering them with rude huts, or, more commonly, on elevated platforms. The bodies rested till the allotted time for final interment came round. Then at some central point an immense pit would be dug as a common grave. In 1636 a Feast of the Dead was held at Ossossane. To this place, from the various villages of the Bear clan, Indians came trooping, wailing mournful funeral songs as they bore the recently dead on litters, or the carefully prepared bones of their departed relatives in parcels slung over their shoulders. All converged on the village of Ossossane, where a pit ten feet deep by thirty feet wide had been dug. There on scaffolds about the pit they placed the bodies and bones, carefully wrapped in furs and covered with bark. The a.s.sembled mourners then gave themselves up to feasting and games, as a prelude to the final act of this drama of death. They lined the pit with costly furs and in the centre placed kettles, household goods, and weapons for the chase, all these, like the bodies and bones, supposed to be indwelt by spirits. They laid the dead bodies in rows on the floor of the pit, and threw the bundles of bones to Indians stationed within, who arranged the remains in their proper places.

The Jesuits were witnesses of this weird ceremony. They saw the naked Indians going about their task in the pit in the glare of torches, like veritable imps of h.e.l.l. It was a discouraging scene. But a greater trial than the Feast of the Dead was in store for them. By a pestilence, a severe form of dysentery, Ihonatiria was almost denuded of its population. In consequence the priests, who had now been reinforced by the arrival of Fathers Francois Le Mercier, Pierre Pijart, Pierre Chastelain, Isaac Jogues, and Charles Garnier, had to seek a more populous centre as headquarters for their mission in Huronia. The chiefs of Oenrio invited the Jesuits to their village.

But Brebeuf's demands were heavy. They should believe in G.o.d; keep His commandments; abjure their faith in dreams; take one wife and be true to her; renounce their a.s.semblies of debauchery; eat no human flesh; never give feasts to demons; and make a vow that if G.o.d would deliver them from the pest they would build a chapel to offer Him thanksgiving and praise. They were ready to make the vow regarding the chapel, but the other conditions were too severe--the pest was preferable. And so the Jesuits turned to Ossossane, where the people agreed to accept these conditions.

Formerly Ossossane had been situated on an elevated piece of ground on the sh.o.r.e of Nottawasaga Bay; but the village had been moved inland and, under the direction of the French, a rectangular wall of posts ten or twelve feet high had been built around it. At opposite angles of the wall two towers guarded the sides. A platform extended round the entire wall, from which the defenders could hurl stones on the heads of an attacking party, or could pour water to extinguish the blaze if an enemy succeeded in setting fire to the palisades.

Here the Jesuits were to live for two years. Outside the walls of the town a commodious cabin seventy feet long was built for them; and on June 5, 1637, in the part of the cabin consecrated as a chapel, Father Pijart celebrated Ma.s.s. The residence was named La Conception de Notre Dame. For a wilderness church it was a marvel.

At the entrance were green boughs adorned with tinsel; pictures hung on the walls; crucifixes, vessels, and ornaments of shining metal ornamented the chapel. From far and near Indians flocked to see this wondrous edifice.

Best of all, a leading chief offered himself for baptism.

The future looked promising; the Indians showed the fathers 'much affection' and a rich harvest of souls seemed about to be garnered.

But all this was to be changed. A hunch-backed, ogre-like medicine-man who claimed to be of miraculous birth came to Ossossane. The pest was still raging, and he laid the blame for it at the door of the missionaries. According to him their prayers and litanies were charms and incantations; their pictures were evil okies. It was, he declared, by the influence of these and other agencies that they had spread the pestilence among the Hurons.

Some of the older and most influential Hurons joined with the sorcerer in his denunciation of the priests, and soon the inhabitants of the whole village turned against them.

Squaws shut the doors of the cabins at their approach, young braves threatened them with death, children followed them about hooting and pelting them with sticks and stones. At last the priests were summoned to a public council and openly accused of being the cause of the misfortunes that had recently visited the Huron people.

Brebeuf replied to the accusations with unflinching courage, denying the charges, and showing their absurdity.

He then boldly addressed his audience on the truths of Christianity, held before them the awful future that awaited those who refused to obey the words of Christ, and declared that the pest was a punishment for their evil lives. The council was deeply impressed by his courage and evident sincerity, and for the time being the lives of the missionaries were in no danger. But they knew that at any moment the blow might fall, and none ever went abroad without the feeling that a tomahawk might descend on his unguarded head.

