BY REUBEN GOLD THWAITES

Doubtless Norse vikings, venturing far southward from outlying colonies in Iceland and Greenland, first coasted New France, and beached their sturdy ships on the shores of New England. But five centuries passed without result, and we cannot properly call them pioneers of American civilization. Columbus it was, who unlocked the eastern door of the New World. Five years later, John Cabot, in behalf of England, was sighting the gloomy headlands of Cape Breton. Cortereal appeared in the neighborhood, in 1501, seeking lands for the Portuguese crown. About this time, at intervals, there came to Newfoundland certain Norman, Breton, and Basque fishers, who, erecting little huts and drying-scaffolds along the rocky shore, sowed the first seed of that polyglot settlement of French, Portuguese, Spanish, and English which has come down to our day almost uninterruptedly. By 1511, these fishermen appear to have known the mainland to the west; for on the map of Sylvanus, in his edition of Ptolemy, that year, we find a delineation of the "Square Gulf," which answers to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In 1520, Fagundus visited these waters for the Portuguese, and four years later Verrazano was making for the French an exploration of the coast between North Carolina and Newfoundland. Whether or not Cartier (1535) was the first to sail up the St. Lawrence "until land could be seen on either side," no man can now tell; apparently, he was the first to leave a record of doing so. Progress up the river was checked by Lachine Rapids, and he spent the winter on Montreal Island.

France and Spain were just then engaged in one of their periodical quarrels, and adventurers were needed to fight battles at home, so that it was six years before any attempts were made to colonize the river-lands to which Cartier had led the way. In 1541, a Picard seigneur named Roberval, enjoying the friendship of Francis I., was commissioned as viceroy of the new country beyond the Atlantic, with Cartier as his chief pilot and captain-general, and a choice selection of jail-birds for colonists. Cartier started off before his chief, built a fort at Quebec, and, after a long and miserable winter, picked up a quantity of glittering stones which he took to be gold and diamonds, and gladly set sail for home. Tradition has it that Roberval met him near the mouth of the river, but was unable to induce him to return to his cheerless task of founding a state in an inhospitable wilderness, with convicts for citizens. Roberval, however, proceeded to Quebec with his consignment of prison dregs, and throughout another protracted winter the flag of France floated from the little intrenched camp which Cartier had planted on the summit of the cliff. Roberval's principal occupation appears to have been the disciplining of his unruly followers, a work in which the gibbet and the lash were freely employed. He also essayed explorations up the river; but the rude task was not to his liking, and, with what remained of his battered band, he followed Cartier to France.

It is commonly said that Canada was abandoned by the French between the going of Roberval and the coming of Champlain. But, though little was done toward colonizing on the St. Lawrence, Newfoundland was by no means neglected. Its fishing industry grew apace. The rules of the Church, prescribing a fish diet on certain holy days, led to a large use of salted fish throughout Catholic Europe; and, by 1578, full a hundred and fifty French vessels alone, chiefly Breton, were employed in the Newfoundland fisheries, while a good trade with the mainland Indians, as far south as the Potomac, had now sprung up. The island colony proved valuable as a supply and repair station for traders and explorers, and thus served as a nucleus of both French and English settlement in America.

It is difficult for us of to-day to realize that, at any time in the world's history, enlightened folk should have thought good colonists could be made out of the sweepings of the jails and gutters of the Old World. But in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that delusion was quite generally entertained by would-be founders of states across sea; it required the lessons of more than a hundred years of disastrous experiments to teach discerning men that only the best of the middle class and the masses, can successfully plant a new community in the wilderness. The experiences of Cartier and Roberval on the St. Lawrence, and of LaudonniÈre in Florida (1564), were of no avail in influencing governmental policy at Paris. In 1590, the Marquis de la Roche was sent out with the usual dissolute crew to succeed Roberval as the king's agent on the banks of the St. Lawrence. Leaving part of his ill-favored gang on the desert Sable Isle, off Nova Scotia (where early in the century Baron de LÉry had vainly attempted to plant a colony), La Roche set forth to explore the mainland for a site. A wild storm blew his vessels to France, and the wretched skin-clad survivors of the band which he had left behind were not rescued until thirteen years had elapsed. Their tale of horror long rang in the ears of France.

In 1600-1603, Chauvin and PontgravÉ made successful trading voyages to the St. Lawrence. Samuel de Champlain was one of the party which, in the latter year, followed in Cartier's track to Montreal. The same season, a Calvinist, named De Monts, was given the vice-royalty and fur-trade monopoly of Acadia, and in 1604 he landed a strangely-assorted company of vagabonds and gentlemen on St. Croix Island, near the present boundary between Maine and New Brunswick; but in the spring following they settled at Port Royal, near where is now Annapolis, Nova Scotia, thus planting the first French agricultural settlement in America. Five years later, Champlain reared a permanent post on the rock of Quebec, and New France was at last, after a century of experiments, fairly under way.

Various motives influenced the men who sought to establish French colonization in America. The ill-fated agricultural colony of the Huguenots in Florida (1562-68), was avowedly an attempt of Admiral Coligny to found an enduring asylum for French Protestants. The enterprise of New France, on the other hand, was the outgrowth of interests more or less conflicting. Doubtless the court had deepest at heart the kingly passion for territorial aggrandizement; next uppermost, was the pious wish to convert heathen nations to the Catholic faith, explorers like Cartier being authorized to discover new lands "in order the better to do what is pleasing to God, our Creator and Redeemer, and what may be for the increase of his holy and sacred name, and of our holy mother, the Church;" the desire for pelf, through the agency of the fur trade, and the possibility of the discovery of precious metals, gave commercial zest to the undertaking, and to many was the raison d'Être of the colony; and lastly, was the almost universal yearning for adventure, among a people who in the seventeenth century were still imbued with that chivalric temper which among Englishmen is assigned to the Middle Ages. The inner life of New France, throughout its century and a half of existence, was largely a warring between these several interests.

Missionaries came early upon the scene. With the Calvinist De Monts were Huguenot ministers for the benefit of the settlers, and Catholic priests to open a mission among the savages, for the court had stipulated with him that the latter were to be instructed only in the faith of Rome. But no missionary work was done, for the colony was through several years on the verge of dissolution, and the priests became victims of scurvy. Poutrincourt, who held under De Monts the patent for Port Royal, did nothing to further the purposes of the court in this regard, until 1610, when, admonished for his neglect, he brought out with him a secular priest, Messire JessÉ FlÉchÉ, of Langres, who on June 24, "apparently in some haste," baptized twenty-one Abenakis, including the district sagamore, or chief. The account of this affair, which Poutrincourt sent in triumph to France, is the initial document in the present series.

On the twelfth of June, 1611, there arrived at Port Royal, at the instance of King Henry IV., two Jesuit fathers, Pierre Biard and Ennemond MassÉ. They were, however, not favorably received by Poutrincourt and his followers; they found great practical difficulties in acquiring the Indian languages and made slight progress in the herculean task to which they had been set. To them, came the following year, a lay brother, Gilbert du Thet, who was soon dispatched to the head of the order, in France, with an account of the situation. In the spring of 1613, he returned, in company with Father Quentin. The little band of missionaries had no sooner established themselves at the new French colony on Mt. Desert Island, than the latter was attacked and dispersed by the Virginian Argall. Du Thet was killed in the fight, MassÉ was, with other colonists, set adrift in a boat, and Biard and Quentin were taken to Virginia, to be eventually shipped to England, and thence allowed to return into France. Several of the earlier documents of our series have to do with this first and apparently unfruitful mission of the Jesuits to Acadia.

