After this calamity the pall of a great fear hung over the Hurons. Paralysed and inert, the warriors took no steps to defend the country against the Iroquois peril. In spite of the exhortations of the Jesuits, they lay idle in their wigwams or hunted in the forest, dejectedly awaiting their doom.

An Iroquois war-party twelve hundred strong spent the winter of 1648-49 on the upper Ottawa; and as the snows began to melt under the thaws of spring these insatiable slayers of men directed their steps towards Huronia. The frontier village on the east was now St Ignace, on the west of the Sturgeon river, about seven miles from Ste Marie. It was strongly fortified and formed a part of a mission of the same name, under the care of Brebeuf and Father Gabriel Lalemant, a nephew of Jerome Lalemant. About a league distant, midway to Ste Marie, stood St Louis, another town of the mission, where the two fathers lived. On the 16th of March the inhabitants of St Ignace had no thought of impending disaster. The Iroquois might be on the war-path, but they would not come while yet ice held the rivers and snow lay in the forests. But that morning, just as the horizon began to glow with the first colours of the dawn, the sleeping Hurons woke to the sound of the dreaded war-whoop. The Iroquois devils had breached the walls. Three Hurons escaped, dashed along the forest trail to St Louis, roused the village, and then fled for Ste Marie, followed by the women and children and those too feeble to fight. There were in St Louis only about eighty warriors, but, not knowing the strength of the invaders, they determined to fight. The Hurons begged Brebeuf and Lalemant to fly to Ste Marie; but they refused to stir. In the hour of danger and death they must remain with their flock, to sustain the warriors in the battle and to give the last rites of the Church to the wounded and dying.

Having made short work of St Ignace, the Iroquois came battering at the walls of St Louis before sunrise. The Hurons resisted stubbornly; but the assailants outnumbered them ten to one, and soon hacked a way through the palisades and captured all the defenders remaining alive, among them Brebeuf and Lalemant.

The Iroquois bound Brebeuf and Lalemant and led them back to St Ignace, beating them as they went. There they stripped the two priests and tied them to stakes. Brebeuf knew that his hour had come. Him the savages made the special object of their diabolical cruelty. And, standing at the stake amid his yelling tormentors, he bequeathed to the world an example of fortitude sublime, unsurpassed, and unsurpassable. Neither by look nor cry nor movement did he give sign of the agony he was suffering. To the reviling and abuse of the fiends he replied with words warning them of the judgment to come. They poured boiling water on his head in derision of baptism; they hung red-hot axes about his naked shoulders; they made a belt of pitch and resin and placed it about his body and set it on fire. By every conceivable means the red devils strove to force him to cry for mercy. But not a sound of pain could they wring from him. At last, after four hours of this torture, a chief cut out his heart, and the noble servant of God quitted the scene of his earthly labours.

Lalemant, a man of gentle, refined character, as delicate as Brebeuf was robust, also endured the torture. But the savages administered it to him with a refinement of cruelty, and kept him alive for fourteen hours. Then at last he, too, entered into his rest.

Ten years before Brebeuf had made a vow to Christ: 'Never to shrink from martyrdom if, in Your mercy, You deem me worthy of so great a privilege. Henceforth, I will never avoid any opportunity that presents itself of dying for You, but will accept martyrdom with delight, provided that, by so doing, I can add to Your glory. From this day, my Lord Jesus Christ, I cheerfully yield unto You my life, with the hope that You will grant me the grace to die for You, since You have deigned to die for me. Grant me, O Lord, so to live, that You may deem me worthy to die a martyr's death Thus my Lord, I take Your chalice, and call upon Your name. Jesu! Jesu! Jesu!' How nobly this vow was kept.



CHAPTER VII

THE DISPERSION OF THE HURONS

Meanwhile at Ste Marie Ragueneau and his companions learned from Huron fugitives of the fate of their comrades; and waited, hourly expecting to be attacked. The priests were attended by about twoscore armed Frenchmen. All day and all night the anxious fathers prayed and stood on guard. In the morning three hundred Huron warriors came to their relief, bringing the welcome news that the Hurons were assembling in force to give battle to the invaders. These Hurons were just in time to fall in with a party of Iroquois, already on the way to Ste Marie. An encounter in the woods followed. At first some of the Hurons were driven back; but straight-away others of their band rushed to the rescue; and the Iroquois in turn ran for shelter behind the shattered palisades of St Louis. The Hurons followed, and finally put the enemy to rout and remained in possession of the place.

Now followed an Indian battle of almost unparalleled ferocity. Never did Huron warriors fight better than in this conflict at the death-hour of their nation. Against the Hurons within the palisades came the Iroquois in force from St Ignace. All day long, in and about the walls of St Louis, the battle raged; and when night fell only twenty wounded and helpless Hurons remained to continue the resistance. In the gathering darkness the Iroquois rushed in and with tomahawk and knife dispatched the remnant of the band.

But the Iroquois had no mind for further fighting, and did not attack Ste Marie. They mustered their Huron captives—old men, women, and children—tied them to stakes in the cabins of St Ignace, and set fire to the village. And, after being entertained to their satisfaction by the cries of agony which arose from their victims in the blazing cabins, they made their way southward through the forests of Huronia and disappeared.

Panic reigned throughout Huronia. After burning fifteen villages, lest they should serve as a shelter for the Iroquois, the Hurons scattered far and wide. Some fled to Ste Marie, some toiled through the snows of spring to the villages of the Petuns, some fled to the Neutrals and Eries, some to the Algonquin tribes of the north and west, and some even sought adoption among the Iroquois. Ste Marie stood alone, like a shepherd without sheep: mission villages, chapels, residences, flocks—all were gone. The work of over twenty years was destroyed. Sick at heart, Ragueneau looked about him for a new situation, a spot that might serve as a centre for his band of devoted missionaries as they toiled among the wanderers by lake and river and in the depths of the northern forest.

He first thought of Isle Ste Marie (Manitoulin Island) as the safest place for the headquarters of a new mission, but finally decided to go to Isle St Joseph (Christian Island), just off Huronia to the north. There, on the bay that indents the south-east corner of the island, he directed that land should be cleared for the building. The work of evacuating Ste Marie began early in May, and on the 15th of the month the buildings were set on fire. The valuables of the mission were placed in a large boat and on rafts; and, with heavy hearts, the fathers and their helpers went aboard for the journey to their new home twenty miles away.

The new Ste Marie which the Jesuits built on Isle St Joseph was in the nature of a strong fort. Its walls were of stone and cement, fourteen feet high and loopholed. At each corner there was a protecting bastion, and the entire structure was surrounded by a deep moat. It was practically impregnable against Indian attack, for it could not be undermined, set on fire, or taken by assault. A handful of men could hold it against a host of Iroquois.

About the sheltering walls of Ste Marie the Indians gathered, to the number of seven or eight thousand by the autumn of 1649. Here the missionaries continued the good work. The only outposts now were among the Algonquins along the shore of Georgian Bay, and the Petun missions of St Mathias, St Matthieu, and St Jean. But the Petuns were presently to share the fate of the Hurons; and Garnier and Chabanel, who were stationed at St Jean, were to perish as had Daniel, Brebeuf, and Lalemant.

During the autumn Ragueneau learned that a large body of Iroquois were working their way westward towards St Jean. He sent runners to the threatened town, and ordered Chabanel to return to Ste Marie and warned Garnier to be on his guard. On the 5th of December Chabanel set out for Ste Marie with some Petun Hurons, and Garnier was left alone at St Jean. Two days later, while the warriors were out searching for their elusive foes, a band of Senecas and Mohawks swept upon the town, broke through the defences, and proceeded to butcher the inhabitants. Garnier fell with his flock. In the thick of the slaughter, while baptizing and absolving the dying, he was smitten down with three bullet wounds and his cassock torn from his body. As he lay in agony the moans of a wounded Petun near by drew his attention. Though spent with loss of blood, though his brain reeled with the weakness of approaching death, he dragged himself to his wounded red brother, gave him absolution, and then fell to the ground in a faint. On recovering from his swoon he saw another dying convert near by and strove to reach his side, but an Iroquois rushed upon him and ended his life with a tomahawk.

