Transcriber's Note.
A list of the changes made can be found at the end of the book.
Formatting and special characters are indicated as follows:
_italic_
=bold=
^{superscript}
[C=] reverse C
[~e] e with tilde
[~i] i with tilde
[^a] a with breve
[(c] c with accent
-reversed characters-
THE JESUIT RELATIONS AND ALLIED DOCUMENTS
VOL. I.
The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents
TRAVELS AND EXPLORATIONS OF THE JESUIT MISSIONARIES IN NEW FRANCE
1610-1791.
THE ORIGINAL FRENCH, LATIN, AND ITALIAN TEXTS, WITH ENGLISH
TRANSLATIONS AND NOTES; ILLUSTRATED BY PORTRAITS, MAPS, AND FACSIMILES
EDITED BY
REUBEN GOLD THWAITES
Secretary of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin
Vol. I.
ACADIA: 1610-1613
CLEVELAND: =The Burrows Brothers Company=, PUBLISHERS, M DCCCXCVI
COPYRIGHT, 1896
BY
THE BURROWS BROTHERS CO
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_The Imperial Press, Cleveland_
EDITORIAL STAFF
Editor REUBEN GOLD THWAITES
Translator from the French JOHN CUTLER COVERT
Assistant Translator from the French MARY SIFTON PEPPER
Translators from the Latin { WILLIAM FREDERIC GIESE
{ JOHN DORSEY WOLCOTT
Translator from the Italian MARY SIFTON PEPPER
Assistant Editor EMMA HELEN BLAIR
GENERAL PREFACE
The story of New France is also, in part, the story of much of New
England, and of States whose shores are washed by the Great Lakes and
the Mississippi River. It may truly be said that the history of every
one of our northern tier of commonwealths, from Maine to Minnesota,
has its roots in the French régime. It is not true, as Bancroft avers,
that the Jesuit was ever the pioneer of New France; we now know that in
this land, as elsewhere in all ages, the trader nearly always preceded
the priest. But the trader was not often a letter-writer or a diarist:
hence, we owe our intimate knowledge of New France, particularly in
the seventeenth century, chiefly to the wandering missionaries of the
Society of Jesus. Coming early to the shores of Nova Scotia (1611),
nearly a decade before the landing of the Plymouth Pilgrims, and
eventually spreading throughout the broad expanse of New France, ever
close upon the track of the adventurous coureur de bois, they met
the American savage before contact with civilization had seriously
affected him. With heroic fortitude, often with marvellous enterprise,
they pierced our wilderness while still there were but Indian trails
to connect far-distant villages of semi-naked aborigines. They saw
North America and the North Americans practically in the primitive
stage. Cultivated men, for the most part,--trained to see as well as to
think, and carefully to make record of their experiences,--they left
the most luxurious country in Europe to seek shelter in the foul and
unwelcome huts of one of the most wretched races of man. To win these
crude beings to the Christian Faith, it was necessary to know them
intimately, in their daily walks. No coureur de bois was more expert
in forest lore than were the Jesuit Fathers; and the records made by
these soldiers of the Cross,--explicit and detailed, while familiar
in tone,--are of the highest scientific value, often of considerable
literary interest. The body of contemporary, documentary material
which, in their _Relations_ and Letters, the Jesuits of New France
have bequeathed to the historian, the geographer, and the ethnologist,
entitles them to the enduring gratitude of American scholars. For forty
years, these documents have, in part, been more or less familiar to
Americanists as a rich storehouse of material. But, hitherto, they
have existed only in rare and costly forms, when in print at all,--as
original products of ancient French, Italian, and German presses, or
as reprints issued in sparse number for small circles of bibliophiles;
while many important papers, capable of throwing light upon certain
portions of Canadian history hitherto in shade, have as yet remained in
manuscript.
We cannot promise for this series the entire body of existing Jesuit
documents, either printed or in manuscript, which illustrate the
history of New France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This
would carry us, even were they all obtainable, far beyond the necessary
limits of this series; for the fathers were profuse writers, and their
papers are in many archives. It is of necessity a matter of selection.
We shall, however, reissue all of the documents usually designated
as _Relations_,--the Cramoisys, the Quebec reissue, the Shea and
O'Callaghan reprints; and to these will be added a very considerable
collection of miscellaneous papers of importance, from printed sources
and from manuscripts, in order to fill the chronological gaps and
round out and complete the story. It is the purpose of the Editor to
present this mass of selected material in chronological order, so
far as proves practicable, and to furnish such scholarly helps as
will tend to render it more available than hitherto for daily use by
students of American history. To this end will be given an English
translation, side by side with the original text. While translations
of many of the briefest documents, and of portions of others, have
already appeared in one form of other, this is the first attempt to
translate the entire body of the _Relations_. In many cases, where
corruptions in text have crept in, we shall be enabled, by recourse to
original manuscripts, to restore correct renderings; this care has been
taken, wherever practicable, even to the examination of manuscripts in
European archives; but occasionally we shall be obliged to follow our
predecessors blindly in this regard, either from inability to discover
the whereabouts of the original, or to obtain access to it, when found.
