 Chapter 16 Part 2 of the Jesuits in North America. The Jesuits in North America in the seventeenth century by Francis Partman. Chapter 16 Part 2 1641-1644 Isaac Zugh. Late in the autumn a party of the Indians set forth on their yearly deer hunt, and Zugh was ordered to go with them. Shivering and half-famished he followed them through the chill November forest, and shared their wild bivouac in the depths of the wintry desolation. The game they took was devoted to Aris Coy, their god, and Eaton in his honour. Zugh would not taste the meat offered to a demon, and thus he starved in the midst of plenty. At night, when the kettle was slung and the savage crew made merry around their fire, he crouched in a corner of the hut, gnawed by hunger and pierced to the bone with cold. They thought his presence unpropitious to their hunting, and the women especially hated him. His demeanor at once astonished and incensed his masters. He brought them firewood like a squaw, he did their bidding without a murmur and patiently bore their abuse, but when they mocked at his god and laughed at his devotions, their slave assumed an air and tone of authority and sternly rebuked them. He would sometimes escape from this Babylon as he calls the hut, and wander in the forest, telling his beads and repeating passages of scripture. In a remote and lonely spot he cut the bark in the form of a cross from the trunk of a great tree, and here he made his prayers. This living martyr, half-clad and shaggy furs, kneeling on the snow among the icickled rocks and beneath the gloomy pines, bowing in adoration before the emblem of the faith in which was his only consolation and his only hope, is alike a theme for the pen and a subject for the pencil. The Indians at last grew tired of him, and sent him back to the village. Here he remained till the middle of March, baptizing infants and trying to convert adults. He told them of the sun, moon, planets and stars. They listened with interest, but when from astronomy he passed to theology he spent his breath in vain. In March the old man with whom he lived set forth for his spring fishing, taking with him his squaw and several children. Zhug also was of the party. They repaired to a lake, perhaps Lake Saratoga, four days distant. Here they subsisted for some time on frogs, the entrails of fish and other garbage. Zhug passed his days in the forest, repeating his prayers and carving the name of Jesus on trees, as a terror to the demons of the wilderness. A messenger at length arrived from the town, and on the following day, under the pretense that signs of an enemy had been seen, the party broke up their camp and returned home in hot haste. The messenger had brought tidings that a war-party, which had gone out against the French, had been defeated and destroyed, and that the whole population were clamoring to appease their grief by torturing Zhug to death. This was the true cause of the sudden and mysterious return, but when they reached the town other tidings had arrived. The missing warriors were safe, and on their way home in triumph with a large number of prisoners. Again Zhug's life was spared, but he was forced to witness the torture and butchery of the converts and allies of the French. Existence became unendurable to him and he longed to die. War parties were continually going out. Should they be defeated and cut off he would pay the forfeit at the stake, and if they came back, as they usually did, with booty and prisoners, he was doomed to see his countrymen and their Indian friends mangled, burned, and devoured. Zhug had shown no disposition to escape, and great liberty was therefore allowed him. He went from town to town, giving absolution to the Christian captives, and converting and baptizing the heathen. On one occasion he baptized a woman in the midst of the fire, under pretense of lifting a cup of water to her parched lips. There was no lack of objects for his zeal. A single war party returned from the Huron country with nearly a hundred prisoners, who were distributed among the Iroquois towns and the greater part burned. Of the children of the Mohawks and their neighbors he had baptized, before August, about seventy, in so much that he began to regard his captivity as a providential interposition for the saving of souls. At the end of July he went with a party of Indians to a fishing place on the Hudson, about twenty miles below Fort Orange. While here he learned that another war party had lately returned with prisoners, two of whom had been burned to death at Asurinam. On this his conscience smote him that he had not returned in the town to give the sufferers absolution or baptism, and he begged leave of the old woman who had him in charge to return at the first opportunity. A canoe soon after went up the river with some of the Iroquois and he was allowed to go in it. When they reached Rensselaerswijk the Indians landed to trade with the Dutch and took shog with them. The center of this rude little settlement was Fort Orange, a miserable structure of logs, standing on a spot now within the limits of the city of Albany. It contained several houses and other buildings, and behind it was a small church, recently erected, and serving as the abode of the pastor, Dominique Megapolensis, known in our day as the writer of an interesting, though short, account of the Mohawks. Some twenty-five or thirty houses, roughly built of boards and roofed with thatch, were scattered at intervals on or near the borders of the Hudson, above and below the fort. Their inhabitants, about a hundred in number, were for the most part rude Dutch farmers, tenants of Van Rensselaer, the patron or Lord of the Manor. They raised wheat, of which they made beer, and oats, with which they fed their numerous horses. They traded too with the Indians, who profited greatly by the competition among them, receiving guns, knives, axes, kettles, cloth, and beads at moderate rates, in exchange for their furs. The Dutch were on excellent terms with their red neighbors, met them in the forest without the least fear, and sometimes intermarried with them. They had known of Joges' captivity, and to their great honor had made efforts for his release, offering for that purpose goods to a considerable value, but without effect. At Fort Orange Joges heard startling news. The Indians of the village where he lived were, he was told, enraged against him, and determined to burn him. About the first of July a war-party had set out for Canada, and one of the warriors had offered to Joges to be the bearer of a letter from him to the French commander at Three Rivers, thinking probably to gain some advantage under cover of a parley. Joges knew that the French would be on their guard, and he felt at his duty to lose no opportunity of informing them as to the state of affairs among the Iroquois. A Dutchman gave him a piece of paper, and he wrote a letter, in a jargon of Latin, French, and Huron, warning his countrymen to be on their guard, as war-parties were constantly going out, and they could hope for no respite from attack until late in the autumn. When the Iroquois reached the mouth of the River Richelieu, where a small fort had been built by the French the preceding summer, the messenger asked for a parley, and gave Joges's letter to the commander of the post, who, after reading it, turned his cannon on the savages. They fled in dismay, leaving behind them their baggage and some of their guns, and returning home in a fury charged Joges with having caused their discomfiture. Joges had expected this result, and was prepared to meet it, but several of the principal Dutch settlers, and among them Van Kerler, who had made the previous attempt to rescue him, urged that his death was certain if he returned to the Indian town, and advised him to make his escape. In the Hudson opposite the settlement lay a small Dutch vessel nearly ready to sail. Van Kerler offered him a passage in her to Bordeaux or Rochelle, representing that the opportunity was too good to be lost, and making light of the prisoner's objection, that a convivance in his escape on the part of the Dutch would excite the resentment of the Indians against them. Joges thanked him warmly, but to his amazement asked for a night to consider the matter, and take counsel of God in prayer. He spent the night in great agitation, tossed by doubt and full of anxiety lest his self-love should beguile him from his duty. Was it not possible that the Indians might spare his life, and that by a timely drop of water he might still rescue souls from torturing devils and eternal fires of perdition? On the other hand, would he not, by remaining to meet a fate almost inevitable, incur the guilt of suicide? And even should he escape torture and death, could he hope that the Indians would again permit him to instruct and baptize their prisoners? Of his French companions, one, Goupil, was dead, while Couture had urged Joges to flight, saying that he would then follow his example. But that, so long as the father remained a prisoner, he, Couture, would share his fate. One morning, Joges had made his decision. God, he thought, would be better pleased should he embrace the opportunity given him. He went to find his Dutch friends, and with a profusion of thanks accepted their offer. They told him that a boat should be left for him on the shore, and that he must watch his time and escape in it to the vessel, where he would be safe. He and his Indian masters were lodged together in a large building, like a barn, belonging to a Dutch farmer. It was a hundred feet long, and had no partition of any kind. At one end the farmer kept his cattle, at the other he slept with his wife, a mohawk squaw, and his children, while his Indian guests lay on the floor in the middle. Batu, Naar, manuscript. As he is described as one of the principal persons of the colony, it is clear that the civilization of Rensselaerswijk was not high. In the evening, Jog, in such a manner as not to excite the suspicion of the Indians, went out to reconnoiter. There was a fence around the house, and as he was passing it a large dog belonging to the farmer flew at him, and bit him very severely in the leg. The Dutchman, hearing the noise, came out with a light. Led Jog back into the building and bandaged his wound. He seemed to have some suspicion of the prisoner's design. For, fearful perhaps that his escape might exasperate the Indians, he made fast the door in such a manner that it could not readily be opened. Jog now lay down among the Indians, who rolled in their blankets were stretched around him. He was fevered with excitement, and the agitation of his mind, joined to the pain of his wound, kept him awake all night. About dawn, while the Indians were still asleep, a laborer in the employ of the farmer came in with a lantern, and Jog, who spoke no Dutch, gave him to understand by signs that he needed his help and guidance. The men was disposed to aid him, silently led the way out, quieted the dogs, and showed him the path to the river. It was more than half a mile distant, and the way was rough and broken. Jog was greatly exhausted, and his wounded limb gave him such pain that he walked with the utmost difficulty. When he reached the shore the day was breaking, and he found to his dismay that the ebb of the tide had left the boat high and dry. He shouted to the vessel, but no one heard him. His desperation gave him strength, and by working the boat to and fro he pushed it at length, little by little, into the water, entered it, and rode to the vessel. The Dutch sailors received him kindly and hid him in the bottom of the hold, placing a large box over the hatchway. He remained two days half stifled in this foul lurking place, while the Indians, furious at his escape, ransacked the settlement in vain to find him. They came off to the vessel, and so terrified the officers, but Jog was set on shore for the night and led to the fort. Here he was hidden in the garret of a house occupied by a miserly old man, to whose charge he was consigned. Food was sent to him, but as his host appropriated the larger part to himself, Jog was nearly starved. There was a compartment of his garret, separated from the rest by a partition of boards. Here the old Dutchman, who, like many others of the settlers, carried on a trade with the Mohawks, kept a quantity of goods for that purpose, and hither he often brought his customers. The boards of the partition had shrunk, leaving wide crevices, and Jog could plainly see the Indians as they passed between him and the light. They on their part might as easily have seen him, if he had not, when he heard them entering the house, hidden himself behind some barrels in the corner, where he would sometimes remain crouched for hours, in a constrained and painful posture, half suffocated with heat and afraid to move a limb. His wounded leg began to show dangerous symptoms, but he was relieved by the care of a Dutch