1654-1657

IROQUOIS AND JESUITS

THE DEPARTURE OF THE JESUITS

RENEWAL OF HOSTILITIES IN THE SPRING—PEACE—WAMPUM NECKLACES AND BELTS—MONTREAL HEADQUARTERS OF PEACE PARLEYS—AUTUMN ATTACKS—"LA BARRIQUE"—MONTREAL LEFT SEVERELY ALONE—CHIEF "LA GRANDE ARMES"—M. DE LAUSON PERSECUTING MONTREAL—THE COMPLETION OF THE PARISH CHURCH—PENDING ECCLESIASTICAL CHANGES IN MONTREAL—NOTES: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES OF THE EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES IN MONTREAL—PONCET—JOGUES—LE MOYNE—BUTEAUX—DRUILLETTES—ALBANEL—LE JEUNE—PARKMAN'S ESTIMATE OF THE SUCCESS OF THE JESUIT MISSIONS—DR. GRANT'S APPRECIATION OF THEIR WORK.

The fictitious and temporary peace which had intervened when de Maisonneuve arrived in the autumn of 1653, and had allowed the settlers to resume the work of building their homes outside the fort, was shortly to be broken.

Indeed, during the year just described there were not wanting indications, early in the spring of 1654, of the renewal of hostilities, when a young surgeon engaged in setting his beaver traps was carried off in a canoe by the lurking Onondaga Indians. In the beginning of May a band of the same Iroquois, who had not heard of this act of perfidy, were well received when coming for trade and they sent a canoe back for the stolen man. In the meantime, about seven hundred Hurons descended to Montreal with thirteen Iroquois captives made on the journey down. These were given to the Iroquois captain, who remained as a hostage till the canoe returned, in the hope of making peace. Soon the surgeon was brought back with a delegation, bearing twenty necklaces of wampum as signs of peace from the Iroquois nation.

One of the significant gifts was to recognize and consolidate the position of Ville Marie as the headquarters of peace treaties, which had been lately so constituted by the governor of Quebec, who had transferred to Montreal the treaty pole which had been erected at Quebec in the autumn of 1653 as a sign of peace. Its position at Montreal signified the recognized place for parley councils for peace overtures. This was an adroit move on the part of de Lauson. It recognized that Montreal was the frontier post and the most accessible, and also it was a standing eulogium of the diplomatic ability of de Maisonneuve to deal with the natives, and it might keep the enemy higher up the river away from Quebec.

Unfortunately, as we have said, these Iroquois were divided into five nations, who often acted without concert, so that protestations of peace by wampum belts had always to be taken for what they were worth. Montreal was soon to be in daily dread of assault. Thus in the autumn, when in fancied security, owing to the recent renewal of peace, the ordinary precautions were being neglected at Montreal in the busy building and farming operations, a band of Iroquois were in ambuscade around. The sentinel was standing on a tree stump, leisurely surveying the country around, when an Iroquois who had stealthily approached, hiding at intervals behind other stumps, suddenly pounced upon him and seizing him by the legs, threw him over his shoulders and set off in flight with the bewildered soldier shrieking for his life and fighting as best he could. His cries aroused the men in the field and they pursued them until they came up to the Iroquois band with their chief at their head. They would have fared badly had not Lambert Closse come up with his men. Recognizing the chief, who was known by the French as "La Barrique," or "The Hogshead," because of his barrel-like corpulency, he ordered one of his best shots cautiously to get within fighting distance, and pick him off.

Meanwhile Hogshead, unaware of impending disaster, was standing on a stump haranguing his men and urging them to the attack, when he received a charge of heavy lead full in his body and he fell to the ground bathed in blood. Thinking him dead, his followers fled incontinently.

But he did not die, for under the skillful care of the doctors and Jeanne Mance, he was tended at the hospital and recovered, though he was seriously crippled for the rest of his days. Their charity changed his fierce disposition. When he left he promised never to go on the warpath against them again but that he would return later to conclude a peace, as indeed he did, though not so easily as he could have wished.

For a time the Iroquois left Montreal severely alone. "Let us not go thither," they would say. "They are devils there." They turned to attack the settlement of the Ile des Oies below Quebec instead. But later, on May 31, 1655, they attacked the colony and killed one Dabigeon.

