A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century

F >> Francis Parkman >> The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century




The Jesuits had from the first lost no opportunity of accosting him;
while he, grateful for a genuine kindness amid the cruel hypocrisy that
surrounded him, gave them an attentive ear, till at length, satisfied
with his answers, they baptized him. His eternal bliss secure, all else
was as nothing; and they awaited the issue with some degree of composure.

A crowd had gathered from all the surrounding towns, and after nightfall
the presiding chief harangued them, exhorting them to act their parts
well in the approaching sacrifice, since they would be looked upon by the
Sun and the God of War. [ Areskoui (see Introduction). He was often
regarded as identical with the Sun. The semi-sacrificial character of
the torture in this case is also shown by the injunction, "que pour ceste
nuict on n'allast point folastrer dans les bois."--Le Mercier, Relation
des Hurons, 1637, 114. ] It is needless to dwell on the scene that
ensued. It took place in the lodge of the great war chief, Atsan.
Eleven fires blazed on the ground, along the middle of this capacious
dwelling. The platforms on each side were closely packed with
spectators; and, betwixt these and the fires, the younger warriors stood
in lines, each bearing lighted pine-knots or rolls of birch-bark.
The heat, the smoke, the glare of flames, the wild yells, contorted
visages, and furious gestures of these human devils, as their victim,
goaded by their torches, bounded through the fires again and again,
from end to end of the house, transfixed the priests with horror.
But when, as day dawned, the last spark of life had fled, they consoled
themselves with the faith that the tortured wretch had found his rest at
last in Paradise.

[ Le Mercier's long and minute account of the torture of this prisoner is
too revolting to be dwelt upon. One of the most atrocious features of
the scene was the alternation of raillery and ironical compliment which
attended it throughout, as well as the pains taken to preserve life and
consciousness in the victim as long as possible. Portions of his flesh
were afterwards devoured. ]




CHAPTER VIII.

1636, 1637.

THE HURON AND THE JESUIT.


ENTHUSIASM FOR THE MISSION.--SICKNESS OF THE PRIESTS.--
THE PEST AMONG THE HURONS.--THE JESUIT ON HIS ROUNDS.--
EFFORTS AT CONVERSION.--PRIESTS AND SORCERERS.--THE MAN-DEVIL.--
THE MAGICIAN'S PRESCRIPTION.--INDIAN DOCTORS AND PATIENTS.--
COVERT BAPTISMS.--SELF-DEVOTION OF THE JESUITS.


Meanwhile from Old France to New came succors and reinforcements to the
missions of the forest. More Jesuits crossed the sea to urge on the work
of conversion. These were no stern exiles, seeking on barbarous shores
an asylum for a persecuted faith. Rank, wealth, power, and royalty
itself, smiled on their enterprise, and bade them God-speed. Yet, withal,
a fervor more intense, a self-abnegation more complete, a self-devotion
more constant and enduring, will scarcely find its record on the page of
human history.

Holy Mother Church, linked in sordid wedlock to governments and thrones,
numbered among her servants a host of the worldly and the proud, whose
service of God was but the service of themselves,--and many, too, who,
in the sophistry of the human heart, thought themselves true soldiers of
Heaven, while earthly pride, interest, and passion were the life-springs
of their zeal. This mighty Church of Rome, in her imposing march along
the high road of history, heralded as infallible and divine, astounds the
gazing world with prodigies of contradiction: now the protector of the
oppressed, now the right arm of tyrants; now breathing charity and love,
now dark with the passions of Hell; now beaming with celestial truth,
now masked in hypocrisy and lies; now a virgin, now a harlot; an imperial
queen, and a tinselled actress. Clearly, she is of earth, not of heaven;
and her transcendently dramatic life is a type of the good and ill,
the baseness and nobleness, the foulness and purity, the love and hate,
the pride, passion, truth, falsehood, fierceness, and tenderness, that
battle in the restless heart of man.

It was her nobler and purer part that gave life to the early missions of
New France. That gloomy wilderness, those hordes of savages, had nothing
to tempt the ambitious, the proud, the grasping, or the indolent.
Obscure toil, solitude, privation, hardship, and death were to be the
missionary's portion. He who set sail for the country of the Hurons left
behind him the world and all its prizes. True, he acted under orders,--
obedient, like a soldier, to the word of command: but the astute Society
of Jesus knew its members, weighed each in the balance, gave each his
fitting task; and when the word was passed to embark for New France,
it was but the response to a secret longing of the fervent heart.
The letters of these priests, departing for the scene of their labors,
breathe a spirit of enthusiastic exaltation, which, to a colder nature
and a colder faith, may sometimes seem overstrained, but which is in no
way disproportionate to the vastness of the effort and the sacrifice
demanded of them.