surgeon of the fort. The minister, Megapolensis, also visited him, and did all in his power for the comfort of his Catholic brother, with whom he seems to have been well pleased, and whom he calls a very learned scholar. When Jog had remained for six weeks in this hiding-place, his Dutch friends succeeded in satisfying his Indian masters by the payment of a large ransom. A vessel from Manhattan, now New York, soon after brought up an order from the director general, Kieft, that he should be sent to him. Accordingly he was placed in a small vessel, which carried him down the Hudson. The Dutch on board treated him with great kindness, and to do him honour, named after him one of the islands in the river. At Manhattan he found a dilapidated fort garrisoned by sixty soldiers, and containing a stone church and the director general's house, together with storehouses and barracks. Near it were ranges of small houses, occupied chiefly by mechanics and labourers, while the dwellings of the remaining colonists, numbering in all four or five hundred, were scattered here and there on the island and the neighbouring shores. The settlers were of different sects and nations, but chiefly Dutch Calvinists. Kieft told his guests that eighteen different languages were spoken at Manhattan. The colonists were in the midst of a bloody Indian war, brought on by their own besotted cruelty, and while Zog was at the fort, some forty of the Dutchmen were killed on the neighbouring farms, and many barns and houses burned. The director general, with a humanity that was far from usual with him, exchanged Zog's squalid and savage dress for a suit of Dutch cloth, and gave him passage in a small vessel which was then about to sail. The voyage was rough and tedious, and the passenger slept on deck or on a coil of ropes, suffering greatly from cold, and often drenched by the waves that broke over the vessel's side. At length she reached Falmouth, on the southern coast of England, when all the crew went ashore for a corouse, leaving Zog alone on board. A boat presently came alongside with a gang of desperados who boarded her and rifled her of everything valuable, threatened Zog with a pistol, and robbed him of his hat and his coat. He obtained some assistance from the crew of a French ship in the harbour, and on the day before Christmas took passage in a small coal vessel for the neighbouring coast of Brittany. In the following afternoon he was set on shore a little to the north of Brest, and seeing a peasant's cottage not far off, he approached it, and asked the way to the nearest church. The peasant and his wife, as the narrative gravely tells us, mistook him by reason of his modest apartment for some poor but pious Irishman, and asked him to share their supper. After finishing his devotions, an invitation which Zog, half famished as he was, gladly accepted. He reached the church in time for the evening mass, and with an unutterable joy knelt before the altar, and renewed the communion of which he had been deprived so long. When he returned to the cottage, the attention of his host was at once attracted to his mutilated and distorted hands. They asked with amazement how he could have received such injuries, and when they heard the story of his tortures, their surprise and veneration knew no bounds. Two young girls, their daughters, begged him to accept all they had to give, a handful of sooths, while the peasant made known the character of his new guest to his neighbors. A trader from Wren brought a horse to the door, and offered the use of it to Zog, to carry him to the Jesuit college in that town. He gratefully accepted it, and on the morning of the fifth of January 1644 reached his destination. He dismounted and knocked at the door of the college. The porter opened it, and saw a man wearing on his head an old woolen nightcap, and in an attire a little better than that of a beggar. Zog asked to see the rector, but the porter answered coldly that the rector was busy in the sacristy. Zog begged him to say that a man was at the door with news from Canada. The missions of Canada were at this time an object of primal interest to the Jesuits, and above all to the Jesuits of France. A letter from Zog, written during his captivity, had already reached France, as had also the Jesuit Relation of 1643, which contained a long account of his capture, and he had no doubt been an engrossing theme of conversation in every house of the French Jesuits. The father rector was putting on his vestments to say mass, but when he heard that a poor man from Canada had asked for him at the door he postponed the service and went to meet him. Zog, without discovering himself, gave him a letter from the Dutch director general attesting his character. The rector, without reading it, began to question him as to the affairs of Canada, and at length asked him if he knew father Zog. I know him very well, was the reply. The Iroquois had taken him, pursued the rector. Is he dead? Have they murdered him? No, answered Zog. He is alive and at liberty, and I am he. Then he fell on his knees to ask his superior's blessing. That night was a night of jubilation and thanksgiving in the college of Rennes. Zog became a center of curiosity and reverence. He was summoned to Paris. The Queen, Anne of Austria, wished to see him, and when the persecuted slave of the Mohawks was conducted into her presence, she kissed his mutilated hands, while the ladies of the court thronged around to do him homage. We are told, and no doubt with truth, that these honors were unwelcome to the modest and single-hearted missionary, who thought only of returning to his work of converting the Indians. A priest with any deformity of body is debarred from saying mass. The teeth and knives of the Iroquois had inflicted an injury worse than the torturers imagined, for they had robbed Zog of the privilege which was the chief consolation of his life. But the Pope, by a special dispensation, restored it to him, and with the opening spring he sailed again for Canada. CHAPTER XVII. CHAPTER XVII. CHAPTER XII. Two forces were battling for the mastery of Canada. On the one side, Christ, the Virgin, and the Angels, with their agents, the priests. On the other, the devil, and his tools, the Iroquois. Such at least was the view of the case held in full faith, not by the Jesuit Fathers alone, but by most of the colonists. Never before had the fiend put forth such rage, and in the Iroquois he found instruments of a nature not uncongenial with his own. At Quebec, three rivers, Montreal, and the little fort of Richelieu, that is to say, in all Canada, no man could hunt, fish, till the fields, or cut a tree in the forest, without peril to his scalp. The Iroquois were everywhere and nowhere. A yell, a volley of bullets, a rush of screeching savages, and all was over. The soldiers hastened to the spot to find silence, solitude, and a mangled corpse. I had as leaf, writes Fr. Vimont, to be beset by goblins as by the Iroquois. The one are about as invisible as the other. Our people on the Richelieu and at Montreal are kept in a closer confinement than ever were monks or nuns in our smallest convents in France. The Confederates at this time were in a flush of unparalleled audacity. They despised white men as base-pultrunes, and esteemed themselves warriors and heroes, destined to conquer all mankind. The firearms with which the Dutch had rashly supplied them, joined to their united councils, their courage and ferocity, gave them an advantage over the surrounding tribes which they fully understood. Their passions rose with their sense of power. They boasted that they would wipe the Hurons, the Algonquins, and the French from the face of the earth, and carry the white girls, meaning the nuns, to their villages. This last event indeed seemed more than probable, and the hospital nuns left their exposed station at Silerie, and withdrew to the ramparts and palisades of Quebec. The St. Lawrence and the Ottawa were so infested that communication with the Huron country was cut off, and three times the annual packet of letters sent thither to the missionaries fell into the hands of the Iroquois. It was towards the close of the year 1640 that the scourge of Iroquois war had begun to fall heavily on the French. At that time a party of their warriors waylaid and captured Thomas Godfroy and François Margueris, the latter a young man of great energy and daring, familiar with the woods, a master of the Algonquin language, and a scholar of no mean acquirements. To the great joy of the colonists he and his companion were brought back to three rivers by their captors and given up, in the vain hope that the French would respond with a gift of firearms. Their demand for them being declined they broke off the parley in a rage, fortified themselves, fired on the French, and withdrew under cover of night. Open war now ensued, and for a time all was bewilderment and terror. How to check the inroads of an enemy so stealthy and so keen for blood was the problem that taxed the brain of Montmangie, the governor. He thought he had found a solution when he conceived the plan of building a fort at the mouth of the river Richelieu, by which the Iroquois always made their descents to the St. Lawrence. Happily for the perishing colony, the cardinal de Richelieu in 1642, sent out thirty or forty soldiers for its defense. Ten times the number would have been scarcely sufficient, but even this slight sucker was hailed with delight, and Montmangie was unable to carry into effect his plan of a fort, for which, hitherto, he had neither builders nor garrison. He took with him, besides the newcomers, a body of soldiers and armed men from Quebec, and with a force of about a hundred men and all, sailed for the Richelieu, in a brigantine and two or three open boats. On the thirteenth of August he reached his destination, and landed where the town of Sorrel now stands. It was but eleven days before that Zhaug and his companions had been captured, and Montmangie's followers found ghastly tokens of the disaster. The heads of the slain were stuck on poles by the side of the river, and several trees, from which portions of the bark had been peeled, were dobbed with the rude picture-writing in which the victors recorded their exploit. Among the rest a representation of Zhaug himself was clearly distinguishable. The heads were removed, the trees cut down, and a large cross planted on the spot. An altar was raised, and all heard mass, then a volley of musketry was fired, and then they fell to their work. They hewed an opening into the forest, dug up the roots, cleared the ground, and cut, shaped, and planted palisades. Thus a week passed, and their defences were nearly completed, and suddenly the war-woop rang in their ears, and two hundred Iroquois rushed upon them from the borders of the clearing. It was the party of warriors that Zhaug had met on an island in Lake Champlain. But for the courage of Du Rocher, a corporal who was on guard, they would have carried all before them. They were rushing through an opening in the palisade, when he, with a few soldiers, met them with such vigor and resolution that they were held in check long enough for the rest to snatch their arms. Montmany, who was on the river in his brigantine, hastened on shore, and the soldiers, encouraged by his arrival, fought with great determination. The Iroquois, on their part, swarmed up to the palisade, thrust their guns through the loopholes, and fired on those within. Nor was it till several of them had been killed and others wounded that they learned to keep a more prudent distance. A tall savage, wearing a crest of the hair of some animal, dyed scarlet and bound with a fillet of wampum, leaped forward to the attack and was shot dead. Another shared his fate, with seven buckshot in his shield, and as many in his body. The French, with shouts, redoubled their fire, and the Indians at length lost heart and fell back. The wounded dropped guns, shields, and war-clubs, and the whole band withdrew to the shelter of a fort which they had built in the forest, three miles above. On the part of the French, one man was killed and four wounded. They had narrowly escaped a disaster which might have proved the ruin of the colony, and they now gamed time so far to strengthen their defenses as to make them reasonably secure against any attack of savages. The new fort, however, did not effectually answer its purpose of stopping the inroads of the Iroquois. They would land a mile or more above it, carry their canoes through the forest across an intervening tongue of land, and then launch them in the St. Lawrence, while the garrison remained in total ignorance of their movements. While the French were thus beset, their Indian allies fared still worse. The effect of Iroquois hostilities on all the Algonquin tribes of Canada, from the Saginais to the Lake of the Nipissings, had become frightfully apparent. Famine and