1654-1657
IROQUOIS AND JESUITS
THE DEPARTURE OF THE JESUITS
RENEWAL OF HOSTILITIES IN THE SPRING--PEACE--WAMPUM NECKLACES
AND BELTS--MONTREAL HEADQUARTERS OF PEACE PARLEYS--AUTUMN
ATTACKS--"LA BARRIQUE"--MONTREAL LEFT SEVERELY ALONE--CHIEF
"LA GRANDE ARMES"--M. DE LAUSON PERSECUTING MONTREAL--THE
COMPLETION OF THE PARISH CHURCH--PENDING ECCLESIASTICAL
CHANGES IN MONTREAL--NOTES: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES OF THE
EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES IN MONTREAL--PONCET--JOGUES--LE
MOYNE--BUTEAUX--DRUILLETTES--ALBANEL--LE JEUNE--PARKMAN'S ESTIMATE
OF THE SUCCESS OF THE JESUIT MISSIONS--DR. GRANT'S APPRECIATION OF
THEIR WORK.
The fictitious and temporary peace which had intervened when de
Maisonneuve arrived in the autumn of 1653, and had allowed the settlers
to resume the work of building their homes outside the fort, was
shortly to be broken.
Indeed, during the year just described there were not wanting
indications, early in the spring of 1654, of the renewal of
hostilities, when a young surgeon engaged in setting his beaver traps
was carried off in a canoe by the lurking Onondaga Indians. In the
beginning of May a band of the same Iroquois, who had not heard of
this act of perfidy, were well received when coming for trade and they
sent a canoe back for the stolen man. In the meantime, about seven
hundred Hurons descended to Montreal with thirteen Iroquois captives
made on the journey down. These were given to the Iroquois captain, who
remained as a hostage till the canoe returned, in the hope of making
peace. Soon the surgeon was brought back with a delegation, bearing
twenty necklaces of wampum as signs of peace from the Iroquois nation.
[Illustration: SANS MERCI
(By Hébert)]
One of the significant gifts was to recognize and consolidate the
position of Ville Marie as the headquarters of peace treaties, which
had been lately so constituted by the governor of Quebec, who had
transferred to Montreal the treaty pole which had been erected at
Quebec in the autumn of 1653 as a sign of peace. Its position at
Montreal signified the recognized place for parley councils for peace
overtures. This was an adroit move on the part of de Lauson. It
recognized that Montreal was the frontier post and the most accessible,
and also it was a standing eulogium of the diplomatic ability of de
Maisonneuve to deal with the natives, and it might keep the enemy
higher up the river away from Quebec.
Unfortunately, as we have said, these Iroquois were divided into five
nations, who often acted without concert, so that protestations of
peace by wampum belts had always to be taken for what they were worth.
Montreal was soon to be in daily dread of assault. Thus in the autumn,
when in fancied security, owing to the recent renewal of peace, the
ordinary precautions were being neglected at Montreal in the busy
building and farming operations, a band of Iroquois were in ambuscade
around. The sentinel was standing on a tree stump, leisurely surveying
the country around, when an Iroquois who had stealthily approached,
hiding at intervals behind other stumps, suddenly pounced upon him
and seizing him by the legs, threw him over his shoulders and set
off in flight with the bewildered soldier shrieking for his life and
fighting as best he could. His cries aroused the men in the field and
they pursued them until they came up to the Iroquois band with their
chief at their head. They would have fared badly had not Lambert Closse
come up with his men. Recognizing the chief, who was known by the
French as "La Barrique," or "The Hogshead," because of his barrel-like
corpulency, he ordered one of his best shots cautiously to get within
fighting distance, and pick him off.
Meanwhile Hogshead, unaware of impending disaster, was standing on
a stump haranguing his men and urging them to the attack, when he
received a charge of heavy lead full in his body and he fell to
the ground bathed in blood. Thinking him dead, his followers fled
incontinently.
But he did not die, for under the skillful care of the doctors and
Jeanne Mance, he was tended at the hospital and recovered, though he
was seriously crippled for the rest of his days. Their charity changed
his fierce disposition. When he left he promised never to go on the
warpath against them again but that he would return later to conclude a
peace, as indeed he did, though not so easily as he could have wished.
For a time the Iroquois left Montreal severely alone. "Let us not
go thither," they would say. "They are devils there." They turned
to attack the settlement of the Ile des Oies below Quebec instead.
But later, on May 31, 1655, they attacked the colony and killed one
Dabigeon.
