 CHAPTER V. 1633-1634 The Huron Mission. Lejeune had learned the difficulties of the Algonquin mission. To imagine that he recoiled or faltered would be an injustice to his order, but on two points he had gained convictions—first, that little progress could be made in converting these wandering hordes till they could be settled in fixed abodes, and secondly, that their scanty numbers, their geographical position, and their slight influence in the politics of the wilderness offered no flattering promise that their conversion would be fruitful in further triumphs of the faith. It was to another quarter that the Jesuits looked most earnestly. By the vast lakes of the West dwelt numerous stationary populations, and particularly the Hurons, on the lake which bears their name. Here was a hopeful basis of indefinite conquests. For, the Hurons won over the faith would spread in wider and wider circles, embracing one by one the kindred tribes, the tobacco-nation, the neutrals, the iris, and the endostes. Nay in his own time God might lead into his fold even the potent and ferocious Iroquois. The way was pathless and long, by rock and torrent, and the gloom of savage forests. The goal was more dreary yet—toil, hardship, famine, filth, sickness, solitude, insult—all that is most revolting to men nurtured among arts and letters—all that is most terrific to monastic credulity, such were the promise and the reality of the Huron mission. In the eyes of the Jesuits the Huron country was the innermost stronghold of Satan, his castle and his dungeon-keep. All the weapons of his malice were prepared against the bold invader who should assail him in this, the heart of his ancient domain. Far from shrinking the priest's seal rose to tenfold ardour. He signed the cross, invoked Saint Ignatius, Saint Francis Xavier, or Saint Francis Borgia, kissed his reliquary, said nine masses to the Virgin, and stood prompt to battle with all the hosts of hell. A life sequestered from social intercourse, and remote from every prize which ambition holds worth the pursuit, or a lonely death, under forms perhaps the most appalling, these were the missionary's alternatives. Their maliners may taunt them, if they will, with credulity, superstition, or a blind enthusiasm, but slander itself cannot accuse them of hypocrisy or ambition. Doubtless in their propagandism they were acting in concurrence with a mundane policy, but for the present at least this policy was rational and humane. They were promoting the ends of commerce and national expansion. The foundations of French dominion were to be laid deep in the heart and conscience of the savage. His stubborn neck was to be subdued to the yoke of the faith. The power of the priest established that of the temporal order was secure. These sanguinary hordes, weaned from intestine strife, were to unite in a common allegiance to God and the king. Filled with French traitors and French settlers, softened by French manners, guided by French priests, ruled by French officers, their now divided bands would become the constituents of a vast wilderness empire, which in time might span the continent. Spanish civilization crushed the Indian. English civilization scorned and neglected him. French civilization embraced and cherished him. Policy and commerce, then, built their hopes on the priests. These commissioned interpreters of the Divine Will, accredited with letters patent from heaven and affiliated to God's anointed on earth, would have pushed to its most unqualified application the scripture metaphor of the shepherd and the sheep. They would have tamed the wild man of the woods to a condition of obedience, unquestioning, passive, and absolute, repugnant to manhood, and adverse to the invigorating and expansive spirit of modern civilization. Yet full of error and full of danger as was their system, they embraced its serene and smiling falsehoods with the sincerity of martyrs and the self-devotion of saints. We have spoken already of the Hurons, of their populous villages on the borders of the great fresh sea, their trade, their rude agriculture, their social life, their wild and incongruous superstitions, and the sorcerers, diviners, and medicine men who lived on their crudulity. Iroquois hostility left open but one avenue to their country, the long and circuitous route which, eighteen years before, had been explored by Champlain, up the river Ottawa, across Lake Nipissing, down French River, and along the shores of the great Georgian bay of Lake Huron, a route as difficult as it was tedious. Midway, on Alamed Island, in the Ottawa, dwelt the Algonquin tribe visited by Champlain in 1613, who amazed at the apparition of the white stranger, thought he had fallen from the clouds. Like other tribes of this region, they were keen traders, and would gladly have secured for themselves the benefits of an intermediate traffic between the Hurons and the French, receiving the furs of the former in barter at a low rate, and exchanging them with the latter at their full value. From their position they could at any time close the passage of the Ottawa, but as this would have been a perilous exercise of their rights, they were forced to act with discretion. An opportunity for the practice of their diplomacy had lately occurred. On or near the Ottawa, at some distance below them, dwelt a small Algonquin tribe called La Petite Nation. One of these people had lately killed a Frenchman, and the murderer was now in the hands of Champlain, a prisoner at the Fort of Quebec. The savage politicians of Alamed Island contrived, as will soon be seen, to turn this incident to profit. In the July that preceded Lejeune's wintering with the Montagnés, a Huron Indian, well known to the French, came to Quebec with the tidings that the annual canoe float of his countrymen was descending the St. Lawrence. On the twenty-eighth the river was alive with them. A hundred and forty canoes, with six or seven hundred savages, landed at the warehouse beneath the fortified rock of Quebec, and set up their huts and campsheds on the strand now covered by the lower town. The greater number brought furs and tobacco for the trade. Others came as sightseers, others to gamble, and others to steal, accomplishments in which the Hurons were proficient, their gambling skill being exercised chiefly against each other, and their thieving talents against those of other nations. The routine of these annual visits was nearly uniform. On the first day the Indians built their huts. On the second they held their consul with the French officers at the fort. On the third and fourth they bartered their furs and tobacco for kettles, hatchets, knives, cloth, beads, iron arrowheads, coats, shirts, and other commodities. On the fifth they were feasted by the French, and at daybreak of the next morning they embarked and vanished like a flight of birds. On the second day then the long file of chiefs and warriors mounted the pathway to the fort. Tall, well-molded figures robed in the skins of the beaver and the bear, each wild visage glowing with paint and glistening with the oil which the Hurons extracted from the seeds of the sunflower. The lank black hair of one streamed loose upon his shoulders. That of another was close-shaven, except an upright ridge, which, bristling like the crest of a dragon's helmet, crossed the crown from the forehead to the neck. While that of a third hung, long and flowing from one side, but on the other was cut short. Sixty chiefs and principal men, with a crowd of younger warriors, formed their council circle in the fort. Those of each village grouped together, and all seated on the ground with the gravity of bearing sufficiently curious to those who had seen the same men in the domestic circle of their lodge fires. Here, too, were the Jesuits, robed in black, anxious and intent, and here was Champlain, who, as he surveyed the throng, recognized among the elder warriors not a few of those who, eighteen years before, had been his companions in arms on his hapless foray against the Iroquois. Where herangs of compliment being made and answered, and the inevitable presence given and received, Champlain introduced to the silent conclave the three missionaries, Brabouf, Daniel, and Davos. To their lot had fallen the honours, dangers, and woes of the Huron mission. "'These are our fathers,' he said. "'We love them more than we love ourselves. The whole French nation honours them. They do not go among you for your furs. They have left their friends in their country to show you the way to heaven. If you love the French, as you say you love them, then love and honour these our fathers.' Two chiefs rose to reply, and each lavished all his rhetoric in praises of Champlain and of the French. Brabouf rose next, and spoke in broken Huron. The assembly, jerking in unison from the bottom of their throats, repeated ejaculations of applause. Then they surrounded him, and vied with each other for the honour of carrying him in their canoes. In short the mission was accepted, and the chiefs of the different villages disputed among themselves the privilege of receiving and entertaining the three priests. On the last day of July, the day of the Feast of Saint Ignatius, Champlain and several masters of trading vessels went to the house of the Jesuits in quest of indulgences, and here they were soon beset by a crowd of curious Indians, who had finished their traffic and were making a tour of observation. Being excluded from the house they looked in at the windows of the room which served as a chapel, and Champlain, amused at their exclamations of wonder, gave one of them a piece of citron. The Huron tasted it, and in rapture demanded what it was. Champlain replied, laughing, that it was the rind of a French pumpkin. The fame of this delectable production was instantly spread abroad, and at every window eager voices and outstretched hands petitioned for a share of the marvellous vegetable. They were at length allowed to enter the chapel, which had lately been decorated with a few hangings, images, and pieces of plate. These unwanted splendors filled them with admiration. They asked if the dove over the altar was the bird that makes the thunder, and pointing to the images of Loyola and Xavier inquired if they were oaksies or spirits, nor was their perplexity much diminished by Brabouf's explanation of their true character. Three images of the Virgin next engaged their attention, and in answer to their questions they were told that they were the mother of him who made the world. This greatly amused them, and they demanded if he had three mothers. Oh, exclaims the Father Superior, had we but images of all the holy mysteries of our faith. They are a great assistance, for they speak their own lesson. The mission was not doomed long to suffer from a dearth of these inestimable auxiliaries. The eve of departure came. The three priests packed their baggage, and Champlain paid their passage, or in other words, made presents to the Indians who were to carry them in their canoes. They lodged that night in the store-house of the Fur Company, around which the Hurons were encamped, and Lejeune and De Nus stayed with them to bid them farewell in the morning. At eleven at night they were roused by a loud voice in the Indian camp, and saw Lebornia, the one-eyed chief of Alamed Island, walking round among the huts, haranging as he went. Brabouf, listening, caught the import of his words. They have begged the French captain to spare the life of the Algonquin of the petite nation, whom he keeps in prison, but he will not listen to us. The prisoner will die. Then his people will revenge him. They will try to kill the three black robes whom you are about to carry to your country. If you do not defend them, the French will be angry and charge you with their death. But if you do, then the Algonquins will make war on you, and the river will be closed. If the French captain will not let the prisoner go, then leave the three black robes where they are, for if you take them with you they will bring you to trouble. Such was the substance of Lebornia's harangue. The anxious priests hastened up to the fort, gained admittance, and roused Champlain from his slumbers. He sent his interpreter with a message to the Hurons that he wished to speak to them before their departure, and accordingly in the morning an Indian crier proclaimed through their camp that none should embark till the next day. Champlain convoked the chiefs, and tried persuasion, promises, and threats. But Lebornia had been busy among them with his intrigues, and now he declared in the council that unless the prisoner were released the missionaries would be murdered on their way and war would ensue. The politics savage had two objects in view. On the one hand he wished to interrupt the direct intercourse between the French and the Hurons, and on the other he thought to gain credit and influence with the nation of the prisoner by affecting his release. His first point was one. Champlain would not give up the murderer, knowing those with whom he was dealing too well to take a course which would have proclaimed the killing of a Frenchman a venial offense. The Hurons, thereupon, refused to carry the missionaries to their country, coupling the refusal with many regrets and many protestations of love, partly no doubt sincere, for the Jesuits had contrived to gain no little favour in their eyes. The council broke up, the Hurons embarked, and the priests returned to their convent. Here under the guidance of Brabouf they employed themselves amid their other avocations in studying the Huron tongue. A year passed, and again the Indian traders descended from their villages. In the meanwhile grievous calamities had befallen the nation. They had suffered deplorable reverses at the hands of the Iroquois, while a pestilence, similar to that which a few years before had swept off the native populations of New England, had begun its ravages among them. They appeared at three rivers, this year the place of trade, in small numbers, and in a miserable state of dejection and alarm. Du Plessis-Bouchard, commander of the French fleet, called them to a council, harangued them, feasted them, and made them presence, but they refused to take the Jesuits. In private, however, some of them were gained over, then again refused, then at the eleventh hour a second time consented. On the eve of embarkation they once more wavered. All was confusion, doubt, and