 XII. 1639–1640. The Tobacco Nation, the Neutrals. It had been the first purpose of the Jesuits to form permanent missions in each of the principle here on towns, but before the close of the year 1639 the difficulties and risks of this scheme had become fully apparent. They resolved, therefore, to establish one central station to be a base of operations, and, as it were, a focus, once the light of the faith should radiate through all the wilderness around. It was to serve at once as residents, in court, magazine, hospital, and convent. Hence the priests would set forth on missionary expeditions far and near, and hither they might retire as to an asylum, in times of sickness or extreme peril. Here the neophytes could be gathered together, safe from perverting influences, and here, in time, a Christian settlement, Huron's mingled with Frenchmen, might spring up and thrive under the shadow of the cross. The side of the new station was admirably chosen. The Little River Y flows from the southward to the Machudache Bay of Lake Huron, and about a mile from its mouth passes through a small lake. The Jesuits made choice of the right bank of the Y, where it issues from this lake, gained permission to build from the Indians, though not without difficulty, and began their labors with an abundant energy and a very deficient supply of workmen and tools. The new establishment was called Saint-Marie. The house at Tinnustia, and the house and chapel at Asasane, were abandoned, and all was concentrated at this spot. On one hand it had a short water communication with Lake Huron, and on the other, its central position gave the readiest access to every part of the Huron territory. During the summer before, the priests had made a survey of their field of action, visited all the Huron towns, and christened each of them with the name of a saint. This heavy draft on the calendar was followed by another, for the designation of the nine towns of the neighboring and kindred people of the tobacco nation. The Huron nations were proportioned into four districts, while those of the tobacco nation formed a fifth, and each district was assigned to the charge of two or more priests. In November and December they began their missionary excursions, for the Indians were now gathered in their settlements, and journeyed on foot through the denuded forests, in mud and snow, bearing on their backs the vessels and utensils necessary for the service of the altar. The new and perilous mission of the tobacco nation fell to Garnier and Jogh. They were well chosen, and yet neither of them was robust by nature, in body or mind, though Jogh was noted for personal activity. The tobacco nation lay at a distance of a two-day's journey from the Huron towns, along the mountains at the head of Natoasaga Bay. The two missionaries tried to find a guide at Osasane, but none would go with them, and they set forth on their wild and unknown pilgrimage alone. The forests were full of snow, and the soft, moist flakes were still falling thickly, obscuring the air, be plastering the gray trunks, weighing to the earth the boughs of spruce and pine, and hiding every footprint of the narrow path. The fathers missed their way, and toiled on till night, shaking down at every step from the burdened branches a shower of fleecy white on their black cassettes. Night overtook them in a spruce swamp. Here they made a fire with great difficulty, cut the evergreen boughs, piled them for a bed, and lay down. The storm presently ceased, and, praised be God, writes one of the travelers, we passed a very good night. In the morning they breakfasted on a morsel of cornbread, and, resuming their journey, fell in with a small party of Indians, whom they followed all day without food. At eight in the evening they reached the first tobacco town, a miserable cluster of bark cabins, hidden among forests and half-buried in snow-drifts, where the savage children, seeing the two black apparitions, screamed that famine and pest were coming. Their evil fame had gone before them. They were unwelcome guests, nevertheless, shivering and famished as they were, in the cold and darkness, they boldly pushed their way into one of these dens of barbarism. It was precisely like a Huron house. Five or six fires blazed on the earthen floor, and around them were huddled twice that number of families, sitting, crouching, standing, or flat on the ground. Old and young, men and women, children and dogs, mingled pal-mel. The scene would have been a strange one by daylight. It was doubly strange by the flicker and glare of the lodge fires. Scowling brows, side-long looks of distrust and fear, the screams of scared children, the scolding of squaws, the growling of wolfish dogs. This was the greeting of the strangers. The chief man of the household treated them at first with the decencies of Indian hospitality, but when he saw them kneeling in the litter and ashes of their devotions, his suppressed fears found vent, and he began allowed Hurang, addressed half to them and half to the Indians. Now, what are these oaksies doing? They are making charms to kill us and destroy all that the pest has spared in this house. I heard that they were sorcerers, and now, when it is too late, I believe it. It is wonderful that the priests escaped the tomahawk. Nowhere is the power of courage, faith, and an unflinching purpose more strikingly displayed than in the record of these missions. In other tobacco towns their reception was much the same, but at the largest, called by them St. Peter and St. Paul, they fared worse. They reached it on a winter afternoon. Every door of its capacious bark houses was closed against them, and they heard the squaws within calling on the young men to go out and split their heads, while children screamed abuse at the black-robed sorcerers. As night approached, they left the town when a band of young men followed them hatched in hand to put them to death. Darkness, the forest, and the mountain favored them, and eluding their pursuers they escaped. Thus began the mission of the tobacco nation. In the following November, a yet more distant and perilous mission was begun. Brabouf and Chaminot set out for the neutral nation. This fierce people, as we have already seen, occupied that part of Canada which lies immediately north of Lake Erie, while a wing of their territory extended across the Niagara into western New York. In their athletic proportions, the ferocity of their manners and the extravagance of their superstitions, no American tribe has ever exceeded them. They carried to a preposterous excess the Indian notion that insanity is endowed with a mysterious and superhuman power. Their country was full of pretended maniacs, who, to propitiate their guardian spirit, or oakes, and acquire the mystic virtue which pertained to madness, raved start naked through the villages, scattering the brands of the lodge fires, and upsetting everything in their way. The two priests left St. Marie on the 2nd of November, found a Huron guide at St. Joseph, and after a dreary march of five days through the forest reached the first neutral town. Advancing thence they visited in turn eighteen others, and their progress was a storm of maledictions. Bourbouf especially was accounted the most pestulent of sorcerers. The Hurons, restrained by a superstitious awe, and unwilling to kill the priests, lest they should embroil themselves with the French at Quebec, conceived that their object might be safely gained by stirring up the neutrals to become their executioners. To that end they sent two emissaries to the neutral towns, who, calling the chiefs and young warriors to a council, denounced the Jesuits as destroyers of the human race, and made their auditors a gift of nine French hatchets on condition that they would put them to death. It was now that Bourbouf, fully conscious of the danger, half starved and half frozen, driven with revilings from every door, struck and spit upon by pretended maniacs, beheld in a vision that a great cross, which as we have seen, moved onward through the air, above the wintry forest that stretched toward the land of the Iroquois. Cheminot records yet another miracle. One evening, when all the chief men of the town were deliberating in council whether to put us to death, Father Bourbouf, while making his examination of conscience, as we were together at prayers, saw the vision of his vector, full of fury, menacing us both with three javelins which he held in his hands. Then he hurled one of the menace, but a more powerful hand caught it as it flew, and this took place a second and third time, as he hurled his two remaining javelins. Late at night our host came back from the council, where