[ The following are passages from letters of missionaries at this time.
See "Divers Sentimens," appended to the Relation of 1635.

"On dit que les premiers qui fondent les Eglises d'ordinaire sont
saincts: cette pensée m'attendrit si fort le cœur, que quoy que ie me
voye icy fort inutile dans ceste fortunée Nouuelle France, si faut-il que
i'auoüe que ie ne me sçaurois defendre d'vne pensée qui me presse le cœur:
Cupio impendi, et superimpendi pro vobis, Pauure Nouuelle France, ie
desire me sacrifier pour ton bien, et quand il me deuroit couster mille
vies, moyennant que ie puisse aider à sauuer vne seule âme, ie seray trop
heureux, et ma vie tres bien employée."

"Ma consolation parmy les Hurons, c'est que tous les iours ie me confesse,
et puis ie dis la Messe, comme si ie deuois prendre le Viatique et mourir
ce iour là, et ie ne crois pas qu'on puisse mieux viure, ny auec plus de
satisfaction et de courage, et mesme de merites, que viure en un lieu,
où on pense pouuoir mourir tous les iours, et auoir la deuise de S. Paul,
Quotidie morior, fratres, etc. mes freres, ie fais estat de mourir tous
les iours."

"Qui ne void la Nouuelle France que par les yeux de chair et de nature,
il n'y void que des bois et des croix; mais qui les considere auec les
yeux de la grace et d'vne bonne vocation, il n'y void que Dieu, les
vertus et les graces, et on y trouue tant et de si solides consolations,
que si ie pouuois acheter la Nouuelle France, en donnant tout le Paradis
Terrestre, certainement ie l'acheterois. Mon Dieu, qu'il fait bon estre
au lieu où Dieu nous a mis de sa grace! veritablement i'ay trouué icy ce
que i'auois esperé, vn cœur selon le cœur de Dieu, qui ne cherche que
Dieu." ]

All turned with longing eyes towards the mission of the Hurons; for here
the largest harvest promised to repay their labor, and here hardships and
dangers most abounded. Two Jesuits, Pijart and Le Mercier, had been sent
thither in 1635; and in midsummer of the next year three more arrived,--
Jogues, Chatelain, and Garnier. When, after their long and lonely
journey, they reached Ihonatiria one by one, they were received by their
brethren with scanty fare indeed, but with a fervor of affectionate
welcome which more than made amends; for among these priests, united in a
community of faith and enthusiasm, there was far more than the genial
comradeship of men joined in a common enterprise of self-devotion and
peril. [ 1 ] On their way, they had met Daniel and Davost descending to
Quebec, to establish there a seminary of Huron children,--a project long
cherished by Brébeuf and his companions.

[ 1 "Ie luy preparay de ce que nous auions, pour le receuoir, mais quel
festin! vne poignée de petit poisson sec auec vn peu de farine;
i'enuoyay chercher quelques nouueaux espics, que nous luy fismes rostir à
la façon du pays; mais il est vray que dans son cœur et à l'entendre,
il ne fit iamais meilleure chere. La ioye qui se ressent à ces
entreueuës semble estre quelque image du contentement des bien-heureux à
leur arriuée dans le Ciel, tant elle est pleine de suauité."--Le Mercier,
Relation des Hurons, 1637, 106. ]

Scarcely had the new-comers arrived, when they were attacked by a
contagious fever, which turned their mission-house into a hospital.
Jogues, Garnier, and Chatelain fell ill in turn; and two of their
domestics also were soon prostrated, though the only one of the number
who could hunt fortunately escaped. Those who remained in health
attended the sick, and the sufferers vied with each other in efforts
often beyond their strength to relieve their companions in misfortune.
[ Lettre de Brébeuf au T. R. P. Mutio Vitelleschi, 20 Mai, 1637, in
Carayon, 157. Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637, 120, 123. ]
The disease in no case proved fatal; but scarcely had health begun to
return to their household, when an unforeseen calamity demanded the
exertion of all their energies.