Then they passed over to the other side of the St. Lawrence and pretended to be another tribe, and sent delegates to parley with the fort. Charles Le Moyne, who had just come from Quebec, recognized them as the assailants at the Ile des Oies and, suspecting treachery, they were told to come the next day. Finally, an engagement took place and five Iroquois were taken prisoners to the camp, among them Chief La Plume (or "The Feather"). Another parley now took place, and a peace was agreed upon on the proposition of Chief La Grande ArmÉe, on condition that all the captives on both sides should be exchanged, and that peace with the Hurons and Algonquins should be observed as long as they should not advance above Three Rivers. Among the French restored were the captives taken at Ile des Oies, one of whom, Elizabeth Moyen, then a child, married Lambert Closse in 1657, and her sister Marie who remained with Jeanne Mance twenty years.

Peace concluded, the work of agriculture was pushed on although, taught by sad experience, the men went to the fields armed as usual. In order to pursue this in greater safety, de Maisonneuve, by a permission given on August 25, 1655, in the name of the Company allowed the colonists to cultivate and enjoy the fruits of the lands on the "domain of the Seigneurs," which were nearer to the fort than their own concessions. When the time came for them to be able to till the latter, the lands on the domain should be handed back. These negotiations were put into the hands of Lambert Closse, for de Maisonneuve had chosen him to hold the reins of government while he himself made a third journey to France this autumn, as the next chapter will relate.

These peace arrangements at Montreal always meant the interchange of presents which were a burden on the community instead of on the governor of Quebec, whom the early historians, with M. de Belmont, accuse of "persecuting Montreal."

In addition to what we know, de Lauson wanted to levy a tax on all imports to Montreal. He took it ill that Montreal had its storehouse at Quebec, wishing it to purchase its necessities from Quebec. He also wanted the Company of Montreal to send out more men than they found convenient. All this brought him a letter of Louis XIV in favour of Montreal.

Misfortunes clouded the last days of de Lauson. He left for France in the summer of 1656 and died in Paris on February 16, 1666, at the age of eighty-two years. His sons, for whom he had planned great possessions in Canada, did not live long after their father's departure from Canada, and he saw nearly all his family extinct before his death and all their properties reverting to the king on account of their conditions of grant not being fulfilled. His ineffectual tenure of office was due to his inefficiency, aggravated by the cruel abandonment of the French colony by the great Company.

M. de Lauson was succeeded in the post of governor general by his son, Charles de Lauson-Charny. But his administration was no more successful than that of his father. Indeed the office was not to his taste and he prevailed upon M. d'Ailleboust, who had arrived from France on September 12, 1657, to take his place, and six days after he sailed back home, disgusted with the vanities of the world, so that he entered the ecclesiastical state, returning later to work in the sacred ministry in Canada.

Meanwhile the new parish church, begun two years ago, was being completed, the funds, owing to the poverty of the colonists, being largely supplied by the Seigneurs. It was adjoined to the HÔtel-Dieu on St. Paul Street, so that it might suffice for the citizens and the sick. It was dedicated to St. Joseph, the patron of the hospital, and was opened in 1656. In the foundation and under the doorway of entrance there was placed, within the first stone, the following inscription, engraven as a leaden plate: "Cette premiÈre pierre a ÉtÉ posÉe en l'honneur de St. Joseph, l'an 1656, le 28 AoÛt.

Jesus! Maria! Joseph!"

This building, which served up to 1689 as the parish church of the colony, was adjoined to the hospital situated on the street which was formed a little afterwards by the first houses constructed at Ville Marie and called St. Paul, and was placed at the corner of another street which was called from the name of the church, St. Joseph, today known as St. Sulpice. The body of the building was of wood, about eighty feet long, thirty broad, and twenty feet high; the church being at one end, covering about fifty feet, and surmounted by a bell tower with two bells. The good folk of Ville Marie were proud to see their new temple.

Affairs were now in a bad state; the Iroquois were uncurbed and unsettled through the weak administration of de Lauson, and thus prepared for the bitter war again to be proclaimed at the end of 1657.

But at present, in the summer of 1657, there was nothing but anticipation of the arrival of the governor and the four Sulpicians who were to be the parish clergy, with a permanent abode and a settled ecclesiastical status.

The Jesuits who had so long served the mission were to be free to go to the up-country Indians—their long connection with the settlement was to be severed.

NOTE

THE JESUIT MISSIONARIES AT MONTREAL
(From 1642 to August 12, 1657, when the Sulpicians succeeded them.)

