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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 ancient country of the Hurons is now the northern and eastern portion
of Simcoe County, Canada West, and is embraced within the peninsula
formed by the Nottawassaga and Matchedash Bays of Lake Huron, the River
Severn, and Lake Simcoe. Its area was small,--its population
comparatively large. In the year 1639 the Jesuits made an enumeration of
all its villages, dwellings, and families. The result showed thirty-two
villages and hamlets, with seven hundred dwellings, about four thousand
families, and twelve thousand adult persons, or a total population of at
least twenty thousand.

[ Lalemant, Relation des Hurons, 1640, 88 (Cramoisy). His words are,
"de feux enuiron deux mille, et enuiron douze mille personnes." There
were two families to every fire. That by "personnes" adults only are
meant cannot be doubted, as the Relations abound in incidental evidence
of a total population far exceeding twelve thousand. A Huron family
usually numbered from five to eight persons. The number of the Huron
towns changed from year to year. Champlain and Le Caron in 1615,
reckoned them at seventeen or eighteen, with a population of about ten
thousand, meaning, no doubt, adults. Brébeuf, in 1635, found twenty
villages, and, as he thinks, thirty thousand souls. Both Le Mercier and
De Quen, as well as Dollier de Casson and the anonymous author of the
Relation of 1660, state the population at from thirty to thirty-five
thousand. Since the time of Champlain's visit, various kindred tribes or
fragments of tribes had been incorporated with the Hurons, thus more than
balancing the ravages of a pestilence which had decimated them. ]

The region whose boundaries we have given was an alternation of meadows
and deep forests, interlaced with footpaths leading from town to town.
Of these towns, some were fortified, but the greater number were open and
defenceless. They were of a construction common to all tribes of
Iroquois lineage, and peculiar to them. Nothing similar exists at the
present day. [ The permanent bark villages of the Dahcotah of the
St. Peter's are the nearest modern approach to the Huron towns. The
whole Huron country abounds with evidences of having been occupied by a
numerous population. "On a close inspection of the forest," Dr. Taché
writes to me, "the greatest part of it seems to have been cleared at
former periods, and almost the only places bearing the character of the
primitive forest are the low grounds." ] They covered a space of from
one to ten acres, the dwellings clustering together with little or no
pretension to order. In general, these singular structures were about
thirty or thirty-five feet in length, breadth, and height; but many were
much larger, and a few were of prodigious length. In some of the
villages there were dwellings two hundred and forty feet long, though in
breadth and height they did not much exceed the others. [ Brébeuf,
Relation des Hurons, 1635, 31. Champlain says that he saw them, in 1615,
more than thirty fathoms long; while Vanderdonck reports the length,
from actual measurement, of an Iroquois house, at a hundred and eighty
yards, or five hundred and forty feet! ] In shape they were much like an
arbor overarching a garden-walk. Their frame was of tall and strong
saplings, planted in a double row to form the two sides of the house,
bent till they met, and lashed together at the top. To these other poles
were bound transversely, and the whole was covered with large sheets of
the bark of the oak, elm, spruce, or white cedar, overlapping like the
shingles of a roof, upon which, for their better security, split poles
were made fast with cords of linden bark. At the crown of the arch,
along the entire length of the house, an opening a foot wide was left for
the admission of light and the escape of smoke. At each end was a close
porch of similar construction; and here were stowed casks of bark,
filled with smoked fish, Indian corn, and other stores not liable to
injury from frost. Within, on both sides, were wide scaffolds, four feet
from the floor, and extending the entire length of the house, like the
seats of a colossal omnibus. [ Often, especially among the Iroquois,
the internal arrangement was different. The scaffolds or platforms were
raised only a foot from the earthen floor, and were only twelve or
thirteen feet long, with intervening spaces, where the occupants stored
their family provisions and other articles. Five or six feet above was
another platform, often occupied by children. One pair of platforms
sufficed for a family, and here during summer they slept pellmell,
in the clothes they wore by day, and without pillows. ] These were
formed of thick sheets of bark, supported by posts and transverse poles,
and covered with mats and skins. Here, in summer, was the sleeping place
of the inmates, and the space beneath served for storage of their
firewood. The fires were on the ground, in a line down the middle of the
house. Each sufficed for two families, who, in winter, slept closely
packed around them. Above, just under the vaulted roof, were a great
number of poles, like the perches of a hen-roost, and here were suspended
weapons, clothing, skins, and ornaments. Here, too, in harvest time,
the squaws hung the ears of unshelled corn, till the rude abode, through
all its length, seemed decked with a golden tapestry. In general,
however, its only lining was a thick coating of soot from the smoke of
fires with neither draught, chimney, nor window. So pungent was the
smoke, that it produced inflammation of the eyes, attended in old age
with frequent blindness. Another annoyance was the fleas; and a third,
the unbridled and unruly children. Privacy there was none. The house
was one chamber, sometimes lodging more than twenty families.

