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




No element was wanting in them for the achievement of such a success as
that to which they aspired,--neither a transcendent zeal, nor a matchless
discipline, nor a practical sagacity very seldom surpassed in the
pursuits where men strive for wealth and place; and if they were destined
to disappointment, it was the result of external causes, against which no
power of theirs could have insured them.

There was a gap in their number. The place of Antoine Daniel was empty,
and never more to be filled by him,--never at least in the flesh, for
Chaumonot averred, that not long since, when the Fathers were met in
council, he had seen their dead companion seated in their midst, as of
old, with a countenance radiant and majestic. [ 1 ] They believed his
story,--no doubt he believed it himself; and they consoled one another
with the thought, that, in losing their colleague on earth, they had
gained him as a powerful intercessor in heaven. Daniel's station had
been at St. Joseph; but the mission and the missionary had alike ceased
to exist.

[ 1 "Ce bon Pere s'apparut après sa mort à vn des nostres par deux
diuerses fois. En l'vne il se fit voir en estat de gloire, portant le
visage d'vn homme d'enuiron trente ans, quoy qu'il soit mort en l'âge de
quarante-huict. . . . Vne autre fois il fut veu assister à vne assemblée
que nous tenions," etc.--Ragueneau, Relation des Hurons, 1649, 5.

"Le P. Chaumonot vit au milieu de l'assemblée le P. Daniel qui aidait les
Pères de ses conseils, et les remplissait d'une force surnaturelle; son
visage était plein de majesté et d'éclat."--Ibid., Lettre au Général de
la Compagnie de Jésus (Carayon, 243).

"Le P. Chaumonot nous a quelque fois raconté, à la gloire de cet illustre
confesseur de J. C. (Daniel) qu'il s'étoit fait voir à lui dans la gloire,
à l'âge d'environ 30 ans, quoiqu'il en eut près de 50, et avec les autres
circonstances qui se trouuent là (in the Historia Canadensis of Du
Creux). Il ajoutait seulement qu'à la vue de ce bien-heureux tant de
choses lui vinrent à l'esprit pour les lui demander, qu'il ne savoit pas
où commencer son entretien avec ce cher défunt. Enfin, lui dit-il:
"Apprenez moi, mon Père, ce que ie dois faire pour être bien agréable à
Dieu."--"Jamais," répondit le martyr, "ne perdez le souvenir de vos
péchés."--Suite de la Vie de Chaumonot, 11. ]




CHAPTER XXVI.

1648.

ANTOINE DANIEL.


HURON TRADERS.--BATTLE AT THREE RIVERS.--ST. JOSEPH.--
ONSET OF THE IROQUOIS.--DEATH OF DANIEL.--THE TOWN DESTROYED.


In the summer of 1647 the Hurons dared not go down to the French
settlements, but in the following year they took heart, and resolved at
all risks to make the attempt; for the kettles, hatchets, and knives of
the traders had become necessaries of life. Two hundred and fifty of
their best warriors therefore embarked, under five valiant chiefs.
They made the voyage in safety, approached Three Rivers on the
seventeenth of July, and, running their canoes ashore among the bulrushes,
began to grease their hair, paint their faces, and otherwise adorn
themselves, that they might appear after a befitting fashion at the fort.
While they were thus engaged, the alarm was sounded. Some of their
warriors had discovered a large body of Iroquois, who for several days
had been lurking in the forest, unknown to the French garrison, watching
their opportunity to strike a blow. The Hurons snatched their arms, and,
half-greased and painted, ran to meet them. The Iroquois received them
with a volley. They fell flat to avoid the shot, then leaped up with a
furious yell, and sent back a shower of arrows and bullets. The Iroquois,
who were outnumbered, gave way and fled, excepting a few who for a time
made fight with their knives. The Hurons pursued. Many prisoners were
taken, and many dead left on the field. [ Lalemant, Relation, 1648, 11.
The Jesuit Bressani had come down with the Hurons, and was with them in
the fight. ] The rout of the enemy was complete; and when their trade
was ended, the Hurons returned home in triumph, decorated with the
laurels and the scalps of victory. As it proved, it would have been well,
had they remained there to defend their families and firesides.