The first mayor of Montreal, Commander Jacques Viger, has collected in a little manuscript book preserved in the Archives of St. Marie's College at Montreal the list of Jesuits serving Montreal from 1642-1657 as follows:

Joseph Poncet, 1642-4; Joseph Imbert Duperon, 1642-3; Ambroise Daoust, 1643; Gabriel Druillettes, 1643-5; Isaac Jogues, 1645; Jacques Buteaux, 1645; Paul Le Jeune, 1645-6; Adrien Daran, 1646; Georges d'Eudemare, 1647-8; Jean de Quen, 1648-50; Pierre Bailloquet, 1648; Charles Albanel, 1650; AndrÉ Richard, 1650; SimÉon Le Moyne, 1650; Claude Pijart, 1650 to August 12, 1657.

Fifteen Jesuits resident in fifteen years. This does not account for names of other distinguished missionaries visiting, whose names appear on the registers as having officiated at Ville Marie baptisms, marriages, deaths and other documents during this early period. Mr. E. Z. Massicotte in his "Les Colons de Montreal de 1642-1667," gives some of these as follows:

• 1649—JÉrome Lalemant, June 1st to 11th, May 19th to 24th.
• 1650—Paul Ragueneau, two days.
• 1655—Claude Dablon passed through Montreal in October, also on the 30th of March, 1666. He would also have signed 3-5-'62 a document concerning Hudson Bay.
• 1656—Joseph Marie Chaumont, October, the bearer of a message for the Iroquois in 1661, was at Montreal in 1662, resided at Montreal in 1663.
• 1656—LÉonard Gareau, wounded in a combat on August 30th, buried September 2d.
• 1657—FranÇois? le Mercier, July 24th.

Of the Montreal Jesuits, there are some who merit special mention here.

JOSEPH ANTOINE PONCET DE LA RIVIERE

Joseph Antoine Poncet de la RiviÈre, of aristocratic birth, was born in Paris and entered the Society of Jesus in his nineteenth year as a novice. His studies finished, he came to New France in 1639. He shortly went to the Huron mission. We next find him, 1642-4, the first priest in charge of the mission chapel at the fort of Montreal. After this he ministered at Quebec. On his return from a visit to the Iroquois, he went down the St. Lawrence and was the first white man to glide through the Thousand Islands. He was giving the alarm to the colonists at Cape Rouge in the summer of 1653, when he was himself seized by the savages. He bore a remembrance of the ill treatment of his captivity in the form of a lost finger, which a little child had been ordered to cut off. He was afterwards released to the Dutch at Fort Orange and returned to Quebec on November 5th, "just nine times nine days after my capture," he says. We next know him as the storm centre of ecclesiastical differences between Montreal and Quebec. As a result of this Poncet was sent back to Europe. He was installed as French penitentiary at Loretto, and later was sent to Martinique, where he died on June 18, 1675.

ISAAC JOGUES

Isaac Jogues was born at OrlÉans, France, January 10, 1607. His first schooling was at Rouen and he entered the Jesuit novitiate at Paris in his seventeenth year. Having finished his studies and period of teaching we find him in his twenty-ninth year reaching Canada in 1636 in the same vessel as Champlain's successor, Montmagny. Two or three weeks later, that same October, Jogues began his missionary work, joining a flotilla of Huron canoes and sailing 900 miles over dangerous rivers and lakes, skirting rapids and precipices and making many toilsome "portages" through dense forests, pools and marshes, to the great Lake Huron which was known as "Fresh Water Sea."

Such was Jogues' first experience of missionary life. Living on Indian corn and water, sleeping on rocks and in the woods, battling day after day against a rapid current, dragging heavy burdens over the long portages, a part of the time with a sick boy on his shoulder—till he staggered through the triple stockade of the Indian town of Ihonitiria and fell into the arms of de BrÉbeuf and his Jesuit companions. In this new mission field one of the first works entrusted to his practical sagacity, which stood his fellow missionaries in good stead, was the construction of Fort Ste. Marie, whose ruins, discovered in 1859, testify to the solidity of the outworks. His first apostolic work away from Fort Ste. Marie was among the Petuns, or Tobacco Indians. In September, 1641, he went with the Jesuit Raimbault to found a mission among the Ojibways or Chippewas on the upper reaches of Lake Huron at a place called by the missionaries Sault Ste. Marie, today a great centre of commerce. They were the first white men to stand on the shores of Lake Superior.

