The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century Part 14

[ "La chapelle est faite d'une charpente bien jolie, semblable presque en facon et grandeur, a notre chapelle de St. Julien."--Ibid., 183. ]

Hither they removed their pictures and ornaments; and here, in winter, several fires were kept burning, for the comfort of the half-naked converts. [ Lalemant, Relation des Hurons, 1639, 62. ] Of these they now had at Ossossane about sixty,--a large, though evidently not a very solid nucleus for the Huron church,--and they labored hard and anxiously to confirm and multiply them. Of a Sunday morning in winter, one could have seen them coming to ma.s.s, often from a considerable distance, "as naked," says Lalemant, "as your hand, except a skin over their backs like a mantle, and, in the coldest weather, a few skins around their feet and legs." They knelt, mingled with the French mechanics, before the altar,--very awkwardly at first, for the posture was new to them,--and all received the sacrament together: a spectacle which, as the missionary chronicler declares, repaid a hundred times all the labor of their conversion. [ Lalemant, Relation des Hurons, 1639, 62. ]

Some of the princ.i.p.al methods of conversion are curiously ill.u.s.trated in a letter written by Garnier to a friend in France. "Send me," he says, "a picture of Christ without a beard." Several Virgins are also requested, together with a variety of souls in perdition--ames d.a.m.nees-- most of them to be mounted in a portable form. Particular directions are given with respect to the demons, dragons, flames, and other essentials of these works of art. Of souls in bliss--ames bienheureuses--he thinks that one will be enough. All the pictures must be in full face, not in profile; and they must look directly at the beholder, with open eyes.

The colors should be bright; and there must be no flowers or animals, as these distract the attention of the Indians.

[ Garnier, Lettre 17me, MS. These directions show an excellent knowledge of Indian peculiarities. The Indian dislike of a beard is well known.

Catlin, the painter, once caused a fatal quarrel among a party of Sioux, by representing one of them in profile, whereupon he was jibed by a rival as being but half a man. ]

The first point with the priests was of course to bring the objects of their zeal to an acceptance of the fundamental doctrines of the Roman Church; but, as the mind of the savage was by no means that beautiful blank which some have represented it, there was much to be erased as well as to be written. They must renounce a host of superst.i.tions, to which they were attached with a strange tenacity, or which may rather be said to have been ingrained in their very natures. Certain points of Christian morality were also strongly urged by the missionaries, who insisted that the convert should take but one wife, and not cast her off without grave cause, and that he should renounce the gross license almost universal among the Hurons. Murder, cannibalism, and several other offences, were also forbidden. Yet, while laboring at the work of conversion with an energy never surpa.s.sed, and battling against the powers of darkness with the mettle of paladins, the Jesuits never had the folly to a.s.sume towards the Indians a dictatorial or overbearing tone.

Gentleness, kindness, and patience were the rule of their intercourse.

[ 1 ] They studied the nature of the savage, and conformed themselves to it with an admirable tact. Far from treating the Indian as an alien and barbarian, they would fain have adopted him as a countryman; and they proposed to the Hurons that a number of young Frenchmen should settle among them, and marry their daughters in solemn form. The listeners were gratified at an overture so flattering. "But what is the use," they demanded, "of so much ceremony? If the Frenchmen want our women, they are welcome to come and take them whenever they please, as they always used to do." [ Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637, 160. ]

[ 1 The following pa.s.sage from the "Divers Sentimens," before cited, will ill.u.s.trate this point. "Pour conuertir les Sauuages, il n'y faut pas tant de science que de bonte et vertu bien solide. Les quatre Elemens d'vn homme Apostolique en la Nouuelle France sont l'Affabilite, l'Humilite, la Patience et vne Charite genereuse. Le zele trop ardent brusle plus qu'il n'eschauffe, et gaste tout; il faut vne grande magnanimite et condescendance, pour attirer peu a peu ces Sauuages.

Ils n'entendent pas bien nostre Theologie, mais ils entendent parfaictement bien nostre humilite et nostre affabilite, et se laissent gaigner."