Then they passed over to the other side of the St. Lawrence and
pretended to be another tribe, and sent delegates to parley with the
fort. Charles Le Moyne, who had just come from Quebec, recognized them
as the assailants at the Ile des Oies and, suspecting treachery, they
were told to come the next day. Finally, an engagement took place
and five Iroquois were taken prisoners to the camp, among them Chief
La Plume (or "The Feather"). Another parley now took place, and a
peace was agreed upon on the proposition of Chief La Grande Armée, on
condition that all the captives on both sides should be exchanged, and
that peace with the Hurons and Algonquins should be observed as long as
they should not advance above Three Rivers. Among the French restored
were the captives taken at Ile des Oies, one of whom, Elizabeth Moyen,
then a child, married Lambert Closse in 1657, and her sister Marie who
remained with Jeanne Mance twenty years.
Peace concluded, the work of agriculture was pushed on although, taught
by sad experience, the men went to the fields armed as usual. In order
to pursue this in greater safety, de Maisonneuve, by a permission given
on August 25, 1655, in the name of the Company allowed the colonists to
cultivate and enjoy the fruits of the lands on the "domain of the
Seigneurs," which were nearer to the fort than their own concessions.
When the time came for them to be able to till the latter, the lands
on the domain should be handed back. These negotiations were put into
the hands of Lambert Closse, for de Maisonneuve had chosen him to hold
the reins of government while he himself made a third journey to France
this autumn, as the next chapter will relate.
These peace arrangements at Montreal always meant the interchange
of presents which were a burden on the community instead of on the
governor of Quebec, whom the early historians, with M. de Belmont,
accuse of "persecuting Montreal."
In addition to what we know, de Lauson wanted to levy a tax on all
imports to Montreal. He took it ill that Montreal had its storehouse
at Quebec, wishing it to purchase its necessities from Quebec. He also
wanted the Company of Montreal to send out more men than they found
convenient. All this brought him a letter of Louis XIV in favour of
Montreal.
Misfortunes clouded the last days of de Lauson. He left for France
in the summer of 1656 and died in Paris on February 16, 1666, at the
age of eighty-two years. His sons, for whom he had planned great
possessions in Canada, did not live long after their father's departure
from Canada, and he saw nearly all his family extinct before his death
and all their properties reverting to the king on account of their
conditions of grant not being fulfilled. His ineffectual tenure of
office was due to his inefficiency, aggravated by the cruel abandonment
of the French colony by the great Company.
M. de Lauson was succeeded in the post of governor general by his
son, Charles de Lauson-Charny. But his administration was no more
successful than that of his father. Indeed the office was not to his
taste and he prevailed upon M. d'Ailleboust, who had arrived from
France on September 12, 1657, to take his place, and six days after he
sailed back home, disgusted with the vanities of the world, so that he
entered the ecclesiastical state, returning later to work in the sacred
ministry in Canada.
Meanwhile the new parish church, begun two years ago, was being
completed, the funds, owing to the poverty of the colonists, being
largely supplied by the Seigneurs. It was adjoined to the Hôtel-Dieu
on St. Paul Street, so that it might suffice for the citizens and the
sick. It was dedicated to St. Joseph, the patron of the hospital, and
was opened in 1656. In the foundation and under the doorway of entrance
there was placed, within the first stone, the following inscription,
engraven as a leaden plate: "Cette première pierre a été posée en
l'honneur de St. Joseph, l'an 1656, le 28 Août.
Jesus! Maria! Joseph!"
This building, which served up to 1689 as the parish church of the
colony, was adjoined to the hospital situated on the street which was
formed a little afterwards by the first houses constructed at Ville
Marie and called St. Paul, and was placed at the corner of another
street which was called from the name of the church, St. Joseph, today
known as St. Sulpice. The body of the building was of wood, about
eighty feet long, thirty broad, and twenty feet high; the church being
at one end, covering about fifty feet, and surmounted by a bell tower
with two bells. The good folk of Ville Marie were proud to see their
new temple.
Affairs were now in a bad state; the Iroquois were uncurbed and
unsettled through the weak administration of de Lauson, and thus
prepared for the bitter war again to be proclaimed at the end of 1657.
But at present, in the summer of 1657, there was nothing but
anticipation of the arrival of the governor and the four Sulpicians
who were to be the parish clergy, with a permanent abode and a settled
ecclesiastical status.
The Jesuits who had so long served the mission were to be free to go to
the up-country Indians--their long connection with the settlement was
to be severed.
NOTE
THE JESUIT MISSIONARIES AT MONTREAL
(From 1642 to August 12, 1657, when the Sulpicians succeeded them.)
