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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




[ 2 Ragueneau, Relation, 1651, 4. In the unpublished journal kept by
the Superior of the Jesuits at Quebec, it is said, under date of April,
1651, that news had just come from Montreal, that, in the preceding
autumn, fifteen hundred Iroquois had taken a Neutral town; that the
Neutrals had afterwards attacked them, and killed two hundred of their
warriors; and that twelve hundred Iroquois had again invaded the Neutral
country to take their revenge. Lafitau, Mœurs des Sauvaqes, II. 176,
gives, on the authority of Father Julien Garnier, a singular and
improbable account of the origin of the war.

An old chief, named Kenjockety, who claimed descent from an adopted
prisoner of the Neutral Nation, was recently living among the Senecas of
Western New York. ]

During two or three succeeding years, the Iroquois contented themselves
with harassing the French and Algonquins; but in 1653 they made treaties
of peace, each of the five nations for itself, and the colonists and
their red allies had an interval of rest. In the following May, an
Onondaga orator, on a peace visit to Montreal, said, in a speech to the
Governor, "Our young men will no more fight the French; but they are too
warlike to stay at home, and this summer we shall invade the country of
the Eries. The earth trembles and quakes in that quarter; but here all
remains calm." [ Le Mercier, Relation, 1654, 9. ] Early in the autumn,
Father Le Moyne, who had taken advantage of the peace to go on a mission
to the Onondagas, returned with the tidings that the Iroquois were all on
fire with this new enterprise, and were about to march against the Eries
with eighteen hundred warriors. [ Le Mercier, Relation, 1654, 10.
Le Moyne, in his interesting journal of his mission, repeatedly alludes
to their preparations. ]

The occasion of this new war is said to have been as follows. The Eries,
who it will be remembered dwelt on the south of the lake named after them,
had made a treaty of peace with the Senecas, and in the preceding year
had sent a deputation of thirty of their principal men to confirm it.
While they were in the great Seneca town, it happened that one of that
nation was killed in a casual quarrel with an Erie; whereupon his
countrymen rose in a fury, and murdered the thirty deputies. Then ensued
a brisk war of reprisals, in which not only the Senecas, but the other
Iroquois nations, took part. The Eries captured a famous Onondaga chief,
and were about to burn him, when he succeeded in convincing them of the
wisdom of a course of conciliation; and they resolved to give him to the
sister of one of the murdered deputies, to take the place of her lost
brother. The sister, by Indian law, had it in her choice to receive him
with a fraternal embrace or to burn him; but, though she was absent at
the time, no one doubted that she would choose the gentler alternative.
Accordingly, he was clothed in gay attire, and all the town fell to
feasting in honor of his adoption. In the midst of the festivity,
the sister returned. To the amazement of the Erie chiefs, she rejected
with indignation their proffer of a new brother, declared that she would
be revenged for her loss, and insisted that the prisoner should forthwith
be burned. The chiefs remonstrated in vain, representing the danger in
which such a procedure would involve the nation: the female fury was
inexorable; and the unfortunate prisoner, stripped of his festal robes,
was bound to the stake, and put to death. [ De Quen, Relation, 1656,
30. ] He warned his tormentors with his last breath, that they were
burning not only him, but the whole Erie nation; since his countrymen
would take a fiery vengeance for his fate. His words proved true; for no
sooner was his story spread abroad among the Iroquois, than the
confederacy resounded with war-songs from end to end, and the warriors
took the field under their two great war-chiefs. Notwithstanding Le
Moyne's report, their number, according to the Iroquois account, did not
exceed twelve hundred.

[ This was their statement to Chaumonot and Dablon, at Onondaga, in
November of this year. They added, that the number of the Eries was
between three and four thousand, (Journal des PP. Chaumonot et Dablon,
in Relation, 1656, 18.) In the narrative of De Quen (Ibid., 30, 31),
based, of course, on Iroquois reports, the Iroquois force is also set
down at twelve hundred, but that of the Eries is reduced to between two
and three thousand warriors. Even this may safely be taken as an
exaggeration.

Though the Eries had no fire-arms, they used poisoned arrows with great
effect, discharging them, it is said, with surprising rapidity. ]

They embarked in canoes on the lake. At their approach the Eries fell
back, withdrawing into the forests towards the west, till they were
gathered into one body, when, fortifying themselves with palisades and
felled trees, they awaited the approach of the invaders. By the lowest
estimate, the Eries numbered two thousand warriors, besides women and
children. But this is the report of the Iroquois, who were naturally
disposed to exaggerate the force of their enemies.