So too Brebeuf, in a letter to Vitelleschi, General of the Jesuits (see Carayon, 163): "Ce qu'il faut demander, avant tout, des ouvriers destines a cette mission, c'est une douceur inalterable et une patience a toute epreuve." ]

The Fathers are well agreed that their difficulties did not arise from any natural defect of understanding on the part of the Indians, who, according to Chaumonot, were more intelligent than the French peasantry, and who, in some instances, showed in their way a marked capacity.

It was the inert ma.s.s of pride, sensuality, indolence, and superst.i.tion that opposed the march of the Faith, and in which the Devil lay intrenched as behind impregnable breastworks.

[ In this connection, the following specimen of Indian reasoning is worth noting. At the height of the pestilence, a Huron said to one of the priests, "I see plainly that your G.o.d is angry with us because we will not believe and obey him. Ihonatiria, where you first taught his word, is entirely ruined. Then you came here to Ossossane, and we would not listen; so Ossossane is ruined too. This year you have been all through our country, and found scarcely any who would do what G.o.d commands; therefore the pestilence is everywhere." After premises so hopeful, the Fathers looked for a satisfactory conclusion; but the Indian proceeded--"My opinion is, that we ought to shut you out from all the houses, and stop our ears when you speak of G.o.d, so that we cannot hear.

Then we shall not be so guilty of rejecting the truth, and he will not punish us so cruelly."--Lalemant, Relation des Hurons, 1640, 80. ]

It soon became evident that it was easier to make a convert than to keep him. Many of the Indians clung to the idea that baptism was a safeguard against pestilence and misfortune; and when the fallacy of this notion was made apparent, their zeal cooled. Their only amus.e.m.e.nts consisted of feasts, dances, and games, many of which were, to a greater or less degree, of a superst.i.tious character; and as the Fathers could rarely prove to their own satisfaction the absence of the diabolic element in any one of them, they proscribed the whole indiscriminately, to the extreme disgust of the neophyte. His countrymen, too, beset him with dismal prognostics: as, "You will kill no more game,"--"All your hair will come out before spring," and so forth. Various doubts also a.s.sailed him with regard to the substantial advantages of his new profession; and several converts were filled with anxiety in view of the probable want of tobacco in Heaven, saying that they could not do without it. [ Lalemant, Relation des Hurons, 1639, 80. ] Nor was it pleasant to these incipient Christians, as they sat in cla.s.s listening to the instructions of their teacher, to find themselves and him suddenly made the targets of a shower of sticks, s...o...b..a.l.l.s, corn-cobs, and other rubbish, flung at them by a screeching rabble of vagabond boys. [ Ibid., 78. ]

Yet, while most of the neophytes demanded an anxious and diligent cultivation, there were a few of excellent promise; and of one or two especially, the Fathers, in the fulness of their satisfaction, a.s.sure us again and again "that they were savage only in name."

[ From June, 1639, to June, 1640, about a thousand persons were baptized.

Of these, two hundred and sixty were infants, and many more were children. Very many died soon after baptism. Of the whole number, less than twenty were baptized in health,--a number much below that of the preceding year.

The following is a curious case of precocious piety. It is that of a child at St. Joseph. "Elle n'a que deux ans, et fait joliment le signe de la croix, et prend elle-meme de l'eau benite; et une fois se mit a crier, sortant de la Chapelle, a cause que sa mere qui la portoit ne lui avoit donne le loisir d'en prendre. Il l'a fallu reporter en prendre."-- Lettres de Garnier, MSS. ]

As the town of Ihonatiria, where the Jesuits had made their first abode, was ruined by the pestilence, the mission established there, and known by the name of St. Joseph, was removed, in the summer of 1638, to Teanaustaye, a large town at the foot of a range of hills near the southern borders of the Huron territory. The Hurons, this year, had had unwonted successes in their war with the Iroquois, and had taken, at various times, nearly a hundred prisoners. Many of these were brought to the seat of the new mission of St. Joseph, and put to death with frightful tortures, though not before several had been converted and baptized. The torture was followed, in spite of the remonstrances of the priests, by those cannibal feasts customary with the Hurons on such occasions. Once, when the Fathers had been strenuous in their denunciations, a hand of the victim, duly prepared, was flung in at their door, as an invitation to join in the festivity. As the owner of the severed member had been baptized, they dug a hole in their chapel, and buried it with solemn rites of sepulture. [ Lalemant, Relation des Hurons, 1639, 70. ]

CHAPTER XII.

