I invite you to consider briefly with me the beginnings of known history
in our home region. Of the general character of that history, as a part
of the exploration and settlement of the lake region, you are already
familiar. What I undertake is to direct special attention to a few of
the individuals who made that history--for history, in the ultimate
analysis, is merely the record of the result of personal character and
influence; and it is striking to note how relatively few and individual
are the dominating minds.
Remembering this, when we turn to trace the story of the Niagara, we
find the initial impulses strikingly different from those which lie at
the base of history in many places. Often the first chapter in the story
is a record of war for war's sake--the aim being conquest, acquisition
of territory, or the search for gold. Not so here. The first invasion of
white men in this mid-lake region was a mission of peace and good will.
Our history begins in a sweet and heroic obedience to commands passed
down direct from the Founder of Christianity Himself. Into these wilds,
long before the banner of any earthly kingdom was planted here, was
borne the cross of Christ. Here the crucifix preceded the sword; the
altar was built before the hearth.
Now, I care not what the faith of the student be, he cannot escape the
facts. The cross is stamped upon the first page of our home history--of
this Buffalo and the banks of the Niagara; and whoever would know
something of that history must follow the footsteps of those who first
brought the cross to these shores. It is, therefore, a brief following
of the personal experiences of these early cross bearers that we
undertake; but first, a word may be permitted by way of reminder as to
the conditions here existing when our recorded history begins.
From remote days unrecorded, the territory bordering the Niagara,
between Lakes Erie and Ontario, was occupied by a nation of Indians
called the Neuters. A few of their villages were on the east side of the
river, the easternmost being supposed to have stood near the present
site of Lockport. The greater part of the Niagara peninsula of Ontario
and the north shore of Lake Erie was their territory. To the east of
them, in the Genesee valley and beyond, dwelt the Senecas, the
westernmost of the Iroquois tribes. To the north of them, on Lake Huron
and the Georgian Bay, dwelt the Hurons. About 1650 the Iroquois overran
the Neuter territory, destroyed the nation and made the region east of
the Niagara a part of their own territory; though more than a century
elapsed, after their conquest of the Neuters, before the Senecas made
permanent villages on Buffalo Creek and near the Niagara. It is
necessary to bear this fact in mind, in considering the visits of white
men to this region during that period; it had become territory of the
Senecas, but they only occupied it at intervals, on hunting or fishing
expeditions.
During the latter years of Neuter possession of our region, missionaries
began to approach the Niagara from two directions; but long before any
brave soul had neared it through what is now New York State,--then the
heart of the fierce Iroquois country,--others, more successful, had come
down from the early-established missions among the Hurons, had sojourned
among the Neuters and had offered Christian prayers among the savages
east of the Niagara.
Note, therefore, that the first white man known to have visited the
Niagara region was a Catholic priest. Moreover, so far as is
ascertained, he was the first man, coming from what is now Canada, to
bring the Christian faith into the present territory of the United
States. This man was Joseph de la Roche Dallion.[1] The date of his
visit is 1626.
Father Dallion was a Franciscan of the Recollect reform, who had been
for a time at the mission among the Hurons, then carried on jointly by
priests and lay brothers of the Recollects and also by Fathers of the
Society of Jesus. On October 18th of this year (1626), he left his
companions, resolved to carry the cross among the people of the Neuter
nation. An interpreter, Brusle, had "told wonders" of these people.
Brusle, it would seem, therefore, had been among them; and although, as
I have said, Father Dallion was the first white man known to have
reached the Niagara, yet it is just to consider the probabilities in the
case of this all but unknown interpreter. There are plausible grounds
for belief, but no proof, that Etienne Brusle was the first white man
who ever saw Niagara Falls. No adventurer in our region had a more
remarkable career than his, yet but little of it is known to us. He was
with Champlain on his journey to the Huron country. He left that
explorer in September, 1615, at the outlet of Lake Simcoe, and went on a
most perilous mission into the country of the Andastes, allies of the
Hurons, to enlist them against the Iroquois. The Andastes lived on the
head-waters of the Susquehanna, and along the south shore of Lake Erie,
the present site of Buffalo being generally included within the bounds
of their territory. Champlain saw nothing more of Brusle for three
years, but in the summer of 1618 met him at Saut St. Louis. Brusle had
had wonderful adventures, had even been bound to the stake and burned so
severely that he must have been frightfully scarred. The name by which
we know him may have been given him on this account. He was saved from
death by what the Indians regarded as an exhibition of wrath on the part
of the Great Spirit. I find no trace of him between 1618 and 1626, when
Father Dallion appears to have taken counsel of him regarding the
Neuters. Brusle was murdered by the Hurons near Penetanguishene in 1632.
What is known of him is learned from Champlain's narrative of the voyage
of 1618 (edition of 1627). Sagard also speaks of him, and says he made
an exploration of the upper lakes--a claim not generally credited.
Parkman, drawing from these sources and the "Relations," tells his story
in "The Pioneers of France in the New World," admiringly calls him "That
Pioneer of Pioneers," and says that he seems to have visited the Eries
in 1615.
The interesting thing about him in connection with our present study is
the fact that he appears to have been the forerunner of Dallion among
the savages of the Niagara. There is no white man named in history who
may be even conjectured, with any plausibility, to have visited the
Niagara earlier than Brusle.[2]
Stimulated by this interpreter's reports, by the encouragement of his
companions and the promptings of his own zeal, Father Dallion set out
for the unknown regions. Two Frenchmen, Grenole and Lavallee,
accompanied him. They tramped the trail for six days through the woods,
apparently rounding the western end of Lake Ontario, and coming eastward
through the Niagara Peninsula. They were well received at the villages,
given venison, squashes and parched corn to eat, and were shown no sign
of hostility. "All were astonished to see me dressed as I was," writes
the father, "and to see that I desired nothing of theirs, except that I
invited them by signs to lift their eyes to heaven, make the sign of the
cross and receive the faith of Jesus Christ." The good priest, however,
had another object, somewhat unusual to the men of his calling. At the
sixth village, where he had been advised to remain, a council was held.
