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The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century

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




The Devil had taken alarm. He had borne with reasonable composure the
loss of individual souls snatched from him by former baptisms; but here
was a convert whose example and influence threatened to shake his Huron
empire to its very foundation. In fury and fear, he rose to the conflict,
and put forth all his malice and all his hellish ingenuity. Such,
at least, is the explanation given by the Jesuits of the scenes that
followed. [ 1 ] Whether accepting it or not, let us examine the
circumstances which gave rise to it.

[ 1 Several of the Jesuits allude to this supposed excitement among the
tenants of the nether world. Thus, Le Mercier says, "Le Diable se
sentoit pressé de prés, il ne pouuoit supporter le Baptesme solennel de
quelques Sauuages des plus signalez."--Relation des Hurons, 1638, 33.--
Several other baptisms of less note followed that above described.
Garnier, writing to his brother, repeatedly alludes to the alarm excited
in Hell by the recent successes of the mission, and adds,--"Vous pouvez
juger quelle consolation nous étoit-ce de voir le diable s'armer contre
nous et se servir de ses esclaves pour nous attaquer et tâcher de nous
perdre en haine de J. C." ]

The mysterious strangers, garbed in black, who of late years had made
their abode among them, from motives past finding out, marvellous in
knowledge, careless of life, had awakened in the breasts of the Hurons
mingled emotions of wonder, perplexity, fear, respect, and awe. From the
first, they had held them answerable for the changes of the weather,
commending them when the crops were abundant, and upbraiding them in
times of scarcity. They thought them mighty magicians, masters of life
and death; and they came to them for spells, sometimes to destroy their
enemies, and sometimes to kill grasshoppers. And now it was whispered
abroad that it was they who had bewitched the nation, and caused the pest
which threatened to exterminate it.

It was Isaac Jogues who first heard this ominous rumor, at the town of
Onnentisati, and it proceeded from the dwarfish sorcerer already
mentioned, who boasted himself a devil incarnate. The slander spread
fast and far. Their friends looked at them askance; their enemies
clamored for their lives. Some said that they concealed in their houses
a corpse, which infected the country,--a perverted notion, derived from
some half-instructed neophyte, concerning the body of Christ in the
Eucharist. Others ascribed the evil to a serpent, others to a spotted
frog, others to a demon which the priests were supposed to carry in the
barrel of a gun. Others again gave out that they had pricked an infant
to death with awls in the forest, in order to kill the Huron children by
magic. "Perhaps," observes Father Le Mercier, "the Devil was enraged
because we had placed a great many of these little innocents in Heaven."

[ "Le diable enrageoit peutestre de ce que nous avions placé dans le ciel
quantité de ces petits innocens."--Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1638,
12 (Cramoisy). ]

The picture of the Last Judgment became an object of the utmost terror.
It was regarded as a charm. The dragons and serpents were supposed to be
the demons of the pest, and the sinners whom they were so busily
devouring to represent its victims. On the top of a spruce-tree, near
their house at Ihonatiria, the priests had fastened a small streamer,
to show the direction of the wind. This, too, was taken for a charm,
throwing off disease and death to all quarters. The clock, once an
object of harmless wonder, now excited the wildest alarm; and the Jesuits
were forced to stop it, since, when it struck, it was supposed to sound
the signal of death. At sunset, one would have seen knots of Indians,
their faces dark with dejection and terror, listening to the measured
sounds which issued from within the neighboring house of the mission,
where, with bolted doors, the priests were singing litanies, mistaken for
incantations by the awe-struck savages.