In 1615, Champlain thought the time ripe for the institution of Indian missions upon the St. Lawrence, a spiritual field hitherto neglected, and introduced to Quebec four members of the fraternity of RÉcollets, the most austere of the three orders of Franciscans; these were Fathers Denis Jamay, Jean d'Olbeau, and Joseph le Caron, and a lay brother, Pacifique du Plessis. To D'Olbeau was assigned the conversion of the Montagnais of the Lower St. Lawrence; Le Caron went to the Hurons, or Wyandots, in the vast stretch of forested wilderness west of the Ottawa River, and before the coming of autumn had established a bark chapel in their midst; Jamay and Du Plessis remained in the neighborhood of Quebec, ministering to the colonists and the wandering savages who came to the little settlement for purposes of trade or sociability, or through fear of scalp-hunting Iroquois. For ten years did these gray friars practice the rites of the church in the Canadian woods, all the way from the fishing and trading outpost of Tadoussac to the western Lake of the Nipissings. Barefooted, save for heavy wooden sandals, coarsely clad in gown and hood, enduring in a rigorous climate, to which they were unused, all manner of hardships by flood and field, they were earnestly devoted to their laborious calling in a time when elsewhere the air of New France was noisy with the strife of self-seeking traders and politicians. Yet somehow their mission seemed without important result. Even less successful was the enterprise of some fellow RÉcollets, who, in 1619, began independent work among the French fishermen and Micmacs of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and GaspÉ, but were forced in 1624, after many disasters, to abandon their task, three of them joining the party at Quebec.

The little band on the St. Lawrence, although thus reinforced, felt impelled, in 1625, to invite the powerful aid of the Jesuits, who in the face of great odds were just then holding most successful missions in Asia, Africa, and South America. In response to the call, three fathers of the black gown came to Quebec this year,—MassÉ, who had been of the old Acadian mission, Charles Lalemant, and that giant among them, in both stature and deeds, Jean de BrÉbeuf. Immediately the work began to broaden, but the records of the dual mission do not give evidence of many converts,—a few Huron youth taken to France, and there instructed and baptized, being the chief gains. The wandering habits of the Indians were not favorable to persistent instruction of the young, and adults were unwilling to commit themselves to the new doctrine, even when not openly opposed to its promulgation. The summer months were usually spent by the missionaries at Tadoussac, Quebec, and Three Rivers, where trading parties from the tribes were wont to assemble; and, when the latter scattered for their winter hunts, the missionaries accompanied them, sharing the toils, dangers, and discomforts of the movable camps, and often suffering much from positive abuse at the hands of their not over-willing hosts.

The settlements of Port Royal and Quebec were at this time wretched little hamlets of a few dozen huts each, surrounded by a palisade, and these fell an easy prey to small English naval forces (1628-29). With their fall, ended the slender mission of the RÉcollets and Jesuits, who were in triumph carried off to England. For a few months, France did not hold one foot of ground in North America. But as peace had been declared between France and England before this conquest, the former received back all of its possessions, and the inevitable struggle for the mastery of the continent was postponed for four generations longer.

With the release of Canada to France, in 1632, the Jesuits were by the home authorities placed in sole charge of the spiritual interests of both settlers and Indians, and the history of their greatest missions begins at this time. On the fifth of July, there landed at Quebec, Fathers Paul le Jeune and Anne de NouË, and a lay brother named Gilbert. Le Jeune was the superior, and at once devoted himself to learning the language and customs of the savages, and so studying the enormous field before him as intelligently to dispose of his meagre forces.

The Indians.

The existence of rival tribes among the Red Indians of North America, was, perhaps, the most formidable obstacle in the path of the missionaries. It has always been impossible to make any hard-and-fast classification; yet the Indians presented a considerable variety of types, ranging from the Southern Indians, some of whose tribes were in a relatively high stage of material advancement and mental calibre, down to the savage root-eaters of the Rocky Mountain region. The migrations of some of the Indian tribes were frequent, and they occupied overlapping territories, so that it is impossible to fix the tribal boundaries with any degree of exactness. Again, the tribes were so merged by intermarriage, by affiliation, by consolidation, by the fact that there were numerous polyglot villages of renegades, by similarities in manner, habits, and appearance, that it is difficult even to separate the savages into families. It is only on philological grounds that these divisions can be made at all. In a general way we may say that between the Atlantic and the Rockies, Hudson Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, there were four Indian languages in vogue, with great varieties of local dialect:

I. The Algonkins were the most numerous, holding the greater portion of the country from the unoccupied "debatable land" of Kentucky northward to Hudson Bay, and from the Atlantic westward to the Mississippi. Among their tribes were the Micmacs of Acadia, the Penobscots of Maine, the Montagnais of the St. Lawrence, the ill-defined tribes of the country round about Lake St. John, and the Ottawas, Chippewas, Mascoutens, Sacs, Foxes, Pottawattomies, and Illinois of the Upper Lakes. These savages were rude in life and manners, were intensely warlike, depended for subsistence chiefly on hunting and fishing, lived in rude wigwams covered with bark, skins, or matted reeds, practised agriculture in a crude fashion, and were less stable in their habitations than the Southern Indians. They have made a larger figure in our history than any other family, because through their lands came the heaviest and most aggressive movement of white population, French or English. Estimates of early Indian populations necessarily differ, in the absence of accurate knowledge; but it is now believed that the number was never so great as was at first estimated by the Jesuit fathers and the earliest English colonists. A careful modern estimate is, that the Algonkins at no time numbered over 90,000 souls, and possibly not over 50,000.

II. In the heart of this Algonkin land was planted the ethnic group called the Iroquois, with its several distinct branches, often at war with each other. The craftiest, most daring, and most intelligent of North American Indians, yet still in the savage hunter state, the Iroquois were the terror of every native band east of the Mississippi, before the coming of the whites, who in turn learned to dread their ferocious power. The five principal tribes of this family—Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, all stationed in palisaded villages south and east of lakes Erie and Ontario—formed a loose confederacy styled by themselves and the French "The Long House," and by the English "The Five Nations," which firmly held the waterways connecting the Hudson and Ohio rivers and the Great Lakes. The population of the entire group was not over 17,000—a remarkably small number, considering the active part they played in American history, and the control which they exercised through wide tracts of wilderness. Related to, but generally at war with them, were the Hurons of Canada, among whom the Jesuits planted their earliest missions. Champlain, in an endeavor to cultivate the friendship of his Huron and Algonkin neighbors, early made war on the Iroquois, and thus secured for New France a heritage of savage enmity which contributed more than any other one cause to cripple its energies and render it at last an easy prey to the rival power of the English colonies.

III. The Southern Indians occupied the country between the Tennessee River and the Gulf, the Appalachian Ranges and the Mississippi. Of a milder disposition than their Northern cousins, the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles were rather in a barbarous than in a savage state; by the time of the Revolution, they were not far behind the white proprietors in industrial or domestic methods, and numbered not above 50,000 persons. With them, this story of the Jesuit missions has little to do; the Louisiana mission, an offshoot of that of New France, did faithful work here, but the documentary result was neither as interesting nor as prolific, and necessarily occupies but small space in the present series.

IV. The Dakotah, or Sioux, family occupied for the most part the country beyond the Mississippi. They were and are a fierce, high-strung people, genuine nomads, and war appears to have been their chief occupation. The Jesuits worked among them but in slight measure, on the waters of the Upper Mississippi; they met this family, chiefly in the persons of the Winnebagoes, one of their outlying bands, which at the time of the French occupation was resident on and about Green Bay of Lake Michigan, at peace and in confederacy with the Algonkins who hedged them about.