"There I told them, as well as I could, that I came on behalf of the
French to contract alliance and friendship with them, and to invite them
to come to trade. I also begged them to allow me to remain in their
country, to be able to instruct them in the law of our God, which is the
only means of going to paradise." The Neuters accepted the priest's
offers, and the first recorded trade in the Niagara region was made when
he presented them "little knives and other trifles." They adopted him
into the tribe, and gave him a father, the chief Souharissen.
After this cordial welcome, Grenole and Lavallee returned to the Hurons,
leaving Father Joseph "the happiest man in the world, hoping to do
something there to advance God's glory, or at least to discover the
means, which would be no small thing, and to endeavor to discover the
mouth of the river of Hiroquois, in order to bring them to trade." After
speaking of the people and his efforts to teach them, he continues: "I
have always seen them constant in their resolution to go with at least
four canoes to the trade, if I would guide them, the whole difficulty
being that we did not know the way. Yroquet, an Indian known in those
countries, who had come there with twenty of his men hunting for beaver,
and who took fully 500, would never give us any mark to know the mouth
of the river. He and several Hurons assured us that it was only ten
days' journey to the trading place; but we were afraid of taking one
river for another, and losing our way or dying of hunger on the land."
So excellent an authority as Dr. John Gilmary Shea says: "This was
evidently the Niagara River, and the route through Lake Ontario. He
(Dallion) apparently crossed the river, as he was on the Iroquois
frontier." The great conquest of the Neuters by the Iroquois was not
until 1648 or 1650. Just what the "Iroquois frontier" was in 1627 is
uncertain. It appears to have been about midway between the Niagara and
the Genesee, the easternmost Neuter village being some thirty miles east
of the Niagara. The Recollect appears therefore as the first man to
write of the Niagara, from personal knowledge, and of its mouth as a
place of trade. The above quotations are from the letter Father Dallion
wrote to one of his friends in France July 18, 1627, he having then
returned to Toanchain, a Huron village. I have followed the text as
given by Sagard. It is significant that Le Clercq, in his "Premier
Etablissement de la Foy," etc., gives a portion of Dallion's account of
his visit to the Neuters, but omits nearly everything he says about
trade.
Father Dallion sojourned three winter months with the Neuters, but the
latter part of the stay was far from agreeable. The Hurons, he says,
having discovered that he talked of leading the Neuters to trade, at
once spread false and evil reports of him. They said he was a great
magician; that he was a poisoner, that he tainted the air of the country
where he tarried, and that if the Neuters did not kill him, he would
burn their villages and kill their children. The priest was at a
disadvantage in not having much command of the Neuter dialect, and it is
not strange, after the evil report had once been started, that he should
have seemed to engage in some devilish incantation whenever he held the
cross before them or sought to baptize the children. When one reflects
upon the dense wall of ignorance and superstition against which his
every effort at moral or spiritual teaching was impotent, the admiration
for the martyr spirit which animated the effort is tempered by amazement
that an acute and sagacious man should have thought it well to "labor"
in such an obviously ineffective way. But history is full of instances
of ardent devotion to aims which the "practical" man would denounce at
once as unattainable. That Father Dallion was animated by the spirit of
the martyrs is attested in his own account of what befel him. A
treacherous band of ten came to him and tried to pick a quarrel. "One
knocked me down with a blow of his fist, another took an ax and tried to
split my head. God averted his hand; the blow fell on a post near me. I
also received much other ill-treatment; but that is what we came to seek
in this country." His assailants robbed him of many of his possessions,
including his breviary and compass. These precious things, which were no
doubt "big medicine" in the eyes of his ungracious hosts, were
afterwards returned. The news of his maltreatment reached the ears of
Fathers Brebeuf and De la Noue at the Huron mission. They sent the
messenger, Grenole, to bring him back, if found alive. Father Dallion
returned with Grenole early in the year 1627; and so ended the first
recorded visit of white man to the Niagara region.
* * * * *
For fourteen years succeeding, I find no allusion to our district. Then
comes an episode which is so adventurous and so heroic, so endowed with
beauty and devotion, that it should be familiar to all who give any
heed to what has happened in the vicinity of the Niagara.
Jean de Brebeuf was a missionary priest of the Jesuits. That implies
much; but in his case even such a general imputation of exalted
qualities falls short of justice. His is a superb figure, a splendid
acquisition to the line of heroic figures that pass in shadowy
procession along the horizon of our home history. Trace the narrative of
his life as sedulously as we may, examine his character and conduct in
whatever critical light we may choose to study them, and still the noble
figure of Father Brebeuf is seen without a flaw. There were those of his
order whose acts were at times open to two constructions. Some of them
were charged, by men of other faith and hostile allegiance, with using
their priestly privileges as a cloak for worldly objects. No such charge
was ever brought against Father Brebeuf. The guilelessness and heroism
of his life are unassailable.
He was of a noble Normandy family, and when he comes upon the scene, on
the banks of the Niagara, he was forty-seven years old. He had come out
to Quebec fifteen years before and had been assigned to the Huron
mission. In 1628 he was called back to Quebec, but five years later he
was allowed to return to his charge in the remote wilderness. The record
of his work and sufferings there is not a part of our present story.
Those who seek a marvelous exemplification of human endurance and
devotion, may find it in the ancient Relations of the order. He lived
amid threats and plots against his life, he endured what seems
unendurable, and his zeal throve on the experience. In November, 1640,
he and a companion, the priest Joseph Chaumonot, resolved to carry the
cross to the Neuter nation. They no doubt knew of Father Dallion's
dismal experience; and were spurred on thereby. Like him, they sought
martyrdom. Their route from the Huron country to the Niagara has been
traced with skill and probable accuracy by the Very Rev. Wm. R. Harris,
Dean of St. Catharines. At this time the Neuter nation lived to the
north of Lake Erie throughout what we know as the Niagara Peninsula, and
on both sides of the Niagara, their most eastern village being near the
present site of Lockport. From an uncertain boundary, thereabouts, they
confronted the possessions of the Senecas, who a few years later were to
wipe them off the face of the earth and occupy all their territory east
of the lake and river.
Fathers Brebeuf and Chaumonot set out on their hazardous mission
November 2d, in the year named, from a Huron town in the present
township of Medonte, Ontario. (Near Penetanguishene, on Georgian Bay.)
