1632, 1633.
PAUL LE JEUNE.
Le Jeune's Voyage • His First Pupils • His Studies • His Indian Teacher
• Winter at the Mission-House • Le Jeune's School • Reinforcements
In another narrative, we have seen how the Jesuits, supplanting the
Récollet friars, their predecessors, had adopted as their own the rugged
task of Christianizing New France. We have seen, too, how a descent of
the English, or rather of Huguenots fighting under English colors, had
overthrown for a time the miserable little colony, with the mission to
which it was wedded; and how Quebec was at length restored to France,
and the broken thread of the Jesuit enterprise resumed. [1]
[1] "Pioneers of France."
It was then that Le Jeune had embarked for the New World. He was in his
convent at Dieppe when he received the order to depart; and he set forth
in haste for Havre, filled, he assures us, with inexpressible joy at the
prospect of a living or a dying martyrdom. At Rouen he was joined by De
Nouë, with a lay brother named Gilbert; and the three sailed together on
the eighteenth of April, 1632. The sea treated them roughly; Le Jeune
was wretchedly sea-sick; and the ship nearly foundered in a gale. At
length they came in sight of "that miserable country," as the missionary
calls the scene of his future labors. It was in the harbor of Tadoussac
that he first encountered the objects of his apostolic cares; for, as he
sat in the ship's cabin with the master, it was suddenly invaded by ten
or twelve Indians, whom he compares to a party of maskers at the
Carnival. Some had their cheeks painted black, their noses blue, and the
rest of their faces red. Others were decorated with a broad band of
black across the eyes; and others, again, with diverging rays of black,
red, and blue on both cheeks. Their attire was no less uncouth. Some of
them wore shaggy bear-skins, reminding the priest of the pictures of St.
John the Baptist.
After a vain attempt to save a number of Iroquois prisoners whom they
were preparing to burn alive on shore, Le Jeune and his companions again
set sail, and reached Quebec on the fifth of July. Having said mass, as
already mentioned, under the roof of Madame Hébert and her delighted
family, the Jesuits made their way to the two hovels built by their
predecessors on the St. Charles, which had suffered woful dilapidation
at the hands of the English. Here they made their abode, and applied
themselves, with such skill as they could command, to repair the
shattered tenements and cultivate the waste meadows around.
The beginning of Le Jeune's missionary labors was neither imposing nor
promising. He describes himself seated with a small Indian boy on one
side and a small negro on the other, the latter of whom had been left by
the English as a gift to Madame Hébert. As neither of the three
understood the language of the others, the pupils made little progress
in spiritual knowledge. The missionaries, it was clear, must learn
Algonquin at any cost; and, to this end, Le Jeune resolved to visit the
Indian encampments. Hearing that a band of Montagnais were fishing for
eels on the St. Lawrence, between Cape Diamond and the cove which now
bears the name of Wolfe, he set forth for the spot on a morning in
October. As, with toil and trepidation, he scrambled around the foot of
the cape,--whose precipices, with a chaos of loose rocks, thrust
themselves at that day into the deep tidewater,--he dragged down upon
himself the trunk of a fallen tree, which, in its descent, well nigh
swept him into the river. The peril past, he presently reached his
destination. Here, among the lodges of bark, were stretched innumerable
strings of hide, from which hung to dry an incredible multitude of eels.
A boy invited him into the lodge of a withered squaw, his grandmother,
who hastened to offer him four smoked eels on a piece of birch bark,
while other squaws of the household instructed him how to roast them on
a forked stick over the embers. All shared the feast together, his
entertainers using as napkins their own hair or that of their dogs;
while Le Jeune, intent on increasing his knowledge of Algonquin,
maintained an active discourse of broken words and pantomime. [2]
[2] Le Jeune, Relation, 1633, 2.
