JESUIT MISSIONARY PIONEERS
Unselfishness of the Better Class of Jesuits.--Their Achievements in
Exploration.--The Great Political Scheme of which they were the
Instruments.--Indian Superstitions.--Danger!--The Touching Story of Isaac
Jogues.--Ferocity of the Five Nations.--Ruin of the Hurons and of the
Jesuit Missions among them.
A class of men whose aims were singularly unselfish were the missionaries
of the Roman Catholic Church, mostly Jesuits, that is, members of the
Society of Jesus. The first object of the best of them was to convert
the Indians and establish a great branch of the Catholic Church in the
wilds of America. There were others, however, whose first aim was to
increase the power of France. These politician-priests were well
represented by the famous Father Allouez who, while he preached the
gospel to the Indians, took still greater pains to preach the glory of
the French King, whose subjects he wished to make them. On one occasion,
supported by a French officer and his {148} soldiers, drawn up under
arms, he thus addressed a large assemblage of Indians gathered at Sault
Ste. Marie:
"When our King attacks his enemies, he is more terrible than the thunder:
the earth trembles; the air and the sea are all on fire with the blaze of
his cannon; he is seen in the midst of his warriors, covered over with
the blood of his enemies, whom he kills in such numbers that he does not
count them by the scalps, but by the streams of blood which he causes to
flow. In each city he has storehouses where there are hatchets enough to
cut down all your forests, kettles enough to cook all your moose, and
beds enough to fill all your lodges. His house is higher than the
tallest of your trees and holds more families than the largest of your
towns. Men come from every quarter of the earth to listen to and admire
him. All that is done in the world is decided by him alone."
But we are not now concerned with such scheming priests. We wish to
sketch very briefly the story of some of those faithful and
single-hearted men who were true missionaries of religion. In their
journeys into the wilds they often proved themselves pathfinders,
penetrating {149} regions never before trodden by the foot of a white
man. Many a tribe got its first impression of our race from these
peaceful preachers. A mission priest, Le Caron, was the first white man
who saw Lake Huron. Another, the heroic Jogues, was the first of our
race to see Lake George. Thus the work of Catholic missionaries must
have a large place in any truthful account of early New France. In fact,
the history of Canada is for a long time the history of Jesuit activity.
These men were in the habit of sending to their superiors in the Old
World copious accounts of all that they saw or did. These reports, which
are known as the "Jesuit Relations," form a perfect storehouse of
information about early Canadian affairs and about the Indians with whom
the French were in contact.
These Jesuit priests commonly were highly educated men, accustomed to all
the refinements of life--some of them of noble families--and we can only
measure their devotion to the cause of religion when we realize the
contrast between their native surroundings and the repulsive savagery
into which they plunged when they went among the Indians. Think of such
a man as {150} Father Le Jeune, cultivated and high-minded, exiling
himself from his white brethren for a whole season, which he spent with a
band of Algonquins, roaming the wintry forests with them, sharing their
hunger and cold and filth, sometimes on the verge of perishing from sheer
starvation, at other times, when game chanced to be plentiful, revolted
by the gorging of his companions, at all times disgusted by their
nastiness. "I told them again and again," he writes, "that if dogs and
swine could talk, they would use just such speech;" a remark which shows,
by the way, that the good friar did not think so highly of dumb animals
as we do in these more enlightened days.
But he had abundant charity, and he noted that underneath all this coarse
rudeness there was genuine fellowship among these savages; that they
cheerfully helped one another, and when food was scarce, fairly
distributed the smallest portion among all. Such observations helped him
to endure his lot with serenity, even when he was himself made the butt
of the coarsest jokes. He survived his hard experiences and, after five
months of roaming, exhausted and worn to a shadow, rejoined the brethren
in the rude convent at Quebec.