the two Huron emissaries had made their gift of hatchets to have us killed. He wakened us to say that three times we had been at the point of death, for the young men had offered three times to strike the blow, and three times the old men had dissuaded them. This explained the meaning of Father Bourbouf's vision. They had escaped for the time, but the Indians agreed among themselves that henceforth no one should give them shelter. At night, pierced with cold and faint with hunger, they found every door closed against them. They stood and watched, saw an Indian issue from a house, and by a quick movement pushed through the half-open door into the subodive smoke and filth. The inmates, aghast at their boldness, stared in silence. Then a messenger ran out to carry the tidings and an angry crowd collected. Go out and leave our country, said an old chief, or we will put you into the kettle and make a feast of you. I have had enough of the dark-colored flesh of our enemies, said a young brave. I wish to know the taste of white meat, and I will eat yours. A warrior rushed in like a madman, drew his bow, and aimed the arrow at Chaminot. I looked at him fixedly, writes the Jesuit, and commended myself in full confidence to St. Michael. Without doubt this great archangel saved us, for almost immediately the fury of the warrior was appeased, and the rest of our enemies soon began to listen to the explanation we gave them of our visit to their country. The mission was barren of any other fruit than hardship and danger, and after a stay of four months the two priests resolved to return. On the way they met a genuine act of kindness. A heavy snowstorm, arresting their progress, a neutral woman took them into her lodge, entertained them for two weeks with her best fare, persuaded her father and relatives to befriend them, and aided them to make a vocabulary of the dialect. Bidding their generous hostess farewell, they journeyed northward, through the melting snows of spring, and reached Saint-Marie in safety. The Jesuits had borne all that the human frame seems capable of bearing. They had escaped as by miracle from torture and death. Did their zeal, flag, or their courage fail? A fervor intense and unquenchable urged them on to more distant and more deadly ventures. The beings so near to mortal sympathies, so human, yet so divine, in whom their faith impersonated and dramatized the great principles of Christian truth, virgins, saints, and angels hovered over them, and held before their raptured sight crowns of glory and garlands of immortal bliss. They burned to do, to suffer, and to die. And now, from out of living martyrdom, they turned their heroic gaze towards and horizon dark with perils, yet more appalling, and saw in hope the day when they should bear the cross into the blood-stained dens of the Iroquois. But in this exultation and tension of the powers, was there no moment when the recoil of nature claimed a temporary sway? When, an exile from his kind, alone, beneath the desolate rock and the gloomy pine trees, the priests gazed forth on the pitiless wilderness and the hobbles of its dark and ruthless tenets, his thoughts, it may be, flew longingly beyond those wastes of forest and sea that lay between him and the home of his boyhood. Or, rather, led by a deeper attraction, they revisited the ancient center of his faith, and he seemed to stand once more in that gorgeous temple, where shrined in lazuli and gold rest the hallowed bones of Loyola. Column and arch and dome rise upon his vision, radiant in painted light, and trembling with celestial music. Again he kneels before the altar, from whose tablature beams upon him that loveliest of shapes, in which the imagination of man has embodied the spirit of Christianity. The illusion overpowers him. A thrill shakes his frame, and he bows in reverential rapture. No longer a memory, no longer a dream, but a visioned presence, distinct and luminous in the forest shades, the virgin stands before him. Prostrate on the rocky earth, he adores the benign angel of his ecstatic faith, then turns with rekindled fervors to his stern apostleship. Now by the shores of Thunder Bay, the Huron traders freight their birch vessels for their yearly voyage, and embarked with them, let us too, revisit the rock of the earth. CHAPTER XIII. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER III. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER III. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER XIII. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER III. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER III. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAPTER IV. THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA. Strange as it may seem, this woman, whose habitual state was one of mystical abstraction, was gifted to a rare degree with the faculties most useful in the practical affairs of life. She had spent several years in the house of her brother-in-law. Here, on the one hand, her vigils, visions, and penances set utterly at naught the order of a well-governed family, while on the other, she made amends to her impatient relative by able and efficient aid in the conduct of his public and private affairs. Her biographers say, and doubtless with truth, that her heart was far away from these mundane interests, yet her talent for business was not the less displayed. Her spiritual guides were aware of it, and saw clearly that gifts so useful to the world might be made equally useful to the church. Hence it was that she was chosen superior of the convent which Madame de la Pelletrie was about to endow at Quebec. Yet it was from heaven itself that Marie de la Inconnaison received her first vocation to Canada. The miracle was in this wise. In a dream she beheld a lady unknown to her. She took her hand, and the two journeyed together westward towards the sea. They soon met one of the apostles, clothed all in white, who, with a wave of his hand, directed them on their way. They now entered on a scene of surpassing magnificence. Beneath their feet was a pavement of squares of white marble, spotted with vermilion, and intersected with lines of vivid scarlet, and all around stood monasteries of matchless architecture. But the two travelers, without stopping to admire, moved on swiftly till they beheld the virgin seated with her infant son on a small temple of white marble which served her as a throne. She seemed about fifteen years of age, and was of a ravishing beauty. Her head was turned aside. She was gazing fixedly on a wild waste of mountains and valleys, half concealed and missed. Marie de la Inconnaison approached her with outstretched arms, adoring. The vision bent towards her, and smiling, kissed her three times, whereupon in a rapture the dreamer awoke. She told the vision to Father Diné, a Jesuit of tour. He was at no loss for an interpretation. The land and mists of mountains was Canada, and thither the virgin called her. Yet one mystery remained unsolved. Who was the unknown companion of her dream? Several years had passed, and signs from heaven and inward voices had raised to an intense fervor her zeal for her new vocation. When for the first time she saw Madame de la Pelletrie on her visit to the convent at tour, and recognized on the instant the lady of her nocturnal vision. No one can be surprised at this who has considered with the slightest attention the phenomena of religious enthusiasm. On the 4th of May, 1639, Madame de la Pelletrie, Marie de la Inconnaison, Marie de Saint Bernard and another Ursuline embarked at Dieppe for Canada. In the ship were also three young hospital nuns, sent out to found at Québec a hotel due, endowed by the famous niece of Richelieu, the Duchess d'Aguillon. Here too were the Jesuits Chamonaut and Ponce, on the way to their mission, together with Father Vimont, who was to succeed Lejeune in his post of superior. To the nuns, pale from their cloistered seclusion, there was a strange and startling novelty in this new world of life and action. The ship, the sailors, the shouts of command, the flapping of sails, the salt wind and the boisterous sea. The voyage was long and tedious. Sometimes they lay in their berths, sea-sick and wobagon. Sometimes they sang in a choir on deck, or heard mass in the cabin. Once on a misty morning a wild cry of alarm startled the crew and passengers alike. A huge iceberg was drifting close upon them. The peril was extreme. Madame de la Pelletrie clung to Marie de la Inconnaison, who stood perfectly calm, and gathered her gown about her feet that she might drown with decency. It is scarcely necessary to say that they were saved by avow to the Virgin and Saint Joseph. Vimont