with success, how much of the contempt of danger manifested by the
wandering knight was referable to genuine valor, and what proportion to
the strength of a Milan coat, and the temper of a Toledo or Ferrara
blade. And it would be still more curious, although perhaps not so
instructive, to estimate the purity and fidelity of the heroines of
chivalry; to ascertain the amount of true devotion given them by their
admirers, "without hope of reward."
But without abating its interest by invidious and ungrateful inquiries,
we can see quite enough--in its turbulence, its cruelty, arrogance, and
oppression--to make us thank Heaven that "the days of chivalry are
gone." And from that chaotic scene of rapine, raid, and murder, we can
turn with pleasure to contemplate the truer, nobler chivalry--the
chivalry of love and peace, whose weapons were the kindness of their
hearts, the purity of their motives, and the self-denial of their lives.
The term "_voyageur_"[52] literally signifies "traveller;" and by this
modest name are indicated some of the bravest adventurers the world has
ever seen. But it is not in its usual, common-place signification that I
employ the word, nor yet in that which is given it by most writers on
the subject of early French settlements and explorations. Men are often
affected by the names given them, either of opprobrium or commendation;
but words are quite as frequently changed, restricted, or enlarged in
meaning, by their application to men. For example: you apply the word
soldier to a class of men; and if robbery be one of the characteristics
of that class, "soldier" will soon come to mean "robber" too. And thus,
though the parallel is only logical, has it been with the term
"_voyageur_." The class of men to whom it is applied were
travellers--_voyageurs_; but they were _more_; and as the habits and
qualities of men came in time to be better understood than the meaning
of French words, the term, used in reference to Western history, took
much of its significance from the history and character of the men it
assumed to describe. Thus, _un voyageur_ means not only a traveller, but
a traveller with a purpose; an adventurer among the Western wilds; a
chivalrous missionary, either in the cause of science or religion. It
includes high courage, burning zeal for church and country, and the most
generous self-devotion. It describes such men as Marquette, La Salle,
Joliet, Gravier, and hundreds of others equally illustrious, who lived
and died among the dangers and privations of the wilderness; who opened
the way for civilization and Christianity among the savages, and won,
many of them, crowns of martyrdom.
They were almost all Frenchmen. The Spaniards who came to this continent
were mere gold-seekers, thirsting only for wealth; and if they sought to
propagate Christianity, or rather the Christian _name_, it was only a
sanguinary bigotry that prompted them. On the other hand, the English
emigrants came to take possession of the country for themselves. The
conversion of the natives, or territorial acquisition for the
mother-country, were to them objects of barely secondary importance.
They believed themselves persecuted--some of them _were_ persecuted--and
they fled: it was only safety for themselves, and the rich lands of the
Indian, that they sought. Providence reserved for the French chevaliers
and missionaries the glory of leaving their homes without compulsion,
real or imaginary, to penetrate an inhospitable wilderness; to undergo
fatigues; to encounter dangers, and endure privations of a thousand
kinds; enticed by no golden glitter, covetous of no riches, save such as
are "laid up in heaven!" They came not as conquerors, but as ministers
of peace, demanding only hospitality. They never attacked the savages
with sword or fagot; but extending hands not stained by blood, they
justified their profession by relief and love and kindly offices.
Sometimes, indeed, they received little tracts of land; not seized by
the hand of power, nor grasped by superior cunning, but possessed as the
free gift of simple gratitude; and upon these they lived in peace,
surrounded by savages, but protected by the respect inspired by
blameless and beneficent lives. Many of those whose vows permitted it,
intermarried among the converted natives, and left the seeds of many
meliorations in a stony soil; and many of them, when they died, were as
sincerely mourned by the simple children of the forest, as if they had
been chiefs and braves.
