THE JESUITS AT QUEBEC
The 15th of June 1625 was a significant day for the colony
of New France. On that morning a blunt-prowed, high-pooped
vessel cast anchor before the little trading village that
clustered about the base of the great cliff at Quebec.
It was a ship belonging to the Caens, and it came laden
to the hatches with supplies for the colonists and goods
for trade with the Indians. But, what was more important,
it had as passengers the Jesuits who had been sent to
the aid of the Recollets, the first of the followers of
Loyola to enter the St Lawrence--Fathers Charles Lalemant,
Ennemond Masse, Jean de Brebeuf, and two lay brothers of
the Society. These black-robed priests were the forerunners
of an army of men who, bearing the Cross instead of the
sword and labouring at their arduous tasks in humility
and obedience but with dauntless courage and unflagging
zeal, were to make their influence felt from Hudson Bay
to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the sea-girt shores of
Cape Breton to the wind-swept plains of the Great West.
They were the vanguard of an army of true soldiers, of
whom the words
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die,
might fittingly have been written. The Jesuit missionary
in North America had no thought of worldly profit or
renown, but, with his mind fixed on eternity, he performed
his task ad majorem Dei gloriam, for the greater glory
of God.
The Jesuits had sailed from Dieppe on the 26th of April
in company with a Recollet friar, La Roche de Daillon,
of whom we shall presently hear more. The voyage across
the stormy Atlantic had been long and tedious. On a vessel
belonging to Huguenots, the priests had been exposed to
the sneers and gibes of crew and traders. It was the
viceroy of New France, the Duc de Ventadour, a devout
Catholic, who had compelled the Huguenot traders to give
passage to these priests, or they would not have been
permitted on board the ship. Much better could the
Huguenots tolerate the humble, mendicant Recollets than
the Jesuits, aggressive and powerful, uncompromising
opponents of Calvinism.
As the anchor dropped, the Jesuits made preparations to
land; but they were to meet with a temporary disappointment.
Champlain was absent in France, and Emery de Caen said
that he had received no instructions from the viceroy to
admit them to the colony. Moreover, they were told that
there was no room for them in the habitation or the fort.
To make matters worse, a bitter, slanderous diatribe
against their order had been distributed among the
inhabitants, and the doors of Catholics and Huguenots
alike were closed against them. Prisoners on the ship,
at the very gate of the promised land, no course seemed
open to them but to return on the same vessel to France.
But they were suddenly lifted by kindly hands from the
depths of despair. A boat rowed by men attached to the
Recollets approached their vessel. Soon several friars
dressed in coarse grey robes, with the knotted cord of
the Recollet order about their waists, peaked hood hanging
from their shoulders, and coarse wooden sandals on their
feet, stood before them on the deck, giving them a
wholehearted welcome and offering them a home, with the
use of half the buildings and land on the St Charles.
Right gladly the Jesuits accepted the offer and were
rowed ashore in the boat of the generous friars. On
touching the soil of New France they fell on their knees
and kissed the ground, in spite of the scowling traders
about them.
The disappointment of these aggressive pioneers of the
Church must have been great as they viewed Quebec. It
was now seventeen years since the colony had been founded;
yet it had fewer than one hundred inhabitants. In the
whole of Canada there were but seven French families and
only six white children. Save by Louis Hebert, the first
to cultivate the soil at Quebec, and the Recollets, no
attempt had been made at agriculture, and the colony was
almost wholly dependent on France for its subsistence.
When not engaged in gathering furs or loading and unloading
vessels, the men lounged in indolence about the
trading-posts or wandered to the hunting grounds of the
Indians, where they lived in squalor and vice. The avarice
of the traders was bearing its natural fruit, and the
untiring efforts of Champlain, a devoted, zealous patriot,
had been unavailing to counteract it. The colony sorely
needed the self-sacrificing Jesuits, but for whom it
would soon undoubtedly have been cast off by the mother
country as a worthless burden. To them Canada, indeed,
owed its life; for when the king grew weary of spending
treasure on this unprofitable colony, the stirring appeals
of the Relations [Footnote: It was a rule of the Society
of Jesus that each of its missionaries should write a
report of his work. These reports, known as Relations,
were generally printed and sold by the booksellers of
Paris. About forty volumes of the Relations from the
missions of Canada were published between 1632 and 1672
and widely read in France.] moved both king and people
to sustain it until the time arrived when New France was
valued as a barrier against New England.
Scarcely had the Jesuits made themselves at home in the
convent of the Recollets when they began planning for
the mission. It was decided that Lalemant and Masse should
remain at Quebec; but Brebeuf, believing, like the
Recollets, that little of permanent value could be done
among the ever-shifting Algonquins, desired to start at
once for the populous towns of Huronia. In July, in
company with the Recollet La Roche de Daillon, Brebeuf
set out for Three Rivers. The Indians--Hurons, Algonquins,
and Ottawas--had gathered at Cape Victory, a promontory
in Lake St Peter near the point where the lake narrows
again into the St Lawrence. There, too, stood French
vessels laden with goods for barter; and thither went
the two missionaries to make friends with the Indians
and to lay in a store of goods for the voyage to Huronia
and for use at the mission. The captains of the vessels
appeared friendly and supplied the priests with coloured
beads, knives, kettles, and other articles. All was going
well for the journey, when, on the eve of departure, a
runner arrived from Montreal bringing evil news.
For a year the Recollet Nicolas Viel had remained in
Huronia. Early in 1624 he had written to Father Piat
hoping that he might live and die in his Huron mission
at Carhagouha. There is no record of his sojourn in
Huronia during the winter 1624-25. Alone among the savages,
with a scant knowledge of their language, his spirit must
have been oppressed with a burden almost too great to be
borne; he must have longed for the companionship of men
of his own language and faith. At any rate, in the early
summer of 1625 he had set out for Quebec with a party of
trading Hurons for the purpose of spending some time in
retreat at the residence on the banks of the St Charles.
He was never to reach his destination. On arriving at
the Riviere des Prairies, his Indian conductors, instead
of portaging their canoes past the treacherous rapids in
this river, had attempted to run them, and a disaster
had followed. The canoe bearing Father Viel and a young
Huron convert named Ahaustic (the Little Fish) had been
overturned and both had been drowned.
[Footnote: This rapid has since been known as Sault au
Recollet and a village near by bears the name of Ahuntsic,
a corruption of the young convert's name. Father A. E.
Jones, S. J., in his 'Old Huronia' (Ontario Archives),
points out that no such word as Ahuntsic could find a
place in a Huron vocabulary.]
The story brought to Cape Victory was that the tragedy
had been due to the treacherous conduct of three
evil-hearted Hurons who coveted the goods the priest had
with him. On the advice of the traders, who feared that
the Hurons were in no spirit to receive the missionaries,
Brebeuf and Daillon concluded not to attempt the ascent
of the Ottawa for the present, and returned to Quebec.
Ten years later, such a report would not have moved
Brebeuf to turn back, but would have been an added
incentive to press forward.