offered it in behalf of all the company, and the ship glided into the open sea unharmed. They arrived at Tadusac on the fifteenth of July, and the nuns ascended to Quebec in a small craft deeply laden with salted codfish, on which, uncooked, they subsisted until the first of August, when they reached their destination. Canon roared welcome from the fort and batteries. All labour ceased, the storehouses were closed, and the zealous Montmangie, with a train of priests and soldiers, met the newcomers at the landing. All the nuns fell prostrate and kissed the sacred soil of Canada. They heard mass at the church, dined at the fort, and presently set forth to visit the new settlement of Sillerie, four miles above Quebec. Noël Breard de Sillerie, a knight of Malta, who had once filled the highest offices under the Queen Marie de Medici, had now severed his connection with his order, renounced the world, and become a priest. He devoted his vast revenues, for a dispensation of the Pope had freed him from his vow of poverty, to the founding of religious establishments. Among other endowments he had placed an ample fund in the hands of the Jesuits for the formation of a settlement of Christian Indians at the spot which still bears his name. On the strand of Sillerie, between the river and the woody heights behind, were clustered the small log-habans of a number of Algonquin converts, together with a church, a mission house, and an infirmary, the whole surrounded by a palisade. It was to this place that the six nuns were now conducted by the Jesuits. The scene delighted and edified them, and in the transports of their zeal they seized and kissed every female Indian child on whom they could lay hands, without minding, says Father Lejeune, whether they were dirty or not. Love and charity, he adds, triumphed over every human consideration. The nuns of the Hotel Dieu soon after took up their abode at Sillerie, whence they removed to a house built for them at Quebec by their foundress, the Duchess Dagouillon. The Ursulines, in the absence of better quarters, were lodged at first in a small wooden tenement under the rock of Quebec, at the brink of the river. Here they were soon beset with such a host of children that the floor of their wretched tenement was covered with beds, and their toil had no respite. Then came the smallpox, carrying death and terror among the neighbouring Indians. These thronged to Quebec in misery and desperation, begging succour from the French. The labourers both of the Ursulines and of the hospital nuns were prodigious. In the infected air of their miserable hovels, where sick and dying savages covered the floor, and were packed one above another in births, amid all that is most distressing and most revolting, with little food and less sleep. These women passed the rough beginning of their new life. Several of them fell ill, but the excess of the evil at length brought relief, for so many of the Indians died in these pest-houses that the survivors shunned them in horror. But how did these women bear themselves amid toil so arduous? A pleasant record has come down to us of one of them, that fair and delicate girl, Marie de Saint-Bernard, called in the convent, Sister St. Joseph, who had been chosen at tour as the companion of Marie de l'Inconation. Another Ursuline, writing at a period when the severity of their labourers was somewhat relaxed, says, Her disposition is charming. In our times of recreation she often makes us cry with laughing. It would be hard to be melancholy when she is near. It was three years later before the Ursulines and their pupils took possession of a massive convent of stone, built for them on the site which they still occupy. Money had failed before the work was done, and the interior was as unfinished as a barn. Beside the cloisters stood a large ash-tree, and it still stands there. Beneath its shade, says the convent tradition, Marie de l'Inconation and her nuns instructed the Indian children in the truce of salvation. But it might seem rash to affirm that their teachings were always either wise or useful, since Father Remont tells us approvingly that they reared their pupils and so chased a horror of the other sex, that a little girl, whom a man had playfully taken by the hand, ran crying to a bowl of water to wash off the unhallowed influence. Now, and henceforward, one figure stands nobly conspicuous in this devoted sisterhood. Marie de l'Inconation no longer lost in the vagaries of an insane mysticism, but engaged in the duties of Christian charity and the responsibilities of an arduous post, displays an ability, a fortitude, and an earnestness which command respect and admiration. Her mental intoxication had ceased, or recurred only at intervals, and false excitements no longer sustained her. She was wracked with constant anxieties about her son, and was often in a condition described by her biographers as a deprivation of all spiritual consolations. Her position was a very difficult one. She herself speaks of her life as a succession of crosses and humiliations. Some of these were due to Madame de la Pelletrie, who in a freak of enthusiasm abandoned her urselines for a time, as we shall presently see, leaving them in the utmost destitution. There were dissensions to be healed among them, and money, everything in short, to be provided. Marie de l'Inconation, in her saddest moments, neither failed in judgment nor slackened in effort. She carried on a vast correspondence, embracing everyone in France who could aid her infant community with money or influence. She harmonized and regulated it with excellent skill, and in the midst of relentless austerities, she was loved as a mother by her pupils' independence. Catholic writers extol her as a saint. Protestants may see in her a Christian heroine, admirable with all her follies and her faults. The traditions of the urselines are full of the virtues of Madame de la Pelletrie, her humility, her charity, her penances, and her acts of mortification. No doubt, with some little allowance, these traditions are true. But there is more of reason than of uncharitableness in the belief that her zeal would have been less ardent and sustained if it had had fewer spectators. She was now fairly committed to the conventional life, her enthusiasm was kept within prescribed bounds, and she was no longer mistress of her own movements. On the one hand she was anxious to accumulate merits against the day of judgment, and on the other she had a keen appreciation of the applause which the sacrifice of her fortune and her acts of piety had gained for her. Mortal vanity takes many shapes. Sometimes it arrays itself in silken jewels, sometimes it walks in sackcloth, and speaks the language of self-abasement. In the convent, as in the world, the fair devotee thirsted for admiration. The halo of saintship glittered in her eyes like a diamond crown, and she aspired to outshine her sisters in humility. She was as sincere as Simeon's stylites on his column, and like him, found encouragement and comfort in the gazing and wondering eyes below. End of Chapter 14 Chapter 15 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 17th century by Francis Parkman. Chapter 15. 1636-1642. Persecution. We now come to an enterprise as singular in its character as it proved important in its results. At la flèche, in Anjou, dwelt Juan Jerome Le Royer de la Doversière, receiver of taxes. His portrait shows us a round bourgeois face, somewhat heavy perhaps, decorated with a slight moustache, and redeemed by bright and earnest eyes. On his head he wears a black skull cap, and over his ample shoulders spreads a stiff white collar of wide-expands and studious plainness. Though he belonged to the noblesse, his look is that of a grave burger, of good renown and sage deportment. Doversière was, however, an enthusiastic devotee of mystical tendencies, who whipped himself with a scourge of small chains till his shoulders were one wound, wore a belt with more than twelve hundred sharp points, and invented for himself other torments, which filled his confessor with admiration. Again there was at Paris a young priest, about twenty-eight years of age, Jean-Jacques Ollier, afterwards widely known as the founder of the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice. Judged by his engraved portrait, his countenance, though marked with both energy and intellect, was anything but prepossessing. Every liniment proclaims the priest. Yet the abbey Ollier has high titles to esteem. He signalized his piety, it is true, by the most disgusting exploits of self-mortification, but at the same time he was strenuous in his efforts to reform the people and the clergy. So zealous