uncertainty, when Brabouf thought him of a vow to St. Joseph. The vow was made. At once he says the Indians became tractable, the fathers embarked, and amid salvos of cannon from the ships set forth for the wild scene of their apostleship. They reckoned the distance at nine hundred miles, but distance was the least repellent feature of this most arduous journey. Barefoot, lest their shoes should injure the frail vessel, each crouched in his canoe, toiling with unpracticed hands to propel it. Before him, week after week, he saw the same lank, unkempt hair, the same tawny shoulders, and long naked arms ceaselessly plying the paddle. The canoes were soon separated, and for more than a month the Frenchmen rarely or never met. Brabouf spoke a little Huron, and could converse with his escort, but Daniel and Davos were doomed to a silence unbroken, saved by the occasional, unintelligible complaints and menaces of the Indians, of whom many were sick with the epidemic, and all were terrified, desponding, and sullen. Their only food was a pittance of Indian corn, crushed between two stones and mixed with water. The toil was extreme. Brabouf counted thirty-five portages, where the canoes were lifted from the water and carried on the shoulders of the voyagers around rapids or cataracts. More than fifty times, besides, they were forced to wade in the raging current, pushing up their empty barks, or dragging them with ropes. Brabouf tried to do his part, but the boulders and sharp rocks wounded his naked feet and compelled him to desist. He and his companions bore their share of the baggage across portages, sometimes a distance of several miles. Four trips, at the least, were required to convey the whole. The way was through the dense forest, encumbered with rocks and logs, tangled with roots and underbrush, damp with perpetual shade, and redolent of decayed leaves and mouldering wood. The Indians themselves were often spent with fatigue. Brabouf, a man of iron frame and a nature unconcrably resolute, doubted if his strength would sustain him to the journey's end. He complains that he had no moment to read his brevery, except by the moonlight or the fire, when stretched out to sleep on a bare rock by some savage cataract of the Ottawa, or in a damp nook of the adjacent forest. All the Jesuits, as well as several of their countrymen who accompanied them, suffered more or less at the hands of their ill-humored conductors. Devoste Indian robbed him of a part of his baggage, threw a part into the river, including most of the books and writing materials of the three priests, and then left him behind, among the Algonquins of Alamed Island. He found means to continue the journey, and at length reached the Huron towns an elementable state of bodily frustration. Daniel, too, was deserted, but fortunately found another party who received him into their canoe. A young Frenchman named Martin was abandoned among the Nipissings. Another named Baron, on reaching the Huron country, was robbed by his conductors of all he had, except the weapons in his hands. Of these he made good use, compelling the robbers to restore a part of their plunder. Descending French River, and following the lonely shores of the great Georgian Bay, the canoe which carried Berbuffa at length neared its destination, thirty days after leaving three rivers. Before him, stretched in savage slumber, lay the forest shore of the Hurons. Did his spirit sink as he approached his dreary home, oppressed with a dark foreboding of what the future should bring forth? There is some reason to think so. Yet it was but the shadow of a moment, for his masculine heart had lost the sense of fear, and his intrepid nature was fired with a zeal before which doubts and uncertainties fled like the mists of the morning. Not the grim enthusiasm of negation, tearing up the weeds of rooted falsehood, or with bold hand felling to the earth the baneful growth of overshadowing abuses. His was the ancient faith uncartailed, redeemed from the decay of centuries, kindled with a new life, and stimulated to a preternatural growth and fruitfulness. Berbuffa and his Huron companions having landed, the Indians, throwing the missionaries baggage on the ground, left him to his own resources, and without heeding his remonstruces, set forth for their respective villages, some twenty miles distant. Thus abandoned the priest kneeled, not to implore succor in his perplexity, but to offer thanks to the Providence which had shielded him thus far. Then rising he pondered as to what course he should take. He knew the spot well. It was on the borders of the small inlet called Thunder Bay. In the neighboring Huron town of Taunchi he had lived three years, preaching and baptizing, but Taunchi had now ceased to exist. Here Etienne Brule, Champlain's adventurous interpreter, had recently been murdered by the inhabitants, who, in excitement and alarm, dreading the consequences of their deed, had deserted the spot, and built, at the distance of a few miles, a new town called Ihanateria. Berbuffa hid his baggage in the woods, including the vessels for the mass, more precious than all the rest, and began his search for this new abode. He passed the burnt remains of Taunchi, saw the charred poles that had formed the frame of his little chapel of bark, and found, as he thought, the spot where Brule had fallen. Evening was near, when, after following, bewildered and anxious a gloomy forest path, he issued upon a wild clearing, and saw before him the bark roofs of Ihanateria. A crowd ran out to meet him. Etchum has come again! Etchum has come again! they cried, recognizing in the distance the stately figure, robed in black, that advanced from the border of the forest. They led him to the town, and the whole population swarmed about him. After a short rest he set out with a number of young Indians in quest of his baggage, returning with it at one o'clock in the morning. There was a certain awandoe in the village, noted as one of the richest and most hospitable of the Hurons, a distinction not easily one where hospitality was universal. His house was large, and amply stored with beans and corn, and though his prosperity had excited the jealousy of the villagers, he had recovered their good will by his generosity. With him Brabouf made his abode, anxiously waiting, week after week, the arrival of his companions. One by one they appeared. Daniel, weary and worn, devost, half dead with famine and fatigue, and their French attendance, each with his tale of hardship and indignity. At length all were assembled under the roof of the hospitable Indian, and once more the Huron mission was begun. CHAPTER VI. 1634-1635. Brabouf and his associates. Where should the Fathers make their abode? The first thought had been to establish themselves at a place called by the French Rochelle, the largest and most important town of the Huron Confederacy. But Brabouf now resolved to remain at Echaneteria. Here he was well known, and here, too, he flattered himself, seeds of the faith had been planted, which, with good nurture, would in time yield fruit. By the ancient Huron custom, when a man or a woman wanted a house, the whole village joined in building one. In the present case, not Echaneteria only, but the neighboring town of Wenrio also took part in the work, though not without the expectation of such gifts as the priests had to bestow. Before October the task was finished. The house was constructed after the Huron model. It was thirty-six feet long and about twenty feet wide, framed with strong sapling poles planted in the earth to form the sides, with the ends bent into an arch for the roof. The whole lashed firmly together, braced with cross poles, and closely covered with overlapping sheets of bark. Without, the structure was strictly Indian, but within the priests, with the aid of their tools, made innovations which were the astonishment of all the country. They divided their dwelling by transverse partitions into three apartments, each with its wooden door, a wondrous novelty in the eyes of their visitors. The first served as a hall, an ante-room, and a place of storage for corn, beans, and dried fruit. The second, the largest of the three, was at once kitchen, workshop, dining-room, drawing-room, school-room, and bed-chamber. The third was the chapel. Here they made their altar, and here were their images, pictures, and sacred vessels. Their fire was on the ground in the middle of the second apartment, the smoke escaping by a hole in the roof. At the sides were placed two wide platforms after the Huron fashion, four feet from the earthen floor. On these were chests in which they kept their clothing investments, and beneath them they slept, reclining on sheets of bark, and covered with skins and the garments they wore by day. Rude stools, a hand mill, a large Indian mortar of wood for crushing corn, and a clock, completed the furniture of the room. There was no lack of visitors, for the house of the black robes contained marvels, the fame of which was noised abroad to the uttermost confines of the Huron nation. Chief among them was the clock. The guests would sit in expectant silence by the hour, squatted on the ground, waiting to hear its strike. They thought it was alive, and asked what it ate. As the last stroke sounded, one of the Frenchmen would cry, Stop! and to the admiration of the company the obedient clock was silent. The mill was another wonder, and they were never tired of turning it. Besides these there was a prism and a magnet, also a magnifying glass wherein a flea was transformed into a frightful monster, and a multiplying lens which showed them the same object eleven times repeated. All this, says Brabouf, serves to gain their affection, and make them more docile in respect to the admirable and incomprehensible mysteries of our faith, for the opinion they have of our genius and capacity makes them believe whatever we tell them. What does the captain say, was the frequent question, for by this tidal of honour they designated the clock. When he strikes twelve times he says, Hang on the kettle, and when he strikes four times he says, Get up and go home. Both interpretations were well remembered. At noon visitors were never wanting to share the father's sagamite, but at the stroke of four all rose and departed, leaving the missionaries for a time in peace. Now the door was barred, and gathering around the fire they discussed the prospects of the mission, compared their several experiences, and took counsel for the future. But the standing topic of their evening talk was the Huron language. Concerning this each had some new discovery to relate, some new suggestion to offer, and in the task of analysing its construction and deducing its hidden laws these intelligent and highly cultivated minds found a congenial employment. But while zealously laboring to perfect their knowledge of the language, they spared no pains to turn their present requirements to account. Was man, woman, or child sick or suffering, they were always at hand with assistance and relief. Adding as they saw opportunity explanations of Christian doctrine, pictures of heaven and hell, and exhortations to embrace the faith. Their friendly offices did not cease here, but included matters widely different. The Hurons lived in constant fear of the Iroquois. At times the whole village population would fly to the woods for concealment, or take refuge in one of the neighbouring fortified towns, on the rumour of an approaching war-party. The Jesuits promised them the aid of the four Frenchmen armed with archbuses, who had come with them from three rivers. They advised the Hurons to make their palisade forts not as hitherto in a circular form, but rectangular, with small flanking towers at the corners for the archboost men. The Indians saw at once the value of the advice, and soon after began to act on it in the case of their great-town of Asasane, or Rochelle. At every opportunity the missionaries gathered together the children of the village at their house. On these occasions, Berbouf, for greater solemnity, put on a surplice, and the close angular cap worn by the Jesuits in their convents. First he chanted the Paternoster, translated by Father Daniel into Huron Rhines, the children chanting in their turn. Next he taught them the sign of the cross, made them repeat the Ave, the Credo, and the Commandments, questioned them as to past instructions, gave them briefly a few new ones, and dismissed them with a present of two or three beads, raisins, or prunes. A great emulation was kindled among this small fry of heathendom. The priests, with amusement and delight, saw them gathered in groups about the village, vying with each other in making the sign of the cross, or in repeating the rhymes they had learned. At times the elders of the people, the repositories of its ancient traditions, were induced to assemble at the house of the Jesuits, who explained to them the principal points of their doctrine, and invited them to a discussion. The auditors proved pliant to a fault, responding good, or, that is true, to every proposition. But when urged to adopt the faith which so readily met their approval, they had always the same reply. It is good for the French, but we are another people, with different customs. On one occasion Berbuff appeared before the chiefs and elders at a solemn national council, described heaven and hell with images suited to their comprehension, asked of which they preferred to go after death, and then in accordance with the invariable Huron custom and affairs of importance, presented a large and valuable belt of wampum, as an invitation to take the path to paradise. Notwithstanding all their exhortations, the Jesuits, for the present, baptized but few. Indeed, during the first year or more, they baptized no adults except those apparently at the point of death, for with excellent reason they feared black sliding and recantation. They found a special pleasure in the baptism of dying infants, rescuing them from the flames of perdition, and changing them, to borrow Lejeune's phrase, from little Indians into little angels. The father's slumbers were brief and broken. Winter was the season of Huron festivity, and as they lay stretched on their hard couch, suffocating with smoke and tormented by an inevitable multitude of fleas, the thumping of the drum resounded all night long from a neighboring house, mingled with the sound of the tortoise