We next find him back at Georgian Bay. Supplies were being exhausted and Jogues offered to go to Quebec, a thousand miles off, for them. This done, on the way back in the first week of August, 1642, his party was surprised by the hostile Mohawks and captured. While being taken up country he was most brutally tortured, beaten by sticks, clubs and knives, and his wounds torn open by the long nails of the Indians. The joints of his fingers were gnawed off or burned off at intervals. On the arrival of the party at Ossernenon, on the north bank of the Mohawk, a captive Christian woman was compelled, under threat of death, to saw off with a jagged shell the thumb of the priest. But he was not killed, as so many of his party were.

On the 29th of September, 1642, RenÉ Goupil, his faithful companion, was tomahawked in the skull for making the sign of the cross on the head of a child. The place is identified as Auriesville.

When Goupil was dead, Jogues was alone and began his awful captivity of more than a year, each moment of which was a martyrdom. In the "Relation," which his superior commanded him to write, he has left us a partial account of the horrors he endured. Employed in the filthiest and most degrading of occupations he was regarded with greater contempt than the most degraded squaw of the village. Heavy burdens were heaped on his crippled and mangled shoulders, and he was made to tramp fifty, sixty and sometimes a hundred miles after his savage masters, who delighted to exhibit him wherever they went. His naked feet left bloody tracks upon the ice or flints of the road; his flesh was rotting with disease, and his wounds were gangrened; he was often beaten to the earth by the fists or clubs of crazy and drunken Indians, and more than once he saw the tomahawk above his head and heard his death sentence pronounced. The wretched deerskin they persuaded him to wear was swarming with vermin; he was often in a condition of semi-starvation as he crouched in a corner of the filthy wigwam and saw the savages gorging themselves with meat, which had been first offered to the demons, and which he therefore refused to eat, though his savage masters raged against the implied contempt to their gods. For thirteen months he thus remained a captive. Yet he baptized more than seventy persons, most of them Huron captives, at the point of death. Often Jogues would rush into the flames up to the stake for this purpose. During this time, on June 30, 1643, he secured a scrap of paper on which he wrote to Montmagny that the Mohawks were about to make a raid on Fort Richelieu. This message, carried for him by a Huron, warned the garrison in time and the Indians were repulsed. This defeat was traced to Jogues and his death was expected. But in the meantime an order came from Governor Kieft of Manhattan to the commandant at Fort Orange to secure his release at all costs. This required the co-operation of Jogues. In spite of his harsh treatment the prisoner was unwilling at first to enter into the plot, feeling it to be his duty to remain at his post. At last he consented. He was conveyed to the Dutch settlement of Fort Orange (Albany), which the angry Mohawks threatened to burn, but fearful of risking a war with the Dutch while they were fighting with the French, after a parley they consented to relinquish their claim on the black robe for 300 livres. A six-day journey brought him to Manhattan which he described as "seven leagues in circuit and on it is a fort to serve as a commencement of a town to be built there, and to be called New Amsterdam." At this town, as at the place of his escape, he was kindly treated by the famous Dominic Johannes Megapolensis, Jr., the first person who went to New York at the invitation of Killaen van Rensselaer to look after the spiritual affairs of the colony. After a month's sojourn at Manhattan, Father Jogues left on November 5, 1643, in a wretched little vessel which, after a severe tossing on the Atlantic, reached Falmouth, in Cornwall, at the end of December, hotly pursued by some of Cromwell's ships, for the rebellion against Charles I was then in progress.

In Falmouth he was robbed, at the point of the pistol, of all his belongings, by some marauders lurking round the port. At last, having secured a free passage in a dirty collier, he was flung on Christmas morning, 1643, on the coast of Brittany, but after eight days he reached the Jesuit College at Rennes—and at last the emaciated, haggard tramp was recognized as the lost Isaac Jogues, of whose capture the "Relations" had warned them.

Honour was now meted out to this humble Jesuit much to his discomfiture. Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV, called him to court and compelled him to throw back his cloak and tell of the hideous manner in which his fingers had been eaten or burned. The queen, descending from the throne, took his hand in hers and, with tears streaming down her cheeks, devoutly kissed the mutilated members and exclaimed: "People write romances for us—but was ever a romance like this? And it is all true."

This form of public exhibition was displeasing to Jogues but the permission granted by Pope Urbain VIII, at the request of some of his admirers, to have the canonical impediment raised against his faculty to say mass because of his mutilated fingers, was a source of gratification. The answer of Urbain to the request was "Indignum esset martyrum Christi, Christi non bibere sanguinem"—"it would be wrong to prevent the martyr of Christ from drinking the blood of Christ."