On October 28, 1637, Brebeuf prepared, as he thought, a farewell letter to his friends at Quebec. He and the four other missionaries at Ossossane signed it and sent it to the superior-general Le Jeune. It opens with the words: 'We are perhaps on the point of shedding our blood and sacrificing our lives in the service of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.' There is no note of fear in this letter. 'If,' it runs, 'you should hear that G.o.d has crowned our labours, or rather our desires, with martyrdom, return thanks to Him, for it is for Him we wish to live and die.' Such was the spirit of these bearers of the Cross. Their humility, courage, and disinterestedness kept them for the present from 'the crown of martyrdom.'

But the hunch-backed sorcerer continued his agitation and the storm once more broke over their heads. To show the Indians that he knew their hearts, and that he could meet death with the stoical courage of one of their own chiefs, Brebeuf summoned them to a festin d'adieua farewell feast--and while his guests, in ominous silence, ate the portions set before them he addressed them in burning words. He was about to die, but before he departed this life he would warn them of the life to come. Their resistance to Christ's message, their abuse and persecution of Christ's messengers, would have to be atoned for in eternity. His actions and words took effect.

Though the sorcerer still schemed, the Jesuits went about their labours unscathed, preaching to the unregenerate, visiting and caring for the sick, and baptizing the dying.

For a year after the establishing of the mission of La Conception at Ossossane three fathers--Pierre Chastelain, Pierre Pijart, and Isaac Jogues--ministered to the remnant of the Hurons at Ihonatiria. But the pest was still raging, and by the spring of 1638 Ihonatiria was little more than a village of empty wigwams. It was useless to remain longer at this spot, and the missionaries looked about for another field for their energies. The town of Teanaostaiae, the largest town of the clan of the Cord, about fifteen miles north of the present town of Barrie, seemed suitable for a central mission. Brebeuf visited the place, talked with the inhabitants, met the council of the nation, and won its consent to establish a residence.

In June the mission of St Joseph was moved to Teanaostaiae.

Before the end of the summer Jerome Lalemant, who for the next eight years was to be the superior of the Huron mission, Simon Le Moyne, and Francois du Peron arrived in Huronia. There was now a new distribution of the mission forces, five priests under Lalemant's immediate leadership taking up their abode at Ossossane, while three in charge of Brebeuf settled at Teanaostaiae.

So far Brebeuf had been the recognized leader in Huronia.

He had been n.o.bly supported by his brother priests and his hired men. The residences at both Ihonatiria and Ossossane had been kept well supplied with food, even better than many of the Indian households. Game was scarce in Huronia, but the fathers had among their engages an expert hunter, Francois Pet.i.t-Pre, ever roaming the forest and the sh.o.r.es in search of game to give variety to their table. Robert Le Coq, a devoted engage, later a donne, [Footnote: An unpaid, voluntary a.s.sistant whose only remuneration was food and clothing, care during illness, and support in old age.] was their 'negotiator' or business man. It was Le Coq who made the yearly trips to Quebec for supplies, and who with infinite labour brought many heavy burdens over the difficult trails. Brebeuf had proved himself essentially an enthusiast for souls, a mystic, a spirit craving the crown of martyrdom, yet withal a man of great tact, and a powerful exemplar to his fellow-priests. Lalemant, while lacking Brebeuf's dominating enthusiasm, was a more practical man, with great organizing ability. After viewing the wide and dangerous field to be administered, the new superior decided to concentrate the separate missions into one stronghold of the faith. The site he chose was remote from any of the centres of Indian population. It was on the eastern bank of the river Wye between Mud Lake and Matchedash Bay. Here the missionaries built a strong rectangular fort with walls of stone surmounted by palisades and with bastions at each corner. The interior buildings--a chapel, a hospital, and dwellings for the missionaries and the engages--although of wood, were supported on foundations of stone and cement.

The new mission-house they named Ste Marie; and from this central station the missionaries went forth in pairs to the farthest parts of Huronia and beyond. The missions to the Petuns and the Neutrals, however, ended in failure.

The Petuns hailed Garnier and Jogues as the Famine and the Pest and the priests barely escaped with their lives.

In the following year (1640), when Brebeuf and Chaumonot went among the Neutrals, they found Huron emissaries there inciting the Neutrals to kill the priests. These Hurons, while themselves fearing to murder the powerful okies of the French, as they regarded the black-robes, desired that the Neutrals should put them to death. But no such tragedy found place as yet. After visiting nineteen towns, meeting everywhere maledictions and threats, Brebeuf and Chaumonot returned to Ste Marie.

