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The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century

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Here he found a warm welcome, and little other refreshment. In respect
to the commodities of life, the Jesuits were but a step in advance of the
Indians. Their house, though well ventilated by numberless crevices in
its bark walls, always smelt of smoke, and, when the wind was in certain
quarters, was filled with it to suffocation. At their meals, the Fathers
sat on logs around the fire, over which their kettle was slung in the
Indian fashion. Each had his wooden platter, which, from the difficulty
of transportation, was valued, in the Huron country, at the price of a
robe of beaver-skin, or a hundred francs. [ "Nos plats, quoyque de bois,
nous coûtent plus cher que Les vôtres; ils sont de la valeur d'une robe
de castor, c'est à dire cent francs."--Lettre du P. Du Peron à son Frère,
27 Avril, 1639.--The Father's appraisement seems a little questionable. ]
Their food consisted of sagamite, or "mush," made of pounded Indian-corn,
boiled with scraps of smoked fish. Chaumonot compares it to the paste
used for papering the walls of houses. The repast was occasionally
varied by a pumpkin or squash baked in the ashes, or, in the season,
by Indian corn roasted in the ear. They used no salt whatever. They
could bring their cumbrous pictures, ornaments and vestments through the
savage journey of the Ottawa; but they could not bring the common
necessaries of life. By day, they read and studied by the light that
streamed in through the large smoke-holes in the roof,--at night, by the
blaze of the fire. Their only candles were a few of wax, for the altar.
They cultivated a patch of ground, but raised nothing on it except wheat
for making the sacramental bread. Their food was supplied by the Indians,
to whom they gave, in return, cloth, knives, awls, needles, and various
trinkets. Their supply of wine for the Eucharist was so scanty, that
they limited themselves to four or five drops for each mass.

[ The above particulars are drawn from a long letter of François Du Peron
to his brother, Joseph-Imbert Du Peron, dated at La Conception
(Ossossané), April 27, 1639, and from a letter, equally long, of
Chaumonot to Father Philippe Nappi, dated Du Pays des Hurons, May 26,
1640. Both are in Carayon. These private letters of the Jesuits,
of which many are extant, in some cases written on birch-bark, are
invaluable as illustrations of the subject.

The Jesuits soon learned to make wine from wild grapes. Those in Maine
and Acadia, at a later period, made good candles from the waxy fruit of
the shrub known locally as the "bayberry." ]

Their life was regulated with a conventual strictness. At four in the
morning, a bell roused them from the sheets of bark on which they slept.
Masses, private devotions, reading religious books, and breakfasting,
filled the time until eight, when they opened their door and admitted the
Indians. As many of these proved intolerable nuisances, they took what
Lalemant calls the _honnête_ liberty of turning out the most intrusive and
impracticable,--an act performed with all tact and courtesy, and rarely
taken in dudgeon. Having thus winnowed their company, they catechized
those that remained, as opportunity offered. In the intervals, the
guests squatted by the fire and smoked their pipes.

As among the Spartan virtues of the Hurons that of thieving was
especially conspicuous, it was necessary that one or more of the Fathers
should remain on guard at the house all day. The rest went forth on
their missionary labors, baptizing and instructing, as we have seen.
To each priest who could speak Huron [ 1 ] was assigned a certain number
of houses,--in some instances, as many as forty; and as these often had
five or six fires, with two families to each, his spiritual flock was as
numerous as it was intractable. It was his care to see that none of the
number died without baptism, and by every means in his power to commend
the doctrines of his faith to the acceptance of those in health.

[ 1 At the end of the year 1638, there were seven priests who spoke
Huron, and three who had begun to learn it. ]

At dinner, which was at two o'clock, grace was said in Huron,--for the
benefit of the Indians present,--and a chapter of the Bible was read
aloud during the meal. At four or five, according to the season, the
Indians were dismissed, the door closed, and the evening spent in writing,
reading, studying the language, devotion, and conversation on the affairs
of the mission.

The local missions here referred to embraced Ossossané and the villages
of the neighborhood; but the priests by no means confined themselves
within these limits. They made distant excursions, two in company,
until every house in every Huron town had heard the annunciation of the
new doctrine. On these journeys, they carried blankets or large mantles
at their backs, for sleeping in at night, besides a supply of needles,
awls, beads, and other small articles, to pay for their lodging and
entertainment: for the Hurons, hospitable without stint to each other,
expected full compensation from the Jesuits.