Their probable path was through the present towns of Beeton,
Orangeville, Georgetown, Hamilton and St. Catharines. They came out upon
the Niagara just north of the Queenston escarpment. The journey thus far
had been a succession of hardships. The interpreters whom they had
engaged to act as guides deserted them at the outset. Ahead of them went
the reputation which the Hurons spread abroad, that they were magicians
and carried all manner of evils with them. Father Brebeuf was a man of
extraordinary physical strength. Many a time, in years gone by, he had
astonished the Indians by his endurance at the paddle, and in carrying
great loads over the portages. His companion, Chaumonot, was smaller and
weaker, but was equally sustained by faith in Divine guidance. On their
way through the forests, Father Brebeuf was cheered by a vision of
angels, beckoning him on; but when he and his companion finally stood on
the banks of the Niagara, under the leaden sky of late November, there
was little of the beatific in the prospect. They crossed the swirling
stream--by what means must be left to conjecture, the probability being
in favor of a light bark canoe--and on the eastern bank found themselves
in the hostile village of Onguiara--the first-mentioned settlement on
the banks of our river.
Here the half-famished priests were charged with having come to ruin the
people. They were refused shelter and food, but finally found
opportunity to step into a wigwam, where Indian custom, augmented by
fear, permitted them to remain. The braves gathered around, and proposed
to put them to death. "I am tired," cried one, "eating the dark flesh of
our enemies, and I want to taste the white flesh of the Frenchman." So
at least is the record in the Relation. Another drew bow to pierce the
heart of Chaumonot; but all fell back in awe when the stalwart Brebeuf
stepped forth into their midst, without weapon and without fear, and
raising his hand exclaimed: "We have not come here for any other purpose
than to do you a friendly service. We wish to teach you to worship the
Master of Life, so that you may be happy in this world and in the
other."
Whether or not any of the spiritual import of his speech was
comprehended cannot be said; but the temper of the crowd changed, so
that, instead of threatening immediate death, they began to take a
curious, childish interest in the two "black-gowns"; examining the
priests' clothes, and appropriating their hats and other loose articles.
The travelers completely mystified them by reading a written message,
and thus getting at another's thoughts without a spoken word. The
Relation is rich in details of this sort, and of the wretchedness of the
life which the missionaries led. They visited other "towns," as the
collections of bark wigwams are called; but everywhere they were looked
upon as necromancers, and their lives were spared only through fear.
Far into the winter the priests endured all manner of hardship. Food was
sometimes thrown to them as to a worthless dog, sometimes denied
altogether, and then they had to make shift with such roots and barks or
chance game as their poor woodcraft enabled them to procure, or the
meager winter woods afforded. On one occasion, when a chief frankly told
them that his people would have killed them long before, but for fear
that the spirits of the priests would in vengeance destroy them,
Brebeuf began to assure him that his mission was only to do good;
whereupon the savage replied by spitting in the priest's face; and the
priest thanked God that he was worthy of the same indignity which had
been put upon Jesus Christ. When one faces his foes in such a spirit,
there is absolutely nothing to fear. And yet, after four months of these
experiences, there seems not to have been the slightest sign of any good
result. The savages were as invulnerable to any moral or spiritual
teachings as the chill earth itself. Dumb brutes would have shown more
return for kindness than they. The saying of Chateaubriand, that man
without religion is the most dangerous animal that walks the earth,
found full justification in these savages. Finally, Brebeuf and his
associate determined to withdraw from the absolutely fruitless field,
and began to retrace their steps towards Huronia.
It was near the middle of February, 1641, when they began their retreat
from the land of the Neuters. The story of that retreat, as indeed of
the whole mission, has been most beautifully told, with a sympathetic
fervency impossible for one not richly endowed with faith to simulate,
by Dean Harris. Let his account of what happened stand here:
"The snow was falling when they left the village Onguiara, crossed the
Niagara River near Queenston, ascended its banks and disappeared in the
shadowy forest. The path, which led through an unbroken wilderness, lay
buried in snow. The cold pierced them through and through. The cords on
Fr. Chaumonot's snow-shoe broke, and his stiffened fingers could
scarcely tie the knot. Innumerable flakes of snow were falling from
innumerable branches. Their only food was a pittance of Indian corn
mixed with melted snow; their only guide, a compass. Worn and spent with
hardships, these saintly men, carrying in sacks their portable altar,
were returning to announce to their priestly companions on the Wye the
dismal news of their melancholy failure and defeat. There was not a
hungry wolf that passed them but looked back and half forgave their
being human. There was not a tree but looked down upon them with pity
and commiseration. Night was closing in when, spent with fatigue, they
saw smoke rising at a distance. Soon they reached a clearing and
descried before them a cluster of bark lodges. Here these Christian
soldiers of the cross bivouacked for the night.
"Early that evening while Chaumonot, worn with traveling and overcome
with sleep, threw himself to rest on a bed that was not made up since
the creation of the world, Father Brebeuf, to escape for a time the
acrid and pungent smoke that filled the cabin, went out to commune with
God alone in prayer.... He moved toward the margin of the woods, when
presently he stopped as if transfixed. Far away to the southeast, high
in the air and boldly outlined, a huge cross floated suspended in
mid-heaven. Was it stationary? No, it moved toward him from the land of
the Iroquois. The saintly face lighted with unwonted splendor, for he
saw in the vision the presage of the martyr's crown. Tree and hillside,
lodge and village, faded away, and while the cross was still slowly
approaching, the soul of the great priest went out in ecstasy, in loving
adoration to his Lord and his God.... Overcome with emotion, he
exclaimed, 'Who will separate me from the love of my Lord? Shall
tribulation, nakedness, peril, distress, or famine, or the sword?'
Emparadised in ecstatic vision, he again cries out with enthusiastic
loyalty, '_Sentio me vehementer impelli ad moriendum pro Christo_'--'I
feel within me a mighty impulse to die for Christ'--and flinging himself
upon his knees as a victim for the sacrifice or a holocaust for sin, he
registered his wondrous vow to meet martyrdom, when it came to him, with
the joy and resignation befitting a disciple of his Lord.
"When he returned to himself the cross had faded away, innumerable stars
were brightly shining, the cold was wrapping him in icy mantle, and he
retraced his footsteps to the smoky cabin. He flung himself beside his
weary brother and laid him down to rest. When morning broke they began
anew their toilsome journey, holding friendly converse.
