 CHAPTER XXI. The peace was broken, and the hounds of war turned loose. The contagion spread through all the Mohawk nation, the war songs were sung, and the warriors took the path for Canada. The miserable colonists and their more miserable allies woke from their dream of peace to a reality of fear and horror. Again, Montreal and three rivers were beset with murdering savages, skulking in thickets and prowling under cover of night. Yet when it came to blows, displaying a courage almost equal to the ferocity that inspired it. They plundered and burned Fort Richelieu, which its small garrison had abandoned, thus leaving the colony without even the semblance of protection. Before the spring opened all the fighting men of the Mohawks took the war-path, but it is clear that many of them still had little heart for their bloody and perfidious work. For of these hearty and all-enduring warriors two-thirds gave out on the way, and returned, complaining that the season was too severe. Two hundred or more kept on, divided into several bands. On Ash Wednesday the French at three rivers were at mass in the chapel, when the Iroquois, quietly approaching, plundered two houses close to the fort, containing all the property of the neighbouring inhabitants, which had been brought hither as to a place of security. They hid their booty, and went in quest of two larger parties of Christian Algonquins engaged in their winter hunt. Two Indians of the same nation, whom they captured, basically set them on the trail, and they took up the chase like hounds on the scent of gain. Wrapped in furs or blanket coats, some with gun in hand, some with bows and quivers, and all with hatchets, war-clubs, knives, or swords, striding on snowshoes with bodies half-bent, through the grey forests and the frozen pine-swamps, among wet black trunks, along dark ravines and under savage hillsides, their small, fear-sized darting quick glances that pierced the farthest recesses of the naked woods. The hunters of men followed the track of their human prey. At length they described the bark wigwams of the Algonquin camp. The warriors were absent. None were here but women and children. The Iroquois surrounded the huts and captured all the shrieking inmates. Then ten of them set out to find the traces of the absent hunters. They soon met the renowned Piscaret returning alone. As they recognized him and knew his metal, they thought treachery better than an open attack. They therefore approached him in the attitude of friends, while he, ignorant of the rupture of the treaty, began to sing his peace-song. Scarcely had they joined him when one of them ran a sword through his body, and having scalped him, they returned in triumph to their companions. All the hunters were soon after way-laid, overpowered by numbers and killed or taken prisoner. Another band of the Mohawks had meanwhile pursued the other party of Algonquins and overtaken them on the march, as, encumbered with their sledges and baggage, they were moving from one hunting camp to another. Though taken by surprise, they made fight and killed several of their assailants, but in a few moments their resistance was overcome, and those who survived the fray were helpless in the clutches of the enraged victors. Then began a massacre of the old, the disabled, and the infants, with the usual beating, gashing and severing of fingers to the rest. The next day the two bands of Mohawks, each with its troop of captives fast bound, met at an appointed spot on the lake of St. Peter, and greeted each other with yells of exultation, with which mingled a wail of anguish as the prisoners of either party recognized their companions in misery. They all kneeled in the midst of their savage conquerors, and one of the men, a noted convert, after a few words of exhortation, repeated in a loud voice a prayer to which the rest responded. Then they sang an Algonquin hymn, while the Iroquois, who at first had stared in wonder, broke into laughter and derision, and at length fell upon them with renewed fury. One was burned alive on the spot. Another tried to escape, and they burned the soles of his feet that he might not repeat the attempt. Many others were maimed and mingled, and some of the women, who afterwards escaped affirmed, that in ridicule of the converts they crucified a small child by nailing it with wooden spikes against a thick sheet of bark. The prisoners were led to the Mohawk towns, and it is needless to repeat the monotonous and revolting tale of torture and death. The men as usual were burned, but the lives of the women and children were spared in order to strengthen the conquerors by their adoption. Not however, until both, but especially the women, had been made to endure the extremes of suffering and indignity. Several of them from time to time escaped, and reached Canada with the story of their woes. Among these was Marie, the wife of Jean Baptiste, one of the principal Algonquin converts, captured and burned with the rest. Early in June she appeared in a canoe at Montreal, where Madame d'Albuste, to whom she was well known, received her with great kindness, and led her to her room in the fort. Here Marie was overcome with emotion. Madame d'Alboute spoke Algonquin with ease, and her words of sympathy joined to the associations of a place where the unhappy fugitive, with her murdered husband and child, had often found a friendly welcome, so wrought upon her that her voice was smothered with sobs. She had once before been a prisoner of the Iroquois, at the town of Onondaga. When she and her companions in misfortune had reached the Mohawk towns, she was recognized by several Onondagas who chanced to be there, and who, partly by threats and partly by promises, induced her to return with them to the scene of her former captivity, where they assured her of good treatment. With their aid she escaped from the Mohawks, and set out with them from Onondaga. On their way they passed the great town of the Onidas, and her conductors, fearing that certain Mohawks who were there would lay claim to her, found a hiding-place for her in the forest, where they gave her food, and told her to wait their return. She lay concealed all day, and at night approached the town under cover of darkness. A dull red glare of flames rose above the jagged tops of the palisade that encompassed it, and from the pandemonium within an uproar of screams, yells, and bursts of laughter told her that they were burning one of her captive countrymen. She gazed and listened, shivering with cold and aghast with horror. The thought possessed her that she would soon share his fate, and she resolved to fly. The ground was still covered with snow, and her footprints would infallibly have betrayed her. If she had not, instead of turning towards home, followed the beaten Indian path westward. She journeyed on, confused in irresolute, and tortured between terror and hunger. At length she approached Onondaga, a few miles from the present city of Syracuse, and hid herself in a dense thicket of spruce or cedar, whence she crept forth at night to grope in the half-melted snow for a few years of corn, left from the last year's harvest. She saw many Indians from her lurking-place, and once a tall savage, with an axe on his shoulder, advanced directly toward the spot where she lay, but in the extremity of her fright she murmured a prayer, on which she turned and changed his course. The faith that awaited her if she remained, for a fugitive could not hope for mercy, and the scarcely less terrible dangers of the pitiless wilderness between her and Canada filled her with despair, for she was half-dead already with hunger and cold. She tied her girdle to the bow of a tree and flung herself from it by the neck. The cord broke. She repeated the attempt with the same result, and then the thought came to her that God meant to save her life. The snow by this time had melted in the forests, and she began her journey for home, with a few handfuls of corn as her only provision. She directed her course by the sun, and for food dug roots, peeled the soft inner bark of trees, and sometimes caught tortoises in the muddy brooks. She had the good fortune to find a hatchet in a deserted camp, and with it made one of those wooden implements which the Indians used for kindling fire by friction. This saved her from her worst suffering, for she had no covering but a thin tunic, which left her legs and arms bare, and exposed her at night to tortures of cold. She built her fire in some deep nook of the forest, warmed herself, cooked what food she had found, told her rosary on her fingers, and slept till daylight, when she always threw water on the embers lest the rising smoke should attract attention. Once she discovered a party of Iroquois hunters, but she lay concealed and they passed without seeing her. She followed their trail back, and found their bark canoe which they had hidden near the bank of a river. It was too large for her to use, but as she was a practised canoe-maker she reduced it to a convenient size, embarked in it, and descended the stream. At length she reached the St. Lawrence, and paddled with the current towards Montreal. On islands and rocky shores she found eggs of waterfowl in abundance, and she speared fish with a sharpened pull, hardened at the point with fire. She even killed deer by driving them into the water, chasing them in her canoe, and striking them on the head with her hatchet. When she landed at Montreal her canoe still had a good store of eggs and dried venison. Her journey from Onondaga had occupied about two months, under hardships which no woman but a squaw could have survived. Escapes not less remarkable of several other women are chronicled in the records of this year, and one of them, with a notable feat of arms which attended it, calls for a brief notice. Eight Algonquins, in one of those fits of desperate valor which sometimes occur in Indians, entered at midnight a camp where thirty or forty Iroquois warriors were buried in sleep, and with quick sharp blows of their tomahawks began to brain them as they lay. They killed ten of them on the spot, and wounded many more. The rest, panicked, stricken, and bewildered by the surprise and the thick darkness, fled into the forest, leaving all they had in the hands of the victors, including a number of Algonquin captives, of whom one had been unwittingly killed by his countrymen in the confusion. Another captive, a woman, had escaped on a previous night. They had stretched her on her back, with limbs extended, and bound her wrists and ankles to four stakes driven firmly into the earth, their ordinary mode of securing prisoners. Then as usual they all fell asleep. She presently became aware that the cord that bound one of her wrists was somewhat loose, and by long and painful efforts she freed her hand. To release the other hand in her feet was then comparatively easy. She cautiously rose. Around her, breathing in deep sleep, lay stretched the dark forms of the unconscious warriors, scarcely visible in the gloom. She stepped over them to the entrance of the hut, and here, as she was passing out, she described a hatchet on the ground. The temptation was too strong for her Indian nature. She seized it, and struck again and again with all her force, on the skull of the Iroquois who lay at the entrance. The sound of the blows and the convulsive struggles of the victim roused the sleepers. They sprang up, groping in the dark, and demanding of each other what was the matter. At length they lighted a roll of birch bark, found their prisoner gone and their comrade dead, and rushed out in a rage in search of the fugitive. She meanwhile, instead of running away, had hit herself in the hollow of a tree, which she had observed the evening before. Her pursuers ran through the dark woods, shouting and whooping to each other, and when all had passed she crept from her hiding place and fled in an opposite direction. In the morning they found her tracks and followed them. On the second day they had overtaken and surrounded her. When hearing their cries on all sides she gave up all hope. But near at hand, in the thickest depths of the forest, the beavers had damned a brook and formed a pond, full of gnawed stumps, dead fallen trees, rank-weeds and tangled bushes. She plunged in, and swimming and waiting found a hiding-place where her body was concealed by the water, and her head by the masses of dead and living vegetation. Her pursuers were at fault, and after a long search gave up the chase in despair. Shivering, naked and half-starved, she crawled out from her wild asylum and resumed her flight. By day the briars and bushes tore her unprotected limbs. By night she shivered with cold, and the mosquitoes and small black gnats of the forest persecuted her with torments which the modern sportsmen will appreciate. She subsisted on such roots, bark, reptiles, or other small animals as her Indian habits enabled her to gather on her way. She crossed streams by swimming, or on rafts of driftwood, latched together with strips of linden bark, and at length reached the St. Lawrence, where, with the aid of her hatchet, she made a canoe. Her home was on the Ottawa, and she was ignorant of the Great River, or at least this part of it. She had scarcely even seen a Frenchman, but had heard of the French as friends, and knew that their dwellings were on the banks of the St. Lawrence. This was her only guide, and she drifted on her way, doubtful whether the vast current would bear her to the abodes of the living or to the land of souls. She passed the watery wilderness of the Lake of St. Peter, and presently described a Huron canoe. Fearing that it was an enemy, she hid herself, and resumed her voyage in the evening, when she soon came inside of the wooden buildings and palisades of three rivers. Several Hurons saw her at the same moment, and made towards her, on which she left ashore and hid in the bushes. Since, being entirely without clothing, she would not come out till one of them threw her his coat. Having wrapped herself in it, she went with them to the Fort and the House of the Jesuits, in a wretched state of emaciation, but in high spirits at the happy issue of her voyage. Such stories might be multiplied, but these will suffice. Nor is it necessary to dwell further