[ One of the best descriptions of the Huron and Iroquois houses is that
of Sagard, Voyage des Hurons, 118. See also Champlain (1627), 78;
Brébeuf, Relation des Hurons, 1635, 31; Vanderdonck, New Netherlands,
in N. Y. Hist. Coll., Second Ser., I. 196; Lafitau, Mœurs des Sauvages,
II. 10. The account given by Cartier of the houses he saw at Montreal
corresponds with the above. He describes them as about fifty yards long.
In this case, there were partial partitions for the several families,
and a sort of loft above. Many of the Iroquois and Huron houses were of
similar construction, the partitions being at the sides only, leaving a
wide passage down the middle of the house. Bartram, Observations on a
Journey from Pennsylvania to Canada, gives a description and plan of the
Iroquois Council-House in 1751, which was of this construction. Indeed,
the Iroquois preserved this mode of building, in all essential points,
down to a recent period. They usually framed the sides of their houses
on rows of upright posts, arched with separate poles for the roof.
The Hurons, no doubt, did the same in their larger structures. For a
door, there was a sheet of bark hung on wooden hinges, or suspended by
cords from above.

On the site of Huron towns which were destroyed by fire, the size, shape,
and arrangement of the houses can still, in some instances, be traced by
remains in the form of charcoal, as well as by the charred bones and
fragments of pottery found among the ashes.

Dr. Taché, after a zealous and minute examination of the Huron country,
extended through five years, writes to me as follows. "From the remains
I have found, I can vouch for the scrupulous correctness of our ancient
writers. With the aid of their indications and descriptions, I have been
able to detect the sites of villages in the midst of the forest, and by
time study, in situ, of archæological monuments, small as they are,
to understand and confirm their many interesting details of the habits,
and especially the funeral rites, of these extraordinary tribes." ]

He who entered on a winter night beheld a strange spectacle: the vista of
fires lighting the smoky concave; the bronzed groups encircling
each,--cooking, eating, gambling, or amusing themselves with idle
badinage; shrivelled squaws, hideous with threescore years of hardship;
grisly old warriors, scarred with Iroquois war-clubs; young aspirants,
whose honors were yet to be won; damsels gay with ochre and wampum;
restless children pellmell with restless dogs. Now a tongue of resinous
flame painted each wild feature in vivid light; now the fitful gleam
expired, and the group vanished from sight, as their nation has vanished
from history.

The fortified towns of the Hurons were all on the side exposed to
Iroquois incursions. The fortifications of all this family of tribes
were, like their dwellings, in essential points alike. A situation was
chosen favorable to defence,--the bank of a lake, the crown of a
difficult hill, or a high point of land in the fork of confluent rivers.
A ditch, several feet deep, was dug around the village, and the earth
thrown up on the inside. Trees were then felled by an alternate process
of burning and hacking the burnt part with stone hatchets, and by similar
means were cut into lengths to form palisades. These were planted on the
embankment, in one, two, three, or four concentric rows,--those of each
row inclining towards those of the other rows until they intersected.
The whole was lined within, to the height of a man, with heavy sheets of
bark; and at the top, where the palisades crossed, was a gallery of
timber for the defenders, together with wooden gutters, by which streams
of water could be poured down on fires kindled by the enemy. Magazines
of stones, and rude ladders for mounting the rampart, completed the
provision for defence. The forts of the Iroquois were stronger and more
elaborate than those of the Hurons; and to this day large districts in
New York are marked with frequent remains of their ditches and
embankments.

