[Sidenote: 1636.]
The Superior of the Huron Mission sent for me and proposed to me a
journey to Quebec,--a terrible journey on account of the difficulty
of the travelling there and back, and also because of the ambuscades
of Iroquois, who murder many of the Indians friendly to the French.
This was merely a proposition, not in any way a command, but I
accepted eagerly in spite of all the dangers and hazards. We started
off then and began our journey and our dangerous adventures at the
same time.
The distance was three hundred leagues, and in this distance we had
to make forty carriages of our boats and all our baggage around
rapids and waterfalls. Although the Indians were very expert in this
method of travelling, we experienced several little shipwrecks which
were attended with loss of our baggage and danger to our lives.
But at last, after thirty-five days’ hard travel, we reached Three
Rivers, from which place we descended to Quebec. We finished our
business at Quebec in a fortnight, and on the first day of August,
1642, we started from Three Rivers on our homeward voyage. We had
passed the first day and night and were proceeding quietly on the
second morning when some of the men in the first canoe shouted to
us that they had seen some footprints on shore. We all landed and
examined the tracks they had seen. We could not agree as to what they
were. Some said Iroquois, and others said that they were Algonquins,
friends of ours. But Eustace Ahatsistari said:--
“Algonquins or Iroquois it matters little; there are not more of them
than there are of us, so let us go on without fear.” Eustace was our
captain, and all the rest deferred to him both because of his feats
of arms and for his prudence and goodness.
So we went onward, up the river; but we had scarcely got on half
a league when a volley of arquebuse balls came upon us from an
ambuscade on shore. The Hurons, for the most part, were so frightened
at the noise that they abandoned their canoes and their arms and
fled into the depths of the woods. Otherwise the discharge did us
small harm, for only one Huron was wounded, and he but slightly in
his hand.
There were four of us Frenchmen, one of whom had escaped with the
Hurons, and eight or ten Christian Indians, and together we made
such head against the enemy that, although it was thirty to ten or
a dozen, the issue would have been doubtful had not another band
of forty Iroquois, who were hiding on the other side of the river,
opened fire upon us.
Upon this the Hurons lost courage, and those who could fled,
abandoning their comrades to the enemy. One Frenchman, René Goupil,
being left alone, was surrounded and captured, together with some
of the brave Hurons. I also was taken and so was our brave Captain
Eustace. One other Frenchman who had been captured, seeing an
opportunity, escaped, but suddenly the thought coming to him that
he was abandoning his Faith and his comrades, he stopped short and
determined to come back to us. But as he turned he saw five of the
Iroquois rushing up to him. One of them aimed his arquebuse at him
but missed. The Frenchman’s piece did not miss, and the Indian fell
back stone-dead. As soon as he had fired the other four Indians threw
themselves upon him with the madness of lions, or rather of devils.
They beat him with clubs, they bit him with their teeth, they tore
him with their nails and transfixed him with their swords. As I
approached him to give him some comfort they fell upon me also and
used me badly. In fact, so enraged were they against the French that
they cruelly tortured René Goupil and me also, biting our fingers
with their teeth in a terrible manner and beating us with sticks.
Finally they all came together again. Those who had been chasing the
Hurons returned, and they began all together to rejoice over their
prey with loud shouts of joy.
We started, then, to be conducted into a strange country. One old
man refused to embark when the Iroquois took to their boats, and
the Indians murdered him. There were twenty-two of us in all. For
the thirteen days which were taken up in the journey I suffered
almost insupportable bodily tortures and mental distresses beyond
comparison. Hunger, the glowing heat, the threats and hatred of
these leopards, the pain of our wounds,--all these were nothing to
the inward grief that I felt at the thought of our Hurons, all firm
Christians. I had thought that they would have been the support of
this growing Church, and I saw them condemned to death.
A week after we left the banks of the great River St. Lawrence we
fell in with two hundred Iroquois who had just returned from an
excursion against the French and their Indian allies. As soon as
they saw us they thanked the Sun for having put us in their power,
and immediately afterward fired a volley from their arquebuses as
a salute to the victors. They then sought out a level plain upon
the hill and then went to find clubs and thorny sticks. Thus armed
they placed themselves in two rows, one hundred on one side and one
hundred on the other, and having stripped us of our clothing they
forced us to pass through this path of pain and anguish. As we ran by
they delivered lusty blows upon our backs with all their strength.