The good work went on, notwithstanding trials and reverses.

The story of the Cross was being carried even to the Algonquins and Nip.i.s.sings of the upper Ottawa and Georgian Bay. At Ste Marie neophytes gathered in numbers, and here there were no medicine-men, 'satellites of Satan,' to seduce them from their vows. But, just at the time when the harvest seemed richest in promise, a cloud appeared on the horizon--a forerunner of darker clouds, heavy with calamity, and of the storm which was to bring destruction to the Huron people.

Meanwhile, how fared the mission at Quebec? Champlain had died on Christmas Day 1635, and the Jesuits had lost a staunch friend and never-failing protector. His successor, however, was Charles Huault de Montmagny, a knight of Malta, a man of devout character, thoroughly in sympathy with the missions. Under Montmagny's rule New France became as austere as Puritan New England.

The Relations of the Jesuits, sent yearly to France and published and widely read, had roused intense enthusiasm among wealthy and pious men and women. Thus Noel Brulart, Chevalier de Sillery, was moved to take an interest in the Canadian mission and to endow a home for Christian Indians. Le Jeune chose a site on the bank of the St Lawrence, four miles above Quebec; and in 1637 the Sillery establishment was erected there, consisting of a chapel, a mission-house, and an infirmary, all within strong palisades.

About the same time two wealthy enthusiasts, the d.u.c.h.esse d'Aiguillon, a niece of Cardinal Richelieu, and Madame de la Peltrie, were likewise inspired by the Relations to undertake charitable work in New France. These ladies founded, respectively, the Hotel-Dieu of Quebec and the Ursuline Convent. In 1639 Madame de la Peltrie, who had given herself as well as her purse to the work, arrived in Quebec, accompanied by Mother Marie de I'Incarnation and two other Ursulines and three Augustinian nuns. The Ursulines at once began their labours as teachers with six Indian pupils. But a plague of small-pox was raging in the colony, and for the first year or two after their arrival these heroic women had to aid the sisters of the Hotel-Dieu in fighting the pest.

The Jesuits themselves were busy with the education of the Indians and had already established a college and seminary for the instruction of young converts. The colony, however, was not growing. The Hundred a.s.sociates had not carried out the terms of their charter. There were less than four hundred settlers in the whole of New France, and only some three hundred soldiers to guard the settlements from attack. Canada as yet was little more than a mission; and such it was to remain for another twenty and more years.

CHAPTER VI

THE MARTYRS

We have observed that the Hurons were at war with the Five Nations and that Iroquois scalping parties haunted the river routes and the trails to waylay Huron canoemen and cut off hunters and stragglers from their villages.

When or how the feud began, between the Iroquois on the one side and the Hurons and Algonquins on the other, no man can tell. It antedated Champlain; and, as we have seen, he had involved the French in it. There were, no doubt, many b.l.o.o.d.y encounters of which history furnishes no record. At first the warriors had fought on equal terms, the weapons of all being the bow and arrow, the tomahawk, the knife, and the war-club. But now the Iroquois had firearms, procured from the Dutch of the Hudson, and were skilled in the use of the musket, which gave them a great advantage over their Huron and Algonquin foes.

On the south-east frontier of Huronia, about four miles from Orillia, stood a town of the clan of the Rock, Contarea, a 'main bulwark of the country.' The inhabitants were pagans who had resisted the missionaries, and refused them permission to build a chapel, not even deigning to listen to their appeals. In the early summer of 1642 the people of Contarea were living in fancied security; and when runners brought word that in the forests to the east a large force of Iroquois were encamped, the Contarean warriors felt confident that, from behind their strong palisades, they could resist any attack. No Iroquois appeared; and, believing the rumour false, many of the warriors left the town for the accustomed hunting and fishing grounds. Suddenly, early on a June morning, the sleepy guards were roused by savage yells. The Iroquois were upon them. The alarm rang out; the towers were manned, and the palisades lined with defenders. But in vain. Arrows and bullets swept towers and palisades, and through breaches made in the walls in rushed a horde of bloodthirsty demons. In a few minutes all was over; the town became a shambles; young and old fell beneath the tomahawks of the infuriated invaders. Then the torch!

And the Iroquois hied them back in triumph to their homes by the Mohawk, exulting in this first effective blow at the enemy in his own country.

When news arrived of the destruction of Contarea, there was wild alarm in the mission towns. But it was no part of the Iroquois plan to attack at once the other Huron strongholds. Huronia could wait until the tribes of the St Lawrence and the Ottawa, allies of the Hurons, should be destroyed. Then the Five Nations could concentrate their forces on the Hurons.