{151}
There was much of this fine spirit about the best of the Jesuits. But,
besides this individual devotion, there was another important
circumstance: they were only private soldiers in a great army. They had
no will of their own, for one of the first principles of the Order was
absolute obedience. Wherever their superiors might send them they must
go without a question. Whatever they might be ordered to do, they must
do it without a murmur.
It became the policy of the leading men of the Order in Canada to
establish missionary posts among the Hurons who, living in fixed
habitations, were more hopeful subjects than the roving Algonquins of the
St. Lawrence region. It would be a great gain, they reasoned, if these
people could be brought within the pale of the Church. At the same time
that so many souls would be saved from everlasting flames, the immensely
lucrative fur-trade of a vast region would be secured to the French, and
the King would gain thousands of dusky subjects. Canada would flourish,
the fur-traders would grow richer than ever, and France would be in the
way of extending her rule ever farther and further over the western
forests and waters--all through the {152} exertions of a few faithful and
single-hearted men who went to preach religion.
The three men chosen for the work among the Hurons were Fathers Brebeuf,
Daniel, and Davost. On their journey to their post, if they could have
followed a direct line, they would have gone up the St. Lawrence to Lake
Ontario, traversed the length of the lake, and then by a short overland
journey reached their destination. But this route would have exposed
them to the ferocious Iroquois, whose country bordered Lake Ontario on
the south. Therefore, it was necessary to take the long and circuitous
canoe-voyage which Champlain had taken fifteen years earlier (_See map_).
At last, after many pains and perils, half-dead with hunger and fatigue,
they reached a village of the Huron country. Soon they settled down to
the routine of their daily life, of which they have left us a very
readable account. Every day they had numerous visitors, some from long
distances, who came to gaze in silent wonder at their domestic
arrangements. For instance, there was the clock. They squatted on the
floor for hours, watching it and waiting to hear it strike. They thought
it was alive and asked what it ate. {153} They listened in awe when it
struck, sure that they heard the voice of a living being. "The Captain"
they called it.
Sometimes one of the French soldiers who accompanied the Jesuits, when
"the Captain" had sounded his last stroke, would cry out, "Stop!" Its
immediate silence proved that it heard and obeyed.
"What does the Captain say?" the Indians sometimes asked.
"When he strikes twelve times, he says, 'Hang on the kettle,' and when he
strikes four times, he says, 'Get up and go home.'"
This was a particularly happy thought; at the stroke of four their
visitors would invariably rise and take themselves off.
In spite of the lack of outward signs of success, the good men were
making a conquest of the savage people's hearts. Their unwearied
patience, their kindness, the innocence of their lives, and the tact with
which they avoided every occasion of ill-will, did not fail to gain the
confidence of those whom they sought to win, and chiefs of distant
villages came to urge that they would take up their abode with them.
Soon the Huron country contained no less than {154} six different points
where faithful priests preached the gospel.
The Fathers had abundant opportunities of observing the habits of the
natives. They have left a most interesting description of the great
Feast of the Dead, which was held at intervals of ten or twelve years,
and the object of which was to gather into one great burying-place all
the dead of the tribe, these being removed from their temporary
resting-places on scaffolds and in graves. It was believed that the
souls of the dead remained with their bodies until the great common
burial, then they would depart to the spirit-world.[1]
This practice, of a great common burial, explains the occurrence, in
various parts of the country once occupied by the Hurons, of pits {155}
containing the remains of many hundreds of persons all mixed together
promiscuously, together with belts of wampum, copper ornaments, glass
beads, and other articles. One of these deposits is said to have
contained the remains of several thousand persons.[2]
The story of Isaac Jogues is a good example both of the Jesuit
missionaries' sufferings and of their fortitude. He had gone to Quebec
for supplies and was returning to the Huron country with two young
Frenchmen, Goupil and Couture, and a number of Hurons. Suddenly the
war-whoop rang in their ears, and a fleet of Iroquois canoes bore down
upon them from adjacent islands, with a terrific discharge of musketry.