[ There is no mathematical regularity in these works. In their form,
the builders were guided merely by the nature of the ground. Frequently
a precipice or river sufficed for partial defence, and the line of
embankment occurs only on one or two sides. In one instance, distinct
traces of a double line of palisades are visible along the embankment.
(See Squier, Aboriginal Monuments of New York, 38.) It is probable that
the palisade was planted first, and the earth heaped around it. Indeed,
this is stated by the Tuscarora Indian, Cusick, in his curious History of
the Six Nations (Iroquois). Brébeuf says, that as early as 1636 the
Jesuits taught the Hurons to build rectangular palisaded works, with
bastions. The Iroquois adopted the same practice at an early period,
omitting the ditch and embankment; and it is probable, that, even in
their primitive defences, the palisades, where the ground was of a nature
to yield easily to their rude implements, were planted simply in holes
dug for the purpose. Such seems to have been the Iroquois fortress
attacked by Champlain in 1615.

The Muscogees, with other Southern tribes, and occasionally the
Algonquins, had palisaded towns; but the palisades were usually but a
single row, planted upright. The tribes of Virginia occasionally
surrounded their dwellings with a triple palisade.--Beverly, History of
Virginia, 149. ]

Among these tribes there was no individual ownership of land, but each
family had for the time exclusive right to as much as it saw fit to
cultivate. The clearing process--a most toilsome one--consisted in
hacking off branches, piling them together with brushwood around the foot
of the standing trunks, and setting fire to the whole. The squaws,
working with their hoes of wood and bone among the charred stumps,
sowed their corn, beans, pumpkins, tobacco, sunflowers, and Huron hemp.
No manure was used; but, at intervals of from ten to thirty years,
when the soil was exhausted, and firewood distant, the village was
abandoned and a new one built.

There was little game in the Huron country; and here, as among the
Iroquois, the staple of food was Indian corn, cooked without salt in a
variety of forms, each more odious than the last. Venison was a luxury
found only at feasts; dog-flesh was in high esteem; and, in some of the
towns captive bears were fattened for festive occasions. These tribes
were far less improvident than the roving Algonquins, and stores of
provision were laid up against a season of want. Their main stock of
corn was buried in _caches_, or deep holes in the earth, either within
or without the houses.

In respect to the arts of life, all these stationary tribes were in
advance of the wandering hunters of the North. The women made a species
of earthen pot for cooking, but these were supplanted by the copper
kettles of the French traders. They wove rush mats with no little skill.
They spun twine from hemp, by the primitive process of rolling it on
their thighs; and of this twine they made nets. They extracted oil from
fish and from the seeds of the sunflower,--the latter, apparently,
only for the purposes of the toilet. They pounded their maize in huge
mortars of wood, hollowed by alternate burnings and scrapings. Their
stone axes, spear and arrow heads, and bone fish-hooks, were fast giving
place to the iron of the French; but they had not laid aside their
shields of raw bison-hide, or of wood overlaid with plaited and twisted
thongs of skin. They still used, too, their primitive breastplates and
greaves of twigs interwoven with cordage. [ Some of the northern tribes
of California, at the present day, wear a sort of breastplate "composed
of thin parallel battens of very tough wood, woven together with a small
cord." ] The masterpiece of Huron handiwork, however, was the birch
canoe, in the construction of which the Algonquins were no less skilful.
The Iroquois, in the absence of the birch, were forced to use the bark of
the elm, which was greatly inferior both in lightness and strength.
Of pipes, than which nothing was more important in their eyes, the Hurons
made a great variety, some of baked clay, others of various kinds of
stone, carved by the men, during their long periods of monotonous leisure,
often with great skill and ingenuity. But their most mysterious fabric
was wampum. This was at once their currency, their ornament, their pen,
ink, and parchment; and its use was by no means confined to tribes of the
Iroquois stock. It consisted of elongated beads, white and purple,
made from the inner part of certain shells. It is not easy to conceive
how, with their rude implements, the Indians contrived to shape and
perforate this intractable material. The art soon fell into disuse,
however; for wampum better than their own was brought them by the traders,
besides abundant imitations in glass and porcelain. Strung into
necklaces, or wrought into collars, belts, and bracelets, it was the
favorite decoration of the Indian girls at festivals and dances. It
served also a graver purpose. No compact, no speech, or clause of a
speech, to the representative of another nation, had any force, unless
confirmed by the delivery of a string or belt of wampum. [ Beaver-skins
and other valuable furs were sometimes, on such occasions, used as a
substitute. ] The belts, on occasions of importance, were wrought into
significant devices, suggestive of the substance of the compact or speech,
and designed as aids to memory. To one or more old men of the nation was
assigned the honorable, but very onerous, charge of keepers of the
wampum,--in other words, of the national records; and it was for them to
remember and interpret the meaning of the belts. The figures on
wampum-belts were, for the most part, simply mnemonic. So also were
those carved on wooden tablets, or painted on bark and skin, to preserve
in memory the songs of war, hunting, or magic. [ Engravings of many
specimens of these figured songs are given in the voluminous reports on
the condition of the Indians, published by Government, under the
editorship of Mr. Schoolcraft. The specimens are chiefly Algonquin. ]
The Hurons had, however, in common with other tribes, a system of rude
pictures and arbitrary signs, by which they could convey to each other,
with tolerable precision, information touching the ordinary subjects of
Indian interest.