The oft-mentioned town of Teanaustayé, or St. Joseph, lay on the
south-eastern frontier of the Huron country, near the foot of a range of
forest-covered hills, and about fifteen miles from Sainte Marie. It had
been the chief town of the nation, and its population, by the Indian
standard, was still large; for it had four hundred families, and at least
two thousand inhabitants. It was well fortified with palisades, after
the Huron manner, and was esteemed the chief bulwark of the country.
Here countless Iroquois had been burned and devoured. Its people had
been truculent and intractable heathen, but many of them had surrendered
to the Faith, and for four years past Father Daniel had preached among
them with excellent results.

On the morning of the fourth of July, when the forest around basked
lazily in the early sun, you might have mounted the rising ground on
which the town stood, and passed unchallenged through the opening in the
palisade. Within, you would have seen the crowded dwellings of bark,
shaped like the arched coverings of huge baggage-wagons, and decorated
with the _totems_ or armorial devices of their owners daubed on the
outside with paint. Here some squalid wolfish dog lay sleeping in the
sun, a group of Huron girls chatted together in the shade, old squaws
pounded corn in large wooden mortars, idle youths gambled with cherry
stones on a wooden platter, and naked infants crawled in the dust.
Scarcely a warrior was to be seen. Some were absent in quest of game or
of Iroquois scalps, and some had gone with the trading-party to the
French settlements. You followed the foul passage-ways among the houses,
and at length came to the church. It was full to the door. Daniel had
just finished the mass, and his flock still knelt at their devotions.
It was but the day before that he had returned to them, warmed with new
fervor, from his meditations in retreat at Sainte Marie. Suddenly an
uproar of voices, shrill with terror, burst upon the languid silence of
the town. "The Iroquois! the Iroquois!" A crowd of hostile warriors had
issued from the forest, and were rushing across the clearing, towards the
opening in the palisade. Daniel ran out of the church, and hurried to
the point of danger. Some snatched weapons; some rushed to and fro in
the madness of a blind panic. The priest rallied the defenders; promised
Heaven to those who died for their homes and their faith; then hastened
from house to house, calling on unbelievers to repent and receive baptism,
to snatch them from the Hell that yawned to ingulf them. They crowded
around him, imploring to be saved; and, immersing his handkerchief in a
bowl of water, he shook it over them, and baptized them by aspersion.
They pursued him, as he ran again to the church, where he found a throng
of women, children, and old men, gathered as in a sanctuary. Some cried
for baptism, some held out their children to receive it, some begged for
absolution, and some wailed in terror and despair. "Brothers," he
exclaimed again and again, as he shook the baptismal drops from his
handkerchief,--"brothers, to-day we shall be in Heaven."

The fierce yell of the war-whoop now rose close at hand. The palisade
was forced, and the enemy was in the town. The air quivered with the
infernal din. "Fly!" screamed the priest, driving his flock before him.
"I will stay here. We shall meet again in Heaven." Many of them escaped
through an opening in the palisade opposite to that by which the Iroquois
had entered; but Daniel would not follow, for there still might be souls
to rescue from perdition. The hour had come for which he had long
prepared himself. In a moment he saw the Iroquois, and came forth from
the church to meet them. When they saw him in turn, radiant in the
vestments of his office, confronting them with a look kindled with the
inspiration of martyrdom, they stopped and stared in amazement; then
recovering themselves, bent their bows, and showered him with a volley of
arrows, that tore through his robes and his flesh. A gun shot followed;
the ball pierced his heart, and he fell dead, gasping the name of Jesus.
They rushed upon him with yells of triumph, stripped him naked, gashed
and hacked his lifeless body, and, scooping his blood in their hands,
bathed their faces in it to make them brave. The town was in a blaze;
when the flames reached the church, they flung the priest into it,
and both were consumed together.

