NEW FRANCE.—DISCOVERIES IN THE REGION OF THE GREAT LAKES.
We have already spoken of the early French discoveries in Canada, or New
France, the settlements on the Bay of Fundy and the St. Lawrence, the
founding of Quebec and Montreal, of Champlain’s expeditions southward,
and his discovery of the lake which still bears his name. The English
colonists, from Maine to South Carolina, whom we have seen firmly plant
themselves on the new soil, occupied as yet, comparatively speaking,
merely the sea-coast, and engaged as they were in agriculture and
maritime trade, had little time or inclination for inland exploration.
For three-quarters of a century their knowledge of the interior was
derived from the Indians and from French discoverers.
Besides, as regarded the New England States, the formidable belt of the
Iroquois territory, or the territory of the Five Nations, which formed
their western boundary, effectually prevented them whilst in their
earlier stage from advancing far in that direction. This most powerful
of the Indian confederacies consisted of the five nations of Senecas,
Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas and Mohawks, who occupied a vast extent of
country between the St. Lawrence, Lake Champlain, and the upper waters
of the Hudson, including the great lakes of Ontario and Erie, as far
north as Lake Huron and the Georgian Bay. It was this formidable barrier
which, while it prevented the Dutch from exploring the Hudson to the
north, had already prevented the French from descending the same river,
when Champlain had discovered the heads of the stream.
The French fur-traders on the St. Lawrence and its tributaries were
necessarily brought into connexion with the Indian, but not alone was
this the case with the French trader; the French missionary kept pace
with him, and even went far a-head, and became the great European
explorer of the interior of North America.
We have seen with admiration, the zeal of Eliot and his coadjutors in
Christianising the feeble remains of the Indian tribes in New England;
and George Fox and his friends equally nobly preaching to those of
Maryland, Carolina and Virginia, as to “men and brethren” in whose souls
the Divine Voice had an utterance as well as in their own; we have seen
William Penn legislating for them equally as for the whites, and forming
with them a covenant of peace which has obtained a world-wide
reputation. But the Christian zeal and uprightness of these men was far
surpassed in intensity by the devotedness, the constancy, and the
heroism of the Jesuit missionaries of New France, who in their
earnestness to save the souls of the heathen, died the death of martyrs
and counted their loss great gain in Christ.
Too little is known by general English readers of this affecting portion
of American history, which is unsurpassed by anything we have yet
related.
When, in 1632, Quebec was restored to the French, a hundred associates,
Richelieu, Champlain and various opulent merchants being of the number,
obtained a grant of New France from Louis XIII., the grant including
“the whole basin of the St. Lawrence, and of such other rivers of New
France as flowed into the sea, besides Florida, which was claimed as a
French province by virtue of Coligny’s unsuccessful efforts.” Champlain,
the governor of New France, a man of a religious mind, who had already
declared that the salvation of a soul was worth more than the conquest
of an empire, was the earnest supporter of missionary labours. As
missionaries of New France, he would have selected priests of the
Franciscan or mendicant order, as being “free from ambition;” but he was
overruled, and the mission of converting the heathens of the New World
was intrusted alone to the Jesuits. They had here the monopoly of souls.
Their labours, however, were of the most apostolic character. “They
had,” says Bancroft, “the faults of ascetic superstition, but the
horrors of a Canadian life in the wilderness were resisted with
invincible passive courage and a deep internal tranquillity. The history
of their labours is connected with the origin of every celebrated town
in the annals of French America; not a cape was turned, no a river
entered, but a Jesuit led the way.”