The pestilence, which for two years past had from time to time visited
the Huron towns, now returned with tenfold violence, and with it soon
appeared a new and fearful scourge,--the small-pox. Terror was universal.
The contagion increased as autumn advanced; and when winter came, far
from ceasing, as the priests had hoped, its ravages were appalling.
The season of Huron festivity was turned to a season of mourning; and
such was the despondency and dismay, that suicide became frequent.
The Jesuits, singly or in pairs, journeyed in the depth of winter from
village to village, ministering to the sick, and seeking to commend their
religious teachings by their efforts to relieve bodily distress. Happily,
perhaps, for their patients, they had no medicine but a little senna.
A few raisins were left, however; and one or two of these, with a
spoonful of sweetened water, were always eagerly accepted by the
sufferers, who thought them endowed with some mysterious and sovereign
efficacy. No house was left unvisited. As the missionary, physician at
once to body and soul, entered one of these smoky dens, he saw the
inmates, their heads muffled in their robes of skins, seated around the
fires in silent dejection. Everywhere was heard the wail of sick and
dying children; and on or under the platforms at the sides of the house
crouched squalid men and women, in all the stages of the distemper.
The Father approached, made inquiries, spoke words of kindness,
administered his harmless remedies, or offered a bowl of broth made from
game brought in by the Frenchman who hunted for the mission. [ Game was
so scarce in the Huron country, that it was greatly prized as a luxury.
Le Mercier speaks of an Indian, sixty years of age, who walked twelve
miles to taste the wild-fowl killed by the French hunter. The ordinary
food was corn, beans, pumpkins, and fish. ] The body cared for, he next
addressed himself to the soul. "This life is short, and very miserable.
It matters little whether we live or die." The patient remained silent,
or grumbled his dissent. The Jesuit, after enlarging for a time, in
broken Huron, on the brevity and nothingness of mortal weal or woe,
passed next to the joys of Heaven and the pains of Hell, which he set
forth with his best rhetoric. His pictures of infernal fires and
torturing devils were readily comprehended, if the listener had
consciousness enough to comprehend anything; but with respect to the
advantages of the French Paradise, he was slow of conviction. "I wish to
go where my relations and ancestors have gone," was a common reply.
"Heaven is a good place for Frenchmen," said another; "but I wish to be
among Indians, for the French will give me nothing to eat when I get
there." [ It was scarcely possible to convince the Indians, that there
was but one God for themselves and the whites. The proposition was met
by such arguments as this: "If we had been of one father, we should know
how to make knives and coats as well as you."--Le Mercier, Relation des
Hurons, 1637, 147. ] Often the patient was stolidly silent; sometimes he
was hopelessly perverse and contradictory. Again, Nature triumphed over
Grace. "Which will you choose," demanded the priest of a dying woman,
"Heaven or Hell?" "Hell, if my children are there, as you say," returned
the mother. "Do they hunt in Heaven, or make war, or go to feasts?"
asked an anxious inquirer. "Oh, no!" replied the Father. "Then,"
returned the querist, "I will not go. It is not good to be lazy."
But above all other obstacles was the dread of starvation in the regions
of the blest. Nor, when the dying Indian had been induced at last to
express a desire for Paradise, was it an easy matter to bring him to a
due contrition for his sins; for he would deny with indignation that he
had ever committed any. When at length, as sometimes happened, all these
difficulties gave way, and the patient had been brought to what seemed to
his instructor a fitting frame for baptism, the priest, with contentment
at his heart, brought water in a cup or in the hollow of his hand,
touched his forehead with the mystic drop, and snatched him from an
eternity of woe. But the convert, even after his baptism, did not always
manifest a satisfactory spiritual condition. "Why did you baptize that
Iroquois?" asked one of the dying neophytes, speaking of the prisoner
recently tortured; "he will get to Heaven before us, and, when he sees us
coming, he will drive us out." [ Most of the above traits are drawn from
Le Mercier's report of 1637. The rest are from Brébeuf. ]

Thus did these worthy priests, too conscientious to let these
unfortunates die in peace, follow them with benevolent persecutions to
the hour of their death.

It was clear to the Fathers, that their ministrations were valued solely
because their religion was supposed by many to be a "medicine," or charm,
efficacious against famine, disease, and death. They themselves, indeed,
firmly believed that saints and angels were always at hand with temporal
succors for the faithful. At their intercession, St. Joseph had
interposed to procure a happy delivery to a squaw in protracted pains of
childbirth; [ Brébeuf, Relation des Hurons, 1636, 89. Another woman was
delivered on touching a relic of St. Ignatius. Ibid., 90. ] and they
never doubted, that, in the hour of need, the celestial powers would
confound the unbeliever with intervention direct and manifest. At the
town of Wenrio, the people, after trying in vain all the feasts, dances,
and preposterous ceremonies by which their medicine-men sought to stop
the pest, resolved to essay the "medicine" of the French, and, to that
end, called the priests to a council. "What must we do, that your God
may take pity on us?" Brébeuf's answer was uncompromising:--

"Believe in Him; keep His commandments; abjure your faith in dreams; take
but one wife, and be true to her; give up your superstitious feasts;
renounce your assemblies of debauchery; eat no human flesh; never give
feasts to demons; and make a vow, that, if God will deliver you from this
pest, you will build a chapel to offer Him thanksgiving and praise."
[ Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637, 114, 116 (Cramoisy). ]

The terms were too hard. They would fain bargain to be let off with
building the chapel alone; but Brébeuf would bate them nothing, and the
council broke up in despair.