shell rattle, the stamping of mocus and feet, and the cadence of voices keeping time with the dancers. Again some ambitious villager would give a feast, and invite all the warriors of the neighboring towns, or some grand wager of gambling, with its attendant drumming, singing, and out-cries, filled the night with discord. But these were light annoyances, compared with the insane rites to cure the sick, prescribed by the medicine men, or ordained by the eccentric inspiration of dreams. In one case, a young sorcerer, by alternate gorging and fasting, both in the interest of his profession, joined with excessive exertion and singing to the spirits, contracted a disorder of the brain, which caused him, in midwinter, to run naked about the village howling like a wolf. The whole population bestirred itself to effect a cure. The patient had, or pretended to have, a dream, in which the conditions of his recovery were revealed to him. These were equally ridiculous and difficult, but the elders met in council, and all the villagers lent their aid, till every requisition was fulfilled, and the incongruous mass of gifts which the madman's dream had demanded were all bestowed upon him. This cure failing, a medicine feast was tried, then several dances in succession. As the patient remained as crazy as before, preparations were begun for a grand dance, more potent than all the rest. Berbuff says that accepting the masquerades of the carnival among Christians, he never saw a folly equal to it. Some, he adds, had sacks over their heads, with two holes for the eyes. Some were as naked as your hand, with horns or feathers on their heads, their bodies painted white, and their faces black as devils. Others were dobbled with red, black, and white. In short, every one decked himself as extravagantly as he could, to dance in this ballet, and contribute something towards the health of the sick man. This remedy also failing, a crowning effort of the medical art was essayed. Berbuff does not describe it, for fear, as he says, of being tedious, but for the time the village was a pandemonium. This, with other ceremonies, was supposed to be ordered by a certain image like a doll, which a source were placed in his tobacco-pouch, whence it uttered its oracles, at the same time moving as if alive. Truly, writes Berbuff, here is nonsense enough, but I greatly fear there is something more dark and mysterious in it. But all these ceremonies were outdone by the grand festival of the Ananhara, or dream-feast, esteemed the most powerful remedy in cases of sickness, or when a village was infested with evil spirits. The time and manner of holding it were determined at a solemn council. This scene of madness began at night. Men, women, and children, all pretending to have lost their senses, rushed shrieking and howling from house to house, upsetting everything in their way, throwing fire-brands, beating those they met or drenching them with water, and availing themselves of this time of license to take a safe revenge on any who had ever offended them. This scene of frenzy continued till daybreak. No corner of the village was secure from the maniac crew. In the morning there was a change. They ran from house to house, accosting the inmates by name, and demanding of each the satisfaction of some secret want, revealed to the pretended madman in a dream, but of the nature of which he gave no hint whatever. The person addressed thereupon threw to him at random any article at hand, as a hatchet, a kettle, or a pipe, and the applicant continued his rounds till the desired gift was hit upon, when he gave an outcry of delight, echoed by gratulatory cries from all present. If, after all his efforts, he failed in obtaining the object of his dream, he fell into deep dejection, convinced that some disaster was in store for him. The approach of summer brought with it a comparative peace. Many of the villagers dispersed, some to their fishing, some to expeditions of trade, and some to distant lodge houses by their detached cornfields. The priests availed themselves of the respite to engage in those exercises of private devotion which the rule of St. Ignatius enjoins. About mid-summer, however, their quiet was suddenly broken. The crops were withering under a severe drought, a calamity which the sandy nature of the soil made doubly serious. The sorcerers put forth their utmost power, and from the tops of the houses yelled incessant invocations to the spirits. All was in vain, the pitiless sky was cloudless. There was thunder in the east and thunder in the west, but over Ihanateria all was serene. A renowned rainmaker, seeing his reputation tottering under his repeated failures, but thought him of accusing the Jesuits, and gave out that the red color of the cross which stood before their house scared the bird of thunder, and caused him to fly another way. On this a clamor arose. The popular ire turned against the priests, and the obnoxious cross was condemned to be hewn down. A gas at the threatened sacrilege, they attempted to reason away the storm, assuring the crowd that the lightning was not a bird, but certain hot and fiery exhalations which being imprisoned darted this way and that trying to escape. As this philosophy failed to convince the hearers, the missionaries changed their line of defense. You say that the red color of the cross brightens the bird of thunder, then paint the cross white and see if the thunder will come. This was accordingly done, but the clouds still kept aloof. The Jesuits followed up their advantage. Your spirits cannot help you, and your sorcerers have deceived you with lies. Now ask the aid of him who made the world, and perhaps he will listen to your prayers. And they added that if the Indians would renounce their sins and obey the true God, they would make a procession daily to implore his favor towards them. There was no want of promises. The processions were begun, as were also nine masses to St. Joseph, and as heavy rains occurred soon after, the Indians conceived a high idea of the efficacy of the French medicine. In spite of the hostility of the sorcerers and the transient commotion raised by the Red Cross, the Jesuits had gained the confidence and goodwill of the Huron population. Their patience, their kindness, their intrepidity, their manifest disinterestedness, the blamelessness of their lives, and the tact which, in the utmost fervors of their zeal, never failed them, had won the hearts of those wayward savages, and chiefs of distant villages came to urge that they would make their abode with them. Brabouf preserves a speech made to him by one of these chiefs as a specimen of Huron eloquence. Relation des Ducans, 1636, page 123. As yet the results of the mission had been faint and few, but the priests toiled on courageously, high in hope that an abundant harvest of souls would one day reward their labors. End of chapter 6 Chapter 7 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 7. 1636-1637. The Feast of the Dead. Mention has been made of those great depositories of human bones found at the present day in the ancient country of the Hurons. They have been a theme of abundant speculation. Yet their origin is a subject, not of conjecture, but of historic certainty. The peculiar rites to which they owe their existence were first described at length by Brabant, who in the summer of the year 1636 saw them at the town of Asasane. The Jesuits had long been familiar with the ordinary rites of sepulcher among the Hurons. The corpse placed in a crouching position in the midst of the circle of friends and relatives. The long, measured wail of the brothers, the speeches in praise of the dead, and consolation to the living. The funeral feast, the gifts at the place of burial, the funeral games where young men of the village contended for prizes, and the long period of mourning to those next to kin. The body was usually laid on a scaffold, or more rarely in the earth. This, however, was not its final resting place. At intervals of ten or twelve years each of the four nations which composed the Huron Confederacy gathered together its dead, and conveyed them all to a common place of sepulcher. Here was celebrated the great feast of the dead, in the eyes of the Hurons their most solemn and important ceremonial. In the spring of 1636 the chiefs and elders of the nation of the bear, the principal nation of the Confederacy, and that to which Hanateria belonged, assembled in a general counsel to prepare for the great solemnity. There was an unwanted spirit of dissension. Some causes of jealousy had arisen, and three or four of the bear villages announced their intention of holding their feast of the dead apart from the rest. As such a procedure was thought abhorrent to every sense of propriety and duty, the announcement excited an intense feeling, yet Rabuf who was present, describes the debate which ensued as perfectly calm, and wholly free from personal abuse or recrimination. The secession, however, took place, and each party withdrew to its villages to gather and prepare its dead. The corpses were lowered from their scaffolds and lifted from their graves. Their coverings were removed by certain functionaries appointed for the office, and the hideous relics arranged in a row, surrounded by the weeping, shrieking, howling concourse. The spectacle was frightful. Here were all the village dead of the last twelve years. The priests, connoisseurs in such matters, regarded it as a display of mortality so edifying that they hastened to summon their French attendants to contemplate and profit by it. Each family reclaimed its own, and immediately addressed itself to removing what remained of flesh from the bones. These, after being tenderly caressed with tears and lamentations, were wrapped in skins and adorned with pendant robes of fur. In the belief of the mourners they were sentient and conscious. A soul was thought still to reside in them, and to this notion, very general among Indians, is in no small degree due that extravagant attachment to the remains of their dead which may be said to mark the race. These relics of mortality, together with their recent corpses, which were allowed to remain in tire but which were also wrapped carefully in furs, were now carried to one of the largest houses and hung to the numerous cross-polls, which like the rafters, supported the roof. Here the concourse of mourners seated themselves at a funeral-feast, and as the squaws of the household distributed the food, a chief harangued the assembly, lamenting the loss of the deceased and extolling their virtues. This solemnity over the mourners began their march for Asasane, the scene of the final rite. The bodies remaining in tire were born on a kind of litter, while the bundles of bones were slung at the shoulders of the relatives like faggots. Thus the processions slowly defiled along the forest pathways with which the country of the Hurons was everywhere intersected, and as they passed beneath the dull shadow of the pines, they uttered at intervals in unison a dreary wailing cry, designed to imitate the voices of disembodied souls winging their way to the land of spirits, and believed to have an effect peculiarly soothing to the conscious relics of which each man bore. When at night they stopped to rest at some village on the way, the inhabitants came forth to welcome them with a grave and mournful hospitality. From every town of the nation of the bear, except the rebellious few that had succeeded, processions like this were converging towards Asasane. This chief town of the Hurons stood on the eastern margin of Narausaga Bay, encompassed with the gloomy wilderness of Fur and Pine. Vither, on the urgent invitation of the chiefs, the Jesuits repaired. The capacious bark houses were filled to overflowing, and the surrounding woods gleamed with campfires, for the processions of mourners were fast arriving, and the throng was swelled by invited guests of other tribes. Funeral games were in progress, the young men and women practicing archery and other exercises for prizes offered by the mourners in the name of their dead relatives. Funeral games were not confined to the Hurons in Iroquois. Parat mentions having seen them among the Ottawa's, and illustrated description of them will be found in Lafittale. Some of the chiefs conducted Brabouf and his companions to the place prepared for the ceremony. It was a cleared area in the forest, many acres in extent. In the midst was a pit about ten feet deep and thirty feet wide. Around it was reared a high and strong scaffolding, and on these were planted numerous upright poles, with cross-poles extended between, for hanging the funeral gifts and the remains of the dead. Meanwhile there was a long delay. The Jesuits were lodged in a house where more than a hundred of these bundles of mortality were hanging from the raptors. Some were mere shapeless rolls, others were made up into clumsy effigies adorned with feathers, beads, and belts of dyed porcupine quills. Amongst this strong of the living and the dead, the priests spent a night which the imagination and the senses conspired to render almost insupportable. At length the officiating chiefs gave the word to prepare for the ceremony. The relics were taken down, opened for the last time, and the bones caressed and fondled by the women amid paroxysms of lamentation. Then all the processions were formed anew, and each bearing its dead moved towards the area prepared for the last solemn rites. As they reached the ground they defiled in order, each to a spot assigned to it, on the outer limits of the clearing. Here the bearers of the dead laid their bundles on the ground, while those who carried the funeral gifts outspread and displayed them for the admiration of the beholders. Their number was immense, and their value relatively very great. Among them were many robes of beaver and other rich furs collected and preserved for years with a view to this festival. Fires were now lighted, kettles slung, and around the entire circle of the clearing the scene was like a fair or caravansary. This continued till three o'clock in the afternoon, when the gifts were repacked and the bones shouldered fresh. Suddenly at a signal from the chiefs the crowd ran forward from every side towards the scaffold, like soldiers to the assault of a town, scaled it by rude ladders with which it was furnished, and hung their relics and their gifts to the forest of poles which