At Ossossané, the house of the Jesuits no longer served the double
purpose of dwelling and chapel. In 1638, they had in their pay twelve
artisans and laborers, sent up from Quebec, [ Du Peron in Carayon,
173. ] who had built, before the close of the year, a chapel of wood.
[ "La chapelle est faite d'une charpente bien jolie, semblable presque en
façon et grandeur, à notre chapelle de St. Julien."--Ibid., 183. ]
Hither they removed their pictures and ornaments; and here, in winter,
several fires were kept burning, for the comfort of the half-naked
converts. [ Lalemant, Relation des Hurons, 1639, 62. ] Of these they
now had at Ossossané about sixty,--a large, though evidently not a very
solid nucleus for the Huron church,--and they labored hard and anxiously
to confirm and multiply them. Of a Sunday morning in winter, one could
have seen them coming to mass, often from a considerable distance,
"as naked," says Lalemant, "as your hand, except a skin over their backs
like a mantle, and, in the coldest weather, a few skins around their feet
and legs." They knelt, mingled with the French mechanics, before the
altar,--very awkwardly at first, for the posture was new to them,--and
all received the sacrament together: a spectacle which, as the missionary
chronicler declares, repaid a hundred times all the labor of their
conversion. [ Lalemant, Relation des Hurons, 1639, 62. ]

Some of the principal methods of conversion are curiously illustrated in
a letter written by Garnier to a friend in France. "Send me," he says,
"a picture of Christ without a beard." Several Virgins are also
requested, together with a variety of souls in perdition--âmes damnées--
most of them to be mounted in a portable form. Particular directions are
given with respect to the demons, dragons, flames, and other essentials
of these works of art. Of souls in bliss--âmes bienheureuses--he thinks
that one will be enough. All the pictures must be in full face, not in
profile; and they must look directly at the beholder, with open eyes.
The colors should be bright; and there must be no flowers or animals,
as these distract the attention of the Indians.

[ Garnier, Lettre 17me, MS. These directions show an excellent knowledge
of Indian peculiarities. The Indian dislike of a beard is well known.
Catlin, the painter, once caused a fatal quarrel among a party of Sioux,
by representing one of them in profile, whereupon he was jibed by a rival
as being but half a man. ]

The first point with the priests was of course to bring the objects of
their zeal to an acceptance of the fundamental doctrines of the Roman
Church; but, as the mind of the savage was by no means that beautiful
blank which some have represented it, there was much to be erased as well
as to be written. They must renounce a host of superstitions, to which
they were attached with a strange tenacity, or which may rather be said
to have been ingrained in their very natures. Certain points of
Christian morality were also strongly urged by the missionaries, who
insisted that the convert should take but one wife, and not cast her off
without grave cause, and that he should renounce the gross license almost
universal among the Hurons. Murder, cannibalism, and several other
offences, were also forbidden. Yet, while laboring at the work of
conversion with an energy never surpassed, and battling against the
powers of darkness with the mettle of paladins, the Jesuits never had the
folly to assume towards the Indians a dictatorial or overbearing tone.
Gentleness, kindness, and patience were the rule of their intercourse.
[ 1 ] They studied the nature of the savage, and conformed themselves to
it with an admirable tact. Far from treating the Indian as an alien and
barbarian, they would fain have adopted him as a countryman; and they
proposed to the Hurons that a number of young Frenchmen should settle
among them, and marry their daughters in solemn form. The listeners were
gratified at an overture so flattering. "But what is the use," they
demanded, "of so much ceremony? If the Frenchmen want our women, they
are welcome to come and take them whenever they please, as they always
used to do." [ Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637, 160. ]

[ 1 The following passage from the "Divers Sentimens," before cited,
will illustrate this point. "Pour conuertir les Sauuages, il n'y faut
pas tant de science que de bonté et vertu bien solide. Les quatre
Elemens d'vn homme Apostolique en la Nouuelle France sont l'Affabilité,
l'Humilité, la Patience et vne Charité genereuse. Le zele trop ardent
brusle plus qu'il n'eschauffe, et gaste tout; il faut vne grande
magnanimité et condescendance, pour attirer peu à peu ces Sauuages.
Ils n'entendent pas bien nostre Theologie, mais ils entendent
parfaictement bien nostre humilité et nostre affabilité, et se laissent
gaigner."

