no conception of one all-pervading, omniscient divine being, governing
and watching over humanity, when the missionaries first came among
them. It was only by making use of their belief in the existence of a
supreme chief for every race of animals, that the priests could lead
their converts to the idea of a Great Spirit who ruled all creation.
In their original state of savagery or barbarism, any conception an
Indian might have of a supernatural being superior to himself was
frittered away by his imagining that the whole material world was under
the influence of innumerable mysterious {126} powers. In the stirring
of the leaves, in the glint of the sunbeam amid the foliage, in the
shadow on his path, in the flash of the lightning, in the crash of the
thunder, in the roar of the cataract, in the colours of the rainbow, in
the very beat of his pulse, in the leap of the fish, in the flight of
the birds, he saw some supernatural power to be evoked. The Indian
companions of Champlain, we remember, threw tobacco to the genius or
Manitou of the great fall of the Ottawa. The Manitou of the
Algonquins, and the Okies or Otkons of the Hurons and Iroquois were not
always superior, mysterious beings endowed with supernatural powers,
like the Algonquin Manabozho, the Great Hare, the king of all animals;
or a deified hero, like Hiawatha, the founder of the Iroquois
confederacy, and Glooscap, the favourite of Micmac legends. The
Manitou or Oki might even be a stone, a fish-bone, a bird's feather, or
a serpent's skin, or some other thing in the animate or inanimate
world, revealed to a young man in his dreams as his fetich or guardian
through life. Dreams were respected as revelations from the spirit
world. As Champlain tells us, during his first expedition to Lake
Champlain, the Indians always questioned him as to his dreams, and at
last he was able to tell them that he had seen in a vision some
Iroquois drowning in the lake, and wished to help them, but was not
permitted to do so by the Indians of his own party. This dream, in
their opinion, was a portent in their favour.
A fetich became at last even the object of an Indian's worship--to be
thanked, flattered, {127} expostulated with, according to the
emergency. It can be easily seen that in this Indian land of
mysterious agencies, of manitous and spirits, the medicine-man and
conjuror exercised a great power among old and young, chiefs and women.
He had to be consulted in illness, in peace, in war, at every moment of
importance to individual or nation. Even in case of illness and
disease he found more value in secret communications with the
supernatural world, and in working on the credulity of his tribesmen,
than in the use of medicines made from plants. The grossest
superstition dominated every community. All sorts of mystic
ceremonies, some most cruel and repugnant to every sense of decency,
were usual on occasions when supernatural influences had to be called
into action.
Every respect was paid to the dead, who were supposed to have gone on a
journey to a spirit land. Every one had such a separate scaffold or
grave, generally speaking, as Champlain saw among the Ottawas, but it
was the strange custom of the Hurons to collect the bones of their dead
every few years and immure them in great pits or ossuaries with
weirdlike ceremonies very minutely described in the _Relations_. In a
passage previously quoted Champlain gave credit to the Indians for
believing in the immortality of the soul. The world to which the
Indian's imagination accompanied the dead was not the Heaven or Hell of
the Jew or Christian. Among some tribes there was an impression rather
than a belief that a distinction was made in the land of the Ponemah or
Hereafter between the great or {128} useful, and the weak or useless;
but generally it was thought that all alike passed to the Spirit Land,
and carried on their vocations as in life. It was a Land of Shades
where trees, flowers, animals, men, and all things were spirits.
"By midnight moons, o'er moistening dews
In vestments for the-chase arrayed
The hunter still the deer pursues,
The hunter and the deer a shade."
[1] See Horatio Hale's "Fall of Hochelaga," in _Journal of American
Folklore_, Cambridge, Mass., 1894.
[2] In this necessarily very imperfect description of the organisation
and customs of the Five Nations I depend mainly on those valuable and
now rare books, _The League of the Iroquois_, and _Houses and Home Life
of the Aborigines_, by Lewis H. Morgan. The reader should also consult
Horatio Hale's _Iroquois Book of Rites_.
{129}
IX.
CONVENTS AND HOSPITALS--VILLE-MARIE--MARTYRED
MISSIONARIES--VICTORIOUS IROQUOIS--HAPLESS HURONS.
(1635-1652.)