Had the objects of these charges been Indians, their term of life would
have been very short. The blow of a hatchet, stealthily struck in the
dusky entrance of a lodge, would have promptly avenged the victims of
their sorcery, and delivered the country from peril. But the priests
inspired a strange awe. Nocturnal councils were held; their death was
decreed; and, as they walked their rounds, whispering groups of children
gazed after them as men doomed to die. But who should be the executioner?
They were reviled and upbraided. The Indian boys threw sticks at them as
they passed, and then ran behind the houses. When they entered one of
these pestiferous dens, this impish crew clambered on the roof, to pelt
them with snowballs through the smoke-holes. The old squaw who crouched
by the fire scowled on them with mingled anger and fear, and cried out,
"Begone! there are no sick ones here." The invalids wrapped their heads
in their blankets; and when the priest accosted some dejected warrior,
the savage looked gloomily on the ground, and answered not a word.

Yet nothing could divert the Jesuits from their ceaseless quest of dying
subjects for baptism, and above all of dying children. They penetrated
every house in turn. When, through the thin walls of bark, they heard
the wail of a sick infant, no menace and no insult could repel them from
the threshold. They pushed boldly in, asked to buy some trifle, spoke of
late news of Iroquois forays,--of anything, in short, except the
pestilence and the sick child; conversed for a while till suspicion was
partially lulled to sleep, and then, pretending to observe the sufferer
for the first time, approached it, felt its pulse, and asked of its
health. Now, while apparently fanning the heated brow, the dexterous
visitor touched it with a corner of his handkerchief, which he had
previously dipped in water, murmured the baptismal words with motionless
lips, and snatched another soul from the fangs of the "Infernal Wolf."
[ 1 ] Thus, with the patience of saints, the courage of heroes, and an
intent truly charitable, did the Fathers put forth a nimble-fingered
adroitness that would have done credit to the profession of which the
function is less to dispense the treasures of another world than to grasp
those which pertain to this.

[ 1 _Ce loup infernal_ is a title often bestowed in the Relations on the
Devil. The above details are gathered from the narratives of Brébeuf,
Le Mercier, and Lalemant, and letters, published and unpublished, of
several other Jesuits.

In another case, an Indian girl was carrying on her back a sick child,
two months old. Two Jesuits approached, and while one of them amused the
girl with his rosary, "l'autre le baptise lestement; le pauure petit
n'attendoit que ceste faueur du Ciel pour s'y enuoler." ]

The Huron chiefs were summoned to a great council, to discuss the state
of the nation. The crisis demanded all their wisdom; for, while the
continued ravages of disease threatened them with annihilation, the
Iroquois scalping-parties infested the outskirts of their towns, and
murdered them in their fields and forests. The assembly met in August,
1637; and the Jesuits, knowing their deep stake in its deliberations,
failed not to be present, with a liberal gift of wampum, to show their
sympathy in the public calamities. In private, they sought to gain the
good-will of the deputies, one by one; but though they were successful in
some cases, the result on the whole was far from hopeful.

In the intervals of the council, Brébeuf discoursed to the crowd of
chiefs on the wonders of the visible heavens,--the sun, the moon, the
stars, and the planets. They were inclined to believe what he told them;
for he had lately, to their great amazement, accurately predicted an
eclipse. From the fires above he passed to the fires beneath, till the
listeners stood aghast at his hideous pictures of the flames of
perdition,--the only species of Christian instruction which produced any
perceptible effect on this unpromising auditory.

The council opened on the evening of the fourth of August, with all the
usual ceremonies; and the night was spent in discussing questions of
treaties and alliances, with a deliberation and good sense which the
Jesuits could not help admiring. [ Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1638,
38. ] A few days after, the assembly took up the more exciting question
of the epidemic and its causes. Deputies from three of the four Huron
nations were present, each deputation sitting apart. The Jesuits were
seated with the Nation of the Bear, in whose towns their missions were
established. Like all important councils, the session was held at night.
It was a strange scene. The light of the fires flickered aloft into the
smoky vault and among the soot-begrimed rafters of the great council-
house, [ 1 ] and cast an uncertain gleam on the wild and dejected throng
that filled the platforms and the floor. "I think I never saw anything
more lugubrious," writes Le Mercier: "they looked at each other like so
many corpses, or like men who already feel the terror of death. When
they spoke, it was only with sighs, each reckoning up the sick and dead
of his own family. All this was to excite each other to vomit poison
against us."

