IN HURONIA
The Jesuits, with the exception of Brebeuf, spent the
winter of 1625-26 at the convent of the Recollets, no
doubt enduring privation, as at that time there was a
scarcity of food in the colony. Brebeuf, eager to study
the Indians in their homes, joined a party of Montagnais
hunters and journeyed with them to their wintering grounds.
He suffered much from hunger and cold, and from the
insanitary conditions under which he was compelled to
live in the filthy, smoky, vermin-infested abodes of the
savages. But an iron constitution stood him in good stead,
and he rejoined his fellow-missionaries none the worse
for his experience. He had acquired, too, a fair knowledge
of the Montagnais dialect, and had learned that boldness,
courage, and fortitude in suffering went far towards
winning the respect of the savages of North America.
On the 5th of July the eyes of the colonists at Quebec
were gladdened by the sight of a fleet of vessels coming
up the river. These were the supply-ships of the company,
and on the Catherine, a vessel of two hundred and fifty
tons, was Champlain, on whom the Jesuits could depend as
a friend and protector. In the previous autumn Lalemant
had selected a fertile tract of land on the left side of
the St Charles, between the river Beauport and the stream
St Michel, as a suitable spot for a permanent home, and
had sent a request to Champlain to secure this land for
the Jesuits. Champlain had laid the request before the
viceroy and he now brought with him the official documents
granting the land. Nine days later a vessel of eighty
tons arrived with supplies and reinforcements for the
mission. On this vessel came Fathers Philibert Noyrot
and Anne de Noue, with a lay brother and twenty labourers
and carpenters.
The Jesuits chose a site for the buildings at a bend in
the St Charles river a mile or so from the fort. Here,
opposite Pointe-aux-Lievres (Hare Point), on a sloping
meadow two hundred feet from the river, they cleared the
ground and erected two buildings--one to serve as a
storehouse, stable, workshop, and bakery; the other as
the residence. The residence had four rooms--a chapel,
a refectory with cells for the fathers, a kitchen, and
a lodging-room for the workmen. It had, too, a commodious
cellar, and a garret which served as a dormitory for the
lay brothers. The buildings were of roughly hewn planks,
the seams plastered with mud and the roofs thatched with
grass from the meadow. Such was Notre-Dame-des-Anges. In
this humble abode men were to be trained to carry the
Cross in the Canadian wilderness, and from it they were
to go forth for many years in an unbroken line, blazing
the way for explorers and traders and settlers.
Almost simultaneously with the arrival of Noyrot and Noue
a flotilla of canoes laden deep with furs came down from
the Huron country. Brebeuf had made up his mind to go to
far Huronia; Noue and the Recollet Daillon had the same
ambition; and all three besought the Hurons to carry them
on the return journey. The Indians expressed a readiness
to give the Recollet Daillon a passage; they knew the
'grey-robes'; but they did not know the Jesuits, the
'black-robes,' and they hesitated to take Brebeuf and
Noue, urging as an excuse that so portly a man as Brebeuf
would be in danger of upsetting their frail canoes. By
a liberal distribution of presents, however, the Hurons
were persuaded to accept Brebeuf and Noue as passengers.
Towards the end of July, just when preparations were
being made to break ground for the residence of
Notre-Dame-des-Anges, the three fathers and some French
assistants set out with the Hurons on the long journey
to the shores of Georgian Bay. Brebeuf was in a state of
ecstasy. He longed for the populous towns of the Hurons.
He had confidence in himself and believed that he would
be able to make the dwellers in these towns followers of
Christ and bulwarks of France in the New World. For
twenty-three years he was to devote his life to this
task; for twenty-three years, save for the brief interval
when the English flag waved over Quebec, he was to dominate
the Huron mission. He was a striking figure. Of noble
ancestry, almost a giant in stature, and with a soldierly
bearing that attracted all observers, he would have shone
at the court of the king or at the head of the army. But
he had sacrificed a worldly career for the Church. And
no man of his ancestors, one of whom had battled under
William the Conqueror at Hastings and others in the
Crusades, ever bore himself more nobly than did Brebeuf
in the forests of Canada, or covered himself with a
greater glory.