The mission of the French Jesuits to these widely-scattered hordes of savages forms one of the most thrilling chapters in human history. It is impossible, in this brief Introduction, to attempt anything more than the barest outline of the theme; Rochemonteix, Shea, and Parkman have told the story in detail, from differing points of view, and with these authorities the student of the following documents in the case is presumed to be familiar. A rapid summary of results will, however, be useful; and this we may best obtain, at the expense of occasional repetition of narrative, by following the fortunes of the pioneers of the Cross through the several district missions into which their work was naturally divided.

I. The Abenaki Mission.

This mission was chiefly in Maine and Acadia, and on Cape Breton Island. The Abenakis (or Abnakis) were a strong but mild-mannered Algonkin tribe, settled in villages or cantonments; but, like others of their race, in the habit of taking long semi-annual journeys,—each winter to hunt, and each summer to fish. We have seen that the French Jesuits, Biard and MassÉ, were in the field as early as 1611, soon after the establishment of Port Royal; their predecessor being the secular French priest, FlÉchÉ, who had been introduced to the country by Poutrincourt, the patentee. Biard and MassÉ met with many discouragements, chiefly the opposition of Poutrincourt's son, Biencourt (sometimes called Baron St. Just), who had been left in charge of the colony. Nevertheless the missionaries learned the native language, and made many long journeys of exploration, one of Biard's trips extending as far as the mouth of the Kennebec. They were later joined by a lay brother, Du Thet, and by Fathers Quentin and Lalemant. Joining the new French colony on Mt. Desert Island, in the spring of 1613, the establishment was almost immediately destroyed by the Virginian Argall. In the skirmish, Du Thet was killed.

In 1619, a party of RÉcollets, from Aquitaine, began a mission on St. John River, in Acadia, but five years later, as we have seen above, abandoned the task, the survivors joining the Quebec mission of their order. Other RÉcollets were in Acadia, however, between 1630 and 1633, and later we have evidence of a small band of Capuchins ministering to French settlers on the Penobscot and Kennebec; but it is probable that they made no attempt to convert the natives.

A Jesuit mission was founded on Cape Breton in 1634, by Father Julian Perrault; and a few years later, Father Charles Turgis was at Miscou. Other missionaries soon came to minister to the Micmacs, but for many years their efforts were without result; and sickness, resulting from the hardships of the situation, caused most of the early black gowns to retreat from the attempt. Finally, an enduring mission was established among these people, and, until about 1670, was conducted with some measure of success by Fathers Andrew Richard, Martin de Lyonne, and James Fremin. About 1673, the RÉcollets took up the now abandoned work, occasionally aided by secular priests from the Seminary of Quebec, and Jesuits, until at last the Micmacs from GaspÉ to Nova Scotia were declared to be entirely converted to the Catholic faith.

Father Gabriel Druillettes, of the Jesuit mission at Sillery, near Quebec, went to the Kennebec country in 1646, invited thither by converted Abenakis who had been at Sillery, and during visits, extending through a period of eleven years, was more than ordinarily successful in the task of gaining Indian converts to Christianity. In 1650, he made a notable visit to the Puritans of Eastern Massachusetts, during which was discussed the proposed union between New France and New England, against the Iroquois. Upon the final departure of Druillettes in 1657, the Abenakis were but spasmodically served with missionaries; occasionally a Jesuit appeared among them, but the field could not be persistently worked, owing to the demands upon the order from other quarters. The fathers now sought to draw Abenaki converts to Sillery, and later to St. Francis de Sales, at the falls of the ChaudiÈre, which soon became almost exclusively an Abenaki mission.

In 1688, Father Bigot, of this mission, again entered the field of the Kennebec, at the same time that Rev. Peter Thury, a priest of the Quebec Seminary, opened a mission on the Penobscot, and the RÉcollet F. Simon gathered a flock at Medoktek, near the mouth of the St. John. They were in time aided and succeeded by others: the Jesuits being Julian Binneteau, Joseph Aubery, Peter de la Chasse, Stephen Lauverjeat, Loyard, and Sebastian Rale; the death of Rale, the greatest of them all, at the hands of New England partisans in the border strife of 1724, is a familiar incident in American history. Jesuits succeeded to the Penobscot mission in 1703, and with great zeal, but amid continual hardships and discouragements, carried on the principal work among the Abenakis until the downfall of New France in 1763. The majority of the Kennebec converts, however, emigrated to the mission of St. Francis de Sales, and from there frequently went forth upon avenging expeditions against the New England borderers.

II. The Montagnais Mission.

This was centered at Tadoussac, and ministered to the Montagnais, Bersiamites, Porcupines, Oumaniwek, Papinachois, and other tribes of the Lower St. Lawrence and the Saguenay. Tadoussac had, from the earliest historic times, been a favorite harbor and trading-station for the French; for, being at the junction of two great rivers, it was convenient as a place of assembly for the natives of the lower country. The first priests in the district had said mass there; but it was not until 1640 that a Jesuit mission was formed by Father Jean du Quen, its sphere of influence soon reaching to the upper waters of the Saguenay, Lake St. John, Hudson Bay, and the coast of Labrador. Du Quen was actively assisted by Charles Meiachkwat, a Montagnais convert, who erected the first chapel, became a catechist, and made extended tours through the neighboring tribes. In time, there were associated with Du Quen, Fathers Buteux and Druillettes. Protracted missionary tours were made by them, with results which were considered satisfactory as compared with other missions; although they had serious difficulties to contend with, in the prevalent intemperance which the fur trade introduced among the natives, the belief in dreams, the laxity of morals, and the wiles of medicine-men, or sorcerers, as they were called by the Jesuits.

For the first few years, the missionaries spent their winters in Quebec, ministering to the colonists, and each spring went down to Tadoussac to meet the summer trading parties; but greater persistency of effort was deemed desirable, and thereafter, instead of returning home in the autumn, they followed the Indians upon their winter hunts, and in the course of these wanderings endured the usual privations and hardships of traveling camps. Bailloquet, Nouvel, Beaulieu, Albanel, De CrÉpieul, Dalmas, Boucher, Peter Michael Laure, and Jean Baptiste Labrosse, are other names of Jesuit fathers who at different periods were engaged upon this toilsome mission.

In 1670, Tadoussac was almost deserted, owing to Iroquois raids and the ravages of smallpox; the Montagnais and kindred tribes were in hiding, through the vast country between Lake St. John and Hudson Bay. They were still followed by their devoted shepherds, whom no hardship could discourage. The following year, CrÉpieul began a mission on Hudson Bay, and here in 1694 his auxiliary Dalmas was killed. Laure (1720-37) left us a monument of his labors in a Montagnais grammar and dictionary. Labrosse, the last of his order at Tadoussac, instructed many of his flock to read and write, and left a legacy of native education, which has lasted unto the present day; he lived and taught long after his order had been suppressed in New France, and died at Tadoussac in 1782.

III. The Quebec and Montreal Missions.

These included the several missions at Quebec, Montreal, Three Rivers, Sillery, BÉcancourt, and St. Francis de Sales, which were designed for the wandering Montagnais of the district, those Algonkins of the West who could be induced to come and settle on the lower waters, and in later years such Abenakis of Acadia and Maine as sought an asylum upon distinctively French soil.