The first mayor of Montreal, Commander Jacques Viger, has collected
in a little manuscript book preserved in the Archives of St. Marie's
College at Montreal the list of Jesuits serving Montreal from 1642-1657
as follows:
Joseph Poncet, 1642-4; Joseph Imbert Duperon, 1642-3; Ambroise Daoust,
1643; Gabriel Druillettes, 1643-5; Isaac Jogues, 1645; Jacques Buteaux,
1645; Paul Le Jeune, 1645-6; Adrien Daran, 1646; Georges d'Eudemare,
1647-8; Jean de Quen, 1648-50; Pierre Bailloquet, 1648; Charles
Albanel, 1650; André Richard, 1650; Siméon Le Moyne, 1650; Claude
Pijart, 1650 to August 12, 1657.
Fifteen Jesuits resident in fifteen years. This does not account
for names of other distinguished missionaries visiting, whose names
appear on the registers as having officiated at Ville Marie baptisms,
marriages, deaths and other documents during this early period. Mr. E.
Z. Massicotte in his "Les Colons de Montreal de 1642-1667," gives some
of these as follows:
1649--Jérome Lalemant, June 1st to 11th, May 19th to 24th.
1650--Paul Ragueneau, two days.
1655--Claude Dablon passed through Montreal in October, also on
the 30th of March, 1666. He would also have signed 3-5-'62 a
document concerning Hudson Bay.
1656--Joseph Marie Chaumont, October, the bearer of a message for
the Iroquois in 1661, was at Montreal in 1662, resided at Montreal
in 1663.
1656--Léonard Gareau, wounded in a combat on August 30th, buried
September 2d.
1657--François? le Mercier, July 24th.
Of the Montreal Jesuits, there are some who merit special mention here.
JOSEPH ANTOINE PONCET DE LA RIVIERE
Joseph Antoine Poncet de la Rivière, of aristocratic birth, was born
in Paris and entered the Society of Jesus in his nineteenth year as a
novice. His studies finished, he came to New France in 1639. He shortly
went to the Huron mission. We next find him, 1642-4, the first priest
in charge of the mission chapel at the fort of Montreal. After this he
ministered at Quebec. On his return from a visit to the Iroquois, he
went down the St. Lawrence and was the first white man to glide through
the Thousand Islands. He was giving the alarm to the colonists at
Cape Rouge in the summer of 1653, when he was himself seized by the
savages. He bore a remembrance of the ill treatment of his captivity
in the form of a lost finger, which a little child had been ordered
to cut off. He was afterwards released to the Dutch at Fort Orange
and returned to Quebec on November 5th, "just nine times nine days
after my capture," he says. We next know him as the storm centre of
ecclesiastical differences between Montreal and Quebec. As a result
of this Poncet was sent back to Europe. He was installed as French
penitentiary at Loretto, and later was sent to Martinique, where he
died on June 18, 1675.
ISAAC JOGUES
Isaac Jogues was born at Orléans, France, January 10, 1607. His first
schooling was at Rouen and he entered the Jesuit novitiate at Paris
in his seventeenth year. Having finished his studies and period of
teaching we find him in his twenty-ninth year reaching Canada in 1636
in the same vessel as Champlain's successor, Montmagny. Two or three
weeks later, that same October, Jogues began his missionary work,
joining a flotilla of Huron canoes and sailing 900 miles over dangerous
rivers and lakes, skirting rapids and precipices and making many
toilsome "portages" through dense forests, pools and marshes, to the
great Lake Huron which was known as "Fresh Water Sea."
[Illustration: JOGUES, THE JESUIT MISSIONARY]
Such was Jogues' first experience of missionary life. Living on Indian
corn and water, sleeping on rocks and in the woods, battling day after
day against a rapid current, dragging heavy burdens over the long
portages, a part of the time with a sick boy on his shoulder--till he
staggered through the triple stockade of the Indian town of Ihonitiria
and fell into the arms of de Brébeuf and his Jesuit companions. In this
new mission field one of the first works entrusted to his practical
sagacity, which stood his fellow missionaries in good stead, was the
construction of Fort Ste. Marie, whose ruins, discovered in 1859,
testify to the solidity of the outworks. His first apostolic work away
from Fort Ste. Marie was among the Petuns, or Tobacco Indians. In
September, 1641, he went with the Jesuit Raimbault to found a mission
among the Ojibways or Chippewas on the upper reaches of Lake Huron at a
place called by the missionaries Sault Ste. Marie, today a great centre
of commerce. They were the first white men to stand on the shores of
Lake Superior.
We next find him back at Georgian Bay. Supplies were being exhausted
and Jogues offered to go to Quebec, a thousand miles off, for them.
This done, on the way back in the first week of August, 1642, his party
was surprised by the hostile Mohawks and captured. While being taken
up country he was most brutally tortured, beaten by sticks, clubs and
knives, and his wounds torn open by the long nails of the Indians.