A scene that was witnessed on the heights of Quebec on a fine June
morning, two hundred and eighty-three years ago, illustrated the spirit
that animated the founders of Canada. At the foot of a cross knelt the
Governor, Charles Hault de Montmagny, Knight of Malta, who had come to
take the place of his great predecessor, Samuel Champlain, whose
remains were buried close by, if indeed this very cross did not
indicate the spot. Jesuits in their black robes, soldiers in their gay
uniforms, officials and inhabitants from the little town below, all
followed the example of Montmagny, whose first words were, according to
Father Le Jeune, the historian of those days: "Behold the first cross
that I have seen in this country, let us worship the crucified Saviour
in his image." Then, this act of devotion accomplished, the procession
entered the {130} little church dedicated by Champlain to Notre Dame de
la Recouvrance, where the priests solemnly chanted the _Te Deum_ and
offered up prayers for the King of France.
The Church was first, the State second. After the service the new
governor entered the fort of St. Louis, only a few steps from the
sacred building, received the keys amid salutes of cannon and musketry,
and was officially installed as head of the civil and military
government of Canada, at this time controlled by the Company of the
Hundred Associates. Then he was called upon to act as god-father for a
dying Indian who desired baptism. In the smoky cabin packed with
Indians Montmagny stood by the earnest Jesuit and named the Algonquin
Joseph. "I leave you to think," says Father Le Jeune, "how greatly
astonished were these people to see so much crimson, so many handsomely
dressed persons beneath their bark roofs."
[Illustration: Marie Guyard (Mère Marie de l'Incarnation).]
During the period of which I am now writing we see the beginnings of
the most famous educational and religious institutions of the country.
The Hotel Dieu was founded in 1639, by the Soeurs Hospitalières from
the convent of St. Augustine, in Dieppe, through the benefactions of
the Duchess d'Aiguillon, the niece of Cardinal Richelieu. Rich,
fascinating, and beautiful women contributed not only their fortunes
but their lives to the service of the Church. Marie Madeleine de
Chauvigny, who belonged to a noble family in Normandy, married at a
very early age a M. de la Peltrie, who left her a young widow of
twenty-two years of age, without {132} any children. Deeply attached
to her religion from her youth, she decided to devote her life and her
wealth to the establishment of an institution for the instruction of
girls in Canada. Her father and friends threw all possible obstacles
in the way of what they believed was utter folly for a gentle cultured
woman, but she succeeded by female wiles and strategy in carrying out
her plans. On the first of August, 1639, she arrived at Quebec, in
company with Marie Guyard, the daughter of a silk manufacturer of
Tours, best known to Canadians as Mère de l'Incarnation, the mother
superior of the Ursulines, whose spacious convent and grounds now cover
seven acres of land on Garden Street in the ancient capital. She had a
vision of a companion who was to accompany her to a land of mists and
mountains, to which the Virgin beckoned as the country of her future
life-work. Canada was the land and Madame de la Peltrie the companion
foreshadowed in that dream which gave Marie Guyard a vocation which she
filled for thirty years with remarkable fidelity and ability.
Madame de la Peltrie and Marie Guyard were accompanied by Mdlle. de
Savonnière de la Troche, who belonged to a distinguished family of
Anjou, and was afterwards known in Canada as Mère de St. Joseph, and
also by another nun, called Mère Cécile de Sainte-Croix. A Jesuit,
Father Vimont, afterwards superior, and author of one of the
_Rélations_, and the three Hospital sisters, arrived in the same ship.
The company landed and "threw themselves on their knees, blessed the
God of Heaven, and kissed {133} the earth of their near country, as
they now called it." A _Te Deum_ followed in the Jesuits' church which
was now completed on the heights near their college, commenced as early
as 1635--one year before the building of Harvard College--through the
generosity of Réné Rohault, eldest son of the Marquis de Gamache. The
first visit of the nuns was to Sillery, four miles to the west of
Quebec, on the north bank of the river, where an institution had been
established for the instruction of the Algonquin and other Indians,
through the liberality of Noël Brulart de Sillery, a Knight of Malta,
and a member of an influential French family, who had taken a deep
interest in the settlement of Canada and proved it by his bounty.