[ Ragueneau, Relation des Hurons, 1649, 3-5; Bressani, Relation Abrégée,
247; Du Creux, Historia Canadensis, 524; Tanner, Societas Jesu Militans,
531; Marie de l'Incarnation, Lettre aux Ursulines de Tours, Quebec, 1649.

Daniel was born at Dieppe, and was forty-eight years old at the time of
his death. He had been a Jesuit from the age of twenty. ]

Teanaustayé was a heap of ashes, and the victors took up their march with
a train of nearly seven hundred prisoners, many of whom they killed on
the way. Many more had been slain in the town and the neighboring forest,
where the pursuers hunted them down, and where women, crouching for
refuge among thickets, were betrayed by the cries and wailing of their
infants.

The triumph of the Iroquois did not end here; for a neighboring fortified
town, included within the circle of Daniel's mission, shared the fate of
Teanaustayé. Never had the Huron nation received such a blow.




CHAPTER XXVII.

1649.

RUIN OF THE HURONS.


ST. LOUIS ON FIRE.--INVASION.--ST. IGNACE CAPTURED.--
BRÉBEUF AND LALEMANT.--BATTLE AT ST. LOUIS.--SAINTE MARIE THREATENED.--
RENEWED FIGHTING.--DESPERATE CONFLICT.--A NIGHT OF SUSPENSE.--
PANIC AMONG THE VICTORS.--BURNING OF ST. IGNACE.--
RETREAT OF THE IROQUOIS.


More than eight months had passed since the catastrophe of St. Joseph.
The winter was over, and that dreariest of seasons had come, the churlish
forerunner of spring. Around Sainte Marie the forests were gray and bare,
and, in the cornfields, the oozy, half-thawed soil, studded with the
sodden stalks of the last autumn's harvest, showed itself in patches
through the melting snow.

At nine o'clock on the morning of the sixteenth of March, the priests saw
a heavy smoke rising over the naked forest towards the south-east,
about three miles distant. They looked at each other in dismay. "The
Iroquois! They are burning St. Louis!" Flames mingled with the smoke;
and, as they stood gazing, two Christian Hurons came, breathless and
aghast, from the burning town. Their worst fear was realized. The
Iroquois were there; but where were the priests of the mission, Brébeuf
and Lalemant?

Late in the autumn, a thousand Iroquois, chiefly Senecas and Mohawks,
had taken the war-path for the Hurons. They had been all winter in the
forests, hunting for subsistence, and moving at their leisure towards
their prey. The destruction of the two towns of the mission of
St. Joseph had left a wide gap, and in the middle of March they entered
the heart of the Huron country, undiscovered. Common vigilance and
common sense would have averted the calamities that followed; but the
Hurons were like a doomed people, stupefied, sunk in dejection, fearing
everything, yet taking no measures for defence. They could easily have
met the invaders with double their force, but the besotted warriors lay
idle in their towns, or hunted at leisure in distant forests; nor could
the Jesuits, by counsel or exhortation, rouse them to face the danger.

Before daylight of the sixteenth, the invaders approached St. Ignace,
which, with St. Louis and three other towns, formed the mission of the
same name. They reconnoitred the place in the darkness. It was defended
on three sides by a deep ravine, and further strengthened by palisades
fifteen or sixteen feet high, planted under the direction of the Jesuits.
On the fourth side it was protected by palisades alone; and these were
left, as usual, unguarded. This was not from a sense of security; for
the greater part of the population had abandoned the town, thinking it
too much exposed to the enemy, and there remained only about four hundred,
chiefly women, children, and old men, whose infatuated defenders were
absent hunting, or on futile scalping-parties against the Iroquois.
It was just before dawn, when a yell, as of a legion of devils, startled
the wretched inhabitants from their sleep; and the Iroquois, bursting in
upon them, cut them down with knives and hatchets, killing many, and
reserving the rest for a worse fate. They had entered by the weakest
side; on the other sides there was no exit, and only three Hurons
escaped. The whole was the work of a few minutes. The Iroquois left a
guard to hold the town, and secure the retreat of the main body in case
of a reverse; then, smearing their faces with blood, after their ghastly
custom, they rushed, in the dim light of the early dawn, towards
St. Louis, about a league distant.