We have seen that RÉcollets were first at Quebec, ministering both to colonists and Indians, and that, in 1625, they invited the Jesuits to aid them. In 1629, the joint mission came to a close through the surrender of Quebec to the English. When the mission was reopened in 1632, Jesuits alone were in charge, their operations being at first confined to the neighboring Montagnais, although they soon spread throughout the entire Canadian field. In 1658, Bishop Laval founded the Seminary of Quebec, whereupon the Jesuits resigned their parishes among the colonists, and thereafter confined themselves to their college and the Indian missions. In addition to their parish work, the priests of the seminary conducted missions in Acadia, Illinois, and on the lower Mississippi.

The year following the return of the Jesuits to Canada, Father Buteux, of that order, began his labors at Three Rivers, which was a convenient gathering-place for the fur trade. The village was frequently raided by Iroquois, but remained until the fall of New France one of the prominent centers of missionary influence. The efforts of Buteux, which lasted until his death at the hands of Iroquois in 1652, met with considerable success. His custom, like that of the other missionaries, was to be present at the French posts during the annual trading "meets," and when the savages returned to the wilderness, to accompany some selected band. In thus following the nomadic tribes, he made some of the longest and most toilsome journeys recorded in the annals of the Society of Jesus, and shared with his flock all the horrors of famine, pestilence, and inter-tribal war.

It was soon realized by the missionaries that but meagre results could be obtained until the Indians were induced to lead a sedentary life. Their wandering habit nullified all attempts at permanent instruction to the young; it engendered improvidence and laziness, bred famine and disease; and the constant struggle to kill fur-bearing animals for their pelts rapidly depleted the game, while the fur trade wrought contamination in many forms. Missionary efforts were at first conducive to the interests of the fur trade, by bringing far-distant tribes within the sphere of French influence; but so soon as the Jesuit sought to change the habits of the natives, to cause them to become agriculturists instead of hunters, and to oppose the rum traffic among them, then the grasping commercial monopoly which controlled the fortunes of New France, and was merely "working" the colony for financial gains, saw in the Jesuit an enemy, and often placed serious obstacles in his path.

In pursuance of the sedentary policy, and also to protect the wretched Montagnais from Iroquois war-parties, the Jesuits, in 1637, established for them a palisaded mission four miles above Quebec, at first giving it the name St. Joseph, but later that of Sillery, in honor of Commander NoËl Brulart de Sillery, of France, who had given ample funds for the founding of this enterprise. Here were at first gathered twenty of the Indians, who began cultivation of the soil, varied by occasional hunting and fishing trips, which the missionaries could not prevent. The little town slowly grew in importance, both Algonkins and Montagnais being represented in its population. Three years later, nuns opened a hospital at Sillery, for the reception of both French and Indian patients, and thus greatly added to the popularity of the mission. But in 1646 the nuns removed their hospital to Quebec; a few years later, the church and mission house were destroyed by fire; disease made sad havoc in the settlement; the thin soil became exhausted through careless tillage; Iroquois preyed upon the converts, until at last the Algonkins almost entirely disappeared; and although their place was taken by Abenakis from Maine and Acadia, until the attendance became almost solely Abenaki, the enterprise waned. In 1685, it was abandoned in favor of St. Francis de Sales, a new mission established at the falls of the ChaudiÈre River, not far from the St. Lawrence. Beyond a monument of later days, to the memory of Fathers MassÉ and De NouË, whose names are prominently connected with this work, nothing now remains to mark the site of the old Sillery mission.

From St. Francis, the mission work began to spread into Maine. Of its character and extent there, mention has already been made. St. Francis achieved a certain measure of prosperity, as Indian missions go. It became in time a source of serious trouble to the New England borderers, for many a French and Indian war-party was here fitted out against the latter, during the series of bloody conflicts which marked the three-quarters of a century previous to the fall of New France. Finally, in September, 1759, Maj. Robert Rogers descended upon the village with his famous rangers, and in retaliation pillaged and burned the houses, and killed "at least two hundred Indians." New France soon after fell into the hands of the English, and, the Jesuits being suppressed, we hear little more of St. Francis de Sales.

In 1641, the missionary settlement of Montreal was founded by Maisonneuve. The Jesuits were the first resident clergy, and soon began mission work among the neighboring Indians and those who resorted thither from the valleys of the Lower St. Lawrence and the Ottawa. Soon, however, the Sulpitians, established in Paris by the AbbÉ Olier, one of the Society of Montreal, took charge of the mission on Montreal Island, which in after years was moved to the Sault au RÉcollet, and thence to the Lake of the Two Mountains, where there was gathered a polyglot village composed of Iroquois, Algonkins, and Nipissings. Upon the opening of the English rÉgime, the Jesuit and RÉcollet missions were suppressed, but those of the Sulpitians were undisturbed, so that this mission at the lake is the oldest now extant in Canada.

Among the Algonkins of the Ottawa River (or Grande RiviÈre), no permanent missions were attempted by any of the orders. Long the chief highway to the West, the river was familiar to travelling missionaries, who frequently ministered to the tribesmen along its banks, either at the native villages or during the annual trading councils at the French posts of Montreal, Three Rivers, and Quebec.

IV. The Huron Mission.

At the time of the advent of the French, the Hurons (or Wyandots), allied in origin and language to the Iroquois, numbered about 16,000 souls, and dwelt in several large villages in a narrow district on the high ground between Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay of Lake Huron. Their dwellings were bark cabins, clustered within stoutly-palisaded walls, and near each fortified town were fields of corn, beans, pumpkins, and tobacco. Agricultural in habit, keen traders, and in the main sedentary, these semi-naked savages made short hunting and fishing expeditions, and laid up stores for the winter. They were better fighters than the Algonkins around them, yet were obliged gradually to withdraw northward and westward from Iroquois persecution, and during the period of the Jesuit missions were almost annihilated by the latter. To the southwest, across a wide stretch of unpopulated forest, were the allies and kindred of the Hurons, the Tionontates, called also Petuns, or Tobacco Nation, a term having its origin in their custom of cultivating large fields of tobacco, which commodity they used in a wide-spread barter with other tribes. To the southeast of the Petuns, west of Lake Ontario and on both sides of the gorge of Niagara, were the peaceful Atiwandaronks, who, being friends alike of Iroquois, Algonkins, and Hurons, were known as the Neutral Nation. To the eastward of the Neutrals, strongly intrenched in the interlocking basins of the Genesee and the Mohawk, lay the dread confederacy of the Iroquois, who in time were to spread like a pestilence over the lands of all their neighbors.

The intelligence and mobility of the Hurons rendered the early prospects for missionary effort among them more promising than with the rude and nomadic Algonkins. But while at first the missionaries of New France were well received, the innate savagery of these people in time asserted itself. Their medicine-men, as bitterly fanatical as the howling dervishes of the Orient, plotted the destruction of the messengers of the new faith; the introduction of European diseases was attributed to the "black gowns;" the ravages of the Iroquois were thought to be brought on by the presence of the strangers; the rites of the church were looked upon as infernal incantations, and the lurid pictures of the Judgment, which were displayed in the little forest chapels, aroused unspeakable terror among this simple people; finally, an irresistible wave of superstitious frenzy led to the blotting out of the mission, accompanied by some of the most heart-rending scenes in the history of Christian evangelization. It will be remembered that in 1615 the RÉcollet friar, Joseph le Caron, made his way into the far-away country of the Hurons, but returned in the following year, having learned much of their language and customs. Five years later, another of his order, William Poulin, took up the weary task, being joined in 1623 by Fathers Le Caron and Nicholas Viel, and the historian of the RÉcollet missions, Brother Gabriel Sagard. All of them soon left the field, however, save Viel, who alone, amid almost incredible hardships, attained some measure of success; but in 1625, when descending the Ottawa to meet and arrange for co-operation with the Jesuit BrÉbeuf, at Three Rivers, he was willfully drowned by his Indian guide in the last rapid of Des Prairies River, just back of Montreal. Such is the origin of the name of the dread Sault au RÉcollet.