[ 1 It must have been the house of a chief. The Hurons, unlike some
other tribes, had no houses set apart for public occasions. ]

A grisly old chief, named Ontitarac, withered with age and stone-blind,
but renowned in past years for eloquence and counsel, opened the debate
in a loud, though tremulous voice. First he saluted each of the three
nations present, then each of the chiefs in turn,--congratulated them
that all were there assembled to deliberate on a subject of the last
importance to the public welfare, and exhorted them to give it a mature
and calm consideration. Next rose the chief whose office it was to
preside over the Feast of the Dead. He painted in dismal colors the
woful condition of the country, and ended with charging it all upon the
sorceries of the Jesuits. Another old chief followed him. "My brothers,"
he said, "you know well that I am a war-chief, and very rarely speak
except in councils of war; but I am compelled to speak now, since nearly
all the other chiefs are dead, and I must utter what is in my heart
before I follow them to the grave. Only two of my family are left alive,
and perhaps even these will not long escape the fury of the pest.
I have seen other diseases ravaging the country, but nothing that could
compare with this. In two or three moons we saw their end: but now we
have suffered for a year and more, and yet the evil does not abate.
And what is worst of all, we have not yet discovered its source."
Then, with words of studied moderation, alternating with bursts of angry
invective, he proceeded to accuse the Jesuits of causing, by their
sorceries, the unparalleled calamities that afflicted them; and in
support of his charge he adduced a prodigious mass of evidence. When he
had spent his eloquence, Brébeuf rose to reply, and in a few words
exposed the absurdities of his statements; whereupon another accuser
brought a new array of charges. A clamor soon arose from the whole
assembly, and they called upon Brébeuf with one voice to give up a
certain charmed cloth which was the cause of their miseries. In vain the
missionary protested that he had no such cloth. The clamor increased.

"If you will not believe me," said Brébeuf, "go to our house; search
everywhere; and if you are not sure which is the charm, take all our
clothing and all our cloth, and throw them into the lake."

"Sorcerers always talk in that way," was the reply.

"Then what will you have me say?" demanded Brébeuf.

"Tell us the cause of the pest."

Brébeuf replied to the best of his power, mingling his explanations with
instructions in Christian doctrine and exhortations to embrace the Faith.
He was continually interrupted; and the old chief, Ontitarac, still
called upon him to produce the charmed cloth. Thus the debate continued
till after midnight, when several of the assembly, seeing no prospect of
a termination, fell asleep, and others went away. One old chief, as he
passed out said to Brébeuf, "If some young man should split your head,
we should have nothing to say." The priest still continued to harangue
the diminished conclave on the necessity of obeying God and the danger of
offending Him, when the chief of Ossossané called out impatiently,
"What sort of men are these? They are always saying the same thing,
and repeating the same words a hundred times. They are never done with
telling us about their _Oki_, and what he demands and what he forbids,
and Paradise and Hell." [ The above account of the council is drawn from
Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1638, Chap. II. See also Bressani,
Relation Abrégée, 163. ]

"Here was the end of this miserable council," writes Le Mercier; . . .
"and if less evil came of it than was designed, we owe it, after God,
to the Most Holy Virgin, to whom we had made a vow of nine masses in
honor of her immaculate conception."

The Fathers had escaped for the time; but they were still in deadly
peril. They had taken pains to secure friends in private, and there were
those who were attached to their interests; yet none dared openly take
their part. The few converts they had lately made came to them in secret,
and warned them that their death was determined upon. Their house was
set on fire; in public, every face was averted from them; and a new
council was called to pronounce the decree of death. They appeared
before it with a front of such unflinching assurance, that their judges,
Indian-like, postponed the sentence. Yet it seemed impossible that they
should much longer escape. Brébeuf, therefore, wrote a letter of
farewell to his Superior, Le Jeune, at Quebec, and confided it to some
converts whom he could trust, to be carried by them to its destination.

