1641-1644.
ISAAC JOGUES.
The Iroquois War • Jogues • His Capture • His Journey to the Mohawks •
Lake George • The Mohawk Towns • The Missionary Tortured • Death of
Goupil • Misery of Jogues • The Mohawk "Babylon" • Fort Orange • Escape
of Jogues • Manhattan • The Voyage to France • Jogues among his Brethren
• He returns to Canada
The waters of the St. Lawrence rolled through a virgin wilderness,
where, in the vastness of the lonely woodlands, civilized man found a
precarious harborage at three points only,--at Quebec, at Montreal, and
at Three Rivers. Here and in the scattered missions was the whole of New
France,--a population of some three hundred souls in all. And now, over
these miserable settlements, rose a war-cloud of frightful portent.
It was thirty-two years since Champlain had first attacked the Iroquois.
[1] They had nursed their wrath for more than a generation, and at
length their hour was come. The Dutch traders at Fort Orange, now
Albany, had supplied them with fire-arms. The Mohawks, the most easterly
of the Iroquois nations, had, among their seven or eight hundred
warriors, no less than three hundred armed with the arquebuse, a weapon
somewhat like the modern carbine. [2] They were masters of the
thunderbolts which, in the hands of Champlain, had struck terror into
their hearts.
[1] See "Pioneers of France," 318.
[2] Vimont, Relation, 1643, 62. The Mohawks were the Agniés, or
Agneronons, of the old French writers.
According to the Journal of New Netherland, a contemporary Dutch
document, (see Colonial Documents of New York, I. 179,) the Dutch at
Fort Orange had supplied the Mohawks with four hundred guns; the profits
of the trade, which was free to the settlers, blinding them to the
danger.
We have surveyed in the introductory chapter the character and
organization of this ferocious people; their confederacy of five
nations, bound together by a peculiar tie of clanship; their chiefs,
half hereditary, half elective; their government, an oligarchy in form
and a democracy in spirit; their minds, thoroughly savage, yet marked
here and there with traits of a vigorous development. The war which they
had long waged with the Hurons was carried on by the Senecas and the
other Western nations of their league; while the conduct of hostilities
against the French and their Indian allies in Lower Canada was left to
the Mohawks. In parties of from ten to a hundred or more, they would
leave their towns on the River Mohawk, descend Lake Champlain and the
River Richelieu, lie in ambush on the banks of the St. Lawrence, and
attack the passing boats or canoes. Sometimes they hovered about the
fortifications of Quebec and Three Rivers, killing stragglers, or luring
armed parties into ambuscades. They followed like hounds on the trail of
travellers and hunters; broke in upon unguarded camps at midnight; and
lay in wait, for days and weeks, to intercept the Huron traders on their
yearly descent to Quebec. Had they joined to their ferocious courage the
discipline and the military knowledge that belong to civilization, they
could easily have blotted out New France from the map, and made the
banks of the St. Lawrence once more a solitude; but, though the most
formidable of savages, they were savages only.
In the early morning of the second of August, 1642, [3] twelve Huron
canoes were moving slowly along the northern shore of the expansion of
the St. Lawrence known as the Lake of St. Peter. There were on board
about forty persons, including four Frenchmen, one of them being the
Jesuit, Isaac Jogues, whom we have already followed on his missionary
journey to the towns of the Tobacco Nation. In the interval he had not
been idle. During the last autumn, (1641,) he, with Father Charles
Raymbault, had passed along the shore of Lake Huron northward, entered
the strait through which Lake Superior discharges itself, pushed on as
far as the Sault Sainte Marie, and preached the Faith to two thousand
Ojibwas, and other Algonquins there assembled. [4] He was now on his
return from a far more perilous errand. The Huron mission was in a state
of destitution. There was need of clothing for the priests, of vessels
for the altars, of bread and wine for the eucharist, of writing
materials,--in short, of everything; and, early in the summer of the
present year, Jogues had descended to Three Rivers and Quebec with the
Huron traders, to procure the necessary supplies. He had accomplished
his task, and was on his way back to the mission. With him were a few
Huron converts, and among them a noted Christian chief, Eustache
Ahatsistari. Others of the party were in course of instruction for
baptism; but the greater part were heathen, whose canoes were deeply
laden with the proceeds of their bargains with the French fur-traders.
[3] For the date, see Lalemant, Relation des Hurons, 1647, 18.
[4] Lalemant, Relation des Hurons, 1642, 97.
Jogues sat in one of the leading canoes. He was born at Orleans in 1607,
and was thirty-five years of age. His oval face and the delicate mould
of his features indicated a modest, thoughtful, and refined nature. He
was constitutionally timid, with a sensitive conscience and great
religious susceptibilities. He was a finished scholar, and might have
gained a literary reputation; but he had chosen another career, and one
for which he seemed but ill fitted. Physically, however, he was well
matched with his work; for, though his frame was slight, he was so
active, that none of the Indians could surpass him in running. [5]
[5] Buteux, Narré de la Prise du Père Jogues, MS.; Mémoire touchant le
Père Jogues, MS.