At Ossossané, a few miles distant, the people, in a frenzy of terror,
accepted the conditions, and promised to renounce their superstitions and
reform their manners. It was a labor of Hercules, a cleansing of Augean
stables; but the scared savages were ready to make any promise that might
stay the pestilence. One of their principal sorcerers proclaimed in a
loud voice through the streets of the town, that the God of the French
was their master, and that thenceforth all must live according to His
will. "What consolation," exclaims Le Mercier, "to see God glorified by
the lips of an imp of Satan!" [ Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637,
127, 128 (Cramoisy). ]

Their joy was short. The proclamation was on the twelfth of December.
On the twenty-first, a noted sorcerer came to Ossossané. He was of a
dwarfish, hump-backed figure,--most rare among this symmetrical
people,--with a vicious face, and a dress consisting of a torn and shabby
robe of beaver-skin. Scarcely had he arrived, when, with ten or twelve
other savages, he ensconced himself in a kennel of bark made for the
occasion. In the midst were placed several stones, heated red-hot.
On these the sorcerer threw tobacco, producing a stifling fumigation; in
the midst of which, for a full half-hour, he sang, at the top of his
throat, those boastful, yet meaningless, rhapsodies of which Indian
magical songs are composed. Then came a grand "medicine-feast"; and the
disappointed Jesuits saw plainly that the objects of their spiritual care,
unwilling to throw away any chance of cure, were bent on invoking aid
from God and the Devil at once.

The hump-backed sorcerer became a thorn in the side of the Fathers,
who more than half believed his own account of his origin. He was, he
said, not a man, but an _oki_,--a spirit, or, as the priests rendered it,
a demon,--and had dwelt with other _okies_ under the earth, when the whim
seized him to become a man. Therefore he ascended to the upper world,
in company with a female spirit. They hid beside a path, and, when they
saw a woman passing, they entered her womb. After a time they were born,
but not until the male oki had quarrelled with and strangled his female
companion, who came dead into the world. [ Le Mercier, Relation des
Hurons, 1637, 72 (Cramoisy). This "petit sorcier" is often mentioned
elsewhere. ] The character of the sorcerer seems to have comported
reasonably well with this story of his origin. He pretended to have an
absolute control over the pestilence, and his prescriptions were
scrupulously followed.

He had several conspicuous rivals, besides a host of humbler competitors.
One of these magician-doctors, who was nearly blind, made for himself a
kennel at the end of his house, where he fasted for seven days. [ See
Introduction. ] On the sixth day the spirits appeared, and, among other
revelations, told him that the disease could be frightened away by means
of images of straw, like scarecrows, placed on the tops of the houses.
Within forty-eight hours after this announcement, the roofs of
Onnentisati and the neighboring villages were covered with an army of
these effigies. The Indians tried to persuade the Jesuits to put them on
the mission-house; but the priests replied, that the cross before their
door was a better protector; and, for further security, they set another
on their roof, declaring that they would rely on it to save them from
infection. [ "Qu'en vertu de ce signe nous ne redoutions point les
demons, et esperions que Dieu preserueroit nostre petite maison de cette
maladie contagieuse."--Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637, 150. ]
The Indians, on their part, anxious that their scarecrows should do their
office well, addressed them in loud harangues and burned offerings of
tobacco to them. [ Ibid., 157. ]

There was another sorcerer, whose medical practice was so extensive, that,
unable to attend to all his patients, he sent substitutes to the
surrounding towns, first imparting to them his own mysterious power.
One of these deputies came to Ossossané while the priests were there.
The principal house was thronged with expectant savages, anxiously
waiting his arrival. A chief carried before him a kettle of mystic water,
with which the envoy sprinkled the company, [ 1 ] at the same time
fanning them with the wing of a wild turkey. Then came a grand
medicine-feast, followed by a medicine-dance of women.