Isaac Jogues did not loiter to be lionized in Paris, but in June was in Quebec, and was now appointed to serve the sick and hearten the defenders of the stockade of Montreal. In July he was present at a parley with the Indians at a conference held at Three Rivers, where he met Father Bressani, who had also had a similar experience of the tortures of the Iroquois and whose fingers were also wanting. After a treaty had been made Jogues returned to Montreal. One result of this treaty was that an ambassador was to be sent to the Mohawks and Father Jogues, as he spoke the Iroquois tongue, was appointed to revisit those who had so ill used him. But it was two years later before the actual embassy started from Three Rivers, on May 16, 1646. Father Jogues reached Lake AndiataroctÉ on the eve of Corpus Christi, the feast of the Blessed Sacrament, and called it the "Lake of the Blessed Sacrament." A century later this was renamed by Sir William Johnson "Lake George" in honour of the English king. On June 5th Jogues reached Ossernenon, and in his character as ambassador was well received. At the council held on June 10th or June 16th the party returned, reaching Quebec on July 3rd. Jogues petitioned to be sent back to the Mohawks as a missionary. On September 27th he left Quebec for the Iroquois country. He wrote to a friend: "Ibo sed non redibo—I go but I shall not return," as though his fate were revealed to him.

Before he reached Ossernenon he learned that the hatchet had been dug up to meet him. As an ambassador he had been respected, but as a Christian missionary a hostile reception awaited him. An innocent box of vestments left behind him on his previous visit was the cause. A pestilence had broken out and the crops were withered. Therefore these misfortunes were due to the Manitou in the box. Jogues could have avoided Ossernenon and returned to Quebec, but he faced his enemies, who met him with the sorcerer, Ondersonk. Jogues wore his clerical garb. His garments were stripped off him; he was slashed with knives and led, mangled and bleeding, to the scene of his recent triumph as an ambassador. A council was held at Tionnontoguen to see what was to be done with him. The Wolf-Tortoise family were against killing him, as were most of the Bears, and he was spared.

But the Bears, bent on vengeance, invited the wounded Jogues to a feast on October 18th. He left his cabin and followed to the festive wigwam, and as he entered a Mohawk, waiting behind the door brought down his axe with a crash on to his skull. His head was hacked off and fixed on a stake of the palisade, and his body was flung into the Mohawk River hard by.

There is no reasonable doubt but that the place of his martyrdom occurred at Auriesville on the south shore of the Mohawk just above the Schoharie. "So died," says Ingram Kip, the Protestant bishop of California, "one of that glorious band that had shown greater devotion in the cause of Christianity than has ever been seen since the time of the Apostles; men whose lives and sufferings reveal a story more touching and pathetic than anything in the records of our country, and whose names should ever be kept in grateful remembrance; stern, high-wrought men who might have stood high in court or camp, and who could contrast their desolate state in the lowly wigwam with the refinement and affluence that waited on them in their earlier years, but who had given up home and love of kindred and the golden ties of relationship for God and man."

Another famous missionary who served Montreal and who often passed through it on his journeys to and fro, was SimÉon Le Moyne, who was born about 1601. He entered the society at the age of nineteen and in 1638 he was at work in the Canadian mission field, chiefly among the Hurons, among whom he was known as "Wane," or phonetically in English "Won," the "w" taking the place of the missing "m" in their language, the result being an attempt to reproduce the French pronunciation of "Moyne." His early experiences at Lake Huron brought him in touch with those other heroes, BrÉbeuf, Daniel, Lalemant, Jogues, and others, many of whom were to be killed. He saw the annihilation of the Hurons and wandered with the remnants over hill and dell and stream, ministering to them. In 1654 he accepted the dangerous mission to the Iroquois at Onondaga, leaving his life in the hands of the Almighty. His object was to pacify the Iroquois as an ambassador, to give comfort to the Huron captives and to prepare the way for a permanent mission. On his return to Quebec he recommended this, and the Jesuits Dablon and Chauminot were appointed. He held several councils and distributed presents. [76] Le Moyne was endowed with a sense of humour. "Le Moyne," says the Rev. T. J. Campbell, "tells us that on this occasion he strutted around like an actor, gesticulating extravagantly, imitating the manners of their great orators, each time winning great grunts of applause from the attendant chiefs and keeping up his eloquence for two hours." The amusing part is that it was told in Huron, of which the Iroquois had only a general knowledge: it was the parent stock. The impressive manner he assumed—he was a past master in mimicry—no doubt overwhelmed them and possibly whimpered interpretations were being given at the same time to let them know what he was saying.