The three fugitives had fled, half naked, through the forest, for the
same point, which they reached about sunrise, yelling the alarm. The
number of inhabitants here was less, at this time, than seven hundred;
and, of these, all who had strength to escape, excepting about eighty
warriors, made in wild terror for a place of safety. Many of the old,
sick, and decrepit were left perforce in the lodges. The warriors,
ignorant of the strength of the assailants, sang their war-songs, and
resolved to hold the place to the last. It had not the natural strength
of St. Ignace; but, like it, was surrounded by palisades.

Here were the two Jesuits, Brébeuf and Lalemant. Brébeuf's converts
entreated him to escape with them; but the Norman zealot, bold scion of a
warlike stock, had no thought of flight. His post was in the teeth of
danger, to cheer on those who fought, and open Heaven to those who fell.
His colleague, slight of frame and frail of constitution, trembled
despite himself; but deep enthusiasm mastered the weakness of Nature,
and he, too, refused to fly.

Scarcely had the sun risen, and scarcely were the fugitives gone, when,
like a troop of tigers, the Iroquois rushed to the assault. Yell echoed
yell, and shot answered shot. The Hurons, brought to bay, fought with
the utmost desperation, and with arrows, stones, and the few guns they
had, killed thirty of their assailants, and wounded many more. Twice the
Iroquois recoiled, and twice renewed the attack with unabated ferocity.
They swarmed at the foot of the palisades, and hacked at them with their
hatchets, till they had cut them through at several different points.
For a time there was a deadly fight at these breaches. Here were the two
priests, promising Heaven to those who died for their faith,--one giving
baptism, and the other absolution. At length the Iroquois broke in,
and captured all the surviving defenders, the Jesuits among the rest.
They set the town on fire; and the helpless wretches who had remained,
unable to fly, were consumed in their burning dwellings. Next they fell
upon Brébeuf and Lalemant, stripped them, bound them fast, and led them
with the other prisoners back to St. Ignace, where all turned out to
wreak their fury on the two priests, beating them savagely with sticks
and clubs as they drove them into the town. At present, there was no
time for further torture, for there was work in hand.

The victors divided themselves into several bands, to burn the
neighboring villages and hunt their flying inhabitants. In the flush of
their triumph, they meditated a bolder enterprise; and, in the afternoon,
their chiefs sent small parties to reconnoitre Sainte Marie, with a view
to attacking it on the next day.

Meanwhile the fugitives of St. Louis, joined by other bands as terrified
and as helpless as they, were struggling through the soft snow which
clogged the forests towards Lake Huron, where the treacherous ice of
spring was still unmelted. One fear expelled another. They ventured
upon it, and pushed forward all that day and all the following night,
shivering and famished, to find refuge in the towns of the Tobacco
Nation. Here, when they arrived, they spread a universal panic.

Ragueneau, Bressani, and their companions waited in suspense at Sainte
Marie. On the one hand, they trembled for Brébeuf and Lalemant; on the
other, they looked hourly for an attack: and when at evening they saw the
Iroquois scouts prowling along the edge of the bordering forest, their
fears were confirmed. They had with them about forty Frenchmen, well
armed; but their palisades and wooden buildings were not fire-proof,
and they had learned from fugitives the number and ferocity of the
invaders. They stood guard all night, praying to the Saints, and above
all to their great patron, Saint Joseph, whose festival was close at hand.

In the morning they were somewhat relieved by the arrival of about three
hundred Huron warriors, chiefly converts from La Conception and Sainte
Madeleine, tolerably well armed, and full of fight. They were expecting
others to join them; and meanwhile, dividing into several bands, they
took post by the passes of the neighboring forest, hoping to waylay
parties of the enemy. Their expectation was fulfilled; for, at this time,
two hundred of the Iroquois were making their way from St. Ignace,
in advance of the main body, to begin the attack on Sainte Marie.
They fell in with a band of the Hurons, set upon them, killed many,
drove the rest to headlong flight, and, as they plunged in terror through
the snow, chased them within sight of Sainte Marie. The other Hurons,
hearing the yells and firing, ran to the rescue, and attacked so fiercely,
that the Iroquois in turn were routed, and ran for shelter to St. Louis,
followed closely by the victors. The houses of the town had been burned,
but the palisade around them was still standing, though breached and
broken. The Iroquois rushed in; but the Hurons were at their heels.
Many of the fugitives were captured, the rest killed or put to utter rout,
and the triumphant Hurons remained masters of the place.