Such were the men of peace who penetrated the wilderness through the
French settlements in Canada, and preached the gospel to the heathen,
where no white man had ever before been seen; and it is particularly to
this class that I apply the word at the head of this article. But the
same gentle spirit pervaded other orders of adventurers--men of the
sword and buckler, as well as of the stole and surplice. These came to
establish the dominion of _La Belle France_; but it was not to oppress
the simple native, or to drive him from his lands. Kindness marked even
the conduct of the rough soldier; and such men as La Salle, and
Iberville, who were stern enough in war, and rigid enough in discipline,
manifested always an anxious solicitude for the _rights_, as well as for
the spiritual welfare of the Indian. They gave a generous confidence
where they were conscious of no wish to injure; they treated frankly and
on equal terms, with those whom their religion and their native kindness
alike taught them to consider brethren and friends. Take, for example,
that significant anecdote of La Salle, related by the faithful
chronicler[53] of his unfortunate expeditions. He was building the fort
of _Crevecoeur_, near the spot where now stands the city of Peoria, on
the Illinois river; and even the name of his little fortress
(_Crevecoeur_, Broken Heart) was a mournful record of his shattered
fortunes. The means of carrying out his noble enterprise (the colonizing
of the Mississippi valley) were lost; the labor of years had been
rendered ineffectual by one shipwreck; his men were discontented, even
mutinous, "attempting," says Hennepin, "first to poison, and then desert
him;" his mind was distracted, his heart almost broken, by accumulated
disasters. Surrounded thus by circumstances which might well have
rendered him careless of the feelings of the savages around him, he
observed that they had become cold and distant--that in effect they no
longer viewed him as their friend. The Iroquois,[54] drifting from the
shores of Lake Ontario, where they had always been the bitterest foes of
the French, had instilled fear and hatred into their minds; it was even
said that some of his own men had encouraged the growing discontent. In
this juncture, what measures does he take? Strengthen his
fortifications, and prepare for war, as the men of other nations had
done? Far from it. Soldier and adventurer as he was, he had no wish to
shed innocent blood; though with his force he might have defied all the
nations about him. He went as a friend, frankly and generously, among
them, and demanded the reasons of their discontent. He touched their
hearts by his confidence, convinced them of his friendship, and attached
them to himself more devotedly than ever. A whole history in one brief
passage!
But it is more especially to the _voyageurs_ of the church--the men of
faith and love--that I wish to direct my readers' attention: To such men
as Le Caron, a Franciscan, with all the zeal and courage and
self-abnegation of his order, who wandered and preached among the bloody
Iroquois, and upon the waters of Huron, as early as 1616: to Mesnard, a
devoted missionary of the same order, who, in 1660, founded a mission at
the Sault de Ste. Marie, and then went into the forest to induce the
savages to listen to the glad tidings he had brought, and never came
back: to Father Allouez, who rebuilt the mission five years afterward
(the first of these houses of God which was not destroyed or abandoned),
who subsequently crossed the lakes, and preached to the Indians on Fox
river, where, in one of the villages of the Miamis and Mascoutens,
Marquette found a cross still standing, after the lapse of years, where
Allouez had raised it, covered with the offerings of the simple natives
to an unknown God. He is the same, too, who founded Kaskaskia, probably
the earliest settlement in the great valley, and whose history ends
(significant fact!) with the record of his usefulness. To Father Pinet,
who founded Cahokia, and was so successful in the conversion of the
natives, that his little chapel could not contain the numbers who
resorted to his ministrations: to Father Marest, the first preacher
against intemperance; and, finally, to Marquette, the best and bravest
of them all, the most single-hearted and unpretending!
Enthusiasm is a characteristic of the French nation; a trait in some
individuals elevated to a sublime self-devotion, and in others degraded
to mere excitability. The vivacity, gesticulation, and grimace, which
characterize most of them, are the external signs of this nature; the
calm heroism of the seventeenth century, and the insane devotion of the
nineteenth, were alike its fruits. The _voyageur_ possessed it, in
common with all his countrymen. But in him it was not noisy, turbulent,
or egotistical; military glory had "neither part nor lot" in his
schemes; the conquests he desired to make were the conquests of faith;
the dominion he wished to establish was the dominion of Jesus.