Their dress was chiefly of skins, cured with smoke after the well-known
Indian mode. That of the women, according to the Jesuits, was more
modest than that "of our most pious ladies of France." The young girls
on festal occasions must be excepted from this commendation, as they wore
merely a kilt from the waist to the knee, besides the wampum decorations
of the breast and arms. Their long black hair, gathered behind the neck,
was decorated with disks of native copper, or gay pendants made in France,
and now occasionally unearthed in numbers from their graves. The men,
in summer, were nearly naked,--those of a kindred tribe wholly so,
with the sole exception of their moccasins. In winter they were clad in
tunics and leggins of skin, and at all seasons, on occasions of ceremony,
were wrapped from head to foot in robes of beaver or otter furs,
sometimes of the greatest value. On the inner side, these robes were
decorated with painted figures and devices, or embroidered with the dyed
quills of the Canada hedgehog. In this art of embroidery, however,
the Hurons were equalled or surpassed by some of the Algonquin tribes.
They wore their hair after a variety of grotesque and startling fashions.
With some, it was loose on one side, and tight braided on the other; with
others, close shaved, leaving one or more long and cherished locks; while,
with others again, it bristled in a ridge across the crown, like the back
of a hyena. [ See Le Jeune, Relation, 1638, 35.--"Quelles hures!"
exclaimed some astonished Frenchman. Hence the name, Hurons. ] When in
full dress, they were painted with ochre, white clay, soot, and the red
juice of certain berries. They practised tattooing, sometimes covering
the whole body with indelible devices. [ Bressani, Relation Abrégée, 72.
--Champlain has a picture of a warrior thus tattooed. ] When of such
extent, the process was very severe; and though no murmur escaped the
sufferer, he sometimes died from its effects.

Female life among the Hurons had no bright side. It was a youth of
license, an age of drudgery. Despite an organization which, while it
perhaps made them less sensible of pain, certainly made them less
susceptible of passion, than the higher races of men, the Hurons were
notoriously dissolute, far exceeding in this respect the wandering and
starving Algonquins. [ 1 ] Marriage existed among them, and polygamy was
exceptional; but divorce took place at the will or caprice of either
party. A practice also prevailed of temporary or experimental marriage,
lasting a day, a week, or more. The seal of the compact was merely the
acceptance of a gift of wampum made by the suitor to the object of his
desire or his whim. These gifts were never returned on the dissolution
of the connection; and as an attractive and enterprising damsel might,
and often did, make twenty such marriages before her final establishment,
she thus collected a wealth of wampum with which to adorn herself for the
village dances. [ 2 ] This provisional matrimony was no bar to a license
boundless and apparently universal, unattended with loss of reputation on
either side. Every instinct of native delicacy quickly vanished under
the influence of Huron domestic life; eight or ten families, and often
more, crowded into one undivided house, where privacy was impossible,
and where strangers were free to enter at all hours of the day or night.

[ 1 Among the Iroquois there were more favorable features in the
condition of women. The matrons had often a considerable influence on
the decisions of the councils. Lafitau, whose book appeared in 1724,
says that the nation was corrupt in his time, but that this was a
degeneracy from their ancient manners. La Potherie and Charlevoix make a
similar statement. Megapolensis, however, in 1644, says that they were
then exceedingly debauched; and Greenhalgh, in 1677, gives ample evidence
of a shameless license. One of their most earnest advocates of the
present day admits that the passion of love among them had no other than
an animal existence. (Morgan, League of the Iroquois, 322.) There is
clear proof that the tribes of the South were equally corrupt. (See
Lawson, Carolina, 34, and other early writers.) On the other hand,
chastity in women was recognized as a virtue by many tribes. This was
peculiarly the case among the Algonquins of Gaspé, where a lapse in this
regard was counted a disgrace. (See Le Clerc, Nouvelle Relation de la
Gaspésie, 417, where a contrast is drawn between the modesty of the girls
of this region and the open prostitution practised among those of other
tribes.) Among the Sioux, adultery on the part of a woman is punished by
mutilation.