In 1626, the Jesuits BrÉbeuf and Anne de NouË, having received some linguistic instruction from RÉcollets who had been in the Huron field, proceeded thither, with a RÉcollet friar, Joseph de la Roche Daillon, to resume the work which the RÉcollets had abandoned. Daillon attempted a mission to neighboring Neutrals, but, being roughly handled by them, rejoined his Jesuit friends among the Hurons. Two years later, he returned to Quebec, having been preceded by De NouË, who found it impossible to master the difficult language of their dusky flock. BrÉbeuf, now left alone, labored gallantly among these people, and, winning the hearts of many by his easy adoption of their manners, gathered about him a little colony of those favorably inclined to his views. He was recalled to Quebec in 1629, arriving there just in time to fall into the hands of Louis Kirk, and be transported to England. When Canada was restored to France, by the treaty of St. Germain, the Jesuits were given sole charge of the Indian missions, but it was 1634 before the Huron mission could be reopened. In September, BrÉbeuf, Antoine Daniel, and Davost returned to BrÉbeuf's old field, and commenced, in the large town of Ihonatiria, the greatest Jesuit mission in the history of New France. Others soon joined them. Additional missions were opened in neighboring towns, some of the strongest of these being each served by four fathers, who were assisted by laymen donnÉs, or given men; while in the cultivation of the soil, and the fashioning of implements and utensils both for the fathers and for the Indians, numerous hired laborers, from the French colonies on the St. Lawrence, were employed in and about the missions. Charles Garnier and Isaac Jogues, with their attendants, made a tour of the Petun villages; other Jesuits were sent among the Neutrals; and even the Algonkins as far northwestward as Sault Ste. Marie were visited (1641) by Raymbault and Jogues, and looked and listened with awe at the celebration of the mass. In 1639, there was built, on the River Wye, the fortified mission house of St. Mary's, to serve as a center for the wide-spread work, as a place for ecclesiastical retreat for the fathers, and a refuge when enemies pressed too closely upon them.

The story of the hardships and sufferings of the devoted missionaries, as told us by Rochemonteix, Shea, and Parkman, and with rare modesty recorded in the documents to be contained in this series, is one of the most thrilling in the annals of humanity. Space forbids us here to dwell upon the theme. No men have, in the zealous exercise of their faith, performed hardier deeds than these Jesuits of the Huron mission; yet, after three years of unremitting toil, they could (1640) count but a hundred converts out of a population of 16,000, and these were for the most part sick infants or aged persons, who had died soon after baptism. The rugged braves scorned the approaches of the fathers, and unmercifully tormented their converts; the medicine-men waged continual warfare on their work; smallpox and the Iroquois were decimating the people.

Jogues was (1642) sent down to the colonies for supplies for the missions, but with his Huron companions was captured by an Iroquois war-party, who led them to the Mohawk towns. There most of the Hurons were killed, and Jogues and his donnÉ, RenÉ Goupil, were tortured and mutilated, and made to serve as slaves to their savage jailers. Finally Goupil, a promising young physician, was killed, and Jogues, being rescued by the Dutch allies of the Mohawks, was sent to Europe. Supplies thus failing them, the Huron missionaries were in a sad plight until finally (1644) relieved by an expedition to the lower country undertaken at great hazards by BrÉbeuf, Garreau, and NoËl Chabanel. The same season, Francis Joseph Bressani, attempting to reach the Huron missions, had been captured and tortured by Mohawks; like Jogues, he was rescued through Dutch intercession and sent back to Europe, but both of these zealots were soon back again facing the cruel dangers of their chosen task.

A temporary peace followed, in 1645, and the hope of the Jesuits was rekindled, for they now had five missions in as many Huron towns, and another established for Algonkins who were resident in the Huron district. But in July, 1648, the Iroquois attacked TeanaustayÉ, the chief Huron village, and while encouraging the frenzied defense Father Daniel lost his life at the hands of the enemy. He was thus the first Jesuit martyr in the Huron mission, and the second in New France,—for Jogues had been tortured to death in the Iroquois towns, two years before. The spirit of the Hurons was crushed in this bloody foray; large bands, deserting their towns, fled in terror to seek protection of the Petuns, while others made their way to the Manitoulin Islands of Lake Huron, and even as far west as the islands of Green Bay and the matted pine forests of Northern Wisconsin. Here and there a town was left, however, and one of the largest of these, called St. Ignatius by the Jesuits, was stormed by a thousand Iroquois, March 16, 1649. The three survivors fled through the woods to neighboring St. Louis, where were BrÉbeuf, now grown old in his service of toil, and young Gabriel Lalemant. Bravely did they aid in defending St. Louis, and administering to wounded and dying; but at last were captured, and being taken to the ruined town of St. Ignatius were most cruelly tortured until relieved by death. Early in November, Fathers Garnier and Chabanel met their death in the Petun country, the former at the hands of Iroquois, the latter being killed by a Huron who imagined that the presence of the Jesuits had brought curses upon his tribe.

The missions in the Huron country were now entirely abandoned. A few of the surviving Jesuits followed their flocks to the islands in Lake Huron; but in June, 1650, the enterprise was forsaken, and the missionaries, with a number of their converts, retired to a village, founded for them, on the Island of Orleans, near Quebec. This settlement being in time ravaged by the Iroquois, a final stand was made at Lorette, also in the outskirts of Quebec, which mission exists to this day.

The great Huron mission, which had been conducted for thirty-five years, had employed twenty-nine missionaries, of whom seven had lost their lives in the work. This important field forsaken, many of the missionaries had returned to Europe disheartened, and apparently the future for Jesuit missions in New France looked gloomy enough. The Iroquois had now practically destroyed the Montagnais between Quebec and the Saguenay, the Algonkins of the Ottawa, and the Hurons, Petuns, and Neutrals. The French colonies of Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal, had suffered from repeated raids of the New York confederates, and their forest trade was now almost wholly destroyed. In this hour of darkness, light suddenly broke upon New France. The politic Iroquois, attacked on either side by the Eries and the Susquehannas, and fearing that while thus engaged their northern victims might revive for combined vengeance, sent overtures of peace to Quebec, and cordially invited to their cantonments the once detested black gowns.

V. The Iroquois Mission.

Champlain had early made enemies of the Iroquois, by attacking them as the allies of his Algonkin neighbors. This enmity extended to all New France, and lasted, with brief intervals of peace, for over half a century. We have seen that Jogues was the first of his order (1642) to enter the Iroquois country, as a prisoner of the Mohawks, the easternmost of the five tribes of the confederacy. Two years later, Bressani, while on his way to the Huron missions, was also captured by the Mohawks, passed through a similar experience of torture, was sold to the Dutch, and transported back to France, and, again like Jogues resumed his hazardous task of attempting to tame the American savage. During the first peace (May, 1646), Jogues, now in civilian costume, paid a brief visit to his former tormentors on the Mohawk, this time conveying only expressions of good-will from the governor of New France. His political errand accomplished, he returned to Quebec; but in August was back again, with a young French attendant named Lalande, intent on opening admission among the Iroquois. Meanwhile, there had been a revulsion of sentiment on their part, and the two Frenchmen had no sooner reached the Mohawk than they were tortured and killed.