The Hurons for the greater part leaped ashore and fled. Jogues sprang
into the bulrushes and could have got away. When he saw some of the
converted Indians in the hands of their enemies, he determined to share
their fate, came out from his hiding-place, and gave himself up. Goupil
{156} was taken prisoner. Couture had got away, but the thought of the
fate that probably awaited Jogues decided him to go back and cast in his
lot with him. In the affray, however, he had killed an Iroquois. In
revenge, the others fell upon him furiously, stripped off all his
clothing, tore away his finger-nails with their teeth, gnawed his
fingers, and thrust a sword through one of his hands. Jogues broke from
his guards, ran to his friend, and threw his arms about his neck. This
so incensed the Iroquois that they turned upon him, beat him with their
fists and war-clubs till he was senseless, and gnawed his fingers as they
had done Couture's. Goupil next received the same ferocious treatment.
The victorious Iroquois now started off with their captives for their
country. Their route lay up the river Richelieu, through the length of
Lake Champlain, and through the greater part of Lake George to a point
where they were wont to leave it and cross over to the Hudson. There was
picturesque scenery by the way. But what charm had the beauties of Lake
Champlain and distant glimpses of the Adirondacks for the poor prisoners,
harassed by the pain and fever of their wounds, in the day cruelly beaten
by their captors and at {157} night so tormented by clouds of mosquitoes
that they could not sleep? In time they passed the sites of Crown Point
and Ticonderoga, sighted romantic Lake George, which these three lonely
white men were the first of their race to see, and landed from their
canoes at the place where afterward rose Fort William Henry, the scene of
one of the most shocking tragedies of the Colonial Wars.
Thirteen dreadful days the journey occupied, from the St. Lawrence to its
termination at a palisaded town on the banks of the Mohawk. On Lake
Champlain they had met a war-party of Iroquois, and the prisoners, for
their delight, had been compelled to run the gauntlet between a double
line of braves armed with clubs and thorny sticks. When Jogues fell
drenched in blood and half-dead, he was recalled to consciousness by fire
applied to his body. Couture's experience illustrates a singular trait
of the ferocious Iroquois. There was nothing that they admired so much
as bulldog courage; and though he had exasperated them by killing one of
their warriors, they punished him only by subjecting him to excruciating
tortures. His fortitude under these still further increased their
admiration and they ended by adopting him {158} into the tribe. Many
years later we read of him still living among the Mohawks. Jogues and
Goupil they dragged from town to town, in each place exposing them on a
scaffold and subjecting them to atrocities contrived to cause the utmost
suffering without endangering life. Yet, in an interval between
tortures, Jogues seized an opportunity to baptize some Huron prisoners
with a few rain-drops gathered from the husks of an ear of green corn
thrown to him for food.
Three of the Hurons were burned to death, and the two Frenchmen expected
the same fate. Goupil did indeed meet with his death, but in a different
way. He was once seen to make the sign of the cross on the forehead of a
grandchild of the Indian in whose lodge he lived. The old man's
superstition was aroused, having been told by the Dutch that the sign of
the cross came from the Devil. So he imagined that Goupil had bewitched
the child.
The next morning, as the two Frenchmen were walking together, talking of
the glory of suffering for the sake of Christ, they met two young
Indians, one of whom buried his hatchet in Goupil's head. Jogues gave
absolution to his dying friend and then, kneeling calmly, bowed his neck
to the blow {159} which he expected. Instead, he was ordered to get up
and go home.
For a time his life hung on a thread. He would have welcomed death. But
the very indifference to it which he showed was probably the reason why
the Iroquois spared him. Now he led an existence of horrible drudgery.
After a while, as he showed no disposition to escape, he was allowed to
come and go as he pleased. So he went from town to town, teaching and
baptizing whenever he could get a chance. The gangs of prisoners whom
the Iroquois brought home from the Huron country, and whom they almost
invariably burned, furnished him an abundance of subjects to work on.