on the bloody records of inroads, butcheries, and tortures. We have seen enough to show the nature of the scourge that now fell without mercy on the Indians and the French of Canada. There was no safety but in the imprisonment of palisades and ramparts. A deep dejection sank on the white and red men alike, but the Jesuits would not despair. Do not imagine, writes the Father Superior, that the rage of the Iroquois, and the loss of many Christians and many catacombs, can bring to naught the mystery of the cross of Jesus Christ, and the efficacy of his blood. We shall die, we shall be captured, burned, butchered. Be it so. Those who die in their beds do not always die the best death. I see none of our company cast down. On the contrary, they ask leave to go up to the Hurons, and some of them protest that the fires of the Iroquois are one of their motives for the journey. CHAPTER XXII. OF THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY by FRANCIS PARTMAN. CHAPTER XXII. 1645-1651. PRIEST AND PURITAN. Before passing to the closing scenes of this wilderness drama, we will touch briefly on a few points aside from its main action, yet essential to an understanding of the scope of the mission. As their establishments at Quebec, Silerie, Three Rivers, and the neighborhood of Lake Huron, the Jesuits had an outlying post at the island of Misscou, on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, near the entrance of the bay of Chaleur, where they instructed the wandering savages of those shores and confessed the French fishermen. The island was unhealthy in the extreme. Several of the French priests sickened and died, and scarcely one convert repaid their toils. There was a more successful mission at Tadoussac, or Sadelege, as the neighboring Indians called it. In winter this place was a solitude, but in summer, when the Montagnies gathered from their hunting grounds to meet the French traitors, Jesuits came yearly from Quebec to instruct them in the faith. Sometimes they followed them northward, into wild swear at this day a white man rarely penetrates. Thus in 1646 Ducouen ascended the Saguenay, and by a series of rivers, torrents, lakes, and rapids, reached a Montagnies horde called the Nation of the Porcupine, where he found that the teachings at Tadoussac had borne fruit, and that the converts had planted a cross on the borders of the savage lake where they dwelt. There was a kindred band, the Nation of the White Fish, among the rocks and forests north of Three Rivers. They proved tractable beyond all others, threw away their medicines or fetishes, burned their magic drums, renounced their medicine-songs, and accepted instead rosaries, crucifixes, and versions of Catholic hymns. In a former chapter we followed Father Paul Lejeune on his winter romings, with a band of Montagnies, among the forests on the northern boundary of Maine. Now Father Gabriel Druyet set forth on a similar excursion, but with one essential difference. Lejeune's companions were heathen, who persecuted him day and night with their jibes and sarcasms. Those of Druyet were all converts, who looked on him as a friend and a father. There were prayers, confessions, masses, and invocations of St. Joseph. They built their bark chapel at every camp, and no festival of the church passed unobserved. On Good Friday they laid their best robe of beaver skin on the snow, placed on it a crucifix, and knelt around it in prayer. What was their prayer? It was a petition for the forgiveness and the conversion of their enemies, the Iroquois. Those who know the intensity and tenacity of an Indian's hatred will see in this something more than a change from one superstition to another. An idea had been presented to the mind of the savage, to which he had previously been an utter stranger. This is the most remarkable record of success in the whole body of the Jesuit relations, but it is very far from being the only evidence, that in teaching the dogmas and observances of the Roman Church, the missionaries taught also the morals of Christianity. When we look for the results of these missions, we soon become aware that the influence of the French and the Jesuits extended far beyond the circle of converts. It eventually modified and softened the manners of many unconverted tribes. In the wars of the next century we do not often find those examples of diabolic atrocity with which the earlier annals are crowded. The savage burned his enemies alive, it is true, but he rarely ate them, neither did he torment them with the same deliberation and persistency. He was a savage still, but not so often a devil. The improvement was not great, but it was distinct, and it seems to have taken place wherever Indian tribes were in close relations with any respectable community of white men. Thus Phillips's war in New England, cruel as it was, was less ferocious, dredging from Canadian experience, than it would have been if a generation of civilized intercourse had not worn down the sharpest asperities of barbarism. Yet it was to French priests and colonists, mingle as they were soon to be among the tribes of the vast interior, that the change is chiefly to be ascribed. In this softening of manners, such as it was, and in the obedient catholicity of a few hundred tamed savages gathered at the stationery missions in various parts of Canada, we find, after a century had elapsed, all the results of the heroic toil of the Jesuits. The missions had failed, because the Indians had ceased to exist. Of the great tribes on whom rested the hopes of the early Canadian fathers, nearly all were virtually extinct. The missionaries built laboriously and well, but they were doomed to build on a failing foundation. The Indians melted away, not because civilization destroyed them, but because their own ferocity and intractable indolence made it impossible that they should exist in its presence. Either the plastic energies of a higher race, or the servile plyancy of a lower one would, each in its way, have preserved them. As it was, their extinction was a foregone conclusion. As for the religion which the Jesuits taught them, however many Protestants may carpet it, it was the only form of Christianity likely to take root in their crude and barbarous nature. To return to Druate. The smoke of the wigwam blinded him, and it is no matter of surprise to hear that he was cured by a miracle. He returned from his winter roving to Quebec in high health, and soon set forth on a new mission. On the river Kennebec, in the present state of Maine, dwelt the Abanakis, and Algonquin people, destined hereafter to become a thorn in the sides of the New England colonists. Some of them had visited their friends, the Christian Indians of Silori. Here they became converted, went home, and preached the faith to their countrymen, and this to such purpose that the Abanakis sent to Quebec to ask for a missionary. Apart from the saving of souls, there were solid reasons for acceding to their request. The Abanakis were near the colonies of New England, indeed the Plymouth colony, under its charter, claimed jurisdiction over them, and in case of rupture they would prove serviceable friends or dangerous enemies to New France. Their messengers were favorably received, and dwelt was ordered to proceed upon the new mission. He left Silori with a party of Indians on the 29th of August 1646, and following, as it seems, the route by which, a hundred and twenty-nine years later, the soldiers of Arnold made their way to Quebec, he reached the waters of the Kennebec, and descended to the Abanakis villages. He nursed the sick, baptized the dying, and gave such instruction as, in the ignorance of the language, he was able. Apparently he had been ordered to reconnoiter, for he presently descended the river from Norwich Walk to the first English trading post, where Augusta now stands. Thence he continued his journey to the sea, and followed the coast in a canoe to the Penobscot, visiting seven or eight English posts on the way, where to his surprise he was very well received. At the Penobscot he found several Kapuchin friars, under their superior, Father Igneza, who welcomed him with the utmost cordiality. Returning he again ascended the Kennebec to the English post at Augusta. At a spot three miles above, the Indians had gathered in considerable numbers, and here they built him a chapel after their fashion. He remained till mid-winter, catechizing and baptizing, and waging war so successfully against the Indian sorcerers, that medicine bags were thrown away, and charms and incantations were supplanted by prayers. In January the whole troop set off on their grand hunt, Driet following them, with toil, says the chronicler, too great to buy the kingdoms of this world, but very small as a prize for the kingdom of heaven. They encamped on Moosehead Lake, where new disputes with the medicine men ensued, and the father again remained master of the field. When, after a prosperous hunt, the party returned to the English trading-house, John Winslow, the agent in charge, again received the missionary with a kindness which showed no trace of jealousy or religious prejudice. Early in the summer Driet went to Quebec, and during the two following years the Abanakis, for reasons which are not clear, were left without a missionary. He spent another winter of extreme hardship with the Algonquins in their winter rovings, and during summer instructed the wandering savages of Tadusac. It was not until the autumn of 1650 that he again descended the Kennebec. This time he went as an envoy charged with the negotiation of a treaty. His journey is worthy of notice, since, with the unimportant exception of Zhaug's Embassy to the Mohogs, it is the first occasion on which the Canadian Jesuits appear in a character distinctly political. Afterwards, when the fervor and freshness of the missions had passed away, they frequently did the work of political agents among the Indians, but the Jesuit of the earlier period was, with rare exceptions, a missionary only, and though he was expected to exert a powerful influence in gaining subjects and allies for France, he was to do so by gathering them under the wings of the Church. The colony of Massachusetts had applied to the French officials at Quebec, with a view to a reciprocity of trade. The Iroquois had brought Canada to extremity, and the French Governor conceived the hope of gaining the powerful support of New England by granting the desired privileges on condition of military aid. But as the Puritans would scarcely see it for their interests to provoke a dangerous enemy, who had thus far never molested them, it was resolved to urge the proposed alliance as a point of duty. The Ibonikis had suffered from Mohog inroads, and the French, assuming for the occasion that they were under the jurisdiction of the English colonies, argued that they were bound to protect them. Driet went in a double character, as the envoy of the government at Quebec and as an agent of a Iboniki flock, who had been advised to petition for English assistance. The time seemed inauspicious for a Jesuit visit to Boston, for not only had it been announced, as foremost among the objects in colonizing New England, to raise up bulwark against the Kingdom of Antichrist, which the Jesuits labored to rear up in all places of the world, but three years before the legislature of Massachusetts had enacted that Jesuits entering the colony should be expelled, and if they returned, hanged. Nevertheless, on the 1st of September, Driet set forth from Quebec with a Christian chief ofcillary, crossed forests, mountains, and torrents, and reached Norwich Walk, the highest Iboniki settlement on the Kennebec. Thence he descended to the English trading-house at Augusta, where his fast friend, the Puritan Winslow, gave him a warm welcome, entertained him hospitably, and promised a war with the object of his mission. He went with him, at great personal inconvenience, to merry-meeting bay, where Driet embarked in an English vessel for Boston. The passage was stormy and the wind ahead. He was forced to land at Cape Anne, or, as he calls it, Kepang. Wins partly on foot, partly in boats along the shore, he made his way to Boston. The three-hilled city of the Puritans lay chill and dreary under a December sky, as the priests crossed in a boat from the neighboring peninsula of Charlestown. Winslow was agent for the merchant, Edward Gibbons, a personage of note, whose life presents curious phases, a reveler of Marymount, a bold sailor, a member of the church, an adventurous trader, an associate of buccaneers, a magistrate of the Commonwealth, and a major general. The Jesuit, with credentials from the Governor of Canada and letters from Winslow, met a reception widely different from that which the law enjoined against persons of his profession. Gibbons welcomed him heartily, prayed him to accept no other lodging than his house while he remained in Boston, and gave him the key of a chamber, in order that he might pray after his own fashion, without fear of disturbance. An accurate Catholic writer thinks it likely that he brought with him the means of celebrating the Mass. If so, the house of the Puritan was, no doubt, desecrated by that popish abomination. But be this as it may, Massachusetts, in the person of her magistrate, became the gracious host of one of those whom, next to the devil and an Anglican bishop, she most abhorred. On the next day Gibbons took his guest to Roxbury, called Roxbury by driet, to see the Governor, the harsh and narrow Dudley, grown gray in repellent virtue and grim honesty. Some half-century before he had served in France under Henry IV, but he had forgotten his French, and called for an interpreter to explain the visitor's credentials. He received duet with courtesy, and promised to call the magistrates together on the following Tuesday to hear his proposals. They met accordingly, and duet was asked to dine with him. The old Governor sat at the head of the table, and after dinner invited the guest to open the business of his embassy. They listened to him, desired him to withdraw, and after consulting among themselves, sent for him to join them again at supper, when they made him an answer, of which the record is lost, but which evidently was not definitive. As the Iboniki Indians