"'Was the cross large?' asked Father Chaumonot.
"'Large,' spoke back the other, 'yes, large enough to crucify us all.'"
It is idle to insist on judgments by the ordinary standards in a case
like this. As Parkman says, it belongs not to history, but to
psychology. Brebeuf saw the luminous cross in the heavens above the
Niagara; not the material, out-reaching arms of Niagara's spray, rising
columnar from the chasm, then resting, with crosslike extensions on the
quiet air, white and pallid under the winter moon. Such phenomena are
not unusual above the cataract, but may not be offered in explanation of
the priest's vision. He was in the neighborhood of Grimsby, full twenty
miles from the falls, when he saw the cross; much too far away to catch
the gleam of frosted spray. Nor is it a gracious spirit which seeks a
material explanation for his vision. The cross truly presaged his
martyrdom; and although the feet of Father Brebeuf never again sought
the ungrateful land of the Neuters, yet his visit and his vision were
not wholly without fruit. They endow local history with an example of
pure devotion to the betterment of others, unsurpassed in all the annals
of the holy orders. To Brebeuf the miraculous cross foretold martyrdom,
and thereby was it a sign of conquest and of victory to this heroic
Constantine of the Niagara.
* * * * *
After Brebeuf and Chaumonot had turned their backs on the Neuters, the
Niagara region was apparently unvisited by white men for more than a
quarter of a century. These were not, however, years of peaceful hunting
and still more placid corn and pumpkin-growing, such as some romantic
writers have been fond of ascribing to the red men when they were
unmolested by the whites. As a matter of fact, and as Fathers Dallion,
Brebeuf and Chaumonot had discovered, the people who claimed the banks
of the lower reaches of the Niagara as within their territory, were the
embodiment of all that was vile and barbarous. There is no record that
they had a village at the angle of lake and river, where now stands old
Fort Niagara. It would have been strange, however, if they did not
occasionally occupy that sightly plateau with their wigwams or huts,
while they were laying in a supply of fish. If trees ever covered the
spot they were killed by early camp-fires, probably long before the
coming of the whites. Among the earliest allusions to the point is one
which speaks of the difficulty of getting wood there; and such a
treeless tract, in this part of the country, could usually be attributed
to the denudation consequent on Indian occupancy.
A decade or so after the retreat of the missionaries came that fierce
Indian strife which annihilated the Neuters and gave Niagara's banks
into the keeping of the fiercer but somewhat nobler Iroquois. The story
of this Indian war has been told with all possible illumination from the
few meager records that are known; and it only concerns the present
chronicle to note that about 1650 the site of Fort Niagara passed under
Seneca domination. The Senecas had no permanent town in the vicinity,
but undoubtedly made it a rendezvous for war parties, and for hunting
and fishing expeditions.
Meanwhile, the Jesuits in their Relations, and after them the
cartographers in Europe, were making hearsay allusions to the Niagara or
locating it, with much inaccuracy, on their now grotesque maps. In 1648
the Jesuit Ragueneau, writing to the Superior at Paris, mentions
Niagara, which he had never seen or approached, as "a cataract of
frightful height." L'Allemant in the Relation published in 1642, had
alluded to the river, but not to the fall. Sanson, in 1656, put
"Ongiara" on his famous map; and four years later the map of Creuxius,
published with his great "Historiae Canadensis," gave our river and fall
the Latin dignity of "Ongiara Catarractes." One map-maker copied from
another, so that even by the middle of the seventeenth century, the
reading and student world--small and ecclesiastical as it mostly
was--began to have some inkling of the main features and continental
position of the mid-lake region for the possession of which, a little
later, several Forts Niagara were to be projected. It is not, however,
until 1669 that we come to another definite episode in the history of
the region.
In that year came hither the Sulpitian missionaries, Francois Dollier de
Casson and Rene de Brehant[3] de Galinee. They were bent on carrying the
cross to nations hitherto unreached, on Western rivers. With them was
the young Robert Cavelier, known as La Salle, who was less interested in
carrying the cross than in exploring the country. Their expedition left
Montreal July 6th, nine canoes in all. They made their way up the St.
Lawrence, skirted the south shore of Lake Ontario, and on Aug. 10th were
at Irondequoit Bay. They made a most eventful visit to the Seneca
villages south of the bay. Thence they continued westward, apparently by
Indian trails overland, and not by canoe. De Galinee, who was the
historian of the expedition, says that they came to a river "one eighth
of a league broad and extremely rapid, forming the outlet or
communication from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario," and he continues with a
somewhat detailed account of Niagara Falls, which, although he passed
near them, he did not turn aside to see. The Sulpitians and La Salle
crossed the river, apparently below Lewiston. They may indeed have come
to the river at its mouth, skirting the lake shore. One may infer either
course from the narrative of de Galinee, which goes on to say that five
days after passing the river they "arrived at the extremity of Lake
Ontario, where there is a fine, large sandy bay ... and where we
unloaded our canoes."
Pushing on westward, late in September, on the trail between Burlington
Bay and the Grand River, they met Joliet, returning from his expedition
in search of copper mines on Lake Superior. This meeting in the
wilderness is a suggestive and picturesque subject, but we may not dwell
on it here. Joliet, though he had thus preceded LaSalle and the
Sulpitians in the exploration of the lakes, had gone west by the old
northern route along the Ottawa, Lake Nipissing and the French River. He
was never on the Niagara, for after his meeting with LaSalle, he
continued eastward by way of the Grand River valley and Lake Ontario.
Fear of the savages deterred him from coming by way of the Niagara, and
thereby, it is not unlikely, becoming the white discoverer of Niagara
Falls.[4] He was the first white man, so far as records relate, to come
eastward through the Detroit River and Lake Erie. Our lake was therefore
"discovered" from the west--a fact perhaps without parallel in the
history of American exploration.
After the meeting with Joliet, La Salle left the missionaries, who,
taking advantage of information had from Joliet, followed the Grand
River down to Lake Erie. Subsequently they passed through Lake Erie to
the westward, the first of white men to explore the lake in that
direction. De Galinee's map (1669) is the first that gives us the north
shore of Lake Erie with approximate accuracy. On October 15th this
devout man and his companion reached Lake Erie, which they described as
"a vast sea, tossed by tempestuous winds." Deterred by the lateness of
the season from attempting further travel by this course, they
determined to winter where they were, and built a cabin for their
shelter.
