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The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century

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Thus died Jean de Brébeuf, the founder of the Huron mission, its truest
hero, and its greatest martyr. He came of a noble race,--the same,
it is said, from which sprang the English Earls of Arundel; but never had
the mailed barons of his line confronted a fate so appalling, with so
prodigious a constancy. To the last he refused to flinch, and "his death
was the astonishment of his murderers." [ Charlevoix, I. 204. Alegambe
uses a similar expression. ] In him an enthusiastic devotion was grafted
on an heroic nature. His bodily endowments were as remarkable as the
temper of his mind. His manly proportions, his strength, and his
endurance, which incessant fasts and penances could not undermine,
had always won for him the respect of the Indians, no less than a courage
unconscious of fear, and yet redeemed from rashness by a cool and
vigorous judgment; for, extravagant as were the chimeras which fed the
fires of his zeal, they were consistent with the soberest good sense on
matters of practical bearing.

Lalemant, physically weak from childhood, and slender almost to
emaciation, was constitutionally unequal to a display of fortitude like
that of his colleague. When Brébeuf died, he was led back to the house
whence he had been taken, and tortured there all night, until, in the
morning, one of the Iroquois, growing tired of the protracted
entertainment, killed him with a hatchet. [ 1 ] It was said, that,
at times, he seemed beside himself; then, rallying, with hands uplifted,
he offered his sufferings to Heaven as a sacrifice. His robust companion
had lived less than four hours under the torture, while he survived it
for nearly seventeen. Perhaps the Titanic effort of will with which
Brébeuf repressed all show of suffering conspired with the Iroquois
knives and firebrands to exhaust his vitality; perhaps his tormentors,
enraged at his fortitude, forgot their subtlety, and struck too near the
life.

[ 1 "We saw no part of his body," says Ragueneau, "from head to foot,
which was not burned, even to his eyes, in the sockets of which these
wretches had placed live coals."--Relation des Hurons, 1649, 15.

Lalemant was a Parisian, and his family belonged to the class of _gens de
robe_, or hereditary practitioners of the law. He was thirty-nine years
of age. His physical weakness is spoken of by several of those who knew
him. Marie de l'Incarnation says, "C'était l'homme le plus faible et le
plus délicat qu'on eût pu voir." Both Bressani and Ragueneau are equally
emphatic on this point. ]

The bodies of the two missionaries were carried to Sainte Marie, and
buried in the cemetery there; but the skull of Brébeuf was preserved as a
relic. His family sent from France a silver bust of their martyred
kinsman, in the base of which was a recess to contain the skull; and,
to this day, the bust and the relic within are preserved with pious care
by the nuns of the Hôtel-Dieu at Quebec.

[ Photographs of the bust are before me. Various relics of the two
missionaries were preserved; and some of them may still be seen in
Canadian monastic establishments. The following extract from a letter of
Marie de l'Incarnation to her son, written from Quebec in October of this
year, 1649, is curious.

"Madame our foundress (Madame de la Peltrie) sends you relics of our holy
martyrs; but she does it secretly, since the reverend Fathers would not
give us any, for fear that we should send them to France: but, as she is
not bound by vows, and as the very persons who went for the bodies have
given relics of them to her in secret, I begged her to send you some of
them, which she has done very gladly, from the respect she has for you."
She adds, in the same letter, "Our Lord having revealed to him (Brébeuf)
the time of his martyrdom three days before it happened, he went, full of
joy, to find the other Fathers; who, seeing him in extraordinary spirits,
caused him, by an inspiration of God, to be bled; after which time
surgeon dried his blood, through a presentiment of what was to take place,
lest he should be treated like Father Daniel, who, eight months before,
had been so reduced to ashes that no remains of his body could be found."