were within the jurisdiction of Plymouth, duet proceeded thither in his character of their agent. Here again he was received with courtesy and kindness. Governor Bradford invited him to dine, and as it was Friday, considerably gave him a dinner of fish. Duet conceived great hope that the colony could be wrought upon to give the desired assistance, for some of the chief inhabitants had an interest in the trade with the Ibonikis. He came back by land to Boston, stopping again at Roxbury on the way. It was night when he arrived, and after the usual custom he took lodging with the minister. Here were several young Indians, pupils of his host, for he was no other than the celebrated Elliot, who during the past summer had established his mission at Natik, and was now laboring in the fullness of his zeal in the work of civilization and conversion. There was great sympathy between the two missionaries, and Elliot prayed his guest to spend the winter with him. At Salem, which Duet also visited, in company with the minister of Marblehead, he had an interview with the stern but manly Endicott, who, he says, spoke French, and expressed both interest and goodwill towards the objects of the expedition. As the envoy had no money left, Endicott paid his charges and asked him to dine with the magistrates. Duet was evidently struck with the thrift and vigor of these sturdy young colonies, and the strength of their population. He says that Boston, meaning Massachusetts, could alone furnish four thousand fighting men, and that the four united colonies could count forty thousand souls. These numbers may be challenged, but at all events the contrast was striking with the attenuated and suffering bands of priests, nuns, and fur traders on the St. Lawrence. About twenty-one thousand persons had come from old to New England, with the resolve of making it their home, and though this immigration had virtually ceased, the natural increase had been great. The necessity, or the strong desire, of escaping from persecution had given the impulse to puritan colonization, while, on the other hand, none but good Catholics, the favored class of France, were tolerated in Canada. These had no motive for exchanging the comforts of home and the smiles of fortune for a starving wilderness and the scalping knives of the Iroquois. The Huguenots would have emigrated in swarms, but they were rigidly forbidden. The zeal of propagandism and the fur trade were, as we have seen, the vital forces of New France. Of her feeble population the best part was bound to perpetual chastity, while the fur traders and those in their service rarely brought their wives to the wilderness. The fur trader, moreover, is always the worst of colonists, since the increase of population, by diminishing the numbers of the fur-bearing animals, is adverse to his interests. But behind all this there was, and the religious ideal of the rival colonies, an influence which alone would have gone far to produce the contrast in material growth. To the mind of the Puritan heaven was God's throne, but no less was the earth his footstool, and each in its degree and its kind had its demands on man. He held it a duty to labor and to multiply, and building on the Old Testament quite as much as on the new, thought that a reward on earth as well as in heaven awaited those who were faithful to the law. Doubtless such a belief is widely open to abuse, and it would be folly to pretend that it escaped abuse in New England, but there was in it an element manly, healthful and invigorating. On the other hand, those who shaped the character and in great measure the destiny of New France had always on their lips the nothingness and the vanity of life. For them time was nothing but a preparation for eternity, and the highest virtue consisted in a renunciation of all the cares, toils, and interests of earth. That such a doctrine has often been joined to an intense worldliness all history proclaims. But with this we have at present nothing to do. If all mankind acted on it in good faith, the world would sink into decrepitude. It is the monastic idea carried into the wide field of active life, and it is like the error of those who, in their zeal to cultivate their higher nature, suffer the neglected body to dwindle and pine, till body and mind alike lapse into feebleness and disease. Doubt returned to the Obanekis and thence to Quebec, full of hope that the object of his mission was in a fair way of accomplishment. The Governor, Da Boust, who had succeeded Montmagnet, called his council, and duet was again dispatched to New England, together with one of the principal inhabitants of Quebec, Jean-Paul Gadfoy. They repaired to New Haven, and appeared before the commissioners of the four colonies, then in session there. But their errand proved fruitless. The commissioners refused either to declare war or permit volunteers to be raised in New England against the Iroquois. The Puritan, like his descendant, would not fight without a reason. The bait of free trade with Canada failed to tempt him, and the envoys retraced their steps with a flat, though courteous refusal. Now let us stop for a moment at Quebec and observe some notable changes that had taken place in the affairs of the colony. The company of the Hundred Associates, whose outlay had been great and their profits small, transferred to the inhabitants of the colony their monopoly of the fur trade and with it their debts. The inhabitants also assumed their obligations to furnish arms, munitions, soldiers, and works of defense, to pay the governor and other officials, introduce immigrants, and contribute to support the missions. The company was to receive, besides, an annual acknowledgment of a thousand pounds of beaver, and was to retain all seniorial rights. The inhabitants were to form a corporation, of which any one of them might be a member, and no individual could trade on his own account, except on condition of selling at a fixed price to the magazine of this new company. This change took place in 1645. It was followed in 1647 by the establishment of a council, composed of the Governor-General, the Superior of the Jesuits, and the Governor of Montreal, who were invested with absolute powers, legislative, judicial, and executive. The Governor-General had an appointment of twenty-five thousand leavers, besides the privilege of bringing over seventy tons of freight yearly in the company's ships. Out of this he was required to pay the soldiers, repair the forts, and supply arms and munitions. Ten thousand leavers and thirty tons of freight, with similar conditions, were assigned to the Governor of Montreal. Under these circumstances one cannot wonder that the colony was but indifferently defended against the Iroquois, and that the king had to send soldiers to save it from destruction. In the next year, at the instance of Maison-Nouve, another change was made. A specified sum was set apart for purposes of defence, and the salaries of the Governors were proportionately reduced. The Governor-General, Montmany, though he seems to have done better than could reasonably have been expected, was removed, and as Maison-Nouve declined the office, Diboust, another Montrealist, was appointed to it. This movement indeed had been accomplished by the interest of the Montreal Party, for already there was no slight jealousy between Quebec and her rival. The Council was reorganised, and now consisted of the Governor, the Superior of the Jesuits, and three of the Principal inhabitants. These last were to be chosen every three years by the Council itself, in conjunction with the syndics of Quebec, Montreal, and three rivers. This syndic was an officer elected by the inhabitants of the community to which he belonged, to manage its affairs. Hence a slight ingredient of liberty was introduced into the new organisation. The Colony, since the transfer of the fur trade, had become a resident corporation of merchants, with the Governor and Council at its head. They were at once the directors of a trading company, a legislative assembly, a court of justice, and an executive body. More even than this, for they regulated the private affairs of families and individuals. The appointment and payment of clerks and the examination of counts mingled with the high functions of government, and the new corporation of the inhabitants seems to have been managed with very little consultation of its members. How the Father Superior acquitted himself in his capacity of director of a fur company is nowhere recorded. As for Montreal, though it had given a Governor to the Colony, its prospects were far from hopeful. The ridiculous de Versier, its chief founder, was sick and bankrupt, and the associates of Montreal, once so full of zeal and so abounding in wealth, were reduced to nine persons. What it had left of vitality was in the enthusiastic Mademoiselle Mons, the earnest and disinterested soldier Maisonneux, and the priest, Hollier, with his new seminary of Saint-Sulpice. Let us visit Quebec in midwinter. We pass the warehouses and dwellings of the lesser town, as we climb the zigzag way now called Mountain Street, the frozen river, the roofs, the summits of the cliff, and all the broad landscape below and around us glare in the sharp sunlight with a dazzling whiteness. At the top, scarcely a private house is to be seen, but, instead, a fort, a church, a hospital, a cemetery, a house of the Jesuits, and an Ursuline convent. Yet regardless of the keen air, soldiers, Jesuits, servants, officials, women, all of the little community who are not cloistered are abroad in a stir. Despite the gloom of the times, an unwanted cheer enlivens this rocky perch of France and the Faith, for it is New Year's Day, and there is an active interchange of greetings and presents. Thanks to the nimble pen of the Father Superior, we know what each gave and what each received. He thus writes in his private journal, the soldiers went with their guns to salute Monsieur the Governor, and so did also the inhabitants in a body. He was beforehand with us, and came here at seven o'clock to wish us a happy New Year, each in turn one after another. I went to see him after Mass. Another time we must be beforehand with him. Monsieur Giffard also came to see us. The hospital nuns sent us letters of compliment very early in the morning, and the Ursulines sent us some beautiful presents, with candles, rosaries, crucifix, et cetera, and at dinnertime two excellent pies. I sent them two images in enamel of Saint Ignatius and Saint Francis Xavier. We gave to Monsieur Giffard Father Bonnet's book on the life of our Lord, to Monsieur Deschattere, a little volume on eternity, to Monsieur Bourdon, a telescope and compass, and to others, reliquaries, rosaries, metals, images, et cetera. I went to see Monsieur Giffard, Monsieur Collière, and Mademoiselle de Rapigny. The Ursulines sent to beg that I would come and see them before the end of the day. I went, and paid my compliments also to Madame de la Peltrie, who sent us some presents. I was near leaving this out, which would have been a sad oversight. We gave a crucifix to the woman who washes the church linen, a bottle of eau de vie to Abraham, four handkerchiefs to his wife, some books of devotion to others, and two handkerchiefs to Robert Hush. He asked for two more, and we gave them to him. End of Chapter 22 Chapter 23 of the Jesuits in North America. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Jesuits in North America, in the seventeenth century, by Francis Parkman. Chapter 23 1645-1648 A DOOMED NATION It was a strange and miserable spectacle to behold the savages of this continent at the time when the knell of their common ruin had already sounded. Civilization had gained a foothold on their borders. The long and gloomy reign of barbarism was drawing near its clothes, and their united efforts could scarcely have availed to sustain it. Yet in this crisis of their destiny these doomed tribes were tearing each other's throats in a wolfish fury, joined to an intelligence that served little purpose but mutual destruction. How the quarrel began between the Iroquois and their Huron kindred no man can tell, and it is not worthwhile to conjecture. At this time the ruling passion of the savage Confederates was the annihilation of this rival people and of their Algonquin allies. If the understanding between the Hurons and these incoherent hordes can be called an alliance, united they far outnumbered the Iroquois. Indeed, the Hurons alone were not much inferior in force, for by the largest estimates the strength of the five Iroquois nations must now have been considerably less than three thousand warriors. Their true superiority was a moral one. They were in one of those transports of pride, self-confidence, and rage for ascendancy, which in a savage people marks an era of conquest. With all the defects of their organization it was far better than that of their neighbors. There were bickering's, jealousies, plodding's, and counter-plodding's—separate wars and separate treaties—among the five members of the League. Yet nothing could sunder them. The bonds that united them were like cords of India rubber. They would stretch, and the parts would be seemingly disjoined, only to return to their old union with the recoil. Such was the elastic strength of those relations of planship which were the life of the League. The first meeting of white men with the Hurons found them at blows with the Iroquois, and from that time forward the war raged with increasing fury. Small scalping parties infested the Huron forests, killing squads in the cornfields, or entering villages at midnight to tomahawk their sleeping inhabitants. Often too, invasions were made in force. Sometimes towns were set upon and burned, and sometimes there were deadly conflicts in the depths of the forests in the passes of the hills. The invaders were not always successful. A bloody rebuff and a sharp retaliation now and then requited them. Thus in 1638 a war-party of a hundred Iroquois met in the forest a band of three hundred Huron and Algonquin warriors. They might have retreated, and the greater number were for doing so. But Ananquia, an united chief, refused. Look, he said, the sky is clear, the sun beholds us. If there were clouds to hide our shame from his