And so six years pa.s.sed over the Jesuits in the mission-fields. Scalping parties occasionally haunted the outskirts of the villages where they were stationed.

The Iroquois frequently attacked the annual fleet of canoes on its journey to Quebec, and on several occasions captured and carried off priests and their a.s.sistants.

But during these years no large body of Iroquois invaded Huronia. The insatiable warriors of the Five Nations were busy devastating the St Lawrence and the Ottawa, pressing the tribes back and ever back, until scarcely a wigwam could be seen between Ville Marie and Lake Nip.i.s.sing.

The Algonquins who had not fallen had left their villages and had sought safety on the bleak sh.o.r.es and islands of Georgian Bay, or among the Hurons.

The mission was prospering under the guidance of Paul Ragueneau, who in 1645 succeeded Lalemant as superior, when the latter journeyed to Quebec to take over the office of superior-general of the Canada mission. Ste Marie, a wilderness Mecca of the faith, entertained yearly thousands of Indians, many of whom professed Christianity.

On one occasion seven hundred Indians sought this sanctuary within a fortnight, and to each of these the fathers from their abundant stores gave two meals. About the walls fields of corn, beans, pumpkins, and wheat spread fair to the eye. Within the enclosure all was activity. Ambroise Brouet was busy in his kitchen; Louis Gauber was at his forge; Pierre Ma.s.son, when not occupied at his tailor's bench, was hard at work in the garden, the pride of the mission; Christophe Regnaut and Jacques Levrier were mending or fashioning shoes and moccasins; Joseph Molere prepared potions for the sick and had charge of the laundry; and Charles Boivin, the master-builder, superintended the erection of new buildings or the strengthening and improving of those already built. The appearance of permanency about the place was enhanced by the fowls, pigs, and cattle. There were two cows and two bulls, which had been brought with incredible toil from Quebec.

The teaching and example of the fathers were winning a way to the hearts of the Indians. In 1648 eleven or twelve mission stations stood throughout Huronia, among the Algonquins, and among the Petuns, now settled in the Blue Hills south of Nottawasaga Bay. Seven of these stations had chapels and in six it had been found necessary to establish residences. In some of the villages, such as Ossossane, the Christians outnumbered the pagans. The Christian Hurons gave active help to the fathers in the work of the mission, some among their own people, and others among the Petuns and the Neutrals. The chapels had bells--on some discarded kettles served this purpose--to call the flocks to worship; and crosses studded the land.

Huronia was in a fair way of being completely won; and the missionaries were already looking to the unexplored regions round and beyond Lake Superior, and even to the land of the Iroquois. Then, with the suddenness of a volcanic eruption, their flocks were scattered and their dearest hopes crushed.

In 1647 there was no communication between Ste Marie and Quebec. Owing to the danger from Iroquois along the route, the annual canoe-fleet did not go down, although a small party of Hurons, it seems, went as far as Ville Marie.

The necessities of the mission were, however, urgent, and in the spring of the following year Father Bressani set out with a strong contingent of two hundred and fifty Huron warriors, fully half of whom were Christians. No sooner had this expedition begun its descent of the Ottawa than an Iroquois war-party, which had wintered near Lake Nip.i.s.sing, stole southward through the forests towards Huronia.

Contarea had been destroyed. The dangerous position of St Jean-Baptiste, situated near the site of Cahiague on Lake Simcoe, whence Champlain had set out against the Iroquois in 1615, had led the Jesuits to abandon it. St Joseph or Teanaostaiae, with about two thousand inhabitants, was therefore the frontier town on the south-east of Huronia. Father Daniel, in charge of this station, had just returned from his annual eight-day retreat at Ste Marie. For four years he had laboured in this mission; and, though his flock had been a stiff-necked one, his work had brought its reward. On the 4th of July his little chapel was crowded for the celebration of early Ma.s.s, and as he gazed at the congregation of his converts his spirit rejoiced within him. He had just finished the service, when shrill through the morning air rang the cry: 'The Iroquois! The Iroquois!' Rushing out he saw the foe already hacking at the palisades and many of the defenders falling beneath a storm of arrows and bullets.