1639, 1640.

THE TOBACCO NATION.--THE NEUTRALS.

A CHANGE OF PLAN.--SAINTE MARIE.--MISSION OF THE TOBACCO NATION.-- WINTER JOURNEYING.--RECEPTION OF THE MISSIONARIES.-- SUPERSt.i.tIOUS TERRORS.--PERIL OF GARNIER AND JOGUES.-- MISSION OF THE NEUTRALS.--HURON INTRIGUES.--MIRACLES.-- FURY OF THE INDIANS.--INTERVENTION OF SAINT MICHAEL.-- RETURN TO SAINTE MARIE.--INTREPIDITY OF THE PRIESTS.-- THEIR MENTAL EXALTATION.

It had been the first purpose of the Jesuits to form permanent missions in each of the princ.i.p.al Huron towns; but, before the close of the year 1639, the difficulties and risks of this scheme had become fully apparent. They resolved, therefore, to establish one central station, to be a base of operations, and, as it were, a focus, whence the light of the Faith should radiate through all the wilderness around. It was to serve at once as residence, fort, magazine, hospital, and convent.

Hence the priests would set forth on missionary expeditions far and near; and hither they might retire, as to an asylum, in times of sickness or extreme peril. Here the neophytes could be gathered together, safe from perverting influences; and here in time a Christian settlement, Hurons mingled with Frenchmen, might spring up and thrive under the shadow of the cross.

The site of the new station was admirably chosen. The little river Wye flows from the southward into the Matchedash Bay of Lake Huron, and, at about a mile from its mouth, pa.s.ses through a small lake. The Jesuits made choice of the right bank of the Wye, where it issues from this lake,--gained permission to build from the Indians, though not without difficulty,--and began their labors with an abundant energy, and a very deficient supply of workmen and tools. The new establishment was called Sainte Marie. The house at Teanaustaye, and the house and chapel at Ossossane, were abandoned, and all was concentrated at this spot.

On one hand, it had a short water communication with Lake Huron; and on the other, its central position gave the readiest access to every part of the Huron territory.

During the summer before, the priests had made a survey of their field of action, visited all the Huron towns, and christened each of them with the name of a saint. This heavy draft on the calendar was followed by another, for the designation of the nine towns of the neighboring and kindred people of the Tobacco Nation. [ See Introduction. ] The Huron towns were portioned into four districts, while those of the Tobacco Nation formed a fifth, and each district was a.s.signed to the charge of two or more priests. In November and December, they began their missionary excursions,--for the Indians were now gathered in their settlements,--and journeyed on foot through the denuded forests, in mud and snow, bearing on their backs the vessels and utensils necessary for the service of the altar.

The new and perilous mission of the Tobacco Nation fell to Garnier and Jogues. They were well chosen; and yet neither of them was robust by nature, in body or mind, though Jogues was noted for personal activity.

The Tobacco Nation lay at the distance of a two days' journey from the Huron towns, among the mountains at the head of Nottawa.s.saga Bay.

The two missionaries tried to find a guide at Ossossane; but none would go with them, and they set forth on their wild and unknown pilgrimage alone.