Brébeuf had once been ordered by the Father Superior to write down the
visions, revelations, and inward experiences with which he was favored,--
"at least," says Ragueneau, "those which he could easily remember,
for their multitude was too great for the whole to be recalled."--"I find
nothing," he adds, "more frequent in this memoir than the expression of
his desire to die for Jesus Christ: 'Sentio me vehementer impelli ad
moriendum pro Christo.' . . . In fine, wishing to make himself a
holocaust and a victim consecrated to death, and holily to anticipate the
happiness of martyrdom which awaited him, he bound himself by a vow to
Christ, which he conceived in these terms"; and Ragueneau gives the vow
in the original Latin. It binds him never to refuse "the grace of
martyrdom, if at any day, Thou shouldst, in Thy infinite pity, offer it
to me, Thy unworthy servant;". . . "and when I shall have received the
stroke of death, I bind myself to accept it at Thy hand, with all the
contentment and joy of my heart."

Some of his innumerable visions have been already mentioned. (See ante,
chapter 9 (page 108).) Tanner, Societas Militans, gives various others,--
as, for example, that he once beheld a mountain covered thick with saints,
but above all with virgins, while the Queen of Virgins sat at the top in
a blaze of glory. In 1637, when the whole country was enraged against
the Jesuits, and above all against Brébeuf, as sorcerers who had caused
the pest, Ragueneau tells us that "a troop of demons appeared before him
divers times,--sometimes like men in a fury, sometimes like frightful
monsters, bears, lions, or wild horses, trying to rush upon him. These
spectres excited in him neither horror nor fear. He said to them,
'Do to me whatever God permits you; for without His will not one hair
will fall from my head.' And at these words all the demons vanished in a
moment."--Relation des Hurons, 1649, 20. Compare the long notice in
Alegambe, Mortes Illustres, 644.

In Ragueneau's notice of Brébeuf, as in all other notices of deceased
missionaries in the Relations, the saintly qualities alone are brought
forward, as obedience, humility, etc.; but wherever Brébeuf himself
appears in the course of those voluminous records, he always brings with
him an impression of power.

We are told that, punning on his own name, he used to say that he was an
ox, fit only to bear burdens. This sort of humility may pass for what it
is worth; but it must be remembered, that there is a kind of acting in
which the actor firmly believes in the part he is playing. As for the
obedience, it was as genuine as that of a well-disciplined soldier,
and incomparably more profound. In the case of the Canadian Jesuits,
posterity owes to this, their favorite virtue, the record of numerous
visions, inward voices, and the like miracles, which the object of these
favors set down on paper, at the command of his Superior; while,
otherwise, humility would have concealed them forever. The truth is,
that with some of these missionaries, one may throw off trash and
nonsense by the cart-load, and find under it all a solid nucleus of saint
and hero. ]




CHAPTER XXIX.

1649, 1650.

THE SANCTUARY.


DISPERSION OF THE HURONS.--SAINTE MARIE ABANDONED.--ISLE ST. JOSEPH.--
REMOVAL OF THE MISSION.--THE NEW FORT.--MISERY OF THE HURONS.--FAMINE.--
EPIDEMIC.--EMPLOYMENTS OF THE JESUITS.


All was over with the Hurons. The death-knell of their nation had
struck. Without a leader, without organization, without union, crazed
with fright and paralyzed with misery, they yielded to their doom without
a blow. Their only thought was flight. Within two weeks after the
disasters of St. Ignace and St. Louis, fifteen Huron towns were abandoned,
and the greater number burned, lest they should give shelter to the
Iroquois. The last year's harvest had been scanty; the fugitives had no
food, and they left behind them the fields in which was their only hope
of obtaining it. In bands, large or small, some roamed northward and
eastward, through the half-thawed wilderness; some hid themselves on the
rocks or islands of Lake Huron; some sought an asylum among the Tobacco
Nation; a few joined the Neutrals on the north of Lake Erie. The Hurons,
as a nation, ceased to exist.