The Iroquois who escaped fled to St. Ignace. Here, or on the way thither,
they found the main body of the invaders; and when they heard of the
disaster, the whole swarm, beside themselves with rage, turned towards
St. Louis to take their revenge. Now ensued one of the most furious
Indian battles on record. The Hurons within the palisade did not much
exceed a hundred and fifty; for many had been killed or disabled, and
many, perhaps, had straggled away. Most of their enemies had guns,
while they had but few. Their weapons were bows and arrows, war-clubs,
hatchets, and knives; and of these they made good use, sallying
repeatedly, fighting like devils, and driving back their assailants again
and again. There are times when the Indian warrior forgets his cautious
maxims, and throws himself into battle with a mad and reckless ferocity.
The desperation of one party, and the fierce courage of both, kept up the
fight after the day had closed; and the scout from Sainte Marie, as he
bent listening under the gloom of the pines, heard, far into the night,
the howl of battle rising from the darkened forest. The principal chief
of the Iroquois was severely wounded, and nearly a hundred of their
warriors were killed on the spot. When, at length, their numbers and
persistent fury prevailed, their only prize was some twenty Huron
warriors, spent with fatigue and faint with loss of blood. The rest lay
dead around the shattered palisades which they had so valiantly defended.
Fatuity, not cowardice, was the ruin of the Huron nation.

The lamps burned all night at Sainte Marie, and its defenders stood
watching till daylight, musket in hand. The Jesuits prayed without
ceasing, and Saint Joseph was besieged with invocations. "Those of us
who were priests," writes Ragueneau, "each made a vow to say a mass in
his honor every month, for the space of a year; and all the rest bound
themselves by vows to divers penances." The expected onslaught did not
take place. Not an Iroquois appeared. Their victory had been bought too
dear, and they had no stomach for more fighting. All the next day,
the eighteenth, a stillness, like the dead lull of a tempest, followed
the turmoil of yesterday,--as if, says the Father Superior, "the country
were waiting, palsied with fright, for some new disaster."

On the following day,--the journalist fails not to mention that it was
the festival of Saint Joseph,--Indians came in with tidings that a panic
had seized the Iroquois camp, that the chiefs could not control it,
and that the whole body of invaders was retreating in disorder, possessed
with a vague terror that the Hurons were upon them in force. They had
found time, however, for an act of atrocious cruelty. They planted
stakes in the bark houses of St. Ignace, and bound to them those of their
prisoners whom they meant to sacrifice, male and female, from old age to
infancy, husbands, mothers, and children, side by side. Then, as they
retreated, they set the town on fire, and laughed with savage glee at the
shrieks of anguish that rose from the blazing dwellings.

[ The site of St. Ignace still bears evidence of the catastrophe, in the
ashes and charcoal that indicate the position of the houses, and the
fragments of broken pottery and half-consumed bone, together with
trinkets of stone, metal, or glass, which have survived the lapse of two
centuries and more. The place has been minutely examined by Dr. Taché. ]

They loaded the rest of their prisoners with their baggage and plunder,
and drove them through the forest southward, braining with their hatchets
any who gave out on the march. An old woman, who had escaped out of the
midst of the flames of St. Ignace, made her way to St. Michel, a large
town not far from the desolate site of St. Joseph. Here she found about
seven hundred Huron warriors, hastily mustered. She set them on the
track of the retreating Iroquois, and they took up the chase,--but
evidently with no great eagerness to overtake their dangerous enemy,
well armed as he was with Dutch guns, while they had little beside their
bows and arrows. They found, as they advanced, the dead bodies of
prisoners tomahawked on the march, and others bound fast to trees and
half burned by the fagots piled hastily around them. The Iroquois pushed
forward with such headlong speed, that the pursuers could not, or would
not, overtake them; and, after two days, they gave over the attempt.