On his return, before reaching Montreal, we are told by Charlevoix that Le Moyne was in a canoe with two Onondagas, the Hurons and Algonquins following. As they approached Montreal they were surprised to find themselves surrounded by several canoes full of Mohawks, who poured a volley upon them from their muskets. The Hurons and Algonquins were all killed, as well as one of the Onondagas. Le Moyne was taken and bound as a prisoner of war, and the Onondaga was told to return home, but he protested that he could not abandon the missionary, who had been confided to him by the sachems of his canton and he menaced the Mohawks with all the wrath of the Upper Iroquois. At first they laughed at his threats, but when they saw that he would not flinch they unbound their prisoner and put him in the hands of his faithful conductor, who led him to Montreal. The chief, who was at the head of these Mohawks, was known as the Flemish Bastard.

The Upper Iroquois, the Agnieronnons, those among whom Isaac Jogues had been killed in 1646, jealous of the distinction paid to their kinsman, the Onondagas, desired an envoy to be sent to them. Accordingly the "Relation" of 1656 tells how Father Le Moyne left Montreal on August 17th with twelve Iroquois and a Frenchman. He arrived at the Village of AgniÉe (Auriesville) on September 17th. He then visited Ossernenon and later went on to Manhattan to visit the Dutch, after which he returned to Ossernenon, leaving for Montreal in November, lucky to escape with his life, having however promised the Mohawks to give them missionaries. In the meantime the Onondagas had been already favoured by missionaries, and a body of fifty Frenchmen, the nucleus of a trading post. Again the jealousy of the Mohawks of Ossernenon caused a second and a third visit from the diplomatic Le Moyne.

The trading post at Onondaga collapsed through the Frenchmen, hearing of a plot to massacre them, decamping by night and making their way to Montreal.

The perfidious Iroquois of Onondaga, angry at their discovered treachery, were now joined by the Mohawks and for two years the St. Lawrence witnessed bloody fights. Christian Huron settlements were burned and pillaged, and white and red men massacred. Montreal was the storm centre of war.

"One day in July (1661), when the storm was at its height, a number of Iroquois canoes were seen coming down the river towards Montreal. The garrison rushed to the stockade and watched them as they approached the shore. In front was a flag of truce. The savage warriors, in paint and feathers, stepped out as if assured of a friendly reception. The gate was thrown open and, followed by four French captives, the Iroquois advanced into the town. The spokesman was the redoubtable Cayuga chief, named Saonchiowaga. Solemnly he broke the bonds of the French prisoners and promised the liberation of others still in the Onondaga country. Then he began his address, offering his presents meanwhile. Coming to the fifth present he said: 'This is to bring the Frenchman back to us. We still keep his mat; his house is still standing in Ganentoa. His fire is still lighted, and his fields have been tilled and await his return for his hand to gather the harvest.' Then, altering his tone and raising aloft the last belt, he exclaimed: A black gown must come to us; otherwise there will be no peace. On his coming depends the lives of twenty Frenchmen at Onondaga.' And he placed in the governor's hand a leaf of a book, on the margin of which the twenty unfortunate captives had written their names." Campbell, Vol. I, p. 102.

Although many thought this a trick to lure others to death Father Le Moyne offered to go to test its sincerity, and on July 21, 1661, he left Montreal for Onondaga. There he was successful in concluding peace with the help of GaragontiÉ, "The Sun that Advances," who shortly went down to Montreal to negotiate peace. But his withdrawal was a sorry turn for Le Moyne, whom the Iroquois lads would have burned alive on the scaffold at the stake. He escaped on one occasion with some frightful scalds which took six months to heal. At another time he was nearly tomahawked. The return of GaragontiÉ alone made his work of charity among the Onondagas possible. He had plenty to do to look after the French captives and to secure their ransom. In this he was largely successful and returned to Montreal in the summer of 1662. The "Relations" record this as follows: "On the last day of August, 1662, the father made his appearance in a canoe below the Falls of St. Louis, having around him all the happy rescued ones and a score of Onondagas, who from being enemies, had become their boatmen. They landed amid the cheers and embraces of all the French of Montreal, and following Father Le Moyne proceeded to the church to thank God."

Wars prevented him going back to Onondaga, but he applied for the post in 1664. His shattered health, however, stood in the way, and he died in 1665, sick of a fever at Cape Madeleine, opposite Three Rivers. He may be called the Apostle of the Onondagas.