The forests were full of snow; and the soft, moist flakes were still falling thickly, obscuring the air, beplastering the gray trunks, weighing to the earth the boughs of spruce and pine, and hiding every footprint of the narrow path. The Fathers missed their way, and toiled on till night, shaking down at every step from the burdened branches a shower of fleecy white on their black ca.s.socks. Night overtook them in a spruce swamp. Here they made a fire with great difficulty, cut the evergreen boughs, piled them for a bed, and lay down. The storm presently ceased; and, "praised be G.o.d," writes one of the travellers, "we pa.s.sed a very good night." [ Jogues and Garnier in Lalemant, Relation des Hurons, 1640, 95. ]

In the morning they breakfasted on a morsel of corn bread, and, resuming their journey, fell in with a small party of Indians, whom they followed all day without food. At eight in the evening they reached the first Tobacco town, a miserable cl.u.s.ter of bark cabins, hidden among forests and half buried in snow-drifts, where the savage children, seeing the two black apparitions, screamed that Famine and the Pest were coming.

Their evil fame had gone before them. They were unwelcome guests; nevertheless, shivering and famished as they were, in the cold and darkness, they boldly pushed their way into one of these dens of barbarism. It was precisely like a Huron house. Five or six fires blazed on the earthen floor, and around them were huddled twice that number of families, sitting, crouching, standing, or flat on the ground; old and young, women and men, children and dogs, mingled pell-mell.

The scene would have been a strange one by daylight: it was doubly strange by the flicker and glare of the lodge-fires. Scowling brows, sidelong looks of distrust and fear, the screams of scared children, the scolding of squaws, the growling of wolfish dogs,--this was the greeting of the strangers. The chief man of the household treated them at first with the decencies of Indian hospitality; but when he saw them kneeling in the litter and ashes at their devotions, his suppressed fears found vent, and he began a loud harangue, addressed half to them and half to the Indians. "Now, what are these _okies_ doing? They are making charms to kill us, and destroy all that the pest has spared in this house.

I heard that they were sorcerers; and now, when it is too late, I believe it." [ Lalemant, Relation des Hurons, 1640, 96. ] It is wonderful that the priests escaped the tomahawk. Nowhere is the power of courage, faith, and an unflinching purpose more strikingly displayed than in the record of these missions.

In other Tobacco towns their reception was much the same; but at the largest, called by them St. Peter and St. Paul, they fared worse.

They reached it on a winter afternoon. Every door of its capacious bark houses was closed against them; and they heard the squaws within calling on the young men to go out and split their heads, while children screamed abuse at the black-robed sorcerers. As night approached, they left the town, when a band of young men followed them, hatchet in hand, to put them to death. Darkness, the forest, and the mountain favored them; and, eluding their pursuers, they escaped. Thus began the mission of the Tobacco Nation.

In the following November, a yet more distant and perilous mission was begun. Brebeuf and Chaumonot set out for the Neutral Nation. This fierce people, as we have already seen, occupied that part of Canada which lies immediately north of Lake Erie, while a wing of their territory extended across the Niagara into Western New York. [ 1 ]

In their athletic proportions, the ferocity of their manners, and the extravagance of their superst.i.tions, no American tribe has ever exceeded them. They carried to a preposterous excess the Indian notion, that insanity is endowed with a mysterious and superhuman power. Their country was full of pretended maniacs, who, to propitiate their guardian spirits, or _okies_, and acquire the mystic virtue which pertained to madness, raved stark naked through the villages, scattering the brands of the lodge-fires, and upsetting everything in their way.

[ 1 Introduction.--The river Niagara was at this time, 1640, well known to the Jesuits, though none of them had visited it. Lalemant speaks of it as the "famous river of this nation" (the Neutrals). The following translation, from his Relation of 1641, shows that both Lake Ontario and Lake Erie had already taken their present names.

"This river" (the Niagara) "is the same by which our great lake of the Hurons, or Fresh Sea, discharges itself, in the first place, into Lake Erie (le lac d'Erie), or the Lake of the Cat Nation. Then it enters the territories of the Neutral Nation, and takes the name of Onguiaahra (Niagara), until it discharges itself into Ontario, or the Lake of St. Louis; whence at last issues the river which pa.s.ses before Quebec, and is called the St. Lawrence." He makes no allusion to the cataract, which is first mentioned as follows by Ragueneau, in the Relation of 1648.