The journey was beset with danger, for the Iroquois were
on the war-path against the Hurons and the French, and
had attacked settlers even in the vicinity of Quebec.
The lot of the voyagers was incessant toil. They had to
paddle against the current, to haul the canoes over
stretches where the water was too swift for paddling,
and to portage past turbulent rapids and falls. The
missionaries were forced to bear their share of the work.
Noue, no longer young, was frequently faint from toil.
Brebeuf not only sustained him, but at many of the
portages, of which there were thirty-five in all, carried
a double load of baggage. The packs contained not only
clothing and food, but priestly vestments, requisites
for the altar, pictures, wine for the Mass, candles,
books, and writing material. The course lay over the
route which Le Caron had followed eleven years before,
up the Ottawa, up the Mattawa, across the portage to Lake
Nipissing, and then down the French River. Arrived in
Penetanguishene Bay, they landed at a village called
Otouacha. They then journeyed a mile and a half inland,
through gloomy forests, past cultivated patches of maize,
beans, pumpkins, squashes, and sunflowers, to Toanche,
where they found Viel's cabin still standing. For three
years this was to be Brebeuf's headquarters.
Huronia lay in what is now the county of Simcoe, Ontario,
comprising the present townships of Tiny, Tay, Flos,
Medonte, and Oro. On the east and north lay Lakes Simcoe
and Couchiching, the Severn river, and Matchedash Bay;
on the west, Nottawasaga Bay. Across the bay, or by land
a journey of about two days, where now are Bruce and Grey
counties, lived the Petuns, and about five days to the
south-west, the Neutrals. The latter tribe occupied both
the Niagara and Detroit peninsulas, overflowed into the
states of Michigan and New York, and spread north as far
as Goderich and Oakville in Ontario. All these nations,
and the Andastes of the lower Susquehanna, were of the
same linguistic stock as the Iroquois who dwelt south of
Lake Ontario. Peoples speaking the Huron-Iroquois tongue
thus occupied the central part of the eastern half of
North America, while all around them, north, south, east,
and west, roamed the tribes speaking dialects of the
Algonquin.
Most of the Huron [Footnote: The name Huron is of uncertain
origin. The word HURON was used in France as early as
1358 to describe the uncouth peasants who revolted against
the nobility. But according to Father Charles Lalemant,
a French sailor, on first beholding some Hurons at
Tadoussac in 1600, was astonished at their fantastic way
of dressing their hair--in stiff ridges with shaved
furrows between--and exclaimed 'Quelles hures!'--what
boar-heads! In their own language they were known as
Ouendats (dwellers on a peninsula), a name still extant
in the corrupted form Wyandots.] towns were encircled by
log palisades. The houses were of various sizes and some
of them were more than two hundred feet long. They were
built in the crudest fashion. Two rows of sturdy saplings
were stuck in the ground about twenty-five feet apart,
then bent to meet so as to form an arch, and covered with
bark. An open strip was left in the roof for the escape
of smoke and for light. Each house sheltered from six to
a dozen families, according to the number of fires. Two
families shared each fire, and around the fire in winter
clustered children, dogs, youths, gaily decorated maidens,
jabbering squaws, and toothless, smoke-blinded old men.
Privacy there was none. Along the sides of the cabin,
about four feet from the ground, extended raised platforms,
on or under which, according to the season or the
inclination of the individual, the inmates slept.
The Huron nation was divided into four clans--the Bear,
the Rock, the Cord, the Deer--with several small dependent
groups. There was government of a sort, republican in
form. They had their deliberative assemblies, both village
and tribal. The village councils met almost daily, but
the tribal assembly--a sort of states-general--was summoned
only when some weighty measure demanded consideration.
Decisions arrived at in the assemblies were proclaimed
by the chiefs.
Of religion as it is understood by Christians the Hurons
had none, nothing but superstitions, very like those of
other barbarous peoples. To everything in nature they
gave a god; trees, lakes, streams, the celestial bodies,
the blue expanse, they deified with okies or spirits.