was he for good morals that he drew upon himself the imputation of a leaning to the heresy of the genesis, a suspicion strengthened by his opposition to certain priests, who, to secure the faithful in their allegiance, justified them in lives of licentiousness. Yet Ollier's catholicity was past attainment, and in his horror of gensenists he yielded to the Jesuits alone. He was praying in the ancient church of Saint-Germain-de-Pres, when, like Doversier, he thought he heard a voice from heaven, saying that he was destined to be a light to the Gentiles. It is recorded as a mystic coincidence, attending this miracle, that the choir was at that very time chanting the words Lumen ad revelacionum gentium, and it seems to have occurred neither to Ollier nor to his biographer that, falling on the ear of the rapt worshipper, they might have unconsciously suggested the supposed revelation. But there was a further miracle. An inward voice told Ollier that he was to form a society of priests, and established them on the island called Montreal, in Canada, for the propagation of the true faith. And writers old and recent assert, that while both he and Doversier were totally ignorant of Canadian geography, they suddenly found themselves in possession, they knew not how, of the most exact details concerning Montreal, its size, shape, situation, soil, climate, and productions. The annual volumes of the Jesuit Relation, issuing from the renowned press of Cremois-C, were at this time spread broadcast throughout France, and in the circles of haute devotion, Canada and its missions were everywhere the themes of enthusiastic discussion, while Champlain, in his published works, had long before pointed out Montreal as the proper site for a settlement. But we are entering a region of miracle, and it is superfluous to look far for explanations. The illusion, in these cases, is part of the history. Doversier pondered the revelation he had received, and the more he pondered, the more he was convinced that it came from God. He therefore set out for Paris, to find some means of accomplishing the task assigned him. Here, as he prayed before an image of the Virgin in the Church of Notre-Dame, he fell into an ecstasy, and beheld a vision. I should be false to the integrity of history, writes his biographer, if I did not relate it here. And he adds that the reality of the celestial favour is past doubting, inasmuch as Doversier himself told it to his daughters. Christ the Virgin and St. Joseph appeared before him. He saw them distinctly. Then he heard Christ asked three times of his Virgin Mother, where can I find a faithful servant? On which the Virgin, taking him, Doversier, by the hand, replied, See, Lord, here is that faithful servant. And Christ, with a benign at smile, received him into his service, promising to bestow on him wisdom and strength to do his work. From Paris he went to the neighbouring chateau of Mauden, which overlooks the valley of the Seine, not far from St. Cloud. Entering the gallery of the old castle, he saw a priest approaching him. It was Ole. Now we are told that neither of these men had ever seen or heard of the other. And yet, says the pious historian, impelled by a kind of inspiration, they knew each other at once, even to the depths of their hearts. Soluted each other by name, as we read of St. Paul the Hermit and St. Anthony, and of St. Dominic and St. Francis, and ran to embrace each other, like two friends who had met after a long separation. Monsieur, exclaimed Ole, I know your design, and I go to commend it to God at the Holy Altar. And he went at once to say mass in the chapel. Doversier received the communion at his hands, and then they walked for three hours in the park, discussing their plans. They were of one mind, in respect both to objects and means, and when they parted, Ole gave Doversier a hundred Louis, saying, This is to begin the work of God. They proposed to found at Montreal three religious communities, three being the mystic number, one of secular priests to direct the colonists and convert the Indians, one of nuns to nurse the sick, and one of nuns to teach the faith to the children, white and red. To borrow their own phrases, they would plant the banner of Christ in an abode of desolation and a haunt of demons, and to this end a band of priests and women were to invade the wilderness and take post between the fangs of the Iroquois. But first they must make a colony, and to do so must raise money. Ole had pious and wealthy penitents. Doversier had a friend, the Baron de Fancamp, devout as himself and far richer. Anxious for his soul and satisfied that the enterprise was an inspiration of God, he was eager to bear part in it. Ole soon found three others, and the six together formed the germ of the society of Notre-Dame de Montreal. Among them they raised the sum of seventy-five thousand leavers, equivalent to about as many dollars at the present day. Now to look for a moment at their plan. Their eulogists say, and with perfect truth, that from a worldly point of view it was mere folly. The partners mutually bound themselves to seek no return for the money expended. Their profit was to be reaped in the skies, and indeed there was none to be reaped on earth. The feeble settlement at Quebec was at this time in danger of utter ruin. For the Iroquois, enraged at the attacks made on them by Champlain, had begun a fearful course of retaliation, and the very existence of the colony trembled in the balance. But if Quebec was exposed to their ferocious inroads, Montreal was incomparably more so. A settlement here would be a perilous outpost, a hand thrust into the jaws of the tiger. It would provoke attack and lie almost in the path of the war-parties. The associates could gain nothing by the fur trade, for they would not be allowed to share in it. On the other hand, danger apart, the place was an excellent one for a mission, for here met two great rivers. The St. Lawrence, with its countless tributaries, flowed in from the west, while the Ottawa descended from the north, and Montreal, embraced by their united waters, was the key to a vast inland navigation. Thither the Indians would naturally resort, and thence the missionaries could make their way into the heart of a boundless heathendom. None of the ordinary motives of colonisation had part in this design. It owed its conception and its birth to religious seal alone. The island of Montreal belonged to Lausanne, former president of the great company of the Hundred Associates, and as we have seen, his son had a monopoly of fishing in the St. Lawrence. Doversier and Fancamp, after much diplomacy, succeeded in persuading the elder Lausanne to transfer his title to them, and as there was a defect in it, they also obtained a grant of the island from the Hundred Associates, its original owners, who, however, reserved to themselves its western extremity as a site for a fort and storehouses. At the same time, the younger Lausanne granted them a ride of fishery within two leagues of the shores of the island, for which they were to make a yearly acknowledgement of ten pounds of fish. A confirmation of these grants was obtained from the king. Doversier and his companions were now seniors of Montreal. They were empowered to appoint a governor and to establish courts, from which there was to be an appeal to the Supreme Court of Quebec, supposing such to exist. They were excluded from the fur trade and forbidden to build castles or forts other than such as were necessary for defence against the Indians. Their title assured they matured their plan. First they would send out forty men to take possession of Montreal, entrenched themselves, and raised crops. Then they would build a house for the priests and two convents for the nuns. Meanwhile, Allier was toiling at Vera Guerrard on the outskirts of Paris to inaugurate the seminary of priests and Doversier at La Flèche to form the community of hospital nuns. How the school nuns were provided for, we shall see hereafter. The colony it will be observed was for the convents, not the convents for the colony. The associates needed a soldier governor to take charge of their forty men, and as directed they supposed by providence they found one wholly to their mind. This was Paul de Chomdi, Sur de Maisonneuve, a devout and valiant gentleman who in long service among the heretics of Holland had kept his faith intact and had held himself resolutely aloof from the licence he loved his profession of arms and wished to consecrate his sword to the church. Past all comparison he is the manliest figure that appears in this group of zealots. The piety of the design, the miracles that inspired it, the adventure and the