His first thought for his flock, he hurried back into the chapel, beseeching them to save themselves. They pressed about him, praying for baptism and for absolution; and, as they held to him appealing hands, he dipped his handkerchief in the font and baptized the crowd by aspersion. Then he boldly strode to the door of his chapel and faced the enemy. For a moment the savage fiends hesitated before the stern-eyed priest standing in his vestments, protecting, as it seemed, the flock that cowered behind him; but only for a moment. Yelling defiance at the white medicine-man, they directed their weapons against him; and this dauntless soldier of the Cross received the crown of martyrdom which he had prayed might be his. His slayers fell upon his body, stripped it of clothing, mutilated it, and cast it into the now flaming chapel, a fitting funeral pyre for the first martyr of the Huron mission. The entire village was given to the flames, and the smoke of the burning cabins and palisades rolled over the forest. A small village not far away, on the trail to Ossossane, shared the same fate. The slaughter glutted the ferocity of the Iroquois for the time being; and, with some seven hundred prisoners, they stole back to their villages south of Lake Ontario.

After this calamity the pall of a great fear hung over the Hurons. Paralysed and inert, the warriors took no steps to defend the country against the Iroquois peril.

In spite of the exhortations of the Jesuits, they lay idle in their wigwams or hunted in the forest, dejectedly awaiting their doom.

An Iroquois war-party twelve hundred strong spent the winter of 1648-49 on the upper Ottawa; and as the snows began to melt under the thaws of spring these insatiable slayers of men directed their steps towards Huronia. The frontier village on the east was now St Ignace, on the west of the Sturgeon river, about seven miles from Ste Marie. It was strongly fortified and formed a part of a mission of the same name, under the care of Brebeuf and Father Gabriel Lalemant, a nephew of Jerome Lalemant.

About a league distant, midway to Ste Marie, stood St Louis, another town of the mission, where the two fathers lived. On the 16th of March the inhabitants of St Ignace had no thought of impending disaster. The Iroquois might be on the war-path, but they would not come while yet ice held the rivers and snow lay in the forests. But that morning, just as the horizon began to glow with the first colours of the dawn, the sleeping Hurons woke to the sound of the dreaded war-whoop. The Iroquois devils had breached the walls. Three Hurons escaped, dashed along the forest trail to St Louis, roused the village, and then fled for Ste Marie, followed by the women and children and those too feeble to fight. There were in St Louis only about eighty warriors, but, not knowing the strength of the invaders, they determined to fight. The Hurons begged Brebeuf and Lalemant to fly to Ste Marie; but they refused to stir. In the hour of danger and death they must remain with their flock, to sustain the warriors in the battle and to give the last rites of the Church to the wounded and dying.

Having made short work of St Ignace, the Iroquois came battering at the walls of St Louis before sunrise. The Hurons resisted stubbornly; but the a.s.sailants outnumbered them ten to one, and soon hacked a way through the palisades and captured all the defenders remaining alive, among them Brebeuf and Lalemant.

The Iroquois bound Brebeuf and Lalemant and led them back to St Ignace, beating them as they went. There they stripped the two priests and tied them to stakes. Brebeuf knew that his hour had come. Him the savages made the special object of their diabolical cruelty. And, standing at the stake amid his yelling tormentors, he bequeathed to the world an example of fort.i.tude sublime, unsurpa.s.sed, and unsurpa.s.sable. Neither by look nor cry nor movement did he give sign of the agony he was suffering. To the reviling and abuse of the fiends he replied with words warning them of the judgment to come. They poured boiling water on his head in derision of baptism; they hung red-hot axes about his naked shoulders; they made a belt of pitch and resin and placed it about his body and set it on fire. By every conceivable means the red devils strove to force him to cry for mercy. But not a sound of pain could they wring from him. At last, after four hours of this torture, a chief cut out his heart, and the n.o.ble servant of G.o.d quitted the scene of his earthly labours.

Lalemant, a man of gentle, refined character, as delicate as Brebeuf was robust, also endured the torture. But the savages administered it to him with a refinement of cruelty, and kept him alive for fourteen hours. Then at last he, too, entered into his rest.

Ten years before Brebeuf had made a vow to Christ: 'Never to shrink from martyrdom if, in Your mercy, You deem me worthy of so great a privilege. Henceforth, I will never avoid any opportunity that presents itself of dying for You, but will accept martyrdom with delight, provided that, by so doing, I can add to Your glory. From this day, my Lord Jesus Christ, I cheerfully yield unto You my life, with the hope that You will grant me the grace to die for You, since You have deigned to die for me.

Grant me, O Lord, so to live, that You may deem me worthy to die a martyr's death Thus my Lord, I take Your chalice, and call upon Your name. Jesu! Jesu! Jesu!' How n.o.bly this vow was kept.

CHAPTER VII