Once it happened that he went with a party of Indians to a fishing-place
on the Hudson. Thence some of them went up the river to Fort Orange, a
miserable structure of logs, standing within the limits of the present
city of Albany. The Dutch settlers there had heard of Jogues's captivity
and, strenuous Protestants though they were, had striven to secure his
release by offering goods to a large value. Now that he was among them,
they urged him not to return to his captors, but to make his escape,
since his death was certain, if he went back. They offered to smuggle
him {160} on board a vessel that lay in the river and pay his way to
France. He resolved to seize the tempting opportunity.
It would make our story too long if we should tell at length the narrow
escapes that he still experienced before he succeeded in getting away.
At his first attempt to slip away at night, he was severely bitten by a
savage dog belonging to the Dutch farmer with whom he and the Indians
lodged. When he got off he lay two days hidden in the hold of the vessel
that was to carry him away. Then the Indians came out and so frightened
its officers that he was sent ashore and put under the care of a miserly
old fellow who ate the most of the food that was provided for Jogues.
While he was hidden in this man's garret he was within a few feet of
Indians who came there to trade. Finally the Dutch satisfied the Indians
by paying a large ransom and shipped Jogues down the river. He received
nothing but kindness from the Dutch everywhere and, on his arrival at
Manhattan (New York), was furnished by the Governor with a suit of
clothes, instead of his tattered skins, and given a passage to Europe.
At last he landed on the coast of Brittany. In due time he reached
Paris, and the city was stirred {161} with the tale of his sufferings and
adventures. He was summoned to court, and the ladies thronged about him
to do him reverence, while the Queen kissed his mutilated hands.
Would not one think that Jogues had had enough of the New World, with its
deadly perils and cruel pains? But so it was not. His simple nature
cared nothing for honors. His heart was over the water, among the
savages whom he longed to save. Besides, he was only a private soldier
in that great army, the Jesuit brotherhood, of which every member was
sworn to act, to think, to live, for but one object, the advancement of
religion as it was represented by the Order. And who was so fit for the
work among the Indians as Jogues, who knew their language and customs?
So, in the following spring we find him again on the Atlantic, bound for
Canada. Two years he passed in peaceful labors at Montreal. Then his
supreme trial came. Peace had been made between the French and the
Mohawks, and Couture still lived among the latter, for the express
purpose of holding them steadfast to their promises. But, for some
reason, the French apprehended an outbreak of hostilities, and it was
{162} resolved to send envoys to the Indian country. At the first
mention of the subject to Jogues he shrank from returning to the scene of
so much suffering. But the habit of implicit obedience triumphed, and he
quickly announced his willingness to do the will of his superiors, which
to him was the will of God. "I shall go, but I shall never return," he
wrote to a friend.
He started out with a small party carrying a load of gifts intended to
conciliate the Iroquois, and followed the route that was associated in
his mind with so much misery, up the Richelieu and Lake Champlain and
through Lake George. At the head of this water they crossed over to the
Hudson, borrowed canoes from some Indians fishing there, and dropped down
the river to Fort Orange. Once more Jogues was among his Dutch friends.
Glad as they were to see him, they wondered at his venturing back among
the people who had once hunted him like a noxious beast. From Fort
Orange he ascended the Mohawk River to the first Indian town. With what
wonder the savages must have gazed at the man who had lived among them as
a despised slave, and now had come back laden with gifts as the
ambassador of a great power! They received {163} him graciously, and
when his errand was done, he returned safe to Quebec.