surmounted it. Then the ladders were removed, and a number of chiefs, standing on the scaffold, harangued the crowd below, praising the dead and extolling the gifts, which the relatives of the departed now bestowed in their names upon their surviving friends. During these harangs other functionaries were lining the grave throughout with rich robes of beaver skin. Three large copper kettles were next placed in the middle, and then ensued a scene of hideous confusion. The bodies which had been left entire were brought to the edge of the grave, flung in, and arranged in order at the bottom by ten or twelve Indians stationed there for the purpose, amidst the wildest excitement and the uproar of many hundred mingled voices. When this part of the work was done, night was fast closing in. The concourse bivouacked around the clearing, and lighted their campfires under the brows of the forest which hedged in the scene of the dismal solemnity. For both in his companions withdrew to the village, where an hour before dawn they were roused by a clamor which might have wakened the dead. One of the bundles of bones, tied to a pole on the scaffold, had chance to fall into the grave. This accident had precipitated the closing act, and perhaps increased its frenzy. Guided by the unearthly den, and the broad glare of flames fed with heaps of fat pine logs, the priests soon reached the spot, and saw what seemed in their eyes an image of hell. All around blazed countless fires, and the air resounded with discordant outcries. The naked multitude, on, under, and around the scaffold, were flinging the remains of their dead, discharged from their envelopments of skin, pell-mell into the pit, where verboof discerned men who, as the ghastly shower fell around them, arranged the bones in their places with long poles. All was soon over, earth, logs, and stones were cast upon the grave, and the clamor subsided into a funerial chant, so dreary and lugubrious that it seemed to the Jesuits the wail of despairing souls from the abyss of perdition. Such was the origin of one of those strange sepultures which are the wonder and perplexity of the modern settler in the abandoned forests of the Hurons. The priests were soon to witness another and a more terrible rite, yet one in which they found a consolation, since it signalled the saving of a soul, the snatching from perdition of one of that dreaded race into whose very midst they hoped, with devoted daring, to bear hereafter the cross of salvation. A band of Huron warriors had surprised a small party of Iroquois, killed several, and captured the rest. One of the prisoners was led in triumph to a village where the priests then were. He had suffered greatly. His hands especially were frightfully lacerated. Now, however, he was received with every mark of kindness. Take courage, said a chief addressing him, you are among friends. The best food was prepared for him, and his captors vied with each other in offices of good will. He had been given, according to Indian custom, to a warrior who had lost a near relative in battle, and the captive was supposed to be adopted in place of the slain. His actual doom was, however, not for a moment in doubt. The Huron received him affectionately, and having seated him in his lodge addressed him in a tone of extreme kindness. My nephew, when I heard that you were coming, I was very glad, thinking that you would remain with me to take the place of him I have lost. But now that I see your condition, and your hands crushed and torn so that you will never use them, I change my mind. Therefore, take courage, and prepare to die to-night like a brave man. The prisoner coolly asked what should be the manner of his death. By fire was the reply. It is well, returned the Iroquois. Meanwhile, the sister of the slain Huron, in whose place the prisoner was to have been adopted, brought him a dish of food, and her eyes, flowing with tears, placed it before him with an air of the utmost tenderness, while at the same time the warrior brought him a pipe, wiped the sweat from his brow, and fanned him with a fan of feathers. About noon he gave his farewell feast, after the custom of those who knew themselves to be at the point of death. All were welcome to this strange banquet, and when the company were gathered the hosts addressed them in a loud, firm voice. My brothers, I am about to die. Do your worst to me. I do not fear torture or death. Some of those present seemed to have visitings of real compassion, and a woman asked the priest if it would be wrong to kill him, and thus save him from the fire. The Jesuits had from the first lost no opportunity of accosting him, while he, grateful for genuine kindness amid the cruel hypocrisy that surrounded him, gave them an attentive ear, till at length, satisfied with his answers they baptized him. His eternal bliss secure, all else was as nothing, and they awaited the issue with some degree of composure. A crowd had gathered from all the surrounding towns, and after nightfall the presiding chief harangued them, exhorting them to act their parts well in the approaching sacrifice, since they would be looked upon by the sun and the god of war. It is needless to dwell on the scene that ensued. It took place in the lodge of the great war chief, Atsan. Eleven fires blazed on the ground, along the middle of this capacious dwelling. The platforms on each side were closely packed with spectators, and betwixt these and the fires the younger warriors stood in lines, each bearing lighted pine-knots or rolls of birch bark. The heat, the smoke, the glare of flames, the wild yells, contorted visages, and furious gestures of these human devils, as their victim, goaded by their torches, bound through the fires again and again, from end to end of the house, transfixed the priests with horror. But when, as day dawned, the last spark of life had fled, they consoled themselves with the faith that the tortured wretch had found his rest at last in paradise. CHAPTER 8. 1636-1637 THE HEURON AND THE JESUIT Meanwhile, from old France to new, came suckers and reinforcements to the missions of the forest. More Jesuits crossed the sea to urge the work of conversion. These were no stern exiles, seeking on barbarous shores an asylum for a persecuted faith. Rank, wealth, power, and royalty itself smiled on their enterprise, and bad them God's speed. Yet with all, a fervor more intense, a self-abnegation more complete, a self- devotion more constant and enduring, will scarcely find its record on the page of human history. Holy Mother Church, linked in sordid wedlock to governments and thrones, numbered among her servants a host of the worldly and the proud, whose service of God was but the service of themselves, and many too, who in the sophistry of the human heart thought themselves true soldiers of heaven, while earthly pride, interest, and passion were the life springs of their zeal. This mighty Church of Rome, in her imposing march along the High Road of History, heralded as infallible and divine, astounds the gazing world with prodigies of contradiction. Now the protector of the oppressed, now the right arm of tyrants, now breathing charity and love, now dark with the passions of hell, now beaming with celestial truth, now masked in hypocrisy and lies, now a virgin, now a harlot, an imperial queen, and a tinseled actress. Clearly she is of earth, not of heaven, and her transcendently dramatic life is a type of the good and ill, the baseness and nobleness, the foulness and purity, the love and hate, the pride, passion, truth, falsehood, fierceness and tenderness, that battle in the restless heart of man. It was her nobler and purer part that gave life to the early missions of New France. That gloomy wilderness, those hordes of savages, had nothing to tempt the ambitious, the proud, the grasping or the indolent. Obscure toil, solitude, privation, hardship and death were to be the missionaries' portion. He who set sail for the country of the Hurons left behind him the world and all its prizes. True, he acted under orders, obedient like a soldier to the word of command. But the astute society of Jesus knew its members, weighed each in the ballots, gave each his fitting task, and when the word was passed to embark for New France, it was but the response to a secret longing of the fervent heart. The letters of these priests, departing for the scene of their labors, breathe the spirit of enthusiastic exultation, which, to a colder nature and a colder faith, may sometimes seem overstrained, but which is in no way disproportionate to the vastness of the effort and the sacrifice demanded of them. All turned with longing eyes towards the mission of the Hurons, for here the largest harvests promise to repay their labour, and here hardships and dangers most abounded. Two Jesuits, Piyart and La Mercier, had been sent thither in sixteen thirty-five, and in mid-summer of the next year three more arrived, Jogue, Châtelin, and Garnier. When, after their long and lonely journey, they reached Ihanateria one by one, they were received by their brethren with scanty fare indeed, but with a fervour of affectionate welcome, which more than made amends, for among priests, united in a community of faith and enthusiasm, there was far more than the genial comradeship of men joined in a common enterprise, self-devotion and peril. On their way they had met Daniel and Davos descending to Quebec, to establish there a seminary of Huron children, a project long cherished by Berbuff and his companions. Scarcely had the newcomers arrived, then they were attacked by a contagious fever, which turned their mission-house into a hospital. Jogue, Garnier, and Châtelin fell ill in turn, and two of their domestics also were soon prostrated, though the only one of the number who could hunt fortunately escaped. Those who remained in health attended the sick, and the sufferers vied with each other in efforts often beyond their strength to relieve their companions in misfortune. The disease in no case proved fatal, but scarcely had health begun to return to their household when an unforeseen calamity demanded the exertion of all their energies. The pestilence, which for two years past had from time to time visited the Huron towns, now returned with tenfold violence, and with it soon appeared a new and fearful scourge, the smallpox. Terror was universal. The contagion increased as autumn advanced, and when winter came, far from ceasing as the priests had hoped, its ravages were appalling. The season of Huron festivity was turned to a season of mourning, and such was the despondency and dismay that suicide became frequent. The Jesuits, singly or in pairs, journeyed in the depth of winter from village to village, ministering to the sick and seeking to commend their religious teachings by their efforts to relieve bodily distress. Happily, perhaps for their patience, they had no medicine but a little senna. A few raisins were left, however, and one or two of these, with a spoonful of sweetened water, were always eagerly accepted by the sufferers, who thought them endowed with some mysterious and sovereign efficacy. No house was left unvisited. As the missionary, physician at once to body and soul, entered one of these smoky dens, he saw the inmates, their heads muffled in their robes of skins, seated around the fires in silent dejection. Everywhere was heard the wail of sick and dying children, and on or under the platforms at the sides of the house crouched squalid men and women in all stages of the distemper. The father approached, made inquiries, spoke words of kindness, administered his harmless remedies, or offered a bowl of broth made from game brought in by the Frenchman who hunted for the mission. The body cared for, he next addressed himself to the soul. This life is short and very miserable. It matters little whether we live or die. The patient remained silent or grumbled his descent. The Jesuit, after enlarging for a time in broken Huron on the brevity and nothingness of mortal wheeler woe, passed next to the joys of heaven and the pains of hell, which he set forth with his best rhetoric. His pictures of infernal fires and torturing devils were readily comprehended, if the listener had consciousness enough to comprehend anything. But with respect to the advantages of the French paradise he was slow of conviction. I wish to go where my relations and ancestors have gone, was a common reply. Heaven is a good place for Frenchmen, said another, but I wish to be among Indians, for the French will give me nothing to eat when I get there. Often the patient was stolidly silent. Sometimes he was hopelessly perverse in contradictory. Again nature triumphed over grace. Which will you choose? demanded the priest of a dying woman. Heaven or hell? Hell, if my children are there, as you say, returned the mother. Do they hunt in heaven or make war or go to feasts? asked an anxious inquirer. Oh, no! replied the father. Then, returned the inquirist, I will not go. It is not good to be lazy. But above all other obstacles was the dread of starvation in the regions of the blessed. Nor, when the dying Indian had been induced at last to express a desire for paradise, was it an easy matter to bring him to a due contrition for his sins, for he would deny with indignation that he had ever committed any. When at length, as sometimes happened, all these difficulties gave way, and the patient had been brought to what seemed to his instructor a fitting frame for baptism, the priest, with contentment at his heart, brought water in a cup or in the hollow of his hand, touched his forehead with a mystic drop, and snatched him from an eternity of woe. But the convert, even after his baptism, did not always manifest a satisfactory spiritual condition. Why did you baptize that Iroquois? asked one of the dying Neophytes. Speaking of the prisoner recently tortured, he will get to heaven before us, and when he sees us coming he will drive us out. Thus did these worthy priests, too conscientious to let these unfortunate die in peace, follow them with benevolent persecutions to the hour of their death. It was clear to the fathers that their ministrations were valued solely because their religion was supposed by many to be a medicine, or charm, efficacious against famine, disease, and death. They themselves indeed firmly believed that the saints and angels were always at hand with temporal suckers for the faithful. At their