There is a portrait of him prefixed to Mr. Shea's admirable edition in
quarto of Jogues's Novum Belgium.
With him were two young men, René Goupil and Guillaume Couture, donnés
of the mission,--that is to say, laymen who, from a religious motive and
without pay, had attached themselves to the service of the Jesuits.
Goupil had formerly entered upon the Jesuit novitiate at Paris, but
failing health had obliged him to leave it. As soon as he was able, he
came to Canada, offered his services to the Superior of the mission, was
employed for a time in the humblest offices, and afterwards became an
attendant at the hospital. At length, to his delight, he received
permission to go up to the Hurons, where the surgical skill which he had
acquired was greatly needed; and he was now on his way thither. [6] His
companion, Couture, was a man of intelligence and vigor, and of a
character equally disinterested. [7] Both were, like Jogues, in the
foremost canoes; while the fourth Frenchman was with the unconverted
Hurons, in the rear.
[6] Jogues, Notice sur René Goupil.
[7] For an account of him, see Ferland, Notes sur les Registres de N. D.
de Québec, 83 (1863).
The twelve canoes had reached the western end of the Lake of St. Peter,
where it is filled with innumerable islands. [8] The forest was close on
their right, they kept near the shore to avoid the current, and the
shallow water before them was covered with a dense growth of tall
bulrushes. Suddenly the silence was frightfully broken. The war-whoop
rose from among the rushes, mingled with the reports of guns and the
whistling of bullets; and several Iroquois canoes, filled with warriors,
pushed out from their concealment, and bore down upon Jogues and his
companions. The Hurons in the rear were seized with a shameful panic.
They leaped ashore; left canoes, baggage, and weapons; and fled into the
woods. The French and the Christian Hurons made fight for a time; but
when they saw another fleet of canoes approaching from the opposite
shores or islands, they lost heart, and those escaped who could. Goupil
was seized amid triumphant yells, as were also several of the Huron
converts. Jogues sprang into the bulrushes, and might have escaped; but
when he saw Goupil and the neophytes in the clutches of the Iroquois, he
had no heart to abandon them, but came out from his hiding-place, and
gave himself up to the astonished victors. A few of them had remained to
guard the prisoners; the rest were chasing the fugitives. Jogues
mastered his agony, and began to baptize those of the captive converts
who needed baptism.
[8] Buteux, Narré de le Prise du Père Jogues, MS. This document leaves
no doubt as to the locality.
Couture had eluded pursuit; but when he thought of Jogues and of what
perhaps awaited him, he resolved to share his fate, and, turning,
retraced his steps. As he approached, five Iroquois ran forward to meet
him; and one of them snapped his gun at his breast, but it missed fire.
In his confusion and excitement, Couture fired his own piece, and laid
the savage dead. The remaining four sprang upon him, stripped off all
his clothing, tore away his finger-nails with their teeth, gnawed his
fingers with the fury of famished dogs, and thrust a sword through one
of his hands. Jogues broke from his guards, and, rushing to his friend,
threw his arms about his neck. The Iroquois dragged him away, beat him
with their fists and war-clubs till he was senseless, and, when he
revived, lacerated his fingers with their teeth, as they had done those
of Couture. Then they turned upon Goupil, and treated him with the same
ferocity. The Huron prisoners were left for the present unharmed. More
of them were brought in every moment, till at length the number of
captives amounted in all to twenty-two, while three Hurons had been
killed in the fight and pursuit. The Iroquois, about seventy in number,
now embarked with their prey; but not until they had knocked on the head
an old Huron, whom Jogues, with his mangled hands, had just baptized,
and who refused to leave the place. Then, under a burning sun, they
crossed to the spot on which the town of Sorel now stands, at the mouth
of the river Richelieu, where they encamped. [9]
[9] The above, with much of what follows, rests on three documents. The
first is a long letter, written in Latin, by Jogues, to the Father
Provincial at Paris. It is dated at Rensselaerswyck (Albany), Aug. 5,
1643, and is preserved in the Societas Jesu Militans of Tanner, and in
the Mortes Illustres et Gesta eorum de Societate Jesu, etc., of
Alegambe. There is a French translation in Martin's Bressani, and an
English translation, by Mr. Shea, in the New York Hist. Coll. of 1857.
The second document is an old manuscript, entitled Narré de la Prise du
Père Jogues. It was written by the Jesuit Buteux, from the lips of
Jogues. Father Martin, S.J., in whose custody it was, kindly permitted
me to have a copy made from it. Besides these, there is a long account
in the Relation des Hurons of 1647, and a briefer one in that of 1644.
All these narratives show the strongest internal evidence of truth, and
are perfectly concurrent. They are also supported by statements of
escaped Huron prisoners, and by several letters and memoirs of the Dutch
at Rensselaerswyck.