It would have been well for him if his superiors had contented themselves
with what he had already done and suffered. But they had a grand scheme
of founding a mission among the Iroquois. They knew its perils and
called it "The Mission of Martyrs." To this post of danger Jogues was
sent. The devoted man went without a murmur. On the way he met Indians
who warned him of danger, and his Huron companions turned back, but he
went on. Arrived among the Mohawks, he found a strong tide of feeling
running against him. The accident that aroused it illustrates Indian
superstitiousness. On his former visit, expecting to return, he had left
a small box. From the first the Indians suspected it of being, like
Pandora's box in the old mythology, full of all kinds of ills. But
Jogues opened it and showed them that it contained only some harmless
personal effects. After he was gone, however, some Huron prisoners
wrought on their terror and at the same time reviled the French,
declaring that the latter had almost ruined the Huron nation by their
witchcraft and had brought on it drought, plague, pestilence, and famine.
{164}
The Iroquois were well-nigh wild with rage and fright. At any moment the
small-pox or some other horror might step out of the little box and stalk
abroad among them. The three clans that made up the tribe were divided.
The clans of the Wolf and the Tortoise were for keeping the peace; but
the clan of the Bear was for making war on the French. Just then, by ill
fortune, Jogues, approaching the Mohawk villages, encountered a band of
Bear warriors. They seized and dragged him to their town. Here he was
savagely attacked and beaten with fists and clubs. In vain he reminded
them that he had come on an errand of peace. They tortured him cruelly.
The Wolf and Tortoise clans protested against this violation of the
peace, but the others carried everything before them.
The next day Jogues was bidden to a feast. He did not dare refuse to go.
As he entered the lodge of the Bear chief, in spite of the efforts of an
Indian who exposed his own life in trying to save him, a hatchet was
buried in his brain. Thus died a singularly pure and unselfish man, a
Pathfinder, too, for he was one of the three white men who first saw Lake
George.
Shortly after the death of Jogues, war broke {165} out again. Nothing
could have exceeded the ferocity of the Five Nations. They boasted that
they intended to sweep the French and their Indian friends off the face
of the earth. No place seemed too remote for them. At the most
unexpected moments of the day or the night they rose, as it seemed, out
of the earth, and, with their blood-curdling war-whoop, fell upon their
intended victims with guns and tomahawks. The poor Algonquins were in a
state of pitiable terror. Nowhere were they safe. Even when they
retired into the wilderness north of the St. Lawrence, they were tracked
by their ruthless foes, slaughtered, burned, and drowned.
We might go on and tell the story of other priests who all fell at the
post of duty and died worthily. But of what use would it be to prolong
these horrors? Enough to say that the Huron nation was almost
annihilated, the feeble remnant left their country and went elsewhere,
and the once promising work of the Jesuits among them ended in fire and
blood.
A small party of the Hurons accompanied the returning priests to the
French settlements and became established, under French protection, near
Quebec, at a place called New Lorette, or Indian {166} Lorette, and
fought by the side of their white friends in later wars. There, to this
day, their descendants, mostly French half-breeds, may be seen engaged in
the harmless occupations of weaving baskets and making moccasins.
Another band wandered away to the far Northwest, came into conflict with
the warlike and powerful Sioux, and, driven back eastward, finally took
up its abode near the sites of Detroit and Sandusky. Under the name of
Wyandots, its descendants played a conspicuous part in our border wars.
[1] The faith of the Indians in a future life was very sincere and
strong. Jonathan Carver tells a touching story of a couple whom he knew
who lost a little son of about four years. They seemed inconsolable.
After a time the father died. Then the mother dried her tears and ceased
her lamentations. When he asked her the reason of this, as it seemed to
him, strange conduct, she answered that she and her husband had grieved
excessively, because they knew that their little boy would be alone in
the other world, without anybody to provide for his wants, but now, his
father having gone to join him, her mind was at rest in the assurance
that the little fellow would be well cared for and happy.
[2] This usage seems to have been quite general. Jonathan Carver, in
1767, tells of a common burying-place of several bands of the Sioux, to
which these roving people carefully brought their dead at a given time,
depositing them with great solemnity. These bodies had previously been
temporarily placed on rude scaffolds on the limbs of trees, awaiting the
general interment.
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