peril all combined to charm him and he eagerly embraced the enterprise. His father opposed his purpose but he met him with a text of Saint Mark. There is no man that hath left house or brethren or sisters for my sake, but he shall receive an hundredfold. On this the elder Maisonneuve, deceived by his own worldliness, imagined that the plan covered some hidden speculation from which enormous profits were expected and therefore withdrew his opposition. Their scheme was ripening fast when Allier and Doversier were assailed by one of those revulsions of spirit to which saints of the ecstatic school are naturally libel. Doversier in particular went to the extremity of dejection, uncertainty and misgiving. What had he, a family man, to do with ventures beyond sea? Was it not his first duty to support his wife and children? Could he not fulfill all his obligations as a Christian by reclaiming the wicked and relieving the poor at La Flèche? Plainly he had doubts that his vocation was genuine. If we could raise the curtain of his domestic life, perhaps we should find him beset by wife and daughters, and imploring him to provide a support for them before squandering his money to plant a convent of nuns in a wilderness. How long his fit of dejection lasted does not appear, but at length he set himself again to his appointed work. Allier, too, emerging from the clouds and darkness, found faith once more and again placed himself at the head of the great enterprise. There was imperative need of more money and Doversier, under judicious guidance, was active in obtaining it. This miserable victim of illusions had a squat, un-courtly figure, and was no proficient in the graces either of manners or of speech. Hence his success in commending his objects to persons of rank and wealth is set down as one of the many miracles which attended the birth of Montreal. But zeal and earnestness are in themselves a power, and the ground had been well marked out and plowed for him in advance. That attractive, though intricate, subject of study, the female mind, has always engaged the attention of priests. More especially in country swear, as in France, women exert a strong social and political influence. The art of kindling the flames of zeal and the more difficult art of directing and controlling them have been themes of reflection the most diligent and profound. Accordingly, we find that a large proportion of the money raised for this enterprise was contributed by devout ladies. Many of them became members which was eventually increased to about forty-five persons chosen for their devotion and their wealth. All the aid his associates had resolved, though not from any collapse of zeal, to postpone the establishment of the seminary and the college until after a settlement should be formed. The hospital, however, might, they thought, be begun at once, for blood and blows would be the assured portion of the first settlers. At least a discreet woman ought to embark with the first colonists of the country. Scarcely was a need recognized when it was supplied. Mademoiselle Jean Mance was born of an honourable family of Nogent-le-Roy, and in 1640 was 34 years of age. These Canadian heroines began their religious experiences early. Of Marie de Lencarnation we read that at the age of seven Christ appeared to her in a vision, and the biographer of Mademoiselle Mance usures us with admiring gravity that at the same tender age led herself to God by a vow of perpetual chastity. This singular infant in due time became a woman of a delicate constitution and manners graceful yet dignified. Though an earnest devotee she felt no vocation for the cloister, yet while still in the world she led the life of a nun. The Jesuit relation and the example of Madame de la Pelletrie of whom she had heard inoculated her with the Canadian enthusiasm, then so prevalent in visiting relatives she made a journey to Paris to take counsel of certain priests. Of one thing she was assured the divine will called her to Canada but to what end she neither knew nor asked to know for she abandoned herself as an Adam to be born to unknown destinies on the breath of God. At Paris Father Saint-Jer, a Jesuit assured her that her vocation to Canada was passed out a call from heaven. She then took the opportunity to introduce her to many ladies of rank, wealth, and zeal. Then, well supplied with money for any pious work to which she might be summoned, she journeyed to Rochelle whence ships were to sail for New France. Thus far she had been kept in ignorance of the plan with regard to Montreal but now Father Laplace, a Jesuit, revealed it to her. On the day after her arrival as a biographer these two persons who had never seen nor heard of each other were enlightened supernaturally whereby their most hidden thoughts were mutually made known as had happened already with Monsieur Allier and this same Monsieur de la Doversière. A long conversation ensued between them and the delights of this interview were never afaced and she had found her destiny. The ocean, the wilderness, the solitude, the Iroquois, nothing daunted her. She would go to Montreal with Maisonne Neuve and his forty men. Yet when the vessel was about to sail a new and sharp misgiving seized her. How could she, a woman not yet bereft of youth or charms live alone in the forest among a troop of soldiers? Her scruples were relieved by two of the men who at the last moment impelled by enthusiasm escaped from her friends and took passage in spite of them in one of the vessels. All was ready. The ship set sail but Allier, Doversière and Fankamp remained at home as did also the other associates with the exception of Maisonne Neuve and Mademoiselle Monts. In the following February an impressive scene took place in the Church of Notre-Dame at Paris. Assembled before the altar of the Virgin and by a solemn ceremonial consecrated Montreal to the Holy Family. Henceforth it was to be called Ville-Marie de Montreal, a sacred town reared to the honour and under the patronage of Christ St. Joseph and the Virgin to be typified by three persons on earth founders respectively of the three destined communities Allier, Doversière and a maiden of Troy Marguerite Burgoyce the hotel view to St. Joseph and the college to the Virgin But we are anticipating a little for it was several years as yet before Marguerite Burgoyce took an active part in the work of Montreal She was the daughter of a respectable tradesman and was now 22 years of age Her portrait has come down to us and her face is a mirror of frankness, loyalty and womanly tenderness Her qualities were those of good sense and tenderness and a warm heart She had known no miracles ecstasies or transes and though afterwards when her religious susceptibilities had reached a fuller development a few such are recorded of her Yet even the Abbe Fayon with the best intentions can credit her with but a meager allowance of these celestial favours Though in the midst of visionaries she distrusted the supernatural and about her belief that in his government of the world her religion was of the affections and was manifested in absorbing devotion to duty She had felt no vocation to the cloister but had taken the vow of chastity and was attached as an extern to the sisters of the congregation of Troy who were fevered with eagerness to go to Canada Marguerite, however was content to wait until there was a prospect that she could do good by going and it was not until the year 1653 that renouncing an inheritance and giving all she had to the poor she embarked for the savage scene of her labours To this day in crowded school rooms of Montreal and Quebec fit monuments of her unobtrusive virtue her successors instruct the children of the poor and embalm the pleasant memory of Marguerite Burgoy's In the martial figure of Missonneuve and the fair form of this gentle nun we find the true heroes of Montreal Missonneuve with his forty men and four women reached Quebec too late in all that season they encountered distrust, jealousy and opposition the agents of the company of the hundred associates looked on them a scant and the governor of Quebec Montmanie saw a rival governor in Maisonneuve every means was used to persuade the adventurers to abandon their project and settle at Quebec Montmanie called a council of the principal persons of his colony who gave it as their opinion to the island of Orléans where they would be in a position to give and receive sucker while by persisting in their first design they would expose themselves to destruction and be of use to nobody Maisonneuve who was present expressed his surprise that they should assume to direct his affairs I've not come here he said to deliberate but