pestilence had aided the ravages of war, till these wretched bands seemed in the course of rapid extermination. Their spirit was broken. They became humble and docile in the hands of the missionaries, ceased their railings against the new doctrine, and leaned on the French as their only hope in this extremity of woe. Sometimes they would appear in troops at Ciliary or three rivers, scared out of their forest by the sight of an Iroquois footprint. Then some new terror would seize them, and drive them back to seek a hiding place in the deepest thickets of the wilderness. Their best hunting grounds were beset by the enemy. They starved for weeks together, subsisting on the bark of trees or the thongs of rawhide which formed the network of their snowshoes. The mortality among them was prodigious. Where, eight years ago, writes Father Remont, one would see a hundred wigwams, one now sees scarcely five or six. A chief who once had eight hundred warriors has now but thirty or forty, and in place of fleets of three or four hundred canoes, we see less than a tenth of that number. These Canadian tribes were undergoing that process of extermination, absorption, or expatriation, which, as there is reason to believe, had for many generations formed the gloomy and meaningless history of the greater part of this continent. Three or four hundred Dutch guns, in the hands of the conquerors, gave an unwanted quickness and decision to the work, but in no way changed its essential character. The horrible nature of this warfare can be known only through examples, and of those one or two will suffice. A band of Algonquins, late in the autumn of 1641, set forth from three rivers on their winter hunt, and fearful of the Iroquois, made their way far northward into the depths of the forest that bordered the Ottawa. Here they thought themselves safe, built their lodges, and began to hunt the moose and beaver. But a large party of their enemies, with a persistent ferocity that is truly astonishing, had penetrated even here, found the traces of the snowshoes, followed up their human prey, and hid at nightfall among the rocks and thickets around the encampment. At midnight their yells and the blows of their war-clubs awakened their sleeping victims. In a few minutes all were in their power. They bound the prisoners hand and foot, rekindled the fire, slung the kettles, cut the bodies of the slain to pieces, and boiled and devoured them before the eyes of the wretched survivors. In a word, says the narrator, they ate men with as much appetite and more pleasure than hunters eat a boar or a stag. Meanwhile they amused themselves with bantering their prisoners. Al, said one of them to an old Algonquin, you are a dead man. You are going to the land of souls. Tell them to take heart. They will have good company soon, for we are going to send all the rest of your nation to join them. This will be good news for them. This old man, who is described as no less malicious than his captors, and even more crafty, soon after escaped, and brought tidings of the disaster to the French. In the following spring two women of the party also escaped, and after suffering almost incredible hardships, reached three rivers, torn with briars, nearly naked, and in a deplorable state of bodily and mental exhaustion. One of them told her story to Father Bouteau, who translated it into French, and gave it to Vimont to be printed in the Relation of 1642. Revolting as it is, it is necessary to recount it. Suffice it to say that it is sustained by the whole body of contemporary evidence in regard to the practices of the Uruguay and some of the neighboring tribes. The conquerors feasted in the lodge till nearly daybreak, and then after a short rest began their march homeward with their prisoners. Among these were three women, of whom the narrator was one, who had each a child of a few weeks or months old. At the first halt their captors took the infants from them, tied them to wooden spits, placed them to die slowly before a fire, and feasted on them before the eyes of the agonized mothers, who shrieks, supplications, and frantic efforts to break the cords that bound them were met with mockery and laughter. They are not men, they are wolves," sobbed the wretched woman, as she told what had befallen her to the pitying Jesuit. At the fall of the Chaudière another of the women ended her woes by leaping into the cataract. When they approached the first Uruguay town they were met at the distance of several leagues by a crowd of the inhabitants, and among them a troop of women, bringing food to regale the triumphant warriors. Here they halted and passed the night in songs of victory, mingled with the dismal chant of the prisoners, who were forced to dance for their entertainment. On the morrow they entered the town, leading the captive Algonquins, fast bound, and surrounded by a crowd of men, women, and children, all singing at the top of their throats. The largest lodge was ready to receive them, and as they entered the victims read their doom in the fires that blazed on the earthen floor, and in the aspect of the attendant savages, whom the Jesuit father calls attendant demons, that waited their coming. The torture which ensued was but preliminary, designed to cause all possible suffering without touching life. It consisted in blows with sticks and cudgels, gashing their limbs with knives, cutting off their fingers with clamshells, scorching them with fire-brands and other indescribable torments. The women were stripped naked, and forced to dance to the singing of the male prisoners, amid the applause and laughter of the crowd. They then gave them food, to strengthen them for further suffering. On the following morning they were placed on a large scaffold inside of the whole population. It was a gala day. Young and old were gathered from far and near. Some mounted the scaffold, and scorched them with torches and fire-brands, while the children, standing beneath the bark platform, applied fire to the feet of the prisoners between the crevices. The Algonquin women were told to burn their husbands and companions, and one of them obeyed, vainly thinking to appease her tormentors. The stoicism of one of the warriors enraged his captors beyond measure. Scream! Why don't you scream? they cried, thrusting their burning brands at his naked body. Look at me, he answered. You cannot make me wince. If you were in my place you would screech like babies. At this they fell upon him with redoubled fury, till their knives and fire-brands left him in no semblance of humanity. He was defiant to the last, and when death came to his relief they tore out his heart and devoured it, then hacked him in pieces and made their feast of triumph on his mangled limbs. All the men and all the old women of the party were put to death in a similar manner, though but few displayed the same amazing fortitude. The younger women, of whom there were about thirty, after passing their ordeal of torture, were permitted to live, and as figured as they were, were distributed among the several villages as concubines or slaves to the Iroquois warriors. Of this number were the narrator and her companion, who being ordered to accompany a war-party and carry their provisions, escaped at night into the forest, and reached three rivers as we have seen. While the Indian allies of the French were wasting away beneath this atrocious warfare, the French themselves, and especially the traveling Jesuits, had their full share of the infliction. In truth the puny and sickly colony seemed in the gasp of dissolution. The beginning of spring, particularly, was a season of terror and suspense, for with the breaking up of the ice, sure as a destiny, came the Iroquois. As soon as a canoe would float they were on the war-path, and with the cry of the returning wildfowl mingled the yell of these human tigers. They did not always wait for the breaking ice, but set forth on foot, and when they came to open water made canoes and embarked. Well-might Father Vimont called the Iroquois the scourge of this infant church. They burned, hacked, and devoured the Neophytes, exterminated whole villages at once, destroyed the nations whom the fathers hoped to convert, and ruined that sure ally of the missions, the fur trade. Not the most hideous nightmare of a fevered brain could transcend in horror the real and waking perils with which they beset the path of these intrepid priests. In the spring of 1644 Joseph Bresony, an Italian Jesuit born at Rome, and now for two years past a missionary in Canada, was ordered by his superior to go up to the Hurons. It was so early in the season that there seemed hope that he might pass in safety, and as the fathers in that wild mission had received no sucker for three years Bresony was charged with letters to them, and with such necessaries for their use as he was able to carry. With him were six young Hurons, lately converted, and a French boy in his service. The party were in three small canoes. Before setting out they all confessed and prepared for death. They left three rivers on the 27th of April, and found eyes still floating in the river, and patches of snow lying in the naked forests. On the first day one of the canoes overset, nearly drowning Bresony who could not swim. On the third day a snowstorm began, and greatly retarded their progress. The young Indians foolishly fired their guns at the wildfowl on the river, and the sound reached the ears of a war-party of Iroquois, one of ten that had already set forth for the St. Lawrence, the Ottawa, and the Huron towns. Hence it befell that, as they crossed the mouth of a small stream entering the St. Lawrence, twenty-seven Iroquois suddenly issued from behind a point, and attacked them in canoes. One of the Hurons was killed, and all the rest of the party captured without resistance. On the fifteenth of July following Bresony wrote from the Iroquois country to the general of the Jesuits at Rome. I do not know if your paternity will recognize the handwriting of one whom you once knew very well. The letter is soiled and ill-written, because the rider has only one finger of his right hand left in tire, and cannot prevent the blood from his wounds which are still open from staining the paper. His ink is gunpowder mixed with water, and his table is the earth. Then follows a modest narrative of what he endured at the hands of his captors. First they thanked the sun for their victory, then plundered the canoes, then cut up, roasted and devoured the slain Huron before the eyes of the prisoners. On the next day they crossed to the southern shore, and ascended the river Richelieu as far as the rapids of Chambley, once they pursued their march on foot among the brambles, rocks, and swamps of the trackless forest. When they reached Lake Champlain they made new canoes and re-embarked, landed at its southern extremity six days afterwards, and thence made for the upper Hudson. Here they found a fishing-camp of four hundred Iroquois, and now Bressene's Torments began in earnest. They split his hand with a knife, between the little finger and the ring finger, then beat him with sticks till he was covered with blood, and afterwards placed him on one of their torture scaffolds of bark as a spectacle to the crowd. Here they stripped him, and while he shivered with cold from head to foot, they forced him to sing. After about two hours they gave him up to the children, who ordered him to dance, at the same time thrusting sharpened sticks into his flesh, and pulling out his hair and beard. Sing, cried one, hold your tongue, screamed another, and if he obeyed the first the second burned him. We will burn you to death, we will eat you, I will eat one of your hands, and I will eat one of your feet. These scenes were renewed every night for a week. Every evening a chief cried aloud through the camp, Come, my children, come and caress our prisoners! And the savage crew thronged jubilant to a large hut, where the captives lay. They stripped off the torn fragment of a cassock, which was the priest's only garment, burned him with live coals and red hot stones, forced him to walk on hot cinders, burned off now a fingernail and now the joint of a finger, rarely more than one at a time, however, for they economized their pleasures, and reserved the rest for another day. This torture was protracted till one or two o'clock, after which they left him on the ground, fast bound to four stakes, and covered only with a scanty fragment of deerskin. The other prisoners had their share of torture, but the worst fell upon the Jesuit as the chief man of the party. The unhappy boy who attended him, though only twelve or thirteen years old, was tormented before his eyes with a pitiless ferocity. At length they left this encampment, and after a march of several days, during which Bressony, in waiting a rocky stream, fell from exhaustion and was nearly drowned, they reached an Iroquois town. It is needless