In a sense Chabanel was less fortunate than Garnier. On the day following the massacre of St Jean he was hastening along the well-beaten trail towards Ste Marie, when the sound of Iroquois war-cries in the distance alarmed his guides, and all deserted him save one. This one did worse, for he slew the priest and cast his body into the Nottawasaga river. This murderer, an apostate Huron, afterwards confessed the crime, declaring that he had committed it because nothing but misfortune had befallen him ever since he and his family had embraced Christianity.

For some months after the death of Garnier and Chabanel the Jesuits maintained the mission of St Mathias among the Petuns in the Blue Hills. Here Father Adrien Greslon laboured until January 1650, and Father Leonard Garreau until the following spring. Garreau was then recalled, leaving not a missionary on the mainland in the Huron or the Petun country.

The French and Indians on Isle St Joseph, though safe from attack, were really prisoners on the island. Mohawks and Senecas remained in the forests near by, ready to pounce on any who ventured to the mainland. When winter bridged with ice the channel between the island and the main shore, it was necessary for the soldiers of the mission to stand incessantly on guard. And now another enemy than the Iroquois stalked among the fugitives. The fathers had abundant food for themselves and their assistants; but the Hurons, in their hurried flight, had made no provision for the winter. The famishing hordes subsisted on acorns and roots, and even greedily devoured the dead bodies of dogs and foxes. Disease joined forces with famine, and by spring fully half the Hurons at Ste Marie had perished. Some fishing and hunting parties left the island in search of food, but few returned.

It soon appeared that for the Hurons to remain on the island meant extinction. Two of the leading chiefs waited on Father Ragueneau and begged him to move the remnant of their people to Quebec, where under the sheltering walls of the fortress they might keep together as a people. It was a bitter draught for the Jesuits; but there was no other course. They made ready for the migration; and on the 10th of June (1650) the thirteen priests and four lay brothers of the mission, with their donnes, hired men, and soldiers, in all sixty French, and about three hundred Hurons, entered canoes and headed for the French River. On their way down the Ottawa they met Father Bressani, who had gone to Quebec in the previous autumn for supplies, and who now joined the retreating party. And on the 28th of July, after a journey of fifty days, all arrived safely at the capital of New France.

[Footnote: For a time the Hurons encamped in the vicinity of the Hotel-Dieu. In the spring of 1651 they moved to the island of Orleans. Five years later their settlement was raided by Mohawks and seventy-one were killed or taken prisoner. The island was abandoned and shelter sought in Quebec under the guns of Fort St Louis, and here they remained until 1668, when they removed to Beauport. In the following year they were placed at Notre-Dame-de-Foy, about four miles from Quebec. In 1673 a site affording more land was given them on the St Charles river about nine miles from the fortress. Here at Old Lorette a chapel was built for them and here they remained for twenty-four years. In 1697 they moved to New Lorette—Jeune Lorette—in the seigneury of St Michel, and at this place, by the rapids of the St Charles, four or five hundred of this once numerous tribe may still be found.]

The war-lust of the Five Nations remained still unsatiated. They continued to harass the Petuns, who finally fled in terror, most of them to Mackinaw Island. Still in dread of the Iroquois, they moved thence to the western end of Lake Superior; but here they came into conflict with the Sioux, and had to migrate once more. A band of them finally moved to Detroit and Sandusky, where, under the name of Wyandots, we find them figuring in history at a later period. The Iroquois then found occasion for quarrels with the Neutrals, the Eries, and the Andastes; and soon practically all the Indian tribes from the shores of Maine to the Mississippi and as far south as the Carolinas were under tribute to the Five Nations. Only the Algonquin tribes of Michigan and Wisconsin and the tribes of the far north had not suffered from these bloodthirsty conquerors.

The Huron mission was ended. For a quarter of a century the Jesuits had struggled to build up a spiritual empire among the heathen of North America, but, to all appearances, they had struggled in vain. In all twenty-five fathers had toiled in Huronia. Of these, as we have seen, four had been murdered by the Iroquois and one by an apostate Huron. Nor was this the whole story of martyrdom. Six years after the dispersion Leonard Garreau was to die by an Iroquois bullet while journeying up the Lake of Two Mountains on his way to the Algonquin missions of the west. Another of the fathers, Rene Menard, while following a party of Algonquins to the wilds of Wisconsin, lost his way in the forest and perished from exposure or starvation; and Anne de Noue, Brebeuf's earliest comrade in Huronia, in an effort to bring assistance to a party of French soldiers storm-bound on Lake St Peter, was frozen to death. But misfortune did not cool the zeal of the Jesuits. Into the depths of the forest they went with their wandering flocks, and raised the Cross by lake and stream as far west as the Mississippi and as far north as Hudson Bay. Already they had found their way into the Long Houses of the Iroquois.



CHAPTER VIII

THE IROQUOIS MISSION

While labouring among the Hurons the Jesuits had their minds on the Iroquois. It was, they thought, within their sphere of duty even to tame these human tigers. They well knew that such an attempt would involve dangers vastly greater than those encountered in Huronia; but the greater the danger and suffering the greater the glory. And yet for a time it seemed impossible to make a beginning of missionary work among the Iroquois. As we have seen, Champlain had made them the uncompromising enemies of the French, and since then all Frenchmen stood in constant peril of their lives from marauding bands in ambush near every settlement and along the highways of travel. Thus nearly twenty years passed after the arrival of the Jesuits in Canada before an opening came for winning a way to the hearts of these ruthless destroyers.

It came at last, fraught with tragedy. From 1636 to 1642 Father Isaac Jogues had been engaged in missionary work in Huronia. He was a man of saintly character, delicate, refined, scholarly; yet he had borne hardships among the Petuns enough to break the spirit of any man. He had toiled, too, among the Algonquin tribes, and at one time had preached to a gathering of two thousand at Sault Ste Marie. In 1642 he was chosen to bring much-needed supplies to Huronia—a dangerous task, as in that year large bodies of Iroquois were on the war-path. And in August he was ascending Lake St Peter with thirty-six Hurons and three Frenchmen in twelve canoes. His French companions were a labourer and two donnes—Rene Goupil, who, having had some hospital experience, was going to Ste Marie as a surgeon, and Guillaume Couture, a man of devotion, energy, and courage. The canoes bearing the party were threading the clustered islands at the western end of Lake St Peter, and had reached a spot where the thickly wooded shores were almost hidden from view by tall reeds that swayed in the summer wind, when suddenly out of the reeds darted a number of Iroquois warriors in canoes. The surprise was complete; three of the Hurons were killed on the spot, and Jogues, Goupil, and Couture, and twenty-two Hurons were taken prisoner. The raiders then plundered the canoes and set out southward, up the Richelieu, with their prisoners. At every stopping-place on the way Jogues and the donnes were brutally tortured; finally, in the Mohawk country they were dragged through the three chief towns of the nation, held up to ridicule, beaten with clubs, their fingers broken or lopped off, and their bodies burned with red-hot coals. Couture had slain a Mohawk warrior during the attack on Lake St Peter; but his courageous bearing so impressed the savages that one of them adopted him in place of a dead relative, and he thus escaped death. Goupil, after several months among the Mohawks, was brutally murdered. But Jogues's life was providentially preserved, and during nearly a year, a year of intense suffering, he went among his persecutors glorying in the opportunity of preaching the Gospel under these hard conditions.

At length a fishing and trading party of Mohawks took him to the Dutch settlement at Fort Orange (Albany). Already the Dutch authorities had tried in vain to gain his release. They now took advantage of his presence among them, generously braving the wrath of his tyrant masters, and aided him to escape. He found shelter on a Dutch vessel and finally succeeded in reaching France. The story of his capture had arrived before him, and his brothers in France welcomed him as a saint and martyr, as one miraculously snatched from the jaws of death. But he had no thought of remaining to enjoy the cloistered quiet and peace of a college in France; back to the hardships and dangers of North America his unconquerable spirit demanded that he should go. According to the rules of the Church he could not administer the sacraments with his mutilated hands; but, having obtained a special dispensation from the Pope, he once more fearlessly crossed the ocean, in search of the crown of martyrdom.