Their course was southward, up the River Richelieu and Lake Champlain;
thence, by way of Lake George, to the Mohawk towns. The pain and fever
of their wounds, and the clouds of mosquitoes, which they could not
drive off, left the prisoners no peace by day nor sleep by night. On the
eighth day, they learned that a large Iroquois war-party, on their way
to Canada, were near at hand; and they soon approached their camp, on a
small island near the southern end of Lake Champlain. The warriors, two
hundred in number, saluted their victorious countrymen with volleys from
their guns; then, armed with clubs and thorny sticks, ranged themselves
in two lines, between which the captives were compelled to pass up the
side of a rocky hill. On the way, they were beaten with such fury, that
Jogues, who was last in the line, fell powerless, drenched in blood and
half dead. As the chief man among the French captives, he fared the
worst. His hands were again mangled, and fire applied to his body; while
the Huron chief, Eustache, was subjected to tortures even more
atrocious. When, at night, the exhausted sufferers tried to rest, the
young warriors came to lacerate their wounds and pull out their hair and
beards.
In the morning they resumed their journey. And now the lake narrowed to
the semblance of a tranquil river. Before them was a woody mountain,
close on their right a rocky promontory, and between these flowed a
stream, the outlet of Lake George. On those rocks, more than a hundred
years after, rose the ramparts of Ticonderoga. They landed, shouldered
their canoes and baggage, took their way through the woods, passed the
spot where the fierce Highlanders and the dauntless regiments of England
breasted in vain the storm of lead and fire, and soon reached the shore
where Abercrombie landed and Lord Howe fell. First of white men, Jogues
and his companions gazed on the romantic lake that bears the name, not
of its gentle discoverer, but of the dull Hanoverian king. Like a fair
Naiad of the wilderness, it slumbered between the guardian mountains
that breathe from crag and forest the stern poetry of war. But all then
was solitude; and the clang of trumpets, the roar of cannon, and the
deadly crack of the rifle had never as yet awakened their angry echoes.
[10]
[10] Lake George, according to Jogues, was called by the Mohawks
"Andiatarocte," or Place where the Lake closes. "Andiataraque" is found
on a map of Sanson. Spofford, Gazetteer of New York, article "Lake
George," says that it was called "Canideri-oit," or Tail of the Lake.
Father Martin, in his notes on Bressani, prefixes to this name that of
"Horicon," but gives no original authority.
I have seen an old Latin map on which the name "Horiconi" is set down as
belonging to a neighboring tribe. This seems to be only a misprint for
"Horicoui," that is, "Irocoui," or "Iroquois." In an old English map,
prefixed to the rare tract, A Treatise of New England, the "Lake of
Hierocoyes" is laid down. The name "Horicon," as used by Cooper in his
Last of the Mohicans, seems to have no sufficient historical foundation.
In 1646, the lake, as we shall see, was named "Lac St. Sacrement."
Again the canoes were launched, and the wild flotilla glided on its
way,--now in the shadow of the heights, now on the broad expanse, now
among the devious channels of the narrows, beset with woody islets,
where the hot air was redolent of the pine, the spruce, and the
cedar,--till they neared that tragic shore, where, in the following
century, New-England rustics baffled the soldiers of Dieskau, where
Montcalm planted his batteries, where the red cross waved so long amid
the smoke, and where at length the summer night was hideous with
carnage, and an honored name was stained with a memory of blood. [11]
[11] The allusion is, of course, to the siege of Fort William Henry in
1757, and the ensuing massacre by Montcalm's Indians. Charlevoix, with
his usual carelessness, says that Jogues's captors took a circuitous
route to avoid enemies. In truth, however, they were not in the
slightest danger of meeting any; and they followed the route which,
before the present century, was the great highway between Canada and New
Holland, or New York.
The Iroquois landed at or near the future site of Fort William Henry,
left their canoes, and, with their prisoners, began their march for the
nearest Mohawk town. Each bore his share of the plunder. Even Jogues,
though his lacerated hands were in a frightful condition and his body
covered with bruises, was forced to stagger on with the rest under a
heavy load. He with his fellow-prisoners, and indeed the whole party,
were half starved, subsisting chiefly on wild berries. They crossed the
upper Hudson, and, in thirteen days after leaving the St. Lawrence,
neared the wretched goal of their pilgrimage, a palisaded town, standing
on a hill by the banks of the River Mohawk.
The whoops of the victors announced their approach, and the savage hive
sent forth its swarms. They thronged the side of the hill, the old and
the young, each with a stick, or a slender iron rod, bought from the
Dutchmen on the Hudson. They ranged themselves in a double line,
reaching upward to the entrance of the town; and through this "narrow
road of Paradise," as Jogues calls it, the captives were led in single
file, Couture in front, after him a half-score of Hurons, then Goupil,
then the remaining Hurons, and at last Jogues. As they passed, they were
saluted with yells, screeches, and a tempest of blows. One, heavier than
the others, knocked Jogues's breath from his body, and stretched him on
the ground; but it was death to lie there, and, regaining his feet, he
staggered on with the rest. [12] When they reached the town, the blows
ceased, and they were all placed on a scaffold, or high platform, in the
middle of the place. The three Frenchmen had fared the worst, and were
frightfully disfigured. Goupil, especially, was streaming with blood,
and livid with bruises from head to foot.