JAMES BUTEAUX

James Buteaux was born at Abbeville, in France, on April 11, 1600, and joined the Canadian mission shortly after it was handed over to the French. He served the Algonquin missions and while at Montreal not only did he accompany the Christian Indians in their fights, but he heartened the little garrison at home, as also the good Maisonneuve, who was then realizing what his declaration had meant when he had told Montmagny that he would stay in Montreal if every tree were an Iroquois. He was a most devoted missionary, although he was a frail man. "I have often seen him," says Father de Quen, "tramping in the dark through three or four feet of snow, groping along by the light of a lantern which the howling wind would often tear from his hand or extinguish, while he himself would perhaps be flung by the violence of the storm down some icy trail into the snowdrifts below. This would be surprising news," continues the writer, "for those who remember him in France, frail to the last degree and almost always a valetudinarian." This happened at Sillery and his devotedness, no doubt, was similar at Montreal.

His whole life was led midst the alarms of war. On the 10th of May, 1652, when, with a Huron and a Frenchman, on a journey from his beloved Three Rivers on a mission to the White Fish tribe, he was fallen upon by Iroquois. The Huron was seized and the priest and Frenchman fell riddled with bullets. The savages then rushed upon them with their knives and tomahawks, stripped them naked and flung them into the river.

GABRIEL DRUILLETTES

Gabriel Druillettes, it is said, was born in 1593, but it is certain he came to Canada on August 15, 1643, in the same ship with the Jesuits Garreau and Chabanel, both subsequently being slain by the Indians. He served Montreal for a short time, but his after-career as the "Apostle of Maine" entitles him to considerable fame in early American history. In 1670 he went to the West. In 1671 the white-haired missionary was at the solemn "prise de possession" at Sault Ste. Marie, ordered by Talon. He remained at the Sault till 1679, whence he journeyed to Quebec to rest after his long missionary wanderings, dying two years later, full of years and good works.

CHARLES ALBANEL

Charles Albanel was born in 1613 and came to America on August 23, 1649, and in the following year was at Montreal. His after-career was one of adventure. He may be called the missionary of the Hudson Bay. In his second visit there in 1674 he went expressly as Frontenac's secret agent to induce Radisson to abandon the service of the Hudson's Bay Company; in fact he handed Radisson a letter from Colbert offering him a position in the French navy, the payment of all his debts and a gratuity of 400 pounds sterling if he would return to his allegiance. The adventurer eventually accepted the proposition. Charles Albanel was taken prisoner to England because he did endeavour to convert "ye Indians and persuade them not to trade with ye English."

He is described as a "little ould man born of English parentage." He was set free, and was in France in 1675, on July 22d set sail for America. Coming back from Canada his superiors kept him away from the Hudson Bay territory and sent him west, and the "little ould man" of 1674 died twenty-two years later, as a missionary at Sault Ste. Marie on January 11, 1696.

PAUL LE JEUNE

Paul Le Jeune, whom the distinguished historian of New York, Dr. O'Callaghan, calls the Father of the Canadian missions, one among many reasons for this title being, that, when Canada was restored to the French, he was elected as superior of the missions, was born at ChÂlons-sur-Marne in July, 1591, and arrived in Canada in 1632. [77] He was the friend of Champlain, whose funeral oration he pronounced in 1635. He was highly esteemed by Montmagny. As superior of the missions he ruled from Miscou to Lake Huron, but he was glad enough to serve humbly in the ranks when Father Vimont became provincial. Thus it is that we find him serving the mission of Montreal. In 1649 he returned to France as procurator of the French missions in Canada. Later on when there was a question of naming a bishop of Quebec, Father Le Jeune was the choice of the queen regent. Charles Lalemant and Ragueneau were also mentioned, but the general of the Jesuits forbade the consideration of any Jesuit for that post. Laval, as we know, was eventually appointed. In 1661, it was Le Jeune who made the touching and fearless appeal to Louis XIV himself for the perishing colony. This helped to open the eyes of the monarch and was the herald of better times which, however, did not occur till 1666, two years after the death of Le Jeune, when de Tracy's and de Courcelles' handful of men brought the peace which lasted for fifteen years.

It would be tedious to the reader to give further autobiographical notes. Yet the importance of these Montreal missionaries for the colonization of New France and the civilization of the Indians justifies the space we have allotted.

Parkman in his "Jesuits," pages 318-320, sums up the success of their missions thus:

"When we look for the results of those missions we soon become aware that the influence of the French and the Jesuits extended far beyond the circle of converts. It eventually modified and softened the manners of many unconverted tribes.