CHAPTER XXVIII.

1649.

THE MARTYRS.


THE RUINS OF ST. IGNACE.--THE RELICS FOUND.--BRÉBEUF AT THE STAKE.--
HIS UNCONQUERABLE FORTITUDE.--LALEMANT.--RENEGADE HURONS.--
IROQUOIS ATROCITIES.--DEATH OF BRÉBEUF.--HIS CHARACTER.--
DEATH OF LALEMANT.


On the morning of the twentieth, the Jesuits at Sainte Marie received
full confirmation of the reported retreat of the invaders; and one of
them, with seven armed Frenchmen, set out for the scene of havoc.
They passed St. Louis, where the bloody ground was strown thick with
corpses, and, two or three miles farther on, reached St. Ignace. Here
they saw a spectacle of horror; for among the ashes of the burnt town
were scattered in profusion the half-consumed bodies of those who had
perished in the flames. Apart from the rest, they saw a sight that
banished all else from their thoughts; for they found what they had come
to seek,--the scorched and mangled relics of Brébeuf and Lalemant.

[ "Ils y trouuerent vn spectacle d'horreur, les restes de la cruauté
mesme, ou plus tost les restes de l'amour de Dieu, qui seul triomphe dans
la mort des Martyrs."--Ragueneau, Relation des Hurons, 1649, 13. ]

They had learned their fate already from Huron prisoners, many of whom
had made their escape in the panic and confusion of the Iroquois retreat.
They described what they had seen, and the condition in which the bodies
were found confirmed their story.

On the afternoon of the sixteenth,--the day when the two priests were
captured,--Brébeuf was led apart, and bound to a stake. He seemed more
concerned for his captive converts than for himself, and addressed them
in a loud voice, exhorting them to suffer patiently, and promising Heaven
as their reward. The Iroquois, incensed, scorched him from head to foot,
to silence him; whereupon, in the tone of a master, he threatened them
with everlasting flames, for persecuting the worshippers of God. As he
continued to speak, with voice and countenance unchanged, they cut away
his lower lip and thrust a red-hot iron down his throat. He still held
his tall form erect and defiant, with no sign or sound of pain; and they
tried another means to overcome him. They led out Lalemant, that Brébeuf
might see him tortured. They had tied strips of bark, smeared with pitch,
about his naked body. When he saw the condition of his Superior, he
could not hide his agitation, and called out to him, with a broken voice,
in the words of Saint Paul, "We are made a spectacle to the world,
to angels, and to men." Then he threw himself at Brébeuf's feet; upon
which the Iroquois seized him, made him fast to a stake, and set fire to
the bark that enveloped him. As the flame rose, he threw his arms upward,
with a shriek of supplication to Heaven. Next they hung around Brébeuf's
neck a collar made of hatchets heated red hot; but the indomitable priest
stood like a rock. A Huron in the crowd, who had been a convert of the
mission, but was now an Iroquois by adoption, called out, with the malice
of a renegade, to pour hot water on their heads, since they had poured so
much cold water on those of others. The kettle was accordingly slung,
and the water boiled and poured slowly on the heads of the two
missionaries. "We baptize you," they cried, "that you may be happy in
Heaven; for nobody can be saved without a good baptism." Brébeuf would
not flinch; and, in a rage, they cut strips of flesh from his limbs,
and devoured them before his eyes. Other renegade Hurons called out to
him, "You told us, that, the more one suffers on earth, the happier he is
in Heaven. We wish to make you happy; we torment you because we love
you; and you ought to thank us for it." After a succession of other
revolting tortures, they scalped him; when, seeing him nearly dead,
they laid open his breast, and came in a crowd to drink the blood of so
valiant an enemy, thinking to imbibe with it some portion of his courage.
A chief then tore out his heart, and devoured it.

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