The remarkable forbearance observed by Eastern and Northern tribes
towards female captives was probably the result of a superstition.
Notwithstanding the prevailing license, the Iroquois and other tribes had
among themselves certain conventional rules which excited the admiration
of the Jesuit celibates. Some of these had a superstitious origin;
others were in accordance with the iron requirements of their savage
etiquette. To make the Indian a hero of romance is mere nonsense. ]

[ 2 "Il s'en trouue telle qui passe ainsi sa ieunesse, qui aura en plus
de vingt maris, lesquels vingt maris ne sont pas seuls en la jouyssance
de la beste, quelques mariez qu'ils soient: car la nuict venuë, las
ieunes femmes courent d'une cabane en une autre, come font les ieunes
hommes de leur costé, qui en prennent par ou bon leur semble, toutesfois
sans violence aucune, et n'en reçoiuent aucune infamie, ny injure,
la coustume du pays estant telle."--Champlain (1627), 90. Compare Sagard,
Voyage des Hurons, 176. Both were personal observers.

The ceremony, even of the most serious marriage, consisted merely in the
bride's bringing a dish of boiled maize to the bridegroom, together with
an armful of fuel. There was often a feast of the relatives, or of the
whole village. ]

Once a mother, and married with a reasonable permanency, the Huron woman
from a wanton became a drudge. In March and April she gathered the
year's supply of firewood. Then came sowing, tilling, and harvesting,
smoking fish, dressing skins, making cordage and clothing, preparing
food. On the march it was she who bore the burden; for, in the words of
Champlain, "their women were their mules." The natural effect followed.
In every Huron town were shrivelled hags, hideous and despised, who,
in vindictiveness, ferocity, and cruelty, far exceeded the men.

To the men fell the task of building the houses, and making weapons,
pipes, and canoes. For the rest, their home-life was a life of leisure
and amusement. The summer and autumn were their seasons of serious
employment,--of war, hunting, fishing, and trade. There was an
established system of traffic between the Hurons and the Algonquins of
the Ottawa and Lake Nipissing: the Hurons exchanging wampum, fishing-nets,
and corn for fish and furs. [ Champlain (1627), 84. ] From various
relics found in their graves, it may be inferred that they also traded
with tribes of the Upper Lakes, as well as with tribes far southward,
towards the Gulf of Mexico. Each branch of traffic was the monopoly of
the family or clan by whom it was opened. They might, if they could,
punish interlopers, by stripping them of all they possessed, unless the
latter had succeeded in reaching home with the fruits of their trade,--in
which case the outraged monopolists had no further right of redress,
and could not attempt it without a breaking of the public peace, and
exposure to the authorized vengeance of the other party. [ Brébeuf,
Relation des Hurons, 1636, 168 (Cramoisy). ] Their fisheries, too,
were regulated by customs having the force of laws. These pursuits,
with their hunting,--in which they were aided by a wolfish breed of dogs
unable to bark,--consumed the autumn and early winter; but before the new
year the greater part of the men were gathered in their villages.

Now followed their festal season; for it was the season of idleness for
the men, and of leisure for the women. Feasts, gambling, smoking,
and dancing filled the vacant hours. Like other Indians, the Hurons were
desperate gamblers, staking their all,--ornaments, clothing, canoes,
pipes, weapons, and wives. One of their principal games was played with
plum-stones, or wooden lozenges, black on one side and white on the
other. These were tossed up in a wooden bowl, by striking it sharply
upon the ground, and the players betted on the black or white. Sometimes
a village challenged a neighboring village. The game was played in one
of the houses. Strong poles were extended from side to side, and on
these sat or perched the company, party facing party, while two players
struck the bowl on the ground between. Bets ran high; and Brébeuf
relates, that once, in midwinter, with the snow nearly three feet deep,
the men of his village returned from a gambling visit, bereft of their
leggins, and barefoot, yet in excellent humor. [ Brébeuf, Relation des
Hurons, 1636, 113.--This game is still a favorite among the Iroquois,
some of whom hold to the belief that they will play it after death in the
realms of bliss. In all their important games of chance, they employed
charms, incantations, and all the resources of their magical art, to gain
good luck. ] Ludicrous as it may appear, these games were often medical
prescriptions, and designed as a cure of the sick.

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