sight we might fly, but as it is we must fight while we can. They stood their ground for a time, but were soon overborn. Four or five escaped, but the rest were surrounded and killed or taken. This year Fortune smiled on the Hurons, and they took in all more than a hundred prisoners, who were distributed among their various towns to be burned. These scenes with them occurred always in the night, and it was held to be of the last importance that the torture should be protracted from sunset till dawn. The two valiant Ananquia was among the victims. Even in death he took his revenge, for it was thought an augury of disaster to the victors if no cry of pain could be exhorted from the sufferer, and on the present occasion he displayed an unflinching courage, rare even among Indian warriors. His execution took place at the town of Tenastaya, called St. Joseph by the Jesuits. The Fathers could not save his life, but what was more to the purpose they baptized him. On the scaffold where he was burned he wrought himself into a fury which seemed to render him insensible to pain. Thinking him nearly spent his tormentors scalped him, went to their amazement he leapt up, snatched the brands that had been the instruments of his torture, and drove the screeching crowd from the scaffold, and held them all at bay, while they pelted him from below with sticks, stones, and showers of live coals. At length he made a false step and fell to the ground, when they seized him and threw him into the fire. He instantly leapt out, covered with blood, cinders, and ashes, and rushed upon them with a blazing brand in each hand. The crowd gave way before him, and he ran towards the town as if dissented on fire. They threw a pole across his way, which tripped him and flung him headlong to the earth, on which they all fell upon him, cut off his hands and feet, and again threw him into the fire. He rolled himself out, and crawled forward on his elbows and knees, glaring upon them with such unutterable ferocity that they recoiled once more, till seeing that he was helpless they threw themselves upon him and cut off his head. When the Iroquois could not win by force they were sometimes more successful with treachery. In the summer of 1645 two war parties of the hostile nations met in the forest. The Hurons bore themselves so well that they had nearly gained the day when the Iroquois called for a parley, displayed a great number of wampum belts, and said that they wished to treat for peace. The Hurons had the folly to consent. The chiefs on both sides sat down to a council, during which the Iroquois, seizing a favourable moment, fell upon their dupes and routed them completely, killing and capturing a considerable number. The large frontier town of St. Joseph was well fortified with palisades, on which at intervals were wooden watchtowers. On an evening of the same summer of 1645 the Iroquois approached the place in force, and the young Huron warriors mounting their palisades, sang their war songs all night, with the utmost power of their lungs, in order that the enemy, knowing them to be on their guard, might be deterred from an attack. The night was dark, and the hideous dissonance resounded far and wide. Yet regardless of the din, two Iroquois crept close to the palisade, where they lay motionless till dawn. By this time the last song had died away, and the tired singers had left their posts or fallen asleep. One of the Iroquois, with the silence and agility of a wild cat, climbed to the top of a watchtower, where he found two slumbering Hurons, brained one of them with his hatchet, and threw the other down to his comrade, who quickly disboiled him of his life and his scalp. Then, with the reeking trophies of their exploit, the adventurers rejoined their countrymen in the forest. The Hurons planned a counter-stroke, and three of them, after a journey of twenty days, reached the great town of the Seneca's. They entered it at midnight, and found as usual no guard, but the doors of the houses were made fast. They cut a hole in the bark side of one of them, crept in, heard the fading embers to give them light, chose each his man, tomahooked him, scalped him, and escaped in the confusion. Despite such petty triumphs, the Hurons felt themselves on the verge of ruin. Pestulence and war had wasted them away, and left but a skeleton of their former strength. In their distress they cast about them for succor, and remembering an ancient friendship with a kindred nation, the Andasties, they sent an embassy to ask of them aid in war or intervention to obtain peace. This powerful people dwelt, as has been shown, on the river Susquehanna. The way was long, even in a direct line, but the Iroquois lay between, and a wide circuit was necessary to avoid them. A Christian chief, whom the Jesuits had named Charles, together with four Christian and four heathen Hurons, bearing wampum belts and gifts from the Council, departed on this embassy on the 13th of April, 1647, and reached the great town of the Andasties early in June. It contained, as the Jesuits were told, no less than thirteen hundred warriors. The Council assembled, and the chief ambassador addressed them, We come from the land of souls, where all is gloom, dismay, and desolation. Our fields are covered with blood. Our houses are filled only with the dead. And we ourselves have but life enough to beg our friends to take pity on a people who are drawing near their end. Then he presented the wampum belts and other gifts, saying that they were the voice of a dying country. The Andasties, who had a mortal quarrel with the Mohops, and who had before promised to aid the Hurons in case of need, returned a favourable answer, but were disposed to try the virtue of diplomacy rather than the tomahawk. After a series of councils they determined to send ambassadors, not to their old enemies the Mohops, but to the Anandagas, Onidas, and Cayugas, who were geographically the central nations of the Iroquois League, while the Mohocs and the Seneca's were respectively at its eastern and western extremities. By inducing the three central nations, and if possible the Seneca's also, to conclude a treaty with the Hurons, these last would be enabled to concentrate their force against the Mohocs, whom the Andasties would attack at the same time, unless they humbled themselves and made peace. This scheme, it will be seen, was based on the assumption that the dreaded League of the Iroquois was far from being a unit in action or council. Early in the spring a band of Anandagas had made an in-road, but were roughly handled by the Hurons, who killed several of them, captured others and put the rest of light. The prisoners were burned, with the exception of one man who committed suicide to escape the torture, and one other, the chief man of the party, whose name was Anareas. Some of the Hurons were dissatisfied at the mercy shown him, and gave out that they would kill him, on which the chiefs, who never placed themselves in open opposition to the popular will, secretly fitted him out, made him presence, and aided him to escape at night, with an understanding that he should use his influence at Anandaga in favour of peace. After crossing Lake Ontario, he met nearly all the Anandaga warriors on the march to avenge his supposed death, for he was a man of high account. They greeted him as one risen from the grave, and on his part he persuaded them to renounce their warlike purpose and return home. On their arrival the chiefs and old men were called to council, and the matter was debated with the usual deliberation. About this time the ambassador of the Andastis appeared with his mampum-belts. Both his nation and the Anandagas had secret motives which were perfectly in accordance. The Andastis hated the Mohaks as enemies, and the Anandagas were jealous of them as confederates, for since they had armed themselves with Dutch guns, their arrogance and boasting had given umbrage to their brethren of the league, and a peace with the Hurons would leave the latter free to turn their undivided strength against the Mohaks, and curb their insolence. The Anidas and the Cayugas were of one mind with the Anandagas. Three nations of the league, to satisfy their spite against a fourth, would strike hands with the common enemy of all. It was resolved to send an embassy to the Hurons, yet it may be that after all the Anandagas had but half a mind for peace. At least they were unfortunate in their choice of an ambassador. He was by birth a Huron, who having been captured when a boy, adopted and naturalized, had become more an Iroquois than the Iroquois themselves, and scarcely one of the fierce confederates had shed so much Huron blood. When he reached the town of Santagnasa, which he did about Midsummer, and delivered his messages and wampum-belts, there was a great division of opinion among the Hurons. The bare nation, the member of their confederacy which was farthest from the Iroquois, and least exposed to danger, was for rejecting overtures made by so offensive an agency. But those of the Hurons who had suffered most were eager for peace at any price, and after a solemn deliberation it was resolved to send an embassy in return. At its head was placed a Christian chief named Jean-Baptiste Atterata, and on the first of August he and four others departed for Anandaga, carrying a perfusion of presence and accompanied by the apostate envoy of the Iroquois. As the ambassadors had to hunt on the way for subsistence, besides making canoes to cross Lake Ontario, it was twenty days before they reached their destination. When they arrived there was great jubilation, and for a full month nothing but councils. Having thus sifted the matter to the bottom, the Anandagas determined at last to send another embassy with Jean-Baptiste on his return, and with them fifteen Huron prisoners, as an earnest of their good intentions, retaining on their part one of Baptiste's colleagues as a hostage. This time they chose for their envoy a chief of their own nation, named Skandawati, a man of renown, sixty years of age, joining with him two colleagues. The old Anandaga entered on his mission with a troubled mind. His anxiety was not so much for his life as for his honor and dignity. For while the Onidas and the Cayugas were acting in concurrence with the Anandagas, the Seneca's had refused any part in the embassy, and still breathed nothing but war. Would they, or still more the Mohawks, so far forget the consideration due to one whose name had been great in the councils of the League as to assault the Hurons while he was among them in the character of an ambassador of his nation, whereby his honor would be compromised and his life endangered? His mind brooded on this idea, and he told one of his colleagues that if such a slight were put upon him he should die of mortification. I am not a dead dog, he said, to be despised and forgotten. I am worthy that all men should turn their eyes on me while I am among enemies, and do nothing that may involve me in danger. What with hunting, fishing, canoe-making, and bad weather, the progress of the August travelers was so slow that they did not reach the Huron towns till the twenty-third of October. Skandewati presented seven large belts of wampum, each composed of three or four thousand beads, which the Jesuits called the pearls and diamonds of the country. He delivered two of the fifteen captives and promised a hundred more on the final conclusion of peace. The three Anandagas remained, as surety for the good faith of those who sent them, until the beginning of January, when the Hurons on their part sent six ambassadors to conclude the treaty, one of the Anandagas accompanying them. Soon there came dire tidings. The prophetic heart of the old chief had not deceived him. The Seneca's and Mohog's, disregarding negotiations in which they had no part, and resolved to bring them to an end, were invading the country in force. It might be thought that the Hurons would take their revenge on the Anandaga envoys, now hostages among them, but they did not do so, for the character of an ambassador was, for the most part, held in respect. One morning, however, Skandawati had disappeared. They were full of excitement, for they thought that he had escaped to the enemy. They ranged the woods in search of him, and at length found him in a thicket near the town. He lay dead, on a bed of spruce bows which he had made, his throat deeply gashed with a knife. He had died by his own hand, a victim of mortified pride. See, writes Father Raghno, how much our Indians stand on the point of honour. We have seen that one of his colleagues had set out for Anandaga with the deputation of six Hurons. This party was met by a hundred Mohawks, who captured them all and killed the six Hurons, but spared the Anandaga, and compelled him to join them. Soon after, they made a sudden onset on about three hundred Hurons journeying through the forest from the town of Saint Ignace. And as many of them were women, they routed the whole and took forty prisoners. The Anandaga bore part in the fray, and captured a Christian Huron girl, but the next day he insisted on returning to the Huron town. Kill me if you will, he said to the Mohawks, but I cannot follow you, for then I should be ashamed to appear among my countrymen, who sent me on a message of peace to the Hurons, and I must die with them, sooner than seem to act as their enemy. On this the Mohawks not only permitted him to go, but gave him the Huron girl whom he had taken, and the Anandaga led her back in safety to her countrymen. Here then is a ray of light out of Egyptian darkness. The principle of honor was not extinct in these wild hearts. We hear no more of the negotiations between the Anandagas and the Hurons. They and their results were swept away in the storm of events soon to be related. End of Chapter 23 Chapter 24 of the Jesuits in North America. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Jesuits in North America in the seventeenth century by Francis Parkman. Chapter 24 1645-1648 The Huron Church. How did it fare with the missions in these days of woe and terror? They had thriven beyond hope. The Hurons, in their time of trouble, had become tractable. They humbled themselves, and in their desolation and despair came for succor to the priests. There was a harvest of converts, not only exceeding in numbers that of all former years, but giving in many cases undeniable proofs of sincerity and fervor. In some towns the Christians outnumbered the heathen, and in nearly all they formed a strong party. The mission of La Concepcion, or Asasane, was the most successful. Here there were now a church and one or more resident Jesuits, as also at St. Joseph, St. Ignace, St. Michel, and St. Jean-Baptiste, for we have seen that the Huron towns were christened with names of saints. Each church had its bell, which was sometimes hung in a neighboring tree. Every morning it rang its summons to mass, and issuing from their dwellings of bark the converts gathered within the sacred precinct, where the bare, rude walls, fresh from the accent saw, contrasted with the sheen of tinsel and gilding, and the hues of gay draperies and gaudy pictures. At evening they met again at prayers, and on Sunday masses, confession, catechism, sermons, and repeating the rosary consumed the whole day. These converts rarely took part in the burning of prisoners. On the contrary, they sometimes set their faces against the practice, and on one occasion a certain Etienne totiri, while his heathen countrymen were tormenting a captive Iroquois at St. Ignace, boldly denounce them, and promise them an eternity of flames and demons unless they desisted. Not content with this, he addressed an exhortation to the sufferer in one of the intervals of his torture. The dying wretch demanded baptism, which Etienne took it upon himself to administer, and amid the hootings of the crowd, who, as he ran with a cup of water from a neighboring house, pushed him to and fro to make in spill it, crying out, Let him alone, let the devils burn him after we have done. In regard to these atrocious scenes, which formed the favorite Huron recreation of a summer night, the Jesuits it must be confessed did not quite come up to the requirements of modern sensibility. They were offended at them, it is true, and prevented them when they could, but they were wholly given to the saving of souls, and held the body in scorn, as the vile source of incalculable mischief, worthy the worst inflections that could be put upon it. What were a few hours of suffering to an eternity of bliss or woe? If the victim were he, then, these brief pangs were but the faint prelude of an undying claim, and if a Christian they were the fiery portal of heaven. They might indeed be a blessing, since accepted in atonement for sin they would shorten the torments of purgatory. Yet while schooling themselves to despise the body, and all the pain or pleasure that pertained to it, the fathers were emphatic on one point. It must not be eaten. In the matter of cannibalism they were loud and vehement and invective. Undeniably the faith was making progress, yet it is not to be supposed that its path was a smooth one. The old opposition and the old columnaries were still alive and active. It is la prayer that kills us. Your books and your strings of beads have bewitched the country. Before you came we were happy and prosperous. You are magicians. Your charms kill our corn and bring sickness in the Iroquois. Etchan Rebuph is a traitor among us in league with our enemies. Such discourse was still rife, openly and secretly. The Huron who embraced the faith renounced thenceforth, as we have seen, the feasts, dances, and games in which was his delight, since all these savored of diabolism. And if being in health he could not enjoy himself, so also being sick he could not be cured, for his physician was a sorcerer whose medicines were charms and incantations. If the convert was a chief his case was far worse, since, writes Father Lamont, to be a chief and a Christian is to combine water and fire, for the business of the chiefs is mainly to do the devil's bidding, preside over ceremonies of hell, and excite the young Indians to dances, feasts, and shameless indecencies. It is not surprising, then, that proselytes were difficult to make, or that being made they often relapsed. The Jesuits complained that they had no means of controlling their converts, and coercing backsliders to stand fast, and they add that the Iroquois, by destroying the fur trade, had broken the principal bond between the Hurons and the French, and greatly weakened the influence of the mission. Among the slanders devised by the heathen party against the teachers of the obnoxious doctrine was one which found wide credence, even among the converts, and produced a great effect. They gave out that a baptized Huron girl who had lately died, and was buried in the cemetery at Saint-Marie, had returned to life, and given a deplorable account of the heaven of the French. No sooner had she entered, such was the story, than they seized her, chained her to a stake, and tormented her all day with inconceivable cruelty. They did the same to all the other converted Hurons, for this was the recreation of the French, and especially of the Jesuits in their celestial abode. They baptized Indians with no other objects than that they might have them to torment in heaven, to which end they were willing to meet hardships and dangers in this life, just as a war party invades the enemy's country at great whisk, that it may bring home prisoners to burn. After her painful experience an unknown friend secretly showed the girl a path down to the earth, and she hastened thither to warn her countrymen against the wiles of the missionaries. In the spring of 1648 the excitement of the heathen party reached a crisis. A young Frenchman named Jacques Douard, in the service of the heathen, going out at evening a short distance from the Jesuit house of Saint-Marie, was tomahawked by unknown Indians, who proved to be two brothers, instigated by the heathen chiefs. A great commotion followed, and for a few days it seemed that the adverse parties would fall to blows, at a time when the common enemy threatened to destroy them both. But Sager-councils prevailed. In view of the manifest strength of the Christians the Pagans lowered their tone, and it soon became apparent that it was the part of the Jesuits to insist boldly on satisfaction for the outrage. They made no demand that their murderers should be punished or surrendered, but with their usual good sense in such matters conform to Indian usage, and required that the nation at large should make atonement for the crime by presence. The number of these, their value and the mode of delivering them were all fixed by ancient custom, and some of the converts, acting as counsel, advised the fathers of every step it behooved them to take in a case of such importance. As this is the best illustration of Huron justice on record, it may be well to observe the method of procedure, recollecting that the public and not the criminal was to pay the forfeit of the crime. First of all, the Huron chiefs summoned the Jesuits to meet them at a grand council of the nation, when an old orator, chosen by the rest, rose and addressed Ragnot, as chief of the French, in the following harangue. Ragnot, who reports it, declares that he has added nothing to it, and the translation is as literal as possible. My brother, began the speaker, behold all the tribes of our league assembled, and he named them one by one. We are but a handful. You are the prop and stay of this nation. A thunderbolt has fallen from the sky and rent a chasm in the earth. We shall fall into it, if you do not support us. Take pity on us. We are here not so much to speak as to weep over our loss and yours. Our country is but a skeleton, without flesh, veins, sinews, or arteries, and its bones hang together by a thread. This thread is broken by the blow that has fallen on the head of your nephew, for whom we weep. It was a demon of hell who placed the hatchet in the murderer's hand. Was it you, son, whose beams shine on us, who led him to do this deed? Why did you not darken your light, that he might be stricken with horror at his crime? Were you his accomplice? No, for he walked in darkness, and did not see where he struck. He thought, this wretched murderer, that he aimed at the head of a young Frenchman, but the blow fell upon his country, and gave it a death wound. The earth opens to receive the blood of the innocent victim, and we shall be swallowed up in the chasm, for we are all guilty. The Iroquois rejoice at his death, and celebrate it as a triumph, for they see that our weapons are turned against each other, and know well that our nation is near its end. Brother, take pity on this nation. You alone can restore it to life. It is for you to gather up all these scattered bones, and close this chasm that opens to engulf us. Take pity on your country. I call it yours, for you are the master of it, and we came here like criminals to receive your sentence, if you will not show us mercy. Pity those who condemn themselves and come to ask for forgiveness. It is you who have given strength to the nation by dwelling with it, and if you leave us, we shall be like a whisp of straw torn from the ground to be the sport of the wind. This country is an island drifting on the waves, for the first storm to overwhelm and sink. Make it fast again to its foundation, and posterity will never forget to praise you. When we first heard of this murder, we could do nothing but weep, and we are ready to receive your orders and comply with your demands. Speak them, and ask what satisfaction you will, for our lives and our possessions are yours, and even if we rob our children to satisfy you, we will tell them that it is not of you that they have to complain, but of him whose crime has made us all guilty. Our anger is against him, but for you we feel nothing but love. He destroyed our lives, and you will restore them, if you will but speak and tell us what you will have us do. Ragnar, who remarks that this harangue is a proof that eloquence is the gift of nature rather than of art, made a reply which he has not recorded, and then gave the speaker a bundle of small sticks, indicating the number of presents which he required in satisfaction for the murder. These sticks were distributed among the various tribes in the council, in order that each might contribute its share towards the indemnity. The council dissolved, and the chiefs went home, each with his allotment of sticks, to collect in his village a corresponding number of presents. There was no constraint, those gave who chose to do so, but as all were ambitious to show their public spirit, the contributions were ample. No one thought of molesting the murderers. Their punishment was their shame at the sacrifices which the public were making in their behalf. The presents being ready, a day was set for the ceremony of their delivery, and crowds gathered from all parts to witness it. The assembly was convened in the open air, in a field beside the mission house of Saint-Marie, and in the midst the chiefs held solemn counsel. Towards evening they deputed four of their number, two Christians and two heathen, to carry their address to the Father Superior. They came, loaded with presents, but these were merely preliminary. One was to open the door, another for leave to enter, and as Saint-Marie was a large house with several interior doors, at each one of which it behooved them to repeat this formality, their stock of gifts became seriously reduced before they reached the room where Father Ragnot awaited them. On arriving they made him a speech, every clause of which was confirmed by a present. The first was to wipe away his tears, the second to restore his voice, which his grief was supposed to have impaired, the third to calm the agitation of his mind, and the fourth to allay the just anger of his heart. These gifts consisted of wampum and the large shells of which it was made, together with other articles, worthless in any eyes but those of an Indian. Nine additional presents followed, four for the four posts of the sepulcher or scaffold of the murdered man, four for the cross-pieces which connected the posts, and one for a pillow to support his head. Then came eight more, corresponding to the eight largest bones of the victim's body, and also to the eight clans of the Hurons. Ragnot, as required by established custom, now made them a present in his turn. It consisted of three thousand beads of wampum, and was designed to soften the earth, in order that they might not be hurt when falling upon it, overpowered by his reproaches for the enormity of their crime. This closed the interview and the deputation withdrew. The grand ceremony took place on the next day. A kind of arena had been prepared, and here were hung the fifty presents in which the atonement essentially consisted, the rest amounting to as many more being only accessory. The Jesuits had the right of examining them all, rejecting any that did not satisfy them, and demanding others in place of them. The naked crowd sat silent and attentive, while the orator in the midst delivered the fifty presents in a series of Hurangs, which the tired listener has not thought it necessary to preserve. Then came the minor gifts, each with its signification explained in turn by the speaker. First, as a sepulcher had been provided the day before for the dead man, it was now necessary to clothe and equip him for his journey to the next world, and to this end three presents were made. They represented a hat, a coat, a shirt, breeches, stockings, shoes, a gun, powder, and bullets, but they were in fact something quite different, as wampum, beaverskins, and the like. Next came several gifts to close up the wounds of the slain. Then followed three more. The first closed the chasm in the earth, which had burst through horror of the crime. The next trod the ground firm, that it might not open again, and here the whole assembly rose in dance as custom required. The last placed a large stone over the closed gulf to make it doubly secure. Now came another series of presents, seven in number, to restore the voices of all the missionaries, to invite the men in their service to forget the murder, to appease the Governor when he should hear of it, to light the fire at Saint-Marie, to open the gate, to launch the ferry-boat in which the Huron visitors crossed the river, and to give back the paddle to the boy who had charge