In the case of each document, we shall invariably state the source
whence we obtained our copy, and shall give additional bibliographical
data as to other editions known to us. All maps and other illustrations
appearing in previous editions will be reproduced in this; and these
will be supplemented by other important contemporary aids of like
character. At the end of each volume will appear such Notes as seem
necessary to the elucidation of the text. The closing volume of the
series will contain--and probably will be wholly devoted to--an
exhaustive analytical Index, a feature without which the work would
lose much of its value. In short, no pains have been, or will be,
spared to render all possible service to scholars, in the present
work. But the field is wide, the difficulties are many, and the Editor
makes no claims to perfection. He will be grateful to any who, in the
course of publication,--promising to extend through several years yet
to come,--will offer helpful suggestions in any department of the
undertaking.
While seeking to reproduce the old texts as closely as practicable,
with their legitimate typographic and orthographic peculiarities, it
has been found advisable here and there to make a few minor changes.
The original printer was sometimes careless,--Cramoisy especially
so,--and his proof-reader negligent. The result was that certain
typographical errors crept into the original prints,--errors not of the
author's making, and therefore not illustrative of his methods. These
consist in the main, of: (1) turned letters; (2) transposed letters;
(3) slipped letters; and (4) mis-spacings. To these obvious errors may
be added such as, e.g., mistaking the verb _gratter_ for _grauer_,
evidently through a failure on the part of the writer to cross his
t's,--the context plainly showing what was written; the printing,
e.g., of _beau[(c]oup_ for _beaucoup_; or the repetition on the next
line of a syllable in a divided word, resulting in such a redundancy
as, _poupouuant_ for _pouuant_. Palpable blemishes like these, we
have deemed it advisable to correct without specific mention; in
some instances, however, the original error has been retained, and in
juxtaposition the correct rendering given within brackets.
Another and more annoying class of errors is, the wrong numbering of
chapters and pages in the old issues, chiefly the fruit of carelessness
in make-up. We indicate, throughout, the original pagination, by
inclosing within brackets the number of each page at its beginning,
e.g. [148]; in case of misnumbering, the correct figure is also given,
e.g. [150, i.e. 149]. A similar device is adopted as to chapter
misnumbering, e.g. Chapitre XXX. [i.e. XXIX.].
A difference in the typographic style of the documents presented in the
present series, will occasionally be noticed. In following originals of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, we have of course reproduced
their peculiarities, such as the long "s," and character diphthongs;
but where our sole copy has been a modern reprint, in a modern
typographic dress, we have followed its style, deeming it inadvisable,
for mere sake of uniformity, to masquerade the document in olden guise.
In the progress of the work, which has now been under way for some
sixteen months, many persons beside the present staff have tendered
helping hands. To them, the Editor returns, for the Publishers and
for himself, grateful acknowledgment. It is impracticable to name
them all in this place; but of a few from whom special favors have
been received, it is only just to speak: The Reverend Arthur E.
Jones, S. J., archivist of St. Mary's College, Montreal, from the
first opened his heart to this enterprise, and has not only given us
_carte blanche_ to ransack his priceless stores, but has contributed
invaluable suggestions and data, almost without number. To Wilberforce
Eames, librarian of Lenox Library, and his assistant, Victor H.
Paltsits, we owe much; for in their institution the greater part
of the transcription is being done, and their daily courtesies and
kindnesses materially lighten the task. Superintendent Robbins Little,
and Librarian Frederick Saunders, of Astor Library, have also been of
much assistance in the conduct of the work. To John Nicholas Brown,
of Providence, R. I., and to his librarian, George Parker Winship,
we are indebted for numerous courtesies and suggestions during the
copying and photographing of documents in the John Carter Brown Library
of Americana. Similar aid is being rendered by Dr. Justin Winsor, of
Harvard College Library, and his assistants, W. H. Tillinghast and T.
J. Kiernan; by the librarians of St. Francis Xavier College, New York,
and the Jesuit Colleges at Georgetown, D. C., and Woodstock, Md.; by L.
P. Sylvani, assistant librarian of the Library of Parliament, Ottawa;
and by C. H. Gould, librarian of McGill University Library, Montreal,
and his assistant, Henry Mott. Donald Guthrie McNab, of Montreal,
has kindly permitted us to photograph and reproduce his excellent
oil portraits of the early fathers; and, in this connection, we feel
under especial obligations to Messrs. Notman & Son, of Montreal, for
their intelligent advice and patience in photographing paintings and
manuscripts for the series. Marked privileges have been granted by
the officials of the Bibliothèque Nationale and the Bibliothèque de
l'Arsenal, of Paris. Numerous antiquarians have rendered generous aid,
notably Peter A. Porter, of Niagara Falls, N. Y.; W. M. Beauchamp,
of Baldwinsville, N. Y.; l'Abbé H. A. B. Verreau, of Montreal; Mgr.
T. E. Hamel, of Quebec; and A. F. Hunter, of Barrie, Ontario. Further
acknowledgment of assistance will be rendered in the several volumes,
as they appear.
R. G. T.
MADISON, WIS., August, 1896.