[ Chaumonot, who was at Ossossané at the time of the Iroquois invasion,
gives a vivid picture of the panic and lamentation which followed the
news of the destruction of the Huron warriors at St. Louis, and of the
flight of the inhabitants to the country of the Tobacco Nation.--Vie,
62. ]

Hitherto Sainte Marie had been covered by large fortified towns which lay
between it and the Iroquois; but these were all destroyed, some by the
enemy and some by their own people, and the Jesuits were left alone to
bear the brunt of the next attack. There was, moreover, no reason for
their remaining. Sainte Marie had been built as a basis for the
missions; but its occupation was gone: the flock had fled from the
shepherds, and its existence had no longer an object. If the priests
stayed to be butchered, they would perish, not as martyrs, but as fools.
The necessity was as clear as it was bitter. All their toil must come to
nought. Sainte Marie must be abandoned. They confess the pang which the
resolution cost them; but, pursues the Father Superior, "since the birth
of Christianity, the Faith has nowhere been planted except in the midst
of sufferings and crosses. Thus this desolation consoles us; and in the
midst of persecution, in the extremity of the evils which assail us and
the greater evils which threaten us, we are all filled with joy: for our
hearts tell us that God has never had a more tender love for us than now."
[ Ragueneau. Relation des Hurons, 1649, 26. ]

Several of the priests set out to follow and console the scattered bands
of fugitive Hurons. One embarked in a canoe, and coasted the dreary
shores of Lake Huron northward, among the wild labyrinth of rocks and
islets, whither his scared flock had fled for refuge; another betook
himself to the forest with a band of half-famished proselytes, and shared
their miserable rovings through the thickets and among the mountains.
Those who remained took counsel together at Sainte Marie. Whither should
they go, and where should be the new seat of the mission? They made
choice of the Grand Manitoulin Island, called by them Isle Sainte Marie,
and by the Hurons Ekaentoton. It lay near the northern shores of Lake
Huron, and by its position would give a ready access to numberless
Algonquin tribes along the borders of all these inland seas. Moreover,
it would bring the priests and their flock nearer to the French
settlements, by the route of the Ottawa, whenever the Iroquois should
cease to infest that river. The fishing, too, was good; and some of the
priests, who knew the island well, made a favorable report of the soil.
Thither, therefore, they had resolved to transplant the mission, when
twelve Huron chiefs arrived, and asked for an interview with the Father
Superior and his fellow Jesuits. The conference lasted three hours.
The deputies declared that many of the scattered Hurons had determined to
reunite, and form a settlement on a neighboring island of the lake,
called by the Jesuits Isle St. Joseph; that they needed the aid of the
Fathers; that without them they were helpless, but with them they could
hold their ground and repel the attacks of the Iroquois. They urged
their plea in language which Ragueneau describes as pathetic and
eloquent; and, to confirm their words, they gave him ten large collars of
wampum, saying that these were the voices of their wives and children.
They gained their point. The Jesuits abandoned their former plan,
and promised to join the Hurons on Isle St. Joseph.

They had built a boat, or small vessel, and in this they embarked such of
their stores as it would hold. The greater part were placed on a large
raft made for the purpose, like one of the rafts of timber which every
summer float down the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa. Here was their stock
of corn,--in part the produce of their own fields, and in part bought
from the Hurons in former years of plenty,--pictures, vestments, sacred
vessels and images, weapons, ammunition, tools, goods for barter with the
Indians, cattle, swine, and poultry. [ Some of these were killed for
food after reaching the island. In March following, they had ten fowls,
a pair of swine, two bulls and two cows, kept for breeding.--Lettre de
Ragueneau au Général de la Compagnie de Jésus, St. Joseph, 13 Mars,
1650. ] Sainte Marie was stripped of everything that could be moved.
Then, lest it should harbor the Iroquois, they set it on fire, and saw
consumed in an hour the results of nine or ten years of toil. It was
near sunset, on the fourteenth of June. [ 1 ] The houseless band
descended to the mouth of the Wye, went on board their raft, pushed it
from the shore, and, with sweeps and oars, urged it on its way all night.
The lake was calm and the weather fair; but it crept so slowly over the
water that several days elapsed before they reached their destination,
about twenty miles distant.

[ 1 Ragueneau, Relation des Hurons, 1650, 3. In the Relation of the
preceding year he gives the fifteenth of May as the date,--evidently an
error.

"Nous sortismes de ces terres de Promission qui estoient nostre Paradis,
et où la mort nous eust esté mille fois plus douce que ne sera la vie en
quelque lieu que nous puissions estre. Mais il faut suiure Dieu, et il
faut aimer ses conduites, quelque opposées qu'elles paroissent à nos
desirs, à nos plus saintes esperances et aux plus tendres amours de
nostre cœur."--Lettre de Ragueneau au P. Provincial à Paris, in Relation
des Hurons, 1650, 1.