So too Brébeuf, in a letter to Vitelleschi, General of the Jesuits (see
Carayon, 163): "Ce qu'il faut demander, avant tout, des ouvriers destinés
à cette mission, c'est une douceur inaltérable et une patience à toute
épreuve." ]

The Fathers are well agreed that their difficulties did not arise from
any natural defect of understanding on the part of the Indians, who,
according to Chaumonot, were more intelligent than the French peasantry,
and who, in some instances, showed in their way a marked capacity.
It was the inert mass of pride, sensuality, indolence, and superstition
that opposed the march of the Faith, and in which the Devil lay
intrenched as behind impregnable breastworks.

[ In this connection, the following specimen of Indian reasoning is worth
noting. At the height of the pestilence, a Huron said to one of the
priests, "I see plainly that your God is angry with us because we will
not believe and obey him. Ihonatiria, where you first taught his word,
is entirely ruined. Then you came here to Ossossané, and we would not
listen; so Ossossané is ruined too. This year you have been all through
our country, and found scarcely any who would do what God commands;
therefore the pestilence is everywhere." After premises so hopeful,
the Fathers looked for a satisfactory conclusion; but the Indian
proceeded--"My opinion is, that we ought to shut you out from all the
houses, and stop our ears when you speak of God, so that we cannot hear.
Then we shall not be so guilty of rejecting the truth, and he will not
punish us so cruelly."--Lalemant, Relation des Hurons, 1640, 80. ]

It soon became evident that it was easier to make a convert than to keep
him. Many of the Indians clung to the idea that baptism was a safeguard
against pestilence and misfortune; and when the fallacy of this notion
was made apparent, their zeal cooled. Their only amusements consisted of
feasts, dances, and games, many of which were, to a greater or less
degree, of a superstitious character; and as the Fathers could rarely
prove to their own satisfaction the absence of the diabolic element in
any one of them, they proscribed the whole indiscriminately, to the
extreme disgust of the neophyte. His countrymen, too, beset him with
dismal prognostics: as, "You will kill no more game,"--"All your hair
will come out before spring," and so forth. Various doubts also assailed
him with regard to the substantial advantages of his new profession; and
several converts were filled with anxiety in view of the probable want of
tobacco in Heaven, saying that they could not do without it. [ Lalemant,
Relation des Hurons, 1639, 80. ] Nor was it pleasant to these incipient
Christians, as they sat in class listening to the instructions of their
teacher, to find themselves and him suddenly made the targets of a shower
of sticks, snowballs, corn-cobs, and other rubbish, flung at them by a
screeching rabble of vagabond boys. [ Ibid., 78. ]

Yet, while most of the neophytes demanded an anxious and diligent
cultivation, there were a few of excellent promise; and of one or two
especially, the Fathers, in the fulness of their satisfaction, assure us
again and again "that they were savage only in name."

[ From June, 1639, to June, 1640, about a thousand persons were baptized.
Of these, two hundred and sixty were infants, and many more were
children. Very many died soon after baptism. Of the whole number,
less than twenty were baptized in health,--a number much below that of
the preceding year.

The following is a curious case of precocious piety. It is that of a
child at St. Joseph. "Elle n'a que deux ans, et fait joliment le signe
de la croix, et prend elle-même de l'eau bénite; et une fois se mit à
crier, sortant de la Chapelle, à cause que sa mère qui la portoit ne lui
avoit donné le loisir d'en prendre. Il l'a fallu reporter en prendre."--
Lettres de Garnier, MSS. ]

As the town of Ihonatiria, where the Jesuits had made their first abode,
was ruined by the pestilence, the mission established there, and known by
the name of St. Joseph, was removed, in the summer of 1638, to
Teanaustayé, a large town at the foot of a range of hills near the
southern borders of the Huron territory. The Hurons, this year, had had
unwonted successes in their war with the Iroquois, and had taken, at
various times, nearly a hundred prisoners. Many of these were brought to
the seat of the new mission of St. Joseph, and put to death with
frightful tortures, though not before several had been converted and
baptized. The torture was followed, in spite of the remonstrances of the
priests, by those cannibal feasts customary with the Hurons on such
occasions. Once, when the Fathers had been strenuous in their
denunciations, a hand of the victim, duly prepared, was flung in at their
door, as an invitation to join in the festivity. As the owner of the
severed member had been baptized, they dug a hole in their chapel,
and buried it with solemn rites of sepulture. [ Lalemant, Relation des
Hurons, 1639, 70. ]




CHAPTER XII.

1639, 1640.

THE TOBACCO NATION.--THE NEUTRALS.