The joints of his fingers were gnawed off or burned off at intervals.
On the arrival of the party at Ossernenon, on the north bank of the
Mohawk, a captive Christian woman was compelled, under threat of death,
to saw off with a jagged shell the thumb of the priest. But he was not
killed, as so many of his party were.
On the 29th of September, 1642, René Goupil, his faithful companion,
was tomahawked in the skull for making the sign of the cross on the
head of a child. The place is identified as Auriesville.
When Goupil was dead, Jogues was alone and began his awful captivity
of more than a year, each moment of which was a martyrdom. In the
"Relation," which his superior commanded him to write, he has left us
a partial account of the horrors he endured. Employed in the filthiest
and most degrading of occupations he was regarded with greater contempt
than the most degraded squaw of the village. Heavy burdens were heaped
on his crippled and mangled shoulders, and he was made to tramp fifty,
sixty and sometimes a hundred miles after his savage masters, who
delighted to exhibit him wherever they went. His naked feet left bloody
tracks upon the ice or flints of the road; his flesh was rotting with
disease, and his wounds were gangrened; he was often beaten to the
earth by the fists or clubs of crazy and drunken Indians, and more than
once he saw the tomahawk above his head and heard his death sentence
pronounced. The wretched deerskin they persuaded him to wear was
swarming with vermin; he was often in a condition of semi-starvation
as he crouched in a corner of the filthy wigwam and saw the savages
gorging themselves with meat, which had been first offered to the
demons, and which he therefore refused to eat, though his savage
masters raged against the implied contempt to their gods. For thirteen
months he thus remained a captive. Yet he baptized more than seventy
persons, most of them Huron captives, at the point of death. Often
Jogues would rush into the flames up to the stake for this purpose.
During this time, on June 30, 1643, he secured a scrap of paper on
which he wrote to Montmagny that the Mohawks were about to make a raid
on Fort Richelieu. This message, carried for him by a Huron, warned
the garrison in time and the Indians were repulsed. This defeat was
traced to Jogues and his death was expected. But in the meantime an
order came from Governor Kieft of Manhattan to the commandant at
Fort Orange to secure his release at all costs. This required the
co-operation of Jogues. In spite of his harsh treatment the prisoner
was unwilling at first to enter into the plot, feeling it to be his
duty to remain at his post. At last he consented. He was conveyed to
the Dutch settlement of Fort Orange (Albany), which the angry Mohawks
threatened to burn, but fearful of risking a war with the Dutch while
they were fighting with the French, after a parley they consented to
relinquish their claim on the black robe for 300 _livres_. A six-day
journey brought him to Manhattan which he described as "seven leagues
in circuit and on it is a fort to serve as a commencement of a town to
be built there, and to be called New Amsterdam." At this town, as at
the place of his escape, he was kindly treated by the famous Dominic
Johannes Megapolensis, Jr., the first person who went to New York at
the invitation of Killaen van Rensselaer to look after the spiritual
affairs of the colony. After a month's sojourn at Manhattan, Father
Jogues left on November 5, 1643, in a wretched little vessel which,
after a severe tossing on the Atlantic, reached Falmouth, in Cornwall,
at the end of December, hotly pursued by some of Cromwell's ships, for
the rebellion against Charles I was then in progress.
[Illustration: NEW YORK AS SEEN BY LE MOYNE]
In Falmouth he was robbed, at the point of the pistol, of all his
belongings, by some marauders lurking round the port. At last, having
secured a free passage in a dirty collier, he was flung on Christmas
morning, 1643, on the coast of Brittany, but after eight days he
reached the Jesuit College at Rennes--and at last the emaciated,
haggard tramp was recognized as the lost Isaac Jogues, of whose capture
the "Relations" had warned them.
Honour was now meted out to this humble Jesuit much to his
discomfiture. Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV, called him to court
and compelled him to throw back his cloak and tell of the hideous
manner in which his fingers had been eaten or burned. The queen,
descending from the throne, took his hand in hers and, with tears
streaming down her cheeks, devoutly kissed the mutilated members and
exclaimed: "People write romances for us--but was ever a romance like
this? And it is all true."
This form of public exhibition was displeasing to Jogues but the
permission granted by Pope Urbain VIII, at the request of some of
his admirers, to have the canonical impediment raised against his
faculty to say mass because of his mutilated fingers, was a source of
gratification. The answer of Urbain to the request was "_Indignum esset
martyrum Christi, Christi non bibere sanguinem_"--"it would be wrong to
prevent the martyr of Christ from drinking the blood of Christ."