CONTENTS OF VOL. I
GENERAL PREFACE vii
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. _The Editor_ 1
PREFACE TO VOLUME I 45
DOCUMENTS:--
I. La Conversion des Savvages qui ont esté baptizés en la Novvelle
France, cette annee 1610. _Marc Lescarbot_ 49
II. Lettre Missive, tovchant la Conversion et baptesme du grand
Sagamos de la nouuelle Frãce. _M. Bertrand_; Port Royal,
June 28, 1610 115
III. Lettre au T.-R. P. Claude Aquaviva, Général de la Compagnie de
Jésus, à Rome. _Pierre Biard_; Dieppe, January 21, 1611 125
IV. Lettre au R. P. Christophe Baltazar, Provincial de France, à Paris.
_Pierre Biard_; Port Royal, June 10, 1611 138
V. Lettre au R. P. Provincial, à Paris. _Ennemond Massé_; Port
Royal, June 10, 1611 184
VI. Lettre au T.-R. P. Claude Aquaviva. _Pierre Biard_; Port
Royal, June 11, 1611 188
VII. Canadicæ Missionis Relatio ab anno 1611 usque ad annum 1613; cum
statu ejusdem Missionis, annis 1703 & 1710. _Joseph Jouvency_ 193
VIII. De Regione et Moribus Canadensium seu Barbarorum Novæ Franciæ.
_Joseph Jouvency_ 239
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL DATA: Volume I 299
NOTES 305
[Decoration]
ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. I
I. Photographic facsimile of title-page, Lescarbot's _La Conversion
des Savvages_ 52
II. Photographic facsimile of title-page, Bertrand's _Lettre Missive_
118
III. Map of Port Royal (1609), from Lescarbot's _Histoire de la
Nouvelle France_ (Paris, 1612) _Facing_ 124
IV. Map of "La Terre Nevve, Grand Riviere de Canada, et côtes de
l'Ocean en la Novvelle France," from _Ibid_ _Facing_ 192
V. Historical map of New France, showing missions, forts,
portage-routes, tribes, etc. _At end of volume_
INTRODUCTION
BY REUBEN GOLD THWAITES
Doubtless Norse vikings, venturing far southward from outlying colonies
in Iceland and Greenland, first coasted New France, and beached their
sturdy ships on the shores of New England. But five centuries passed
without result, and we cannot properly call them pioneers of American
civilization. Columbus it was, who unlocked the eastern door of the
New World. Five years later, John Cabot, in behalf of England, was
sighting the gloomy headlands of Cape Breton. Cortereal appeared in
the neighborhood, in 1501, seeking lands for the Portuguese crown.
About this time, at intervals, there came to Newfoundland certain
Norman, Breton, and Basque fishers, who, erecting little huts and
drying-scaffolds along the rocky shore, sowed the first seed of that
polyglot settlement of French, Portuguese, Spanish, and English which
has come down to our day almost uninterruptedly. By 1511, these
fishermen appear to have known the mainland to the west; for on the
map of Sylvanus, in his edition of Ptolemy, that year, we find a
delineation of the "Square Gulf," which answers to the Gulf of St.
Lawrence. In 1520, Fagundus visited these waters for the Portuguese,
and four years later Verrazano was making for the French an exploration
of the coast between North Carolina and Newfoundland. Whether or not
Cartier (1535) was the first to sail up the St. Lawrence "until land
could be seen on either side," no man can now tell; apparently, he was
the first to leave a record of doing so. Progress up the river was
checked by Lachine Rapids, and he spent the winter on Montreal Island.
France and Spain were just then engaged in one of their periodical
quarrels, and adventurers were needed to fight battles at home, so
that it was six years before any attempts were made to colonize the
river-lands to which Cartier had led the way. In 1541, a Picard
seigneur named Roberval, enjoying the friendship of Francis I., was
commissioned as viceroy of the new country beyond the Atlantic, with
Cartier as his chief pilot and captain-general, and a choice selection
of jail-birds for colonists. Cartier started off before his chief,
built a fort at Quebec, and, after a long and miserable winter, picked
up a quantity of glittering stones which he took to be gold and
diamonds, and gladly set sail for home. Tradition has it that Roberval
met him near the mouth of the river, but was unable to induce him to
return to his cheerless task of founding a state in an inhospitable
wilderness, with convicts for citizens. Roberval, however, proceeded
to Quebec with his consignment of prison dregs, and throughout another
protracted winter the flag of France floated from the little intrenched
camp which Cartier had planted on the summit of the cliff. Roberval's
principal occupation appears to have been the disciplining of his
unruly followers, a work in which the gibbet and the lash were freely
employed. He also essayed explorations up the river; but the rude task
was not to his liking, and, with what remained of his battered band, he
followed Cartier to France.
It is commonly said that Canada was abandoned by the French between
the going of Roberval and the coming of Champlain. But, though little
was done toward colonizing on the St. Lawrence, Newfoundland was by
no means neglected. Its fishing industry grew apace. The rules of the
Church, prescribing a fish diet on certain holy days, led to a large
use of salted fish throughout Catholic Europe; and, by 1578, full a
hundred and fifty French vessels alone, chiefly Breton, were employed
in the Newfoundland fisheries, while a good trade with the mainland
Indians, as far south as the Potomac, had now sprung up. The island
colony proved valuable as a supply and repair station for traders and
explorers, and thus served as a nucleus of both French and English
settlement in America.