Madame de la Peltrie and her companions, the Jesuit historian tells us
naïvely, embraced the little Indian girls "without taking heed whether
they were clean or not."
It was during Montmagny's term of office that the city of Montreal was
founded by a number of religious enthusiasts. Jérôme le Royer de la
Dauversière, receiver of taxes at La Flêche in Anjou, a noble and
devotee, consulted with Jean Jacques Olier, then a priest of St.
Sulpice in Paris, as to the best means of establishing a mission in
Canada. Both declared they had visions which pointed to the island of
Mont Royal as the future scene of their labours. They formed a company
with large powers as seigniors as soon as they had obtained from M. de
Lauzon, one of the members of the Company of Hundred Associates, a
title to the island. They interested in the project Paul de Chomedey,
Sieur {134} de Maisonneuve, a devout and brave soldier, an honest and
chivalric gentleman, who was appointed the first governor by the new
company. Mdlle. Jeanne Mance, daughter of the attorney-general of
Nogent-le-Roi, among the vine-clad hills of Champagne, who had bound
herself to perpetual chastity from a remarkably early age, gladly
joined in this religious undertaking. The company had in view the
establishment of communities of secular priests, and of nuns to nurse
the sick, and teach the children--the French as well as the savages.
Madame de Bullion, the rich widow of a superintendent of finance,
contributed largely towards the enterprise, and may be justly
considered the founder of Hotel Dieu of Montreal.
Maisonneuve and Mdlle. Mance, accompanied by forty men and four women,
arrived at Quebec in August, 1641, when it was far too late to attempt
an establishment on the island. Governor de Montmagny and others at
Quebec disapproved of the undertaking which had certainly elements of
danger. The governor might well think it wisest to strengthen the
colony by an establishment on the island of Orleans or in the immediate
vicinity of Quebec, instead of laying the foundations of a new town in
the most exposed part of Canada. However, all these objections availed
nothing against the enthusiasm of devotees. In the spring of 1642,
Maisonneuve and his company left Quebec. He was accompanied by
Governor de Montmagny, Father Vimont, superior of the Jesuits, and
Madame de la Peltrie, who left the Ursulines very abruptly and
inconsiderately {135} under the conviction that she had a mission to
fill at Mont Royal.
[Illustration: Portrait of Maisonneuve.]
On the 17th May, Maisonneuve and his companions landed on the little
triangle of land, the Place Royale of Champlain, formed by the junction
of a stream with the St. Lawrence. They fell immediately on their
knees and gave their thanks to the {136} Most High. After singing some
hymns, they raised an altar which was decorated by Madame de la Peltrie
and Mdlle. Mance, and celebrated the first great mass on the island.
Father Vimont, as he performed this holy rite of his Church, addressed
the new colonists with words which foreshadowed the success of the
Roman Catholic Church in the greatest Canadian city, which was first
named Ville-Marie.
A picket enclosure, mounted with cannon, protected the humble buildings
erected for the use of the first settlers on what is now the
Custom-house Square. The little stream--not much more than a rivulet
except in spring--which for many years rippled between green, mossy
banks, now struggles beneath the paved street.
An obelisk of gray Canadian granite now stands on this historic ground.
Madame de la Peltrie did not remain more than two years in Ville-Marie,
but returned to the convent at Quebec which she had left in a moment of
caprice. Mdlle. Mance, who was Madame de Bullion's friend, remained at
the head of the Hotel Dieu. The Sulpicians eventually obtained control
of the spiritual welfare, and in fact of the whole island, though from
necessity and policy the Jesuits were at first in charge. It was not
until 1653 that one of the most admirable figures in the religious and
educational history of Canada, Margaret Bourgeoys, a maiden of Troyes,
came to Ville-Marie, and established the parent house in Canada of the
Congregation de Notre-Dame, whose schools have extended in the progress
of centuries from Sydney, on the island of Cape Breton, to the Pacific
coast.