In 1634, two Jesuits, Brebeuf and Daniel, left Quebec in company with a
party of Huron Indians, who inhabited the wild forest regions east of
the lake which bears their name. The journey was one of “three hundred
leagues, now through the wild forest, now ascending the Ottawa, the
great western tributary of the St. Lawrence, an impetuous river,
abounding in falls, where the canoe had to be carried for leagues on the
shoulders.” Thus by day encountering the perils and hardships of a
journey through this savage country, and at night sleeping on the earth,
they at length reached the Manitoulin, or Georgian Bay, the eastern
branch of Lake Huron. On the borders of this lake a mission was soon
established, and a little chapel erected, “built by the aid of the axe,”
and consecrated to St. Joseph, where mass was celebrated and matins and
vespers chanted, and the host administered to the Huron converts, who,
touched by the doctrine of the Saviour, promulgated by these his devoted
ministers, thronged to receive the symbols of divine love. The Christian
villages of St. Louis and St. Ignatius arose in the wilderness, and the
praises of God and Christ resounded in the Huron tongue. For fifteen
years this successful mission was continued, other missionaries being
soon attracted to this field of labour; for we are told by Bancroft,
from, whom we shall freely borrow in this portion of our history, that
“now and then one of these fathers would make a voyage to Quebec in a
canoe, with two or three savages, paddle in hand, exhausted with rowing,
his feet naked, his breviary hanging about his neck, his shirt unwashed,
his cassock half-torn off his lean body, but with a face full of
content, charmed with the life which he led, and inspiring by his air
and by his words a strong desire to join him in his mission.”
Jean de Brebeuf, the Huron missionary, was an ecstatic in his sufferings
and devotions. Not satisfied with the toil and subjection of his body
consequent on his arduous labours, he subjected himself to the rigours
of penance and self-mortification, and was rewarded with beatific
visions which exalted his pious raptures into ecstacy,—“What shall I
render to thee, Jesus, my Lord, for all thy benefits? I will accept thy
cup and invoke thy name!” exclaimed he, and registered a vow before God
and the host of heaven, before St. Joseph and other saints, “never to
shrink from martyrdom for Christ’s sake, but to receive the death-blow
only with joy!”
The life of Brebeuf in the wilderness was like an unceasing hymn. Now he
was instructing his youthful neophytes, who regarded him with a
reverential love; now he was passing slowly through the village and the
neighbouring forest, ringing a bell as the signal for older converts or
inquirers to assemble for a religious conference; and so great was his
influence on the minds of the sages and warriors of the forest, that he
won, not only their listening ear, but inspired many of them with a
profound friendship for him. Of this class was the great warrior
Ahasistari, whose mind was of a singularly high character. It was thus
that he acknowledged his faith in Jesus, whom, unconsciously, he had
long worshipped: “Before you came,” said he, “into this country, when I
have been in the greatest perils, and have alone escaped, I have said to
myself, some powerful spirit has the guardianship of my days.”
Ahasistari was baptized, and with a zeal kindred to that of his
spiritual father and friend, exclaimed, addressing a number of other
converts, “Let us strive to make the whole world embrace the faith in
Jesus.”
These missionary labours being crowned with success, a central station
was fixed at St. Mary’s on the Matchedash, the river which connects the
Toronto and Huron lakes, and “here three thousand Indian converts
received in one year a frugal welcome.”
These joyful tidings awoke an enthusiasm in France on its behalf; the
king, the queen, the princesses, the very pope himself, vied in their
evidence of favour. Young nobles, renouncing the pleasures of the world,
joined the missionary corps and devoted their revenues to its service.
Thus “was a Jesuit college and school for Indian children established at
Quebec, about the time that the Puritan College of Cambridge was
established in Massachusetts: thus did the niece of Cardinal Richelieu
endow a public hospital open to all mankind, in which young nuns from
the hospital of Dieppe were sent over: thus was an Ursuline convent for
the education of girls founded by a young and wealthy widow of Alençon,
who went with three nuns to Quebec for this purpose, and who, kissing
the soil of their adopted country as they landed, were received by the
governor and Indians shouting for joy of their welcome, whence they were
escorted to the church with chanted _Te Deums_.
Missionary labours having now acquired a national importance, Montreal
was converted, with many religious ceremonies, into the head-quarters of
the Christianised Indians, intended to form a post of communication
between Quebec and Lake Huron. Champlain, the governor, being now dead,
was succeeded by M. de Montmagny. There were at this time upwards of
fifty missionaries employed; twice or thrice a year they assembled at
St. Mary’s, the rest of the time they were scattered among the Indians.