The next missionary to reach the Iroquois country was Father Joseph Bressani, an Italian priest who had been attracted to the Canadian mission-field through reading the Relations of the missionaries to Huronia. On April 27, 1644, with six Hurons and a French boy twelve years old, he set out from Three Rivers. It was thought that the Iroquois would not yet have reached the St Lawrence at this early time of the year; but this was an error, as the sequel proved. A party of twenty-seven warriors in ambush surprised Bressani and his fellow-travellers, slew several of the Hurons, and carried the rest with Bressani and the French boy to the Mohawk towns. Bressani they put to torture even more severe than that which Jogues had endured; not sparing the young lad, who manfully faced his tormentors till death freed him. Bressani escaped death only because an old squaw adopted him; but so mangled were his hands, so burned and broken was his body, that she deemed her slave of little value and sent him with her son to Fort Orange to be sold. The Dutch acted generously; paid a liberal ransom; and gave Bressani passage on a Dutch vessel, which landed him at La Rochelle on November 15, 1644. But, like Jogues, his one thought was to return to New France; and in the following year we find him in Huronia, his mutilated hands, torn and broken by the enemies of the Hurons, mute but efficacious witnesses of his courage.

For a time the hopes of the Jesuits for a mission among the Iroquois were damped by the experiences of Jogues and Bressani. But in 1645 an incident took place that opened the way for an attempt to carry the Gospel to this savage people. A band of Algonquins captured several Mohawks and brought them to Sillery. The captives fully expected to be tortured and burned; but the Jesuits at Quebec and the governor, Montmagny, were desirous of winning the goodwill of the Iroquois. They persuaded the Algonquins to free the prisoners, then treated them kindly, and sent one of them home on the understanding that he would try to make peace between his people and the French and their allies. On the advice of Guillaume Couture, who was still among the Mohawks and was much esteemed and trusted by them, the Mohawks sent ambassadors to Three Rivers to consult with the governor. The result was a temporary peace; the Mohawks agreed to bury the hatchet; and early in the following spring (1646) Montmagny decided to send to them a special messenger who might make the peace permanent and set up among them a mission.

Isaac Jogues, having returned to Canada after his brief rest in France, was now stationed at Ville Marie. His knowledge of the Mohawk language and character made him the most fitting person to send as envoy to the Mohawks, in the twofold capacity of diplomat and missionary. At first, as his sufferings rose before his mind, he shrank from the task, but only for a moment. He would go fearlessly to these people, though they lived in his memory only by the tortures they had inflicted on him. He set out; and on arriving at the Mohawk towns he found the savages friendly. Everywhere the Mohawks bade him welcome. They listened attentively to the message from the governor, and accepted the wampum belts and gifts which he bore. Apparently the Mohawks were eager for the amity of the French. To both Jogues and Couture it seemed that at last the time was ripe for an Iroquois mission—the Mission of the Martyrs. Before saying farewell to the Mohawks Jogues left with his hosts, as a pledge that he would return, a locked box; and by the end of June he was back in Quebec to report the success of his journey. He then prepared to redeem his pledge to the Mohawks. He left Quebec towards the end of August, with a lay brother named Lalande and some Hurons. He had forebodings of death, for on the eve of the journey he wrote to a friend in France: Ibo et non redibo, I shall go and shall not return. Arrived at the Richelieu, he was told by some friendly Indians that the attitude of the Mohawks had changed. They were in arms, and were once more breathing vengeance against the French and their allies. At this Jogues's Huron companions deserted him, but he and Lalande pressed on to their destination. The alarm was only too well founded. The Mohawks at once crowded round them, scowling and threatening. They stripped Jogues and his comrade of their clothing, beat them, and repeated the tortures which Jogues had suffered four years before.

The innocent cause of this outbreak of Mohawk fury was the box which Jogues had left behind him. From this box, as the ignorant savages thought, had come the drought and a plague of grasshoppers, which had destroyed the crops, and also the pest which was now raging in the Mohawk towns. Some Huron captives among the Mohawks, no doubt to win favour with their masters, had maligned Jogues, proclaiming him a sorcerer who had previously brought disaster to the Hurons, and had now come to destroy the Mohawks. Undoubtedly, they declared, it was from the box that had come all the ills which had befallen them. Jogues protested his innocence; but as well might he have tried to reason with a pack of wolves. They demanded his death, and the inevitable blow soon fell. On the 18th of October, as he sat wounded and bruised and starving in a wigwam, a chief approached and bade him come to a feast. He knew what the invitation meant; it was a feast of death; but he calmly rose, his spirit steeled for the worst. His guide entered a wigwam and ordered him to follow; and, as he bent his head to enter, a savage concealed by the door cleft his skull with a tomahawk. On the following day Lalande shared a similar fate. Their heads were chopped off and placed on the palisades of the town, and their bodies thrown into the Mohawk river. The Mission of the Martyrs was at an end for the time being.

Ten years were to pass before missionary work was renewed among the Iroquois—ten years of disaster to the Jesuits and to the colony. In these years, as we have already seen, the Hurons, Petuns, and Neutrals were destroyed or scattered, and the French and Indian settlements along the St Lawrence were continually in danger. There was no safety outside the fortified posts, and agriculture and trade were at a standstill. The year 1653 was particularly disastrous; a horde of Mohawks were abroad, hammering at the palisades of every settlement and spreading terror even in the strongly guarded towns of Ville Marie, Three Rivers, and Quebec. But light broke when all seemed darkest. The western Iroquois—the Oneidas, Onondagas, and Senecas—were at war with the Eries. While thus engaged it seemed to them good policy to make peace with the French, and they dispatched an embassy to Ville Marie to open negotiations. The Mohawks, too, fearing that their western kinsmen might gain some advantage over them, sent messengers to New France. A grand council was held at Quebec. But even while making peace the Iroquois were intent on war. They desired nothing short of the utter extermination of the Huron nation, and viewed with jealousy the Huron settlement under the wing of the French on the island of Orleans. Both Onondagas and Mohawks plotted to destroy this community. The proposed peace was merely a ruse to open a way to attack the Hurons in order to kill them or to adopt them into the Five Nations, which, on account of losses in war, needed recruits. The Mohawks requested that the Hurons be removed to the Mohawk villages; the Onondagas stipulated for a French colony in their country, in the hope that the Hurons would be attracted to such a settlement, and that then both French and Hurons would be in their power. The governor of New France, now Jean de Lauzon, a weak old man who thought more of the profits of the fur trade and of land-grants for himself and his family than of the welfare of the colony, knew not how to act. A negative answer he dared not give; and he equally feared the effect of a definite promise. On the one hand was the certainty that war would break out again in all its fury; on the other the equal certainty that the fate which had befallen the Hurons in Huronia would almost inevitably overtake the poor remnant of Christian Hurons whom it was his duty to protect.

The Jesuits, however, were anxious to labour among the Iroquois, and at their request the governor adopted a temporizing policy. Before giving a final reply it was deemed wise to send an ambassador to the Five Nations to spy out the land and confirm the peace. This dangerous task was assigned to the veteran missionary Father Simon Le Moyne. In the spring of 1654 Le Moyne visited the Onondagas. His diplomacy and eloquence succeeded with them, but the Mohawks still continued their raids on the settlements. Nevertheless in 1655 the Mohawks again sent messengers to Quebec professing friendship. Le Moyne once more took up the task of diplomat and journeyed to the Mohawk country in the hope of making a binding treaty with the fiercest and most inveterate foes of New France. In this same year a large deputation of Onondagas arrived at Quebec. They wished the French to take immediate action and establish a mission and colony in their midst. Once more their sincerity seemed doubtful; and Fathers Chaumonot and Dablon were dispatched to Onondaga to ascertain the temper and disposition of the Indians there. After spending the winter of 1655-56 in the country, where they had conferences in the great council-house of the Five Nations with representatives of all the tribes, the two fathers believed that the time was ripe for a mission. A colony, too, in their judgment, would be advisable; it would serve at once as a centre of civilization for the Iroquois and a barrier against the Dutch and English of New York, who hitherto had monopolized the trade of the Iroquois. In the spring of 1656 Dablon returned to Quebec to advise the governor to accept the terms of the Onondagas, while Chaumonot remained at Onondaga to watch over his new flock both as missionary and as political agent.