Occasionally they were visited in their hut by Iroquois beaver hunters.
For five months and eleven days they remained in their winter quarters
and on the 23d of March, 1670, being Passion Sunday, they erected a
cross as a memorial of their long sojourn. The official record of the
act is as follows:
"We the undersigned certify that we have seen affixed on the lands
of the lake called Erie the arms of the King of France with this
inscription: 'The year of salvation 1669, Clement IX. being seated
in St. Peter's chair, Louis XIV. reigning in France, M. de
Courcelle being Governor of New France, and M. Talon being
intendant therein for the King, there arrived in this place two
missionaries from Montreal accompanied by seven other Frenchmen,
who, the first of all European peoples, have wintered on this lake,
of which, as of a territory not occupied, they have taken
possession in the name of their King by the apposition of his arms,
which they have attached to the foot of this cross. In witness
whereof we have signed the present certificate.'
"FRANCOIS DOLLIER,
"Priest of the Diocese of Nantes in Brittany.
"DE GALINEE,
"Deacon of the Diocese of Rennes in Brittany."
The winter was exceedingly mild, but the stream[5] was still frozen on
the 26th of March, when they portaged their canoes and goods to the lake
to resume their westward journey. Unfortunately losing one of their
canoes in a gale they were obliged to divide their party, four men with
the luggage going in the two remaining canoes; while the rest, including
the missionaries, undertook the wearisome journey on foot all the way
from Long Point to the mouth of the Kettle Creek. De Galinee grows
enthusiastic in his admiration for the immense quantities of game and
fruits opposite Long Point and calls the country the terrestrial
Paradise of Canada. "The grapes were as large and as sweet as the finest
in France. The wine made from them was as good as _vin de Grave_." He
admires the profusion of walnuts, chestnuts, wild apples and plums.
Bears were fatter and better to the palate than the most "savory" pigs
in France. Deer wandered in herds of fifty to an hundred. Sometimes even
two hundred would be seen feeding together. Before arriving at the sand
beach which then connected Long Point with the mainland they had to
cross two streams. To cross the first stream they were forced to walk
four leagues inland before they found a satisfactory place to cross. One
whole day was spent in constructing a raft to cross Big Creek, and after
another delay caused by a severe snow-storm, they successfully effected
a crossing and found on the west side a marshy meadow two hundred paces
wide into which they sank to their girdles in mud and slush. Beset by
dangers and retarded by inclement weather, they at last arrived at
Kettle Creek, where they expected to find the canoe in which Joliet had
come down Lake Huron and the Detroit and which he had told them was
hidden there. Great was their disappointment to find that the Indians
had taken it. However, later in the day, while gathering some wood for a
fire, they found the canoe between two logs and joyfully bore it to the
lake. In the vicinity of their encampment the hunters failed to secure
any game, and for four or five days the party subsisted on boiled maize.
The whole party then paddled up the lake to a place where game was
plentiful and the hunters saw more than two hundred deer in one herd,
but missed their aim. Disheartened at their failure and craving meat,
they shot and skinned a miserable wolf and had it ready for the kettle
when one of the men saw some thirty deer on the other side of the small
lake they were on. The party succeeded in surrounding the deer and,
forcing them into the water, killed ten of them. Now well supplied with
both fresh and smoked meat, they continued their journey, traveled
nearly fifty miles in one day and came to a beautiful sand beach (Point
Pelee), where they drew up their canoes and camped for the night. During
the night a terrific gale came up from the northeast. Awakened by the
storm they made all shift to save their canoes and cargoes. Dollier's
and de Galinee's canoes were saved, but the other one was swept away
with its contents of provisions, goods for barter, ammunition, and,
worst of all, the altar service, with which they intended establishing
their mission among the Pottawatamies.
The loss of their altar service caused them to abandon the mission and
they set out to return to Montreal, but strangely enough chose the long,
roundabout journey by way of the Detroit, Lake Huron and the French
River, in preference to the route by which they had come, or by the
outlet of Lake Erie, which they had crossed the autumn before. Thus de
Galinee and Dollier de Casson, like Joliet,--not to revert to Champlain
half a century earlier,--missed the opportunity, which seemed to wait
for them, of exploring the eastern end of Lake Erie, of correctly
mapping the Niagara and observing and describing its incomparable
cataract. Obviously the Niagara region was shunned less on account of
its real difficulties, which were not then known, than through terror of
the Iroquois. Our two Sulpitians reached Montreal June 18, 1670, which
date marks the close of the third missionary visitation in the history
of the Niagara.