intercession sent Joseph had interposed to procure a happy delivery to a squaw in protracted pains of childbirth. And they never doubted that, in the hour of need, the celestial powers would confound the unbeliever with intervention direct and manifest. At the town of Wenrio, the people, after trying in vain all the feasts, dances, and preposterous ceremonies by which their medicine men sought to stop the pest, resolved to essay the medicine of the French. And, to that end, called the priest to a council. What must we do that your God may take pity on us? Burbuff's answer was uncompromising. Believe in him, keep his commandments, abjure your faith in dreams, take but one wife and be true to her. Give up your superstitious feasts, renounce your assemblies of debauchery, eat no human flesh, never give feasts to demons, and make a vow that, if God will deliver you from this pest, you will build a chapel to offer him thanksgiving and praise. The terms were too hard. They would feign bargain to be let off with building the chapel alone, but Burbuff would bait them nothing, and the council broke up in despair. At Ososane, a few miles distant, the people, in a frenzy of terror, accepted the conditions, and promised to renounce their superstitions and reform their manners. It was a labor of Hercules, a cleansing of Agyan stables, but the scared savages were ready to make any promise that might stay the pestulence. One of their principal sorcerers proclaimed in a loud voice through the streets of the town, that the God of the French was their master, and that thenceforth almost live according to his will. What consolation exclaims le Mercier, to see God glorified by the lips of an imp of Satan? Their joy was short. The proclamation was on the 12th of December. On the twenty-first, a noted sorcerer came to Ososane. He was of a dwarfish, humpbacked figure, most rare among the symmetrical people, with a vicious face and a dress consisting of a torn and shabby robe of beaver skin. Scarcely had he arrived, when with ten or twelve other savages he ensconced himself in a kennel of bark made for the occasion. In the midst were placed several stones, heated red-hot. On these the sorcerer threw tobacco, producing a stifling fumigation. In the midst of which, for a full half-hour, he sang, at the top of his throat, those boastful yet meaningless rhapsodies of which Indian magical songs are composed. Then came a grand medicine-feast, and the disappointed Jesuits saw plainly that the objects of their spiritual care, unwilling to throw away any chance of cure, were bent on invoking aid from God and the devil at once. This humpbacked sorcerer became a thorn in the sight of the Fathers, who more than half believed his own account of his origin. He was, he said, not a man, but an oaky, a spirit, or as the priest rendered it a demon, and had dwelt with other oakies under the earth, when the whim seized him to become a man. Therefore he ascended to the upper world in company with a female spirit. They hid beside a path, and when they saw a woman passing they entered her womb. After a time they were born, but not until the male oaky had quarreled with and strangled his female companion, who came dead into the world. Le Mercier, Relation des Urans, 1637, 62, Croix-moi-si. This petit socié is often mentioned elsewhere. The character of the sorcerer seems to have comported reasonably well with this story of his origin. He pretended to have an absolute control over the pestilence, and his prescriptions were scrupulously followed. He had several conspicuous rivals, besides a host of humbler competitors. One of these magician doctors, who was nearly blind, made for himself a kennel at the end of his house, where he fasted for seven days. On the sixth day the spirits appeared, and among other revelations, told him that the disease could be frightened away by means of images of straw, like scarecrows, placed on the tops of the houses. Within forty-eight hours after this announcement, the rubes of Anantisati and the neighboring villages were covered with an army of these effigies. The Indians tried to persuade the Jesuits to put them on the mission house, but the priests replied that the cross before their door was a better protector, and for further security they set another on their roof, declaring that they would rely on it to save them from infection. The Indians, on their part, anxious that their scarecrows should do their off its well, addressed them in loud harangs and burned offerings of tobacco to them. There was another sorcerer, whose medical practice was so extensive, that unable to attend to all his patients he sent substitutes to the surrounding towns, first imparting to them his own mysterious power. One of these deputies came to Asasane while the priests were there. The principal house was thronged with expectant savages, anxiously waiting his arrival. A chief carried before him a kettle of mystic water, with which the envoy sprinkled the company, at the same time fanning them with the wing of a wild turkey. Then came a grand medicine-feast, followed by a medicine-dance of women. Opinion was divided as to the nature of the pest, but the greater number were agreed that it was a malignant oaky, who came from Lake Huron. As it was of the last moment to conciliate or frighten him, no means to these ends were neglected. Feasts were held for him, at which to do him honour, each guest gorged himself like a vulture. A mystic fraternity danced with fire brands in their mouths, while other dancers wore masks and pretended to be humpbacked. Tobacco was burned to the demon of the pest, no less than to the scarecrows which were to frighten him. A chief climbed to the roof of a house and shouted to the invisible monster, If you want flesh, go to our enemies, go to the Iroquois. While, to add terror to persuasion, the crowd in the dwelling below yelled with all the force of their lungs, and beat furiously with sticks on the walls of bark. Thus these public efforts to stay the pestulance, the sufferers, each for himself, had their own methods of cure, dictated by dreams or prescribed by established usage. Thus two of the priests, entering a house, saw a sick man crouched in a corner, while near him sat three friends. Before each of these was placed a huge portion of food, enough the witness declares for four, and though all were gorged to suffocation, with starting eyeballs and distended veins, they still held staunchly to their task, resolved at all cost to devour the whole, in order to cure the patient, who meanwhile ceased not in feeble tones to praise their exertions, and implore them to persevere. Turning from these eccentricities of the noble savage to the zealots who were toiling, according to their light, to snatch him from the clutch of Satan, we see the irrepressible Jesuits roaming from town to town in restless quest of subjects for baptism. In the case of adults they thought some little preparation essential, but their efforts to this end, even with the aid of St. Joseph, whom they constantly invoked, were not always successful, and, cheaply as they offered salvation, they sometimes failed to find a purchaser. With infants, however, a simple drop of water sufficed for the transfer from a prospective hell to an assured paradise. The Indians, who at first had sought baptism as a cure, now began to regard it as a cause of death, and when the priests entered a lodge where a sick child lay in extremity, the scowling parents watched him with jealous distrust, lest unawares the deadly drop should be applied. The Jesuits were now equal to the emergency. Father La Mercier will best tell his own story. On the 3rd of May Father Pierre Pierrete baptized at Anantilla a little child, two months old, in manifest danger of death, without being seen by the parents, who would not give their consent. This is the device which he used. Our fellow sugar does wonders for us. He pretended to make the child drink a little sugared water, and at the same time dipped a finger in it. As the father of the infant began to suspect something and called out to him not to baptize it, he gave the spoon to a woman who was near and said to her, Give it to him yourself. She approached and found the child asleep, and at the same time Father Pierrete, under pretence of seeing if he was really asleep, touched his face with his wet finger and baptized him. At the end of forty-eight hours he went to heaven. Some days before the missionary had used the same device, in Dusty, for baptizing a little boy six or seven years old. His father, who was very sick, had several times refused to receive baptism, and when asked if he would not be glad to have his son baptized, he had answered no. At least, said Father Pierrete, you will not object to my giving him a little sugar. No, but you must not baptize him. The missionary gave it to him once, and again, and at the third spoonful, before he had put the sugar into the water, he let a drop of it fall on the girl, at the same time pronouncing the sacramental words. A little girl, who was looking at him, cried out, Father, he is baptizing him. The child's father was much disturbed, but the missionary said to him, Did you not see that I was giving him sugar? The child died soon after, but God showed his grace to the father, who is now in perfect health. That equivocal morality, lashed by the withering satire of Pascal, a morality built on the doctrine that all means are permissible for saving souls from perdition, and that sin itself is no sin when its object is the greater glory of God, found far less scope in the rude wilderness of the Hurons than among the interests, ambitions, and passions of civilized life. Nor were these men, chosen from the purest of their order, personally well-fitted to illustrate the capabilities of this elastic system. Yet now and then, by the light of their own writings, we may observe that the teachings of the School of Loyola had not been wholly without effect in the formation of their ethics. But when we see them, in the gloomy February of 1637, and the gloomier months that followed, toiling on foot from one infected town to another, wading through the sodden snow, under the bare and dripping forests, drenched with incessant rains, till they described at length through the storm the cluster dwellings of some barbarous hamlet, when we see them entering one after another these wretched abodes of misery and darkness, and all for one sole end, the baptism of the sick and dying, we may smile at the futility of the object, but we must needs admire the self-sacrificing zeal with which it was pursued. CHAPTER IX. 1637. Character of the Canadian Jesuits. Before pursuing farther these obscure but noteworthy scenes in the drama of human history, it will be well to indicate, so far as there are means of doing so, the distinctive traits of some of the chief actors. Mention has often been made of Bebeuf, that masculine apostle of the Faith, the Iax of the Mission. Nature had given him all the passions of a vigorous manhood, and religion had crushed them, curbed them, or tamed them to do her work, like a dammed-up torrent, sluiced and guided to grind and saw and weed for the good of man. Beside him in strange contrast stands his co-laborer Charles Garnier. Both were of noble birth and gentle nurture, but here the parallel ends. Garnier's face was beardless, though he was above thirty years old. For this he was laughed at by his friends in Paris, but admired by the Indians, who thought him handsome. His constitution, bodily or mental, was by no means robust. From boyhood he had shown a delicate and sensitive nature, a tender conscience, and a proneness to religious emotion. He had never gone with his schoolmates to ends and other places of amusement, but kept his pocket-money to give to beggars. One of his brothers' relates of him, that seeing an obscene book he bought and destroyed it, lest other boys should be injured by it. He had always wished to be a Jesuit, and after a novitiate which is described as most edifying, he became a professed member of the Order. The Church indeed absorbed the greater part, if not the whole, of this pious family, one brother being a Carmelite, another a Capuchin, and a third a Jesuit, while there seems also to have been a fourth under vows. Of Charles Garnier there remained twenty-four letters, written at various times to his father and two of his brothers, chiefly during his missionary life among the Hurons. They breathed the deepest and most intense Roman Catholic piety, and a spirit enthusiastic, yet sad, as of one renouncing all hopes and prizes of the world and living for heaven alone. The affections of his sensitive nature, severed from earthly objects, found relief in an ardent adoration of the Virgin Mary. With none of the bone and sinew of rugged manhood, he entered, not only without hesitation, but with eagerness, on a life which would have tried the boldest, and sustained by the spirit within him he was more than equal to it. His fellow missionaries thought him a saint, and had he lived a century or two earlier he would have perhaps been canonized. Yet while all his life was a willing martyrdom, one can discern, amid his admirable virtues, some slight lingerings of mortal vanity. Thus in three several letters he speaks of his great success in baptizing, and plainly intimates that he had sent more souls to heaven than the other Jesuits. Next appears a young man of about twenty-seven years, Joseph Marie Chamonot. Unlike Brabouf and Garnier he was of humble origin, his father being a vine-dresser, and his mother the daughter of a poor village schoolmaster. At an early age they sent him to Châtillon on the Seine, where he lived with his uncle, a priest, who taught him to speak Latin, and awakened his religious susceptibilities, which were naturally strong. This did not prevent him from yielding to the persuasions of one of his companions to run off to Boone, a town of Burgundy, where the fugitives proposed to study music under the fathers of the oratory. To provide funds for the journey he stole a sum of about the value of a dollar from his uncle the priest. This act, which seems to have been a mere peccadillo of boyish levity, determined his future career. Finding himself in total destitution at Boone he wrote to his mother for money, and received in reply an order from his father to come home. Stung with the thought of being posted as a thief in his native village