An expedition, the entire expense of which fell on the Jesuits, was at once fitted out. The town major of Quebec, Zachary du Puys, took military command of the party, which consisted of ten soldiers, thirty or forty white labourers, four Jesuit fathers—Menard, Le Mercier, Dablon, and Fremin—two lay brothers, and a number of Hurons, Senecas, and Onondagas. On the 17th of May the colonists left Quebec in two large boats and twelve canoes. They began their journey with forebodings as to their fate, for the Mohawks were once more haunting the St Lawrence. Scarcely had Du Puys and his men passed out of sight of Quebec when they were attacked. The Mohawks, however, pretended that they had supposed the party to be Hurons, expressed regret for the attack, and allowed the expedition to proceed. At Montreal the boats were discarded in favour of canoes for the difficult navigation of the upper St Lawrence. Save for Le Moyne, Chaumonot, and Dablon, these colonists were the first whites to ascend the St Lawrence between Montreal and Lake Ontario; the first to toil up against the current of those swift waters and to portage past the turbulent rapids; the first to view the varied beauty of the lordly river, its broad stretches of sparkling blue waters, its fairyland mazes of islands, and its great forests rising everywhere from the shore to the horizon. At length they reached Lake Ontario and skirted its southern shore until they entered the Oswego river. Ascending this river they were met by Chaumonot and an Onondaga delegation. On Lake Onondaga the canoes formed four abreast behind the canoe of the leader, from which streamed a white silk flag with the name Jesus woven on it in letters of gold. Then, with measured stroke of paddle and song of praise, the flotilla swept ashore to the site which Chaumonot had chosen for the headquarters of the colony. Here, from the crest of a low hill, commanding a beautiful view of one of the most picturesque of inland lakes, they cleared the trees and erected a commodious and substantial house, with smaller buildings about it, all enclosed in the usual palisade.

The Jesuits announced that they had come not as traders but as 'messengers of God,' seeking no profit; and they began work under most favourable conditions. Owing to Chaumonot's exertions the Onondagas seemed genuinely friendly. The fathers, too, found in every village many adopted Hurons, from their old missions in Huronia, who still professed Christianity. Indeed, one whole village was composed largely of Hurons and Petuns. The mission was not confined to the Onondagas; the Cayugas, Senecas, and Oneidas were included; and the new field seemed rich in promise.

But it soon became evident that the fickle Iroquois were not to be trusted. The Mohawks continued their raids on the Hurons at Quebec and carried off captives from under the very walls of Fort St Louis. Learning of this, the Onondagas sent an expedition to Quebec to demand that some Hurons should be given to them also, and the weak administrator of the colony, Charles de Lauzon-Charny, being too cowardly to resist, complied with this demand. On the way back to Onondaga the Indians slew some of the captives. On arriving at home they tortured and burned others, among them women and helpless children. The colonists at Onondaga frequently witnessed such scenes, but they were powerless to interfere. Presently they learned that it was with evil intentions that they had been invited to Onondaga. A statement made to one of the missionaries by a dying convert served only to confirm the rumour already current, namely, that the death of the colonists had been decreed from the first, and that the Jesuits were to meet the fate which had befallen Jogues and their brothers in Huronia.

Prompt action was necessary. Orders were sent to the missionaries in the outlying points to return to headquarters, and towards the end of March the colonists, fifty-three in all, were behind the palisades of their houses on Lake Onondaga. But they had slight chance of escape, for they had not canoes enough to carry more than half the party. Moreover, they were closely watched: Onondaga warriors had pitched their wigwams about the palisades and several had stationed themselves immediately in front of the gate. The greatest need of the French, however, being adequate means of transportation, they addressed themselves to this problem. In the principal dwelling was a large garret, and here they built two strong boats, each capable of bearing fifteen men. But the difficulty still remained of getting these boats to the lake without the knowledge of the savages.

Among the colonists was a young man, Pierre Esprit Radisson, who three years before had been a prisoner among the Iroquois and who was afterwards to figure prominently in the history of the Canadian wilderness. He was unscrupulous but resourceful; and on this occasion his talents came into good use. He knew the Indians well and he knew that they could not resist a feast, especially a feast of a semi-religious character. He persuaded a young man of the mission to feign illness and to invite the Onondagas to aid in his cure by attending a festin a manger tout—a feast where everything must be eaten. To sanction this no doubt went much against the grain of the Jesuits, who had been upbraiding the Indians for their superstition and gluttony; but in this case the end seemed assuredly to justify the means. The Onondagas attended the banquet. In huge iron pots slung over fires outside the gate of the palisades the French boiled an immense quantity of venison, game, fish, and corn. They had brought with them to the colony a number of hogs, and these they slew to add to the feast. The Indians squatted about the kettles, from which the soldiers, employees, and fathers ladled the food; as fast as a warrior's dish was emptied it was refilled; and when a reveller signified that he had eaten enough, the pretended invalid cried out: 'Would you have me die?' and once more the gorged Onondaga fell to. To add to the entertainment, some of the Frenchmen, who had brought violins to the wilderness, fiddled with might and main. At length the gluttony began to take the desired effect: one after another the Onondagas dropped to sleep to the soothing music of the violins. Then, when brute slumber had sealed the eyes of all, the colonists roused themselves for flight. Some one, probably Radisson, suggested that they were fifty-three wide-awake Frenchmen to one hundred sleeping savages, and that it would be easy to brain their enemies as they slept; but the Jesuits would not sanction such a course. The Frenchmen threw open the gate, and carried the boats from the garret to the lakeside. They put up effigies of soldiers at conspicuous points within the enclosure, barred and locked the gate, and launched the vessels. They had swept across the lake and were well down the Oswego before day had dawned and the Indians had awakened from their heavy slumber.

When the Onondagas recovered consciousness they were surprised at the deathlike stillness. They peered through the palisades; and, seeing the effigies of the soldiers, believed that their intended victims were within. But no sounds except the clucking and crowing of some fowls fell on their ears. They became suspicious and hammered at the gate; and, when there was no answer, broke it down in fury, only to find the place deserted. An examination of the shore showed that heavy boats had been launched a few hours before. Believing that the powerful God of the white man was in league with the colonists, and had supplied them with these boats, the savages made no attempt to follow the fugitives, who, after sustaining the loss of three men in the rapids of the St Lawrence, reached Quebec on the 23rd of April.

For another decade no further effort was to be made to civilize and christianize the Iroquois. During this period, however, a radical and much-needed change took place in the government of New France. Hitherto chartered companies had been in control, and their aim had been trade, not colonization. Until 1663 Canada remained a trading station and a mission rather than a true colony. But in this year the king, Louis XIV, cancelled the charter of the Hundred Associates, proclaimed the colony under royal government, and sent out strong men from the motherland to govern the country.

It was not long before the Iroquois began to feel the resistance of new forces in the settlements along the St Lawrence; and in 1665, when a strong regiment of veterans, the Carignan-Salieres, under the Marquis de Tracy, landed in New France, the Iroquois who had been smiting the settlements slunk away to their fortified towns. In January 1666 Courcelle, the governor, invaded the Mohawk country; and though his expedition was a failure, it served as a warning to the Five Nations. In May Senecas and Mohawks came to Quebec to treat for peace. They assumed their ancient haughty air; but Tracy was in no mood for this. He sentenced to death a Mohawk who had the boldness to boast of having tomahawked a Frenchman, and dismissed the ambassadors with angry words. The Indians, discomfited, returned to their strongholds. At their heels followed Tracy and Courcelle with thirteen hundred men. At the approach of this army the Mohawks deserted their villages and escaped death. But the French set fire to the villages and desolated the Mohawk country.

In the spring of 1667 the Mohawks came to Quebec humbly begging that missionaries, blacksmiths, and surgeons should be sent to live among them. The other tribes of the Five Nations followed their example. Once more the Jesuits went to the Iroquois and established missions among the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, and Senecas. For twenty years the devoted fathers laboured in this hard field. During the administrations of the governors Courcelle and Frontenac the Iroquois remained peaceable, but they became restless after the removal of Frontenac in 1682. The succeeding governors, La Barre and Denonville, proved weak rulers, and the Mohawks began once more to send war-parties against the settlements. At length, in 1687, open war broke out. The missionaries, however, had been withdrawn from the Iroquois country, just in time to escape the fury of the savages.