During an Iroquois attack upon Quebec, seven years later (1653), Father Joseph Anthony Poncet was taken prisoner by the marauders and carried to the Mohawk, where he suffered in the same manner as his predecessors; but his captors being now desirous of a renewal of peace with the French, spared his life, and sent him back to Quebec with overtures for a renewal of negotiations. Early in July, 1654, Father Simon le Moyne was sent forth upon a tour of inspection, and returned to Quebec in September, with glowing reports of the fervor of his reception by both Mohawks and Onondagas. It was determined to rear a mission among the latter, and thither (1655),—a four weeks' voyage,—proceeded Claude Dablon and Peter Mary Joseph Chaumonot; while, to appease the jealous Mohawks, Le Moyne at the same time reopened a brief but unprosperous mission among that tribe.

At first, Dablon and Chaumonot had high hopes of their Onondaga enterprise; but mistrust soon arose in the minds of the natives, and Dablon found it necessary to proceed to Quebec and obtain fresh evidences of the friendship of the French. He returned in the early summer of 1656, accompanied by Fathers Francis Le Mercier, superior of the Canadian mission, and RenÉ MÉnard, two lay brothers, and a party of French colonists under a militia captain, who designed founding a settlement in the land of the Iroquois. By the close of the year, the work was in a promising stage; a number of Christianized Hurons, who had been adopted into the confederacy, formed a nucleus for proselyting, several Iroquois converts had been made, and all five of the tribes had been visited by the missionaries.

Fathers Paul Ragueneau and Joseph Imbert DupÉron, who had been sent out from Quebec in July, 1657, to assist the Onondaga mission, reached it only after many perils en route; for meanwhile, there had been a fresh Iroquois uprising against the Hurons and Ottawas, in which Father Leonard Garreau lost his life near Montreal, and the entire confederacy was soon in an uproar against the white allies of its ancient enemies. The intrepid Le Moyne joined the party in November, and in the following March (1658), on learning that all of the French had been condemned to death, the entire colony stole away in the night, and reached Montreal only after a long and hazardous voyage. The great Iroquois mission, which had promised so happily and cost so much in blood and treasure, was now thought to be a thing of the past.

There was, however, still another chapter to the story. In the summer of 1660, after two years of bloody forays against New France, a Cayuga sachem, who had been converted at Onondaga, came to Montreal as a peace messenger, asking for another black gown to minister to the native converts and a number of French captives in the Iroquois towns. Once more, Le Moyne cheerfully set out upon what seemed a path to death; but he passed the winter without molestation, and in the spring following was allowed to return to Canada with the French prisoners.

It was five years later (1665), before the government of New France felt itself sufficiently strong to threaten chastisement of the raiding Iroquois, who had long been making life a torment in the colonies on the St. Lawrence. The Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas sued for peace; but the Mohawks were obstinate, and their villages were wasted by fire until they too asked for mercy and the ministrations of the Jesuits. Fathers James Fremin, James Bruyas, and John Pierron were sent out in 1667; later, they were assisted by Julian Garnier, Stephen de Carheil, Peter Milet, and Boniface, so that by the close of 1668 a mission was in progress in each of the five cantonments. A few notable converts were made, among them Catharine Tegakouita, known as the "Iroquois saint;" Catharine Ganneaktena, an Erie captive who afterwards founded a native mission village on the banks of the St. Lawrence; the head-men AssendasÉ, Kryn, and Soenrese. But a great success was never possible; here as elsewhere, the vices and superstitions of the tribesmen were deep-rooted, and they had not yet reached a stage of culture where the spiritual doctrines of Christianity appealed strongly, save to a few emotional natures. The converts were subjected to so many annoyances and dangers, that isolation was thought essential, and there was established for them opposite Montreal the palisaded mission of St. Francis Xavier; this settlement, fostered by the French as a buffer against Iroquois attack on the colonists, was subsequently removed to Sault St. Louis, and is known in our day as Caughnawaga. This mission, and that of the Sulpitians on Montreal Mountain—later removed to the neighboring Lake of the Two Mountains,—and at QuintÉ Bay, were frequently recruited by Iroquois Christians, who were carefully instructed by the missionaries in the arts of agriculture and the rites of the church.

This depletion of the Iroquois population alarmed the sachems of the confederacy. To please them, Governor Dongan of New York, himself a Catholic, introduced to the Five Nations three English Jesuits, who sought in vain to counteract the movement. The French did not abandon the Iroquois mission-field until 1687, when the rising power of the English obliged them to withdraw from the country. We have, however, glimpses of occasional attempts thereafter to revive the work, Bruyas being on the ground in 1701, joined the following year by James de Lamberville, Garnier, and Le Valliant, and later by James d'Hue and Peter de Marieul. The entire party were again driven from the cantonments in 1708, De Marieul being the last of his order to remain on duty.

Thereafter, the Jesuits were chiefly devoted to their mission at Caughnawaga, whither many Iroquois retreated before the inroads of Dutch and English settlers who were now crowding upon their lands. When the black gowns were at last expelled from New France, secular priests continued their work among the remnants of those New York Indians who had sought protection by settling among the French colonists on the St. Lawrence.

This embraced the tribes beyond Lake Huron,—the Chippewas at Sault Ste. Marie, the Beavers, the Crees, the Ottawas and refugee Hurons on Lake Superior, the Menomonees, Pottawattomies, Sacs, Foxes, Winnebagoes, Miamis, Illinois, and those of the Sioux who lived on or near the banks of the Mississippi. The Ottawas were the first Indians from the upper lakes to trade with the French, hence that vast district became early known as the country of the Ottawas.

The Huron mission was the door to the Ottawa mission. Jogues and Raimbault were with the Chippewas at Sault Ste. Marie in 1641; but it was nineteen years after that (1660), before they were followed by another Jesuit, the veteran Father MÉnard, who accompanied an Ottawa fleet up the great river of that name, through Lake Huron and the Sault, and on to Keweenaw Bay, where he said the first mass heard on the shores of the northern sea. After a wretched winter on that inhospitable coast, spent in a shanty of fir boughs, with savage neighbors who reviled his presence, he proceeded inland intent on ministering to some Hurons who had fled from Iroquois persecution to the gloomy pine forest about the upper waters of Black River, in what is now Wisconsin. In August, 1661, he lost his life at a portage, thus being the first martyr upon the Ottawa mission.

Four years later, Claude AlloÜez set out for Lake Superior, and reaching Chequamegon Bay in October (1665), built a little chapel of bark upon the southwest shore of that rock-bound estuary,—the famous mission of La Pointe. His flock was a medley, Hurons and Algonkins here clustering in two villages, where they lived on fish, safe at last from the raging Iroquois, although much pestered by the wild Sioux of the West. For thirty years did AlloÜez travel from tribe to tribe, through the forests and over the prairies of the vast wilderness which a century later came to be organized into the Northwest Territory, and established missions at Green Bay, Sault Ste. Marie, on the Miami, and, with Marquette, among the Illinois at Kaskaskia.

Later, there arrived on the scene Fathers Louis Nicholas, James Marquette, Dablon, Louis AndrÉ, Druillettes, Albanel, and others. The field of the Northwest seemed at first, as did the Huron mission, highly promising. The missionaries were everywhere greeted by large audiences, and much curiosity was displayed concerning the rites of the church; but, as usual, the nomadic habits of the Indians rendered instruction difficult. The fathers, with great toil and misery, and subject to daily danger and insult, followed their people about upon long hunting and fishing expeditions; and even when the bands had returned to the squalid villages, life there was almost as comfortless as upon the trail. Among the donnÉs and the Jesuit coadjutor brothers were skillful workers in metal, who repaired the guns and utensils of the natives, and taught them how best to obtain and reduce the ore from lead and copper deposits. We have evidence that the copper region of Lake Superior was at times resorted to by the lay followers and their Indian attendants, to obtain material for crucifixes and for the medals which the missionaries gave to converts; and in the lead mines centering about where are now Dubuque, Iowa, and Galena, Ill., the missionary attendants and Indians obtained lead for barter with French fur-traders, who, like the soldiers of the Cross, were by this time wandering all over the Northwest.