The lesson, however, was too laborious, and of too little profit, to be
often repeated, and the missionary sought anxiously for more stable
instruction. To find such was not easy. The interpreters--Frenchmen,
who, in the interest of the fur company, had spent years among the
Indians--were averse to Jesuits, and refused their aid. There was one
resource, however, of which Le Jeune would fain avail himself. An
Indian, called Pierre by the French, had been carried to France by the
Récollet friars, instructed, converted, and baptized. He had lately
returned to Canada, where, to the scandal of the Jesuits, he had
relapsed into his old ways, retaining of his French education little
besides a few new vices. He still haunted the fort at Quebec, lured by
the hope of an occasional gift of wine or tobacco, but shunned the
Jesuits, of whose rigid way of life he stood in horror. As he spoke good
French and good Indian, he would have been invaluable to the embarrassed
priests at the mission. Le Jeune invoked the aid of the Saints. The
effect of his prayers soon appeared, he tells us, in a direct
interposition of Providence, which so disposed the heart of Pierre that
he quarrelled with the French commandant, who thereupon closed the fort
against him. He then repaired to his friends and relatives in the woods,
but only to encounter a rebuff from a young squaw to whom he made his
addresses. On this, he turned his steps towards the mission-house, and,
being unfitted by his French education for supporting himself by
hunting, begged food and shelter from the priests. Le Jeune gratefully
accepted him as a gift vouchsafed by Heaven to his prayers, persuaded a
lackey at the fort to give him a cast-off suit of clothes, promised him
maintenance, and installed him as his teacher.
Seated on wooden stools by the rough table in the refectory, the priest
and the Indian pursued their studies. "How thankful I am," writes Le
Jeune, "to those who gave me tobacco last year! At every difficulty I
give my master a piece of it, to make him more attentive." [3]
[3] Relation, 1633, 7. He continues: "Ie ne sçaurois assez rendre graces
à Nostre Seigneur de cet heureux rencontre.... Que Dieu soit beny pour
vn iamais, sa prouidence est adorable, et sa bonté n'a point de limites"
Meanwhile, winter closed in with a severity rare even in Canada. The St.
Lawrence and the St. Charles were hard frozen; rivers, forests, and
rocks were mantled alike in dazzling sheets of snow. The humble
mission-house of Notre-Dame des Anges was half buried in the drifts,
which, heaped up in front where a path had been dug through them, rose
two feet above the low eaves. The priests, sitting at night before the
blazing logs of their wide-throated chimney, heard the trees in the
neighboring forest cracking with frost, with a sound like the report of
a pistol. Le Jeune's ink froze, and his fingers were benumbed, as he
toiled at his declensions and conjugations, or translated the Pater
Noster into blundering Algonquin. The water in the cask beside the fire
froze nightly, and the ice was broken every morning with hatchets. The
blankets of the two priests were fringed with the icicles of their
congealed breath, and the frost lay in a thick coating on the
lozenge-shaped glass of their cells. [4]
[4] Le Jeune, Relation, 1633, 14, 15.
By day, Le Jeune and his companion practised with snow-shoes, with all
the mishaps which attend beginners,--the trippings, the falls, and
headlong dives into the soft drifts, amid the laughter of the Indians.
Their seclusion was by no means a solitude. Bands of Montagnais, with
their sledges and dogs, often passed the mission-house on their way to
hunt the moose. They once invited De Nouë to go with them; and he,
scarcely less eager than Le Jeune to learn their language, readily
consented. In two or three weeks he appeared, sick, famished, and half
dead with exhaustion. "Not ten priests in a hundred," writes Le Jeune to
his Superior, "could bear this winter life with the savages." But what
of that? It was not for them to falter. They were but instruments in the
hands of God, to be used, broken, and thrown aside, if such should be
His will. [5]
[5] "Voila, mon Reuerend Pere, vn eschantillon de ce qu'il faut souffrir
courant apres les Sauuages.... Il faut prendre sa vie, et tout ce qu'on
a, et le ietter à l'abandon, pour ainsi dire, se contentant d'vne croix
bien grosse et bien pesante pour toute richesse. Il est bien vray que
Dieu ne se laisse point vaincre, et que plus on quitte, plus on trouue:
plus on perd, plus on gaigne: mais Dieu se cache par fois, et alors le
Calice est bien amer."--Le Jeune, Relation 1633, 19.