to follow the revolting details of the new torments that succeeded. They hung him by the feet with chains, placed food for their dogs on his naked body, that they might lacerate him as they ate, and at last had reduced his emaciated frame to such a condition that even they themselves stood in horror of him. I could not have believed, he writes to his superior, that a man was so hard to kill. He found among them those who, from compassion or from a refinement of cruelty, fed him, for he could not feed himself. They told him jestingly that they wished to fatten him before putting him to death. The council that was to decide his fate met on the nineteenth of June, when, to the prisoner's amazement, as it seemed, to their own surprise, they resolved to spare his life. He was given, with due ceremony, to an old woman to take the place of a deceased relative. But since he was as repulsive in his mangled condition, as by the Indian standard he was useless, she sent her son with him to Fort Orange to sell him to the Dutch. With the same humanity which they had shown in the case of Zog, they gave a generous ransom for him, supplied him with clothing, kept him till his strength was in some degree recruited, and then placed him on board a vessel bound for Rochelle. Here he arrived on the fifteenth of November, and in the following spring, maimed and disfigured, but with health restored, embarked to dare again the knives and fire-brands of the Iroquois. It should be noticed, injustice to the Iroquois, that ferocious and cruel as past all denial they were, they were not so bereft of the instincts of humanity as at first sight might appear. An inexorable severity towards enemies was a very essential element in their savage conception of the character of the warrior. Pity was a cowardly weakness at which their pride revolted. This, joined to their thirst for applause and their dread of ridicule, made them smother every movement of compassion, and conspired with their native fierceness to form a character of unrelenting cruelty rarely equalled. The perils which beset the missionaries did not spring from the fury of the Iroquois alone, for nature herself was armed with terror in this stern wilderness of New France. On the thirteenth of January, 1646, Father An-Denoux set out from three rivers to go to the fort built by the French at the mouth of the River Richelieu, where he was to say mass and hear confessions. Denoux was sixty-three years old, and had come to Canada in sixteen twenty-five. As an indifferent memory disabled him from mastering the Indian languages, he devoted himself to the spiritual charge of the French and of the Indians about the forts within reach of an interpreter. For the rest he attended the sick, and in times of scarcity, fished in the river or dug roots in the woods for the subsistence of his flock. In short, though sprung from a noble family of Champagne, he shrank from no toil, however humble, to which his idea of duty or his vow of obedience called him. The old missionary had four companions, two soldiers and a Huron Indian. They were all on snowshoes, and the soldiers dragged their baggage on small sledges. Their highway was the St. Lawrence, transformed to solid ice, and buried like all the country beneath two or three feet of snow, which, far and near, glared dazzlingly white under the clear winter sun. Before night they had walked eighteen miles, and the soldiers, unused to snowshoes, were greatly fatigued. They made their camp in the forest on the shore of the great expansion of the St. Lawrence called the Lake of St. Peter, dug away the snow, heaped it around the spot as a barrier against the wind, made their fire on the frozen earth in the midst, and lay down to sleep. At two o'clock in the morning De Noux awoke. The moon shone like daylight over the vast white desert of the frozen lake, with its bordering fir trees bowed to the ground with snow, and the kindly thought struck the father that he might ease his companions by going in advance to Fort Richelieu and sending back men to aid them in dragging their sludges. He knew the way well. He directed them to follow the tracks of his snowshoes in the morning, and not doubting to reach the fort before night, left behind his blanket and his flint and steel. For provisions he put a morsel of bread and five or six prunes in his pocket. Told his rosary and set forth. Before dawn the weather changed. The air thickened, clouds hid the moon, and a snowstorm set in. The traveller was in utter darkness. He lost the points of the compass, wandered far out on the lake, and when day appeared could see nothing but the snow beneath his feet, and the myriads of falling flakes that encompassed him like a curtain, impervious to the sight. Still he toiled on, winding hither and thither, and at times unwittingly circling back on his own footsteps. At night he dug a hole in the snow under the shore of an island, and lay down without fire, food, or blanket. Meanwhile the two soldiers and the Indian, unable to trace his footsteps, which the snow had hidden, pursued their way for the fort. But the Indian was ignorant of the country, and the Frenchmen were unskilled. They wandered from their course, and at evening encamped on the shore of the island of Sant Ignatius, at no great distance from De Noux. Here the Indian, trusting to his instinct, left them and set forth alone in search of their destination, which he soon succeeded in finding. The palisades of the feeble little fort, and the rude buildings within, were whitened with snow and half buried in it. Here amid the desolation a handful of men kept watch and ward against the Iroquois. Seated by the blazing logs the Indian asked for De Noux, and to his astonishment the soldiers of the garrison told him that he had not been seen. The captain of the post was called. All was anxiety, but nothing could be done that night. At daybreak parties went out to search. The two soldiers were readily found, but they looked in vain for the missionary. All day they were ranging the ice, firing their guns and shouting, but to no avail, and they returned, disconsolate. There was a converted Indian, whom the French called Charles, at the fort, one of four who were spending the winter there. On the next morning, the second of February, he and one of his companions, together with Baron, a French soldier, resumed the search, and guided by the slight depressions in the snow which had fallen on the wanderer's footprints, the quick-eyed savages traced him through all his windings, found his camp by the shore of the island, and thence followed him beyond the fort. He had passed near without discovering it. Perhaps weakness had dims his sight, stopped to rest at a point a league above, and thence made his way about three leagues farther. Here they found him. He had dug a circular excavation in the snow, and was kneeling in it on the earth. His head was bare, his eyes open and turned upwards, and his hands clasped on his breast. His hat and his snowshoes laid aside. The body was leaning slightly forward, resting against the bank of snow before it, and frozen to the hardness of marble. Thus, in an act of kindness and charity, died the first martyr of the Canadian mission. CHAPTER 18 1642-1644 Let us now ascend to the island of Montreal. Here as we have seen, an association of devout and zealous persons had essayed to found a mission colony under the protection of the Holy Virgin, and we left the adventurers after their landing, bivouacked on the shore, on an evening in May. There was an altar in the open air, decorated with a taste that betokened no less of good nurture than of piety, and around it clustered the tents that sheltered the commandant Maisonneuve, the two ladies, Madame de la Pelletree and Mademoiselle Mance, and the soldiers and laborers of the expedition. In the morning they all fell to their work, Maisonneuve hewing down the first tree, and labored with such good will that their tents were soon enclosed with a strong palisade, and their altar covered by a provisional chapel, built in the Huron mode of bark. Soon afterward their canvas habitations were supplanted by solid structures of wood, and the feeble germ of a future city began to take root. The Iroquois had not yet found them out, nor did they discover them till they had had ample time to fortify themselves. Meanwhile on a Sunday they would stroll at their leisure over the adjacent meadows and in the shade of the bordering forest, where, as the old chronicler tells us, the grass was gay with wildflowers and the branches with the flutter and song of many strange birds. The day of the assumption of the Virgin was celebrated with befitting solemnity. There was a mass in their bark chapel, then a tidaeum, then public instruction of certain Indians who chanced to be at Montreal, then a procession of all the colonists after Vespers, to the admiration of the red-skinned beholders. Canon, too, were fired in honour of their celestial patroness. Their thunder made all the island echo, writes Father Vimont, and the demons, though used to thunderbolts, were scared at a noise which told them of the love we bear, our great mistress. And I have scarcely any doubt that the tutelary angels of the savages of New France have marked this day in the calendar of paradise. The summer passed prosperously, but with the winter their faith was put to a rude test. In December there was a rise of the St. Lawrence, threatening to sweep away in a night the results of all their labour. They fell to their prayers, and Maison Neuve planted a wooden cross in face of the advancing deluge. Just making a vow that should the peril be averted, he, Maison Neuve, would bear another cross on his soldiers up the neighbouring mountain and place it on the summit. The vow seemed in vain. The flood still rose, filled the fort-ditch, swept the foot of the palisade, and threatened to sap the magazine. But here it stopped, and presently began to recede, till at length it had withdrawn within its lawful channel, and via Marie was safe. Now it remained a fulfil of promise from which such happy results had proceeded. Maison Neuve set his men at work to clear a path through the forest to the top of the mountain. A large cross was made, and solemnly blessed by the priest. Then on the 6th of January the Jesuit du Péran led the way, followed in procession by Madame de la Pelletrie, the artisans and soldiers to the destined spot. The commandant, who with all the ceremonies of the church had been declared first soldier of the cross, walked behind the rest, bearing on his shoulder a cross so heavy that it needed his utmost strength to climb the steep and rugged path. They planted it on the highest crest, and all knelt in adoration before it. Du Péran said, Mass, and Madame de la Pelletrie, always romantic and always devout, received the sacrament on the mountaintop, a spectacle to the virgin world outstretched below. Sundry relics of saints had been set in the wood of the cross, which remained an object of pilgrimage to the pious colonists of Via Marie. Peace and harmony reigned within the little fort, and so edifying was the demeanor of the colonists so faithful were they to the confessional and so constantly at mass that a chronicler of the day exclaims, in a burst of enthusiasm, that the desert slightly a resort of demons were now the abode of angels. Two Jesuits, who for the time were their pastors, had them well in hand. They dwelt under the same roof with most of their flock, who lived in community in one large house, and vied with each other in zeal for the honour of the Virgin and the conversion of the Indians. At the end of August 1643 a vessel arrived at Via Marie, with a reinforcement commanded by Louis d'Aiboust de Couillon, a pious gentleman of Champagne, and one of the associates of Montreal. Some years before he had asked and wedlocked the hand of Barb de Boulogne, but the young lady had, when a child in the ardour of her piety, taken a valve of perpetual chastity. By the advice of her Jesuit confessor she accepted his suit, on condition that she should preserve to the hour of her death the state to which Holy Church has always ascribed a peculiar merit. D'Aiboust married her, and when, soon after, he conceived the purpose of devoting his life to the work of the faith in Canada, he invited his maiden spouse to go with him. She refused, and forbade him to mention the subject again. Her health was indifferent, and about this time she fell ill. As a last resort she made a promise to God that, if he would restore her, she would go to Canada with her husband, and forthwith her maladies ceased. Still her reluctance continued. She hesitated, and then refused again, when an inward light revealed to her that it was her duty to cast her lot in the wilderness. She accordingly embarked with D'Aiboust, accompanied by her sister, Mademoiselle Philippine de Boulogne, who had caught the contagion of her zeal. The