of the boat. The Fathers, it seems, had the right of exacting two more presents to rebuild their house and church, supposed to have been shaken to the earth by the late Calamity, but they were bored to urge the claim. Last of all were three gifts to confirm all the rest, and to entreat the Jesuits to cherish an undying love for the Hurons. The priests on their part gave presents as tokens of good will, and with that the assembly dispersed. The mission had gained a triumph, and its influence was greatly strengthened. The future would have been full of hope, but for the pretentious cloud of war that rose, black and wrathful, from where lay the dens of the Iroquois. CHAPTER XXV 1648-1649 St. Marie. The river Y enters the Bay of Gloucester, an inlet of the Bay of Machadash, itself an inlet of the vast Georgian Bay of Lake Huron. Rechase the track of two centuries and more, and ascend this little stream in the summer of the year 1648. Your vessel is a birch canoe, and your conductor a Huron Indian. On the right hand and on the left, gloomy and silent, rise the primeval woods, but you have advanced scarcely half a league when the scene is changed, and cultivated fields, planted chiefly with maize, extend far along the bank, and back to the distant verge of the forest. Before you opens the small lake from which the stream issues, and on your left, a stone's throw from the shore rises a range of palisades and bastioned walls, enclosing a number of buildings. Your canoe enters a canal or ditch immediately above them, and you land at the mission or residence or fort of St. Marie. There was the center and base of the Huron missions, and now, for once, one must wish that Jesuit pens had been more fluent. They have told us but little of St. Marie, and even this is to be gathered chiefly from incidental illusions. In the forest, which long since has resumed its reign over this memorable spot, the walls and ditches of the fortifications may still be plainly traced, and the deductions from these remains are in perfect accord with what we can gather from the relations and letters of the priests. The fortified work which enclosed the buildings was in the form of a parallelogram, about a hundred and seventy-five feet long, and from eighty to ninety wide. It lay parallel with the river, and somewhat more than a hundred feet distant from it. On two sides it was a continuous wall of masonry, flanked with square bastions, adapted to musketry, and probably used as magazines, storehouses, or lodgings. The sides towards the river and the lake had no other defences than a ditch and palisade, flanked like the others by bastions, over each of which was displayed a large cross. The buildings within were, no doubt, of wood, and they included a church, a kitchen, a refractory, places of retreat for religious instruction and meditation, and lodgings for at least sixty persons. Near the church but outside the fortification was a cemetery. Beyond the ditch or canal which opened on the river was a large area, still traceable in the form of an irregular triangle, surrounded by a ditch and apparently by palisades. It seems to have been meant for the protection of the Indian visitors who came in throngs to Saint-Marie, and who were lodged in a large house of bark after the Huron Manor. Here perhaps was also the hospital, which was placed without the walls, in order that Indian women, as well as men, might be admitted into it. No doubt the buildings of Saint-Marie were of the roughest, wood walls, affords, windows without glass, vast chimneys of unhewn stone. All its riches were centred in the church, which, as Laumont tells us, was regarded by the Indians as one of the wonders of the world, but which, he adds, would have made but a beggarly show in France. Yet one wonders, at first thought, how so much labor could have been accomplished here. Of late years, however, the number of men at the command of the mission had been considerable. Soldiers had been sent up, from time to time, to escort the Fathers on their way, and defend them on their arrival. Thus in 1644 Montmanie ordered twenty men of a reinforcement just arrived from France, to escort Rebouf, Guerreau, and Chabonel to the Hurons, and remain there during the winter. These soldiers lodged with the Jesuits and lived at their table. It was not, however, on detachments of troops that they mainly relied for labor or defense. Any inhabitant of Canada who chose to undertake so hard and dangerous a service was allowed to do so, receiving only his maintenance from the mission without pay. In return he was allowed to trade with the Indians and sell the first thus obtained at the magazine of the company, at a fixed price. Many availed themselves of this permission, and all whose services were accepted by the Jesuits seemed to have been men to whom they had communicated no small portion of their own zeal, and who were enthusiastically attached to their order and their cause. There is abundant evidence that a large proportion of them acted from motives wholly disinterested. They were, in fact, dawns of the mission, given hard in hand to its service. There is probability in the conjecture that the profits of their trade with the Indians were reaped, not for their own behoof, but for that of the mission. It is difficult, otherwise, to explain the confidence with which the Father Superior, in a letter to the General of the Jesuits at Rome, speaks of its resources. He says, though our number is greatly increased, and though we still hope for more men, and especially for more priests of our society, it is not necessary to increase the pecuniary aid given us. Much of this prosperity was in no doubt due to the excellent management of their resources and a very successful agriculture. While the Indians around them were starving, they raised maize in such quantities that in the spring of 1649 the Father Superior thought that their stock of provisions might suffice for three years. Hunting and fishing, he says, are better than here to four, and he adds that they had fowls, swine, and even cattle. How they could have brought these last is St. Marie it is difficult to conceive. The feat under the circumstances is truly astonishing. Everything indicates a fixed resolve on the part of the Fathers to build up a solid and permanent establishment. It is by no means to be inferred that the household fared sumptuously. Their ordinary food was maize, pounded and boiled, and seasoned in the absence of salt, which was regarded as a luxury, with morsels of smoked fish. In March 1649 there were in their Huron country in its neighborhood eighteen Jesuit priests, four lay brothers, twenty-three men serving without pay, seven hired men, four boys, and eight soldiers. Of this number fifteen priests were engaged in the various missions, while all the rest were retained permanently at St. Marie. All was method, discipline, and subordination. Some of the men were assigned to household work, and some to the hospital, while the rest labored at the fortifications, tilled the fields, and stood ready in case of need to fight the Iroquois. The Fathers Superior, with two other priests' assistants, controlled and guided all. The remaining Jesuits, undisturbed by temporal cares, were devoted exclusively to the charge of their respective missions. Two or three times in the year they all, or nearly all, assembled at St. Marie to take counsel together and determine their future action. Hither also they came at intervals for a period of meditation and prayer to nerve themselves and gain new inspiration for their stern task. Besides being the citadel and the magazine of the mission, St. Marie was the scene of a bountiful hospitality. On every alternate Saturday, as well as on feast days, the converts came in crowds from the farthest villages. They were entertained during Saturday, Sunday, and a part of Monday, and the rites of the church were celebrated before them with all possible solemnity and pomp. They were welcomed also at other times, and entertained usually with three meals to each. In these latter years the prevailing famine drove them to St. Marie in swarms. In the course of 1647 three thousand were lodged and fed together, and in the following year the number was doubled. Heathen Indians were also received and supplied with food, but were not permitted to remain at night. There was provision for the soul as well as the body, and Christian or heathen few left St. Marie without a word of instruction or exhortation. Charity was an instrument of conversion. Such so far as we can reconstruct it from the scattered hints remaining was this singular establishment at once military, monastic, and patriarchal. The missions of which it was the basis were now eleven in number. To those among the Hurons already mentioned another had lately been added, that of St. Madeleine, and two others called St. Jean and St. Matthias, had been established in the neighboring tobacco nation. The three remaining missions were all among tribes speaking the Algonquin languages. Every winter, bands of these savages, driven by famine and fear of the Iroquois, sought harbourage in the Huron country, and the mission of St. Elizabeth was established for their benefit. The next Algonquin mission was that of St. Esprit, embracing the Nipissings and other tribes east and northeast of Lake Huron. And lastly, the mission of St. Pierre included the tribes at the outlet of Lake Superior, and throughout a vast extent of surrounding wilderness. These missions were more laborious, though not more perilous than those among the Hurons. The Algonquin hordes were never long at rest, and summer and winter the priests must follow them by lake, forest, and stream, in summer plying the paddle all day, or toiling through pathless thickets, bending under the weight of a birch canoe or a load of baggage. At night his bed the rugged earth or some bare rock, lashed by the restless waves of Lake Huron, while famine, the snowstorms, the cold, the treacherous eyes of the great lakes, smoke, filth, and not rarely, threats and persecution, were the lot of his winter wanderings. It seemed an earthly paradise when at long intervals he found a respite from his toils among his brother Jesuits under the roof of St. Marie. Hither, while the Fathers are gathered from their scattered stations at one of their periodical meetings, a little before the season of Lent, 1649, let us too repair and join them. We enter at the eastern gate of the fortification, midway in the wall between its northern and southern bastions, and pass to the hall, where at a rude table, spread with rude or fair, all the household are assembled, laborers, domestics, soldiers, and priests. It was a scene that might recall a remote half-futile, half-patriarchal age, when under the smoky raptors of his antique hall some war-like feign sat, with kinsmen and dependents ranged down the long board, each in his degree. Here doubtless, Rogno, the Father Superior, held the place of honour, and for chieftains scarred with Danish battle-axes, was seen a band of thoughtful men, clad in a threadbare garb of black, their brows swarthie from exposure, yet marked with the lines of intellect and a fixed enthusiasm of purpose. Here was Bressony, scarred with firebrand and knife. Chabonel, once a professor of rhetoric in France, now a missionary, welcomed by a self-imposed vow to a life from which his nature recoiled, the fanatical Chaminot, whose character savoured of his peasant birth, for the grossest fungus of superstition that ever grew under the shadow of Rome was not too much for his omnivorous crejulity, and miracles and mysteries were his daily food. Yet, such as his faith was, he was ready to die for it. Garnier, beardless like a woman, was of a far finer nature. His religion was of the affections and the sentiments, and his imagination, warmed with the ardour of his faith, shaped the ideal forms of his worship into visible realities. Rebouf sat conspicuous among his brethren, portly and tall, his short mustache and beard grizzled with time, for he was fifty-six years old. If he seemed impassive, it was because one over-mastering principle had merged and absorbed all the impulses of his nature and all the faculties of his mind. The enthusiasm which, with many as fitful and spasmodic, was with him the current of his life, solemn and deep as the tide of destiny. The Divine Trinity, the Virgin, the Saints, Heaven and Hell, angels and fiends, to him these alone were real, and all things else were not. Gabriel Laman, nephew of Jerome Laman, superior at Quebec, was Rebouf's colleague at the mission of Saint Ignace. His slender frame and delicate features gave him an appearance of youth, though he had reached middle life, and, as in the case of Garnier, the fervor of his mind sustained him through exertions of which he seemed physically incapable. Of the rest of that company little has come down to us but the bear record of their missionary toils, and we may ask in vain what youthful enthusiasm, what broken hope or faded dream, turned the current of their lives, and sent them from the heart of civilization to the savage outpost of the world. No element was wanting in them for the achievement of such a success as that to which they aspired. Neither a transcendent zeal, nor a matchless discipline, nor a practical sagacity very seldom surpassed in the pursuits where men strive for wealth in place, and if they were destined to disappointment it was the result of external causes against which no power of theirs could have ensured them. There was a gap in their number. The place of Antoine Daniel was empty, and never more to be filled by him—never, at least in the flesh—for Chamonoa veered that not long since, when the Fathers were met in council, he had seen their dead companions seated in their midst, as of old, with accountants radiant and majestic. They believed his story. No doubt he believed it himself, and they consoled one another with the thought that, in losing their colleague on earth, they had gained him as a powerful intercessor in heaven. Daniel's station had been at St. Joseph, but the mission and the missionary alike had ceased to exist. End of Chapter 25 The Jesuits in North America in the 17th Century by Francis Parkman. Chapter 26, 1648, Antoine Daniel. In the summer