An Indian made Le Jeune a present of two small children, greatly to the
delight of the missionary, who at once set himself to teaching them to
pray in Latin. As the season grew milder, the number of his scholars
increased; for, when parties of Indians encamped in the neighborhood, he
would take his stand at the door, and, like Xavier at Goa, ring a bell.
At this, a score of children would gather around him; and he, leading
them into the refectory, which served as his school-room, taught them to
repeat after him the Pater, Ave, and Credo, expounded the mystery of the
Trinity, showed them the sign of the cross, and made them repeat an
Indian prayer, the joint composition of Pierre and himself; then
followed the catechism, the lesson closing with singing the Pater
Noster, translated by the missionary into Algonquin rhymes; and when all
was over, he rewarded each of his pupils with a porringer of peas, to
insure their attendance at his next bell-ringing. [6]
[6] "I'ay commencé à appeller quelques enfans auec vne petite clochette.
La premiere fois i'en auois six, puis douze, puis quinze, puis vingt et
davantage; ie leur fais dire le Pater, Aue, et Credo, etc. ... Nous
finissons par le Pater Noster, que i'ay composé quasi en rimes en leur
langue, que ie leur fais chanter: et pour derniere conclusion, ie leur
fais donner chacun vne escuellée de pois, qu'ils mangent de bon
appetit," etc.--Le Jeune, Relation, 1633, 23.
It was the end of May, when the priests one morning heard the sound of
cannon from the fort, and were gladdened by the tidings that Samuel de
Champlain had arrived to resume command at Quebec, bringing with him
four more Jesuits,--Brébeuf, Masse, Daniel, and Davost. [7] Brébeuf,
from the first, turned his eyes towards the distant land of the
Hurons,--a field of labor full of peril, but rich in hope and promise.
Le Jeune's duties as Superior restrained him from wanderings so remote.
His apostleship must be limited, for a time, to the vagabond hordes of
Algonquins, who roamed the forests of the lower St. Lawrence, and of
whose language he had been so sedulous a student. His difficulties had
of late been increased by the absence of Pierre, who had run off as Lent
drew near, standing in dread of that season of fasting. Masse brought
tidings of him from Tadoussac, whither he had gone, and where a party of
English had given him liquor, destroying the last trace of Le Jeune's
late exhortations. "God forgive those," writes the Father, "who
introduced heresy into this country! If this savage, corrupted as he is
by these miserable heretics, had any wit, he would be a great hindrance
to the spread of the Faith. It is plain that he was given us, not for
the good of his soul, but only that we might extract from him the
principles of his language." [8]
[7] See "Pioneers of France."
[8] Relation, 1633, 29.
Pierre had two brothers. One, well known as a hunter, was named
Mestigoit; the other was the most noted "medicine-man," or, as the
Jesuits called him, sorcerer, in the tribe of the Montagnais. Like the
rest of their people, they were accustomed to set out for their winter
hunt in the autumn, after the close of their eel-fishery. Le Jeune,
despite the experience of De Nouë, had long had a mind to accompany one
of these roving bands, partly in the hope, that, in some hour of
distress, he might touch their hearts, or, by a timely drop of baptismal
water, dismiss some dying child to paradise, but chiefly with the object
of mastering their language. Pierre had rejoined his brothers; and, as
the hunting season drew near, they all begged the missionary to make one
of their party,--not, as he thought, out of any love for him, but solely
with a view to the provisions with which they doubted not he would be
well supplied. Le Jeune, distrustful of the sorcerer, demurred, but at
length resolved to go.