These adventurous men not only carried the gospel of Christ into the
wilderness, and to the hitherto unknown inhabitants on the banks of vast
lakes and rivers, but every year extended the geographical knowledge of
the interior.
Within very few years after the commencement of these labours, a scheme
was formed to carry the gospel to the south of Lake Huron, to Lake
Michigan and Green Bay, thus advancing into the immense regions of the
north-west and west. Views, as it were, were opened up into the remote
wilderness, by the occasional visits at some missionary outpost of
Indians from remote nations, who reported of distant rivers and regions
where as yet the white man was unknown. Thus came a chief from the
head-waters of the Ohio, and others from the wandering Algonquins. The
French had as yet been kept from the Lakes Erie and Ontario, and the
more southern waters of the St. Lawrence, by the determined hostility of
the Mohawks, so that their access to the west was by the river Ottawa;
although Brebeuf had visited the neutral tribes about Niagara.
In 1641, Charles Raymbault and Claude Pijart appeared as missionaries
among the Algonquins of Lake Nipissing. It was towards the close of
summer when the Jesuits arrived, and the great festival of the dead was
about to be celebrated by these wandering tribes. To this ceremony all
the confederated nations assembled, their canoes covering the waters of
the lake as they advanced towards a bay on the shores of which the
ceremony was to take place. As the boats approached, they were received
with shouts which echoed among the rocks. Beneath a long shed lay the
bones of the dead in coffins of bark, incased in rich furs; all night
long the mourning-song of the war-chiefs was chanted, accompanied by the
wailing of the women. When these savage but mournful ceremonies were
ended, the Jesuits made known their wish of penetrating the more distant
wilderness, and conveying thither the light of a new and milder
religion, and by their presents and gentle words so won upon the
savages, that an invitation was given to visit the nation of the
Chippewas below the falls of St. Mary.
The invitation was gladly accepted, and Charles Raymbault, with Isaac
Jogues as his companion, set out on this long and arduous journey. After
crossing Lake Huron, which occupied seventeen days, they arrived at the
straits which connect it with Lake Superior, where two thousand persons
were met to receive them. Making known, on their part, the religion of
Christ, they heard of Indian nations eighteen days’ journey still
further to the west—the far-famed Sioux—with fixed abodes, and who
cultivated maize and tobacco, but whose race and language were unknown.
The chiefs of the Chippewas received the envoys of Christianity with
kindness, and invited them to remain. Raymbault, after languishing a
year in consumption, returned to Quebec to die. Jogues was ascending the
St. Lawrence with Ahasistari and other Huron chiefs, when a war-party of
Mohawks, enemies alike to the French and the Hurons, lying in wait for
them, attacked them as they approached the shore to land. Jogues might
have escaped, but he would not desert his companions, some of whom were
unbaptized converts. The brave and noble-hearted Ahasistari had already
fled to a secure covert, when seeing Jogues in the hands of the enemy,
he came forth, saying, “My brother, I made an oath to thee that I would
share thy fortune, whether life or death; here am I to keep my word.”
The captives were marched away in triumph to the Mohawk country. In
three successive villages Jogues was compelled to run the gauntlet; on
one of which dreadful occasions he rejoiced his soul by “a vision of the
glory of the Queen of Heaven.” Again, when consumed with hunger and
thirst, an ear of Indian corn on the stalk being thrown to him, he found
cause of exultation in the few drops of water contained in the curl of
the leaf, because they sufficed to baptize two captive neophytes! The
brave Ahasistari perished in the flames, having received absolution,
“with all the courage of a Christian martyr and the stoicism of an
Indian chief.” A young Indian convert too, having marked the sign of the
cross on an infant’s brow, was struck with a tomahawk, in the belief
that he was aiming to destroy the child by a charm.