It is difficult for us of to-day to realize that, at any time in the
world's history, enlightened folk should have thought good colonists
could be made out of the sweepings of the jails and gutters of the Old
World. But in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that delusion
was quite generally entertained by would-be founders of states across
sea; it required the lessons of more than a hundred years of disastrous
experiments to teach discerning men that only the best of the middle
class and the masses, can successfully plant a new community in
the wilderness. The experiences of Cartier and Roberval on the St.
Lawrence, and of Laudonnière in Florida (1564), were of no avail in
influencing governmental policy at Paris. In 1590, the Marquis de la
Roche was sent out with the usual dissolute crew to succeed Roberval as
the king's agent on the banks of the St. Lawrence. Leaving part of his
ill-favored gang on the desert Sable Isle, off Nova Scotia (where early
in the century Baron de Léry had vainly attempted to plant a colony),
La Roche set forth to explore the mainland for a site. A wild storm
blew his vessels to France, and the wretched skin-clad survivors of the
band which he had left behind were not rescued until thirteen years had
elapsed. Their tale of horror long rang in the ears of France.
In 1600-1603, Chauvin and Pontgravé made successful trading voyages
to the St. Lawrence. Samuel de Champlain was one of the party
which, in the latter year, followed in Cartier's track to Montreal.
The same season, a Calvinist, named De Monts, was given the
vice-royalty and fur-trade monopoly of Acadia, and in 1604 he landed
a strangely-assorted company of vagabonds and gentlemen on St. Croix
Island, near the present boundary between Maine and New Brunswick; but
in the spring following they settled at Port Royal, near where is now
Annapolis, Nova Scotia, thus planting the first French agricultural
settlement in America. Five years later, Champlain reared a permanent
post on the rock of Quebec, and New France was at last, after a century
of experiments, fairly under way.
Various motives influenced the men who sought to establish French
colonization in America. The ill-fated agricultural colony of the
Huguenots in Florida (1562-68), was avowedly an attempt of Admiral
Coligny to found an enduring asylum for French Protestants. The
enterprise of New France, on the other hand, was the outgrowth of
interests more or less conflicting. Doubtless the court had deepest
at heart the kingly passion for territorial aggrandizement; next
uppermost, was the pious wish to convert heathen nations to the
Catholic faith, explorers like Cartier being authorized to discover
new lands "in order the better to do what is pleasing to God, our
Creator and Redeemer, and what may be for the increase of his holy
and sacred name, and of our holy mother, the Church;" the desire for
pelf, through the agency of the fur trade, and the possibility of the
discovery of precious metals, gave commercial zest to the undertaking,
and to many was the _raison d'être_ of the colony; and lastly, was the
almost universal yearning for adventure, among a people who in the
seventeenth century were still imbued with that chivalric temper which
among Englishmen is assigned to the Middle Ages. The inner life of New
France, throughout its century and a half of existence, was largely a
warring between these several interests.
Missionaries came early upon the scene. With the Calvinist De Monts
were Huguenot ministers for the benefit of the settlers, and Catholic
priests to open a mission among the savages, for the court had
stipulated with him that the latter were to be instructed only in the
faith of Rome. But no missionary work was done, for the colony was
through several years on the verge of dissolution, and the priests
became victims of scurvy. Poutrincourt, who held under De Monts the
patent for Port Royal, did nothing to further the purposes of the
court in this regard, until 1610, when, admonished for his neglect,
he brought out with him a secular priest, Messire Jessé Fléché,
of Langres, who on June 24, "apparently in some haste," baptized
twenty-one Abenakis, including the district sagamore, or chief. The
account of this affair, which Poutrincourt sent in triumph to France,
is the initial document in the present series.
On the twelfth of June, 1611, there arrived at Port Royal, at the
instance of King Henry IV., two Jesuit fathers, Pierre Biard and
Ennemond Massé. They were, however, not favorably received by
Poutrincourt and his followers; they found great practical difficulties
in acquiring the Indian languages and made slight progress in the
herculean task to which they had been set. To them, came the following
year, a lay brother, Gilbert du Thet, who was soon dispatched to the
head of the order, in France, with an account of the situation. In the
spring of 1613, he returned, in company with Father Quentin. The little
band of missionaries had no sooner established themselves at the new
French colony on Mt. Desert Island, than the latter was attacked and
dispersed by the Virginian Argall. Du Thet was killed in the fight,
Massé was, with other colonists, set adrift in a boat, and Biard and
Quentin were taken to Virginia, to be eventually shipped to England,
and thence allowed to return into France. Several of the earlier
documents of our series have to do with this first and apparently
unfruitful mission of the Jesuits to Acadia.