Among the chief objects of Huron worship were the moon
and the sun. The oki of the moon had the care of souls
and the power to cut off life; the oki of the sun presided
over the living and sustained all created things. The
great vault of heaven with its myriad stars inspired them
with awe; it was the abode of the spirit of spirits, the
Master of Life. Aronhia was the name they gave this
supreme oki. This would show that they had a vague
conception of God. To Aronhia they offered sacrifices,
to Aronhia they appealed in time of danger, and when
misfortune befell them it was due to the anger of Aronhia.
But all this had no influence on their conduct; even in
their worship they were often astoundingly vicious.
To such dens of barbarism had come men fresh from the
civilization of the Old World--men of learning, culture,
and gentle birth, in whose veins flowed the proudest
blood of France. To these savages, indolent, superstitious,
and vicious, had come Brebeuf, Noue, and Daillon, with
a message of peace, goodwill, and virtue.
Until the middle of October the three fathers lived
together at Toanche, save that Daillon went on a brief
visit to Ossossane, on the shore of Nottawasaga Bay. The
Recollet, however, had instructions from his superior Le
Caron to go to the country of the Neutrals, of which
Champlain's interpreter, Etienne Brule, had reported
glowingly, but which was as yet untrodden by the feet of
missionaries. And so on the 18th of October 1626 Daillon
set out on the trail southward, with two French traders
as interpreters, and an Indian guide. Arriving among the
Neutrals, after a journey of five or six days, he was at
first kindly received in each of the six towns which he
visited. But this happy situation was not to last. The
Neutral country, now the richest and most populous part
of Ontario, boasting such cities as Hamilton and Brantford
and London, was rich in fur-bearing animals and tobacco;
and the Hurons were the middlemen in trade between the
Neutrals and the French. The Hurons, fearing now that
they were about to lose their business--for it was rumoured
that Daillon was seeking to have the Neutrals trade
directly with the French--sent messengers to the Neutrals
denouncing the grey-robe as a sorcerer who had come to
destroy them with disease and death. In this the Neutral
medicine-men agreed, for they were jealous of the priest.
The plot succeeded. The Indians turned from Daillon,
closed their doors against him, stole his writing-desk,
blanket, breviary, and trinkets, and even threatened him
with death. But Brebeuf learned of his plight, probably
from one of the Hurons who had raised the Neutrals against
him, and sent a Frenchman and an Indian runner to escort
him back to Toanche.
There was a break in the mission in 1627. Noue lacked
the physical strength and the mental alertness essential
to a missionary in these wilds. Finding himself totally
unable to learn even the rudiments of the Huron language,
he returned to Quebec, since he did not wish to be a
burden to Brebeuf. For a year longer Brebeuf and the
Recollet Daillon remained together at Toanche. But in
the autumn of 1628 Daillon left Huronia. He was the last
of the Recollets to minister to the Hurons.
Save for his French hired men, or engages, Brebeuf was
now alone among the savage people. In this awful solitude
he laboured with indomitable will, ministering to his
flock, studying the Huron language, compiling a Huron
dictionary and grammar, and translating the Catechism.
The Indians soon saw in him a friend; and, when he passed
through the village ringing his bell, old and young
followed him to his cabin to hear him tell of God, of
heaven the reward of the good, and of hell the eternal
abode of the unrighteous. But he made few converts. The
Indian idea of the future had nothing in common with the
Christian idea. The Hurons, it is true, believed in a
future state, but it was to be only a reflex of the
present life, with the difference that it would give them
complete freedom from work and suffering, abundant game,
and an unfailing supply of tobacco.
Brebeuf's one desire now was to live and die among this
people. But the colony at Quebec was in a deplorable
condition, as he knew, and he was not surprised when,
early in the summer of 1629, he received a message
requesting his presence there. Gathering his flock about
him he told them that he must leave them. They had as a
sign of affection given him the Huron name Echon. Now
Christian and pagan alike cried out: 'You must not leave
us, Echon!' He told them that he had to obey the order
of his superior, but that 'he would, with God's grace,
return and bring with him whatever was necessary to lead
them to know God and serve Him.' Then he bade them
farewell; and, joining a flotilla of twelve canoes about
to depart for Quebec, he and his engages set out. They
arrived at Notre-Dame-des-Anges on the 17th of July, to
find the Jesuits there in consternation at the rumoured
report of the approach of a strong English fleet.