Isaac Jogues did not loiter to be lionized in Paris, but in June was
in Quebec, and was now appointed to serve the sick and hearten the
defenders of the stockade of Montreal. In July he was present at a
parley with the Indians at a conference held at Three Rivers, where
he met Father Bressani, who had also had a similar experience of the
tortures of the Iroquois and whose fingers were also wanting. After a
treaty had been made Jogues returned to Montreal. One result of this
treaty was that an ambassador was to be sent to the Mohawks and Father
Jogues, as he spoke the Iroquois tongue, was appointed to revisit
those who had so ill used him. But it was two years later before the
actual embassy started from Three Rivers, on May 16, 1646. Father
Jogues reached Lake Andiatarocté on the eve of Corpus Christi, the
feast of the Blessed Sacrament, and called it the "Lake of the Blessed
Sacrament." A century later this was renamed by Sir William Johnson
"Lake George" in honour of the English king. On June 5th Jogues reached
Ossernenon, and in his character as ambassador was well received. At
the council held on June 10th or June 16th the party returned, reaching
Quebec on July 3rd. Jogues petitioned to be sent back to the Mohawks
as a missionary. On September 27th he left Quebec for the Iroquois
country. He wrote to a friend: "Ibo sed non redibo--I go but I shall
not return," as though his fate were revealed to him.
[Illustration: LAKE OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT]
Before he reached Ossernenon he learned that the hatchet had been
dug up to meet him. As an ambassador he had been respected, but as a
Christian missionary a hostile reception awaited him. An innocent box
of vestments left behind him on his previous visit was the cause. A
pestilence had broken out and the crops were withered. Therefore these
misfortunes were due to the _Manitou_ in the box. Jogues could have
avoided Ossernenon and returned to Quebec, but he faced his enemies,
who met him with the sorcerer, Ondersonk. Jogues wore his clerical
garb. His garments were stripped off him; he was slashed with knives
and led, mangled and bleeding, to the scene of his recent triumph as an
ambassador. A council was held at Tionnontoguen to see what was to be
done with him. The Wolf-Tortoise family were against killing him, as
were most of the Bears, and he was spared.
But the Bears, bent on vengeance, invited the wounded Jogues to a feast
on October 18th. He left his cabin and followed to the festive wigwam,
and as he entered a Mohawk, waiting behind the door brought down his
axe with a crash on to his skull. His head was hacked off and fixed on
a stake of the palisade, and his body was flung into the Mohawk River
hard by.
There is no reasonable doubt but that the place of his martyrdom
occurred at Auriesville on the south shore of the Mohawk just above
the Schoharie. "So died," says Ingram Kip, the Protestant bishop of
California, "one of that glorious band that had shown greater devotion
in the cause of Christianity than has ever been seen since the time
of the Apostles; men whose lives and sufferings reveal a story more
touching and pathetic than anything in the records of our country,
and whose names should ever be kept in grateful remembrance; stern,
high-wrought men who might have stood high in court or camp, and who
could contrast their desolate state in the lowly wigwam with the
refinement and affluence that waited on them in their earlier years,
but who had given up home and love of kindred and the golden ties of
relationship for God and man."
Another famous missionary who served Montreal and who often passed
through it on his journeys to and fro, was Siméon Le Moyne, who was
born about 1601. He entered the society at the age of nineteen and in
1638 he was at work in the Canadian mission field, chiefly among the
Hurons, among whom he was known as "Wane," or phonetically in English
"Won," the "w" taking the place of the missing "m" in their language,
the result being an attempt to reproduce the French pronunciation of
"Moyne." His early experiences at Lake Huron brought him in touch with
those other heroes, Brébeuf, Daniel, Lalemant, Jogues, and others, many
of whom were to be killed. He saw the annihilation of the Hurons and
wandered with the remnants over hill and dell and stream, ministering
to them. In 1654 he accepted the dangerous mission to the Iroquois at
Onondaga, leaving his life in the hands of the Almighty. His object
was to pacify the Iroquois as an ambassador, to give comfort to the
Huron captives and to prepare the way for a permanent mission. On
his return to Quebec he recommended this, and the Jesuits Dablon and
Chauminot were appointed. He held several councils and distributed
presents.[76] Le Moyne was endowed with a sense of humour. "Le Moyne,"
says the Rev. T. J. Campbell, "tells us that on this occasion he
strutted around like an actor, gesticulating extravagantly, imitating
the manners of their great orators, each time winning great grunts of
applause from the attendant chiefs and keeping up his eloquence for two
hours." The amusing part is that it was told in Huron, of which the
Iroquois had only a general knowledge: it was the parent stock. The
impressive manner he assumed--he was a past master in mimicry--no doubt
overwhelmed them and possibly whimpered interpretations were being
given at the same time to let them know what he was saying.