In 1615, Champlain thought the time ripe for the institution of Indian
missions upon the St. Lawrence, a spiritual field hitherto neglected,
and introduced to Quebec four members of the fraternity of Récollets,
the most austere of the three orders of Franciscans; these were
Fathers Denis Jamay, Jean d'Olbeau, and Joseph le Caron, and a lay
brother, Pacifique du Plessis. To D'Olbeau was assigned the conversion
of the Montagnais of the Lower St. Lawrence; Le Caron went to the
Hurons, or Wyandots, in the vast stretch of forested wilderness west
of the Ottawa River, and before the coming of autumn had established
a bark chapel in their midst; Jamay and Du Plessis remained in the
neighborhood of Quebec, ministering to the colonists and the wandering
savages who came to the little settlement for purposes of trade or
sociability, or through fear of scalp-hunting Iroquois. For ten years
did these gray friars practice the rites of the church in the Canadian
woods, all the way from the fishing and trading outpost of Tadoussac
to the western Lake of the Nipissings. Barefooted, save for heavy
wooden sandals, coarsely clad in gown and hood, enduring in a rigorous
climate, to which they were unused, all manner of hardships by flood
and field, they were earnestly devoted to their laborious calling in a
time when elsewhere the air of New France was noisy with the strife of
self-seeking traders and politicians. Yet somehow their mission seemed
without important result. Even less successful was the enterprise of
some fellow Récollets, who, in 1619, began independent work among the
French fishermen and Micmacs of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Gaspé,
but were forced in 1624, after many disasters, to abandon their task,
three of them joining the party at Quebec.
The little band on the St. Lawrence, although thus reinforced, felt
impelled, in 1625, to invite the powerful aid of the Jesuits, who
in the face of great odds were just then holding most successful
missions in Asia, Africa, and South America. In response to the call,
three fathers of the black gown came to Quebec this year,--Massé, who
had been of the old Acadian mission, Charles Lalemant, and that giant
among them, in both stature and deeds, Jean de Brébeuf. Immediately
the work began to broaden, but the records of the dual mission do not
give evidence of many converts,--a few Huron youth taken to France, and
there instructed and baptized, being the chief gains. The wandering
habits of the Indians were not favorable to persistent instruction
of the young, and adults were unwilling to commit themselves to the
new doctrine, even when not openly opposed to its promulgation. The
summer months were usually spent by the missionaries at Tadoussac,
Quebec, and Three Rivers, where trading parties from the tribes were
wont to assemble; and, when the latter scattered for their winter
hunts, the missionaries accompanied them, sharing the toils, dangers,
and discomforts of the movable camps, and often suffering much from
positive abuse at the hands of their not over-willing hosts.
The settlements of Port Royal and Quebec were at this time wretched
little hamlets of a few dozen huts each, surrounded by a palisade, and
these fell an easy prey to small English naval forces (1628-29). With
their fall, ended the slender mission of the Récollets and Jesuits, who
were in triumph carried off to England. For a few months, France did
not hold one foot of ground in North America. But as peace had been
declared between France and England before this conquest, the former
received back all of its possessions, and the inevitable struggle for
the mastery of the continent was postponed for four generations longer.
With the release of Canada to France, in 1632, the Jesuits were by the
home authorities placed in sole charge of the spiritual interests of
both settlers and Indians, and the history of their greatest missions
begins at this time. On the fifth of July, there landed at Quebec,
Fathers Paul le Jeune and Anne de Nouë, and a lay brother named
Gilbert. Le Jeune was the superior, and at once devoted himself to
learning the language and customs of the savages, and so studying the
enormous field before him as intelligently to dispose of his meagre
forces.
THE INDIANS.
The existence of rival tribes among the Red Indians of North America,
was, perhaps, the most formidable obstacle in the path of the
missionaries. It has always been impossible to make any hard-and-fast
classification; yet the Indians presented a considerable variety
of types, ranging from the Southern Indians, some of whose tribes
were in a relatively high stage of material advancement and mental
calibre, down to the savage root-eaters of the Rocky Mountain region.
The migrations of some of the Indian tribes were frequent, and they
occupied overlapping territories, so that it is impossible to fix the
tribal boundaries with any degree of exactness. Again, the tribes
were so merged by intermarriage, by affiliation, by consolidation, by
the fact that there were numerous polyglot villages of renegades, by
similarities in manner, habits, and appearance, that it is difficult
even to separate the savages into families. It is only on philological
grounds that these divisions can be made at all. In a general way we
may say that between the Atlantic and the Rockies, Hudson Bay and the
Gulf of Mexico, there were four Indian languages in vogue, with great
varieties of local dialect:
I. The Algonkins were the most numerous, holding the greater portion of
the country from the unoccupied "debatable land" of Kentucky northward
to Hudson Bay, and from the Atlantic westward to the Mississippi. Among
their tribes were the Micmacs of Acadia, the Penobscots of Maine, the
Montagnais of the St. Lawrence, the ill-defined tribes of the country
round about Lake St. John, and the Ottawas, Chippewas, Mascoutens,
Sacs, Foxes, Pottawattomies, and Illinois of the Upper Lakes. These
savages were rude in life and manners, were intensely warlike, depended
for subsistence chiefly on hunting and fishing, lived in rude wigwams
covered with bark, skins, or matted reeds, practised agriculture in
a crude fashion, and were less stable in their habitations than the
Southern Indians. They have made a larger figure in our history than
any other family, because through their lands came the heaviest and
most aggressive movement of white population, French or English.