he resolved not to do so, but to set out forthwith on a pilgrimage to Rome, and accordingly, tattered in penniless he took the road for the sacred city. Soon a conflict began within him between his misery and the pride which rebad him to beg. The pride was forced to succumb. He begged from door to door, slept under sheds by the wayside or in haystacks, and now and then found lodging and a meal at a convent. Thus sometimes alone, sometimes with vagabonds whom he met on the road, he made his way through Savoy and Lombardy in a pitiable condition of destitution, filth, and disease. At length he reached Acona, when the thought occurred to him of visiting the Holy House of Loretto, and imploring the sucker of the Virgin Mary. Nor were his hopes disappointed. He had reached that renowned shrine, knelt, paid his devotions, and offered his prayer, when, as he issued from the door of the chapel, he was accosted by a young man, whom he conjectures to have been an angel descended to his relief, and who was probably some penitent or devotee bent on works of charity or self-mortification. With a voice of the greatest kindness he proffered his aid to the wretched boy, whose appearance was alike fitted to awakened pity and disgust. The conquering of a natural repugnance to filth, in the interest of charity and humility, is a conspicuous virtue in most of the Roman Catholic saints, and whatever merit may attach to it was acquired in an extraordinary degree by the young man in question. Apparently he was a physician, for he not only restored the miserable wanderer to a condition of comparative decency, but cured him of aggrievous malady, the result of neglect. Chameleau went on his way, thankful to his benefactor, and overflowing with an enthusiasm of gratitude to Our Lady of Loretto. As he journeyed towards Rome, an old burger, at whose door he had begged, employed him as a servant. He soon became known to a Jesuit, to whom he had confessed himself in Latin, and as his requirements were considerable for his years, he was eventually employed as teacher of a low class in one of the Jesuit schools. Nature had inclined him to a life of devotion. He would feign be a hermit, and to that end practiced eating green ears of wheat. But finding he could not swallow them, conceived that he had mistaken his vocation. Then a strong desire grew up within him to become a recollect, a capuchin, or above all a Jesuit, and at length the wish of his heart was answered. At the age of twenty-one he was admitted to the Jesuit Novitiate. Soon after its close a small duodessimo volume was placed in his hands. It was a relation of the Canadian mission, and contained one of those narratives of prebuf which have been often cited in the preceding pages. Its effect was immediate. Burning to share those glorious toils, the young priest asked to be sent to Canada, and his request was granted. Before embarking he set out with the Jesuit Ponsette, who was also destined for Canada, on a pilgrimage from Rome to the Shrine of Our Lady of Loretto. They journeyed on foot, begging alms by the way. Chamonau was soon seized with a pain in the knee, so violent that it seemed impossible to proceed. At San Severino, where they lodged with the Barnabites, he bethought him of asking the intercessions of a certain poor woman of that place, who had died some time before with the reputation of sanctity. Accordingly he addressed to her his prayer, promising to publish her fame on every possible occasion, if she would obtain his cure from God. The intercession was accepted, the offending limb became sound again, and the two pilgrims pursued their journey. They reached Loretto, and kneeling before the Queen of Heaven implored her favour and aid, while Chamonau, overflowing with devotion to this celestial mistress of his heart, conceived the purpose of building in Canada a chapel to her honour, after the exact model of the Holy House of Loretto. They soon afterwards embarked together, and arrived among the Hurons early in the autumn of 1639. Noelle Chablonel came later to the mission, for he did not reach the Huron country until 1643. He detested the Indian life, the smoke, the vermin, the filthy food, and the impossibility of privacy. He could not study by the smoky lodge fire, among the noisy crowd of men in squaws, with their dogs and their restless screeching children. He had a natural inaptitude to learning the language, and laboured at it for five years with scarcely a sign of progress. The devil whispered a suggestion into his ear, let him procure his release from these barren and revolting toils and return to France, where congenial and useful employments awaited him. Chablonel refused to listen, and when the temptation still beset him, he bound himself by a solemn vow to remain in Canada to the day of his death. Isaac Zog was of a character not unlike Garnier. Nature had given him no special force of intellect or constitutional energy, yet the man was indomitable and irrepressible, as his history will show. We have but a few means of characterizing the remaining priests of the mission otherwise than as their traits appear on the field of their labours. Theirs was no faith of abstractions and generalities. For them, heaven was very near to earth, stretching and mingling with it at many points. On high, God the Father sat enthroned, and nearer to human sympathies, divine incarnate in the sun, with the benign form of his immaculate mother and her spouse, Saint Joseph, the chosen patron of New France. Interceding saints and departed friends bore to the throne of grace the petitions of those yet lingering in mortal bondage, and formed an ascending chain from the earth to heaven. These priests lived in an atmosphere of supernaturalism. Every day had its miracle. Divine power declared itself in action immediate and direct, controlling, guiding, or reversing the laws of nature. The missionaries did not reject the ordinary cures for disease or wounds, but they relied far more on a prayer to the Virgin, a vow to Saint Joseph, or to the promise of a new vin, or nine days devotion to some other celestial personage, while the touch of a fragment of a tooth or bone of some departed saint was of sovereign efficacy to cure sickness, solace pain, or receive a suffering squaw in the throes of childbirth. Once, Chaminot, having a headache, remembered to have heard of a sick man who regained his health by commending his case to Saint Ignatius, and at the same time putting a medal stamped with his image into his mouth. Accordingly he tried a similar experiment, putting into his mouth a medal bearing the representation of the holy family, which was the object of his especial devotion. The next morning found him cured. The relation between this world and the next was sometimes of a nature curiously intimate. Thus when Chaminot heard of Garnier's death, he immediately addressed his departed colleague and promised him the benefit of all the good works which he, Chaminot, might perform during the next week, provided the defunct missionary would make him heir to his knowledge of the Huron tongue. And he ascribed to the deceased Garnier's influence the mastery of that language which he afterwards acquired. The efforts of the missionaries for the conversion of the savages were powerfully seconded from the other world, and the refractory subject who was deaf to human persuasion softened before the superhuman agencies which the priest invoked to his aid. It is scarcely necessary to add that signs and voices from another world, visitations from hell and visions from heaven, were incidents of no rare occurrence in the lives of these ardent apostles. To Berbouf, whose deep nature, like a furnace white hot, glowed with the still intensity of his enthusiasm, they were especially frequent. Demons in troops appeared before him, sometimes in the guise of men, sometimes as bears, wolves, or wildcats. He called on God and the apparitions vanished. Death, like a skeleton, sometimes menaced him, and once, as he faced it with an unquailing eye, it fell powerless at his feet. A demon in the form of a woman assailed him with the temptation which beset St. Benedict among the rocks of Subiaco, but Berbouf signed the cross and the infernal siren melted into air. He saw the vision of a vast and gorgeous palace, and a miraculous voice assured him that such was to be the reward of those who dwelled in savage hobbles for the cause of God. Angels appeared to him, and more than once, St. Joseph and the Virgin were visibly present before his sight. Once, when he was among the neutral nation, in the winter of 1640, he beheld the ominous apparition of a great cross slowly approaching from the quarter where lay the country of the Iroquois. He told the vision to his comrades, What was it like? How large was it? they eagerly demanded. Large enough replied the priest to crucify us all. To explain such phenomena is the province of psychology and not of history. Their occurrence is no matter of surprise, and it would be superfluous to doubt that they were recounted in good faith, and with a full belief in their reality. In these enthusiasts we shall find striking examples of one of the morbid forces of human nature, yet in candor let us do honour to what was genuine in them. That principle of self-abnegation which is the life of true religion, and which is vital no less to the highest forms of heroism. CHAPTER X The town of Asasane, or Rochelle, stood as we have seen on the borders of Lake Huron at the skirts of a gloomy wilderness of pine. Thither, in May 1637, repaired Father Pijart to found in this one of the largest of the Huron towns the new mission of the immaculate conception. The Indians had promised Brabuff to build a house for the black robes, and Pijart found the work in progress. There were at this time about fifty dwellings in the town, each containing eight or ten families. The quadrangular fort already alluded to had now been completed by the Indians, under the instruction of the priests. The new mission-house was about seventy feet in length. No sooner had the savage workmen secured the bark covering on its top and sides than the priests took possession, and began their preparations for a notable ceremony. At the farther end they made an altar, and hung such decorations as they had on the rough walls of bark throughout half the length of the structure. This formed their chapel. On the altar was a crucifix with vessels and ornaments of shining metal, while above hung several pictures, among them a painting of Christ and another of the Virgin, both of life size. There was also a representation of the last judgment wherein dragons and serpents might be seen feasting on the entrails of the wicked, while demons scourged them into the flames of hell. The entrance was adorned with a quantity of tinsel, together with green boughs skillfully disposed. One is forced to wonder at, if not to admire, the energy with which these priests and their scarcely less zealot attendants toiled to carry their pictures and ornaments through the most arduous of journeys, where the traveller was often famished from the sheer difficulty of transporting provisions. A great event had called forth all this preparation. Of the many baptisms achieved by the fathers in the course of their indefatagable ministry the subjects had all been infants or adults at the point of death, but at length a Huron, in full health and manhood, respected and influential in his tribe, had been won over to the faith, and was now to be baptized with solemn ceremonial, in the chapel thus gorgeously adorned. It was a strange scene. Indians were there in throngs, and the house was closely packed. Warriors, old and young, glistening in grease and sunflower oil, with uncouth locks, a trifle less coarse than a horse's mane, and faces perhaps smeared with paint in honour of the occasion, wenches and gay attire, hags muffled in a filthy, discarded deerskin, their leathery visages corrugated with age and malice, and their hard, glittering eyes riveted on the spectacle before them. The priests, no longer in their daily garb of black, but radiant in their surplices, the genuflections, the tinkling of the bell, the swinging of the censor, the sweet odour so unlike the fumes of the smoky lodge-fires, the mysterious elevation of the host, for a mass followed the baptism, and the agitation of the neophyte, whose Indian imperturbability fairly deserted him. All these combined to produce on the minds of the savage beholders an impression that seemed to promise a rich harvest for the fate. To the Jesuits it was a day of triumph and of hope. The ice had been broken, the wedge had entered, light had dawned at last on the long night of Heathendham. But there was one feature of the situation which in their rejoicing they overlooked. The devil had taken alarm. He had borne with reasonable composure the loss of individual souls snatched from him by former baptisms. But here was a convert whose example and influence threatened to shake his Huron Empire to its very foundation. In fury and fear he rose to the conflict, and put forth all his malice and all his hellish ingenuity. Such at least is the explanation given by the Jesuits of the scenes that followed. Whether accepting it or not, let us examine the circumstances which gave rise to it. The mysterious strangers, garbed in black, who of late years had made their abode among them, for motives past finding out, marvellous in knowledge, careless of life, had awakened in the breasts of the Hurons mingled emotions of wonder, perplexity, fear, respect, and awe. From the first they had held them answerable for the changes of the weather, commending them when the crops were abundant and upbraiding them in times of scarcity. They thought them mighty magicians, masters of life and death, and they came to them for spells, sometimes to destroy their enemies and sometimes to kill grasshoppers. And now it was whispered abroad that it was they who had bewitched the nation, and caused the pests which threatened to exterminate it. It was Isaac Jogh who first heard this ominous rumor at the town of Asa Sinati, and it proceeded from the dwarfish sorcerer already mentioned, who boasted himself a devil incarnate. The slanders spread fast and far. Their friends looked at them as scants, their enemies clamored for their lives. Some said that they concealed in their houses a corpse which infected the country, a perverted notion derived from