In the pursuit of these objects, or rather of this single object, I have
said he manifested the enthusiasm of his race; but it was the noblest
form of that characteristic. The fire that burned in his bosom was fed
by no selfish purpose. To have thought of himself, or of his own
comforts, or glory, to the detriment of any Christian enterprise,
however dangerous or unpromising, would, in his eyes, have been a deadly
sin.
At Sault de Ste. Marie, Father Marquette heard of many savages (whom he
calls "God's children") living in barbarism, far to the west. With five
boatmen and one companion, he at once set out for an unexplored, even
unvisited wilderness. He had what they had not--the gospel; and his
heart yearned toward them, as the heart of a mother toward an afflicted
child. He went to them, and bound them to him "in the bond of peace." If
they received him kindly--as they usually did, for even a savage
recognises and respects genuine devotion--he preached to them, mediated
among them, softened their hearts, and gathered them into the fold of
God. If they met him with arms in their hands--as they sometimes did,
for savages, like civilized men, do not always know their friends--he
resolutely offered peace; and, in his own simple and pious language,
"God touched their hearts," and they cast aside their weapons and
received him kindly.
But the _voyageur_ had higher qualities than enthusiasm. He was capable
of being so absorbed in a cause as to lose sight of his own identity; to
forget that he was more than an instrument in the hands of God, to do
God's work: and the distinction between these traits is broad indeed!
Enthusiasm is noisy, obtrusive--self-abnegation is silent, retiring;
enthusiasm is officious, troublesome, careless of time and
place--self-abnegation is prudent, gentle, considerate. The one is
active and fragmentary--the other passive, but constant.
Thus, when the untaught and simple native was to be converted, the
missionary took note of the spiritual capacity as well as of the
spiritual wants; he did not force him to receive, at once, the whole
creed of the church, as a mere enthusiast would have done; for _that_
wisdom would feed an infant with strong meats, even before it had drawn
its mother's milk. Neither did he preach the gospel with the sword, like
the Spaniard, nor with fire and fagot, like the puritan. He was wise as
the serpent, but gentle as the dove. He took the wondering Indian by
the hand; received him as a brother; won him over to listen patiently;
and then taught him first that which he could most easily comprehend: he
led him to address the throne of grace, or, in the language of the time,
"to embrace the prayer;" because even the savage believed in Deity. As
his understanding was expanded, and his heart purified--as every heart
must be which truly lifts itself to God--he gradually taught him the
more abstruse and wonderful doctrines of the Church of Christ. Gently
and imperceptibly he led him on, until the whole tremendous work was
done. The untutored savage, if he knew nothing else, yet knew the name
of his Redeemer. The bloody warfare, the feuds and jealousies of his
tribe, if not completely overcome, at least were softened and
ameliorated. When he could not convert, he endeavored to humanize; and
among the tribes of the Illinois,[55] though they were never thoroughly
Christianized, the influence of the good fathers soon prevailed to
abolish the barbarous practice of torturing captives.[56] For though
they might not embrace the religion, the savages venerated its
teachers, and loved them for their gentleness.
And this gentleness was not want of courage; for never in the history of
the world has truer valor been exhibited than that shown by the early
missionary and his compeers, the first military adventurers! Read
Joutel's account of the melancholy life and death of La Salle; read the
simple, unpretending "Journal" of Marquette;[57] and compare their
constancy and heroism with that displayed at any time in any cause! But
the _voyageur_ possessed higher qualities than courage, also; and here
again we recur to his perfect abnegation of himself; his renunciation of
all personal considerations.
Courage takes note of danger, but defies it: the _voyageur_ was careless
of danger, because he counted it as nothing; he gave it no thought,
because it only affected _himself_; and he valued not his own safety and
comfort, so long as he could serve the cause by forgetting them. Mere
courage is combative, even pugnacious; but the _voyageur_ fought only
"the good fight;" he had no pride of conquest, save in the victories of
Faith, and rather would suffer, himself, than inflict suffering upon
others. Mere courage is restless, impatient, purposeless: but the
_voyageur_ was content to remain wherever he could do good, tentative
only in the cause of Christ, and distracted by no objects from his
mission. His religion was his inspiration; his conscience his reward.