Not in vain did the Jesuits labour among the Five Nations. They made numerous converts, and persuaded many of them to move to Canada. Communities of Christian Iroquois and Hurons who had been adopted by the Five Nations settled near the Bay of Quinte, at La Montagne on the island of Montreal, and at Caughnawaga by the rapids of Lachine. The large settlements of 'praying Indians' still living at Caughnawaga and at St Regis, near Cornwall, are descendants of these Indians.



CHAPTER IX

THE MISSION OF VILLE MARIE

While the Jesuits carried the Cross to the Hurons, the Algonquins, and the Iroquois, other crusaders, equally noble and courageous, planted it on the spot where now stands the foremost city of the Dominion. The settlement of the large and fertile island at the confluence of the Ottawa and the St Lawrence had a motive all its own. Quebec was founded primarily for trade; and so with practically all other settlements which have grown into great centres of population. But Montreal was originally intended solely for a mission station. Its founders had no thought of trade; indeed, they were prohibited from dealing in furs, then the chief marketable product of the colony.

We have seen that the men and women who founded the Sillery mission, and the Hotel-Dieu and the Ursuline convent at Quebec, received their inspiration from the Relations of the Jesuits. So likewise did the founders of the settlement on the island of Montreal. Jerome le Royer de la Dauversiere of La Fleche in Anjou, a receiver of taxes, and Abbe Jean Jacques Olier of Paris, were the prime movers in the undertaking. Each independently of the other had conceived the idea of establishing on the island of Hochelaga a mission for the conversion of the heathen in Canada. Meeting by accident at the Chateau of Meudon near Paris, they planned their enterprise, and decided to found a colony of devotees, composed of an order of priests, an order of sisters to care for the sick and infirm, and an order of nuns for the teaching of young Indians and the children of settlers at the mission. These two enthusiasts went to work in a quite practical way to realize their ambition. They succeeded in interesting the Baron de Fancamp and three other wealthy gentlemen, and soon had a sum—about $75,000— ample for the establishment of the colony. While they were busy at this work, Mademoiselle Jeanne Mance, a courageous and devout woman, was moved by one of Father Le Jeune's Relations to devote her life to the care of the wounded and suffering in the wilds of New France; and the projected colony on the island of Montreal offered an opportunity for the fulfilment of her desire. Madame de Bullion, a rich and very charitable woman, had agreed to aid Olier and Dauversiere by endowing a hospital in the colony, and Jeanne Mance offered her services as nurse and housekeeper. A leader was needed, a man of soldierly training and pious life; and in Paul de Chomedy, Sieur de Maisonneuve, a veteran of the wars in Holland, the ideal man was found. No attempt was made at this time to secure teachers; there would be at first neither white nor red children to teach, for there were no Indians living on the island of Montreal, and the colonists would not at first bring their families to this wilderness post. The funds collected and the leader found, the next step was to get permission from the Hundred Associates to settle on the island; and here was a difficulty. The Associates had been liberal in land-grants to their own members; and Jean de Lauzon, the president, had received for himself large concessions, among them the entire island of Montreal. However, he was persuaded, probably for a consideration, to part with a grant that brought him no return, and which he could visit only at the risk of his scalp. Olier and Dauversiere and their associates secured the land, and Maisonneuve was appointed governor of the new colony.

The Jesuits had played an important part in this undertaking. It was their Relations that had given the impulse, and the promoters of the colony had the able assistance of Father Charles Lalemant, whom we have already met as the first superior of the Jesuit order in New France. It was he who persuaded Jean de Lauzon to consent to surrender his grant, and it was to him that Maisonneuve first came to seek advice as to how he could best consecrate his sword to the Church in Canada. And it was largely on Lalemant's recommendation that Maisonneuve received his appointment as leader of the colonists and governor of the colony. To Lalemant, too, came Jeanne Mance when she first heard the clear call to the new mission.

The promoters of the 'Society of Our Lady of Montreal' now set to work to collect recruits for the mission, provide supplies, and prepare vessels to transport the colonists to New France. All was ready about the middle of June 1641, and, while Dauversiere, Olier, and Fancamp remained in France to look after the interests of the colony there, Maisonneuve and Jeanne Mance, with three other women and about fifty men, set sail and arrived in Quebec before the end of August. Here they did not find the enthusiastic welcome which they expected. Maisonneuve had come with a special commission as governor of Montreal, and was coldly received by Montmagny, who was jealous of him, and who moreover believed, no doubt rightly, that a divided authority would not be in the best interests of struggling New France. The Jesuits at Quebec tried to persuade Maisonneuve to abandon his enterprise. There were, they said, no inhabitants on the island of Montreal, it was in the direct route of the Mohawks, who annually haunted the Ottawa and St Lawrence, and swift destruction would surely be the fate of the colony. But Maisonneuve could not be moved from his fixed purpose; he would go to Montreal even 'if every tree on that island were to be changed to an Iroquois.'

Accompanied by Father Vimont, the superior of the Jesuits, and Governor Montmagny, Maisonneuve went up the river, and took formal possession of the island on the 15th of October in the name of the 'Society of Our Lady of Montreal.' The colonists spent the winter at St Michel, near Sillery, for there was no room for the Montrealers in the buildings at Quebec. On May 8, 1642, Maisonneuve led his company—in a pinnace, a barge, and two row-boats —to the site of the new colony. Here, too, were Father Vimont and Madame de la Peltrie, who for the nonce had deserted her Ursulines to accompany Jeanne Mance to a field that offered greater excitement and danger. On the 18th of May, at a spot where tall warehouses now abound and where the varied roar of the traffic of a great city never ceases, they set up an altar, and Father Vimont consecrated the island mission. In the course of his sermon he uttered the prophetic words: 'You are a grain of mustard seed that shall rise and grow till its branches overshadow the earth. You are few, but your work is the work of God. His smile is upon you and your children shall fill the land.' The city of Montreal, the throbbing heart of the business life of Canada, with its half-million and more inhabitants and its magnificent charitable, religious, and educational institutions, is the fulfilment of his words.

But the beginnings were feeble and disheartening. A few houses, flanked by a windmill and fort, and connected by a footpath where now runs St Paul Street, represented the beginnings of Montreal—or Ville Marie, as the settlement had been christened by the Society in Paris.

The Iroquois soon learned of Ville Marie. Within a few months a scalping party of Mohawks paid it a visit, and killed several workmen and wounded others. The wounded became the care of Jeanne Mance, who never henceforth lacked patients. Between the labourers injured by accident in the forest and the wounded from Iroquois fights, the gentle-handed nurse and her assistants were kept always busy. Many of her patients were friendly Indians who had suffered in the raids; sometimes even a sorely smitten Iroquois would be borne to the rude hospital.

But the mission did not grow. The Algonquins and Hurons viewed the island of Montreal as too exposed for a permanent encampment, for the Iroquois ever hovered about it. At no season of the year was Ville Marie immune from attack; night and day the inhabitants had to be on the alert; and often the cry 'The Iroquois!' sent the entire population to the shelter of the fort. For fifteen years there was little change in the population, and year after year the same dangers and hardships faced the people. But Maisonneuve and Jeanne Mance hoped on, confident that Ville Marie was destined to have a glorious future. In 1653 Marguerite Bourgeoys, a woman of great force of character, arrived in the colony to open a school. Finding no white pupils, she gathered about her a few red children, and made her school-room in a stable assigned to her by Maisonneuve. Presently more pupils came, and among them some white children. In 1658 she returned to France to secure assistants, and when, in the following year, she resumed her labours at Ville Marie, it was as the head of the 'Congregation of the Sisters of Notre Dame,' an organization that has so greatly developed as to make its influence felt, not only in Canada, but in the United States as well.