"We are perhaps," he says, "about to give our blood and our lives in the
cause of our Master, Jesus Christ. It seems that His goodness will
accept this sacrifice, as regards me, in expiation of my great and
numberless sins, and that He will thus crown the past services and ardent
desires of all our Fathers here. . . . Blessed be His name forever,
that He has chosen us, among so many better than we, to aid him to bear
His cross in this land! In all things, His holy will be done!" He then
acquaints Le Jeune that he has directed the sacred vessels, and all else
belonging to the service of the altar, to be placed, in case of his death,
in the hands of Pierre, the convert whose baptism has been described,
and that especial care will be taken to preserve the dictionary and other
writings on the Huron language. The letter closes with a request for
masses and prayers.

[ The following is the conclusion of the letter (Le Mercier, Relation des
Hurons, 1638, 43.)

"En tout, sa sainte volonté soit faite; s'il veut que dés ceste heure
nous mourions, ô la bonne heure pour nous! s'il veut nous reseruer à
d'autres trauaux, qu'il soit beny; si vous entendez que Dieu ait couronné
nos petits trauaux, ou plustost nos desirs, benissez-le: car c'est pour
luy que nous desirons viure et mourir, et c'est luy qui nous en donne la
grace. Au reste si quelques-vns suruiuent, i'ay donné ordre de tout ce
qu'ils doiuent faire. I'ay esté d'aduis que nos Peres et nos domestiques
se retirent chez ceux qu'ils croyront estre leurs mei'leurs amis; i'ay
donné charge qu'on porte chez Pierre nostre premier Chrestien tout ce qui
est de la Sacristie, sur tout qu'on ait vn soin particulier de mettre en
lieu d'asseurance le Dictionnaire et tout ce que nous auons de la langue.
Pour moy, si Dieu me fait la grace d'aller au Ciel, ie prieray Dieu pour
eux, pour les pauures Hurons, et n'oublieray pas Vostre Reuerence.

"Apres tout, nous supplions V. R. et tous nos Peres de ne nous oublier en
leurs saincts Sacrifices et prieres, afin qu'en la vie et apres la mort,
il nous fasse misericorde; nous sommes tous en la vie et à l'Eternité,

"De vostre Reuerence tres-humbles et tres-affectionnez seruiteurs en
Nostre Seigneur,

"IEAN DE BREBEVF.
FRANÇOIS IOSEPH LE MERCIER.
PIERRE CHASTELLAIN.
CHARLES GARNIER.
PAVL RAGVENEAV.

"En la Residence de la Conception, à Ossossané,
ce 28 Octobre.

"I'ay laissé en la Residence de sainct Ioseph les Peres Pierre Pijart et
Isaac Iogves, dans les mesmes sentimens." ]

The imperilled Jesuits now took a singular, but certainly a very wise
step. They gave one of those farewell feasts--festins d'adieu--which
Huron custom enjoined on those about to die, whether in the course of
Nature or by public execution. Being interpreted, it was a declaration
that the priests knew their danger, and did not shrink from it. It might
have the effect of changing overawed friends into open advocates, and
even of awakening a certain sympathy in the breasts of an assembly on
whom a bold bearing could rarely fail of influence. The house was packed
with feasters, and Brébeuf addressed them as usual on his unfailing
themes of God, Paradise, and Hell. The throng listened in gloomy
silence; and each, when he had emptied his bowl, rose and departed,
leaving his entertainers in utter doubt as to his feelings and
intentions. From this time forth, however, the clouds that overhung the
Fathers became less dark and threatening. Voices were heard in their
defence, and looks were less constantly averted. They ascribed the
change to the intercession of St. Joseph, to whom they had vowed a nine
days' devotion. By whatever cause produced, the lapse of a week wrought
a hopeful improvement in their prospects; and when they went out of doors
in the morning, it was no longer with the expectation of having a hatchet
struck into their brains as they crossed the threshold.

