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

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[ The prevalence of this fancy among the Algonquins in the remote parts
of Canada is well established. The writer found it also among the
extreme western bands of the Dahcotah. He tried, in the month of July,
to persuade an old chief, a noted story-teller, to tell him some of the
tales; but, though abundantly loquacious in respect to his own adventures,
and even his dreams, the Indian obstinately refused, saying that winter
was the time for the tales, and that it was bad to tell them in summer.

Mr. Schoolcraft has published a collection of Algonquin tales, under the
title of Algic Researches. Most of them were translated by his wife,
an educated Ojibwa half-breed. This book is perhaps the best of
Mr. Schoolcraft's works, though its value is much impaired by the want of
a literal rendering, and the introduction of decorations which savor more
of a popular monthly magazine than of an Indian wigwam. Mrs. Eastman's
interesting Legends of the Sioux (Dahcotah) is not free from the same
defect. Other tales are scattered throughout the works of Mr. Schoolcraft
and various modern writers. Some are to be found in the works of Lafitau
and the other Jesuits. But few of the Iroquois legends have been printed,
though a considerable number have been written down. The singular History
of the Five Nations, by the old Tuscarora Indian, Cusick, gives the
substance of some of them. Others will be found in Clark's History of
Onondaga. ]

It is obvious that the Indian mind has never seriously occupied itself
with any of the higher themes of thought. The beings of its belief are
not impersonations of the forces of Nature, the courses of human destiny,
or the movements of human intellect, will, and passion. In the midst of
Nature; the Indian knew nothing of her laws. His perpetual reference of
her phenomena to occult agencies forestalled inquiry and precluded
inductive reasoning. If the wind blew with violence, it was because the
water-lizard, which makes the wind, had crawled out of his pool; if the
lightning was sharp and frequent, it was because the young of the
thunder-bird were restless in their nest; if a blight fell upon the corn,
it was because the Corn Spirit was angry; and if the beavers were shy and
difficult to catch, it was because they had taken offence at seeing the
bones of one of their race thrown to a dog. Well, and even highly
developed, in a few instances,--I allude especially to the Iroquois,--
with respect to certain points of material concernment, the mind of the
Indian in other respects was and is almost hopelessly stagnant. The very
traits that raise him above the servile races are hostile to the kind and
degree of civilization which those races so easily attain. His
intractable spirit of independence, and the pride which forbids him to be
an imitator, reinforce but too strongly that savage lethargy of mind from
which it is so hard to rouse him. No race, perhaps, ever offered greater
difficulties to those laboring for its improvement.

To sum up the results of this examination, the primitive Indian was as
savage in his religion as in his life. He was divided between fetich-
worship and that next degree of religious development which consists in
the worship of deities embodied in the human form. His conception of
their attributes was such as might have been expected. His gods were no
whit better than himself. Even when he borrows from Christianity the
idea of a Supreme and Universal Spirit, his tendency is to reduce Him to
a local habitation and a bodily shape; and this tendency disappears only
in tribes that have been long in contact with civilized white men.
The primitive Indian, yielding his untutored homage to One All-pervading
and Omnipotent Spirit, is a dream of poets, rhetoricians, and
sentimentalists.




THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA.


CHAPTER I.

1634.

NOTRE-DAME DES ANGES.


QUEBEC IN 1634.--FATHER LE JEUNE.--THE MISSION-HOUSE.--
ITS DOMESTIC ECONOMY.--THE JESUITS AND THEIR DESIGNS.


Opposite Quebec lies the tongue of land called Point Levi. One who,
in the summer of the year 1634, stood on its margin and looked northward,
across the St. Lawrence, would have seen, at the distance of a mile or
more, a range of lofty cliffs, rising on the left into the bold heights
of Cape Diamond, and on the right sinking abruptly to the bed of the
tributary river St. Charles. Beneath these cliffs, at the brink of the
St. Lawrence, he would have descried a cluster of warehouses, sheds,
and wooden tenements. Immediately above, along the verge of the
precipice, he could have traced the outlines of a fortified work, with a
flagstaff, and a few small cannon to command the river; while, at the
only point where Nature had made the heights accessible, a zigzag path
connected the warehouses and the fort.