Estimates of early Indian populations necessarily differ, in the
absence of accurate knowledge; but it is now believed that the number
was never so great as was at first estimated by the Jesuit fathers and
the earliest English colonists. A careful modern estimate is, that the
Algonkins at no time numbered over 90,000 souls, and possibly not over
50,000.
II. In the heart of this Algonkin land was planted the ethnic group
called the Iroquois, with its several distinct branches, often at war
with each other. The craftiest, most daring, and most intelligent
of North American Indians, yet still in the savage hunter state, the
Iroquois were the terror of every native band east of the Mississippi,
before the coming of the whites, who in turn learned to dread their
ferocious power. The five principal tribes of this family--Mohawks,
Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, all stationed in palisaded
villages south and east of lakes Erie and Ontario--formed a loose
confederacy styled by themselves and the French "The Long House," and
by the English "The Five Nations," which firmly held the waterways
connecting the Hudson and Ohio rivers and the Great Lakes. The
population of the entire group was not over 17,000--a remarkably small
number, considering the active part they played in American history,
and the control which they exercised through wide tracts of wilderness.
Related to, but generally at war with them, were the Hurons of Canada,
among whom the Jesuits planted their earliest missions. Champlain,
in an endeavor to cultivate the friendship of his Huron and Algonkin
neighbors, early made war on the Iroquois, and thus secured for New
France a heritage of savage enmity which contributed more than any
other one cause to cripple its energies and render it at last an easy
prey to the rival power of the English colonies.
III. The Southern Indians occupied the country between the Tennessee
River and the Gulf, the Appalachian Ranges and the Mississippi. Of
a milder disposition than their Northern cousins, the Cherokees,
Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles were rather in a barbarous
than in a savage state; by the time of the Revolution, they were not
far behind the white proprietors in industrial or domestic methods,
and numbered not above 50,000 persons. With them, this story of the
Jesuit missions has little to do; the Louisiana mission, an offshoot of
that of New France, did faithful work here, but the documentary result
was neither as interesting nor as prolific, and necessarily occupies
but small space in the present series.
IV. The Dakotah, or Sioux, family occupied for the most part the
country beyond the Mississippi. They were and are a fierce, high-strung
people, genuine nomads, and war appears to have been their chief
occupation. The Jesuits worked among them but in slight measure, on
the waters of the Upper Mississippi; they met this family, chiefly in
the persons of the Winnebagoes, one of their outlying bands, which at
the time of the French occupation was resident on and about Green Bay
of Lake Michigan, at peace and in confederacy with the Algonkins who
hedged them about.
The mission of the French Jesuits to these widely-scattered hordes of
savages forms one of the most thrilling chapters in human history. It
is impossible, in this brief Introduction, to attempt anything more
than the barest outline of the theme; Rochemonteix, Shea, and Parkman
have told the story in detail, from differing points of view, and with
these authorities the student of the following documents in the case
is presumed to be familiar. A rapid summary of results will, however,
be useful; and this we may best obtain, at the expense of occasional
repetition of narrative, by following the fortunes of the pioneers of
the Cross through the several district missions into which their work
was naturally divided.
I. THE ABENAKI MISSION.
This mission was chiefly in Maine and Acadia, and on Cape Breton
Island. The Abenakis (or Abnakis) were a strong but mild-mannered
Algonkin tribe, settled in villages or cantonments; but, like others
of their race, in the habit of taking long semi-annual journeys,--each
winter to hunt, and each summer to fish. We have seen that the
French Jesuits, Biard and Massé, were in the field as early as 1611,
soon after the establishment of Port Royal; their predecessor being
the secular French priest, Fléché, who had been introduced to the
country by Poutrincourt, the patentee. Biard and Massé met with
many discouragements, chiefly the opposition of Poutrincourt's son,
Biencourt (sometimes called Baron St. Just), who had been left in
charge of the colony. Nevertheless the missionaries learned the native
language, and made many long journeys of exploration, one of Biard's
trips extending as far as the mouth of the Kennebec. They were later
joined by a lay brother, Du Thet, and by Fathers Quentin and Lalemant.
Joining the new French colony on Mt. Desert Island, in the spring
of 1613, the establishment was almost immediately destroyed by the
Virginian Argall. In the skirmish, Du Thet was killed.
In 1619, a party of Récollets, from Aquitaine, began a mission on St.
John River, in Acadia, but five years later, as we have seen above,
abandoned the task, the survivors joining the Quebec mission of their
order. Other Récollets were in Acadia, however, between 1630 and 1633,
and later we have evidence of a small band of Capuchins ministering to
French settlers on the Penobscot and Kennebec; but it is probable that
they made no attempt to convert the natives.
A Jesuit mission was founded on Cape Breton in 1634, by Father Julian
Perrault; and a few years later, Father Charles Turgis was at Miscou.
Other missionaries soon came to minister to the Micmacs, but for many
years their efforts were without result; and sickness, resulting from
the hardships of the situation, caused most of the early black gowns to
retreat from the attempt. Finally, an enduring mission was established
among these people, and, until about 1670, was conducted with some
measure of success by Fathers Andrew Richard, Martin de Lyonne, and
James Fremin. About 1673, the Récollets took up the now abandoned work,
occasionally aided by secular priests from the Seminary of Quebec,
and Jesuits, until at last the Micmacs from Gaspé to Nova Scotia were
declared to be entirely converted to the Catholic faith.