"Mais il fallut, à tous tant que nous estions, quitter cette ancienne
demeure de saincte Marie; ces edifices, qui quoy que pauures,
paroissoient des chefs-d'œuure de l'art aux yeux de nos pauures Sauuages;
ces terres cultiuées, qui nous promettoient vne riche moisson. Il nous
fallut abandonner ce lieu, que ie puis appeller nostre seconde Patrie et
nos delices innocentes, puis qu'il auoit esté le berceau de ce
Christianisme, qu'il estoit le temple de Dieu et la maison des seruiteurs
de Iesus-Christ; et crainte que nos ennemis trop impies, ne profanassent
ce lieu de saincteté et n'en prissent leur auantage, nous y mismes le feu
nous mesmes, et nous vismes brusler à nos yeux, en moins d'vne heure,
nos trauaux de neuf et de dix ans."--Ragueneau, Relation des Hurons, 1650,
2, 3. ]

Near the entrance of Matchedash Bay lie the three islands now known as
Faith, Hope, and Charity. Of these, Charity or Christian Island, called
Ahoendoé by the Hurons and St. Joseph by the Jesuits, is by far the
largest. It is six or eight miles wide; and when the Hurons sought
refuge here, it was densely covered with the primeval forest. The
priests landed with their men, some forty soldiers, laborers, and others,
and found about three hundred Huron families bivouacked in the woods.
Here were wigwams and sheds of bark, and smoky kettles slung over fires,
each on its tripod of poles, while around lay groups of famished wretches,
with dark, haggard visages and uncombed hair, in every posture of
despondency and woe. They had not been wholly idle; for they had made
some rough clearings, and planted a little corn. The arrival of the
Jesuits gave them new hope; and, weakened as they were with famine,
they set themselves to the task of hewing and burning down the forest,
making bark houses, and planting palisades. The priests, on their part,
chose a favorable spot, and began to clear the ground and mark out the
lines of a fort. Their men--the greater part serving without pay--
labored with admirable spirit, and before winter had built a square,
bastioned fort of solid masonry, with a deep ditch, and walls about
twelve feet high. Within were a small chapel, houses for lodging,
and a well, which, with the ruins of the walls, may still be seen on the
south-eastern shore of the island, a hundred feet from the water. [ 1 ]
Detached redoubts were also built near at hand, where French musketeers
could aid in defending the adjacent Huron village. [ Compare Martin,
Introduction to Bressani, Relation Abrégée, 38. ] Though the island was
called St. Joseph, the fort, like that on the Wye, received the name of
Sainte Marie. Jesuit devotion scattered these names broadcast over all
the field of their labors.

[ 1 The measurement between the angles of the two southern bastions is
123 feet, and that of the curtain wall connecting these bastions is 78
feet. Some curious relics have been found in the fort,--among others,
a steel mill for making wafers for the Host. It was found in 1848,
in a remarkable state of preservation, and is now in an English museum,
having been bought on the spot by an amateur. As at Sainte Marie on the
Wye, the remains are in perfect conformity with the narratives and
letters of the priests. ]

The island, thanks to the vigilance of the French, escaped attack
throughout the summer; but Iroquois scalping-parties ranged the
neighboring shores, killing stragglers and keeping the Hurons in
perpetual alarm. As winter drew near, great numbers, who, trembling and
by stealth, had gathered a miserable subsistence among the northern
forests and islands, rejoined their countrymen at St. Joseph, until six
or eight thousand expatriated wretches were gathered here under the
protection of the French fort. They were housed in a hundred or more
bark dwellings, each containing eight or ten families. [ Ragueneau,
Relation des Hurons, 1650, 3, 4. He reckons eight persons to a family. ]
Here were widows without children, and children without parents; for
famine and the Iroquois had proved more deadly enemies than the
pestilence which a few years before had wasted their towns. [ 1 ]
Of this multitude but few had strength enough to labor, scarcely any had
made provision for the winter, and numbers were already perishing from
want, dragging themselves from house to house, like living skeletons.
The priests had spared no effort to meet the demands upon their charity.
They sent men during the autumn to buy smoked fish from the Northern
Algonquins, and employed Indians to gather acorns in the woods. Of this
miserable food they succeeded in collecting five or six hundred bushels.
To diminish its bitterness, the Indians boiled it with ashes, or the
priests served it out to them pounded, and mixed with corn. [ Eight
hundred sacks of this mixture were given to the Hurons during the
winter.--Bressani, Relation Abrégée, 283. ]