[12] This practice of forcing prisoners to "run the gauntlet" was by no
means peculiar to the Iroquois, but was common to many tribes.
They were allowed a few minutes to recover their breath, undisturbed,
except by the hootings and gibes of the mob below. Then a chief called
out, "Come, let us caress these Frenchmen!"--and the crowd, knife in
hand, began to mount the scaffold. They ordered a Christian Algonquin
woman, a prisoner among them, to cut off Jogues's left thumb, which she
did; and a thumb of Goupil was also severed, a clam-shell being used as
the instrument, in order to increase the pain. It is needless to specify
further the tortures to which they were subjected, all designed to cause
the greatest possible suffering without endangering life. At night, they
were removed from the scaffold, and placed in one of the houses, each
stretched on his back, with his limbs extended, and his ankles and
wrists bound fast to stakes driven into the earthen floor. The children
now profited by the examples of their parents, and amused themselves by
placing live coals and red-hot ashes on the naked bodies of the
prisoners, who, bound fast, and covered with wounds and bruises which
made every movement a torture, were sometimes unable to shake them off.
In the morning, they were again placed on the scaffold, where, during
this and the two following days, they remained exposed to the taunts of
the crowd. Then they were led in triumph to the second Mohawk town, and
afterwards to the third, [13] suffering at each a repetition of
cruelties, the detail of which would be as monotonous as revolting.
[13] The Mohawks had but three towns. The first, and the lowest on the
river, was Osseruenon; the second, two miles above, was Andagaron; and
the third, Teonontogen: or, as Megapolensis, in his Sketch of the
Mohawks, writes the names, Asserué, Banagiro, and Thenondiogo. They all
seem to have been fortified in the Iroquois manner, and their united
population was thirty-five hundred, or somewhat more. At a later period,
1720, there were still three towns, named respectively Teahtontaioga,
Ganowauga, and Ganeganaga. See the map in Morgan, League of the
Iroquois.
In a house in the town of Teonontogen, Jogues was hung by the wrists
between two of the upright poles which supported the structure, in such
a manner that his feet could not touch the ground; and thus he remained
for some fifteen minutes, in extreme torture, until, as he was on the
point of swooning, an Indian, with an impulse of pity, cut the cords and
released him. While they were in this town, four fresh Huron prisoners,
just taken, were brought in, and placed on the scaffold with the rest.
Jogues, in the midst of his pain and exhaustion, took the opportunity to
convert them. An ear of green corn was thrown to him for food, and he
discovered a few rain-drops clinging to the husks. With these he
baptized two of the Hurons. The remaining two received baptism soon
after from a brook which the prisoners crossed on the way to another
town.
Couture, though he had incensed the Indians by killing one of their
warriors, had gained their admiration by his bravery; and, after
torturing him most savagely, they adopted him into one of their
families, in place of a dead relative. Thenceforth he was comparatively
safe. Jogues and Goupil were less fortunate. Three of the Hurons had
been burned to death, and they expected to share their fate. A council
was held to pronounce their doom; but dissensions arose, and no result
was reached. They were led back to the first village, where they
remained, racked with suspense and half dead with exhaustion. Jogues,
however, lost no opportunity to baptize dying infants, while Goupil
taught children to make the sign of the cross. On one occasion, he made
the sign on the forehead of a child, grandson of an Indian in whose
lodge they lived. The superstition of the old savage was aroused. Some
Dutchmen had told him that the sign of the cross came from the Devil,
and would cause mischief. He thought that Goupil was bewitching the
child; and, resolving to rid himself of so dangerous a guest, applied
for aid to two young braves. Jogues and Goupil, clad in their squalid
garb of tattered skins, were soon after walking together in the forest
that adjoined the town, consoling themselves with prayer, and mutually
exhorting each other to suffer patiently for the sake of Christ and the
Virgin, when, as they were returning, reciting their rosaries, they met
the two young Indians, and read in their sullen visages an augury of
ill. The Indians joined them, and accompanied them to the entrance of
the town, where one of the two, suddenly drawing a hatchet from beneath
his blanket, struck it into the head of Goupil, who fell, murmuring the
name of Christ. Jogues dropped on his knees, and, bowing his head in
prayer, awaited the blow, when the murderer ordered him to get up and go
home. He obeyed but not until he had given absolution to his still
breathing friend, and presently saw the lifeless body dragged through
the town amid hootings and rejoicings.