[ 1 The idea seems to have been taken from the holy water of the French.
Le Mercier says that a Huron who had been to Quebec once asked him the
use of the vase of water at the door of the chapel. The priest told him
that it was "to frighten away the devils". On this, he begged earnestly
to have some of it. ]

Opinion was divided as to the nature of the pest; but the greater number
were agreed that it was a malignant oki, who came from Lake Huron. [ 1 ]
As it was of the last moment to conciliate or frighten him, no means to
these ends were neglected. Feasts were held for him, at which, to do him
honor, each guest gorged himself like a vulture. A mystic fraternity
danced with firebrands in their mouths; while other dancers wore masks,
and pretended to be hump-backed. Tobacco was burned to the Demon of the
Pest, no less than to the scarecrows which were to frighten him. A chief
climbed to the roof of a house, and shouted to the invisible monster,
"If you want flesh, go to our enemies, go to the Iroquois!"--while,
to add terror to persuasion, the crowd in the dwelling below yelled with
all the force of their lungs, and beat furiously with sticks on the walls
of bark.

[ 1 Many believed that the country was bewitched by wicked sorcerers,
one of whom, it was said, had been seen at night roaming around the
villages, vomiting fire. (Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637, 134.)
This superstition of sorcerers vomiting fire was common among the
Iroquois of New York.--Others held that a sister of Étienne Brulé caused
the evil, in revenge for the death of her brother, murdered some years
before. She was said to have been seen flying over the country,
breathing forth pestilence. ]

Besides these public efforts to stay the pestilence, the sufferers,
each for himself, had their own methods of cure, dictated by dreams or
prescribed by established usage. Thus two of the priests, entering a
house, saw a sick man crouched in a corner, while near him sat three
friends. Before each of these was placed a huge portion of food,--enough,
the witness declares, for four,--and though all were gorged to
suffocation, with starting eyeballs and distended veins, they still held
staunchly to their task, resolved at all costs to devour the whole,
in order to cure the patient, who meanwhile ceased not in feeble tones,
to praise their exertions, and implore them to persevere.

[ "En fin il leur fallut rendre gorge, ce qu'ils firent à diuerses
reprises, ne laissants pas pour cela de continuer à vuider leur
plat."--Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637, 142.--This beastly
superstition exists in some tribes at the present day. A kindred
superstition once fell under the writer's notice, in the case of a
wounded Indian, who begged of every one he met to drink a large bowl of
water, in order that he, the Indian, might be cured. ]

Turning from these eccentricities of the "noble savage" [ 1 ] to the
zealots who were toiling, according to their light, to snatch him from
the clutch of Satan, we see the irrepressible Jesuits roaming from town
to town in restless quest of subjects for baptism. In the case of adults,
they thought some little preparation essential; but their efforts to this
end, even with the aid of St. Joseph, whom they constantly invoked, [ 2 ]
were not always successful; and, cheaply as they offered salvation,
they sometimes railed to find a purchaser. With infants, however,
a simple drop of water sufficed for the transfer from a prospective Hell
to an assured Paradise. The Indians, who at first had sought baptism as
a cure, now began to regard it as a cause of death; and when the priest
entered a lodge where a sick child lay in extremity, the scowling parents
watched him with jealous distrust, lest unawares the deadly drop should
be applied. The Jesuits were equal to the emergency. Father Le Mercier
will best tell his own story.

[ 1 In the midst of these absurdities we find recorded one of the best
traits of the Indian character. At Ihonatiria, a house occupied by a
family of orphan children was burned to the ground, leaving the inmates
destitute. The villagers united to aid them. Each contributed something,
and they were soon better provided for than before. ]

[ 2 "C'est nostre refuge ordinaire en semblables necessitez, et
d'ordinaire auec tels succez, que nous auons sujet d'en benir Dieu à
iamais, qui nous fait cognoistre en cette barbarie le credit de ce
S. Patriarche aupres de son infinie misericorde."--Le Mercier, Relation
des Hurons, 1637, 153.--In the case of a woman at Onnentisati, "Dieu nous
inspira de luy vouër quelques Messes en l'honneur de S. Joseph."
The effect was prompt. In half an hour the woman was ready for baptism.
On the same page we have another subject secured to Heaven, "sans doute
par les merites du glorieux Patriarche S. Joseph." ]

"On the third of May, Father Pierre Pijart baptized at Anonatea a little
child two months old, in manifest danger of death, without being seen by
the parents, who would not give their consent. This is the device which
he used. Our sugar does wonders for us. He pretended to make the child
drink a little sugared water, and at the same time dipped a finger in it.
As the father of the infant began to suspect something, and called out to
him not to baptize it, he gave the spoon to a woman who was near, and
said to her, 'Give it to him yourself.' She approached and found the
child asleep; and at the same time Father Pijart, under pretence of
seeing if he was really asleep touched his face with his wet finger,
and baptized him. At the end of forty-eight hours he went to Heaven.

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