Now, embarked in the canoe of some Montagnais Indian, let him cross the
St. Lawrence, land at the pier, and, passing the cluster of buildings,
climb the pathway up the cliff. Pausing for rest and breath, he might
see, ascending and descending, the tenants of this outpost of the
wilderness: a soldier of the fort, or an officer in slouched hat and
plume; a factor of the fur company, owner and sovereign lord of all
Canada; a party of Indians; a trader from the upper country, one of the
precursors of that hardy race of _coureurs de bois_, destined to form a
conspicuous and striking feature of the Canadian population: next,
perhaps, would appear a figure widely different. The close, black
cassock, the rosary hanging from the waist, and the wide, black hat,
looped up at the sides, proclaimed the Jesuit,--Father Le Jeune, Superior
of the Residence of Quebec.

And now, that we may better know the aspect and condition of the infant
colony and incipient mission, we will follow the priest on his way.
Mounting the steep path, he reached the top of the cliff, some two
hundred feet above the river and the warehouses. On the left lay the
fort built by Champlain, covering a part of the ground now forming Durham
Terrace and the Place d'Armes. Its ramparts were of logs and earth,
and within was a turreted building of stone, used as a barrack, as
officers' quarters, and for other purposes. [ Compare the various
notices in Champlain (1632) with that of Du Creux, Historia Canadensis,
204. ] Near the fort stood a small chapel, newly built. The surrounding
country was cleared and partially cultivated; yet only one dwelling-house
worthy the name appeared. It was a substantial cottage, where lived
Madame Hébert, widow of the first settler of Canada, with her daughter,
her son-in-law Couillard, and their children, good Catholics all, who,
two years before, when Quebec was evacuated by the English, [ 1 ] wept
for joy at beholding Le Jeune, and his brother Jesuit, De Nouë, crossing
their threshold to offer beneath their roof the long-forbidden sacrifice
of the Mass. There were inclosures with cattle near at hand; and the
house, with its surroundings, betokened industry and thrift.

[ 1 See "Pioneers of France in the New World." Hébert's cottage seems
to have stood between Ste.-Famille and Couillard Streets, as appears by a
contract of 1634, cited by M. Ferland. ]

Thence Le Jeune walked on, across the site of the modern market-place,
and still onward, near the line of the cliffs which sank abruptly on his
right. Beneath lay the mouth of the St. Charles; and, beyond, the
wilderness shore of Beauport swept in a wide curve eastward, to where,
far in the distance, the Gulf of Montmorenci yawned on the great river.
[ The settlement of Beauport was begun this year, or the year following,
by the Sieur Giffard, to whom a large tract had been granted here--
Langevin, Notes sur les Archives de N. D. de Beauport, 5. ] The priest
soon passed the clearings, and entered the woods which covered the site
of the present suburb of St. John. Thence he descended to a lower
plateau, where now lies the suburb of St. Roch, and, still advancing,
reached a pleasant spot at the extremity of the Pointe-aux-Lièvres,
a tract of meadow land nearly inclosed by a sudden bend of the
St. Charles. Here lay a canoe or skiff; and, paddling across the narrow
stream, Le Jeune saw on the meadow, two hundred yards from the bank,
a square inclosure formed of palisades, like a modern picket fort of the
Indian frontier. [ 1 ] Within this inclosure were two buildings, one of
which had been half burned by the English, and was not yet repaired.
It served as storehouse, stable, workshop, and bakery. Opposite stood
the principal building, a structure of planks, plastered with mud,
and thatched with long grass from the meadows. It consisted of one story,
a garret, and a cellar, and contained four principal rooms, of which one
served as chapel, another as refectory, another as kitchen, and the
fourth as a lodging for workmen. The furniture of all was plain in the
extreme. Until the preceding year, the chapel had had no other ornament
than a sheet on which were glued two coarse engravings; but the priests
had now decorated their altar with an image of a dove representing the
Holy Ghost, an image of Loyola, another of Xavier, and three images of
the Virgin. Four cells opened from the refectory, the largest of which
was eight feet square. In these lodged six priests, while two lay
brothers found shelter in the garret. The house had been hastily built,
eight years before, and now leaked in all parts. Such was the Residence
of Notre-Dame des Anges. Here was nourished the germ of a vast
enterprise, and this was the cradle of the great mission of New France.
[ 2 ]