to act it is my duty and my honour to found a colony at Montreal and I would go if every tree were an Iroquois and no inclination to shelter the new colonists for the winter and they would have fared ill but for the generosity of Monsieur Pousseau who lived not far distant at a place called Saint-Michel this devout and most hospitable person made room for them all in his rough but capacious dwelling their neighbours were the hospital nuns then living at the mission of Ciliary in a substantial but comfortless house of stone where amidst destitution sickness and irrepressible disgust the filth of the savages whom they had in charge they were laboring day and night with devoted assiduity among the minor ills which beset them were the eccentricities of one of their lay sisters crazed with religious enthusiasm who had the care of their poultry and domestic animals of which she was accustomed to inquire one by one if they loved God when, not receiving an immediate answer in the affirmative she would instantly put them to death telling them that their impiety at Saint-Michel Maisonne-Nove employed his men in building boats to ascend to Montreal and in various other labours for the behoove of the future colony thus the winter wore away but as celestial minds are not exempt from ire Montmarnier and Maisonne-Nove fell into a quarrel the 25th of January was Maisonne-Nove's Fet Day and as he was greatly beloved by his followers they resolved to celebrate the occasion accordingly an hour and a half before daylight they made a general discharge of their muskets and cannon the sound reached Quebec two or three miles distant startling the governor from his morning slumbers and his indignation was redoubled when he heard it again at night for Maisonne-Nove pleased at the attachment of his men had feasted them and warmed their hearts with a distribution of wine Montmarnier jealous of his authority resented these demonstration as an infraction of it affirming that they had no right and arresting the principal offender won Jean Gory he put him in irens on being released a few days after his companions welcomed him with great rejoicing and Maisonne-Nove gave them all a feast he himself came in during the festivity drank the health of the company shook hands with the late prisoner placed him at the head of the table and addressed him as follows Jean Gory you have been put in irens for me and I the affront for that I add ten crowns to your wages then turning to the others my boys he said though Jean Gory has been misused you must not lose heart for that but drink all of you to the health of the man in irens when we are once at Montreal we shall be our own masters and can fire our cannon when we please Montmarnier was wroth when this was reported to him and on the ground that what had passed was contrary to the service of the king he summoned Gory and six others before him and put them separately under oath their evidence failed to establish a case against their commander but thenceforth there was great coldness between the powers of Quebec and Montreal early in May Maisonne-Nove and his followers embarked they had gained an unexpected recruit during the winter in the person of Madame de la Pelletree the piety, the novelty and the romance of their enterprise all had their charms for the fair enthusiast and their impuls imputed by a slandering historian to the levity of her sex urged her to share their fortunes her zeal was more admired by the Montrealists whom she joined than by the Ursulines whom she abandoned she carried off all the furniture she had lent them and left them in the utmost destitution nor did she remain quiet after reaching Montreal but was presently seized with the longing to visit the Hurons and preach the faith in person lately returned from that most arduous mission to convince her that the attempt would be as useless as rash it was the 8th of May when Maisonne-Nove and his followers embarked at Saint Michel and as the boats, deep laden with men arms and stores moved slowly on their way the forest with leaves just opening in the warmth of spring lay on their right hand and on their left in a flattering semblance of tranquility and peace tangled thickets and damper veins and in the shade and stillness of the columned woods lurked everywhere a danger and a terror what shall we say of these adventures of Montreal of these who bestowed their wealth and, far more, of those who sacrificed their peace and risked their lives on an enterprise at once so romantic and so devout surrounded as they were with illusions false lights and false shadows breathing an atmosphere of miracle compassed about with angels and devils though unreal their minds drugged as it were to preternatural excitement it is very difficult to judge of them high merit without doubt there was in some of their number but one may beg to be spared the attempt to measure or define it to estimate a virtue involved in conditions so anomalous demands perhaps a judgment more than human the Roman church sunk in disease and corruption when the Reformation began a trumpet blast to purge and brace itself anew unable to advance she drew back to the fresher and comparatively purer life of the past and the fervors of medieval Christianity were renewed in the 16th century in many of its aspects this enterprise of Montreal belonged to the time of the first Crusades the spirit of Godfrey de Bouillon lived again in Chumde du Maisonneuve and in Marguerite Bourgoise was realized that fair ideal of Christian womanhood was the rise of heaven which soothed with a gentle influence the wildness of a barbarous age on the 17th of May 1642 Maisonneuve's little flotilla a penance, a flat bottom craft moved by sales and two rowboats approached Montreal and all on board raised in unison a hymn of praise Montmagnier was with them to deliver the island in behalf of the company of the hundred associates of Montreal and here too was Father Vimont superior of the missions for the Jesuits had been prudently invited to accept the spiritual charge of the young colony on the following day they glided along the green and solitary shores now thronged with the life of a busy city and landed on the spot which Champlain 31 years before had chosen as the fit site of a settlement it was a tongue or triangle of land formed by the junction of a rivulet known afterwards as Point Collier the rivulet was bordered by a meadow and beyond rose the forest with its vanguard of scattered trees early spring flowers were blooming in the young grass and birds of varied plumage flitted among the boughs Maisonneuve sprang ashore and fell on his knees his followers imitated his example and all joined their voices in enthusiastic songs of thanksgiving tents, baggage, arms and stores were landed on a pleasant spot near at hand and Mademoiselle Monts with Madame de la Pelletrie aided by her servant Charlotte Barr decorated it with a taste which was the admiration of the beholders now all the company gathered before the shrine here stood Vimont in the rich vestiments of his office here were the two ladies with their servant Montmagny, no very willing spectator and Maisonneuve a warlike figure, erect and tall his men clustering around him with artisans and labors all alike soldiers at need they kneeled in reverent silence as the host was raised aloft and when the rite was over the priest turned and addressed them you are a grain of mustard seed that shall rise and grow till its branches overshadow the earth you are few but your work is the work of God his smile is on you and your children shall fill the land the afternoon waned the sun sank behind the western forest and twilight came on fireflies were twinkling over the darkened meadow they caught them, tied them with threads into shining festoons and hung them before the altar where the host remained exposed then they pitched their tents lighted their bivouac fires stationed their guards and lay down to rest such was the birth night of Montreal is this true history or a romance of Christian chivalry it is both end of chapter 15 chapter 16 part 1 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 17th century by Francis Parkman chapter 16 part 1 1649 to 1644 Isaac's Joke the waters of the St. Lawrence civilized man found a precarious Harbridge at three points only at Quebec at Montreal and at three rivers here and in the scattered missions was the whole of New France a population of some 300 souls in all and now over these miserable settlements rose a war cloud of frightful portant it was 32 years since Champlain had first attacked the Iroquois they had nursed their wroth for more than a generation the Dutch traders at Fort Orange now Albany had supplied