Meanwhile, in 1642, Abbe Olier had founded the Seminary of St Sulpice in Paris; and during the intervening years had been assiduously training missionaries to take over the spiritual control of Ville Marie. Since its founding the Jesuits Poncet, Du Peron, Le Moyne, and Pijart, who had been trained in the difficult school of the Huron mission, and Le Jeune and Druillettes, had ministered to the inhabitants. But in August 1657 the Sulpician priests Gabriel de Queylus, Gabriel Souart, and Dominic Galinier arrived at Ville Marie, and the Jesuits immediately surrendered the parish to them. Henceforth Ville Marie was to be the peculiar care of the Sulpicians, giving them for many years enough of both difficulty and danger. The Iroquois peril did not abate. Never a month passed but the alarm-bell rang out to warn the settlers that the savages were at hand. Even the priests went about their duties with sword at side; and two of them, Vignal and Le Maitre, fell beneath the tomahawk. Only the courage, watchfulness, and foresight of Maisonneuve and of such men as Sergeant-Major Lambert Closse, who gave his life for the colony, saved Ville Marie from utter destruction. And as years went on the Iroquois grew bolder. Having scattered the Hurons and the Algonquins, they now threatened every trading-post and mission station in Canada.

In 1660 the climax came. Early in the spring of that year the harassed mission at Ville Marie learned that several hundred Iroquois, who had wintered on the upper Ottawa, were coming down, and that another horde, approaching by way of the Richelieu, would join forces with them. It was the purpose of the savages to destroy Ville Marie and Three Rivers and Quebec, and to wipe out the French on the St Lawrence for good and all.

There was at this time in Ville Marie a young soldier named Adam Daulac, or Dollard, Sieur des Ormeaux, twenty-five years old. He believed that the best defence was attack, and boldly proposed to ascend the Ottawa, with a band of sixteen volunteers, and waylay the Iroquois coming from the north-west. And so the gallant young men bade farewell to their friends and set out. In two large canoes they paddled up the Ottawa, past the swift waters at Ste Anne, through the smooth stretch of the Lake of the Two Mountains, up the fierce current at Carillon, and then on to the rapids of the Long Sault. Here they paused; this was a fitting place for battle. The Iroquois would never expect to find a handful of Frenchmen here, and they could be surprised as they raced down the rapids. On a level stretch near the foot of the Sault there was a rude fort ready at hand, a palisaded structure which had served during the previous autumn as a shelter for an Algonquin war-party. The French drew the canoes up on the shore, and stored the provisions and ammunition in the fort. Then all save the watchful sentinels lay down for a much-needed rest. On the following day Daulac's band was reinforced by four Algonquins and forty Hurons, the Hurons led by the chief Annahotaha, an inveterate foe of the Iroquois, who had on more than one occasion taken terrible revenge on the enemies of his people. Daulac, now in command of sixty men, confidently awaited the Iroquois. In the meantime axe and saw and shovel were plied to erect a second row of palisades and to fill the space between with earth to the height of a man's breast. Scouts went out and discovered the encampment of the Iroquois, and at last brought the news that two canoes were running the rapids. Daulac hurriedly placed several of his best marksmen in ambush at a spot where the Iroquois were likely to land. The musketeers, however, in their excitement, did not kill all the canoemen. Two of the Iroquois escaped and sped back through the forest to warn their countrymen, and soon a hundred canoes came leaping down the turbulent waters. For a moment Daulac and his men watched the advancing savages. Then they dashed into the fort to prepare for the fight. Against their defences rushed the Iroquois. Again and again the defenders drove them back with great loss. And for a week the heroic band, living on short rations of crushed corn and water from a well they had dug within the fort, kept the assailants at bay. During this time the Iroquois received large reinforcements, but to no avail. At length they made shields of split logs heavy enough to resist bullets; and presently the bewildered defenders of the fort saw a wooden wall advancing against them. They fired rapid, despairing volleys; a few of the shield-bearers fell, but their places were quickly filled from those in the rear. At the foot of the palisades the Iroquois cast aside the shields, and, hatchet in hand, hacked an opening. The end had come. The Iroquois breached the wall. But Daulac and his men stood to the last, brandishing knife and axe, while with fierce war-cries the Iroquois bounded into the fort; and when the sounds of battle ceased there remained only three Frenchmen, living but mortally wounded, on whom the savages could glut their vengeance.

[Footnote: The story of the fight was brought to Montreal by some Hurons who deserted Daulac's party and escaped.]

The Iroquois had won, but they had no stomach for raiding the settlements. If seventeen Frenchmen, assisted by a few Indians, could keep their hosts at bay for a week, it would be useless to attack strongly fortified posts. And so Daulac and his men at this 'Canadian Thermopylae' had really turned aside the tide of war from New France. The settlements were saved, and for a time traders and missionaries journeyed along the St Lawrence and the Ottawa unmolested.

In 1663, when Louis XIV took New France under his wing, the surviving members of the original Society of Our Lady of Montreal made over the island to the Sulpicians, who assumed the liabilities of the Society, and took up the task of looking after the education of the inhabitants and the care of the sick. Four years later the Seminary of St Sulpice was given judicial rights in the mission of Ville Marie. In 1668 five more Sulpicians came to the colony, among them Rene de Galinee and Dollier de Casson, who were to win distinction as missionaries and explorers. Many Sulpician missions pushed out from Ville Marie, along the upper St Lawrence and the north shore of Lake Ontario.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century the complexion of Ville Marie, then generally called Montreal, had somewhat changed. The Jesuits, the Recollets, who had returned to New France in 1670, and the Sulpicians all laboured there. Moreover, from a mere mission station it had become an important trading centre; and as such it was to continue. In position it was well adapted for the fur trade, and after the British took possession in 1760 it became the emporium of a great traffic in the fur-fields of the north and west. But its glorious days are those of its infancy, the days of Maisonneuve and Daulac, of Jeanne Mance and Marguerite Bourgeoys, of Rene de Galinee and Dollier de Casson.



CHAPTER X

THE MISSIONARY EXPLORERS

The establishment of royal government in 1663 gave new life to the missions of Canada, and the missionaries pressed forward with unflagging zeal. They penetrated to the remotest known tribes and blazed fresh trails for traders and settlers in the western and northern wildernesses. We have not space here to tell the story of these pathfinders, but a few examples may be given. In 1665 Father Claude Allouez went to Lake Superior to begin a sojourn of twenty-five years among the Indians in the region which now forms part of the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. In 1666 Father Gabriel Druillettes, 'the patriarch' of the Abnaki mission, who had already borne the Cross to the Crees of the north, began his labours among the Algonquins of Georgian Bay and Lake Superior. In 1669 and 1670 the Sulpicians Dollier de Casson and Rene de Galinee explored and charted Lake Erie and the waters between it and Lake Huron. In 1670 Father Claude Dablon, superior of the western missions, joined Father Allouez at the mission of St Francois-Xavier on Green Bay; and, among the Winnebagoes of this region and the Mascoutens and Miamis between the rivers Fox and Wisconsin, he learned of 'the famous river called the Mississippi.' In 1672 Father Charles Albanel toiled from the Saguenay to Hudson Bay, partly as missionary, but chiefly to lay claim to the country for New France, and to watch the operations of the newly founded Hudson's Bay Company.

It was the 25th of May 1670 when Galinee and Casson arrived at Sault Ste Marie, after an arduous canoe journey from their wintering camp on Lake Erie, near the site of the present town of Port Dover. At the Sault they found a thriving mission. It had a capacious chapel and a comfortable dwelling-house; it was surrounded by a palisade of cedars, and about it were cultivated bits of ground planted with wheat, Indian corn, peas, and pumpkins. Near by were clusters of bark wigwams, the homes of Ojibwas and other Indians, who came here each year to catch the whitefish that teemed in the waters of the rapids fronting the settlement.

One of the priests in charge of this mission, when the Sulpicians halted at it on their circuitous journey back to Montreal, was the young Jesuit Jacques Marquette, a man of delicate mould, indomitable will, keen intellect, and ardent faith. He was not to remain long at Sault Ste Marie; for he had heard 'the call of the west'; and in the summer of this year he set out for the mission of St Esprit, at La Pointe, on the south-west shore of Lake Superior. Here there was a motley collection of Indians, among them many Hurons and Petuns, who had fled to this remote post to be out of reach of the Iroquois. These exiles from Huronia still remembered the Jesuits and retained 'a little Christianity.' St Esprit was not only a mission; it was a centre of the fur trade, and to it came Illinois Indians from the Mississippi and Sioux from the western prairies. From these Marquette learned of the great river, and from their description of it he was convinced that it flowed into the Gulf of California. He had a burning desire to visit the savage hordes that dwelt along this river, and a longing to explore it to its mouth. But while he meditated the journey war broke out between the Sioux—the Iroquois of the west—and the Hurons and Ottawas of St Esprit. The Sioux won, and the vanquished Hurons and Ottawas took to flight, the Hurons going to Michilimackinac and the Ottawas to Great Manitoulin Island. Marquette followed the Hurons, and set up a mission at Point St Ignace, on the north shore of the strait of Michilimackinac.