They approached the Erie fort, and two of their chiefs, dressed like
Frenchmen, advanced and called on those within to surrender. One of them
had lately been baptized by Le Moyne; and he shouted to the Eries, that,
if they did not yield in time, they were all dead men, for the Master of
Life was on the side of the Iroquois. The Eries answered with yells of
derision. "Who is this master of your lives?" they cried; "our hatchets
and our right arms are the masters of ours." The Iroquois rushed to the
assault, but were met with a shower of poisoned arrows, which killed and
wounded many of them, and drove the rest back. They waited awhile,
and then attacked again with unabated mettle. This time, they carried
their bark canoes over their heads like huge shields, to protect them
from the storm of arrows; then planting them upright, and mounting them
by the cross-bars like ladders, scaled the barricade with such impetuous
fury that the Eries were thrown into a panic. Those escaped who could;
but the butchery was frightful, and from that day the Eries as a nation
were no more. The victors paid dear for their conquest. Their losses
were so heavy that they were forced to remain for two months in the Erie
country, to bury their dead and nurse their wounded.

[ De Quen, Relation, 1656, 31. The Iroquois, it seems, afterwards made
other expeditions, to finish their work. At least, they told Chaumonot
and Dablon, in the autumn of this year, that they meant to do so in the
following spring.

It seems, that, before attacking the great fort of the Eries, the
Iroquois had made a promise to worship the new God of the French, if He
would give them the victory. This promise, and the success which
followed, proved of great advantage to the mission.

Various traditions are extant among the modern remnant of the Iroquois
concerning the war with the Eries. They agree in little beyond the fact
of the existence and destruction of that people. Indeed, Indian
traditions are very rarely of any value as historical evidence. One of
these stories, told me some years ago by a very intelligent Iroquois of
the Cayuga Nation, is a striking illustration of Iroquois ferocity.
It represents, that, the night after the great battle, the forest was
lighted up with more than a thousand fires, at each of which an Erie was
burning alive. It differs from the historical accounts in making the
Eries the aggressors. ]

One enemy of their own race remained,--the Andastes. This nation appears
to have been inferior in numbers to either the Hurons, the Neutrals,
or the Eries; but they cost their assailants more trouble than all these
united. The Mohawks seem at first to have borne the brunt of the Andaste
war; and, between the years 1650 and 1660, they were so roughly handled
by these stubborn adversaries, that they were reduced from the height of
audacious insolence to the depths of dejection. [ 1 ] The remaining four
nations of the Iroquois league now took up the quarrel, and fared
scarcely better than the Mohawks. In the spring of 1662, eight hundred
of their warriors set out for the Andaste country, to strike a decisive
blow; but when they reached the great town of their enemies, they saw
that they had received both aid and counsel from the neighboring Swedish
colonists. The town was fortified by a double palisade, flanked by two
bastions, on which, it is said, several small pieces of cannon were
mounted. Clearly, it was not to be carried by assault, as the invaders
had promised themselves. Their only hope was in treachery; and,
accordingly, twenty-five of their warriors gained entrance, on pretence
of settling the terms of a peace. Here, again, ensued a grievous
disappointment; for the Andastes seized them all, built high scaffolds
visible from without, and tortured them to death in sight of their
countrymen, who thereupon decamped in miserable discomfiture.
[ Lalemant, Relation, 1663, 10. ]

[ 1 Relation, 1660, 6 (anonymous).

The Mohawks also suffered great reverses about this time at the hands of
their Algonquin neighbors, the Mohicans. ]

The Senecas, by far the most numerous of the five Iroquois nations,
now found themselves attacked in turn,--and this, too, at a time when
they were full of despondency at the ravages of the small-pox. The
French reaped a profit from their misfortunes; for the disheartened
savages made them overtures of peace, and begged that they would settle
in their country, teach them to fortify their towns, supply them with
arms and ammunition, and bring "black-robes" to show them the road to
Heaven. [ Lalemant, Relation, 1664, 33. ]

The Andaste war became a war of inroads and skirmishes, under which the
weaker party gradually wasted away, though it sometimes won laurels at
the expense of its adversary. Thus, in 1672, a party of twenty Senecas
and forty Cayugas went against the Andastes. They were at a considerable
distance the one from the other, the Cayugas being in advance, when the
Senecas were set upon by about sixty young Andastes, of the class known
as "Burnt-Knives," or "Soft-Metals," because as yet they had taken no
scalps. Indeed, they are described as mere boys, fifteen or sixteen
years old. They killed one of the Senecas, captured another, and put the
rest to flight; after which, flushed with their victory, they attacked
the Cayugas with the utmost fury, and routed them completely, killing
eight of them, and wounding twice that number, who, as is reported by the
Jesuit then in the Cayuga towns, came home half dead with gashes of
knives and hatchets. [ Dablon, Relation, 1672, 24. ] "May God preserve
the Andastes," exclaims the Father, "and prosper their arms, that the
Iroquois may be humbled, and we and our missions left in peace!" "None
but they," he elsewhere adds, "can curb the pride of the Iroquois."
The only strength of the Andastes, however, was in their courage: for at
this time they were reduced to three hundred fighting men; and about the
year 1675 they were finally overborne by the Senecas. [ État Présent des
Missions, in Relations Inédites, II. 44. Relation, 1676, 2. This is one
of the Relations printed by Mr. Lenox. ] Yet they were not wholly
destroyed; for a remnant of this valiant people continued to subsist,
under the name of Conestogas, for nearly a century, until, in 1763,
they were butchered, as already mentioned, by the white ruffians known as
the "Paxton Boys." [ "History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac," Chap. XXIV.
Compare Shea, in Historical Magazine, II. 297. ]