On his return, before reaching Montreal, we are told by Charlevoix that
Le Moyne was in a canoe with two Onondagas, the Hurons and Algonquins
following. As they approached Montreal they were surprised to find
themselves surrounded by several canoes full of Mohawks, who poured a
volley upon them from their muskets. The Hurons and Algonquins were all
killed, as well as one of the Onondagas. Le Moyne was taken and bound
as a prisoner of war, and the Onondaga was told to return home, but
he protested that he could not abandon the missionary, who had been
confided to him by the sachems of his canton and he menaced the Mohawks
with all the wrath of the Upper Iroquois. At first they laughed at his
threats, but when they saw that he would not flinch they unbound their
prisoner and put him in the hands of his faithful conductor, who led
him to Montreal. The chief, who was at the head of these Mohawks, was
known as the Flemish Bastard.
The Upper Iroquois, the Agnieronnons, those among whom Isaac Jogues had
been killed in 1646, jealous of the distinction paid to their kinsman,
the Onondagas, desired an envoy to be sent to them. Accordingly the
"Relation" of 1656 tells how Father Le Moyne left Montreal on August
17th with twelve Iroquois and a Frenchman. He arrived at the Village
of Agniée (Auriesville) on September 17th. He then visited Ossernenon
and later went on to Manhattan to visit the Dutch, after which he
returned to Ossernenon, leaving for Montreal in November, lucky to
escape with his life, having however promised the Mohawks to give them
missionaries. In the meantime the Onondagas had been already favoured
by missionaries, and a body of fifty Frenchmen, the nucleus of a
trading post. Again the jealousy of the Mohawks of Ossernenon caused a
second and a third visit from the diplomatic Le Moyne.
The trading post at Onondaga collapsed through the Frenchmen, hearing
of a plot to massacre them, decamping by night and making their way to
Montreal.
The perfidious Iroquois of Onondaga, angry at their discovered
treachery, were now joined by the Mohawks and for two years the St.
Lawrence witnessed bloody fights. Christian Huron settlements were
burned and pillaged, and white and red men massacred. Montreal was the
storm centre of war.
"One day in July (1661), when the storm was at its height, a number of
Iroquois canoes were seen coming down the river towards Montreal. The
garrison rushed to the stockade and watched them as they approached the
shore. In front was a flag of truce. The savage warriors, in paint and
feathers, stepped out as if assured of a friendly reception. The gate
was thrown open and, followed by four French captives, the Iroquois
advanced into the town. The spokesman was the redoubtable Cayuga chief,
named Saonchiowaga. Solemnly he broke the bonds of the French prisoners
and promised the liberation of others still in the Onondaga country.
Then he began his address, offering his presents meanwhile. Coming to
the fifth present he said: 'This is to bring the Frenchman back to us.
We still keep his mat; his house is still standing in Ganentoa. His
fire is still lighted, and his fields have been tilled and await his
return for his hand to gather the harvest.' Then, altering his tone
and raising aloft the last belt, he exclaimed: A black gown must come
to us; otherwise there will be no peace. On his coming depends the
lives of twenty Frenchmen at Onondaga.' And he placed in the governor's
hand a leaf of a book, on the margin of which the twenty unfortunate
captives had written their names." Campbell, Vol. I, p. 102.
Although many thought this a trick to lure others to death Father Le
Moyne offered to go to test its sincerity, and on July 21, 1661, he
left Montreal for Onondaga. There he was successful in concluding peace
with the help of Garagontié, "The Sun that Advances," who shortly went
down to Montreal to negotiate peace. But his withdrawal was a sorry
turn for Le Moyne, whom the Iroquois lads would have burned alive
on the scaffold at the stake. He escaped on one occasion with some
frightful scalds which took six months to heal. At another time he
was nearly tomahawked. The return of Garagontié alone made his work
of charity among the Onondagas possible. He had plenty to do to look
after the French captives and to secure their ransom. In this he was
largely successful and returned to Montreal in the summer of 1662. The
"Relations" record this as follows: "On the last day of August, 1662,
the father made his appearance in a canoe below the Falls of St. Louis,
having around him all the happy rescued ones and a score of Onondagas,
who from being enemies, had become their boatmen. They landed amid the
cheers and embraces of all the French of Montreal, and following Father
Le Moyne proceeded to the church to thank God."
Wars prevented him going back to Onondaga, but he applied for the post
in 1664. His shattered health, however, stood in the way, and he died
in 1665, sick of a fever at Cape Madeleine, opposite Three Rivers. He
may be called the Apostle of the Onondagas.