His system may have been perverted, his zeal mistaken, his church a
sham; we are not arguing that question. But the purity of his
intentions, the sincerity of his heart, can not be doubted; and the most
intolerant protestant against "the corruptions of Rome" will, at least,
admit that even catholicism was better than the paganism of the savage.
"There is not," says Macaulay,[58] "and there never was on this earth, a
work of human policy so well deserving of examination as the Roman
Catholic Church." And certainly all other systems combined have never
produced one tithe of the astounding results brought about by this
alone. Whether she has taught truth or falsehood; whether, on the whole,
it had been better or worse for the cause of Christianity, had no such
organization ever existed; whether her claims be groundless or
well-founded, are questions foreign to our purpose. But that her polity
is the most powerful--the best adapted to the ends she has in view--of
all that man has hitherto invented, there can be no doubt. Her
missionaries have been more numerous and more successful, ay, and more
devoted, than those of any other church. They have gone where even the
sword of the conqueror could not cleave his way. They have built
churches in the wilderness, which were time-worn and crumbling when the
first emigrant penetrated the forests. They have preached to youthful
savages who never saw the face of another white man, though they lived
to three-score years and ten. They have prayed upon the shores of lonely
lakes and rivers, which were not mapped by geographers for centuries
after their deaths. They have travelled on foot, unarmed and alone,
where an army could not march. And everywhere their zeal and usefulness
have ended only with their lives; and always with their latest breath
they have mingled prayers for the salvation of their flocks, with
aspirations for the welfare of their church. For though countless miles
of sea and land were between her and them, their loyalty and affection
to the great spiritual Mother were never forgotten. "In spite of oceans
and deserts; of hunger and pestilence; of spies and penal laws; of
dungeons and racks, of gibbets and quartering-blocks," they have been
found in every country, at all times, ever active and zealous. And
everywhere, in palace, or hovel, or wilderness, they have been true sons
of the church, loyal and obedient.
An organization capable of producing such results is certainly well
worth examination. For the influence she has wielded in ages past gives
promise of her future power; and it becomes those who think her
permanence pernicious to the world, to avoid her errors and yet imitate
her wisdom. If the system be a falsehood and a sham, it is a most
gigantic and successful one, and it is of strange longevity. It has
lived now more than fifteen hundred years, and one hundred and fifty
millions of people yet believe it. If it be a counterfeit, it is high
time the cheat were detected and exposed. Let those who have the truth
give forth its light, that the falsehood may wither and die. Unless they
do so, the life which has already extended over so many centuries may
gain fresh vigor, and renew its youth. Even yet the vision of the
essayist may be realized: "She may still exist in undiminished vigor,
when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast
solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch
the ruins of St. Paul's!"
It was to this church that the early _voyageurs_ belonged. And I do not
use that word "belonged" as it is employed in modern times among
protestants: I mean _more_ than that convenient, loosely-fitting
profession, which, like a garment, is thrown on and off, as the
exigencies of hypocrisy or cupidity may require. These men actually _did
belong_ to the church. They were hers, soul and body; hers, in life and
in death; hers to go whithersoever she might direct, to do whatsoever
she might appoint. They believed the doctrines they taught with an
abiding, _active_ faith; and they were willing to be spent in preaching
them to the heathen.