Jogues passed a night of anguish and desolation, and in the morning,
reckless of life, set forth in search of Goupil's remains. "Where are
you going so fast?" demanded the old Indian, his master. "Do you not see
those fierce young braves, who are watching to kill you?" Jogues
persisted, and the old man asked another Indian to go with him as a
protector. The corpse had been flung into a neighboring ravine, at the
bottom of which ran a torrent; and here, with the Indian's help, Jogues
found it, stripped naked, and gnawed by dogs. He dragged it into the
water, and covered it with stones to save it from further mutilation,
resolving to return alone on the following day and secretly bury it. But
with the night there came a storm; and when, in the gray of the morning,
Jogues descended to the brink of the stream, he found it a rolling,
turbid flood, and the body was nowhere to be seen. Had the Indians or
the torrent borne it away? Jogues waded into the cold current; it was
the first of October; he sounded it with his feet and with his stick; he
searched the rocks, the thicket, the forest; but all in vain. Then,
crouched by the pitiless stream, he mingled his tears with its waters,
and, in a voice broken with groans, chanted the service of the dead.
[14]
[14] Jogues in Tanner, Societas Militans, 519; Bressani, 216; Lalemant,
Relation, 1647, 25, 26; Buteux, Narré, MS.; Jogues, Notice sur René
Goupil.
The Indians, it proved, and not the flood, had robbed him of the remains
of his friend. Early in the spring, when the snows were melting in the
woods, he was told by Mohawk children that the body was lying, where it
had been flung, in a lonely spot lower down the stream. He went to seek
it; found the scattered bones, stripped by the foxes and the birds; and,
tenderly gathering them up, hid them in a hollow tree, hoping that a day
might come when he could give them a Christian burial in consecrated
ground.
After the murder of Goupil, Jogues's life hung by a hair. He lived in
hourly expectation of the tomahawk, and would have welcomed it as a
boon. By signs and words, he was warned that his hour was near; but, as
he never shunned his fate, it fled from him, and each day, with renewed
astonishment, he found himself still among the living.
Late in the autumn, a party of the Indians set forth on their yearly
deer-hunt, and Jogues was ordered to go with them. Shivering and half
famished, he followed them through the chill November forest, and shared
their wild bivouac in the depths of the wintry desolation. The game they
took was devoted to Areskoui, their god, and eaten in his honor. Jogues
would not taste the meat offered to a demon; and thus he starved in the
midst of plenty. At night, when the kettle was slung, and the savage
crew made merry around their fire, he crouched in a corner of the hut,
gnawed by hunger, and pierced to the bone with cold. They thought his
presence unpropitious to their hunting, and the women especially hated
him. His demeanor at once astonished and incensed his masters. He
brought them fire-wood, like a squaw; he did their bidding without a
murmur, and patiently bore their abuse; but when they mocked at his God,
and laughed at his devotions, their slave assumed an air and tone of
authority, and sternly rebuked them. [15]
[15] Lalemant, Relation, 1647, 41.
He would sometimes escape from "this Babylon," as he calls the hut, and
wander in the forest, telling his beads and repeating passages of
Scripture. In a remote and lonely spot, he cut the bark in the form of a
cross from the trunk of a great tree; and here he made his prayers. This
living martyr, half clad in shaggy furs, kneeling on the snow among the
icicled rocks and beneath the gloomy pines, bowing in adoration before
the emblem of the faith in which was his only consolation and his only
hope, is alike a theme for the pen and a subject for the pencil.
The Indians at last grew tired of him, and sent him back to the village.
Here he remained till the middle of March, baptizing infants and trying
to convert adults. He told them of the sun, moon, planets, and stars.
They listened with interest; but when from astronomy he passed to
theology, he spent his breath in vain. In March, the old man with whom
he lived set forth for his spring fishing, taking with him his squaw,
and several children. Jogues also was of the party. They repaired to a
lake, perhaps Lake Saratoga, four days distant. Here they subsisted for
some time on frogs, the entrails of fish, and other garbage. Jogues
passed his days in the forest, repeating his prayers, and carving the
name of Jesus on trees, as a terror to the demons of the wilderness. A
messenger at length arrived from the town; and on the following day,
under the pretence that signs of an enemy had been seen, the party broke
up their camp, and returned home in hot haste. The messenger had brought
tidings that a war-party, which had gone out against the French, had
been defeated and destroyed, and that the whole population were
clamoring to appease their grief by torturing Jogues to death. This was
the true cause of the sudden and mysterious return; but when they
reached the town, other tidings had arrived. The missing warriors were
safe, and on their way home in triumph with a large number of prisoners.
Again Jogues's life was spared; but he was forced to witness the torture
and butchery of the converts and allies of the French. Existence became
unendurable to him, and he longed to die. War-parties were continually
going out. Should they be defeated and cut off, he would pay the forfeit
at the stake; and if they came back, as they usually did, with booty and
prisoners, he was doomed to see his countrymen and their Indian friends
mangled, burned, and devoured.
Jogues had shown no disposition to escape, and great liberty was
therefore allowed him. He went from town to town, giving absolution to
the Christian captives, and converting and baptizing the heathen. On one
occasion, he baptized a woman in the midst of the fire, under pretence
of lifting a cup of water to her parched lips. There was no lack of
objects for his zeal. A single war-party returned from the Huron country
with nearly a hundred prisoners, who were distributed among the Iroquois
towns, and the greater part burned. [16] Of the children of the Mohawks
and their neighbors, he had baptized, before August, about seventy;
insomuch that he began to regard his captivity as a Providential
interposition for the saving of souls.