JAMES BUTEAUX
James Buteaux was born at Abbeville, in France, on April 11, 1600, and
joined the Canadian mission shortly after it was handed over to the
French. He served the Algonquin missions and while at Montreal not
only did he accompany the Christian Indians in their fights, but he
heartened the little garrison at home, as also the good Maisonneuve,
who was then realizing what his declaration had meant when he had
told Montmagny that he would stay in Montreal if every tree were an
Iroquois. He was a most devoted missionary, although he was a frail
man. "I have often seen him," says Father de Quen, "tramping in the
dark through three or four feet of snow, groping along by the light
of a lantern which the howling wind would often tear from his hand or
extinguish, while he himself would perhaps be flung by the violence of
the storm down some icy trail into the snowdrifts below. This would be
surprising news," continues the writer, "for those who remember him in
France, frail to the last degree and almost always a valetudinarian."
This happened at Sillery and his devotedness, no doubt, was similar at
Montreal.
His whole life was led midst the alarms of war. On the 10th of May,
1652, when, with a Huron and a Frenchman, on a journey from his beloved
Three Rivers on a mission to the White Fish tribe, he was fallen upon
by Iroquois. The Huron was seized and the priest and Frenchman fell
riddled with bullets. The savages then rushed upon them with their
knives and tomahawks, stripped them naked and flung them into the river.
GABRIEL DRUILLETTES
Gabriel Druillettes, it is said, was born in 1593, but it is certain he
came to Canada on August 15, 1643, in the same ship with the Jesuits
Garreau and Chabanel, both subsequently being slain by the Indians. He
served Montreal for a short time, but his after-career as the "Apostle
of Maine" entitles him to considerable fame in early American history.
In 1670 he went to the West. In 1671 the white-haired missionary was
at the solemn "_prise de possession_" at Sault Ste. Marie, ordered by
Talon. He remained at the Sault till 1679, whence he journeyed to
Quebec to rest after his long missionary wanderings, dying two years
later, full of years and good works.
CHARLES ALBANEL
Charles Albanel was born in 1613 and came to America on August 23,
1649, and in the following year was at Montreal. His after-career was
one of adventure. He may be called the missionary of the Hudson Bay.
In his second visit there in 1674 he went expressly as Frontenac's
secret agent to induce Radisson to abandon the service of the Hudson's
Bay Company; in fact he handed Radisson a letter from Colbert offering
him a position in the French navy, the payment of all his debts and a
gratuity of 400 pounds sterling if he would return to his allegiance.
The adventurer eventually accepted the proposition. Charles Albanel
was taken prisoner to England because he did endeavour to convert "ye
Indians and persuade them not to trade with ye English."
He is described as a "little ould man born of English parentage." He
was set free, and was in France in 1675, on July 22d set sail for
America. Coming back from Canada his superiors kept him away from the
Hudson Bay territory and sent him west, and the "little ould man" of
1674 died twenty-two years later, as a missionary at Sault Ste. Marie
on January 11, 1696.
PAUL LE JEUNE
Paul Le Jeune, whom the distinguished historian of New York, Dr.
O'Callaghan, calls the Father of the Canadian missions, one among
many reasons for this title being, that, when Canada was restored to
the French, he was elected as superior of the missions, was born at
Châlons-sur-Marne in July, 1591, and arrived in Canada in 1632.[77]
He was the friend of Champlain, whose funeral oration he pronounced
in 1635. He was highly esteemed by Montmagny. As superior of the
missions he ruled from Miscou to Lake Huron, but he was glad enough
to serve humbly in the ranks when Father Vimont became provincial.
Thus it is that we find him serving the mission of Montreal. In 1649
he returned to France as procurator of the French missions in Canada.
Later on when there was a question of naming a bishop of Quebec, Father
Le Jeune was the choice of the queen regent. Charles Lalemant and
Ragueneau were also mentioned, but the general of the Jesuits forbade
the consideration of any Jesuit for that post. Laval, as we know, was
eventually appointed. In 1661, it was Le Jeune who made the touching
and fearless appeal to Louis XIV himself for the perishing colony. This
helped to open the eyes of the monarch and was the herald of better
times which, however, did not occur till 1666, two years after the
death of Le Jeune, when de Tracy's and de Courcelles' handful of men
brought the peace which lasted for fifteen years.
It would be tedious to the reader to give further autobiographical
notes. Yet the importance of these Montreal missionaries for the
colonization of New France and the civilization of the Indians
justifies the space we have allotted.
Parkman in his "Jesuits," pages 318-320, sums up the success of their
missions thus:
"When we look for the results of those missions we soon become aware
that the influence of the French and the Jesuits extended far beyond
the circle of converts. It eventually modified and softened the manners
of many unconverted tribes.