[ 1 "Ie voudrois pouuoir representer à toutes les personnes
affectionnées à nos Hurons, l'état pitoyable auquel ils sont reduits;
. . . comment seroit-il possible que ces imitateurs de Iésus Christ ne
fussent émeus à pitié à la veuë des centaines et centaines de veuues dont
non seulement les enfans, mais quasi les parens ont esté outrageusement
ou tuez, ou emmenez captifs, et puis inhumainement bruslez, cuits,
déchirez et deuorez des ennemis."--Lettre de Chaumonot à Lalemant,
Supérieur à Quebec, Isle de St. Joseph, 1 Juin, 1649.

"Vne mère s'est veuë, n'ayant que ses deux mamelles, mais sans suc et
sans laict, qui toutefois estoit l'vnique chose qu'elle eust peu
presenter à trois ou quatre enfans qui pleuroient y estans attachez.
Elle les voyoit mourir entre ses bras, les vns apres les autres, et
n'auoit pas mesme les forces de les pousser dans le tombeau. Elle
mouroit sous cette charge, et en mourant elle disoit: Ouy, Mon Dieu,
vous estes le maistre de nos vies; nous mourrons puisque vous le voulez;
voila qui est bien que nous mourrions Chrestiens. I'estois damnée,
et mes enfans auec moy, si nous ne fussions morts miserables; ils ont
receu le sainct Baptesme, et ie croy fermement que mourans tous de
compagnie, nous ressusciterons tous ensemble."--Ragueneau, Relation des
Hurons, 1650, 5. ]

As winter advanced, the Huron houses became a frightful spectacle.
Their inmates were dying by scores daily. The priests and their men
buried the bodies, and the Indians dug them from the earth or the snow
and fed on them, sometimes in secret and sometimes openly; although,
notwithstanding their superstitious feasts on the bodies of their enemies,
their repugnance and horror were extreme at the thought of devouring
those of relatives and friends. [ 1 ] An epidemic presently appeared,
to aid the work of famine. Before spring, about half of their number
were dead.

[ 1 "Ce fut alors que nous fusmes contraints de voir des squeletes
mourantes, qui soustenoient vne vie miserable, mangeant iusqu'aux ordures
et les rebuts de la nature. Le gland estoit à la pluspart, ce que
seroient en France les mets les plus exquis. Les charognes mesme
deterrées, les restes des Renards et des Chiens ne faisoient point
horreur, et se mangeoient, quoy qu'en cachete: car quoy que les Hurons,
auant que la foy leur eust donné plus de lumiere qu'ils n'en auoient dans
l'infidelité, ne creussent pas commettre aucun peché de manger leurs
ennemis, aussi peu qu'il y en a de les tuer, toutefois ie puis dire auec
verité, qu'ils n'ont pas moins d'horreur de manger de leurs compatriotes,
qu'on peut auoir en France de manger de la chair humaine. Mais la
necessité n'a plus de loy, et des dents fameliques ne discernent plus ce
qu'elles mangent. Les mères se sont repeuës de leurs enfans, des freres
de leurs freres, et des enfans ne reconnoissoient plus en vn cadaure mort,
celuy lequel lors qu'il viuoit, ils appelloient leur Pere."--Ragueneau,
Relation des Hurons, 1650, 4. Compare Bressani, Relation Abrégée, 283. ]

Meanwhile, though the cold was intense and the snow several feet deep,
yet not an hour was free from the danger of the Iroquois; and, from
sunset to daybreak, under the cold moon or in the driving snow-storm,
the French sentries walked their rounds along the ramparts.