some half-instructed neophyte concerning the body of Christ in the Eucharist. Others ascribed the evil to a serpent, others to a spotted frog, others to a demon which the priests were supposed to carry in the barrel of a gun. Others again gave out that they had pricked an infant to death with owls in the forest in order to kill the Huron children by magic. Perhaps, observed Father La Mercier, the devil was enraged because we had placed a great many of these little innocents in heaven. The picture of the last judgment became an object of the utmost terror. It was regarded as a charm. The dragons and serpents were supposed to be demons of the pest, and the sinners whom they were so busily devouring to represented its victims. On the top of a spruce tree, near their house at Ahanateria, the priests had fastened a small streamer to show the direction of the wind. This, too, was taken for a charm, throwing off disease and death to all quarters. The clock, once an object of harmless wonder, now excited the wildest alarm, and the Jesuits were forced to stop it, since when it struck it was supposed to sound the signal of death. At sunset one would have seen knots of Indians, their faces dark with dejection and terror, listening to the measured sounds which issued from within the neighboring house of the mission, where, with bolted doors, the priests were singing litanies, mistaken for incantations by the awe-struck sabbages. Had the objects of these charges been Indians, their term of life would have been very short. The blow of a hatchet, stealthily struck in the dusky entrance of a lodge, would have promptly avenged the victims of their sorcery, and delivered the country from peril. But the priests inspired a strange awe. All councils were held, their death was decreed, and as they walked their rounds, whispering groups of children gazed after them as men doomed to die. But who should be the executioner? They were reviled and upbraided. The Indian boys threw sticks at them as they passed, and then ran behind the houses. When they entered one of these pastiferous dens, this impish crew clamored on the roof, to pelt them with snowballs through the smoke-holes. The old squaw who crouched by the fire scald on them with mingled anger and fear, and cried out, Begone, there are no sick ones here. The invalids wrapped their heads in their blankets, and when the priests accosted some dejected warrior, the savage looked gloomily on the ground and answered not a word. Yet nothing could divert the Jesuits from their ceaseless quest of dying subjects for baptism, and above all of dying children. They penetrated every house in turn. When, through the thin walls of bark, they heard the wail of a sick infant, no menace and no insult could repel them from the threshold. They pushed boldly in, asked to buy some trifle, spoke of late news of Iroquois forays, of anything in short except the pestilence and the sick child, conversed for a while till suspicion was partially lulled asleep, and then, pretending to observe the sufferer for the first time, approached it, felt its pulse, and asked of its health. Now, while apparently fanning the heated brow, the dexterous visitor touched it with a corner of his handkerchief, which he had previously dipped in water, murmured the baptismal words with motionless lips, and snatched another soul from the fangs of the infernal wool. Thus, with the patience of saints, the courage of heroes, and an intent truly charitable, did the Fathers put forth a nimble fingered adroitness that would have done credit to the profession of which the function is less to dispense the treasures of another world than to grasp those which pertain to this. The Huron chiefs were summoned to a great council to discuss the State of the Nation. The crisis demanded all their wisdom, for while the continued ravages of disease threatened them with annihilation, the Iroquois scalping parties infested the outskirts of their towns and murdered them in their fields and forests. The assembly met in August 1637, and the Jesuits, knowing their deep stake in its deliberations, failed not to be present, with a liberal gift of wampum to show their sympathy in the public calamities. In private they sought to gain the goodwill of the deputies one by one, but though they were successful in some cases, the result on the whole was far from hopeful. In the intervals of the council were buffed discourse to the crowd of chiefs on the wonders of the visible heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars, and the planets. They were inclined to believe what he told them, for he had lately, to their great amazement, accurately predicted an eclipse. From the fires above he passed to the fires beneath, till the listeners stood aghast at his hideous pictures of the flames of perdition, the only species of Christian instruction which produced any perceptible effect on this unpromising auditory. The council opened on the evening of the Fourth of August, with all the usual ceremonies, and the night was spent in discussing questions of treaties and alliances, with a deliberation and good sense which the Jesuits could not help admiring. A few days after the assembly took up the more exciting question of the epidemic and its causes. Deputies from three of the four Huron nations were present, each deputation sitting apart. The Jesuits were seated with the nation of the bear in whose towns their missions were established. Like all important councils the session was held at night. It was a strange scene. The light of the fires flickered aloft into the smoky vault, and among the suit-begrimed rafters of the great council-house, and cast an uncertain gleam on the wild and dejected throng that filled the platforms on the floor. I think I never saw anything more legubrious, writes Le Mercier. They looked at each other like so many corpses, or like men who already feel the terror of death. When they spoke it was only with sighs, each reckoning up the sick and dead of his own family. All this was to excite each other to vomit poison against us. A grisly old chief, named Antataric, withered with age and stone blind, but renowned in past years for eloquence and console, opened the debate in a loud, though tremulous voice. First he saluted each of the three nations present, then each of the chiefs in turn, congratulated them that all were there assembled to deliberate on a subject of the last importance to the public welfare, and exhorted them to give it a mature and calm consideration. Next rose the chief whose office it was to preside over the Feast of the Dead. He painted in dismal colors the woeful condition of the country, and ended with charging it all upon the sorceries of the Jesuits. Another old chief followed him. My brothers, he said, you know well that I am a war chief and very rarely speak except in councils of war, but I am compelled to speak now, since nearly all the other chiefs are dead, and I must utter what is in my heart before I follow them to the grave. Only two of my family are left alive, and perhaps even these will not long escape the fury of the pest. I have seen other diseases ravaging the country, but nothing that could compare with this. In two or three moons we saw their end, but now we have suffered for a year and more, and yet the evil does not abate. And what is worst of all we have not yet discovered its source. Then, with words of studied moderation, alternating with bursts of angry invective, he proceeded to accuse the Jesuits of causing, by their sorceries, the unparalleled calamities that afflicted them, and in support of his charge he added a prodigious mass of evidence. When he had spent his eloquence Berbuff rose to reply, and in a few words exposed the absurdities of his statements, whereupon another accuser brought a new array of charges. A clamor soon arose from the whole assembly, and they called upon Berbuff with one voice to give up a certain charmed cloth, which was the cause of their miseries. In vain the missionary protested that he had no such cloth. The clamor increased. If you will not believe me, said Berbuff, go to our house, search everywhere, and if you are not sure which is the charm, take all our clothing and all our cloth and throw them into the lake. Sorcerers always talk in that way, was the lie. Then what will you have me say? demanded Berbuff. Tell us the cause of the pest. Berbuff replied to the best of his power, mingling his explanations with instructions in Christian doctrine and exhortations to embrace the faith. He was continually interrupted, and the old chief, Antotaric, still called upon him to produce the charmed cloth. Thus the debate continued till after midnight, when several of the assembly, seeing no prospect of a termination, fell asleep, and others went away. One old chief, as he passed out, said to Berbuff, If some young man should split your head, we should have nothing to say. The priest still continued to harangue the diminished conclave on the necessity of obeying God and the danger of offending him. When the chief of Osasane called out impatiently, What sort of men are these? They are always saying the same thing and repeating the same words a hundred times. They are never done with telling us about their oaky and what he demands and what he forbids, and paradise and hell. Here was the end of this miserable council, writes Le Mercier, and if less evil came of it than was designed, we owe it after God to the most holy Virgin, to whom we had made a vow of nine masses in honor of her immaculate conception. The Fathers had escaped for the time, but they were still in deadly peril. They had taken pains to secure friends in private, and there were those who were attached to their interests, yet none dared openly take their part. The few converts they had lately made came to them in secret, and warned them that their death was determined upon. Their house was set on fire. In public every face was averted from them, and a new council was called to pronounce the decree of death. They appeared before it with a front of such unflinching assurance that their judges, Indian-like, postponed the sentence. Yet it seemed impossible that they should much longer escape. Rabuf, therefore, wrote a letter of farewell to his superior, Lejeune, at Quebec, and confided it to some converts whom he could trust, to be carried by them to its destination. We are, perhaps, he says, about to give our blood and our lives in the cause of our Master Jesus Christ. It seems that his goodness will accept this sacrifice, as regards me, an expiation of my great and numberless sins, and that he will thus crown the past services and ardent desires of all our Fathers here. It would be his name for ever that he has chosen us, among so many better than we, to aid him to bear his cross in this land. In all things his holy will be done. He then acquaints Lejeune that he has directed the sacred vessels, and all else belonging to the service of the altar, to be placed in case of his death in the hands of Pierre, the convert whose baptism has been described, and that a special care will be taken to preserve the dictionary and other writings on the Huron language. The letter closes with a request for Masses and prayers. The imperiled Jesuits now took a singular, but certainly a very wise step. They gave one of those farewell feasts, festin d'adieu, which Huron custom enjoined on those about to die, whether in the course of nature or by public execution. Being interpreted it was a declaration that the priests knew their danger, and did not shrink from it. It might have the effect of changing over-odd friends into open advocates, and even of awakening a certain sympathy in the breast of an assembly on whom a bold bearing could rarely fail of influence. The house was packed with feasters, and Brabouf addressed them as usual on his unfailing themes of God, Paradise, and Hell. The throng listened in gloomy silence, and each, when he had emptied his bowl, rose and departed, leaving his entertainers in utter doubt as to his feelings and intentions. From this time forth, however, the clouds that overhung the fathers became less dark and threatening. Voices were heard in their defense, and looks were less constantly averted. They ascribed the change to the intercession of St. Joseph, to whom they had vowed a nine-days devotion. By whatever cause produced, the lapse of a week brought a hopeful improvement in their prospects, and when they went out of doors in the morning it was no longer with the expectation of having a hatchet struck into their brains as they crossed the threshold. The persecution of the Jesuits as sorcerers continued in an intermittent form for years, and several of them escaped very narrowly. In a house at Osasone, a young Indian rushed suddenly upon Francois du Péran, and lifted his tomahawk to brain him, when a squaw caught his hand. Paul Regneau wore crucifix, from which hung the image of a skull. An Indian, thinking at a charm, snatched it from him. The priest tried to recover it when the savage, his eyes glittering with murder, brandished his hatchet to strike. Regneau stood motionless, awaiting the blow. His assailant for bore, and withdrew muttering. Pierre Chamonaut was emerging from a house at the Huron town called by the Jesuits Saint-Michel, where he had just baptized a dying girl, when her brother, standing hidden in the doorway, struck him on the head with a stone. Chamonaut, severely wounded, staggered without falling, when the Indians sprang upon him with his tomahawk. The bystanders arrested the blow. Francois La Mercier, in the midst of a crowd of Indians in a house at the town called Saint-Louis, was assailed by a noted chief, who rushed in, raving like a madman, and in a torrent of words, charged upon him all the miseries of the nation. Then, snatching a brand from the fire, he shook it in the Jesuit's face, and told him that he should be burned alive. La Mercier met him with looks as determined as his own, till abashed at his undaunted front and bold enunciations the Indians stood confounded. The belief that their persecutions were owing to the fury of the devil, driven to desperation by the home thrust he had received at their hands, was an unfailing consolation to the priests. Truly, writes La Mercier, it is an unspeakable happiness for us, in the midst of this barbarism, to hear the roaring of the demons and to see earth and hell raging against a handful of men who