presence of these damsels would, to all appearance, be rather a burden than a profit to the colonists, beset as they then were by Indians, and often in peril of starvation, but the spectacle of their ardour, as disinterested as it was extravagant, would serve to exalt their religious enthusiasm in which alone was the life of Via Marie. Their vessel passed in safety the Iroquois who watched the St. Lawrence, and its arrival filled the colonists with joy. D'Aiboust was a skillful soldier, specially versed in the arts of fortification, and under his direction the frail palisades which formed their sole defence were replaced by solid ramparts and bastions of earth. He brought news that the unknown benefactress, as a certain generous member of the Association of Montreal was called, in ignorance of her name, had given funds to the amount as afterwards appeared of forty-two thousand leavers, for the building of a hospital at Via Marie. The source of the gift was kept secret from a religious motive, but it soon became known that it proceeded from Madame de Bouillon, a lady whose rank and wealth were exceeded only by her devotion. It is true that the hospital was not wanted, as no one was sick at Via Marie, and one or two chambers would have sufficed for every protective necessity, but it will be remembered that the colony had been established in order that a hospital might be built, and Madame de Bouillon would not hear to any other application of her money. Mademoiselle Monts wrote to her to urge that the money should be devoted to the Huron mission, but she absolutely refused. D'allier de Casson, manuscript. Instead, therefore, of tilling the land to supply their own pressing needs, all the labourers of the settlement were set at this pious, though superfluous task. There was no room in the fort, which, moreover, was in danger of inundation, and the hospital was accordingly built on higher ground adjacent. To leave it unprotected would be to abandon its inmates to the Iroquois. It was, therefore, surrounded by a strong palisade, and in time of danger a part of the garrison was detailed to defend it. Here Mademoiselle Monts took up her abode, and waited the day when wounds or disease should bring patience to her empty wards. Doversier, who had first conceived of this plan of a hospital in the wilderness, was a senseless enthusiast, who rejected a sin every protest of reason against the dreams which governed him, yet one rational and practical element entered into the motives of those who carried the plan into execution. The hospital was intended not only to nurse sick Frenchmen, but to nurse and convert sick Indians. In other words, it was an engine of the mission. From Maison-Nove to the humblest labourer, these zealous colonists were bent on the work of conversion. To that end the ladies made pilgrimages to the cross on the mountain, sometimes for nine days in succession, to pray God to gather the heathen into his fold. The fatigue was great, nor was the danger less, and armed men always escorted them as a precaution against the Iroquois. The male colonists were equally fervent, and sometimes as many as fifteen or sixteen persons would kneel at once before the cross, with the same charitable petition. The ardour of their zeal may be inferred from the fact that these pious expeditions consumed the greater part of the day, when time and labour were of a value past reckoning to the little colony. Besides their pilgrimages they used other means, and very efficient ones, to attract and gain over the Indians. They housed, fed, and clothed them at every opportunity, and though they were subsisting chiefly on provisions brought at great cost from France, there was always a portion for the hungry savages, who from time to time encamped near their fort. If they could persuade any of them to be nursed, they were consigned to the tender care of Mademoiselle Mance, and if a party went to war their women and children were taken in charge till their return. As this attention to their bodies had for its object the profit of their souls, it was accompanied with incessant catacysing. This with the other influences of the place had its effect, and some notable conversions were made. Among them was that of the renowned chief, Tessouat, or Le Bourne, as the French called him, a crafty and intractable savage, whom to their own surprise they succeeded in taming and winning to the faith. He was christened with the name of Paul, and his squaw with that of Madeline. Maisonneuve rewarded him with a gun, and celebrated the day by a feast to all the Indians present. The French hoped to form an agricultural settlement of Indians in the neighbourhood of Via Marie, and they spared no exertion to this end, giving them tools and aiding them to till the fields. They might have succeeded, but for that pest of the wilderness, the Iroquois, who hovered about them, harassed them with petty attacks, and again and again drove the Algonquins in terror from their camps. Some time had elapsed, as we have seen, before the Iroquois discovered Via Marie, but at length ten fugitive Algonquins chased by a party of them made for the friendly settlement as a safe asylum. And thus their astonished pursuers became aware of its existence. They reconnoitered the place, and went back to their towns with the news. From that time forth the colonists had no peace, no more excursions for fishing and hunting, no more Sunday strolls in woods and meadows. The men went armed to their work, and returned at the sound of a bell, marching in a compact body, prepared for an attack. Early in June 1643, sixty Hurons came down in canoes for traffic, and on reaching the place now called La Chine, at the head of the rapids of Saint-Louis, and a few miles above Via Marie, they were amazed at finding a large Iroquois war-party in a fort hastily built of the trunks and bowels of trees. Surprise and fright seemed to have infatuated them. They neither fought nor fled, but greeted their inveterate foes as if they were friends and allies, and to gain their good graces told them all they knew of the French settlement, challenging them to attack it and promising an easy victory. Accordingly the Iroquois detached forty of their warriors, who surprised six Frenchmen at work queuing timber within gunshot of the fort, killed three of them, took the remaining three prisoners, and returned in triumph. The captives were bound with the usual rigor, and the Hurons taunted and insulted them to please their dangerous companions. Their baseness availed them little, for at night, after a feast of victory, when the Hurons were asleep or off their guard, their entertainers fell upon them, and killed or captured the greater part. The rest ran for Vmre, where, as their treachery was as yet unknown, they were received with great kindness. The next morning the Iroquois decant, carrying with them their prisoners, and the first plundered from the Huron canoes. They had taken also and probably destroyed all the letters from the missionaries in the Huron country, as well as a copy of their relation of the preceding year. The three French prisoners, one escaped and reached Montreal, the remaining two were burnt alive. At Vmre it was usually dangerous to pass beyond the ditch of the fort or the palisades of the hospital. Sometimes a solitary warrior would lie hidden for days, without sleep and almost without food, behind a log in the forest or in a dense thicket, watching like a lynx for some rash straggler. Sometimes parties of a hundred or more made embuscades nearby, and sent a few of their number to lure out the soldiers by a petty attack and a flight. The danger was much diminished, however, when the colonists received from France a number of dogs, which proved most efficient sentinels and scouts. Of the instinct of these animals the riders of the time speak with astonishment. Chief among them was a bitch named Pilot, who every morning made the rounds of the forests and fields about the fort, followed by a troop of her offspring. If one of them lagged behind, she hid him to remind him of his duty, and if any sculked and ran home she punished them severely in the same manner on her return. When she discovered the Iroquois, which she was sure to do by the sense if any were near, she barked furiously and ran at once straight to the fort, followed by the rest. The Jesuit chronicler adds, with an amusing naivete, that while this was her duty her natural inclination was for hunting squirrels. Maisonneuve was as brave a night of the crosses ever fought in Palestine for the sepulchre of Christ, but he could temper his valor with discretion. He knew that he and his soldiers were but indifferent woodsmen, that their crafty foe had no equal in ambuscades and surprises, and that, while a defeat might ruin the French, it would only exasperate an enemy whose resources and men were incomparably greater. Therefore when the dog sounded the alarm he kept his followers close and stood patiently on the defensive. They chafed under this Fabian policy, and at length imputed it to cowardice. Their murmurings grew louder till they reached the ear of Maisonneuve. The religion which animated him had not destroyed the soldierly pride which takes root so readily and so strongly in a manly nature, and an imputation of cowardice from his own soldiers struck him to the quick. He saw, too, that such an opinion of him must needs weak in his authority, and impair the discipline essential to the safety of the colony. On the morning of the thirtieth of March Pilot was heard barking with unusual fury in the forest eastward from the fort, and in a few moments they saw her running over the clearing, where the snow was still deep, followed by her brood, all giving tongue together. The excited Frenchman flocked about their commander. Maisonneuve, habitually composed and calm, answered sharply. Yes, you shall see the enemy. Get yourselves ready at once, and take care that you are as brave as you profess to be. I shall lead you myself. All was bustled in the fort. Winds were loaded, pouches filled, and snowshoes tied on by those who had them and knew how to use them. There were not enough, however, and many were forced to go without them. When all was ready, Maisonneuve saled forth at the head of thirty men, leaving Diaboost with the remainder to hold the fort. They crossed the snowy clearing and entered the forest, where all was silent as the grave. They pushed on, wading through the deep snow, with the countless pitfalls hidden beneath it, when suddenly they were greeted with the screeches of eighty Iroquois, who sprang up from their lurking places, and showered bullets and arrows upon the advancing French. The emergency called, not for chivalry but for wood-craft, and Maisonneuve ordered his men to take shelter, like their assailants behind trees. They stood their ground resolutely for a long time, but the Iroquois pressed them close. Three of their number were killed, others were wounded, and their ammunition began to fail. Their only alternatives were destruction or retreat, and to retreat was not easy. The order was given. Though steady at first, the men soon became confused and over-eager to escape the galling fire which the Iroquois sent after them. Maisonneuve directed them towards a sledge-track which had been used in dragging timber for building the hospital, and where the snow was firm beneath the foot. He himself remained to the last, encouraging his followers and aiding the wounded to escape. The French, as they struggled through the snow, faced about from time to time, and fired back to check the pursuit. But no sooner had they reached the sledge-track than they gave way to their terror and ran in a body for the fort. Those within, seeing this confused rush of men from the distance, mistook them for the enemy, and an overzealous soldier touched the match to a cannon which had been pointed to rake the sledge-track. Had not the peace misfire from the dampness of the priming, he would have done more execution at one shot than the Iroquois in all the fight of that morning. Maisonneuve was left alone, retreating backwards down the track, and holding his pursuers in check with a pistol in each hand. They might have easily shot him, but recognizing him as the commander of the French, they were bent on taking him alive. Their chief coveted this honour for himself, and his followers held a loop to give him the opportunity. He pressed close upon Maisonneuve, who snapped a pistol at him which missed fire. The Iroquois, who had ducked to avoid the shot, rose erect, and sprang forward to seize him, when Maisonneuve, with his remaining pistol, shot him dead. Then ensued a curious spectacle, not infrequent in Indian battles. The Iroquois seemed to forget their enemy, in their anxiety to secure and carry off the body of their chief, and the French commander continued his retreat, unmolested, till he was safe under the cannon of the fort. From