them with firearms the Mohawks the most easterly of the Iroquois nations had among their seven or eight hundred warriors no less than three hundred armed with the Archiboost a weapon somewhat like the modern carbine they were masters of the thunderbolt switch in the hands of Champlain had struck terror into their hearts we have surveyed in the introductory chapter the character and organization their Confederacy of five nations bound together by a peculiar tie of clanship their chiefs half hereditary, half elective their government and oligarchy and form and a democracy and spirit their minds thoroughly savage yet marked here and there with traits of a vigorous development the war which they had long waged with the Hurons was carried on by the Seneca's and the other western nations of their league while the conduct of hostilities by the French and their Indian allies in lower Canada was left to the Mohawks in parties of from ten to a hundred or more they would leave their towns on the river Mohawk descend Lake Champlain and the river Richelieu lie in ambush on the banks of the St. Lawrence and attack the passing boats or canoes sometimes they hovered about the fortifications of Quebec and three rivers killing stragglers or luring armed parties into amboscades they followed like hounds and hunters broke in upon unguarded camps at midnight and lay in wait for days and weeks to intercept the Huron traders on their yearly descent to Quebec had they joined to their ferocious courage the discipline and the military knowledge that belonged to civilization they could easily have blotted out new France from the map and made the banks of the St. Lawrence once more a solitude but though the most formidable of savages they were savages only of two twelve Huron canoes were moving slowly along the northern shore of the expansion of the St. Lawrence known as the Lake of St. Peter there were on board about forty persons including four Frenchmen one of them being the Jesuit Isaac Jogue whom we have already followed on his missionary journey to the towns of the tobacco nation in the interval he had not been idle during the last autumn 1641 he with father Charles Rambeau had passed along the shore entered the strait through which Lake Superior discharges itself pushed on as far as the Sault Ste. Marie and preached the faith to two thousand Ojibwe's and other Algonquins there assembled he was now on his return from a far more perilous errand the Huron mission was in a state of destitution there was need of clothing for the priests of vessels for the altars of bread and wine for the Eucharist of writing materials in short of everything and early in the summer of the present year Jogue had descended to three rivers and Quebec with the Huron traders to procure the necessary supplies he had now accomplished his task and was on his way back to the mission with him were a few Huron converts and among them a noted Christian chief Eustache Ahit Sestari others of the party were in course of instruction for baptism but the greater part were heathen whose canoes were deeply laden of their bargains with the French fur traders Jogue sat in one of the leading canoes he was born at Orléans in 1607 and was 35 years of age his oval face and the delicate mold of his features indicated a modest thoughtful and refined nature he was constitutionally timid with a sensitive conscience and great religious susceptibilities he was a finished scholar and might have gained a literary reputation but he had chosen another career and one for which he seemed but ill-fitted physically however he was well matched with his work for though his frame was slight he was so active that none of the Indians could surpass him in running with him were two young men Rene Gopil and Guillaume Couture don of the mission that is to say laymen who from a religious motive and without pay had attached themselves to the service of the Jesuits Gopil had formerly entered upon the Jesuit novitiate at Paris but failing health had obliged him to leave it as soon as he was able he came to Canada offered his services to the superior of the mission was employed for a time in the humblest offices and afterwards became an attendant at the hospital at length to his delight he received permission to go up to the Hurons where the surgical skill which he had acquired was greatly needed and he was now on his way thither his companion Couture and of a character equally disinterested both were like jug in the foremost canoes while the fourth Frenchman was with the unconverted Hurons in the rear the twelve canoes had reached the western end of the lake of St. Peter where it is filled with innumerable islands the forest was close on their right they kept near the shore to avoid the current and the shallow water before them was covered with a dense growth of tall billwashes suddenly the silence was frightfully broken the war-woup rose from among the rushes mingled with the reports of guns and the whistling of bullets and several Iroquois canoes filled with warriors pushed out from their concealment and bore down upon Jove and his companions the Hurons in the rear were seized with a shameful panic they leapt to shore left canoes, baggage and weapons and fled into the woods the French and the Christian Hurons made fight for a time but when they saw another fleet of other islands they lost heart and those escaped who could Goupil was seized amid triumphant yells as were also several of the Huron converts Jove sprang into the bull rushes and might have escaped but when he saw Goupil and the neophytes in the clutches of the Iroquois he had no heart to abandon them but came out from his hiding place and gave himself up to the astonished victors a few of them had remained to guard the prisoners the rest were chasing the fugitives in the agony and began to baptize those of the captive converts who needed baptism Couture had eluded pursuit but when he thought of Jove and of what perhaps awaited him he resolved to share his fate and turning retraced his steps as he approached five Iroquois ran forward to meet him and one of them snapped his gun at his breast but it missed fire in his confusion and excitement Couture fired his own piece and laid the savage dead Jove's clothing tore away his fingernails with their teeth gnawed his fingers with the fury of famished dogs and thrust a sword through one of his hands Jove broke from his guards and rushing to his friend through his arms about his neck the Iroquois dragged him away beat him with their fists and war-clubs till he was senseless and when he had revived lacerated his fingers with their teeth as they had done those of Couture then they turned upon Goupil and treated him with the same ferocity and luck for the present unharmed more of them were brought in every moment till at length the number of captives amounted in all to twenty-two while three Hurons had been killed in the fight in pursuit the Iroquois, about seventy in number now embarked with their prey but not until they had knocked on the head an old Huron whom Jove with his mangled hands had just baptized and who refused to leave the place then under a burning sun they crossed to the spot at the river Richelieu where they encamped their course was southward up the river Richelieu and Lake Champlain thence by way of Lake George to the Mohawk towns the pain and fever of their wounds and the clouds of mosquitoes which they could not drive off left the prisoners no peace by day nor sleep by night on the eighth day they learned that a large Iroquois war-party on their way to Canada the warriors, two hundred in number saluted their victorious countrymen with volleys from their guns then armed with clubs and thorny sticks ranged themselves in two lines between which the captives were compelled to pass up the side of a rocky hill on the way they were beaten with such fury that Jove who was last in the line fell powerless drenched in blood and half-dead as the chief man among the French captives he fared the worst his hands were again mangled by his body while the Huron chief, Eustache was subjected to tortures even more atrocious when at night the exhausted sufferers tried to rest the young warriors came to lacerate their wounds and pull out their hair and beards in the morning they resumed their journey and now the lake narrowed to the semblance of a tranquil river before them was a woody mountain close on their right a rocky promontory and between these photo stream and a hundred years after rose the ramparts of Ticonderoga they landed shouldered their canoes and baggage took their way through the woods past the spot where the fierce highlanders and the dauntless regiments of England breasted in