[16] The Dutch clergyman, Megapolensis, at this time living at Fort
Orange, bears the strongest testimony to the ferocity with which his
friends, the Mohawks, treated their prisoners. He mentions the same
modes of torture which Jogues describes, and is very explicit as to
cannibalism. "The common people," he says, "eat the arms, buttocks, and
trunk; but the chiefs eat the head and the heart." (Short Sketch of the
Mohawk Indians.) This feast was of a religious character.
At the end of July, he went with a party of Indians to a fishing-place
on the Hudson, about twenty miles below Fort Orange. While here, he
learned that another war-party had lately returned with prisoners, two
of whom had been burned to death at Osseruenon. On this, his conscience
smote him that he had not remained in the town to give the sufferers
absolution or baptism; and he begged leave of the old woman who had him
in charge to return at the first opportunity. A canoe soon after went up
the river with some of the Iroquois, and he was allowed to go in it.
When they reached Rensselaerswyck, the Indians landed to trade with the
Dutch, and took Jogues with them.
The centre of this rude little settlement was Fort Orange, a miserable
structure of logs, standing on a spot now within the limits of the city
of Albany. [17] It contained several houses and other buildings; and
behind it was a small church, recently erected, and serving as the abode
of the pastor, Dominie Megapolensis, known in our day as the writer of
an interesting, though short, account of the Mohawks. Some twenty-five
or thirty houses, roughly built of boards and roofed with thatch, were
scattered at intervals on or near the borders of the Hudson, above and
below the fort. Their inhabitants, about a hundred in number, were for
the most part rude Dutch farmers, tenants of Van Rensselaer, the
patroon, or lord of the manor. They raised wheat, of which they made
beer, and oats, with which they fed their numerous horses. They traded,
too, with the Indians, who profited greatly by the competition among
them, receiving guns, knives, axes, kettles, cloth, and beads, at
moderate rates, in exchange for their furs. [18] The Dutch were on
excellent terms with their red neighbors, met them in the forest without
the least fear, and sometimes intermarried with them. They had known of
Jogues's captivity, and, to their great honor, had made efforts for his
release, offering for that purpose goods to a considerable value, but
without effect. [19]
[17] The site of the Phœnix Hotel.--Note by Mr. Shea to Jogues's Novum
Belgium.
[18] Jogues, Novum Belgium; Barnes, Settlement of Albany, 50-55;
O'Callaghan, New Netherland, Chap. VI.
On the relations of the Mohawks and Dutch, see Megapolensis, Short
Sketch of the Mohawk Indians, and portions of the letter of Jogues to
his Superior, dated Rensselaerswyck, Aug. 30, 1643.
[19] See a long letter of Arendt Van Curler (Corlaer) to Van Rensselaer,
June 16, 1643, in O'Callaghan's New Netherland, Appendix L. "We
persuaded them so far," writes Van Curler, "that they promised not to
kill them.... The French captives ran screaming after us, and besought
us to do all in our power to release them out of the hands of the
barbarians."
At Fort Orange Jogues heard startling news. The Indians of the village
where he lived were, he was told, enraged against him, and determined to
burn him. About the first of July, a war-party had set out for Canada,
and one of the warriors had offered to Jogues to be the bearer of a
letter from him to the French commander at Three Rivers, thinking
probably to gain some advantage under cover of a parley. Jogues knew
that the French would be on their guard; and he felt it his duty to lose
no opportunity of informing them as to the state of affairs among the
Iroquois. A Dutchman gave him a piece of paper; and he wrote a letter,
in a jargon of Latin, French, and Huron, warning his countrymen to be on
their guard, as war-parties were constantly going out, and they could
hope for no respite from attack until late in the autumn. [20] When the
Iroquois reached the mouth of the River Richelieu, where a small fort
had been built by the French the preceding summer, the messenger asked
for a parley, and gave Jogues's letter to the commander of the post,
who, after reading it, turned his cannon on the savages. They fled in
dismay, leaving behind them their baggage and some of their guns; and,
returning home in a fury, charged Jogues with having caused their
discomfiture. Jogues had expected this result, and was prepared to meet
it; but several of the principal Dutch settlers, and among them Van
Curler, who had made the previous attempt to rescue him, urged that his
death was certain, if he returned to the Indian town, and advised him to
make his escape. In the Hudson, opposite the settlement, lay a small
Dutch vessel nearly ready to sail. Van Curler offered him a passage in
her to Bordeaux or Rochelle,--representing that the opportunity was too
good to be lost, and making light of the prisoner's objection, that a
connivance in his escape on the part of the Dutch would excite the
resentment of the Indians against them. Jogues thanked him warmly; but,
to his amazement, asked for a night to consider the matter, and take
counsel of God in prayer.
[20] See a French rendering of the letter in Vimont, Relation, 1643, p.
75.