that day he was a hero in the eyes of his men. Quebec and Montreal are happy in their founders. Samuel de Champlain and Chamedais de Maisonneuve are among the names that shine with a fair and honest luster on the infancy of nations. CHAPTER XIX The Jesuits in North America in the seventeenth century by Francis Parkman. CHAPTER XIX 1644-1645 PEACE In the damp and freshness of a mid-summer morning, when the sun had not yet risen, but when the river and the sky were red with the glory of approaching day, the inmates of the fort at three rivers were roused by a tumult of joyous and exultant voices. They thronged to the shore, priests, soldiers, traders, and officers, mingled with warriors and shrill-voiced squaws from Huron and Algonquin camps in the neighbouring forest. Close at hand they saw twelve or fifteen canoes slowly drifting down the current of the St. Lawrence, manned by eighty young Indians, all singing their songs of victory and striking their paddles against the edges of their bark vessels, in cadence with their voices. Among them three Iroquois prisoners stood upright, singing loudly and defiantly, as men not fearing torture or death. A few days before, these young warriors, in part Huron and in part Algonquin, had gone out on the warpath to the river Richelieu, where they had presently found themselves entangled among several bands of Iroquois. They withdrew in the night after a battle in the dark with an Iroquois canoe, and as they approached Fort Richelieu, had the good fortune to discover ten of their enemy ambush-guided in a clump of bushes and fallen trees, watching to wailay some of the soldiers on their morning visit to the fishing nets in the river hard by. They captured three of them, and carried them back in triumph. The victors landed amid screams of exultation. Two of the prisoners were assigned to the Hurons and the third to the Algonquins, who immediately took him to their lodges near the Fort at three rivers, and began the usual caress by burning his feet with red-hot stones and cutting off his fingers. Schaunfler, the commandant, went out to them with urgent remonstrances, and at length prevailed on them to leave their victim without further injury, until Montmagnet, the governor, should arrive. He came with all dispatch, not wholly from a motive of humanity, but partly in the hope that the three captives might be instrumental in concluding a peace with their countrymen. A council was held in the Fort at three rivers. Montmagnet made valuable presents to the Algonquins and the Hurons to induce them to place the prisoners in his hands. The Algonquins complied, and the unfortunate Iroquois, Gash, maimed, and scorched, was given up to the French, who treated him with the greatest kindness. But neither the governor's gifts nor his eloquence could persuade the Hurons to follow the example of their allies, and they departed for their own country with their two captives, promising, however, not to burn them, but to use them for negotiations of peace. With this pledge, scarcely worth the breath that uttered it, Montmagnet was forced to content himself. Thus it appeared that the fortune of war did not always smile, even on the Iroquois. Indeed, if there is faith in Indian tradition, there had been a time, scarcely half a century past, when the Mohops, perhaps the fiercest and haughtiest of the Confederate nations, had been nearly destroyed by the Algonquins, whom they now held in contempt. These people, whose inferiority arose cheaply from the want of that compact organization in which lay the strength of the Iroquois, had not lost their ancient warlike spirit, and they had one champion of whom even the audacious Confederates stood in awe. His name was Piscaray, and he dwelt on that great island in the Ottawa of which La Borna was chief. He had lately turned Christian in the hope of French favor and countenance, always faithful to an ambitious Indian, and perhaps too, with an eye to the gun and powderhorn which formed the earthly reward of the convert. Tradition tells marvelous stories of his exploits. Once it is said he entered an Iroquois town on a dark night. His first care was to seek out a hiding-place, and he soon found one in the midst of a large wood-pile. Next he crept into a lodge, and finding the inmates asleep, killed them with his war-club, took their scalps, and quietly withdrew to the retreat he had prepared. In the morning a howl of lamentation and fury rose from the astonished villagers. They ranged the fields and forests in vain pursuit of the mysterious enemy, who remained all day in the wood-pile. Once at midnight he came forth and repeated his former exploit. On the third night every family placed its sentinels, and Piscaray, stealthily creeping from lodge to lodge, and reconnoitering each through crevices in the bark, saw watchers everywhere. At length he described a sentinel who had fallen asleep near the entrance of a lodge, though his companion at the other end was still awake and vigilant. He pushed aside the sheet of bark that served as a door, struck the sleeper a deadly blow, yelled his war cry, and fled like the wind. All the village swarmed out in furious chase, but Piscaray was the swiftest runner of his time, and easily kept in advance of his pursuers. When daylight came he showed himself from time to time to lure them on, then yelled defiance and distanced them again. At night all but six had given over the chase, and even these, exhausted as they were, had begun to despair. Piscaray, seeing a hollow tree, crept into it like a bear and hid himself, while the Iroquois, losing his traces in the dark, lay down to sleep nearby. At midnight he emerged from his retreat, stealthily approached his slumbering enemies, nimbly brained them all with his war-club, and then, burdened with a goodly bundle of scouts, made homeward in triumph. This is but one of several stories that tradition has preserved whose exploits, and with all reasonable allowances it is certain that the crafty and valiant Algonquin was the model of an Indian warrior, that which follows rest on a far safer basis. Early in the spring of 1645 Piscaray, with six other converted Indians, some of them better Christians than he, set out on a war-party, and after dragging their canoes over the frozen St. Lawrence, launched them on the open stream of the Rishaloo. They ascended to Lake Champlain and hid themselves in the leafless forests of a large island, watching patiently for their human prey. One day they heard a distant shot. Come, friends, said Piscaray, let us get our dinner. Perhaps it will be the last, for we must dine before we run. Having dined to their contentment, the philosophic warriors prepared for action. One of them went to Reconoiter, and soon reported that two canoes full of Iroquois were approaching the island. Piscaray and his followers crouched in the bushes at the point for which the canoes were making, and as the foremost Runeer each chose his mark, and fired with such good effect that, of seven warriors all but one were killed. The survivor jumped overboard, and swam for the other canoe where he was taken in. It now contained eight Iroquois, who, far from attempting to escape, paddled in haste for a distant part of the shore, in order to land, give battle, and avenge their slain comrades. But the Algonquins, running through the woods, reached the landing before them, and as one of them rose to fire they shot him. In his fall he overset the canoe. The water was shallow, and the submerged warriors, presently finding foothold, waited towards the shore and made desperate fight. The Algonquins had the advantage of position, and used it so well that they killed all but three of their enemies, and captured two of the survivors. Next they sought out the bodies, carefully scalped them, and set out in triumph on their return. To the credit of their Jesuit teachers they treated their prisoners with a forbearance hitherto without example. One of them, who was defiant and abusive, received a blow to silence him, but no further indignity was offered to either. As the successful warriors approached the little mission settlement of Silaree, immediately above Quebec, they raised their song of triumph, and beat time with their paddles on the edges of their canoes. While from eleven poles raised aloft, eleven fresh scalps fluttered in the wind. The father Jesuit and all his flock were gathered on the strand to welcome them. The Indians fired their guns and screeched in jubilation. One Jean-Baptiste, a Christian chief of Silaree, made a speech from the shore. Piscaré replied, standing upright in his canoe, and to crown the occasion a squad of soldiers marching in haste from Quebec, fired a solutive musketry, to the boundless delight of the Indians. Much to the surprise of the two captives there was no running of the gauntlet, no gnawing off of fingernails or cutting off of fingers, but the scalps were hung like little flags over the entrances of the lodges, and all Silaree betook itself to feasting and rejoicing. One old woman, indeed, came to the Jesuit with a pathetic appeal. Oh, my father, let me caress these prisoners a little. They have killed, burned, and eaten my father, my husband, and my children. But the missionary answered with a lecture on the duty of forgiveness. On the next day Montmagnier came to Silaree, and there was a grand council in the house of the Jesuits. Piscaré, in a solemn hurrang, delivered his captives to the governor, who replied with a speech of compliment and an ample gift. The two Iroquois were present, seated with a seeming imperturbability, but a great anxiety of heart, and when at length they comprehended that their lives were safe, one of them, a man of great size and symmetry, rose and addressed Montmagnier. On Antio I am saved from the fire, my body is delivered from death. On Antio you have given me my life. I thank you for it. I will never forget it. All my country will be grateful to you. The earth will be bright, the river calm and smooth. There will be peace and friendship between us. The shadow is before my eyes no longer. The spirits of my ancestors slain by the Algonquins have disappeared. On Antio you are good, we are bad. But our anger is gone. I have no heart for peace and rejoicing. As he said this he began to dance, holding his hands up raised as if apostricizing the sky. Suddenly he snatched a hatchet, brandished it for a moment like a madman, and flung it into the fire, saying as he did so, thus I throw down my anger, thus I cast away the weapons of blood. Farewell, war! Now I am your friend forever. The two prisoners were allowed to roam at will about the settlement, withheld from escaping by an Indian point of honour. Montmagnese soon after sent them to three rivers, where the Iroquois taken during the last summer had remained all winter. Champ Fleur, the commandant, now received orders to clothe, equip, and send him home, with a message to his nation that On Antio made them present of his life, and that he still had two prisoners in his hands, whom he would also give them, if they saw fit to embrace this opportunity of making peace with the French and their Indian allies. This was at the end of May. On the fifth of July following the liberated Iroquois reappeared at three rivers, bringing with him two men of renown, ambassadors of the Mohawk Nation. There was a fourth man of the party, and as they approached the Frenchmen on shore recognized, to their great delight, Guillaume Couture, the young man captured three years before with father Zogue, and long since given up as dead. In dress and appearance he was an Iroquois. He had gained a great influence over his captors, and this embassy of peace was due in good measure to his persuasions. The chief of the Iroquois, Quiote Sutton, a tall savage, covered from head to foot with belts of wampum, stood erect in the prow of the sailboat which had brought him and his companions from Richelieu, and in a loud voice announced himself as the accredited envoy of his nation. The boat fired a swivel, the fort replied with a cannon shot, and the envoys landed in state. Quiote Sutton and his colleague were conducted to the room of the commandant, where, seated on the floor, they were regaled sumptuously and presented in due course with pipes of tobacco. They had never before seen anything so civilized and were delighted with their entertainment. We are glad to see you, said Schauntflur to Quiote Sutton. You may be sure that you are safe here. It is as if you are among your own people and in your own house. Tell your chief that he lies, replied the honoured guest, addressing the interpreter. Schauntflur, though he probably knew that this was but an Indian mode of expressing dissent, showed some little surprise when Quiote Sutton, after tranquilly smoking for a moment, proceeded. Your chief says it is as if I were in my own country. This is not true, for there I am not so honoured and caressed. He