It has always been a leading principle in the policy of the Roman
church, to preserve her unity, and she has been enabled to do so,
principally by the ramified and elastic polity for which she has been
distinguished, to which she owes much of her extent and power, as well
as no small part of the reproach so liberally bestowed upon her in the
pages of history. There are many "arms" in her service: a man must be
impracticable indeed, when she can find no place in which to make him
useful, or to prevent his being mischievous. She never drives one from
the pale of the church who can benefit it as a communicant, or injure it
as a dissenter. If he became troublesome at home, she has, in all ages,
had enterprises on foot in which she might clothe him with authority,
and send him to the uttermost parts of the earth; thus ridding herself
of a dangerous member, and, by the same act, enlarging the sphere of her
own dominion. Does an enthusiast become noisy, or troublesome upon
unimportant points, the creed is flexible, and the mother will not
quarrel with her child, for his earnestness may convince and lead astray
more valuable sons and daughters. She will establish a new order, of
which the stubborn fanatic shall be founder; the new order is built into
the old church organization, and its founder becomes a dignitary of the
ecclesiastical establishment. Instead of becoming a dangerous heretic
and schismatic, he is attached to orthodoxy by cords stronger than
steel; henceforth all his earnest enthusiasm shall be directed to the
advancement of his order, and consequently of his church. Does one
exhibit inflexibility in some matter of conscience upon which the church
insists, there are many of God's children in the wilderness starving in
spirit for the bread of life; and to these, with that bread, shall the
refractory son be sent. He receives the commission; departs upon his
journey, glad to forget a difference with his spiritual superiors;
preaches to the heathen; remembers only that the church is his mother;
wins a crown of martyrdom, and is canonized for the encouragement of
others!
Thus she finds a place for all, and work enough for each; and thus are
thrown off the elements of schism and rebellion. Those who had most
courage in the cause of right; all who were likely to be guided in
matters of conscience by their own convictions; the most sincere and
single-hearted, the firmest and purest and bravest, were, in matters of
controversy, the most dangerous champions, should they range themselves
against the teaching of the church. They were consequently, at the
period of which I am writing, the men whom it was most desirable to send
away; and they were eminently well fitted for the arduous and wasting
duties of the missionary.
To this class belonged the large majority of the _voyageur_ priests: men
who might be inconvenient and obtrusive monitors, or formidable
adversaries in controversy, if they remained at home; but who could only
be useful--who of all men could be _most_ useful--in gathering the
heathen into the fold of the church. There were, doubtless, a few of
another class; the restless, intriguing, and disobedient, who, though
not formidable, were troublesome. But even when these joined the
missionary expeditions, they did but little to forward the work, and are
entitled to none of the honor so abundantly due to their more sincere
brethren. To this class, for example, belonged the false and egotistical
Hennepin, who only signalized himself by endeavoring to appropriate the
reputation so hardly won by the brave and unfortunate La Salle.[59]
It does not appear upon the record that any of these men--of either the
restless and ambitious, or of the better class--were literally _sent
away_. But such has been the politic practice of this church for many
ages; and we may safely believe, that when she was engaged in an
unscrupulous and desperate contest for the recovery, by fair means or
foul, of her immense losses, there might be many in the ranks of her
pious priesthood whom it would be inconvenient to retain at home. And
during that conflict especially, with the most formidable enemies she
ever had, she could not afford to be encumbered.
But whatever may have been the motives of their spiritual superiors, the
missionaries themselves were moved only by the considerations of which
we have spoken--the truest piety and the most burning zeal. Of these
influences they were conscious; but we shall perhaps not do the
character injustice if we add another spur to action, of which they were
_not_ conscious. There is a vein of romance in the French composition; a
love of adventure for the sake of the adventure itself, which, when not
tamed or directed, makes a Frenchman fitful, erratic, and unreliable.
When it is toned by personal ambition, it becomes a sort of Paladin
contempt for danger; sometimes a crazy furor. When accompanied by
powerful intellect, and strengthened by concentration on a purpose, it
makes a great commander--great for the quickness of his comprehension,
the suddenness of his resolutions, the rapidity of their execution. When
humanized by love, and quickened by religious zeal, it is purified of
every selfish thought, and produces the chivalrous missionary, whom
neither fire nor flood, neither desert nor pathless wilderness, shall
deter from obeying the command of Him who sent his gospel "unto every
creature." And thus are even those traits, which so often curse the
world with insane ambition and sanguinary war, turned by the power of a
true benevolence to be blessings of incalculable value.