Marquette had succeeded AlloÜez at La Pointe, in 1669; but it was not long before the Hurons and Ottawas of Chequamegon Bay foolishly incurred the fresh hostility of the Sioux, and the following year were driven eastward like autumn leaves before a blast. Marquette established them in a new mission, at Point St. Ignace, opposite Mackinaw; and it was from here that, in 1673, he joined the party of Louis Joliet, en route to the Mississippi River. The St. Ignace mission became the largest and most successful in the Northwest, there being encamped there, during Marquette's time, about 500 Hurons and 1,300 Ottawas. The interesting story of Marquette, a familiar chapter in American history, will be fully developed in the documents of this series; and we shall be able to present for the first time a facsimile of the original MS. Journal of his final and fatal voyage (1674), which is preserved among the many treasures of the Jesuit College of St. Mary's, in Montreal.

After the suspension of the publication of the Relations, in 1673, we obtain few glimpses of the Ottawa mission, save in the occasional references of travelers. The several local missions in the district were, in the main, probably more successful than those in any of the other fields of endeavor. La Pointe, Green Bay; St. Ignace (later Mackinac), Sault Ste. Marie, St. Joseph's, and Kaskaskia became the most important of them all; and at some of these points Catholic missions are still maintained by Franciscan friars and secular priests, for resident French Creoles and Indians. The uprising of the Foxes against French power, which lasted spasmodically from about 1700 to 1755, greatly hampered the work of the Jesuits; they did not, during this period, entirely absent themselves from the broad country of the Ottawas, but conversions were few and the records slight.

There was, for a time, governmental attempt to supplant the Western Jesuits with RÉcollets. Several friars were with La Salle, who had a great antipathy to the disciples of Loyola,—Father Hennepin's adventures belong to this period of RÉcollet effort, his colleagues at Fort CrÈvecoeur being Brothers Ribourde and MembrÉ; but their mission closed with the Iroquois repulse of the French from CrÈvecoeur, and the consequent death of Ribourde. When La Salle retired from the region, AlloÜez resumed the Illinois mission of the Jesuits; and soon after there arrived upon the ground Fathers Gravier, Marest, Mermet, and Pinet, who, because of the more docile character of the tribes collectively known as the Illinois,—Kaskaskias, Cahokias, Peorias, and Tamaroas,—found here a relatively fruitful field. In time, French settlements grew up around the palisaded missions, intermarriages occurred, and the work flourished for many years. Black gowns visited the prosperous Illinois towns as late as 1781, when the death of Father Meurin closed the work of his order in the Northwest.

VII. The Louisiana Mission.

The Jesuit Marquette was in Louisiana in 1673, but established no mission. Nine years later, MembrÉ, of the RÉcollets, accompanied La Salle into the region, and instructed natives as far down the Mississippi as the mouth; and with La Salle at his death were Anastasius Douay, of the RÉcollets, and the Sulpitian Cavalier. In 1698, Francis Jolliet de Montigny and Anthony Davion, priests of the Seminary of Quebec, established missions on the Yazoo, among the Natchez, and elsewhere in the neighborhood; to their aid, soon came others of their house,—St. CÔme, Gaulin, FonÇault, and Erborie, who labored until about 1710, when, St. CÔme and FonÇault being killed by roving Indians, the survivors retired to the North. The Jesuit Du Rue accompanied Iberville into the country in 1699-1700, followed by De Limoges and DongÉ, of his order, their work continuing until about 1704.

In 1721, Father Charlevoix reported that but two priests were then in Louisiana, one at Yazoo and another in New Orleans; at the latter post, a chaplain of some sort was established throughout the French rÉgime. Capuchins and Jesuits were both admitted to Louisiana, in 1722, the former to serve as priests to the French of the country, chiefly at New Orleans and Natchez, while the Jesuits were restricted to the Indian missions, although permitted to maintain a house in the outskirts of New Orleans. It was not long before the Illinois mission became attached to Louisiana, and missionaries for that field usually entered upon their work by way of the New Orleans house. Missions were maintained in the villages of the Arkansas, Yazoo, Choctaws, and Alibamons; but the uprising of the Indians in the Natchez district, in 1727, led to the fall of these several missions, together with that of French colonies above New Orleans. Father Du Poisson was killed by savages at Natchez, where he was temporarily supplying the French settlers in the absence of their Capuchin friar; Souel fell a victim to the Yazoos, at whose hands Doutreleau narrowly escaped destruction. However, the Jesuits did not despair, but soon returned to the Lower Mississippi, where they continued their labors until about 1770, although the order had in 1762 been suppressed in France.

The Louisiana mission of the Jesuits, while producing several martyrs, and rich in striking examples of missionary zeal, has yielded but meagre documentary results; few of the papers in the present series touch upon its work, and indeed detailed knowledge thereof is not easily obtainable. Severed from Canada by a long stretch of wilderness, communication with the St. Lawrence basin was difficult and spasmodic, and in the case of the Jesuits generally unnecessary; for, having their own superior at New Orleans, his allegiance was to the general of the order in France, not to his fellow-superiors in Quebec and Montreal. The several missions of New France played a large part in American history; that of Louisiana, although interesting, is of much less importance.

The Relations.

A few explorers like Champlain, Radisson, and Perrot have left valuable narratives behind them, which are of prime importance in the study of the beginnings of French settlement in America; but it is to the Jesuits that we owe the great body of our information concerning the frontiers of New France in the seventeenth century. It was their duty annually to transmit to their superior in Quebec, or Montreal, a written journal of their doings; it was also their duty to pay occasional visits to their superior, and to go into retreat at the central house of the Canadian mission. Annually, between 1632 and 1673, the superior made up a narrative, or Relation, of the most important events which had occurred in the several missionary districts under his charge, sometimes using the exact words of the missionaries, and sometimes with considerable editorial skill summarizing the individual journals in a general account, based in part upon the oral reports of visiting fathers. This annual Relation, which in bibliographies occasionally bears the name of the superior, and at other times of the missionary chiefly contributing to it, was forwarded to the provincial of the order in France, and, after careful scrutiny and re-editing, published by him in a series of duodecimo volumes, known collectively as The Jesuit Relations.

The authors of the journals which formed the basis of the Relations were for the most part men of trained intellect, acute observers, and practised in the art of keeping records of their experiences. They had left the most highly civilized country of their times, to plunge at once into the heart of the American wilderness, and attempt to win to the Christian faith the fiercest savages known to history. To gain these savages, it was first necessary to know them intimately,—their speech, their habits, their manner of thought, their strong points and their weak. These first students of the North American Indian were not only amply fitted for their undertaking, but none have since had better opportunity for its prosecution. They were explorers, as well as priests. Bancroft was inexact when he said, in oft-quoted phrase, "Not a cape was turned, not a river entered, but a Jesuit led the way." The actual pioneers of New France were almost always coureurs de bois, in the prosecution of the fur trade; but coureurs de bois, for obvious reasons, seldom kept records, even when capable of doing so, and as a rule we learn of their previous appearance on the scene only through chance allusions in the Relations. The Jesuits performed a great service to mankind in publishing their annals, which are, for historian, geographer, and ethnologist, among our first and best authorities.