A CHANGE OF PLAN.--SAINTE MARIE.--MISSION OF THE TOBACCO NATION.--
WINTER JOURNEYING.--RECEPTION OF THE MISSIONARIES.--
SUPERSTITIOUS TERRORS.--PERIL OF GARNIER AND JOGUES.--
MISSION OF THE NEUTRALS.--HURON INTRIGUES.--MIRACLES.--
FURY OF THE INDIANS.--INTERVENTION OF SAINT MICHAEL.--
RETURN TO SAINTE MARIE.--INTREPIDITY OF THE PRIESTS.--
THEIR MENTAL EXALTATION.


It had been the first purpose of the Jesuits to form permanent missions
in each of the principal Huron towns; but, before the close of the year
1639, the difficulties and risks of this scheme had become fully
apparent. They resolved, therefore, to establish one central station,
to be a base of operations, and, as it were, a focus, whence the light of
the Faith should radiate through all the wilderness around. It was to
serve at once as residence, fort, magazine, hospital, and convent.
Hence the priests would set forth on missionary expeditions far and near;
and hither they might retire, as to an asylum, in times of sickness or
extreme peril. Here the neophytes could be gathered together, safe from
perverting influences; and here in time a Christian settlement, Hurons
mingled with Frenchmen, might spring up and thrive under the shadow of
the cross.

The site of the new station was admirably chosen. The little river Wye
flows from the southward into the Matchedash Bay of Lake Huron, and,
at about a mile from its mouth, passes through a small lake. The Jesuits
made choice of the right bank of the Wye, where it issues from this
lake,--gained permission to build from the Indians, though not without
difficulty,--and began their labors with an abundant energy, and a very
deficient supply of workmen and tools. The new establishment was called
Sainte Marie. The house at Teanaustayé, and the house and chapel at
Ossossané, were abandoned, and all was concentrated at this spot.
On one hand, it had a short water communication with Lake Huron; and on
the other, its central position gave the readiest access to every part of
the Huron territory.

During the summer before, the priests had made a survey of their field of
action, visited all the Huron towns, and christened each of them with the
name of a saint. This heavy draft on the calendar was followed by
another, for the designation of the nine towns of the neighboring and
kindred people of the Tobacco Nation. [ See Introduction. ] The Huron
towns were portioned into four districts, while those of the Tobacco
Nation formed a fifth, and each district was assigned to the charge of
two or more priests. In November and December, they began their
missionary excursions,--for the Indians were now gathered in their
settlements,--and journeyed on foot through the denuded forests, in mud
and snow, bearing on their backs the vessels and utensils necessary for
the service of the altar.

The new and perilous mission of the Tobacco Nation fell to Garnier and
Jogues. They were well chosen; and yet neither of them was robust by
nature, in body or mind, though Jogues was noted for personal activity.
The Tobacco Nation lay at the distance of a two days' journey from the
Huron towns, among the mountains at the head of Nottawassaga Bay.
The two missionaries tried to find a guide at Ossossané; but none would
go with them, and they set forth on their wild and unknown pilgrimage
alone.

The forests were full of snow; and the soft, moist flakes were still
falling thickly, obscuring the air, beplastering the gray trunks,
weighing to the earth the boughs of spruce and pine, and hiding every
footprint of the narrow path. The Fathers missed their way, and toiled
on till night, shaking down at every step from the burdened branches a
shower of fleecy white on their black cassocks. Night overtook them in a
spruce swamp. Here they made a fire with great difficulty, cut the
evergreen boughs, piled them for a bed, and lay down. The storm
presently ceased; and, "praised be God," writes one of the travellers,
"we passed a very good night." [ Jogues and Garnier in Lalemant, Relation
des Hurons, 1640, 95. ]