vain the storm of blood and fire and soon reached the shore where Abercrombie landed and Lord Howe fell first of white men Jove and his companions gazed on the romantic lake that bears the name not of its gentle discoverer but of the Canovarian king like a fair niad of the wilderness it slumbered between the guardian mountains that breathed from crag and forest the stern poetry of war but all then was solitude and the clang of trumpets the roar of cannon and the deadly crack of the rifle had never as yet awakened their angry echoes again the canoes were launched and the wild flotilla glided on its way now in the shadow of the heights now on the broad expanse now among the devious channels of the narrows beset with woody islets where the hot air was redolent of the pine the spruce and the cedar till they neared that tragic shore where in the following century New England rustics baffled the soldiers of Dyskow where Montcom planted his batteries where the Red Cross waved so long amid the smoke and where at length the summer night was hideous with carnage and an honoured name was stained the Iroquois landed at or near the future site of Fort William Henry left their canoes and with their prisoners began their march for the nearest Mohawk town each bore his share of the plunder even Jogue, though his lacerated hands were in a frightful condition and his body covered with bruises was forced to stagger on with the rest under a heavy load he with his fellow prisoners and indeed the whole party were half-starved subsisting chiefly on wild berries they crossed the upper Hudson and in thirteen days after leaving the St. Lawrence near the wretched goal of their pilgrimage a palisaded town standing on a hill by the banks of the river Mohawk the whoops of the victors announced their approach and the savage hide sent forth its swarms they thronged the side of the hill the old and the young each with a stick or a slender iron rod brought from the Dutchman on the Hudson they ranged themselves in a double line reaching upward to the entrance of the town and through this narrow road of paradise as Jogue calls it the captives were led in single file Couture in front after him a half-score of Hurons then Goupil then the remaining Hurons and at last Jogue as they passed they were saluted with yells screeches and a tempest of blows one heavier than the others knocked Jogue's breath from his body and stretched him on the ground but it was death to lie there and regaining his feet he staggered on with the rest when they reached the town the blows ceased and they were all placed on a scaffold or high platform in the middle of the place the three Frenchmen fared the worst and were frightfully disfigured Goupil especially was streaming with blood and lived with bruises from head to foot they were allowed a few minutes to recover their breath the chief called out come let us caress these Frenchmen and the crowd, knife and hand began to mount the scaffold they ordered a Christian Algonquin woman a prisoner among them to cut off Jogue's left thumb which she did and a thumb of Goupil was also severed a clamshell being used as the instrument in order to increase the pain it is needless to specify further tortures to which they were subjected all destined to cause the greatest possible suffering without endangering life they were placed on the scaffold and placed in one of the houses each stretched on his back with his limbs extended and his ankles and wrists bound fast to stakes driven into the earth and floor the children now profited by the examples of their parents and amused themselves by placing live coals and red hot ashes on the naked bodies of the prisoners who, bound fast and covered with wounds and bruises which made every movement a torture were sometimes unable to shake them off during this and the two following days they remained exposed to the taunts of the crowd then they were led in triumph to the second Mohawk town and afterwards to the third suffering at each a repetition of cruelties the detail of which would be as monotonous as revolting in a house in the town of Tian Nan Togun Jogue was hung by the wrist between two of the upright poles which supported the structure in such a manner that his feet and thus he remained for some fifteen minutes in extreme torture until, as he was on the point of swooning and Indian with an impulse of pity cut the cords and released him while they were in this town four fresh Huron prisoners just taken were brought in and placed on a scaffold with the rest Jogue, in the midst of his pain and exhaustion took the opportunity to convert them an ear of green corn was thrown to him for food and he discovered a few raindrops and he baptized two of the Hurons the remaining two received baptism soon after from a brook which the prisoners crossed on the way to another town Kothur, though he had incensed the Indians by killing one of their warriors had gained their admiration by his bravery and after torturing him most savagely they adopted him into one of their families in place of a dead relative thenceforth he was comparatively safe Jogue and Goupil were less fortunate three of the Hurons had been burned to death and they expected to share their fate a council was held to pronounce their doom but dissensions arose and no result was reached they were led back to the first village where they remained wracked with suspense and half dead with exhaustion Jogue, however, lost no opportunity to baptize dying infants while Goupil taught children to make the sign of the cross on one occasion he made the sign on the forehead of a child grandson of an Indian in whose lodge the superstition of the old savage was aroused some Dutch men had told him that the sign of the cross came from the devil and would cause mischief he thought that Goupil was bewitching the child and resolving to rid himself of so dangerous a guest applied for aid to two young braves Jogue and Goupil clad in their squalid garb of tattered skins were soon after walking together in the forest that adjoined the town consoling themselves with prayer and mutually exhorting each other patiently for the sake of Christ and the virgin when, as they were returning reciting their rosaries they met the two young Indians and read in their sullen visages an augury of ill the Indians joined them and accompanied them to the entrance of the town where one of the two suddenly drawing a hatchet from beneath his blanket struck it into the head of Goupil who fell murmuring the name of Christ Jogue dropped on his knees and bowing his head in prayer and waited to blow when the murderer ordered him to get up and go home he obeyed but not until he had given absolution to his still breathing friend and presently saw the lifeless body dragged through the town amid hootings and rejoicings Jogue passed a night of anguish and desolation and in the morning reckless of life set forth in search of Goupil's remains where are you going so fast demanded the old Indian, his master do you not see those fierce young braves Jogue persisted and the old man asked another Indian to go with him as a protector the corpse had been flung into a neighboring ravine at the bottom of which ran a torrent and here, with the Indians' help Jogue found it stripped naked and nodbed by dogs he dragged it into the water and covered it with stones to save it from further mutilation resolving to return alone on the following day and secretly bury it but with the night there came a storm and when in the gray of the morning he found it a rolling, turbid flood and the body was nowhere to be seen had the Indians or the torrent borne it away Jogue waited into the cold current it was the first of October he sounded it with his feet and with his stick he searched the rocks, the thicket, the forest but all in vain then, crouched by the pitiless stream he mingled his tears with its waters and in a voice broken with groans chanted the service of the dead the Indians it proved and not the flood had robbed him of the remains of his friend early in the spring when the snows were melting in the woods he was told by Mohawk children that the body was lying where it had been flung in a lonely spot lower down the stream he went to seek it found the scattered bones stripped by the foxes and the birds and tenderly gathering them up hid them in a hollow tree hoping that a day might come until Jogue's life hung by a hair he lived an hourly expectation of the Tomahawk and would have welcomed it as a boon by signs and words he was warned that his hour was near but as he never shunned his fate it fled from him and each day with renewed astonishment he found himself still among the living End of Chapter 16 Part 1