[ 1 This must have been very near the point where the streamlet called
the River Lairet enters the St. Charles. The place has a triple historic
interest. The wintering-place of Cartier in 1535-6 (see "Pioneers of
France") seems to have been here. Here, too, in 1759, Montcalm's bridge
of boats crossed the St. Charles; and in a large intrenchment, which
probably included the site of the Jesuit mission-house, the remnants of
his shattered army rallied, after their defeat on the Plains of
Abraham.--See the very curious Narrative of the Chevalier Johnstone,
published by the Historical Society of Quebec. ]

[ 2 The above particulars are gathered from the Relations of 1626
(Lalemant), and 1632, 1633, 1634, 1635 (Le Jeune), but chiefly from a
long letter of the Father Superior to the Provincial of the Jesuits at
Paris, containing a curiously minute report of the state of the mission.
It was sent from Quebec by the returning ships in the summer of 1634,
and will be found in Carayon, Première Mission des Jésuites au Canada,
122. The original is in the archives of the Order at Rome. ]

Of the six Jesuits gathered in the refectory for the evening meal,
one was conspicuous among the rest,--a tall, strong man, with features
that seemed carved by Nature for a soldier, but which the mental habits
of years had stamped with the visible impress of the priesthood. This
was Jean de Brébeuf, descendant of a noble family of Normandy, and one of
the ablest and most devoted zealots whose names stand on the missionary
rolls of his Order. His companions were Masse, Daniel, Davost, De Nouë,
and the Father Superior, Le Jeune. Masse was the same priest who had
been the companion of Father Biard in the abortive mission of Acadia.
[ See "Pioneers of France in the New World." ] By reason of his useful
qualities, Le Jeune nicknamed him "le Père Utile." At present, his
special function was the care of the pigs and cows, which he kept in the
inclosure around the buildings, lest they should ravage the neighboring
fields of rye, barley, wheat, and maize. [ 1 ] De Nouë had charge of the
eight or ten workmen employed by the mission, who gave him at times no
little trouble by their repinings and complaints. [ 2 ] They were forced
to hear mass every morning and prayers every evening, besides an
exhortation on Sunday. Some of them were for returning home, while two
or three, of a different complexion, wished to be Jesuits themselves.
The Fathers, in their intervals of leisure, worked with their men,
spade in hand. For the rest, they were busied in preaching, singing
vespers, saying mass and hearing confessions at the fort of Quebec,
catechizing a few Indians, and striving to master the enormous
difficulties of the Huron and Algonquin languages.

[ 1 "Le P. Masse, que je nomme quelquefois en riant le Père Utile,
est bien cognu de V. R. Il a soin des choses domestiques et du bestail
que nous avons, en quoy il a très-bien reussy."--Lettre du P. Paul le
Jeune au R. P. Provincial, in Carayon, 122.--Le Jeune does not fail to
send an inventory of the "bestail" to his Superior, namely: "Deux grosses
truies qui nourissent chacune quatre petits cochons, deux vaches, deux
petites genisses, et un petit taureau." ]

[ 2 The methodical Le Jeune sets down the causes of their discontent
under six different heads, each duly numbered. Thus:--
"1. C'est le naturel des artisans de se plaindre et de gronder."
"2. La diversité des gages les fait murmurer," etc. ]