{137}
Yet during these years, while convents and hospitals were founded,
while brave gentlemen and cultured women gave up their lives to their
country and their faith, while the bells were ever calling their
congregations to mass and vespers, the country was defended by a mere
handful of inhabitants, huddled together at Quebec, at Three Rivers,
and at the little settlement of Ville-Marie. The canoes of the
Iroquois were constantly passing on the lakes and rivers of Canada,
from Georgian Bay to the Richelieu, and bands of those terrible foes of
the French and their Indian allies were ever lurking in the woods that
came so dangerously close to the white settlements and the Indian
villages.
In 1642, Father Isaac Jogues was returning from the missions on Lake
Huron, with Couture, an interpreter, and Goupil, a young medical
attendant--both donnés or lay followers of the Jesuits. They were in
the company of a number of Hurons who were bringing furs to the traders
on the St. Lawrence, when the Iroquois surprised them at the western
end of Lake St. Peter's. The prisoners were taken by the Richelieu to
the Mohawk country and Father Jogues was the first Frenchman to pass
through Lake George[1]--with its picturesque hills and islets--which in
a subsequent journey he named Lac du Saint-Sacrament, because he
reached it on the eve of Corpus Christi. The Frenchmen were carried
from village to village of the Iroquois, and {138} tortured with all
the cruel ingenuity usual in such cases. Goupil's thumb was cut off
with a clam shell, as one way of prolonging pain. At night the
prisoners were stretched on their backs with their ankles and wrists
bound to stakes. Couture was adopted into the tribe, and was found
useful in later years as an intermediary between the French and
Mohawks. Goupil was murdered and his body tossed into a stream rushing
down a steep ravine. Despite his sufferings Father Jogues never
desisted from his efforts to baptise children and administer the rites
of his Church to the tortured prisoners. On one occasion he performed
the sacred office for a dying Huron with some rain or dewdrops which
were still clinging to an ear of green corn which had been thrown to
him for food. After indescribable misery, he was taken to Fort Orange,
where the Dutch helped him to escape to France, but he returned to
Canada in the following year.
Bands of Iroquois continued to wage war with relentless fury on all the
Algonquin tribes from the Chaudière Falls of the Ottawa to the upper
waters of the Saguenay. Bressani, a highly cultured Italian priest,
was taken prisoner on the St. Lawrence, while on his way to the Huron
missions, and carried to the Mohawk villages, where he went through the
customary ordeal of torture. He was eventually given to an old woman
who had lost a member of her family, but when she saw his maimed
hands--one split between the little finger and the ring-finger--she
sent him to the Dutch, who ransomed and sent him to France, whence he
came back like Jogues, a year later.
{139}
In 1645 the Mohawks made peace with the French, but the other members
of the Five Nations refused to be bound by the treaty. Father Isaac
Jogues ventured into their country in 1646, and after a successful
negotiation returned to consult the governor at Quebec; but unhappily
for him he left behind a small box, filled with some necessaries of his
simple life, with which he did not wish to encumber himself on this
flying visit. The medicine-men or sorcerers, who always hated the
missionaries as the enemies of their vile superstitious practices, made
the Indians believe that this box contained an evil spirit which was
the origin of disease, misfortune, and death. When Father Jogues came
back, he found the village divided into two parties--one wishing his
death, the other inclined to show him mercy, and after infinite
wrangling between the factions, he was suddenly killed by a blow from a
tomahawk as he was entering a long-house, to attend a feast to which he
had been invited. His body was treated with contumely, and his head
affixed to a post of the palisades of the village. He was the first
martyr who suffered death at the hands of the Iroquois.
The "black robe" was now to be seen in every Indian community of
Canada; among the Hurons and Algonquins as far as Lake Huron, among the
White Fish tribe at the head-waters of the Saguenay, and even among the
Abenakis of the Kennebec. Father Gabriel Druillétes, who had served an
apprenticeship among the Montagnais, was in charge of this Abenaki
mission, and in the course of years {140} visited Boston, Plymouth, and
Salem, in the interests of the Canadian French, who wished to enter
into commercial relations with New England, and also induce its
governments to enter into an alliance against the Iroquois. The
authorities of the New England confederacy eventually refused to evoke
the hostility of the dangerous Five Nations. Father Druillétes,
however, won for Canada the enduring friendship of the Abenakis, as
Acadian history shows.