He spent the night in great agitation, tossed by doubt, and full of
anxiety lest his self-love should beguile him from his duty. [21] Was it
not possible that the Indians might spare his life, and that, by a
timely drop of water, he might still rescue souls from torturing devils,
and eternal fires of perdition? On the other hand, would he not, by
remaining to meet a fate almost inevitable, incur the guilt of suicide?
And even should he escape torture and death, could he hope that the
Indians would again permit him to instruct and baptize their prisoners?
Of his French companions, one, Goupil, was dead; while Couture had urged
Jogues to flight, saying that he would then follow his example, but
that, so long as the Father remained a prisoner, he, Couture, would
share his fate. Before morning, Jogues had made his decision. God, he
thought, would be better pleased should he embrace the opportunity given
him. He went to find his Dutch friends, and, with a profusion of thanks,
accepted their offer. They told him that a boat should be left for him
on the shore, and that he must watch his time, and escape in it to the
vessel, where he would be safe.
[21] Buteux, Narré, MS.
He and his Indian masters were lodged together in a large building, like
a barn, belonging to a Dutch farmer. It was a hundred feet long, and had
no partition of any kind. At one end the farmer kept his cattle; at the
other he slept with his wife, a Mohawk squaw, and his children, while
his Indian guests lay on the floor in the middle. [22] As he is
described as one of the principal persons of the colony, it is clear
that the civilization of Rensselaerswyck was not high.
[22] Buteux, Narré, MS.
In the evening, Jogues, in such a manner as not to excite the suspicion
of the Indians, went out to reconnoitre. There was a fence around the
house, and, as he was passing it, a large dog belonging to the farmer
flew at him, and bit him very severely in the leg. The Dutchman, hearing
the noise, came out with a light, led Jogues back into the building, and
bandaged his wound. He seemed to have some suspicion of the prisoner's
design; for, fearful perhaps that his escape might exasperate the
Indians, he made fast the door in such a manner that it could not
readily be opened. Jogues now lay down among the Indians, who, rolled in
their blankets, were stretched around him. He was fevered with
excitement; and the agitation of his mind, joined to the pain of his
wound, kept him awake all night. About dawn, while the Indians were
still asleep, a laborer in the employ of the farmer came in with a
lantern, and Jogues, who spoke no Dutch, gave him to understand by signs
that he needed his help and guidance. The man was disposed to aid him,
silently led the way out, quieted the dogs, and showed him the path to
the river. It was more than half a mile distant, and the way was rough
and broken. Jogues was greatly exhausted, and his wounded limb gave him
such pain that he walked with the utmost difficulty. When he reached the
shore, the day was breaking, and he found, to his dismay, that the ebb
of the tide had left the boat high and dry. He shouted to the vessel,
but no one heard him. His desperation gave him strength; and, by working
the boat to and fro, he pushed it at length, little by little, into the
water, entered it, and rowed to the vessel. The Dutch sailors received
him kindly, and hid him in the bottom of the hold, placing a large box
over the hatchway.
He remained two days, half stifled, in this foul lurking-place, while
the Indians, furious at his escape, ransacked the settlement in vain to
find him. They came off to the vessel, and so terrified the officers,
that Jogues was sent on shore at night, and led to the fort. Here he was
hidden in the garret of a house occupied by a miserly old man, to whose
charge he was consigned. Food was sent to him; but, as his host
appropriated the larger part to himself, Jogues was nearly starved.
There was a compartment of his garret, separated from the rest by a
partition of boards. Here the old Dutchman, who, like many others of the
settlers, carried on a trade with the Mohawks, kept a quantity of goods
for that purpose; and hither he often brought his customers. The boards
of the partition had shrunk, leaving wide crevices; and Jogues could
plainly see the Indians, as they passed between him and the light. They,
on their part, might as easily have seen him, if he had not, when he
heard them entering the house, hidden himself behind some barrels in the
corner, where he would sometimes remain crouched for hours, in a
constrained and painful posture, half suffocated with heat, and afraid
to move a limb. His wounded leg began to show dangerous symptoms; but he
was relieved by the care of a Dutch surgeon of the fort. The minister,
Megapolensis, also visited him, and did all in his power for the comfort
of his Catholic brother, with whom he seems to have been well pleased,
and whom he calls "a very learned scholar." [23]
[23] Megapolensis, A Short Sketch of the Mohawk Indians.
When Jogues had remained for six weeks in this hiding-place, his Dutch
friends succeeded in satisfying his Indian masters by the payment of a
large ransom. [24] A vessel from Manhattan, now New York, soon after
brought up an order from the Director-General, Kieft, that he should be
sent to him. Accordingly he was placed in a small vessel, which carried
him down the Hudson. The Dutch on board treated him with great kindness;
and, to do him honor, named after him one of the islands in the river.