Well might Father Le Jeune write to his Superior, "The harvest is
plentiful, and the laborers few." These men aimed at the conversion of a
continent. From their hovel on the St. Charles they surveyed a field of
labor whose vastness might tire the wings of thought itself; a scene
repellent and appalling, darkened with omens of peril and woe. They were
an advance-guard of the great army of Loyola, strong in a discipline that
controlled not alone the body and the will, but the intellect, the heart,
the soul, and the inmost consciousness. The lives of these early
Canadian Jesuits attest the earnestness of their faith and the intensity
of their zeal; but it was a zeal bridled, curbed, and ruled by a guiding
hand. Their marvellous training in equal measure kindled enthusiasm and
controlled it, roused into action a mighty power, and made it as
subservient as those great material forces which modern science has
learned to awaken and to govern. They were drilled to a factitious
humility, prone to find utterance in expressions of self-depreciation and
self-scorn, which one may often judge unwisely, when he condemns them as
insincere. They were devoted believers, not only in the fundamental
dogmas of Rome, but in those lesser matters of faith which heresy
despises as idle and puerile superstitions. One great aim engrossed
their lives. "For the greater glory of God"--ad majorem Dei gloriam--
they would act or wait, dare, suffer, or die, yet all in unquestioning
subjection to the authority of the Superiors, in whom they recognized the
agents of Divine authority itself.




CHAPTER II.

LOYOLA AND THE JESUITS.


CONVERSION OF LOYOLA.--FOUNDATION OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS.--
PREPARATION OF THE NOVICE.--CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ORDER.--
THE CANADIAN JESUITS.


It was an evil day for new-born Protestantism, when a French artilleryman
fired the shot that struck down Ignatius Loyola in the breach of
Pampeluna. A proud noble, an aspiring soldier, a graceful courtier,
an ardent and daring gallant was metamorphosed by that stroke into the
zealot whose brain engendered and brought forth the mighty Society of
Jesus. His story is a familiar one: how, in the solitude of his
sick-room, a change came over him, upheaving, like an earthquake, all the
forces of his nature; how, in the cave of Manresa, the mysteries of
Heaven were revealed to him; how he passed from agonies to transports,
from transports to the calm of a determined purpose. The soldier gave
himself to a new warfare. In the forge of his great intellect, heated,
but not disturbed by the intense fires of his zeal, was wrought the
prodigious enginery whose power has been felt to the uttermost confines
of the world.

Loyola's training had been in courts and camps: of books he knew little
or nothing. He had lived in the unquestioning faith of one born and bred
in the very focus of Romanism; and thus, at the age of about thirty,
his conversion found him. It was a change of life and purpose, not of
belief. He presumed not to inquire into the doctrines of the Church.
It was for him to enforce those doctrines; and to this end he turned all
the faculties of his potent intellect, and all his deep knowledge of
mankind. He did not aim to build up barren communities of secluded monks,
aspiring to heaven through prayer, penance, and meditation, but to subdue
the world to the dominion of the dogmas which had subdued him; to
organize and discipline a mighty host, controlled by one purpose and one
mind, fired by a quenchless zeal or nerved by a fixed resolve, yet
impelled, restrained, and directed by a single master hand. The Jesuit
is no dreamer: he is emphatically a man of action; action is the end of
his existence.

It was an arduous problem which Loyola undertook to solve,--to rob a man
of volition, yet to preserve in him, nay, to stimulate, those energies
which would make him the most efficient instrument of a great design.
To this end the Jesuit novitiate and the constitutions of the Order are
directed. The enthusiasm of the novice is urged to its intensest pitch;
then, in the name of religion, he is summoned to the utter abnegation of
intellect and will in favor of the Superior, in whom he is commanded to
recognize the representative of God on earth. Thus the young zealot
makes no slavish sacrifice of intellect and will; at least, so he is
taught: for he sacrifices them, not to man, but to his Maker. No limit
is set to his submission: if the Superior pronounces black to be white,
he is bound in conscience to acquiesce.