of 1647 the Hurons dared not go down to the French settlements, but in the following year they took heart and resolved at all risks to make the attempt, for the kettles, hatchets, and knives of the traders had become necessaries of life. Two hundred and fifty of their best warriors therefore embarked under five valiant chiefs. They made the voyage in safety, approached three rivers on the 17th of July, and, running their canoes ashore among the bull rushes, began to grease their hair, paint their faces, and otherwise adorn themselves, that they might appear after a befitting fashion at the fort. While they were thus engaged, the alarm was sounded. Some of their warriors had discovered a large body of Iroquois, who for several days had been lurking in the forest, unknown to the French garrison, watching their opportunity to strike a blow. The Hurons snatched their arms and, half greased and painted, ran to meet them. The Iroquois received them with a volley. They fell flat to avoid the shot, then leaped up with a furious yell and sent back a shower of arrows and bullets. The Iroquois, who were outnumbered, gave way and fled, watching a few who for a time made fight with their knives. The Hurons pursued. Many prisoners were taken, and many dead left on the field. The route of the enemy was complete, and when their trade was ended, the Hurons returned home in triumph, decorated with the laurels and the scalps of victory. As it proved, it would have been well had they remained there to defend their families and firesides. The off-mentioned town of Théoniste, or St. Joseph, lay on the southeastern frontier of the Huron country, near the foot of a range of forest-covered hills, and about fifteen miles from Saltmerie. It had been the chief town of the nation, and its population by the Indian standard was still large, for it had four hundred families and at least two thousand inhabitants. It was well fortified with palisades, after the Huron manner, and was esteemed the chief bulwark of the country. Here countless Iroquois had been burned and devoured, its people had been truculent and intractable heathen, but many of them had surrendered to the faith, and for four years past Father Daniel had preached among them with excellent results. On the morning of the Fourth of July, when the forest around basked lazily in the early sun, you might have mounted the rising ground on which the town stood, and past unchallenged through the opening in the palisade. Within you would have seen the crowded dwellings of bark, shaped like the arch-coverings of huge baggan wagons, and decorated with the totems or armorial devices of their owners dobbed on the outside with paint. Here some squalid wolfish dog lay sleeping in the sun, a group of Huron girls chatted together in the shade, old squaws pounded corn in large wooden mortars, idle youths gambled with cherry stones on a wooden platter, and naked infants crawled in the dust. Scarcely a warrior was to be seen. Some were absent in quest of game or of Iroquois scalps, and some had gone with a trading-party to the French settlements. You followed the foul passageways among the houses, and at length came to the church. It was full to the door. Danielle had just finished the mass, and his flock still knelt at their devotions. It was but the day before that he had returned to them, warmed with new fiver from his meditations in retreat at Saint-Marie. Suddenly an uproar of voices shrill with terror burst upon the languid silence of the town. The Iroquois! The Iroquois! A crowd of hostile warriors had issued from the forest, and were rushing across the clearing towards the opening in the Palisade. Danielle ran out of the church and hurried to the point of danger. Some snatched weapons, some rushed to and fro in the madness of a blind panic. The priest rallied the defenders, promised heaven to those who died for their homes and their faith, then hastened from house to house, calling on unbelievers to repent and receive baptism to snatch them from the hell that yawned to engulf them. They crowded around him, imploring to be saved, and immersing his handkerchief in a bowl of water, he shook it over them and baptized them by aspersion. They pursued him as he ran again to the church, where he found a throng of women, children, and old men gathered as an asanctuary. Some cried for baptism, some held out their children to receive it, some begged for absolution, and some wailed in terror and despair. Brothers, he exclaimed again and again as he shook the baptismal drops from his handkerchief, brothers, today we shall be in heaven. The first yell of the war whip now rose close at hand. The palisade was forced and the enemy was in the town. The air quivered with the infernal din. Fly, screamed the priest, driving his flock before him, I will stay here. We shall meet again in heaven. Many of them escaped through an opening in the palisade, opposite to that by which the Iroquois had entered. But Danielle would not follow, for there still might be souls to rescue from perdition. The hour had come for which he had long prepared himself. In a moment he saw the Iroquois and came forth from the church to meet them. When they saw him in turn, radiant in the vestments of his office, confronting them with a look kindled with the inspiration of martyrdom, they stopped and stared in amazement, then recovering themselves, bent their bows, and showered him with a volley of arrows that tore through his robes and his flesh. A gunshot followed, the ball pierced his heart, and he fell dead, gasping the name of Jesus. They rushed upon him with yells of triumph, stripped him naked, gashed and hacked his lifeless body, and scooping his blood in their hands, bathed their faces in it to make them brave. The town was in a blaze, when the flames reached the church, they flung the priest into it, and both were consumed together. Tiana's dye was a heap of ashes, and the victors took up their march with a train of nearly seven hundred prisoners, many of whom they killed on the way. Many more had been slain in the town and the neighboring forest where the pursuers hunted them down, and where women, crouching for refuge among thickets, were betrayed by the cries and wailing of their infants. The triumph of the Iroquois did not end there, for a neighboring fortified town, included within the circle of Danielle's mission, shared the fate of Tiana's dye. Never had the Huron Nation received such a blow. After twenty-seven, sixteen forty-nine, ruin of the Hurons. More than eight months had passed since the catastrophe of St. Joseph. The winter was over, and that dreariest of seasons had come, the churlish forerunner of spring. Around St. Marie the forests were gray and bare, and in the cornfields the oozy, half-thawed soil studded with the sodden stalks of the last autumn's harvest, showed itself in patches through the melting snow. At nine o'clock on the morning of the sixteenth of March the priests saw a heavy smoke rising over the naked forest towards the southeast, about three miles distant. They looked at each other in dismay. The Iroquois, they are burning Saint-Louis. Flames mingled with the smoke, and as they stood gazing two Christian Hurons came, breathless and aghast from the burning town. Their worst fear was realized. The Iroquois were there, but where were the priests of the mission Brabouf and Laumont? Late in the autumn a thousand Iroquois, chiefly Seneca's and Mohocs, had taken the warpath for the Hurons. They had been all winter in the forests hunting for subsistence and moving at their leisure toward their prey. The destruction of the two towns of the mission of St. Joseph had left a wide gap, and in the middle of March they entered the heart of the Huron country undiscovered. Common vigilance and common sense would have averted the calamities that followed, but the Hurons were like a doomed people, stupefied, sunk in dejection, fearing everything, yet taking no measures for defense. They could easily have met the invaders with double their force, but the besotted warriors lay idle in their towns, or hunted at leisure in distant forests, nor could the Jesuits, by counsel or exhortation, rouse them to face the danger. Before daylight of the sixteenth the invaders approached St. Agnasa, which, with Salui and three other towns, formed the mission of the same name. They reconnoitred the place in the darkness. It was defended on three sides by a deep ravine and further strengthened by Palisades fifteen or sixteen feet high, planted under the direction of the Jesuits. On the fourth side it was protected by Palisades alone, and these were left as usual unguarded. This was not from a sense of security, but a greater part of the population had abandoned the town, thinking it too much exposed to the enemy, and there remained only about four hundred, chiefly women, children, and old men, whose infatuated defenders were absent hunting, or on futile scalping parties against the Iroquois. It was just before dawn when a yell, as of a legion of devils, startled the wretched inhabitants for their sleep, and the Iroquois, bursting in upon them, cut them down with knives and hatchets, killing many and reserving the rest for a worse fate. They had entered by the weakest side. On the other sides there was no exit, and only three Hurons escaped. The whole was the work of a few minutes. The Iroquois left a guard to hold the town, and secure the retreat of the main body in case of a reverse. Then smearing their faces with blood, after their ghastly custom, they rushed in the dim light of the early dawn toward Saint-Louis, about a league distant. The three fugitives had fled, half naked through the forest, for the same point, which they reached about sunrise yelling the alarm. The number of inhabitants here was less, at this time than seven hundred, and of these all who had strength to escape, accepting about eighty warriors, made in wild terror for a place of safety. Many of the old, sick and decrepit were left perforce in the lodges. The warriors, ignorant of the strength of the assailants, sang their war songs, and resolved to hold the place to the last. It had not the natural strength of Saint-Ignace, but, like it, was surrounded by palisades. Here were the two Jesuits, Brabouf and Lamont. Brabouf's converts entreated him to escape with them, but the Norman zealot, bold sign of a war-like stock, had no thought of flight. His post was in the teeth of danger, to cheer on those who fought, and open heaven to those who fell. His colleague, slide of frame and frail of constitution, trembled despite himself, but deep enthusiasm mastered the weakness of nature, and he too refused to fly. Scarcely had the sun risen, and scarcely were the fugitives gone, when like a troop of tigers the Iroquois rushed to the assault. Yell echoed yell, and shot answered shot. The Hurons, brought to bay, fought with the utmost desperation, and with arrows, stones, and the few guns they had killed thirty of their assailants and wounded many more. Once the Iroquois recoiled, and twice renewed the attack with unabated ferocity. They swarmed at the foot of the palisades, and hacked at them with their hatchets, till they had cut them through at several different points. For a time there was a deadly fight at these breaches. Here were the two priests, promising heaven to those who died for their faith, one giving baptism and the other absolution. At length the Iroquois broke in, and captured all the surviving defenders, the Jesuits among the rest. They set the town on fire, and the helpless wretches who had remained unable to fly were consumed in their burning dwellings. Next they fell upon Bebouf and Laumont, stripped them, bound them fast, and led them, with the other prisoners, back to Saint Ignace, where all turned out to wreak their fury on the two priests, beating them savagely with sticks and clubs as they drove them into the town. At present there was no time for further torture, for there was work in hand. The victors divided themselves into several bands to burn the neighboring villages and hunt their flying inhabitants. In the flesh of their triumph they meditated a bolder enterprise, and in the afternoon their chiefs sent small parties to reconnoiter Saint-Marie, with a view to attacking it on the next day. Meanwhile the fugitives of Saint-Louis, joined by other bands as terrified and as helpless as they, were struggling through the soft snow which clogged the forest towards Lake Huron, where the treacherous ice of spring was still unmelted. One fear expelled another. They ventured upon it and pushed forward all that day and all the following night, shivering and famished, to find refuge in the towns of the tobacco-nation. Here when they arrived they spread a universal panic. Rugno, Bressenie, and their companions waited in suspense at Saint-Marie. On the one hand they trembled for Bebouf and Laumont. On the other they looked hourly for an attack. And when at evening they saw the Iroquois scouts prowling along the edge of the bordering forest their fears were confirmed. They had with them about forty Frenchmen, well armed, but their palisades and wooden buildings were not fire-proof, and they had learned from fugitives the number and ferocity of the invaders. They stood guard all night, praying to the saints, and above all to their great patron, Saint Joseph, whose festival was close at hand. In the morning they were somewhat relieved by the arrival of about three hundred Huron warriors, chiefly converts from La Conception and Saint Madeleine, tolerably well armed and full of fight. They were expecting others to join them, and meanwhile, dividing into several bands, they took post by the passes of the neighboring forest, hoping to waylay parties of the enemy. Their expectation was fulfilled, for at this time two hundred of the Iroquois were making their way from Saint Ignace, in advance of the main body, to begin the attack on Saint-Marie. They fell in with a band of Hurons, set upon them, killed many, drove the rest to headlong flight, and as they plunged in terror through the snow chased them within sight of Saint-Marie. The other Hurons, hearing the yells and firing, went to the rescue, and attacked so fiercely that the Iroquois in turn were routed, and ran for shelter to Saint Louis, followed