In the morning they breakfasted on a morsel of corn bread, and, resuming
their journey, fell in with a small party of Indians, whom they followed
all day without food. At eight in the evening they reached the first
Tobacco town, a miserable cluster of bark cabins, hidden among forests
and half buried in snow-drifts, where the savage children, seeing the two
black apparitions, screamed that Famine and the Pest were coming.
Their evil fame had gone before them. They were unwelcome guests;
nevertheless, shivering and famished as they were, in the cold and
darkness, they boldly pushed their way into one of these dens of
barbarism. It was precisely like a Huron house. Five or six fires
blazed on the earthen floor, and around them were huddled twice that
number of families, sitting, crouching, standing, or flat on the ground;
old and young, women and men, children and dogs, mingled pell-mell.
The scene would have been a strange one by daylight: it was doubly
strange by the flicker and glare of the lodge-fires. Scowling brows,
sidelong looks of distrust and fear, the screams of scared children,
the scolding of squaws, the growling of wolfish dogs,--this was the
greeting of the strangers. The chief man of the household treated them
at first with the decencies of Indian hospitality; but when he saw them
kneeling in the litter and ashes at their devotions, his suppressed fears
found vent, and he began a loud harangue, addressed half to them and half
to the Indians. "Now, what are these _okies_ doing? They are making
charms to kill us, and destroy all that the pest has spared in this house.
I heard that they were sorcerers; and now, when it is too late, I believe
it." [ Lalemant, Relation des Hurons, 1640, 96. ] It is wonderful that
the priests escaped the tomahawk. Nowhere is the power of courage, faith,
and an unflinching purpose more strikingly displayed than in the record
of these missions.

In other Tobacco towns their reception was much the same; but at the
largest, called by them St. Peter and St. Paul, they fared worse.
They reached it on a winter afternoon. Every door of its capacious bark
houses was closed against them; and they heard the squaws within calling
on the young men to go out and split their heads, while children screamed
abuse at the black-robed sorcerers. As night approached, they left the
town, when a band of young men followed them, hatchet in hand, to put
them to death. Darkness, the forest, and the mountain favored them; and,
eluding their pursuers, they escaped. Thus began the mission of the
Tobacco Nation.

In the following November, a yet more distant and perilous mission was
begun. Brébeuf and Chaumonot set out for the Neutral Nation. This
fierce people, as we have already seen, occupied that part of Canada
which lies immediately north of Lake Erie, while a wing of their
territory extended across the Niagara into Western New York. [ 1 ]
In their athletic proportions, the ferocity of their manners, and the
extravagance of their superstitions, no American tribe has ever exceeded
them. They carried to a preposterous excess the Indian notion, that
insanity is endowed with a mysterious and superhuman power. Their
country was full of pretended maniacs, who, to propitiate their guardian
spirits, or _okies_, and acquire the mystic virtue which pertained to
madness, raved stark naked through the villages, scattering the brands of
the lodge-fires, and upsetting everything in their way.

[ 1 Introduction.--The river Niagara was at this time, 1640, well known
to the Jesuits, though none of them had visited it. Lalemant speaks of
it as the "famous river of this nation" (the Neutrals). The following
translation, from his Relation of 1641, shows that both Lake Ontario and
Lake Erie had already taken their present names.

"This river" (the Niagara) "is the same by which our great lake of the
Hurons, or Fresh Sea, discharges itself, in the first place, into Lake
Erie (le lac d'Erié), or the Lake of the Cat Nation. Then it enters the
territories of the Neutral Nation, and takes the name of Onguiaahra
(Niagara), until it discharges itself into Ontario, or the Lake of
St. Louis; whence at last issues the river which passes before Quebec,
and is called the St. Lawrence." He makes no allusion to the cataract,
which is first mentioned as follows by Ragueneau, in the Relation of 1648.

"Nearly south of this same Neutral Nation there is a great lake, about
two hundred leagues in circuit, named Erie (Erié), which is formed by the
discharge of the Fresh Sea, and which precipitates itself by a cataract
of frightful height into a third lake, named Ontario, which we call Lake
St. Louis."--Relation des Hurons, 1648, 46. ]

The two priests left Sainte Marie on the second of November, found a
Huron guide at St. Joseph, and, after a dreary march of five days through
the forest, reached the first Neutral town. Advancing thence, they
visited in turn eighteen others; and their progress was a storm of
maledictions. Brébeuf especially was accounted the most pestilent of
sorcerers. The Hurons, restrained by a superstitious awe, and unwilling
to kill the priests, lest they should embroil themselves with the French
at Quebec, conceived that their object might be safely gained by stirring
up the Neutrals to become their executioners. To that end, they sent two
emissaries to the Neutral towns, who, calling the chiefs and young
warriors to a council, denounced the Jesuits as destroyers of the human
race, and made their auditors a gift of nine French hatchets on condition
that they would put them to death. It was now that Brébeuf, fully
conscious of the danger, half starved and half frozen, driven with
revilings from every door, struck and spit upon by pretended maniacs,
beheld in a vision that great cross, which as we have seen, moved onward
through the air, above the wintry forests that stretched towards the land
of the Iroquois. [ See ante, chapter 9 second last paragraph (page 109). ]

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