The bloody triumphs of the Iroquois were complete. They had "made a
solitude, and called it peace." All the surrounding nations of their own
lineage were conquered and broken up, while neighboring Algonquin tribes
were suffered to exist only on condition of paying a yearly tribute of
wampum. The confederacy remained a wedge thrust between the growing
colonies of France and England.

But what was the state of the conquerors? Their triumphs had cost them
dear. As early as the year 1660, a writer, evidently well-informed,
reports that their entire force had been reduced to twenty-two hundred
warriors, while of these not more than twelve hundred were of the true
Iroquois stock. The rest was a medley of adopted prisoners,--Hurons,
Neutrals, Eries, and Indians of various Algonquin tribes. [ 1 ] Still
their aggressive spirit was unsubdued. These incorrigible warriors
pushed their murderous raids to Hudson's Bay, Lake Superior, the
Mississippi, and the Tennessee; they were the tyrants of all the
intervening wilderness; and they remained, for more than half a century,
a terror and a scourge to the afflicted colonists of New France.

[ 1 Relation, 1660, 6, 7 (anonymous). Le Jeune says, "Their victories
have so depopulated their towns, that there are more foreigners in them
than natives. At Onondaga there are Indians of seven different nations
permanently established; and, among the Senecas, of no less than eleven."
(Relation, 1657, 34.) These were either adopted prisoners, or Indians
who had voluntarily joined the Iroquois to save themselves from their
hostility. They took no part in councils, but were expected to join
war-parties, though they were usually excused from fighting against their
former countrymen. The condition of female prisoners was little better
than that of slaves, and those to whom they were assigned often killed
them on the slightest pique. ]




CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE END.


FAILURE OF THE JESUITS.--WHAT THEIR SUCCESS WOULD HAVE INVOLVED.--
FUTURE OF THE MISSION.


With the fall of the Hurons, fell the best hope of the Canadian mission.
They, and the stable and populous communities around them, had been the
rude material from which the Jesuit would have formed his Christian
empire in the wilderness; but, one by one, these kindred peoples were
uprooted and swept away, while the neighboring Algonquins, to whom they
had been a bulwark, were involved with them in a common ruin. The land
of promise was turned to a solitude and a desolation. There was still
work in hand, it is true,--vast regions to explore, and countless
heathens to snatch from perdition; but these, for the most part, were
remote and scattered hordes, from whose conversion it was vain to look
for the same solid and decisive results.

In a measure, the occupation of the Jesuits was gone. Some of them went
home, "well resolved," writes the Father Superior, "to return to the
combat at the first sound of the trumpet;" [ 1 ] while of those who
remained, about twenty in number, several soon fell victims to famine,
hardship, and the Iroquois. A few years more, and Canada ceased to be a
mission; political and commercial interests gradually became ascendant,
and the story of Jesuit propagandism was interwoven with her civil and
military annals.

[ 1 Lettre de Lalemant au R. P. Provincial (Relation, 1650, 48). ]

Here, then, closes this wild and bloody act of the great drama of New
France; and now let the curtain fall, while we ponder its meaning.

The cause of the failure of the Jesuits is obvious. The guns and
tomahawks of the Iroquois were the ruin of their hopes. Could they have
curbed or converted those ferocious bands, it is little less than certain
that their dream would have become a reality. Savages tamed--not
civilized, for that was scarcely possible--would have been distributed in
communities through the valleys of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi,
ruled by priests in the interest of Catholicity and of France. Their
habits of agriculture would have been developed, and their instincts of
mutual slaughter repressed. The swift decline of the Indian population
would have been arrested; and it would have been made, through the
fur-trade, a source of prosperity to New France. Unmolested by Indian
enemies, and fed by a rich commerce, she would have put forth a vigorous
growth. True to her far-reaching and adventurous genius, she would have
occupied the West with traders, settlers, and garrisons, and cut up the
virgin wilderness into fiefs, while as yet the colonies of England were
but a weak and broken line along the shore of the Atlantic; and when at
last the great conflict came, England and Liberty would have been
confronted, not by a depleted antagonist, still feeble from the
exhaustion of a starved and persecuted infancy, but by an athletic
champion of the principles of Richelieu and of Loyola.