Jogues expected a similar fate, but his life was spared; and roaming
through the forest of the Mohawk, he carved the cross and the name of
Christ on the bark of trees; and advancing thus to the confines of the
Mohawk country, was ransomed by Van Cuyler, the Dutch commandant of
Albany, on the Hudson. To reach Canada again Jogues was obliged to
return to France. He was shipwrecked however, on the English coast near
Falmouth, and falling into hands as merciless as the Iroquois, was
plundered by wreckers even of the clothes from his back. Father
Bressani, another Jesuit—who on his way from the Hurons was taken
captive by the Iroquois, and having seen his companion furnish a
cannibal feast, was stripped and ill-used till his life only was
left—was saved also by the humanity of the Dutch.
In 1645, the French desirous of establishing peace with the Five
Nations, a great assembly took place at Three Rivers, a little above
Montreal, on the St. Lawrence, where were present the French officers in
full uniform and five Indian sachems in all their bravery. Speeches were
made in the figurative style of the Indians, with great professions of
everlasting peace, the Algonquins being a party thereto. “We have
thrown,” said the Mohawk orator, “the hatchet so high in the air, and
beyond the skies, that no arm on earth can reach to bring it down. The
shades of our braves that have fallen in war have gone so deep into the
earth, that they never can be heard calling for revenge.”
Peace being assured, and having been preserved through one winter,
Father Jogues desirous, of establishing a mission among the Five
Nations, and being the only person who understood the language of the
Onondagas, set out as its founder in the month of June. His mind seemed
prophetic of his fate, and his last words to his Christian brethren
were, “_Ibo et non redibo!_” I shall go, but shall never return. And so
it was. Arrived in the Mohawk country, he was taken prisoner, on charge
of having blighted the corn. He met his death with composure; his head
was hung on the palisade of the Indian village, and his body thrown into
the peaceful Mohawk River. Nor did the Jesuits alone satisfy themselves
with penetrating to the east. Gabriel Dreuillettes, accompanied by an
Indian guide, crossed the St. Lawrence to the sources of the Kennebec in
Maine; and descending that river, reached a missionary station of the
Franciscans on the Penobscot, established several years before by
D’Aulney. Leaving these, his Christian brethren, he established himself
in the remoter wilderness, where a chapel was built, and Indian converts
gathered around him.
As regarded their intercourse with the Indians, the versatile French
seemed to acquire much greater influence over these children of the
forest than the stern and uncompromising settlers of New England. The
remarks of the historian Hildreth on this subject deserve attention.
“The French missionaries, better acquainted with human nature and the
philosophy of religion, were more moderate in their demands and more
tender in their treatment. Though themselves enthusiasts of the highest
pitch, they asked not so much of their converts ecstacies and
metaphysics as admiring reverence and ceremonial observances, which ever
constitute the religion of the multitude. Themselves in the highest
degree self-denying and ascetic, surpassing in this respect even their
puritan rivals, they yet looked with fatherly indulgence on the human
weaknesses and easily-besetting sins of their converts. These converts
were admitted to all the privileges of French subjects; intermarriages
became frequent—for prejudices of caste were much less strong on the
part of the French than of the English—and thence resulted a mixed race;
the Canadian couriers of the woods, boatmen and woodsmen, combining the
hardihood and activity of the Indian, with the more docile, manageable
and persevering temper of the French. There were dozens of Jesuit
missionaries employed in New France, not less zealous than Eliot, and
far more enterprising, whose travels and adventures show religious
influences and theocratic ideas not less operative in the first
exploration of the distant West, than in the original settlement of New
England.”