The priests rose before dawn, and spent the time till sunrise in their
private devotions. Then the bell of their chapel rang, and the Indians
came in crowds at the call; for misery had softened their hearts, and
nearly all on the island were now Christian. There was a mass, followed
by a prayer and a few words of exhortation; then the hearers dispersed to
make room for others. Thus the little chapel was filled ten or twelve
times, until all had had their turn. Meanwhile other priests were
hearing confessions and giving advice and encouragement in private,
according to the needs of each applicant. This lasted till nine o'clock,
when all the Indians returned to their village, and the priests presently
followed, to give what assistance they could. Their cassocks were worn
out, and they were dressed chiefly in skins. [ Lettre de Ragueneau au
Général de la Compagnie de Jésus, Isle St. Joseph, 13 Mars, 1650. ]
They visited the Indian houses, and gave to those whose necessities were
most urgent small scraps of hide, severally stamped with a particular
mark, and entitling the recipients, on presenting them at the fort,
to a few acorns, a small quantity of boiled maize, or a fragment of
smoked fish, according to the stamp on the leather ticket of each.
Two hours before sunset the bell of the chapel again rang, and the
religious exercises of the morning were repeated. [ Ragueneau, Relation
des Hurons, 1650, 6, 7. ]

Thus this miserable winter wore away, till the opening spring brought new
fears and new necessities.

[ Concerning the retreat of the Hurons to Isle St. Joseph, the principal
authorities are the Relations of 1649 and 1650, which are ample in detail,
and written with an excellent simplicity and modesty; the Relation
Abrégée of Bressani; the reports of the Father Superior to the General of
the Jesuits at Rome; the manuscript of 1652, entitled Mémoires touchant
la Mort et les Vertus des Pères, etc.; the unpublished letters of
Garnier; and a letter of Chaumonot, written on the spot, and preserved in
the Relations. ]




CHAPTER XXX.

1649.

GARNIER.--CHABANEL.


THE TOBACCO MISSIONS.--ST. JEAN ATTACKED.--DEATH OF GARNIER.--
THE JOURNEY OF CHABANEL.--HIS DEATH.--GARREAU AND GRELON.


Late in the preceding autumn the Iroquois had taken the war-path in
force. At the end of November, two escaped prisoners came to Isle
St. Joseph with the news that a band of three hundred warriors was
hovering in the Huron forests, doubtful whether to invade the island or
to attack the towns of the Tobacco Nation in the valleys of the Blue
Mountains. The Father Superior, Ragueneau, sent a runner thither in all
haste, to warn the inhabitants of their danger.

There were at this time two missions in the Tobacco Nation, St. Jean and
St. Matthias, [ 1 ]--the latter under the charge of the Jesuits Garreau
and Grelon, and the former under that of Garnier and Chabanel. St. Jean,
the principal seat of the mission of the same name, was a town of five or
six hundred families. Its population was, moreover, greatly augmented by
the bands of fugitive Hurons who had taken refuge there. When the
warriors were warned by Ragueneau's messenger of a probable attack from
the Iroquois, they were far from being daunted, but, confiding in their
numbers, awaited the enemy in one of those fits of valor which
characterize the unstable courage of the savage. At St. Jean all was
paint, feathers, and uproar,--singing, dancing, howling, and stamping.
Quivers were filled, knives whetted, and tomahawks sharpened; but when,
after two days of eager expectancy, the enemy did not appear, the
warriors lost patience. Thinking, and probably with reason, that the
Iroquois were afraid of them, they resolved to sally forth, and take the
offensive. With yelps and whoops they defiled into the forest, where the
branches were gray and bare, and the ground thickly covered with snow.
They pushed on rapidly till the following day, but could not discover
their wary enemy, who had made a wide circuit, and was approaching the
town from another quarter. By ill luck, the Iroquois captured a Tobacco
Indian and his squaw, straggling in the forest not far from St. Jean; and
the two prisoners, to propitiate them, told them the defenceless
condition of the place, where none remained but women, children, and old
men. The delighted Iroquois no longer hesitated, but silently and
swiftly pushed on towards the town.

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