closely by the victors. The houses of the town had been burned, but the Palisade around them was still standing, though breached and broken. The Iroquois rushed in, but the Hurons were at their heels. Many of the fugitives were captured, the rest killed or put to utter out, and the triumphant Hurons remained masters of the place. The Iroquois who escaped fled to Saint Ignace. Here, or on the way thither, they found the main body of the invaders, and when they heard of the disaster, the whole swarm, beside themselves with rage, turned towards Saint Louis to take their revenge. Now ensued one of the most furious Indian battles on record. The Hurons within the Palisade did not much exceed a hundred and fifty, for many had been killed or disabled, and many, perhaps, had straggled away. Most of their enemies had guns, while they had but few. Their weapons were bows and arrows, war-clubs, hatchets and knives, and of these they made good use, sallying repeatedly fighting like devils, and driving back their assailants again and again. There are times when the Indian warrior forgets his cautious maxims and throws himself into battle with a mad and reckless ferocity. The desperation of one party and the fierce courage of both kept up the fight after the day had closed, and the scout from Saint-Marie, as he bent, listening under the gloom of the pines, heard far into the night the howl of battle rising from the darkened forest. The principal chief of the Iroquois was severely wounded, and nearly a hundred of their warriors were killed on the spot. When at length their numbers and persistent fury prevailed, their only prize was some twenty Huron warriors, spent with fatigue and faint with loss of blood. The rest lay dead around the shattered Palisades which they had so valiantly defended. Fatuity, not cowardice, was the ruin of the Huron nation. The lamps burned all night at Saint-Marie, and its defenders stood watching till daylight, musket in hand. The Jesuits prayed without ceasing, and sent Joseph was besieged with invocations. Those of us who were priests, writes Rogno, each made a vow to say a mass in his honor for every month, for the space of a year, and all the rest bound themselves by vows to diverse penances. The expected onslaught did not take place. Not an Iroquois appeared. Their victory had been bought too dear, and they had no stomach for more fighting. All the next day, the eighteenth, a stillness, like the dead lull of a tempest, followed the turmoil of yesterday. As if, says the Father Superior, the country were waiting, palsied with fright for some new disaster. On the following day, the journalist fails not to mention that it was the festival of Saint Joseph. Indians came in with tidings that a panic had seized the Iroquois camp, that the chiefs could not control it, and that the whole body of invaders was retreating in disorder, possessed with a vague terror that the Hurons were upon them in force. They had found time, however, for an act of atrocious cruelty. They planted stakes in the bark houses of Saint Ignace, and bound to them those of their prisoners whom they meant to sacrifice, male and female, from old age to infancy, husbands, mothers, and children, side by side. Then as they retreated they set the town on fire, and laughed with savage glee at the streaks of anguish that rose from the blazing dwellings. They loaded the rest of their prisoners with their baggage and plunder, and drove them through the forest southward, braining with their hatchets any who gave out on the march. An old woman, who had escaped out of the midst of the flames of Saint Ignace, made her way to Saint Michel, a large town not far from the desolate side of Saint Joseph. Here she found about seven hundred Huron warriors hastily mustard. She set them on the track of the retreating Iroquois, and they took up the chase, but evidently with no great eagerness to overtake their dangerous enemy, well armed as he was with Dutch guns, while they had little beside their bow and arrows. They found as they advanced the dead bodies of prisoners tomahawked on the march, and others bound fast to trees and half burned by the faggots piled hastily around them. The Iroquois pushed forward with such headlong speed that the pursuers could not or would not overtake them, and after two days they gave over the attempt. End of CHAPTER XXVII. On the morning of the twentieth, the Jesuits at Saint-Marie received full confirmation of the reported retreat of the invaders, and one of them, with seven armed Frenchmen, set out for the scene of Havoc. They passed St. Louis, where the bloody ground was strone thick with corpses and two or three miles farther on, reached Saint Ignace. Here they saw a spectacle of horror, for among the ashes of the burnt town were scattered in profusion the half-consumed bodies of those who had perished in the flames. Apart from the rest they saw a sight that banished all else from their thoughts, for they found what they had come to seek, the scorched and mangled relics of pre-bouf and l'allément. They had learned their fate already from Huron prisoners, many of whom had made their escape in the panic and confusion of the Iroquois retreat. They described what they had seen, and the condition in which the bodies were found confirmed their story. On the afternoon of the sixteenth, the day when the two priests were captured, pre-bouf was led apart and bound to a stake. He seemed more concerned for his captive converts than for himself, and addressed them in a loud voice, exhorting them to suffer patiently and promising heaven as their reward. The Iroquois, incensed, scorched him from head to foot to silence him, whereupon in the tone of a master he threatened them with everlasting flames for persecuting the worshipers of God. As he continued to speak with voice and countenance unchanged, they cut away his lower lip and thrust a red-hot iron down his throat. He still held his tall form, erect and defiant, with no sign or sound of pain, and they tried another means to overcome him. They let out l'allément that pre-bouf might see him tortured. They had tied strips of bark smeared with pitch about his naked body. When he saw the condition of his superior, he could not hide his agitation, and called out to him with a broken voice in the words of Saint Paul, "'We are made a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men!' Then he threw himself at pre-bouf's feet, upon which the Iroquois seized him, made him fast to a stake, and set fire to the bark that enveloped him. As the flame rose, he threw his arms upward with a shriek of supplication to heaven. Next they hung around pre-bouf's neck a collar made of hatchets heated red-hot, but the indomitable priest stood like a rock. A Huron in the crowd, who had been a convert of the mission, but was now an Iroquois by adoption, called out with the malice of a renegade to pour hot water on their heads, since they had poured so much cold water on those of others. The kettle was accordingly slung, and the water boiled and poured slowly on the heads of the two missionaries. "'We baptized you,' they cried, "'that you may be happy in heaven, for nobody can be saved without a good baptism.' Pre-bouf would not flinch, and in a rage they cut strips of flesh from his limbs and devoured them before his eyes.' Other renegade Hurons called out to him, "'You told us that the more one suffers on earth, the happier he is in heaven. We wish to make you happy. We torment you because we love you, and you ought to thank us for it.' After a succession of other revolting tortures, they scalped him. When seeing him nearly dead, they laid open his breast and came in a crowd to drink the blood of so valiant an enemy, thinking to imbibe with it some portion of his courage. A chief then tore out his heart and devoured it. "'Thus died Jean de Brebouf, the founder of the Huron mission, its truest hero, and its greatest martyr. He came of a noble race, the same it has said, from which sprang the English earls of Orundel, but never had the mailed barons of his line confronted a fate so appalling, with so prodigious a constancy. To the last he refused to flinch, and his death was the astonishment of his murderers. In him an enthusiastic devotion was grafted on an heroic nature. His bodily endowments were as remarkable as the temper of his mind. His manly proportions, his strength and his endurance, which incessant fasts and penances could not undermine, had always won for him the respect of the Indians, no less than a courage unconscious of fear, and yet redeemed from rashness by a cool and vigorous judgment. For extravagant as were the chimeras, which fed the fires of his zeal, they were consistent with a soberest good sense on matters of practical bearing. Lalemont, physically weak from childhood, and slender almost to emaciation, was constitutionally unequal to a display of fortitude like that of his colleague. When Brebuf died, he was led back to the house whence he had been taken, and tortured there all night, until in the morning one of the Iroquois, growing tired of the protracted entertainment, killed him with a hatchet. It was said that at times he seemed beside himself, then rallying with hands uplifted, he offered his sufferings to heaven as a sacrifice. His robust companion had lived less than four hours under the torture while he survived it for nearly seventeen. Perhaps the titanic effort of will with which Brebuf repressed all show of suffering, conspired with the Iroquois knives and firebrands to exhaust his vitality. Perhaps his tormentors enraged at his fortitude, forgot their subtlety, and struck too near the life. The bodies of the two missionaries were carried to Saint-Marie, and buried in the cemetery there. But the skull of Brebuf was preserved as a relic. His family sent from France a silver bust of their martyred kinsmen, in the base of which was a recess to contain the skull, and to this day, the bust and the relic within are preserved with pious care by the nuns of the Hôtel-du at Quebec. Photographs of the bust are before me. Various relics of the two missionaries were preserved, and some of them may still be seen in Canadian monastic establishments. The following extract from a letter of Marie de l'Incarnation to her son, written from Quebec in October of this year, 1649, is curious. Madame, our foundress, Madame de la Pelleture, sends you relics of our holy martyrs, but she does it secretly, since the Reverend Fathers would not give us any, for fear that we should send them to France. But as she is not bound by vows, and as the very persons who went for the bodies have given relics of them to her in secret, I begged her to send you some of them, which she has done very gladly from the respect she has for you. She adds in the same letter. Our Lord having revealed to him, Brébouf, the time of his martyrdom three days before it happened, he went full of joy to find the other Fathers, who, seeing him in extraordinary spirits, caused him by an inspiration of God to be bled, after which time surgeon dried his blood through a presentiment of what was to take place, lest he should be treated like Father Daniel, who, eight months before, had been so reduced to ashes that no remains of his body could be found. Brébouf had once been ordered by the Fathers superior to write down the visions, revelations, and inward experiences with which he was favored. At least, says Ragnot, those which he could easily remember, for their multitude was too great for the whole to be recalled. I find nothing, he adds, more frequent in this memoir than the expression of his desire to die for Jesus Christ. Sentio me vehementer, empele ad moriendum pro Cristo. In fine, wishing to make himself a holocaust and a victim consecrated to death, and holily to anticipate the happiness of martyrdom which awaited him, he bound himself by a vow to Christ, which he conceived in these terms. And Ragnot gives the vow in the original Latin. It binds him never to refuse. The grace of martyrdom, if at any day thou shouldst in thy infinite pity offer it to me thy unworthy servant, and when I shall have received the stroke of death, I bind myself to accept it at thy hand, with all the contentment and joy of my heart. Some of his innumerable visions have been already mentioned. CHAPTER IX PAGE 108 Tanner, Societist Militans, gives various others, as, for example, that he once beheld a mountain covered thick with saints, but above all with virgins, while the queen of virgins sat at the top in a blaze of glory. In 1637, when the whole country was enraged against the Jesuits, and above all against Brebuph, as sorcerers who had caused the past, Ragnot tells us that, A troop of demons appeared before him diverse times, sometimes like men in a fury, sometimes like frightful monsters, bears, lions, or wild horses trying to rush upon him. These specters excited in him neither horror nor fear, he said to them, Due to me whatever God permits you, for without his will not one hair will fall from my head, and at these words all the demons vanished in a moment. CHAPTER XIV In Ragnot's notice of Brebuph, as in all other notices of deceased missionaries in the relations, the saintly qualities alone are brought forward, as obedience, humility, etc., but wherever Brebuph himself appears in the course of those voluminous records, he always brings with him an impression of power. We are told that, punning on his own name, he used to say that he was an ox fit only to bear burdens. This sort of humility may pass for what it is worth, but it must be remembered that there was a kind of acting in which the actor firmly believes in the part he is playing. As for the obedience, it was as genuine as that of a well disciplined soldier, and incomparably more profound. In the case of the Canadian Jesuits, posterity owes to this their favorite virtue, the record of numerous visions, inward voices, and the like miracles, which the object of these favors set down on paper at the command of his superior, while otherwise humility would have concealed them for ever. The truth is, that with some of these missionaries, one may throw off trash and nonsense by the cartload, and find under it all a solid nucleus of saint and hero. End of Chapter 28 Recording by Mark Penfold, Lincoln, Nebraska