Meanwhile 'the great intendant,' Talon, was pushing out in all directions for new territory to add to the French dominions in America. And just before the end of his brilliant administration he commissioned the explorer Louis Jolliet to find and explore the Mississippi, of which so much had been heard from missionaries, traders, and Indians. Like Marquette, Talon believed that this river flowed into the Western Sea—the Pacific ocean—and that it would open a route to China and the Indies; and it was directed that Marquette should accompany Jolliet on the journey.

Jolliet left Montreal in the autumn of 1672 and reached Michilimackinac, where he was to spend the winter with Marquette, just as the ice was forming on lake and river. When he drew up his canoe in front of the palisaded mission at Point St Ignace, Marquette felt that his ambitions were about to be realized. He was disappointed in his flock of Algonquins and the feeble remnant of Hurons, and he hoped to gather about him on the Great Plains—of whose vegetation and game he had heard marvellous accounts—a multitude of Indians who would welcome his Gospel message. Dablon and Allouez had already touched the outskirts of this country, and their success was an earnest of great things in store.

The winter passed slowly for Marquette; but at length, on May 17, 1673, the explorer and the missionary with five assistants—a feeble band to risk a plunge into the unknown—launched their canoes and headed westward.

The explorers first shaped their course along the northern shore of Lake Michigan, then steered south-west until they reached the mouth of the Menominee river, flowing into Green Bay. Here they rested for a brief period among friendly Menominees, who tried to persuade them to give up their venture. According to the Menominees, the banks of the Mississippi were infested by savage tribes who tortured and slew all intruders into their domains. As this did not seem sufficient to discourage Jolliet and Marquette, they added that demons haunted the land bordering the river and monsters the river itself, and that, even if they escaped savages, demons, and monsters, they would perish from the excessive heat of the country Both Jolliet and Marquette had heard such stories from Indians before. Pressing on to the south end of Green Bay, they entered the Fox river and ascended it until they reached Lake Winnebago. After crossing this lake they continued westward up the extension of the Fox. They were now in the land of the Mascoutens and Miamis. The country teemed with life; birds filled the air with whirr of wing and with song; as the voyagers paddled ever westward deer and elk came from their forest lairs to gaze with wondering eyes at these unfamiliar intruders on their haunts. The Mascoutens were friendly, and supplied the travellers with bison flesh and venison, and with guides to direct them over the watershed to the Wisconsin. They carried the canoes over a forest trail, and launched them on this river; and then with exulting hearts swept forward on the last stage of their journey to the Mississippi. At length, on the 17th of June, they reached the great river and landed at the place where now stands Prairie du Chien. They had the feeling of conquerors, but of conquerors whose greatest battle has yet to be fought. Out of the far north came this mysterious river; but whither did it go? Did these waters sweep onward till they lost themselves in the Pacific, or did they pour into some southern bay of the Atlantic? Such were the questions that agitated the minds of these first of Frenchmen to gaze on the 'Father of Waters,' [Footnote: It is thought possible that in 1658-59 Pierre Esprit Radisson and Medard Chouart des Groseilliers crossed the Mississippi while hunting furs in the country west of Lake Superior; but there is an element of doubt as to this. Save for the Spaniards, Jolliet and Marquette were the first white men on the Mississippi, so far as known.] questions that were not to be laid at rest until La Salle, nine years later, toiled down the river and from its mouth viewed the wide expanse of the Gulf of Mexico.

After a brief rest the party launched their canoes and for over a week drifted downward with the current, anchoring their canoes in mid-stream at night for fear of an attack by hostile Indians. But during this time they saw no human beings; the only living things that caught their eyes as they sped past forest and plain were the deer browsing along the banks, the birds circling overhead, and immense herds of buffalo moving like huge armies over the grassy slopes. At length they reached a village of friendly Illinois, and here they were feasted on fish, dog, and buffalo meat, and spent the balmy midsummer night in the open, sleeping on buffalo robes. While at this village, Marquette, who had a rare gift of tongues, addressed the Illinois in Algonquin, and thus preached the Gospel for the first time to the Indians of the Mississippi. Here their hosts warned them of the dangers they were going to—death from savages or demons awaited them in the south—and presented them with a calumet as a passport to protect them against the tribes below.

After leaving this village the explorers came upon a 'hideous monster,' a huge fish, the appearance of which almost made them credit the stories of the Indians. According to Marquette: 'His head was like that of a tiger, his nose was sharp, and somewhat resembled a wildcat; his beard was long, his ears stood upright, the colour of his head was grey, and his neck black.' Onward swept the explorers past the mouth of the Illinois. A few miles above the present city of Alton they paused to gaze on some high rocks on which fabulous creatures were pictured. 'They are,' wrote Marquette in his narrative, 'as large as a calf, with head and horns like a goat; their eyes red; beard like a tiger's, and a face like a man's. Their tails are so long that they pass over their heads and between their forelegs, under the belly, and ending like a fish's tail. They are painted red, green, and black.' The Indians of the Mississippi were certainly not without imagination and possessed some artistic skill. No doubt it was these pictured rocks that had originated among the Menominees and Illinois the stories of the demons with which they had regaled Marquette and Jolliet.

While the voyagers were still discussing the pictured rocks, their canoes began to toss and heave on rushing waters, and they found themselves in the midst of plunging logs and tumbling trees. They were at the mouth of the Missouri. As they threaded their way past this dangerous point, Marquette resolved that he would one day ascend this river that he might 'preach the Gospel to all the peoples of this New World who have so long grovelled in the darkness of infidelity.'

Onward still into the unknown! At the mouth of the Ohio—then called by the Indians the Ouabouskigon [Footnote: This word, as well as the word Ohio, or O-he-ho, means 'The Beautiful.']—they drew up their canoes to rest and then advanced a little farther south to an Illinois village. The inhabitants of this village wore European clothing and had beads, knives, and hatchets, obtained no doubt from the Spaniards. The Indians told the explorers that the mouth of the river was distant only a ten-days' journey, whereas it was in reality a thousand miles away. But with increased hope the Frenchmen once more launched their canoes and went on until they came to the mouth of the Arkansas. Here they met with the first hostile demonstration. Indians, with bows bent and war-clubs raised, threatened destruction to these unknown whites; but Marquette, calm, courageous, and confident, stood up in the bow of his canoe and held aloft the calumet the Illinois had given him. The passport was respected and the elders of the village, which was close at hand, invited the voyagers ashore and feasted them with sagamite and fish. Leaving this village, they pressed southward twenty odd miles to another Arkansas village. The attitude of the Indians here alarmed them, and this, with the apprehension that the mouth of the Mississippi was much farther away than they had been led to believe, decided them to return.

Jolliet and Marquette were now satisfied with what they had achieved. The southward trend of the river proved conclusively that it could not fall into the Gulf of California, and, as they were in latitude 33 degrees 41 minutes, the river could not empty into the Atlantic in Virginia. It must therefore join the sea either on the coast of Florida or in the Gulf of Mexico. Moreover, to proceed farther would but add weary miles to the difficult return journey. But the chief reason for turning back is best given in Marquette's own words:

We considered that the advantage of our travels would be altogether lost to our nation if we fell into the hands of the Spaniards, from whom we could expect no other treatment but death or slavery; besides, we saw that we were not prepared to resist the Indians, the allies of the Europeans, who continually infested the lower part of the river.