* * * * *
And now I approach the point at which many writers of our local history
have chosen to begin their story--the famous expedition of La Salle and
his companions in 1678-'79. For the purpose of the present study we may
omit the more familiar aspects of that adventure, and limit our regard
to the acts of the holy men who continue the interrupted chain of
missionary work on the Niagara. On December 6th, St. Nicholas Day, 1678,
with an advance party under La Motte de Lussiere, came the Flemish
Recollect, Louis Hennepin. As the bark in which they had crossed stormy
Lake Ontario at length entered the Niagara, they chanted the Ambrosian
hymn, "Te Deum Laudamus," and there is no gainsaying the sincerity of
that thank-offering for perils escaped. Five days later, being encamped
on the present site of Niagara, Ont., Father Hennepin celebrated the
first mass ever said in the vicinity. A few days later, on the site of
Lewiston, he had completed a bark chapel, in which was held the first
Christian service which had been held on the eastern side of the Niagara
since the visit of Brebeuf thirty-eight years before. Father Hennepin
has left abundant chronicles of his activities on the Niagara. As soon
as the construction of the Griffon was begun above the falls a chapel
was established there, near the mouth of Cayuga Creek. Having blessed
this pioneer vessel of the upper lakes, when she was launched, he set
out for Fort Frontenac in the interests of the enterprise, and was
accompanied to the Niagara, on his return, by the Superior of the
mission, Father Gabriel de la Ribourde, and Fathers Zenobius Membre and
Melithon Watteaux. All through that summer these devoted priests shared
the varied labors of the camp. Hennepin tells us how he and his
companions toiled back and forth over the portage around the falls,
sometimes with their portable altar, sometimes with provisions, rigging
or other equipment for the ship. "Father Gabriel," he says, "though of
sixty-five years of age, bore with great vigor the fatigue of that
journey, and went thrice up and down those three mountains, which are
pretty high and steep." This glimpse of the saintly old priest is a
reminiscence to cherish in our local annals. He was the last of a noble
family in Burgundy who gave up worldly wealth and station to enter the
Order of St. Francis. He came to Canada in 1670, and was the first
Superior of the restored Recollect mission in that country. There is a
discrepancy between Hennepin and Le Clercq as to his age; the former
says he was sixty-five years old in 1679, when he was on the Niagara;
the later speaks of him as being in his seventieth year in 1680. Of the
three missionaries who with La Salle sailed up the Niagara in August,
1679, and with prayers and hymns boldly faced the dangers of the unknown
lake, the venerable Father Gabriel was first of all to receive the
martyr's crown. A year later, September 9, 1680, while engaged at his
devotions, he was basely murdered by three Indians. To Father Membre
there were allotted five years of missionary labor before he, too, was
to fall a victim to the savage. Father Hennepin lived many years, and
his chronicles stand to-day as in some respects the foundation of our
local history. But cherish as we may the memory of this trio of
missionaries, the imagination turns with a yet fonder regard back to the
devoted priest who was not permitted to voyage westward from the Niagara
with the gallant La Salle. When the Griffon sailed, Father Melithon
Watteaux was left behind in the little palisaded house at Niagara as
chaplain. He takes his place in our history as the first Catholic priest
appointed to minister to whites in New York State. On May 27, 1679, La
Salle had made a grant of land at Niagara to these Recollect Fathers,
for a residence and cemetery, and this was the first property in the
present State of New York to which the Catholic Church held title. Who
can say what were the experiences of the priest during the succeeding
winter in the loneliness and dangers of the savage-infested wilderness?
Nowhere have I as yet found any detailed account of his sojourn. We
know, however, that it was not long. During the succeeding years there
was some passing to and fro. In 1680 La Salle, returning east, passed
the site of his ruined and abandoned fort. He was again on the Niagara
in 1681 with a considerable party bound for the Miami. Father Membre,
who was with him, returned east in October, 1682, by the Niagara route;
and La Salle himself passed down the river again in 1683--his last visit
to the Niagara. His blockhouse, within which was Father Melithon's
chapel, had been burned by the Senecas.
From this time on for over half a century the missionary work in our
region centered at Fort Niagara, which still stands, a manifold reminder
of the romantic past, at the mouth of the river. Four years after La
Salle's last passage through the Niagara--in 1687--the Marquis de
Denonville led his famous expedition against the Senecas. With him in
this campaign was a band of Western Indians, who were attended by the
Jesuit Father Enjalran. He was wounded in the battle with the Senecas
near Boughton Hill, but appears to have accompanied de Denonville to his
rendezvous on the site of Fort Niagara. Here he undoubtedly exercised
his sacred office; and since the construction of Fort Niagara began at
this time his name may head the list of priests officiating at that
stronghold. He was soon after dispatched on a peace mission to the West,
which was the special scene of his labors. His part, for some years to
come, was to be an important one as Superior of the Jesuit Mission at
Michillimackinac.
As soon as Fort Niagara was garrisoned, Father Jean de Lamberville was
sent thither as chaplain. For the student, it would be profitable to
dwell at length upon the ministrations of this devoted priest. He was of
the Society of Jesus, had come out to Canada in 1668, and labored in the
Onondaga mission from 1671 to 1687. His work is indelibly written on the
history of missions in our State. He was the innocent cause of a party
of Iroquois falling into the hands of the French, who sent them to
France, where they toiled in the king's galleys. When de Denonville, in
1687, left at Fort Niagara a garrison of one hundred men under the
Chevalier de la Mothe, Father Lamberville came to minister to them. The
hostile Iroquois had been dealt a heavy blow, but a more insidious and
dreadful enemy soon appeared within the gates. The provisions which had
been left for the men proved utterly unfit for food, so that disease,
with astounding swiftness, swept away most of the garrison, including
the commander. Father Lamberville, himself, was soon stricken down with
the scurvy. Every man in the fort would no doubt have perished but for
the timely arrival of a party of friendly Miami Indians, through whose
good offices the few survivors, Father Lamberville among them, were
enabled to make their way to Catarouquoi--now Kingston, Ont. There he
recovered; and he continued in the Canadian missions until 1698, when he
returned to France.
Not willing to see his ambitious fort on the Niagara so soon abandoned,
de Denonville sent out a new garrison and with them came Father Pierre
Milet. He had labored, with rich results, among the Onondagas and
Oneidas. No sooner was he among his countrymen, in this remote and
forlorn corner of the earth, than he took up his spiritual work with
characteristic zeal. On Good Friday of that year, 1688, in the center of
the square within the palisades, he caused to be erected a great cross.
It was of wood, eighteen feet high, hewn from the forest trees and
neatly framed. On the arms of it was carved in abbreviated words the
sacred legend, "_Regnat, Vincit, Imperat Christus_," and in the midst of
it was engraven the Sacred Heart. Surrounded by the officers of the
garrison,--gallant men of France, with shining records, some of them
were,--by the soldiers, laborers and friendly Indians, Father Milet
solemnly blessed it. Can you not see the little band, kneeling about
that symbol of conquest? Around them were the humble cabins and quarters
of the soldiers. One of them, holding the altar, was consecrated to
worship. Beyond ran the palisades and earthworks--feeble fortifications
between the feeble garrison and the limitless, foe-infested wilderness.
On one hand smiled the blue Ontario, and at their feet ran the gleaming
Niagara, already a synonym of hardship and suffering in the annals of
three of the religious orders. What wonder that the sense of isolation
and feebleness was borne in upon the little band, or that they devoutly
bowed before the cross which was the visible emblem of their strength
and consolation in the wilderness. Where is the artist who shall paint
us this scene, unique in the annals of any people?