[ Those who wish to know the nature of the Jesuit virtue of obedience
will find it set forth in the famous Letter on Obedience of Loyola. ]

Loyola's book of Spiritual Exercises is well known. In these exercises
lies the hard and narrow path which is the only entrance to the Society
of Jesus. The book is, to all appearance, a dry and superstitious
formulary; but, in the hands of a skilful director of consciences,
it has proved of terrible efficacy. The novice, in solitude and darkness,
day after day and night after night, ponders its images of perdition and
despair. He is taught to hear, in imagination, the howlings of the
damned, to see their convulsive agonies, to feel the flames that burn
without consuming, to smell the corruption of the tomb and the fumes of
the infernal pit. He must picture to himself an array of adverse armies,
one commanded by Satan on the plains of Babylon, one encamped under
Christ about the walls of Jerusalem; and the perturbed mind, humbled by
long contemplation of its own vileness, is ordered to enroll itself under
one or the other banner. Then, the choice made, it is led to a region of
serenity and celestial peace, and soothed with images of divine benignity
and grace. These meditations last, without intermission, about a month,
and, under an astute and experienced directorship, they have been found
of such power, that the Manual of Spiritual Exercises boasts to have
saved souls more in number than the letters it contains.

To this succeed two years of discipline and preparation, directed,
above all things else, to perfecting the virtues of humility and
obedience. The novice is obliged to perform the lowest menial offices,
and the most repulsive duties of the sick-room and the hospital; and he
is sent forth, for weeks together, to beg his bread like a common
mendicant. He is required to reveal to his confessor, not only his sins,
but all those hidden tendencies, instincts, and impulses which form the
distinctive traits of character. He is set to watch his comrades,
and his comrades are set to watch him. Each must report what he observes
of the acts and dispositions of the others; and this mutual espionage
does not end with the novitiate, but extends to the close of life.
The characteristics of every member of the Order are minutely analyzed,
and methodically put on record.

This horrible violence to the noblest qualities of manhood, joined to
that equivocal system of morality which eminent casuists of the Order
have inculcated, must, it may be thought, produce deplorable effects upon
the characters of those under its influence. Whether this has been
actually the case, the reader of history may determine. It is certain,
however, that the Society of Jesus has numbered among its members men
whose fervent and exalted natures have been intensified, without being
abased, by the pressure to which they have been subjected.

It is not for nothing that the Society studies the character of its
members so intently, and by methods so startling. It not only uses its
knowledge to thrust into obscurity or cast out altogether those whom it
discovers to be dull, feeble, or unwilling instruments of its purposes,
but it assigns to every one the task to which his talents or his
disposition may best adapt him: to one, the care of a royal conscience,
whereby, unseen, his whispered word may guide the destiny of nations; to
another, the instruction of children; to another, a career of letters or
science; and to the fervent and the self-sacrificing, sometimes also to
the restless and uncompliant, the distant missions to the heathen.

The Jesuit was, and is, everywhere,--in the school-room, in the library,
in the cabinets of princes and ministers, in the huts of savages, in the
tropics, in the frozen North, in India, in China, in Japan, in Africa,
in America; now as a Christian priest, now as a soldier, a mathematician,
an astrologer, a Brahmin, a mandarin, under countless disguises, by a
thousand arts, luring, persuading, or compelling souls into the fold of
Rome.

Of this vast mechanism for guiding and governing the minds of men,
this mighty enginery for subduing the earth to the dominion of an idea,
this harmony of contradictions, this moral Proteus, the faintest sketch
must now suffice. A disquisition on the Society of Jesus would be
without end. No religious order has ever united in itself so much to be
admired and so much to be detested. Unmixed praise has been poured on
its Canadian members. It is not for me to eulogize them, but to portray
them as they were.