Many of the Relations were written in Indian camps, amid a chaos of distractions. Insects innumerable tormented the journalists, they were immersed in scenes of squalor and degradation, overcome by fatigue and lack of proper sustenance, often suffering from wounds and disease, maltreated in a hundred ways by hosts who, at times, might more properly be called jailers; and not seldom had savage superstition risen to such a height, that to be seen making a memorandum was certain to arouse the ferocious enmity of the band. It is not surprising that the composition of these journals of the Jesuits is sometimes crude; the wonder is, that they could be written at all. Nearly always the style is simple and direct. Never does the narrator descend to self-glorification, or dwell unnecessarily upon the details of his continual martyrdom; he never complains of his lot; but sets forth his experience in phrases the most matter-of-fact. His meaning is seldom obscure. We gain from his pages a vivid picture of life in the primeval forest, as he lived it; we seem to see him upon his long canoe journeys, squatted amidst his dusky fellows, working his passage at the paddles, and carrying cargoes upon the portage trail; we see him the butt and scorn of the savage camp, sometimes deserted in the heart of the wilderness, and obliged to wait for another flotilla, or to make his way alone as best he can. Arrived at last, at his journey's end, we often find him vainly seeking for shelter in the squalid huts of the natives, with every man's hand against him, but his own heart open to them all. We find him, even when at last domiciled in some far-away village, working against hope to save the unbaptized from eternal damnation; we seem to see the rising storm of opposition, invoked by native medicine-men,—who to his seventeenth-century imagination seem devils indeed,—and at last the bursting climax of superstitious frenzy which sweeps him and his before it. Not only do these devoted missionaries,—never, in any field, has been witnessed greater personal heroism than theirs,—live and breathe before us in the Relations; but we have in them our first competent account of the Red Indian, at a time when relatively uncontaminated by contact with Europeans. We seem, in the Relations, to know this crafty savage, to measure him intellectually as well as physically, his inmost thoughts as well as open speech. The fathers did not understand him from an ethnological point of view, as well as he is to-day understood; their minds were tinctured with the scientific fallacies of their time. But, with what is known to-day, the photographic reports in the Relations help the student to an accurate picture of the untamed aborigine, and much that mystified the fathers, is now, by aid of their careful journals, easily susceptible of explanation. Few periods of history are so well illuminated as the French rÉgime in North America. This we owe in large measure to the existence of the Jesuit Relations.

What are generally known as the Relations proper, addressed to the superior and published in Paris, under direction of the provincial, commence with Le Jeune's Brieve Relation du Voyage de la Nouvelle-France (1632); and thereafter a duodecimo volume, neatly printed and bound in vellum, was issued annually from the press of Sebastien Cramoisy, in Paris, until 1673, when the series was discontinued, probably through the influence of Frontenac, to whom the Jesuits were distasteful. The Relations at once became popular in the court circles of France; their regular appearance was always awaited with the keenest interest, and assisted greatly in creating and fostering the enthusiasm of pious philanthropists, who for many years substantially maintained the missions of New France. In addition to these forty volumes, which to collectors are technically known as "Cramoisys," many similar publications found their way into the hands of the public, the greater part of them bearing date after the suppression of the Cramoisy series. Some were printed in Paris and Lyons by independent publishers; others appeared in Latin and Italian texts, at Rome, and other cities in Italy; while in such journals as Mercure FranÇois and AnnuÆ LitterÆ Societatis Jesu, occasionally were published letters from the missionaries, of the same nature as the Relations, but briefer and more intimate in tone.

It does not appear, however, that popular interest in these publications materially affected the secular literature of the period; they were largely used in Jesuit histories of New France, but by others were practically ignored. General literary interest in the Relations was only created about a half century ago, when Dr. E. B. O'Callaghan, editor of the Documentary History of New York, called attention to their great value as storehouses of contemporary information. Dr. John G. Shea, author of History of the Catholic Missions among the Indian Tribes of the United States, and Father Felix Martin, S. J., of Montreal, soon came forward, with fresh studies of the Relations. Collectors at once commenced searching for Cramoisys, which were found to be exceedingly scarce,—most of the originals having been literally worn out in the hands of their devout seventeenth-century readers; finally, the greatest collector of them all, James Lenox, of New York, outstripped his competitors and laid the foundation, in the Lenox Library, of what is to-day probably the only complete collection in America. In 1858, the Canadian government reprinted the Cramoisys, with a few additions, in three stout octavo volumes, carefully edited by AbbÉs LÀverdiÈre, Plante, and Ferland. These, too, are now rare, copies seldom being offered for sale.

The Quebec reprint was followed by two admirable series brought out by Shea and O'Callaghan respectively. Shea's Cramoisy Series (1857-1866), numbers twenty-five little volumes, the edition of each of which was limited to a hundred copies, now difficult to obtain; it contains for the most part entirely new matter, chiefly Relations prepared for publication by the superiors, after 1672, and miscellaneously printed; among the volumes, however, are a few reprints of particularly rare issues of the original Cramoisy press. The O'Callaghan series, seven in number (the edition limited to twenty-five copies), contains different material from Shea's, but of the same character. A further addition to the mass of material was made by Father Martin, in Relations InÉdites de la Nouvelle-France, 1672-79 (2 vols., Paris, 1861); and by Father Carayon in PremiÈre Mission des JÉsuites au Canada (Paris, 1864). In 1871, there was published at Quebec, under the editorship of AbbÉs LaverdiÈre and Casgrain, Le Journal des JÉsuites, from the original manuscript in the archives of the Seminary of Quebec (now Laval University). The memoranda contained in this volume,—a rarity, for the greater part of the edition was accidentally destroyed by fire,—were not intended for publication, being of the character of private records, covering the operations of the Jesuits in New France between 1645 and 1668. The Journal is, however, an indispensable complement of the Relations. It was reprinted by a Montreal publisher (J. M. Valois) in 1892, but even this later edition is already exhausted. Many interesting epistles are found in Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Écrites des Missions ÉtrangÈres, which cover the Jesuit missions in many lands, between the years 1702 and 1776; only a small portion of this publication (there are several editions, ranging from 1702-1776 to 1875-77) is devoted to the North American missions.

American historians, from Shea and Parkman down, have already made liberal use of the Relations, and here and there antiquarians and historical societies have published fragmentary translations. The great body of the Relations and their allied documents, however, has never been Englished. The text is difficult, for their French is not the French of the modern schools; hence these interesting papers have been doubly inaccessible to the majority of our historical students. The present edition, while faithfully reproducing the old French text, even in most of its errors, offers to the public for the first time, an English rendering side by side with the original.

In breadth of scope, also, this edition will, through the generous enterprise of the publishers, readily be first in the field. Not only will it embrace all of the original Cramoisy series, the Shea and O'Callaghan series, those collected by Fathers Martin and Carayon, the Journal des JÉsuites, and such of the Lettres Édifiantes as touch upon the North American missions, but many other valuable documents which have not previously been reprinted; it will contain, also, considerable hitherto-unpublished material from the manuscripts in the archives of St. Mary's College, Montreal, and other depositories. These several documents will be illustrated by faithful reproductions of all the maps and other engravings appearing in the old editions, besides much new material obtained especially for this edition, a prominent feature of which will be authentic portraits of many of the early fathers, and photographic facsimiles of pages from their manuscript letters.

In the Preface to each volume will be given such Bibliographical Data concerning its contents, as seem necessary to the scholar. The appended Notes consist of historical, biographical, archÆological, and miscellaneous comment, which it is hoped may tend to the elucidation of the text. An exhaustive General Index to the English text will appear in the final volume of the series.

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