"Nearly south of this same Neutral Nation there is a great lake, about two hundred leagues in circuit, named Erie (Erie), which is formed by the discharge of the Fresh Sea, and which precipitates itself by a cataract of frightful height into a third lake, named Ontario, which we call Lake St. Louis."--Relation des Hurons, 1648, 46. ]

The two priests left Sainte Marie on the second of November, found a Huron guide at St. Joseph, and, after a dreary march of five days through the forest, reached the first Neutral town. Advancing thence, they visited in turn eighteen others; and their progress was a storm of maledictions. Brebeuf especially was accounted the most pestilent of sorcerers. The Hurons, restrained by a superst.i.tious awe, and unwilling to kill the priests, lest they should embroil themselves with the French at Quebec, conceived that their object might be safely gained by stirring up the Neutrals to become their executioners. To that end, they sent two emissaries to the Neutral towns, who, calling the chiefs and young warriors to a council, denounced the Jesuits as destroyers of the human race, and made their auditors a gift of nine French hatchets on condition that they would put them to death. It was now that Brebeuf, fully conscious of the danger, half starved and half frozen, driven with revilings from every door, struck and spit upon by pretended maniacs, beheld in a vision that great cross, which as we have seen, moved onward through the air, above the wintry forests that stretched towards the land of the Iroquois. [ See ante, chapter 9 second last paragraph (page 109). ]

Chaumonot records yet another miracle. "One evening, when all the chief men of the town were deliberating in council whether to put us to death, Father Brebeuf, while making his examination of conscience, as we were together at prayers, saw the vision of a spectre, full of fury, menacing us both with three javelins which he held in his hands. Then he hurled one of them at us; but a more powerful hand caught it as it flew: and this took place a second and a third time, as he hurled his two remaining javelins... . Late at night our host came back from the council, where the two Huron emissaries had made their gift of hatchets to have us killed. He wakened us to say that three times we had been at the point of death; for the young men had offered three times to strike the blow, and three times the old men had dissuaded them. This explained the meaning of Father Brebeuf's vision." [ Chaumonot, Vie, 55. ]

They had escaped for the time; but the Indians agreed among themselves, that thenceforth no one should give them shelter. At night, pierced with cold and faint with hunger, they found every door closed against them.

They stood and watched, saw an Indian issue from a house, and, by a quick movement, pushed through the half-open door into this abode of smoke and filth. The inmates, aghast at their boldness, stared in silence.

Then a messenger ran out to carry the tidings, and an angry crowd collected.

"Go out, and leave our country," said an old chief, "or we will put you into the kettle, and make a feast of you."

"I have had enough of the dark-colored flesh of our enemies," said a young brave; "I wish to know the taste of white meat, and I will eat yours."

A warrior rushed in like a madman, drew his bow, and aimed the arrow at Chaumonot. "I looked at him fixedly," writes the Jesuit, "and commended myself in full confidence to St. Michael. Without doubt, this great archangel saved us; for almost immediately the fury of the warrior was appeased, and the rest of our enemies soon began to listen to the explanation we gave them of our visit to their country." [ Ibid., 57. ]

The mission was barren of any other fruit than hardship and danger, and after a stay of four months the two priests resolved to return.

On the way, they met a genuine act of kindness. A heavy snow-storm arresting their progress, a Neutral woman took them into her lodge, entertained them for two weeks with her best fare, persuaded her father and relatives to befriend them, and aided them to make a vocabulary of the dialect. Bidding their generous hostess farewell, they journeyed northward, through the melting snows of spring, and reached Sainte Marie in safety.

[ Lalemant, in his Relation of 1641, gives the narrative of this mission at length. His account coincides perfectly with the briefer notice of Chaumonot in his Autobiography. Chaumonot describes the difficulties of the journey very graphically in a letter to his friend, Father Nappi, dated Aug. 3, 1640, preserved in Carayon. See also the next letter, Brebeuf au T. R. P. Mutio Vitelleschi, 20 Aot, 1641.

The Recollet La Roche Dallion had visited the Neutrals fourteen years before, (see Introduction, note,) and, like his two successors, had been seriously endangered by Huron intrigues. ]