will not even defend themselves. In all the copious records of this dark period, not a line gives occasion to suspect that one of this loyal band flinched or hesitated. The iron bribeuf, the gentle garnier, the all-enduring jog, the enthusiastic chaminot, l'allement, la Mercier, Châtelin, Daniel, Pijar, Ragnon, Dupère-en, Pancé, Le Moyne—one and all bore themselves with a tranquil boldness which amazed the Indians and enforced their respect. Father Jerome La Mer, in his journal of 1639, is now disposed to draw an evil augury for the mission from the fact that, as yet, no priest had been put to death, in as much as it is a received maxim that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. He consults himself with the hope that the daily life of the missionaries may be accepted as a living martyrdom, since abuse and threats without end, the smoke, fleas, filth, and dogs of the Indian lodges, which are, he says, little images of hell, cold, hunger, and ceaseless anxiety, and all these continued for years, are a portion to which many might prefer the stroke of a tomahawk. Reasonable as the Father's hope may be, its expression proved needless in the sequel, for the Huron Church was not destined to suffer from a lack of martyrdom in any form. CHAPTER 11 1638-1640 We have already touched on the domestic life of the Jesuits. That we may the better know them, we will follow one of their number on his journey towards the scene of his labours, and observe what awaited him on his arrival. Father François Poux Perron came up from Ottawa in a Huron canoe in September 1638, and was well treated by the Indian owner of the vessel. L'Allemante and Le Mouin, who had set out from three rivers before him, did not fare so well. The former was assailed by an Algonquin of Allemante Island, who tried to strangle him in revenge for the death of a child, which a Frenchman in the employ of the Jesuits had lately bled, but had failed to restore to health by the operation. Le Mouin was abandoned by his Huron conductors, and remained for a fortnight by the bank of the river, with a French attendant who supported him by hunting. Another Huron, belonging to the flotilla that carried Duperron, then took him into his canoe, but becoming tired of him was about to leave him on a rock in the river when his brother priest bribed the savage with a blanket to carry him to his journey's end. It was midnight, on the 29th of September, when Duperron landed on the shore of Thunder Bay, after paddling without rest since one o'clock of the preceding morning. The night was rainy, and Asasane was about fifteen miles distant. His Indian companions were impatient to reach their towns. The rain prevented the kindling of a fire, while the priest, who for a long time had not heard mass, was eager to renew his communion as soon as possible. Hence, tired and hungry as he was, he shouldered his sack and took the path for Asasane without breaking his fast. He toiled on, half spent, amid the ceaseless pattering, trickling, and whispering of innumerable drops among innumerable leaves. Till as day dawned he reached a clearing, and described through the mist a cluster of Huron houses. Faint and bedrenched, he entered the principal one and was greeted with the monosyllable Shea. Welcome! A squaw spread a mat for him by the fire, roasted four ears of Indian corn before the coals, baked two squashes in the embers, ladled from her kettle a dish of Sagamite, and offered them to her famished guest. Missionaries seemed to have been a novelty at this place, for while the father breakfasted a crowd, chiefly of children, gathered about him, and stared at him in silence. One examined the texture of his cassock, another put on his hat, a third took the shoes from his feet and tried them on her own. Duperron requited his entertainers with a few trinkets, and begged by signs a guide to Asasane. An Indian accordingly set out with him and conducted him to the mission house, which he reached at six o'clock in the evening. Here he found a warm welcome and a little other refreshment. In respect to the commodities of life the Jesuits were but a step in advance of the Indians. Their house, though well ventilated by numberless crevices in its bark walls, always smelt of smoke, and when the wind was in certain quarters was filled with it to suffocation. At their meals the father sat on logs around the fire, over which their kettle was slung in the Indian fashion. Each had his wooden platter, which from the difficulty of transportation was valued in the Huron country at the price of a robe of beaver skin or a hundred francs. Their food consisted of sagamite or mush, made of pounded Indian corn, boiled with scraps of smoked fish. Chaminot compares it to the paste used for papering the walls of houses. The repast was occasionally varied by a pumpkin or squash baked in the ashes, or in the season by Indian corn roasted in the ear. They used no salt whatever. They could bring their cumbrous pictures, ornaments, investments through the savage journeys of the Ottawa, but they could not bring the common necessaries of life. By day they read and studied by the light that streamed in through the large smoke holes in the roof. At night by the blaze of the fire. Their only candles were a few of wax for the altar. They cultivated a patch of ground but raised nothing on it except wheat for making the sacramental bread. Their food was supplied by the Indians, to whom they gave, in return, cloth, knives, awls, needles, and various trinkets. Their supply of wine for the Eucharist was so scanty that they limited themselves to four or five drops for each mass. Their life was regulated with a conventional strictness. At four in the morning a bell roused them from the sheets of bark on which they slept. Masses, private devotions, reading religious books, and breakfasting filled the time until eight, when they opened their door and admitted the Indians. As many of these proved intolerable nuisances they took what Leaumont calls the Annette liberty of turning out the most intrusive and impracticable, an act performed with all tact and courtesy and rarely taken in dudgeon. Having thus winnowed their company they catatized those that remained as opportunity offered. In the intervals the guests squatted by the fire and smoked their pipes. As among the Spartan virtues of the Hurons that of thieving was especially conspicuous, it was necessary that one or more of the fathers should remain on guard at the house all day. The rest went forth on their missionary labours, baptizing and instructing as we have seen. To each priest who could speak Huron was assigned a certain number of houses, in some instances as many as forty, and as these often had five or six fires, with two families to each, his spiritual flock was as numerous as it was intractable. It was his care to see that none of the number died without baptism, and by every means in his power to commend the doctrines of his faith to the acceptance of those in health. At dinner, which was at two o'clock, Grace was said in Huron, for the benefit of the Indians present, and a chapter of the Bible was read aloud during the meal. At four or five, according to the season, the Indians were dismissed, the door closed, and the evenings spent in writing, reading, studying the language, devotion, and conversation on the affairs of the mission. The local missions here referred to embrace Asasane and the villages of the neighborhood, but the priests by no means confined themselves within these limits. They made distant excursions, too, in company, until every house in every Huron town had heard the annunciation of the new doctrine. On these journeys they carried blankets or large mantles at their backs for sleeping in at night, besides a supply of needles, alls, beads, and other small articles to pay for their lodging and entertainment. For the Hurons, hospitable without stint to each other, expected full compensation from the Jesuits. At Asasane the house of the Jesuits no longer served the double purpose of dwelling in Chapel. In 1638 they had in their pay twelve artisans and laborers sent up from Quebec. Hither they removed their pictures and ornaments, and here, in winter, several fires were kept burning, for the comfort of the half-naked converts. Of these they now had at Asasane about sixty, a large though evidently not a very solid nucleus for the Huron church, and they labored hard and anxiously to confirm and multiply them. Of a Sunday morning in winter one could have seen them coming to mass, often from a considerable distance, as naked, says Lalmont, as your hand, except a skin over their backs like a mantle, and in the coldest weather a few skins around their feet and legs. They knelt, mingled with the French mechanics, before the altar, very awkwardly at first for the posture was new to them, and all received the sacrament together, a spectacle which, as the missionary chronicler declares, repaid a hundred times all the labor of their conversion. Some of the principal methods of conversion are curiously illustrated in a letter written by Garnier to a friend in France. Send me, he says, a picture of Christ without a beard. Several virgins are also requested, together with a variety of souls in perdition. Ahm dhamni, most of them to be mounted in a portable form. Particular direction are given with respect to the demons, dragons, flames, and other essentials of these works of art. Of souls in bliss, Ahm's ben-heruse, he thinks that one will be enough. All the pictures must be in full face, not in profile, and they must look directly at the beholder with open eyes. The colors should be bright, and there must be no flowers or animals, as these distract the attention of the Indians. The first point with the priest was, of course, to bring the objects of their zeal to an acceptance of the fundamental doctrines of the Roman Church. But as the mind of the savage was by no means that beautiful blank which some have represented it, there was much to be erased as well as to be written. They must renounce a host of superstitions, to which they were attached with a strange tenacity, or which may rather be said to have been ingrained in their very natures. Certain points of Christian morality were also strongly urged by the missionaries, who insisted that the convert should take but one wife and not cast her off without grave cause, and that he should renounce the gross license almost universal among the Hurans. Murder, cannibalism, and several other offenses were also forbidden. Yet while laboring at the work of conversion with an energy never surpassed, and battling against the powers of darkness with the metal of paladins, the Jesuits never had the folly to assume towards the Indians a dictatorial or overbearing tone. Gentleness, kindness, and patience were the rule of their intercourse. They studied the nature of the savage, and conformed themselves to it with an admirable tact. Far from treating the Indian as an alien and barbarian they would feign have adopted him as a countryman, and they proposed to the Hurans that a number of young Frenchmen should settle among them and marry their daughters in solemn form. The listeners were gratified at an overture so flattering. But what is the use they demanded of so much ceremony? If the Frenchmen want our women they are welcome to come and take them whenever they please, as they always used to do. The Fathers are well agreed that their difficulties did not arise from any natural defective understanding on the part of the Indians, who, according to Chaminot, were more intelligent than the French peasantry, and who in some instances showed their way with a marked capacity. It was the inert mass of pride, sensuality, indolence, and superstition that opposed the march of the faith, and in which the devil lay entrenched as behind impregnable breastworks. It soon became evident that it was easier to make a convert than to keep him. Many of the Indians clung to the idea that baptism was a safeguard against pestilence and misfortune, and when the fallacy of this notion was made apparent their zeal cooled. Their only amusements consisted of feasts, dances, and games, many of which were, to a greater or less degree, of a superstitious character, and as the Fathers could rarely prove to their own satisfaction the absence of the diabolic element in any one of them, they prescribed the whole indiscriminately, to the extreme disgust of the neophyte. His countrymen, too, set him with dismal prognostics, as, you will kill no more game, all your hair will come out before the spring, and so forth. Various doubts also assailed him with regard to the substantial advantages of his new profession, and several converts were filled with anxiety in view of the probable want of tobacco in heaven, saying that they could not do without it. Nor was it pleasant in these incipient Christians, as they sat in class listening to the instructions of their teacher, to find themselves and him suddenly made the targets of a shower of sticks, snowballs, corn cobs, and other rubbish, flung at them by a screeching rabble of vagabond boys. Yet while most of the neophytes demanded an anxious and diligent cultivation, there were a few of excellent promise, and of one or two especially, the Fathers, in the fullness of their satisfaction, assure us again and again that they were savage only in name. As the town of Ahanateria, where the Jesuits had made their first abode, was ruined by the pestilence, the mission established there, and known by the name of St. Joseph, was removed in the summer of 1638 to Tionaste, a large town at the foot of a range of hills near the southern borders of the Huron Territory. The Hurons, this year, had had unwanted success in their war with the Iroquois, and had taken at various times nearly a hundred prisoners. Many of these were brought to the seat of the new mission of St. Joseph, and put to death with frightful tortures, though not before several had been converted and baptized. The torture was followed in spite of the remonstrances of the priests by those cannibal feasts customary with the Hurons on such occasions. Once, when the Fathers had been strenuous in their denunciations, a hand of the victim duly prepared was flung in at their door, as an invitation to join in the festivity. As the owner of the severed member had been baptized, they dug a hole in their chapel and buried it with solemn rites of sepulchre.