After the display of Iroquois ferocity, and the murder of Jogues, of
which that seemed the signal, war was resumed. The proud Iroquois
determined on the destruction or dispersion of the Hurons and Wyandots,
and the missionaries labouring among these nations shared their fate. On
the morning of July 4, 1648, the village of St. Joseph, in the absence
of the Indians, who were on the chase, and when only women and children
remained, was surprised by a war-party of Mohawks. The village was
fired, and the remorseless tomahawk began its bloody work. The terrified
women and children flocked round the missionary, Father Daniel, who
seeing the destruction which was at hand, hastened through the village,
speaking words of Christian comfort and baptizing the dying. When the
enemy advanced to the chapel, the calm, devoted preacher stood before
them to oppose their entrance of the sacred building. For a moment they
were awe-stricken, and paused as if to retire; the next they discharged
against him a shower of arrows. Bleeding from many wounds, he lifted up
his hands and voice, and overpowering the yells of the savages by his
words of pity and forgiveness, he received finally his death-blow from a
hatchet. The following winter, in the dead of night, a thousand Iroquois
warriors attacked the village of St. Ignatius and murdered its four
hundred inhabitants; the same fate befell St. Louis, in which dwelt the
missionaries Brebeuf and Lallemand. Both could have escaped, but that
their Christian zeal and love forbade them to desert converts who might
need baptism in the hour of death. Faithful to the last, these servants
of Christ, having spent their lives in works of love, died as martyrs.
Brebeuf for three hours, and Lallemand for seventeen, were subjected to
the direst Indian tortures, the stoic Indians themselves beholding with
amazement the firmness of their victims. Wonderful was the Christian
heroism of these missionaries. The history of man hardly contains any
greater. Charlevoix says truly, writing of these men, “The Lord
communicates himself without measure to those who sacrifice themselves
without reserve.” And, speaking of them personally, he adds, “I myself
knew some of them in my youth, and I found them such as I have painted
them, bending under the labour of a long apostleship, with bodies
exhausted by fatigues and broken with age, but still preserving all the
vigour of the apostolic spirit.”
It had been the desire of the missionaries, after this Huron calamity,
to have collected the scattered remains of the nation on the Grand
Manitoulin Isle, in Lake Huron. But it was not accomplished. The Huron
nation was never again to be collected, and the station on the
Manitoulin was abandoned.
The pride of the Iroquois increased with their successes, even as the
zeal of the missionaries grew with their sufferings, and the conversion
of the formidable Five Nations became now the object of their desire;
but this object was too vast even for their accomplishment. The
Iroquois, possessed of fire-arms obtained from the Dutch, now also their
partisans, resolved on the extermination of the French, and their
war-parties triumphed at Three Rivers and advanced to Quebec, killing
the governor at the one place, and a priest at the other. “No frightful
solitude of the wilderness,” says Bancroft, “no impenetrable recess of
the frozen north, was safe against the passions of the Five Nations.
Their chiefs, animated not only by cruelty but by pride, were resolved
that no nation should role but themselves.”
In this state of terrible alarm, beset by enemies as powerful as they
were remorseless, New France despatched one of her council and Father
Dreuillettes, the missionary of the north-east, to ask aid from the
united colonies of New England against the Mohawks; but “the story of
their sufferings, and their murdered missionaries, were listened to with
indifference: no aid could be obtained from that quarter.” Nothing was
left for them but to suffer or to help themselves, and after they had
remained for about three years in this state of constant alarm, the
Iroquois consented to peace.
According to Indian custom, numbers of the vanquished Hurons had been
adopted into the nation and families of the conquerors; and many of
these carried thus with them into the bosom of the Five Nations,
affection for the French, and some knowledge of Christianity; and when
Father Le Moyne was sent as envoy to ratify the treaty of peace, he was
welcomed by a party of his old Huron friends. This circumstance awoke in
his soul the hope that those mighty nations might be converted to
Christianity, and the whole west become subject to France. A vaster
field was now open for missionary labour than before. Le Moyne
established himself on Mohawk River, and two others, Dablon and
Chaumonot, an Italian priest and an old missionary among the Hurons,
took up their quarters at Onondaga, the village of that nation, where
they were warmly welcomed. They were welcomed also by the Oneidas. A
grand assembly of the nations gathered, “under the open sky and among
the primeval forests,” to receive the emissaries of Christ. Chaumonot
addressed them with all the fervour and impassioned eloquence of an
Italian orator, and his Indian audience were transported out of
themselves. “Happy land!” sang the excited chiefs, “happy land, in which
the French are to dwell! Glad tidings! glad tidings! It is well that we
have spoken together; it is well that we have a heavenly message!”