And yet, but a few months later--September 15th of that year--the
garrison was recalled, the post abandoned, the palisades broken down,
the cabins left rifled and empty; and when priest and soldiers had
sailed away, and only the prowling wolf or the stealthy Indian ventured
near the spot, Father Milet's great cross still loomed amid the
solitude, a silent witness of the faith which knows no vanquishing.
There followed an interim in the occupancy of the Niagara when neither
sword nor altar held sway here; nor was the altar reestablished in our
region until the permanent rebuilding of Fort Niagara in 1726. True,
Father Charlevoix passed up the river in 1721, and has left an
interesting account of his journey, his view of the falls, and his brief
tarrying at the carrying-place--now Lewiston. This spot was the
principal rendezvous of the region for many years; and here, at the
cabin of the interpreter Joncaire, where Father Charlevoix was received,
we may be sure that spiritual ministrations were not omitted. A somewhat
similar incident, twenty-eight years later, was the coming to these
shores of the Jesuit Father Bonnecamps. He was not only the spiritual
leader but appears to have acted as pilot and guide to De Celoron's
expedition--an abortive attempt on the part of Louis XV. to reesablish
the claims of France to the inland regions of America. The expedition
came up the St. Lawrence and through Lake Ontario, reaching Fort Niagara
on July 6, 1749. It passed up the river, across to the south shore of
Lake Erie and by way of Chautauqua Lake and the Allegheny down the Ohio.
Returning from its utterly futile adventure, we find the party resting
at Fort Niagara for three days, October 19-21. Who the resident chaplain
was at the post at that date I have not been able to ascertain; but we
may be sure that he had a glad greeting for Father Bonnecamps. From
1726, when, as already mentioned, the fort was rebuilt, until its
surrender to Sir Wm. Johnson in 1759, a garrison was continually
maintained, and without doubt was constantly attended by a chaplain. The
register of the post during these years has never been found--the
presumption being that it was destroyed by the English--so that the
complete list of priests who ministered there is not known.
Only here and there from other sources do we glean a name by which to
continue the succession. Father Crespel was stationed at Fort Niagara
for about three years from 1729, interrupting his ministrations there
with a journey to Detroit, where his order--the Society of Jesus--had
established a mission. Of Fort Niagara at this time he says: "I found
the place very agreeable; hunting and fishing were very productive; the
woods in their greatest beauty, and full of walnut and chestnut trees,
oaks, elms and some others, far superior to any we see in France." But
not even the banks of the Niagara were to prove an earthly paradise.
"The fever," he continues, "soon destroyed the pleasures we began to
find, and much incommoded us, until the beginning of autumn, which
season dispelled the unwholesome air. We passed the winter very quietly,
and would have passed it very agreeably, if the vessel which was to have
brought us refreshments had not encountered a storm on the lake, and
been obliged to put back to Frontenac, which laid us under the necessity
of drinking nothing but water. As the winter advanced, she dared not
proceed, and we did not receive our stores till May."
Remember the utter isolation of this post and mission at the period we
are considering. To be sure, it was a link in the chain of French posts,
which included Quebec, Montreal, Kingston, Niagara, Detroit,
Michillimackinac; but in winter the water route for transport was
closed, and Niagara, like the upper posts, was thrown on its own
resources for existence. There is no place in our domain to-day which
fairly may be compared to it for isolation and remoteness. The upper
reaches of Alaskan rivers are scarcely less known to the world than was
the Niagara at the beginning of the last century. A little fringe of
settlement--hostile settlement at that--stretched up the Hudson from New
York. Even the Mohawk Valley was still unsettled. From the Hudson to
the remotest West the wilderness stretched as a sea, and Fort Niagara
was buried in its midst. Although a full century had gone by since
Father Dallion first reached its shores, there was now no trace of white
men on the banks of the Niagara save at the fort at its mouth, where
Father Crespel ministered, and at the carrying-place, where Joncaire the
interpreter lived with the Indians. Not even the first Indian villages
on Buffalo Creek were to be established for half a century to come.
After Father Crespel's return from Detroit, he remained two years longer
at Fort Niagara, caring for the spiritual life of the little garrison,
and learning the Iroquois and Ottawah languages well enough to converse
with the Indians. "This enabled me," he writes, "to enjoy their company
when I took a walk in the environs of our post." The ability to converse
with the Indians afterwards saved his life. When his three years of
residence at Niagara expired he was relieved, according to the custom of
his order, and he passed a season in the convent at Quebec. While he was
undoubtedly immediately succeeded at Niagara by another chaplain, I have
been unable to learn his name or aught of his ministrations. Indeed,
there are but few glimpses of the post to be had from 1733 to 1759, when
it fell into the hands of the English. One of the most interesting of
these is of the visit of the Sulpitian missionary, the Abbe Piquet, who
in 1751 came to Fort Niagara from his successful mission at La
Presentation--now Ogdensburg. It is recorded of him that while here he
exhorted the Senecas to beware of the white man's brandy; his name may
perhaps stand as that of the first avowed temperance worker in the
Niagara region.
But the end of the French _regime_ was at hand. For more than a century
our home region had been claimed by France; for the last thirty-three
years the lily-strewn standard of Louis had flaunted defiance to the
English from the banks of the Niagara. Now on a scorching July day the
little fort found itself surrounded, with Sir Wm. Johnson's cannon
roaring from the wilderness. There was a gallant defense, a baptism of
fire and blood, an honorable capitulation. But in that fierce conflict
at least one of the consecrated soldiers of the cross--Father Claude
Virot--fell before British bullets; and when the triple cross of Britain
floated over Fort Niagara, the last altar raised by the French on the
east bank of the Niagara river had been overthrown.