On the 17th of July, just one month after they first sighted the waters of the Mississippi, the explorers turned their canoes northward. A little south of the Illinois river some friendly Indians told them of a shorter way to Lake Michigan than by the Wisconsin and Fox river route. These Indians were anxious to have Marquette remain with them and establish a mission. He was unable to comply with their request, for in the miasmal region of the lower Mississippi he had contracted a severe malarial fever; but he promised to return to them as soon as his health permitted. The explorers were now joined by a chief and a band of Indians as guides to Lake Michigan, and with these they ascended the Illinois and then the river Des Plaines. From the river Des Plaines they portaged their canoes to the Chicago river and descended it to Lake Michigan. They arrived at Green Bay at the end of September, having travelled in all, since leaving this spot, over twenty-five hundred miles. Marquette was too ill to go farther; and he remained at Green Bay to recruit his strength, while Jolliet hastened to Quebec to report to Frontenac the results of his expedition. Unfortunately, the canoe in which Jolliet travelled was upset in the Lachine rapids and the papers containing his charts and the account of his journey were lost; however, he was able to piece out from memory the story of his Ulysses-like wanderings.

By the autumn of 1674 Marquette thought that he had completely recovered his health, and, having received permission from his superior, he set out for the Illinois country on the 25th of October to establish the mission of the Immaculate Conception. He was accompanied on this journey by two assistants—two true heroes—known to history only as Pierre and Jacques, and a band of Potawatomis and Illinois. In ten canoes the party paddled southward from Green Bay, for nearly a month buffeting the tempestuous autumn seas of Lake Michigan. They ascended the Chicago river for six miles and encamped. Marquette could go no farther; he was once more prostrated with illness, and a severe hemorrhage threatened to carry him off. But his valiant spirit conquered, and during the winter he was able to minister to some Illinois, who were encamped a short distance away and who paid him occasional visits. By the spring he had so far recovered that he decided to undertake the journey to the Mississippi, his heart set on founding a mission among the tribes there. On the 13th of March he and his two helpers broke camp and portaged their canoe to the Des Plaines. Near the junction of this river with the Illinois was the Indian town of Old Kaskaskia. The Indians of this town gave him a welcome worthy of a conqueror, such as indeed he really was. He went among them teaching and preaching; but brain and body were burning with fever; he felt that he had not long to live, and if he would die among his own people he must hasten home. He summoned the Indians to a grand council. And, in one of God's first temples—a meadow decked with spring flowers and roofed by the blue vault of heaven—he preached to a congregation of over three thousand—chiefs, warriors, women, and children. His sermon finished, he blessed his hearers, and, leaving his words to sink into their hearts, bade them farewell.

Pierre and Jacques now made ready the canoe, and the journey to Michilimackinac began. When they reached Lake Michigan Marquette was only half conscious. While he lay on the robes piled in the bottom of the canoe, his faithful henchmen paddled furiously to reach their destination. But their efforts were in vain; Marquette saw that his end was approaching and bade them turn the canoe to land. And on May 19, 1675, on the bleak shore of Lake Michigan, this hero of the Cross, the greatest of the missionary explorers, entered into his rest. He was only thirty-eight; he had not finished his work; he had not realized his ambitions; but his memory lives, a force for good, as that of one who dared and endured and passionately followed the path of the setting sun.



CHAPTER XI

THE LAST PHASE

The priests laboured on in their mission-fields from Cape Breton to the Mississippi and north towards Hudson Bay, wherever there were Indians. In the Iroquois country alone did they fail to establish themselves securely. The nearest neighbours of the Iroquois, the English of New York and New England, stirred by French and Indian raids on their borders and regarding all Frenchmen as enemies, did what they could to destroy the influence of the French priests and keep them out of the country. Lord Bellomont, governor of New York, even threatened to hang any priest found in his colony. Yet the Jesuits made another attempt in 1702; but it did not succeed, and a few years later the Iroquois mission was abandoned.

Among the Algonquin tribes the old dread of the priests had vanished and they were everywhere hailed as friends. They were no longer in danger of assassination, and, apart from the hardships inevitable to wilderness life, their lot was not an unpleasant one. Perhaps their worst enemy was the brandy traffic carried on by the coureurs de bois, which brought in its wake drunkenness, disease, licentiousness, and crime. The missionaries fought this evil, with the wholehearted support of Laval, the great bishop of Quebec, and of his successors. But for their opposition it is probable that the Indians in contact with the French would have been utterly swept away; as it was, brandy thinned their numbers quite as much as war. Some of the coureurs de bois, who displayed their wares and traded for furs at the mission stations, were almost as obnoxious to the priests as the brandy which they offered. Among them were many worthy men, like the great Du Lhut; but the majority were 'white savages,' whose conduct went far to nullify the teaching and example of the missionaries.

Thus the missions went on until the British came. For more than fifty years the conflict between the two nations for mastery continued intermittently; and finally in 1760 the French struck their flag and departed. The victors viewed the religious orders with distrust; they regarded the priests as political agents; and they passed an edict that such Jesuits and Recollets as were in Canada might remain and 'die where they are, but they must not add to their number.' Of the Jesuits only twelve remained, and the last of these, Father Casot, died in 1800.

In looking back over the work of the missionaries in New France, it would seem that their visible harvest was a scant one, since the Indian races for whom they toiled have disappeared from history and are apparently doomed to extinction. This, of course, is due to natural causes over which the priests had no control and which they would thankfully have had otherwise. It cannot be questioned that their work operated for the benefit of the natives. But the priceless contribution of the missionaries lies in the example which they gave to the world. During the greater part of two centuries in the wilds they bore themselves manfully and fought a good fight. In all that time not one of all the men in that long procession of missionaries is known to have disgraced himself or to have played the coward in the face of danger or disaster.

The influence of the priests, however, was not confined to the Indians. It permeated the whole colony and lives to the present day. In no country in the world is there a more peaceable and kindly or moral and devout people than in the province of Quebec, largely because they have kept in their primitive simplicity the lessons taught by the clergy of New France. When the Revolution swept away religion and morals in Old France, it left untouched the French of Canada; and the descendants of the peasants of Anjou, Picardy, and Poitou kept alive in the New World the beliefs and customs, the simple faith and reverence for authority, of their ancestors in the Old World. Throughout the length and breadth of New France the priests and nuns were the teachers of the people. And the seminaries, schools, and colleges which they founded continue to shape the morals and character of the French Canadians of to-day.

It may be doubted whether the British government acted wisely after winning Canada in suppressing the religious orders. At any rate, after the unhappy rebellions of 1837 the government adopted a more generous policy; and the Jesuits and the Oblates came to Canada in ever-increasing numbers to take up missionary work anew. Like the priests of old they went into the wilderness, no difficulty too great to be overcome, no peril too hazardous to be risked. In the Mackenzie valley, in the far Yukon, and among the tumbled hills of British Columbia they planted the Cross, establishing missions and schools.

But the great age of the Church in Canada was the heroic age of Lalemant and Brebeuf, of Jogues and Bressani, of Allouez and Marquette. Their memories are living lights illuminating the paths of all workers among those who sit in spiritual darkness. The resolution of these first missionaries, not to be overcome by hardship, torture, or threat of death itself, has served in time of trial and danger to brace missionaries of all churches. Brebeuf still lives and labours in the wilderness regions of Canada; Marquette still toils on into the unknown.



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

'The Relations' of the Jesuits are, of course, the prime sources of information. Consult the edition edited by R. G. Thwaites, 'The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents', seventy-three volumes (1896-1901). This gives the original French text with an English translation. See also Rochemonteix, 'Les Jesuites et la Nouvelle France'; Parkman, 'Pioneers of France', 'The Old Regime in Canada', 'The Jesuits in North America', 'La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West', 'Frontenac and New France'; Harris, 'Pioneers of the Cross in Canada'; Jones, 'Old Huronia', the fifth report of the Bureau of Archives for the Province of Ontario; Marshall, 'Christian Missions'; Campbell, 'Pioneer Priests of North America'.

The following general histories contain many illuminating pages on the missions: Faillon, 'Histoire de la Colonie Francaise'; Charlevoix, 'Histoire de la Nouvelle-France'; Boucher, 'Canada in the Seventeenth Century'; Sagard, 'Histoire du Canada'; Kingsford, 'History of Canada'; Shortt and Doughty, 'Canada and its Provinces' (especially the chapter in the second volume by the distinguished priest, Rev. Lewis Drummond, S.J.); Winsor, 'Narrative and Critical History of America.

Reference works with valuable articles on the missions and the Indians are: 'The Catholic Encyclopaedia'; Hodge, 'Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico'; White, 'Handbook of Indians of Canada', adapted from Hodge.

THE END