CHAPTER III.

1632, 1633.

PAUL LE JEUNE.


LE JEUNE'S VOYAGE.--HIS FIRST PUPILS.--HIS STUDIES.--
HIS INDIAN TEACHER.--WINTER AT THE MISSION-HOUSE.--
LE JEUNE'S SCHOOL.--REINFORCEMENTS.


In another narrative, we have seen how the Jesuits, supplanting the
Récollet friars, their predecessors, had adopted as their own the rugged
task of Christianizing New France. We have seen, too, how a descent of
the English, or rather of Huguenots fighting under English colors,
had overthrown for a time the miserable little colony, with the mission
to which it was wedded; and how Quebec was at length restored to France,
and the broken thread of the Jesuit enterprise resumed. [ "Pioneers of
France." ]

It was then that Le Jeune had embarked for the New World. He was in his
convent at Dieppe when he received the order to depart; and he set forth
in haste for Havre, filled, he assures us, with inexpressible joy at the
prospect of a living or a dying martyrdom. At Rouen he was joined by De
Nouë, with a lay brother named Gilbert; and the three sailed together on
the eighteenth of April, 1632. The sea treated them roughly; Le Jeune
was wretchedly sea-sick; and the ship nearly foundered in a gale.
At length they came in sight of "that miserable country," as the
missionary calls the scene of his future labors. It was in the harbor of
Tadoussac that he first encountered the objects of his apostolic cares;
for, as he sat in the ship's cabin with the master, it was suddenly
invaded by ten or twelve Indians, whom he compares to a party of maskers
at the Carnival. Some had their cheeks painted black, their noses blue,
and the rest of their faces red. Others were decorated with a broad band
of black across the eyes; and others, again, with diverging rays of black,
red, and blue on both cheeks. Their attire was no less uncouth. Some of
them wore shaggy bear skins, reminding the priest of the pictures of
St. John the Baptist.

After a vain attempt to save a number of Iroquois prisoners whom they
were preparing to burn alive on shore, Le Jeune and his companions again
set sail, and reached Quebec on the fifth of July. Having said mass,
as already mentioned, under the roof of Madame Hébert and her delighted
family, the Jesuits made their way to the two hovels built by their
predecessors on the St. Charles, which had suffered woful dilapidation at
the hands of the English. Here they made their abode, and applied
themselves, with such skill as they could command, to repair the
shattered tenements and cultivate the waste meadows around.

The beginning of Le Jeune's missionary labors was neither imposing nor
promising. He describes himself seated with a small Indian boy on one
side and a small negro on the other, the latter of whom had been left by
the English as a gift to Madame Hébert. As neither of the three
understood the language of the others, the pupils made little progress in
spiritual knowledge. The missionaries, it was clear, must learn
Algonquin at any cost; and, to this end, Le Jeune resolved to visit the
Indian encampments. Hearing that a band of Montagnais were fishing for
eels on the St. Lawrence, between Cape Diamond and the cove which now
bears the name of Wolfe, he set forth for the spot on a morning in
October. As, with toil and trepidation, he scrambled around the foot of
the cape,--whose precipices, with a chaos of loose rocks, thrust
themselves at that day into the deep tidewater,--he dragged down upon
himself the trunk of a fallen tree, which, in its descent, well nigh
swept him into the river. The peril past, he presently reached his
destination. Here, among the lodges of bark, were stretched innumerable
strings of hide, from which hung to dry an incredible multitude of eels.
A boy invited him into the lodge of a withered squaw, his grandmother,
who hastened to offer him four smoked eels on a piece of birch bark,
while other squaws of the household instructed him how to roast them on a
forked stick over the embers. All shared the feast together, his
entertainers using as napkins their own hair or that of their dogs; while
Le Jeune, intent on increasing his knowledge of Algonquin, maintained an
active discourse of broken words and pantomime. [ Le Jeune, Relation,
1633, 2. ]

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