[ "Tant y a que depuis le 6. de Nouembre que nous acheuasmes nos Messes
votiues son honneur, nous auons iouy d'vn repos incroyable, nons nous en
emerueillons nous-mesmes de iour en iour, quand nous considerons en quel
estat estoient nos affaires il n'y a que huict iours."--Le Mercier,
Relation des Hurons, 1638, 44. ]

The persecution of the Jesuits as sorcerers continued, in an intermittent
form, for years; and several of them escaped very narrowly. In a house
at Ossossané, a young Indian rushed suddenly upon François Du Peron,
and lifted his tomahawk to brain him, when a squaw caught his hand.
Paul Ragueneau wore a crucifix, from which hung the image of a skull.
An Indian, thinking it a charm, snatched it from him. The priest tried
to recover it, when the savage, his eyes glittering with murder,
brandished his hatchet to strike. Ragueneau stood motionless, waiting
the blow. His assailant forbore, and withdrew, muttering. Pierre
Chaumonot was emerging from a house at the Huron town called by the
Jesuits St. Michel, where he had just baptized a dying girl, when her
brother, standing hidden in the doorway, struck him on the head with a
stone. Chaumonot, severely wounded, staggered without falling, when the
Indian sprang upon him with his tomahawk. The bystanders arrested the
blow. François Le Mercier, in the midst of a crowd of Indians in a house
at the town called St. Louis, was assailed by a noted chief, who rushed
in, raving like a madman, and, in a torrent of words, charged upon him
all the miseries of the nation. Then, snatching a brand from the fire,
he shook it in the Jesuit's face, and told him that he should be burned
alive. Le Mercier met him with looks as determined as his own, till,
abashed at his undaunted front and bold denunciations, the Indian stood
confounded.

[ The above incidents are from Le Mercier, Lalemant, Bressani, the
autobiography of Chaumonot, the unpublished writings of Garnier, and the
ancient manuscript volume of memoirs of the early Canadian missionaries,
at St. Mary's College, Montreal. ]

The belief that their persecutions were owing to the fury of the Devil,
driven to desperation by the home-thrusts he had received at their hands,
was an unfailing consolation to the priests. "Truly," writes Le Mercier,
"it is an unspeakable happiness for us, in the midst of this barbarism,
to hear the roaring of the demons, and to see Earth and Hell raging
against a handful of men who will not even defend themselves." [ 1 ]
In all the copious records of this dark period, not a line gives occasion
to suspect that one of this loyal band flinched or hesitated. The iron
Brébeuf, the gentle Garnier, the all-enduring Jogues, the enthusiastic
Chaumonot, Lalemant, Le Mercier, Chatelain, Daniel, Pijart, Ragueneau,
Du Peron, Poncet, Le Moyne,--one and all bore themselves with a tranquil
boldness, which amazed the Indians and enforced their respect.

[ 1 "C'est veritablement un bonheur indicible pour nous, au milieu de
cette barbarie, d'entendre les rugissemens des demons, & de voir tout
l'Enfer & quasi tous les hommes animez & remplis de fureur contre une
petite poignée de gens qui ne voudroient pas se defendre."--Relation des
Hurons, 1640, 31 (Cramoisy). ]

Father Jerome Lalemant, in his journal of 1639, is disposed to draw an
evil augury for the mission from the fact that as yet no priest had been
put to death, inasmuch as it is a received maxim that the blood of the
martyrs is the seed of the Church. [ 1 ] He consoles himself with the
hope that the daily life of the missionaries may be accepted as a living
martyrdom; since abuse and threats without end, the smoke, fleas, filth,
and dogs of the Indian lodges,--which are, he says, little images of
Hell,--cold, hunger, and ceaseless anxiety, and all these continued for
years, are a portion to which many might prefer the stroke of a tomahawk.
Reasonable as the Father's hope may be, its expression proved needless in
the sequel; for the Huron church was not destined to suffer from a lack
of martyrdom in any form.