* * * * *
On this eventful day in 1759, when seemingly the opportunities for the
Catholic Church to continue its work on the Niagara were at an end,
there was, in the poor parish of Maryborough, county Kildare, Ireland, a
little lad of six whose mission it was to be to bring hither again the
blessed offices of his faith. This was Edmund Burke, afterwards Bishop
of Zion, and first Vicar-Apostolic of Nova Scotia, but whose name shines
not less in the annals of his church because of his zeal as missionary
in Upper Canada. Having come to Quebec in 1786, he was, in 1794,
commissioned Vicar-General for the whole of Upper Canada--the province
having then been established two years. In that year we find him at
Niagara, where he was the first English-speaking priest to hold Catholic
service. True, there was at the post that year a French missionary named
Le Dru, who could speak English; but he had been ordered out of the
province for cause. The field was ripe for a man of Father Burke's
character and energy. His early mission was near Detroit; he was the
first English-speaking priest in Ohio, and it is worthy of note that he
was at Niagara on his way east, July 22, 1796--only three weeks before
the British finally evacuated Fort Niagara and the Americans took
possession. Through his efforts in that year, the Church procured a
large lot at Niagara, Ont., where he proposed a missionary
establishment. There had probably never been a time, since the English
conquest, when there had not been Catholics among the troops quartered
on the Niagara; but under a British and Protestant commandant no
suitable provision for their worship had been made. In 1798--two years
after the British had relinquished the fort on the east side of the
river to the Americans--Father Burke, being at the British garrison on
the Canadian side, wrote to Monseigneur Plessis:
Here I am at Niagara, instead of having carried out my original
design of going on to Detroit, thence returning to Kingston to pass
the winter. The commander of the garrison, annoyed by the continual
complaints of the civic officials against the Catholic soldiers,
who used to frequent the taverns during the hours of service on
Sunday, gave orders that officers and men should attend the
Protestant service. They had attended for three consecutive Sundays
when I represented to the commander the iniquity of this order. He
replied that he would send them to mass if the chaplain was there,
and he thought it very extraordinary that whilst a chaplain was
paid by the king for the battalion, instead of attending to his
duty he should be in charge of a mission, his men were without
religious services, and his sick were dying without the sacraments.
You see, therefore, that I have reason for stopping short at
Niagara; for we must not permit four companies, of whom three
fourths both of officers and men are Catholics, to frequent the
Protestant church.
The name of the priest against whom the charge of neglect appears to
lie, was Duval; but it is not clear that he had ever attended the troops
to the Niagara station. But after Father Burke came Father Desjardines
and an unbroken succession, with the district fully organized in
ecclesiastical jurisdiction.
* * * * *
And now, although our story of mission work in the Niagara region has
been long--has reviewed the visitations of two centuries--the reader may
have remarked the striking fact that every priest who came into our
territory, up to the opening of the nineteenth century, came from
Canada. This fact is the more remarkable when we recall the
long-continued and vigorous missions of the Jesuits in what is now New
York State, extending west nearly to the Genesee River. But the fact
stands that no priest from those early establishments made his way
westward to the present site of Buffalo. Fathers Lamberville and Milet
had been stationed among the Onondagas and Oneidas before coming into
our region at Fort Niagara; but they came thither from Canada, by way of
Lake Ontario, and not through the wilderness of Western New York. The
westernmost mission among the Iroquois was that of Fathers Carheil and
Garnier at Cayuga, where they were at work ten years before La Salle
built the Griffon on the Niagara. It is interesting to note that this
mission, which was established nearest to our own region, was "dedicated
to God under the invocation of St. Joseph," and that, two hundred years
after, the first Bishop of Buffalo obtained from his Holiness, Pope Pius
IX., permission that St. Joseph should be the principal patron saint of
this diocese.
The earliest episcopal jurisdiction of the territory now embraced in the
city of Buffalo, dating from the first visit of Dallion to the land of
the Neuters, was directly vested in the diocese of Rouen--for it was the
rule that regions new-visited belonged to the government of the bishop
from a port in whose diocese the expedition bearing the missionary had
sailed; and this stood until a local ecclesiastical government was
formed; the first ecclesiastical association of our region, on the New
York side, therefore, is with that grand old city, Rouen, the home of La
Salle, scene of the martyrdom of the Maid of Orleans, and the center,
through many centuries, of mighty impulses affecting the New World. From
1657 to 1670 our region was embraced in the jurisdiction of the Vicar
Apostolic of New France; and from 1670 to the Conquest in the diocese of
Quebec. There are involved here, of course, all the questions which grew
out of the strife for possession of the Niagara region by the French,
English and Dutch. Into these questions we may not enter now further
than to note that from 1684 the English claimed jurisdiction of all the
region on the east bank of the Niagara and the present site of Buffalo.
This claim was in part based on the Treaty of Albany at which the
Senecas had signified their allegiance to King Charles; and by that
acquiescence nominally put the east side of the Niagara under British
rule. The next year, when the Duke of York came to the throne, he
decreed that the Archbishop of Canterbury should hold ecclesiastical
jurisdiction over the whole Colony of New York. It is very doubtful,
however, if the Archbishop of Canterbury had ever heard of the
Niagara--the first English translation of Hennepin did not appear for
fourteen years after this date; and nothing is more unlikely than that
the Senecas who visited the Niagara at this period, or even the Dutch
and English traders who gave them rum for beaver-skins, had ever heard
of the Archbishop of Canterbury, or cared a copper for his
ecclesiastical jurisdiction, either on the Niagara or even in the
settlements on the Hudson. In the New York Colony, and afterward State,
the legal discrimination against Catholics continued down to 1784, when
the law which condemned Catholic priests to imprisonment or even death
was repealed. At the date of its repeal there was not a Catholic
congregation in the State. Those Catholics who were among the pioneer
settlers of Western New York had to go as far east as Albany to perform
their religious duties or get their children baptized. Four years
later--in 1788--our region was included in the newly-formed diocese of
Baltimore. In 1808 we came into the new diocese of New York. Not until
1821 do we find record of the visit of a priest to Buffalo. In 1829 the
Church acquired its first property here--through its benefactor whose
name and memory are preserved by one of our noblest institutions--Louis
Le Couteulx--and the first Buffalo parish was established under the Rev.
Nicholas Mertz.
We are coming very close to the present; and yet still later, in 1847,
when the diocese of Buffalo was formed, there were but sixteen priests
in the sixteen great counties which constituted it. It is superfluous to
contrast that time with the present. There is nothing more striking, to
the student of the history and development of our region during the last
half century, than the increase of the Catholic Church--in parishes and
schools, in means of propaganda, in material wealth with its vast
resources and power for good, and especially in that personal zeal and
unflagging devotion which know no limit and no exhaustion, and are drawn
from the same source of strength that inspired and sustained Brebeuf and
Chaumonot and their fellow-heroes of the cross on the banks of the
Niagara.
The Paschal of the Great Pinch.