says it is as if I were in my own house, but in my own house I am sometimes very ill-served, and here you feast me with all manner of good cheer. From this and many other replies the French conceived that they had to do with a man of his spree. He undoubtedly belonged to that class of professed orders, who, though rarely or never claiming the honours of hereditary cheapenship, had great influence among the Iroquois, and were employed in all affairs of embassy and negotiation. They had memories trained to an astonishing tenacity, were perfect in all the conventional metaphors in which the language of Indian diplomacy and rhetoric mainly consisted, knew by heart the traditions of the nation, and were adepts in the parliamentary usages, which among the Iroquois were held little less than sacred. The ambassadors were feasted for a week, not only by the French, but also by the Hurons and Algonquins, and then the Grand Peace Council took place. Montmagnier had come up from Quebec, and with him the chiefmen of the colony. It was a bright mid-summer day, and the sun beat hot upon the parched area of the fort, where awnings were spread to shelter the assembly. On one side sat Montmagnier, with officers and others who attended him. Near him was Vimont, superior of the mission, and other Jesuits, jogue among the rest. Only before them sat the Iroquois, on sheets of spruce bark spread on the ground like mats, for they had insisted on being near the French as a sign of the extreme love they had of late conceived towards them. On the opposite side of the area were the Algonquins, in their several divisions of the Algonquins proper, the Montagniers, and the Attica Megas, sitting, lying, or squatting on the ground. On the right hand and on the left were Hurons mingled with Frenchmen. In the midst was a large open space like the arena of a prize ring, and here were planted two poles with a line stretched from one to the other, on which, in due time, were to be hung the wampum belts that represented the words of the orator. For the present, these belts were in part hung about the persons of the two ambassadors, and in part stored in a bag carried by one of them. When all was ready, Chiat-Satana rose, strode into the open space, and raising his tall figure erect, stood looking for a moment at the sun. Then he gazed around on the assembly, took a wampum belt in his hand, and began. On Antio give ear, I am the mouth of all my nation. When you listen to me, you listen to all the Iroquois. There is no evil in my heart. My song is a song of peace. We have many war songs in our country, but we have thrown them all away, and now we sing of nothing but gladness and rejoicing. Hereupon he began to sing, his countrymen joining with him. He walked to and fro, gesticulating towards the sky, and seemed to apostricize the sun. Then, turning towards the governor, resumed his harangue. First he thanked him for the life of the Iroquois prisoner released in the spring, but blamed him for sending him home without company or escort. Then he led forth the young Frenchman, Guillaume Couture, and tied a wampum belt to his arm. With this he said, I give you back this prisoner. I did not say to him, Nephew, take a canoe and go home to Quebec. I should have been without sense had I done so. I should have been troubled in my heart, lest some evil might befall him. The prisoner whom you sent back to us suffered every kind of danger and hardship on the way. Here he proceeded to represent the difficulties of the journey in pantomime. So natural, says Father Vimont, that no actor in France could equal it. He counterfeited the lonely traveller toiling up some rocky portage track, with a load of baggage on his head, now stopping as if half spent, and now tripping against a stone. Next he was in his canoe, vainly trying to urge it against the swift current, looking around in despair on the foaming rapids, then recovering courage and paddling desperately for his life. What did you mean, demanded the orator, resuming his harangue, by sending a man alone among these dangers? I have not done so. From Nephew, I said to the prisoner there before you, pointing to Couture, follow me, I will see you home at the risk of my life. And to confirm his words he hung another belt on the line. The third belt was to declare that the nation of the speaker had sent presents to the other nations to recall their war-parties, in view of the approaching peace. The fourth was an assurance that the memory of the slain Iroquois no longer stirred the living to vengeance. I passed near the place where Piscaray and the Algonquins slew our warriors in the spring. I saw the scene of the fight where the two prisoners here were taken. I passed quickly. I would not look on the blood of my people. Their bodies lie there still. I turned away my eyes that I might not be angry. Then, stooping, he struck the ground and seemed to listen. I heard the voice of my ancestors, slain by the Algonquins, crying to me in a tone of affection. My grandson, my grandson, restrain your anger. Speak no more of us, for you cannot deliver us from death. Think of the living. Rescue them from the knife and the fire. When I heard these voices I went on my way and journeyed hither to deliver those whom you still hold in captivity. The fifth, sixth, and seventh belts were to open the passage by water from the French to the Iroquois, to chase hostile canoes from the river, smooth away the rapids and cataracts, and calm the waves of the lake. The eighth cleared the path by land. You would have said, writes Vimal, that he was cutting down trees, hacking off branches, dragging away bushes and filling up holes. Look, exclaimed the orator, when he had entered this pantomime, the road is open, smooth and straight, and he bent towards the earth as if to see that no impediment remained. There is no thorn or stone or log in the way. Now you may see the smoke of our villages from Quebec to the heart of our country. Another belt of unusual size and beauty was to bind the Iroquois, the French, and their Indian allies together as one man. As he presented it, the order led forth a Frenchman and an Algonquin from among his auditors, and linking his arms with theirs, pressed them closely to his sides, in token of indissoluble union. The next belt invited the French to feast with the Iroquois. Our country is full of fish, venison, moose, beaver, and game of every kind. Remove these filthy swine that run about among your houses, feeding on garbage, and come and eat good food with us. The road is open, there is no danger. There was another belt to scatter the clouds, that the sun might shine on the hearts of the Indians and the French, and reveal their sincerity and truth to all. Then others still, to confirm the Hurons in thoughts of peace. By the fifteenth belt, Quiat-Satan declared that the Iroquois had always wished to send home zhog and bresani to their friends, it had meant to do so, but that zhog was stolen from them by the Dutch, and they had given bresani to them because he desired it. If he had but been patient, added the Ambassador, I would have brought him back myself. Now I know not what has befallen him. Perhaps he is drowned, perhaps he is dead. Here zhog said with a smile to the Jesuits near him, they had the pile laid to burn me, they would have killed me a hundred times if God had not saved my life. Two or three more belts were hung on the line, each with its appropriate speech, and then the speaker closed his hurrang. I go to spend what remains of the summer in my own country, in games and dances and rejoicing for the blessing of peace. He had interspersed his discourse throughout with now a song and now a dance, and the council ended in a general dancing, in which Iroquois, Hurons, Algonquins, Monteneys, Attica-Megas, and French all took part after their respective fashions. In spite of one or two palpable falsehoods that embellished his oratory, the Jesuits were delighted with him. Everyone admitted, says Vimal, that he was eloquent and pathetic. In short, he showed himself an excellent actor, for one who has had no instruction but nature. I gathered only a few fragments of his speech from the mouth of the interpreter, who gave us but broken portions of it, and did not translate consecutively. Two days after, another council was called, when the Governor gave his answer, accepting the proffered peace and confirming his acceptance by gifts of considerable value. He demanded as a condition that the Indian allies of the French should be left unmolested, until their principal chiefs, who were not then present, should make a formal treaty with the Iroquois in behalf of their several nations. Piscarais then made a present to wipe away the remembrance of the Iroquois he had slaughtered, and then the assembly was dissolved. In the evening Vimal invited the ambassadors to the mission house, and gave each of them a sack of tobacco and a pipe. In return, Kyat-Satan made him a speech. When I left my country, I gave up my life. I went to meet death, and I owe it to you that I am yet alive. I thank you that I still see the sun. I thank you for all your words and acts of kindness. I thank you for your gifts. You have covered me with them from head to foot. You left nothing free but my mouth, and now you have stopped that with a handsome pipe, and regaled it with the taste of the herb we love. I bid you farewell, not for a long time, for you will hear from us soon. Even if we should be drowned on our way home, the winds and the waves will bear witness to our countrymen of your favors, and I am sure that some good spirit has gone before us to tell them of the good news that we are about to bring. On the next day he and his companions set forth on their return. Kyat-Satan, when he saw his party embarked, turned to the French and Indians who lined the shore, and said with a loud voice, Farewell, brothers, I am one of your relations now. Then, turning to the Governor, on Antio, your name will be great over all the earth. When I came hither I never thought to carry back my head. I never thought to come out of your doors alive. And now I return loaded with honors, gifts, and kindness. Brothers, to the Indians, obey on Antio and the French. Their hearts and their thoughts are good. Be friends with them, and do as they do. You shall hear from us soon. The Indians whooped and fired their guns. There was a cannon shot from the fort, and the sailboat that bore the distinguished visitors moved on its way towards the Richelieu. But the work was not done. There must be more councils, speeches, wampum belts, and gifts of all kinds—more feasts, dances, songs, and uproar. The Indians gathered at three rivers were not sufficient in numbers or in influence to represent their several tribes, and more were on their way. The principal men of the Hurons were to come down this year, with Algonquins of many tribes, from the north and the northwest, and Kyat-Satan had promised that Iroquois ambassadors, duly empowered, should meet them at three rivers, and make a solemn peace with them all under the eye of on Antio. But what hope was there that this swarm of fickle and wayward savages could be gathered together at one time and at one place? Or that being there they could be restrained from cutting each other's throats? Yet so it was, and in this happy event the Jesuits saw the interposition of God, wrought upon by the prayers of those pious souls in France, who daily and nightly besieged heaven with supplications for the welfare of the Canadian missions. First came a band of Monteneys. Next followed Nipissings, Atega-Megas, and Algonquins of the Ottawa, their canoes deep laden with furs. Then on the 10th of September appeared the great fleet of the Hurons, sixty canoes, bearing a host of warriors, among whom the French recognized the tattered black cosset of Father Jerome Laumont. There were twenty French soldiers, too, returning from the Huron country, whether they had been sent the year before to guard the fathers and their flock. Three rivers swarmed like an ant hill with savages. The shore was lined with canoes, the forests and the field were alive with busy camps. The trade was brisk, and in its attendant speeches, feasts and dances there was no respite. But where were the Iroquois? Montmoney and the Jesuits grew very anxious. In a few days more the concourse would begin to disperse, and the golden moment be lost. It was a great relief when a canoe appeared with tidings that the Promised Embassy was on its way. And yet more, when on the 17th, four Iroquois approached the shore, and in a loud voice announced themselves as envoys of their nation. The tumult was prodigious. Montmoney's soldiers formed a double rank, and the savage rabble, with wild eyes and faces smeared with grease and paint, stared over the shoulders and between the gun-barrels of the musketeers, as the ambassadors of their deadliest foes stalked with unmoved visages towards