"In the wars of the next century we do not find those examples of
diabolical atrocity with which the earlier annals are crowded. The
savage burned his enemies alive, it is true, but he rarely ate them;
neither did he torment them with the same deliberation and persistency.
He was a savage still, but not so often a devil. * * * In this
softening of manner, such as it was, and in the obedient Catholicity of
a few hundred tamed savages gathered at stationary missions in Canada,
we find after a century had elapsed all the results of the heroic toil
of the Jesuits. The missions had failed because the Indians had ceased
to exist. Of the great tribes on whom rested the hopes of the early
Canadian fathers, nearly all were virtually extinct. The missionaries
built laboriously and well, but they were doomed to build on a falling
foundation. The Indians melted away, not because civilization destroyed
them, but because their own ferocity and untractable indolence made it
impossible that they should exist in its presence. Either the plastic
energies of a higher race, or the servile pliancy of a lower one, would
each in its way have preserved them; as it was, their extinction was
a foregone conclusion. As for the religion which the Jesuits taught
them, however Protestants may carp at it, it was the only form of
Christianity likely to take root in their crude and barbarous nature."
The following appreciation of the early Jesuits, taken from "The
Dominion of Canada--The Brave Days of Old," by a Protestant writer,
Professor Grant, of Kingston, may be of interest as coming from a later
day pen:
"Eyes and heart alternately glow and fill as we read the endless
'Relations' of their faith and failures, their heaped-up measure of
miseries, their boundless wisdom, their heroic martyrdoms. We forget
our traditional antipathy to the name of Jesuit. The satire of Pascal,
the memories of the Inquisition and the political history of the
order, is all forgotten. We dislike to have our sympathies checked
by reminders, that in Canada as elsewhere, they were the consistent,
formidable foes of liberty; that their love of power not only embroiled
them continually with the civil authorities, but made them jealous
of the Recollects and Sulpicians, unwilling that any save their own
order--or, as we say, sect--should share in the dangers and glory of
converting the infidels of New France. How can we, sitting at home in
ease, we who have entered into their labours, criticize men before
whose spiritual white heat every mountain melted away; who carried the
cross in advance of the most adventurous 'coureurs de bois,' or guides,
who taught agriculture to the Indian on the Georgian Bay before a dozen
farms had been cleared on the St. Lawrence--drove or carried cattle
through unbroken forest around the countless rapids and cataracts of
the Ottawa and French rivers that they might wean the Hurons from
nomadic habits and make of them a nation; who shrank from no hardship
and no indignity if by any means they might save some of the miserable
savages who heaped indignities upon themselves; who instituted
hospitals and convents wherever they went, always (in the spirit of
their masters) caring most for the weak, the decrepit, the aged;
and submitted themselves, without thinking of escape, to inutterable
tortures rather than lose an opportunity of administering the last
sacraments to those who had fallen under the hatchets of the Iroquois!
Few Protestants have any idea of the extraordinary missionary activity
of the Church of Rome in the seventeenth century. Few Englishmen know
to what extent French society was inspired then by religious fervour.
Few Canadians have any knowledge of the spiritual inheritance of which
they are the heirs. It would be well for all of us to read Parkman's
'Jesuits in North America,' if we cannot get hold of the original
'Relations;' for the story, looked at even from a Protestant and
republican standpoint, is one to do us all good, revealing as it does
the spiritual bonds that link into oneness of faith Protestant and
Roman Catholic, and teaching that beneath the long black robe of the
dreaded Jesuit is to be found, not so much that disingenuousness and
those schemes of worldly ambition usually associated with the name, but
a passionate devotion to the Saviour, love for the souls of men and the
fixed steadfastness of the martyr's spirit that remains unshaken when
heart and flesh faint and fail.
"The prophetic words of the father superior of the Jesuits in 1647 stir
the heart of the Christian--by whatsoever name known among men--like
the blasts of a trumpet: 'We shall die; we shall be captured, burned,
butchered. Be it so. Those who die in their beds do not always die
the best death. I see none of our Company cast down.' And truly, in
spite of failures, these men did a great work. Seeds of divine truth
they sowed broadcast over the wilderness. Gradually they tempered
the ferocity of the Indian character, and mitigated the horrors of
Indian war. They induced the remnants of many tribes to settle under
the shadow of their missions protected by forts. Portions even of the
terrible Iroquois settled in Canada and the church has, on the whole,
no children more obedient, and Queen Victoria certainly no subjects
more loyal."--(Scribner's Magazine, quoted in Canadian Antiquarian and
Numismatic Journal, 1879.)
FOOTNOTES:
[76] He discovered the salt springs at Onondaga (Syracuse).
[77] Paul le Jeune in 1632 wrote the first letter of the Relations of
the Jesuits.