Liberty may thank the Iroquois, that, by their insensate fury, the plans
of her adversary were brought to nought, and a peril and a woe averted
from her future. They ruined the trade which was the life-blood of New
France; they stopped the current of her arteries, and made all her early
years a misery and a terror. Not that they changed her destinies.
The contest on this continent between Liberty and Absolutism was never
doubtful; but the triumph of the one would have been dearly bought,
and the downfall of the other incomplete. Populations formed in the
ideas and habits of a feudal monarchy, and controlled by a hierarchy
profoundly hostile to freedom of thought, would have remained a hindrance
and a stumbling-block in the way of that majestic experiment of which
America is the field.

The Jesuits saw their hopes struck down; and their faith, though not
shaken, was sorely tried. The Providence of God seemed in their eyes
dark and inexplicable; but, from the stand-point of Liberty, that
Providence is clear as the sun at noon. Meanwhile let those who have
prevailed yield due honor to the defeated. Their virtues shine amidst
the rubbish of error, like diamonds and gold in the gravel of the torrent.

But now new scenes succeed, and other actors enter on the stage, a hardy
and valiant band, moulded to endure and dare,--the Discoverers of the
Great West.




Appendix: Transcription notes:

This etext was transcribed from a volume of the Twentieth Edition.

The principal works of Francis Parkman:
The Oregon Trail, 1849
The Conspiracy of Pontiac, 1851
The seven works comprising "France and England in North America":
Pioneers of France in the New World, 1865
The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century, 1867
LaSalle and the Discovery of the Great West, 1869
The Old Regime in Canada, 1874
Count Frontenac and New France Under Louis XIV, 1877
Montcalm and Wolfe, 1884
A Half-Century of Conflict, 1892 (2 volumes)

The 8-bit version of this etext, with accented French characters,
is produced using Windows Code Page 1252. Most of the accented
characters will also display correctly if you view the text using
any of the ISO 8859 character sets. However, the "oe" ligature -
œ - will only display correctly if using Windows 1252.

This book contains five hundred sixty-eight (568) footnotes:
- Footnotes are always presented in square brackets.
- Where practical, the footnote is presented at the point that the
footnote is referenced.
- Otherwise, a numbered reference [ 1 ] is shown at the point that the
footnote is referenced, and the corresponding numbered footnotes are
presented immediately following the paragraph.

In those cases in which I felt it would be beneficial, underscores are
used to denote _words and phrases_ which are presented in _italics_ in
the printed book.

Detailed notes include:
- modifications applied while transcribing printed book to e-text.
- instances in which a footnote referred to a specific page in the
printed book; these references have been modified to identify the
appropriate chapter.
- problems transcribing the text.

Introduction:
Page xxxv, in the French footnote the word "come" is printed with
a straight line over the "o". This character is not available in
code page 1252.

Chapter 4:
Page 31, fixed typo ("fumeé", wrong character accented) in footnote
Page 31, footnote is not printed clearly, word appears to be "mais"
Page 31, apostrophe is not printed in "qu'à"
Page 33, fixed typo ("laiss", should be "laisse") in footnote
Page 37, footnote refers back to page xliv

Chapter 6:
Page 62, there is a footnote 1 on this page, but no clear
reference mark within the page. I placed the footnote at
the end of the second paragraph, where it appears that there
might be an intended but mis-printed reference mark.

Chpater 7:
Page 76, French footnote contains the word "Atsatone8ai". No
similar word occurs elsewhere in the text, so I did not know
what to change it to, so I left it as is.

Chapter 8:
Page 85, "i" is not printed in "i'auoüe"
Page 85, footnote is not printed clearly, word appears to be "cherche"

Chapter 12:
Page 144, footnote refers back to page 109

Chapter 15:
Page 195, rightmost digit of year in footnote is poorly printed,
appears most likely to be 1659

Chapter 18:
Page 263, poorly printed word in footnote, appears to be "de"

Chapter 19:
Page 281, fixed typo ("die", should be "dine")

Chapter 22:
Page 330, footnote refers back to page 264

Page 333, fixed typo ("Govornor")

Chapter 23:
Page 339, footnote refers back to page 137

Chapter 25:
Page 364, footnote refers back to page 214
Page 364, footnote 4, add missing close-quotes
Page 371, I assumed a comma at end of page
Page 372, fixed typo ("aprés", wrong accent on "e") in footnote
Page 372, I guessed ":" after "dit-il"

Chapter 28:
Page 392, footnote refers back to page 108

Chapter 29:
Page 397, footnote, add missing close-quotes

Chapter 30:
Page 407, fixed typo ("mâitre", wrong character accented) in footnote

Chapter 31:
Page 412, fixed typo ("neges", should be "neiges") in footnote

Chapter 32:
Page 431, footnote refers back to page 102

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