Father Gabriel Druillettes, of the Jesuit mission at Sillery, near
Quebec, went to the Kennebec country in 1646, invited thither by
converted Abenakis who had been at Sillery, and during visits,
extending through a period of eleven years, was more than ordinarily
successful in the task of gaining Indian converts to Christianity. In
1650, he made a notable visit to the Puritans of Eastern Massachusetts,
during which was discussed the proposed union between New France
and New England, against the Iroquois. Upon the final departure of
Druillettes in 1657, the Abenakis were but spasmodically served with
missionaries; occasionally a Jesuit appeared among them, but the field
could not be persistently worked, owing to the demands upon the order
from other quarters. The fathers now sought to draw Abenaki converts
to Sillery, and later to St. Francis de Sales, at the falls of the
Chaudière, which soon became almost exclusively an Abenaki mission.
In 1688, Father Bigot, of this mission, again entered the field of
the Kennebec, at the same time that Rev. Peter Thury, a priest of the
Quebec Seminary, opened a mission on the Penobscot, and the Récollet
F. Simon gathered a flock at Medoktek, near the mouth of the St.
John. They were in time aided and succeeded by others: the Jesuits
being Julian Binneteau, Joseph Aubery, Peter de la Chasse, Stephen
Lauverjeat, Loyard, and Sebastian Rale; the death of Rale, the greatest
of them all, at the hands of New England partisans in the border
strife of 1724, is a familiar incident in American history. Jesuits
succeeded to the Penobscot mission in 1703, and with great zeal, but
amid continual hardships and discouragements, carried on the principal
work among the Abenakis until the downfall of New France in 1763. The
majority of the Kennebec converts, however, emigrated to the mission
of St. Francis de Sales, and from there frequently went forth upon
avenging expeditions against the New England borderers.
II. THE MONTAGNAIS MISSION.
This was centered at Tadoussac, and ministered to the Montagnais,
Bersiamites, Porcupines, Oumaniwek, Papinachois, and other tribes
of the Lower St. Lawrence and the Saguenay. Tadoussac had, from the
earliest historic times, been a favorite harbor and trading-station
for the French; for, being at the junction of two great rivers, it
was convenient as a place of assembly for the natives of the lower
country. The first priests in the district had said mass there; but it
was not until 1640 that a Jesuit mission was formed by Father Jean du
Quen, its sphere of influence soon reaching to the upper waters of the
Saguenay, Lake St. John, Hudson Bay, and the coast of Labrador. Du Quen
was actively assisted by Charles Meiachkwat, a Montagnais convert, who
erected the first chapel, became a catechist, and made extended tours
through the neighboring tribes. In time, there were associated with
Du Quen, Fathers Buteux and Druillettes. Protracted missionary tours
were made by them, with results which were considered satisfactory as
compared with other missions; although they had serious difficulties
to contend with, in the prevalent intemperance which the fur trade
introduced among the natives, the belief in dreams, the laxity of
morals, and the wiles of medicine-men, or sorcerers, as they were
called by the Jesuits.
For the first few years, the missionaries spent their winters in
Quebec, ministering to the colonists, and each spring went down to
Tadoussac to meet the summer trading parties; but greater persistency
of effort was deemed desirable, and thereafter, instead of returning
home in the autumn, they followed the Indians upon their winter hunts,
and in the course of these wanderings endured the usual privations and
hardships of traveling camps. Bailloquet, Nouvel, Beaulieu, Albanel,
De Crépieul, Dalmas, Boucher, Peter Michael Laure, and Jean Baptiste
Labrosse, are other names of Jesuit fathers who at different periods
were engaged upon this toilsome mission.
In 1670, Tadoussac was almost deserted, owing to Iroquois raids and the
ravages of smallpox; the Montagnais and kindred tribes were in hiding,
through the vast country between Lake St. John and Hudson Bay. They
were still followed by their devoted shepherds, whom no hardship could
discourage. The following year, Crépieul began a mission on Hudson Bay,
and here in 1694 his auxiliary Dalmas was killed. Laure (1720-37) left
us a monument of his labors in a Montagnais grammar and dictionary.
Labrosse, the last of his order at Tadoussac, instructed many of his
flock to read and write, and left a legacy of native education, which
has lasted unto the present day; he lived and taught long after his
order had been suppressed in New France, and died at Tadoussac in 1782.
III. THE QUEBEC AND MONTREAL MISSIONS.
These included the several missions at Quebec, Montreal, Three Rivers,
Sillery, Bécancourt, and St. Francis de Sales, which were designed for
the wandering Montagnais of the district, those Algonkins of the West
who could be induced to come and settle on the lower waters, and in
later years such Abenakis of Acadia and Maine as sought an asylum upon
distinctively French soil.