They made me run last that I might be the more exposed to their rage.
I had hardly run half-way when I fell to the ground from the pain
and from the blows. Seeing this the Indians redoubled their efforts.
I was unable to force myself to rise, partly through my weakness and
partly because I thought I might as well die there. Seeing me fall
they threw themselves upon me, and God alone knows how long they beat
me. But when they saw that I had not fallen by accident and that I
was really too near death to arise, since their anger was not yet
appeased, and also because they wished to carry me alive into their
own country, they picked me up and carried me, all bleeding, out of
the torture, but soon began again to ill-treat me. It would take too
long to tell of the sufferings they inflicted upon me. They broke
one of my fingers, they crushed the others with their teeth, and
also tore my flesh by their nails, with the rage of demons, and when
my strength failed me they applied fire to my arms and legs. They
treated my companions in like manner. Among the Hurons the brave and
valiant christian, Eustace, was treated most cruelly.
These warriors having offered up a sacrifice of our blood pursued
their way, and we went ours. On the tenth day after our departure we
arrived at a place where we quitted our boats to march on land. This
part of the journey was very painful. The Iroquois who had charge of
me, having more baggage than he could carry easily, placed a heavy
load upon my own back, torn and mangled as it was. For three days
we ate nothing but berries which we picked as we went along. The
heat of the day, at the hottest part of the summer, and the pain of
our wounds weakened us so that we had to march behind the rest. One
night when we were a little way from the others I suggested to René
Goupil that he should escape. In fact we might have done it, but for
my part I would rather have suffered all kinds of torment than have
abandoned those whom I might have been able to console. René, seeing
that I wished to follow my little flock, would not quit me. “I will
die with you,” said he, “and I will never abandon you.”
One night we arrived at a little river distant about a quarter of a
league from the first village of the Iroquois. We found on the banks
an assemblage of men and boys armed with sticks with which they beat
us with their usual cruelty. I had on my hands but two finger-nails
left. These they tore off with their teeth, cutting the flesh to the
bone with their own long finger-nails.
After they had satisfied their cruelty they carried us in triumph
into the first village, where all the young people were without the
gates ranged in rows, armed with sticks, some of them with iron tips
which they got from the Dutch. We had to march around among those
young people and receive beatings and torturings like those I have
described to you. When night had come they brought us to the cabins
to be sport for the children. They gave us a little Indian meal
boiled in water. They made us lie down, binding us, hand and foot,
to four posts stuck in the ground, in the form of a Saint Andrew’s
Cross. The children, to teach further cruelty to their parents,
threw live coals and hot ashes upon our stomachs, taking pleasure in
seeing our flesh grill and blacken. O God! what a night! To remain
in a very constrained position without the power of moving, to be
unable to defend ourselves from the attack of the thousands of vermin
which assailed us from every side, to be still suffering from recent
wounds, to have nothing on which to sustain life,--in truth, these
are grave torments, but God is over all. At sunrise they carried us
out again, and for three days and three nights we endured tortures
which I have been trying to describe.
We passed in this way through these villages, and in each village we
were beaten and tortured terribly. Finally they allowed us to settle
down and try to cure our wounds.
* * * * *
When these poor captives had got back a little of their strength, the
chiefs of the country began to talk of sending them back to Three
Rivers to return them to the French. The business went so far that
they considered that it was all arranged; but finally the chiefs
found that they could not agree as to the terms, and so the Father
and his companions were left as before, in the fear each moment that
they would be put to death.
These barbarians have the custom of giving the prisoners, whom they
do not wish to put to death, to those families who have lost some of
their number in war. These persons take the place of the dead and
become members of the family, which alone holds the power of life and
death over them. In such cases no one else dares to do anything to
them; but when they keep some one as public prisoner, without giving
him to any one in particular, the poor man is at all times in danger
of instant death. If some wretch kills him, no one cares. He is only
enabled to drag on his miserable life through the charity of those
who take pity on him. In such a condition was our good Father, and so
also was one of his companions. The other Frenchmen had been given to
a family in place of an Iroquois warrior who had fallen in battle....