At Manhattan he found a dilapidated fort, garrisoned by sixty soldiers,
and containing a stone church and the Director-General's house, together
with storehouses and barracks. Near it were ranges of small houses,
occupied chiefly by mechanics and laborers; while the dwellings of the
remaining colonists, numbering in all four or five hundred, were
scattered here and there on the island and the neighboring shores. The
settlers were of different sects and nations, but chiefly Dutch
Calvinists. Kieft told his guest that eighteen different languages were
spoken at Manhattan. [25] The colonists were in the midst of a bloody
Indian war, brought on by their own besotted cruelty; and while Jogues
was at the fort, some forty of the Dutchmen were killed on the
neighboring farms, and many barns and houses burned. [26]
[24] Lettre de Jogues à Lalemant, Rennes, Jan. 6, 1644.--See Relation,
1643, p. 79.--Goods were given the Indians to the value of three hundred
livres.
[25] Jogues, Novum Belgium.
[26] This war was with Algonquin tribes of the neighborhood.--See
O'Callaghan, New Netherland, I., Chap. III.
The Director-General, with a humanity that was far from usual with him,
exchanged Jogues's squalid and savage dress for a suit of Dutch cloth,
and gave him passage in a small vessel which was then about to sail. The
voyage was rough and tedious; and the passenger slept on deck or on a
coil of ropes, suffering greatly from cold, and often drenched by the
waves that broke over the vessel's side. At length she reached Falmouth,
on the southern coast of England, when all the crew went ashore for a
carouse, leaving Jogues alone on board. A boat presently came alongside
with a gang of desperadoes, who boarded her, and rifled her of
everything valuable, threatened Jogues with a pistol, and robbed him of
his hat and coat. He obtained some assistance from the crew of a French
ship in the harbor, and, on the day before Christmas, took passage in a
small coal vessel for the neighboring coast of Brittany. In the
following afternoon he was set on shore a little to the north of Brest,
and, seeing a peasant's cottage not far off, he approached it, and asked
the way to the nearest church. The peasant and his wife, as the
narrative gravely tells us, mistook him, by reason of his modest
deportment, for some poor, but pious Irishman, and asked him to share
their supper, after finishing his devotions, an invitation which Jogues,
half famished as he was, gladly accepted. He reached the church in time
for the evening mass, and with an unutterable joy knelt before the
altar, and renewed the communion of which he had been deprived so long.
When he returned to the cottage, the attention of his hosts was at once
attracted to his mutilated and distorted hands. They asked with
amazement how he could have received such injuries; and when they heard
the story of his tortures, their surprise and veneration knew no bounds.
Two young girls, their daughters, begged him to accept all they had to
give,--a handful of sous; while the peasant made known the character of
his new guest to his neighbors. A trader from Rennes brought a horse to
the door, and offered the use of it to Jogues, to carry him to the
Jesuit college in that town. He gratefully accepted it; and, on the
morning of the fifth of January, 1644, reached his destination.
He dismounted, and knocked at the door of the college. The porter opened
it, and saw a man wearing on his head an old woollen nightcap, and in an
attire little better than that of a beggar. Jogues asked to see the
Rector; but the porter answered, coldly, that the Rector was busied in
the Sacristy. Jogues begged him to say that a man was at the door with
news from Canada. The missions of Canada were at this time an object of
primal interest to the Jesuits, and above all to the Jesuits of France.
A letter from Jogues, written during his captivity, had already reached
France, as had also the Jesuit Relation of 1643, which contained a long
account of his capture; and he had no doubt been an engrossing theme of
conversation in every house of the French Jesuits. The Father Rector was
putting on his vestments to say mass; but when he heard that a poor man
from Canada had asked for him at the door, he postponed the service, and
went to meet him. Jogues, without discovering himself, gave him a letter
from the Dutch Director-General attesting his character. The Rector,
without reading it, began to question him as to the affairs of Canada,
and at length asked him if he knew Father Jogues.
"I knew him very well," was the reply.
"The Iroquois have taken him," pursued the Rector. "Is he dead? Have
they murdered him?"
"No," answered Jogues; "he is alive and at liberty, and I am he." And he
fell on his knees to ask his Superior's blessing.
That night was a night of jubilation and thanksgiving in the college of
Rennes. [27]
[27] For Jogues's arrival in Brittany, see Lettre de Jogues à Lalemant,
Rennes, Jan. 6, 1644; Lettre de Jogues à------, Rennes, Jan. 5, 1644,
(in Relation, 1643,) and the long account in the Relation of 1647.
Jogues became a centre of curiosity and reverence. He was summoned to
Paris. The Queen, Anne of Austria, wished to see him; and when the
persecuted slave of the Mohawks was conducted into her presence, she
kissed his mutilated hands, while the ladies of the Court thronged
around to do him homage. We are told, and no doubt with truth, that
these honors were unwelcome to the modest and single-hearted missionary,
who thought only of returning to his work of converting the Indians. A
priest with any deformity of body is debarred from saying mass. The
teeth and knives of the Iroquois had inflicted an injury worse than the
torturers imagined, for they had robbed Jogues of the privilege which
was the chief consolation of his life; but the Pope, by a special
dispensation, restored it to him, and with the opening spring he sailed
again for Canada.