We have seen that Récollets were first at Quebec, ministering both to
colonists and Indians, and that, in 1625, they invited the Jesuits
to aid them. In 1629, the joint mission came to a close through the
surrender of Quebec to the English. When the mission was reopened in
1632, Jesuits alone were in charge, their operations being at first
confined to the neighboring Montagnais, although they soon spread
throughout the entire Canadian field. In 1658, Bishop Laval founded
the Seminary of Quebec, whereupon the Jesuits resigned their parishes
among the colonists, and thereafter confined themselves to their
college and the Indian missions. In addition to their parish work, the
priests of the seminary conducted missions in Acadia, Illinois, and on
the lower Mississippi.
The year following the return of the Jesuits to Canada, Father Buteux,
of that order, began his labors at Three Rivers, which was a convenient
gathering-place for the fur trade. The village was frequently raided
by Iroquois, but remained until the fall of New France one of the
prominent centers of missionary influence. The efforts of Buteux, which
lasted until his death at the hands of Iroquois in 1652, met with
considerable success. His custom, like that of the other missionaries,
was to be present at the French posts during the annual trading
"meets," and when the savages returned to the wilderness, to accompany
some selected band. In thus following the nomadic tribes, he made some
of the longest and most toilsome journeys recorded in the annals of the
Society of Jesus, and shared with his flock all the horrors of famine,
pestilence, and inter-tribal war.
It was soon realized by the missionaries that but meagre results could
be obtained until the Indians were induced to lead a sedentary life.
Their wandering habit nullified all attempts at permanent instruction
to the young; it engendered improvidence and laziness, bred famine and
disease; and the constant struggle to kill fur-bearing animals for
their pelts rapidly depleted the game, while the fur trade wrought
contamination in many forms. Missionary efforts were at first conducive
to the interests of the fur trade, by bringing far-distant tribes
within the sphere of French influence; but so soon as the Jesuit
sought to change the habits of the natives, to cause them to become
agriculturists instead of hunters, and to oppose the rum traffic
among them, then the grasping commercial monopoly which controlled
the fortunes of New France, and was merely "working" the colony for
financial gains, saw in the Jesuit an enemy, and often placed serious
obstacles in his path.
In pursuance of the sedentary policy, and also to protect the wretched
Montagnais from Iroquois war-parties, the Jesuits, in 1637, established
for them a palisaded mission four miles above Quebec, at first
giving it the name St. Joseph, but later that of Sillery, in honor
of Commander Noël Brulart de Sillery, of France, who had given ample
funds for the founding of this enterprise. Here were at first gathered
twenty of the Indians, who began cultivation of the soil, varied by
occasional hunting and fishing trips, which the missionaries could not
prevent. The little town slowly grew in importance, both Algonkins and
Montagnais being represented in its population. Three years later,
nuns opened a hospital at Sillery, for the reception of both French
and Indian patients, and thus greatly added to the popularity of
the mission. But in 1646 the nuns removed their hospital to Quebec;
a few years later, the church and mission house were destroyed by
fire; disease made sad havoc in the settlement; the thin soil became
exhausted through careless tillage; Iroquois preyed upon the converts,
until at last the Algonkins almost entirely disappeared; and although
their place was taken by Abenakis from Maine and Acadia, until the
attendance became almost solely Abenaki, the enterprise waned. In
1685, it was abandoned in favor of St. Francis de Sales, a new mission
established at the falls of the Chaudière River, not far from the St.
Lawrence. Beyond a monument of later days, to the memory of Fathers
Massé and De Nouë, whose names are prominently connected with this
work, nothing now remains to mark the site of the old Sillery mission.
From St. Francis, the mission work began to spread into Maine. Of
its character and extent there, mention has already been made. St.
Francis achieved a certain measure of prosperity, as Indian missions
go. It became in time a source of serious trouble to the New England
borderers, for many a French and Indian war-party was here fitted out
against the latter, during the series of bloody conflicts which marked
the three-quarters of a century previous to the fall of New France.
Finally, in September, 1759, Maj. Robert Rogers descended upon the
village with his famous rangers, and in retaliation pillaged and burned
the houses, and killed "at least two hundred Indians." New France
soon after fell into the hands of the English, and, the Jesuits being
suppressed, we hear little more of St. Francis de Sales.
In 1641, the missionary settlement of Montreal was founded by
Maisonneuve. The Jesuits were the first resident clergy, and soon began
mission work among the neighboring Indians and those who resorted
thither from the valleys of the Lower St. Lawrence and the Ottawa.
Soon, however, the Sulpitians, established in Paris by the Abbé Olier,
one of the Society of Montreal, took charge of the mission on Montreal
Island, which in after years was moved to the Sault au Récollet, and
thence to the Lake of the Two Mountains, where there was gathered a
polyglot village composed of Iroquois, Algonkins, and Nipissings. Upon
the opening of the English régime, the Jesuit and Récollet missions
were suppressed, but those of the Sulpitians were undisturbed, so that
this mission at the lake is the oldest now extant in Canada.
Among the Algonkins of the Ottawa River (or Grande Rivière), no
permanent missions were attempted by any of the orders. Long the chief
highway to the West, the river was familiar to travelling missionaries,
who frequently ministered to the tribesmen along its banks, either at
the native villages or during the annual trading councils at the French
posts of Montreal, Three Rivers, and Quebec.
IV. THE HURON MISSION.