A chapel sprang, as it were, instantly into being, for the enthusiasm of
the Indians finished it in a day; and the services of the Romish Church
were chanted in the Mohawk tongue. Christianity was thus planted among
the Onondagas, who dwelling on the banks of the Oswego, which was
included within the charter of the Hundred Associates, was claimed as a
part of the French empire. Chaumonot made his way to “the more fertile
and densely-peopled land” of the Senecas, the most powerful tribe of the
confederacy, while René Mesnard was reserved as a missionary by the
Cayugas, and a chapel erected in their village, the interior of which
was hung with mats, on which were displayed pictures of the Virgin and
the Infant Saviour which attracted the admiring gaze of the converts.
While Christian missions were thus established throughout the other
nations, the chapel of the Onondagas becoming too small for its
increasing worshippers, was enlarged, and for a moment it seemed as if
the religion of peace had taken root in the blood-stained soil of the
Five Nations. At the close of 1657, Jesuit priests published their faith
from the Mohawk to the Genesee, Onondaga remaining the central station.
A little colony of fifty Frenchman was also established on the
Oswego.[9]
But neither settlements nor missionary labours could change the nature
of the inveterate savage. A war of extermination was carried on by them
against their neighbours, the Eries; and the tortures of the captives,
even women and children, which were brought to the villages, called
forth protests from the missionaries. These excited the displeasure of
the Indians, and three Frenchmen were murdered. In vain was aid
solicited from Canada; the growing ill-will of the Onondagas compelled
the missionaries to abandon their chapel and the colonists their
settlement. The Mohawks obliged Le Moyne to depart; and the following
year war again broke out with the Five Nations.
The same year the first bishop of New France, the able Montigny, arrived
at Quebec, and the island of Montreal having been granted in fief to the
Seminary of St. Sulpice, at Paris, a deputation of monks came over, and
the foundation of the present city was laid, by the establishment of a
hospital, to serve in which religious women came from France. “To the
unassisted energy of Margeurite Bourgeoise,” says Hildreth, “the
institution of the Daughters of the Congregation owes its origin. With
no other resource than her courage and her confidence in God, she
undertook the establishment of a convent at Montreal, to secure to all
female children, however poor and destitute, a useful and respectable
education. The whole island of Montreal, in fact, resembled a religious
community.”
The puritanic rigidity of life in New England was equalled by that of
catholic Montreal. As a picture of the manners of those days in that
religious city, we may give the description of La Hontan:—“We have here
a misanthropical bigot of a curé, under whose spiritual despotism play
and visiting the ladies are reckoned among the deadly sins. If you have
the misfortune to be on his black list, he launches at you publicly from
the pulpit. In order to keep well with Messieurs the priests of St.
Sulpice, our temporal lords, it is necessary to communicate once a
month. No one dare be absent from great masses and sermons. These
Arguses have their eyes constantly on the conduct of the women and the
girls. Fathers and husbands may sleep in all assurance, unless they have
suspicion of these vigilant sentinels themselves. Of all the vexation of
these disturbers, I find none so intolerable as their war upon books.
None are to be found here but books of devotion. All others are
prohibited and condemned to the flames.”
While civilisation was labouring to establish itself in the north, the
adventurous Jesuits had penetrated to the far west. In 1656, two young
fur-traders returned to St. Louis, after a two years’ travel of 500
leagues, bringing back with them a great number of Ottawas. They related
wonderful and exciting histories of vast lakes in the west, and numerous
tribes of Indians, as yet unknown to the white man. New fields were
opened for commerce and missionary labours.
Gabriel Dreuillettes, formerly missionary in Maine, and Louis Gareau, an
old Huron missionary, were deputed to this service, and accompanied by
the Ottawas, returned with them in their canoes. But the Mohawks,
enemies of the Ottawas, attacked the little fleet and Gareau was killed.