[ 1 "Nous auons quelque fois douté, sçauoir si on pouuoit esperer la
conuersion de ce païs sans qu'il y eust effusion de sang: le principe
reçeu ce semble dans l'Eglise de Dieu, que le sang des Martyrs est la
semence des Chrestiens, me faisoit conclure pour lors, que cela n'estoit
pas à esperer, voire mesme qu'il n'étoit pas à souhaiter, consideré la
gloire qui reuient à Dieu de la constance des Martyrs, du sang desquels
tout le reste de la terre ayant tantost esté abreuué, ce seroit vne
espece de malediction, que ce quartier du monde ne participast point au
bonheur d'auoir contribué à l'esclat de ceste gloire."--Lalemant,
Relation des Hurons, 1639, 56, 57. ]




CHAPTER XI

1638-1640.

PRIEST AND PAGAN.


DU PERON'S JOURNEY.--DAILY LIFE OF THE JESUITS.--
THEIR MISSIONARY EXCURSIONS.--CONVERTS AT OSSOSSANÉ.--
MACHINERY OF CONVERSION.--CONDITIONS OF BAPTISM.--BACKSLIDERS.--
THE CONVERTS AND THEIR COUNTRYMEN.--THE CANNIBALS AT ST. JOSEPH.


We have already touched on the domestic life of the Jesuits. That we may
the better know them, we will follow one of their number on his journey
towards the scene of his labors, and observe what awaited him on his
arrival.

Father François Pu Peron came up the Ottawa in a Huron canoe in September,
1638, and was well treated by the Indian owner of the vessel. Lalemant
and Le Moyne, who had set out from Three Rivers before him, did not fare
so well. The former was assailed by an Algonquin of Allumette Island,
who tried to strangle him in revenge for the death of a child, which a
Frenchman in the employ of the Jesuits had lately bled, but had failed to
restore to health by the operation. Le Moyne was abandoned by his Huron
conductors, and remained for a fortnight by the bank of the river,
with a French attendant who supported him by hunting. Another Huron,
belonging to the flotilla that carried Du Peron, then took him into his
canoe; but, becoming tired of him, was about to leave him on a rock in
the river, when his brother priest bribed the savage with a blanket to
carry him to his journey's end.

It was midnight, on the twenty-ninth of September, when Du Peron landed
on the shore of Thunder Bay, after paddling without rest since one
o'clock of the preceding morning. The night was rainy, and Ossossané was
about fifteen miles distant. His Indian companions were impatient to
reach their towns; the rain prevented the kindling of a fire; while the
priest, who for a long time had not heard mass, was eager to renew his
communion as soon as possible. Hence, tired and hungry as he was,
he shouldered his sack, and took the path for Ossossané without breaking
his fast. He toiled on, half-spent, amid the ceaseless pattering,
trickling, and whispering of innumerable drops among innumerable leaves,
till, as day dawned, he reached a clearing, and descried through the
mists a cluster of Huron houses. Faint and bedrenched, he entered the
principal one, and was greeted with the monosyllable "Shay!"--"Welcome!"
A squaw spread a mat for him by the fire, roasted four ears of Indian
corn before the coals, baked two squashes in the embers, ladled from her
kettle a dish of sagamite, and offered them to her famished guest.
Missionaries seem to have been a novelty at this place; for, while the
Father breakfasted, a crowd, chiefly of children, gathered about him,
and stared at him in silence. One examined the texture of his cassock;
another put on his hat; a third took the shoes from his feet, and tried
them on her own. Du Peron requited his entertainers with a few trinkets,
and begged, by signs, a guide to Ossossané. An Indian accordingly set
out with him, and conducted him to the mission-house, which he reached at
six o'clock in the evening.

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