the fort. Now council followed council with an insufferable prolixity of speech-making. There were belts to wipe out the memory of the slain, belts to clear the sky, smooth the rivers and calm the lakes, a belt to take the hatchet from the hands of the Iroquois, another to take away their guns, another to take away their shields, another to wash the war-paint from their faces, and another to break the kettle in which they boiled their prisoners. In short, there were belts past numbering, each with its meaning, sometimes literal, sometimes figurative, but all bearing upon the great work of peace. At length all was ended, the dances ceased, the songs and the whoops died away, and the great muster dispersed, some to their smoky lodges on the distant shores of Lake Curon, and some to frozen hunting grounds in northern forests. There was peace in this dark and blood-stained wilderness. The lynx, the panther, and the wolf had made a covenant of love. But who should be their surety? A doubt and a fear mingled with the joy of the Jesuit fathers, and to their thanksgivings to God they joined a prayer that the hand which had given might still be stretched forth to preserve. CHAPTER 20 1645-1646 THE PEACE BROKEN There is little doubt that the Iroquois negotiators acted for the moment in sincerity. Guillaume Couture, who returned with them and spent the winter in their towns, saw sufficient proof that they sincerely desired peace. And yet the treaty had a double defect. First, the wayward, capricious, and ungoverned nature of the Indian parties to it, on both sides, made a speedy rupture more than likely. Secondly, in spite of their own assertion, to the contrary, the Iroquois envoys represented, not the Confederacy of the Five Nations, but only one of these nations, the Mohawks. For each of the members of this singular league could, and often did, make peace and war independently of the rest. It was the Mohawks who had made war on the French and their Indian allies on the Lower St. Lawrence. They claimed, as against the other Iroquois, a certain right of domain to all this region, and though the warriors of the four upper nations had sometimes poached on the Mohawk Preserve, by murdering both French and Indians at Montreal, they employed their energies for the most part in attacks on the Hurons, the upper Algonquins, and other tribes of the Interior. These attacks still continued, unaffected by the peace with the Mohawks. Imperfect, however, as the treaty was, it was invaluable. Could it but be kept inviolate? And to this end, Montmagnet, the Jesuits, and all the colony anxiously turned their thoughts. It was to hold the Mohawks to their faith that Couture had bravely gone back to winter among them, but an agent of a more acknowledged weight was needed, and Father Isaac Zog was chosen. No white man, Couture accepted, knew their language and their character so well. His errand was half political, half religious, for not only was he to be the bearer of gifts, wampum belts, and messages from the Governor, but he was also to found a new mission, christened in advance with a prophetic name, the Mission of the Martyrs. For two years past Zog had been at Montreal, and it was here that he received the order of his superior to proceed to the Mohawk towns. At first, nature asserted itself, and he recoiled involuntarily at the thought of the horrors of which his sacred body and his mutilated hands were a living memento. It was a transient weakness, and he prepared to depart with more than willingness, giving thanks to heaven that he had been found worthy to suffer and to die for the saving of souls and the greater glory of God. He felt a presentiment that his death was near, and wrote to a friend, I shall go, and shall not return. And Algonquin Convert gave him sage advice. Say nothing about the faith at first, for there is nothing so repulsive in the beginning as our doctrine, which seems to destroy everything that men hold dear. And as your long cassock preaches, as well as your lips, you had better put on a short coat. Zog, therefore, exchanged the uniform of Loyola for a civilian's doublet and hose. Four, observes his superior, one should be all things to all men that he may gain them all to Jesus Christ. It would be well if the application of the maxim had always been as harmless. Zog left three rivers about the middle of May, with the monsieur Bourdain, engineer to the governor, two Algonquins with gifts to confirm the peace, and four Mohawks as guides and escort. He passed the Richelieu and Lake Champlain, well remembered scenes of former miseries, and reached the foot of Lake George on the eve of Corpus Christi. Thence he called the lake Lac Saint-Sacraman, and this name it preserved, until a century after, an ambitious Irishman, in compliment to the sovereign from whom he sought advancement, gave it the name it bears. From Lake George they crossed on foot to the Hudson, where being greatly fatigued by their heavy loads of gifts, they borrowed canoes at an Iroquois fishing station, and descended to Fort Orange. Here Zog met the Dutch friends to whom he owed his life, and who now kindly welcomed and entertained him. After a few days he left them, and descended the River Mohawk to the first Mohawk town. Crowds gathered from the neighboring towns to gaze on the man whom they had known as a scorned and abused slave, and who now appeared among them as the ambassador of a power which, hitherto, indeed, they had despised, but which in their present mood they were willing to propitiate. There was a council in one of the lodges, and while his crowded auditory smoked their pipes, Zog stood in the midst, and harangued them. He offered in due form the gifts of the governor with the wampum-belts and their messages of peace, while at every pause his words were echoed by a unanimous grunt of applause from the attentive concourse. Peace speeches were made in return, and all was harmony. When, however, the Algonquin deputies stood before the council, they and their gifts were coldly received. The old hate, maintained by traditions of mutual atrocity, burned fiercely under a thin semblance of peace, and though no outbreak took place, the prospect of the future was very ominous. The business of the embassy was scarcely finished, when the Mohawks counseled Zog and his companions to go home with all dispatch, saying that if they waited longer they might meet on the way warriors of the four upper nations, who would inevitably kill the two Algonquin deputies, if not the French also. Zog, therefore, set out on his return. But not until, despite the advice of the Indian convert, he had made the round of the houses, confessed and instructed a few Christian prisoners still remaining here, and baptized several dying Mohawks. Then he and his party crossed through the forest to the southern extremity of Lake George, made bark canoes, and descended to Fort Richelieu, where they arrived on the twenty-seventh of June. His political errand was accomplished. Now, should he return to the Mohawks, or should the mission of the martyrs be for a time abandoned? Laumont, who had succeeded Vimal as superior of the missions, held a counsel at Quebec with three other Jesuits, of whom Zog was one, and it was determined that unless some new contingency should arise he should remain for the winter at Montreal. This was in July, soon after the plan was changed, for reasons which do not appear, and Zog received his orders to repair to his dangerous post. He set out on the twenty-fourth of August, accompanied by a young Frenchman named Laumont, and three or four Hurons. On the way they met Indians who warned them of a change of feeling in the Mohawk towns, and the Hurons, alarmed, refused to go farther. Zog, naturally, perhaps the most timid man of the party, had no thought of drawing back, and pursued his journey with his young companion, who, like other dents of the mission, was scarcely behind the Jesuits themselves and devoted enthusiasm. The reported change of feeling had indeed taken place, and the occasion of it was characteristic. On his previous visit to the Mohawks, Zog, meaning to return, had left in their charge a small chest or box. From the first they were distrustful, suspecting that it contained some secret mischief. He therefore opened it and showed them the contents, which were few personal necessaries, and having thus, as he thought, reassured them, locked the box and left it in their keeping. The Huron prisoners in the town attempted to make favor with their Iroquois enemies by abusing their French friends, declaring them to be sorcerers who had bewitched, by their charms and memories, the whole Huron nation, and caused drought, famine, pestilence, and a host of insupportable miseries. Thereupon the suspicions of the Mohawks against the box revived with double force, and they were convinced that famine, the pest, or some malignant spirit was shut up in it, waiting the moment to issue forth and destroy them. There was sickness in the town, and caterpillars were eating their corn. This was ascribed to the sorceries of the Jesuit. Still they were divided in opinion. Some stood for the French, others were furious against them. Among the Mohawks three clans or families were predominant, if indeed they did not compose the entire nation. The clans of the bear, the tortoise, and the wolf. Though by the nature of their constitution it was scarcely possible that these clans should come to blows, so intimately were they bound together by ties of blood, yet they were often divided on points of interest or policy, and on this occasion the bear raged against the French, and howled for war, while the tortoise and the wolf still clung to the treaty. Among savages, with no government except the intermittent one of councils, the party of action and violence must always prevail. The bear chiefs sang their war songs, and followed by the young men of their own clan, and by such others as they had infected with their frenzy, set forth in two bands on the war path. The warriors of one of these bands were making their way through the forests between the Mohawk and Lake George, when they met Jogue and Lalande. They seized them, stripped them, and led them in triumph to their town. Here a savage crowd surrounded them, beating them with sticks and with their fists. One of them cut thin strips of flesh from the back and arms of Jogue, saying as he did so, let us see if this white flesh is the flesh of an oaky. I am a man like yourselves, replied Jogue, but I do not fear death or torture. I do not know why you would kill me. I come here to confirm the peace and show you the way to heaven, and you treat me like a dog. You shall die to-morrow, cried the rabble. Take courage, we shall not burn you. We shall strike you both with a hatchet, and place your heads on the palisade, that your brothers may see you when we take them prisoners. The clans of the wolf and the tortoise still raised their voices in behalf of the captive Frenchman, but the fury of the minority swept all before it. In the evening, it was the eighteenth of October, Jogue, smarting with his wounds and bruises, was sitting in one of the lodges, when an Indian entered and asked him to a feast. To refuse would have been an offence. He arose and followed the savage, who led him to the lodge of the bear-chief. Jogue bent his head to enter, when another Indian, standing concealed within at the side of the doorway, struck at him with a hatchet. An Iroquois, called by the French le burger, who seems to have followed in order to defend him, bravely held out his arm to ward off the blow, but the hatchet cut through it and sank into the missionary's brain. He fell at the feet of his murderer, who at once finished the work by hacking off his head. Lalande was left in suspense all night, and in the morning was killed in a similar manner. The bodies of the two Frenchmen were then thrown into the mohawk, and their heads displayed on the points of the palisade which enclosed the town. Thus died Isaac Jogue, one of the purest examples of Roman Catholic virtue which this western continent has seen. The priests, his associates, praise his humility, and tell us that it reached the point of self-contempt, a crowning virtue in their eyes, that he regarded himself as nothing, and lived solely to do the will of God as uttered by the lips of his superiors. They add that, when left to the guidance of his own judgment, his self-distrust made him very slow of decision, but that when acting under orders he knew neither hesitation nor fear. With all his gentleness he had a certain warmth or vivacity of temperament, and we have seen how, during his first captivity, while humbly submitting to every caprice of his tyrants and appearing to rejoice in abasement, a derisive word against his faith would change the lamb into the lion, and the lips that seemed so tame would speak in sharp, bold tones of menace and reproop. End of chapter 20