"In the wars of the next century we do not find those examples of diabolical atrocity with which the earlier annals are crowded. The savage burned his enemies alive, it is true, but he rarely ate them; neither did he torment them with the same deliberation and persistency. He was a savage still, but not so often a devil. * * * In this softening of manner, such as it was, and in the obedient Catholicity of a few hundred tamed savages gathered at stationary missions in Canada, we find after a century had elapsed all the results of the heroic toil of the Jesuits. The missions had failed because the Indians had ceased to exist. Of the great tribes on whom rested the hopes of the early Canadian fathers, nearly all were virtually extinct. The missionaries built laboriously and well, but they were doomed to build on a falling foundation. The Indians melted away, not because civilization destroyed them, but because their own ferocity and untractable indolence made it impossible that they should exist in its presence. Either the plastic energies of a higher race, or the servile pliancy of a lower one, would each in its way have preserved them; as it was, their extinction was a foregone conclusion. As for the religion which the Jesuits taught them, however Protestants may carp at it, it was the only form of Christianity likely to take root in their crude and barbarous nature."

The following appreciation of the early Jesuits, taken from "The Dominion of Canada—The Brave Days of Old," by a Protestant writer, Professor Grant, of Kingston, may be of interest as coming from a later day pen:

"Eyes and heart alternately glow and fill as we read the endless 'Relations' of their faith and failures, their heaped-up measure of miseries, their boundless wisdom, their heroic martyrdoms. We forget our traditional antipathy to the name of Jesuit. The satire of Pascal, the memories of the Inquisition and the political history of the order, is all forgotten. We dislike to have our sympathies checked by reminders, that in Canada as elsewhere, they were the consistent, formidable foes of liberty; that their love of power not only embroiled them continually with the civil authorities, but made them jealous of the Recollects and Sulpicians, unwilling that any save their own order—or, as we say, sect—should share in the dangers and glory of converting the infidels of New France. How can we, sitting at home in ease, we who have entered into their labours, criticize men before whose spiritual white heat every mountain melted away; who carried the cross in advance of the most adventurous 'coureurs de bois,' or guides, who taught agriculture to the Indian on the Georgian Bay before a dozen farms had been cleared on the St. Lawrence—drove or carried cattle through unbroken forest around the countless rapids and cataracts of the Ottawa and French rivers that they might wean the Hurons from nomadic habits and make of them a nation; who shrank from no hardship and no indignity if by any means they might save some of the miserable savages who heaped indignities upon themselves; who instituted hospitals and convents wherever they went, always (in the spirit of their masters) caring most for the weak, the decrepit, the aged; and submitted themselves, without thinking of escape, to inutterable tortures rather than lose an opportunity of administering the last sacraments to those who had fallen under the hatchets of the Iroquois! Few Protestants have any idea of the extraordinary missionary activity of the Church of Rome in the seventeenth century. Few Englishmen know to what extent French society was inspired then by religious fervour. Few Canadians have any knowledge of the spiritual inheritance of which they are the heirs. It would be well for all of us to read Parkman's 'Jesuits in North America,' if we cannot get hold of the original 'Relations;' for the story, looked at even from a Protestant and republican standpoint, is one to do us all good, revealing as it does the spiritual bonds that link into oneness of faith Protestant and Roman Catholic, and teaching that beneath the long black robe of the dreaded Jesuit is to be found, not so much that disingenuousness and those schemes of worldly ambition usually associated with the name, but a passionate devotion to the Saviour, love for the souls of men and the fixed steadfastness of the martyr's spirit that remains unshaken when heart and flesh faint and fail.

"The prophetic words of the father superior of the Jesuits in 1647 stir the heart of the Christian—by whatsoever name known among men—like the blasts of a trumpet: 'We shall die; we shall be captured, burned, butchered. Be it so. Those who die in their beds do not always die the best death. I see none of our Company cast down.' And truly, in spite of failures, these men did a great work. Seeds of divine truth they sowed broadcast over the wilderness. Gradually they tempered the ferocity of the Indian character, and mitigated the horrors of Indian war. They induced the remnants of many tribes to settle under the shadow of their missions protected by forts. Portions even of the terrible Iroquois settled in Canada and the church has, on the whole, no children more obedient, and Queen Victoria certainly no subjects more loyal."—(Scribner's Magazine, quoted in Canadian Antiquarian and Numismatic Journal, 1879.)

[76] He discovered the salt springs at Onondaga (Syracuse).