It is impossible within the limited space of this chapter to give any
accurate idea of the spirit of patience, zeal, and self-sacrifice which
the Jesuit Fathers exhibited in their missions among the hapless
Hurons. For years they found these Indians very suspicious of their
efforts to teach the lessons of their faith. It was only with
difficulty the missionaries could baptise little children. They would
give sugared water to a child, and, apparently by accident, drop some
on its head, and at the same time pronounce the sacramental words.
Some Indians believed for a long time that the books and strings of
beads were the embodiment of witchcraft. But the persistency of the
priests was at last rewarded by the conversion, or at all events the
semblance of conversion, of large numbers of Hurons. It would seem,
according as their fears of the Iroquois increased, the Hurons gave
greater confidence to the French, and became more dependent on their
counsel. In fact, in some respects, they lost their spirit of
self-reliance. In some villages the converts at last exceeded the
number of unbelievers. By {141} 1647 there were eighteen priests
engaged in the work of eleven missions, chiefly in the Huron country,
but also among the Algonquin tribes on the east and northeast of Lake
Huron or at the outlet of Lake Superior. Each mission had its little
chapel, and a bell, generally hanging on a tree. One central mission
house had been built at Ste. Marie close to a little river, now known
as the Wye, which falls into Thunder Bay, an inlet of Matchedash Bay.
This was a fortified station in the form of a parallelogram,
constructed partly of masonry, and partly of wooden palisades,
strengthened by two bastions containing magazines. The chapel and its
pictures attracted the special admiration of the Indians, whose
imagination was at last reached by the embellished ceremonies of the
Jesuits' church. The priests, thoroughly understanding the
superstitious character of the Indians, made a lavish use of pictorial
representations of pain and sufferings and rewards, allotted to bad and
good. Father Le Jeune tells us that "such holy pictures are most
useful object-lessons for the Indians." On one occasion he made a
special request for "three, four, or five devils, tormenting a soul
with a variety of punishments--one using fire, another serpents, and
another pincers." The mission house was also constantly full of
Indians, not simply enjoying these pictures, but participating also in
the generous hospitality of the Fathers.
It was in 1648 that the first blow descended on this unhappy people who
were in three years' time to be blotted out as a warlike, united nation
in {142} America. In that year the Iroquois attacked the mission of
St. Joseph (Teanaustayé), fifteen miles from Ste. Marie, where in 1638
a famous Iroquois, Ononkwaya, had been tortured. All the people had
been massacred or taken prisoners in the absence of the warriors who
were mostly in pursuit of a band of Iroquois. Father Daniel, arrayed
in the vestments of his vocation, was among the first to fall a victim
to the furious savages, who instantly cast his body into the flames of
his burning chapel,--a fitting pyre for the brave soldier of the Cross.
St. Ignace, St. Louis, and other missions were attacked early in the
following year. Fathers Jean de Brebeuf and Gabriel Lalemant were
tortured and murdered at St. Ignace. From village after village the
shrieks of helpless women and men and children, tied to stakes in
burning houses, ascended to a seemingly pitiless Heaven. Many persons
were tortured on the spot, but as many or more reserved for the sport
of the Iroquois villages. Father Brebeuf was bound to a stake, and
around his neck was thrown a necklace of red-hot tomahawks. They cut
off his lower lip, and thrust a heated iron rod down his throat. It
was doubtless their delight to force a groan or complaint from this
stalwart priest, whose towering and noble figure had always been the
admiration of the Canadian Indians, but both he and Lalemant, a
relatively feeble man, showed themselves as brave as the most
courageous Indian warriors under similar conditions.
When a party from Ste. Marie came a few days later to the ruins of St.
Ignace, they found the {143} tortured bodies of the dead missionaries
on the ground, and carried them to the mission house, where they were
buried in sacred earth. The skull of the generous, whole-souled
Brebeuf is still to be seen within a silver bust in the Hotel Dieu of
Quebec. Father Gamier was killed at the mission of St. Jean (Etarita),
in the raids which the Iroquois made at a later time on the Tobacco
Nation, the kindred of the Hurons. Father Chabanel, who was on his way
from St. Jean to Ste. Marie, was never heard of, and it is generally
believed that he was treacherously killed and robbed by a Huron.