In 1660, two other fur-traders, who had passed the winter on the banks
of Lake Superior, returned to Quebec, again escorted by a great number
of canoes rowed by Algonquins and laden with peltry. The Mohawks and
their confederate nations had carried on a war of extermination against
the Eries, and were now advancing against other nations lying more to
the south and west. The Algonquins, therefore, besought an alliance with
the French against these powerful enemies.
Again the missionary enthusiasm was excited; the very bishop of Quebec
himself was eager to undertake the enterprise; but the decision being by
lot, René Mesnard, late missionary among the Cayugus, was chosen. He was
already advanced in years, and experienced in missionary service. “I
go,” said he, “trusting in Providence, who feeds the little birds of the
desert and clothes the wild flowers of the forest.” “In three or four
months,” wrote he to a friend, “you may add me to the memento of
deaths.” In the autumn he reached the southern shore of Lake Superior,
and the following year, being on his way to the Bay of Chegoimegon, on
the western extremity of that great lake, he lost his way in the forest
and never more was seen; his cassock and breviary being kept for long
years afterwards as amulets among the Sioux.
Again the Mohawks made war on the French, and Montreal was in danger;
the abandonment of the country was even thought of and might have been
carried out, but that Colbert, the minister of the young Louis XIV., who
had just come to the throne, estimating at its true value the commercial
relationship of France with the Canadian colony, was the means of its
being transferred to a new West India company, the original company of
New France having resigned its rights to the sovereign. Under this new
management, “a royal regiment, under the indefatigable Tracy as viceroy,
was sent over for its defence; Courcelles, a veteran soldier, was
appointed governor, and Talon, a man of business and integrity, as royal
representative in civil affairs. Every omen was favourable, save the
conquest of New Netherlands by the English, which took place at this
time, and which circumstance, in a quarter of a century, made the
hunting-fields of the Iroquois the battle-grounds of these two European
rivals.”
Under the better prospects which the change of administration introduced
into New France, Father Allouez, nothing daunted by the cruel fate of
Gareau and Mesnard, set out on a mission to the remote west. His journey
commenced in August, 1665, and early in September he entered the great
lake, reverenced by the Indians as a divinity, “and sailing along the
lofty banks and pictured rocks of its southern shore, passed beyond the
Bay of Keweena, obtaining knowledge of those copper mines known
immemorially to the Indians, and for which that region is now
celebrated, and so arrived at Chegoimegon, where landing, he celebrated
mass and inscribing the cross on a lofty tree of the forest, claimed the
country for the Christian king of France.”
The great village of the Chippewas was situated on Chegoimegon Bay, and
at the moment of Allouez’ arrival a grand council of ten or twelve
nations had assembled there to prevent war between the Chippewas and the
Sioux. Into this assembly advanced the fearless missionary, and in the
names of Christ and of the monarch of France commanded peace; offering
to them the advantage of commerce, and protection from the French
against their common enemy the Iroquois.
These Indians who had never before seen a white man, listened to him
with reverence. A chapel soon sprung up there, and the services were
chanted in a new tongue. At this mission of St. Esprit, more than twenty
different nations listened to the teacher. Hither came scattered
remnants of the Hurons and Ottawas; hither came the Potawatamies,
worshippers of the sun, who invited Allouez to their homes still further
westward; hither came the Sacs and Foxes, hunters of the deer, the
beaver and the buffalo; hither came the Illinois and the impassive
Sioux, whose food was wild rice, and who used skins of beasts instead of
bark to roof their cabins, and who excited the missionary’s curiosity by
the accounts they gave of the mighty Mesipi, on which they dwelt, and
which flowed to the south; forests they had not, but vast prairies where
herds of deer and buffalo grazed on the tall grasses. “They told him of
their mysterious peace-pipe, and of the welcome which they gave to
strangers;” and Allouez, as he listened, exclaimed, “Their country is
the best field for the gospel.”
After a residence here of two years, Allouez returned to Quebec, and
there exciting an enthusiasm equal to his own, he, already on the third
day after his return, in company with Louis Nicolas, another missionary,
was on his way back to Chegoimegon.