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Late in the preceding autumn the Iroquois had taken the war-path
in force. At the end of November, two escaped prisoners came to Isle
St. Joseph with the news that a band of three hundred warriors was
hovering in the Huron forests, doubtful whether to invade the island
or to attack the towns of the Tobacco Nation in the valleys of the
Blue Mountains. The Father Superior, Ragueneau, sent a runner
thither in all haste, to warn the inhabitants of their danger.
There were at this time two missions in the Tobacco Nation, St. Jean
and St. Matthias,1 the latter under the
charge of the Jesuits Garreau and Grelon, and the former under that
of Garnier and Chabanel. St. Jean, the principal seat of the mission
of the same name, was a town of five or six hundred families. Its
population was, moreover, greatly augmented by the bands of fugitive
Huron who had taken refuge there. When the warriors were warned by
Ragueneau's messenger of a probable attack from the Iroquois, they
were far from being daunted, but, confiding in their numbers,
awaited the enemy in one of those fits of valor which characterize
the unstable courage of the savage. At St. Jean all was paint,
feathers, and uproar,--singing, dancing, howling, and stamping.
Quivers were filled, knives whetted, and tomahawks sharpened; but
when, after two days of eager expectancy, the enemy did not appear,
the warriors lost patience. Thinking, and probably with reason, that
the Iroquois were afraid of them, they resolved to sally forth, and
take the offensive. With yelps and whoops they defiled into the
forest, where the branches were gray and bare, and the ground
thickly covered with snow. They pushed on rapidly till the following
day, but could not discover their wary enemy, who had made a wide
circuit, and was approaching the town from another quarter. By ill
luck, the Iroquois captured a Tobacco Indian and his squaw,
straggling in the forest not far from St. Jean; and the two
prisoners, to propitiate them, told them the defenseless condition
of the place, where none remained but women, children, and old men.
The delighted Iroquois no longer hesitated, but silently and swiftly
pushed on towards the town.
It was two o'clock in the afternoon of the seventh of December. [Bressani,
Relation Abrégée, 264.] Chabanel had left the place a day or two
before, in obedience to a message from Ragueneau, and Garnier was
here alone. He was making his rounds among the houses, visiting the
sick and instructing his converts, when the horrible din of the
war-whoop rose from the borders of the clearing, and, on the
instant, the town was mad with terror. Children and girls rushed to
and fro, blind with fright; women snatched their infants, and fled
they knew not whither. Garnier ran to his chapel, where a few of his
converts had sought asylum. He gave them his benediction, exhorted
them to hold fast to the Faith, and bade them fly while there was
yet time. For himself, he hastened back to the houses, running from
one to another, and giving absolution or baptism to all whom he
found. An Iroquois met him, shot him with three balls through the
body and thigh, tore off his cassock, and rushed on in pursuit of
the fugitives. Garnier lay for a moment on the ground, as if
stunned; then, recovering his senses, he was seen to rise into a
kneeling posture. At a little distance from him lay a Huron,
mortally wounded, but still showing signs of life. With the Heaven
that awaited him glowing before his fading vision, the priest
dragged himself towards the dying Indian, to give him absolution;
but his strength failed, and he fell again to the earth. He rose
once more, and again crept forward, when a party of Iroquois rushed
upon him, split his head with two blows of a hatchet, stripped him,
and left his body on the ground.2 At
this time the whole town was on fire. The invaders, fearing that the
absent warriors might return and take their revenge, hastened to
finish their work, scattered firebrands every where, and threw
children alive into the burning houses. They killed many of the
fugitives, captured many more, and then made a hasty retreat through
the forest with their prisoners, butchering such of them as lagged
on the way. St. Jean lay a waste of smoking ruins thickly strewn
with blackened corpses of the slain.
Towards evening, parties of fugitives reached St. Matthias, with
tidings of the catastrophe. The town was wild with alarm, and all
stood on the watch, in expectation of an attack; but when, in the
morning, scouts came in and reported the retreat of the Iroquois,
Garreau and Grelon set out with a party of converts to visit the
scene of havoc. For a long time they looked in vain for the body of
Garnier; but at length they found him lying where he had fallen,--so
scorched and disfigured, that he was recognized with difficulty. The
two priests wrapped his body in a part of their own clothing; the
Indian converts dug a grave on the spot where his church had stood;
and here they buried him. Thus, at the age of forty-four, died
Charles Garnier, the favorite child of wealthy and noble parents,
nursed in Parisian luxury and ease, then living and dying, a more
than willing exile, amid the hardships and horrors of the Huron
wilderness. His life and his death are his best eulogy. Brébeuf was
the lion of the Huron mission, and Garnier was the lamb; but the
lamb was as fearless as the lion.
[Garnier's devotion to the mission was absolute. He
took little or no interest in the news from France,
which, at intervals of from one to three years, found
its way to the Huron towns. His companion Bressani says,
that he would walk thirty or forty miles in the hottest
summer day, to baptize some dying Indian, when the
country was infested by the enemy. On similar errands,
he would sometimes pass the night alone in the forest in
the depth of winter. He was anxious to fall into the
hands of the Iroquois, that he might preach the Faith to
them even out of the midst of the fire. In one of his
unpublished letters he writes, "Praised be our Lord, who
punishes me for my sins by depriving me of this crown"
(the crown of martyrdom). After the death of Brébeuf and
Lalemant, he writes to his brother--
"Hélas! Mon cher frère, si ma conscience ne me
convainquait et ne me confondait de mon infidélité au
service de notre bon maître, je pourrais espérer quelque
faveur approchante de celles qu'il a faites aux
bien-heureux martyrs avec qui j'avais le bien de
converser souvent, étant dans les mêmes occasions et
dangers qu'ils étaient, mais sa justice me fait craindre
que je ne demeure toujours indigne d'une telle couronne."
He contented himself with the most wretched fare during
the last years of famine, living in good measure on
roots and acorns; "although," says Ragueneau, "he had
been the cherished son of a rich and noble house, on
whom all the affection of his father had centred, and
who had been nourished on food very different from that
of swine."--Relation des Hurons, 1650, 12.
For his character, see Ragueneau, Bressani, Tanner, and
Alegambe, who devotes many pages to the description of
his religious traits; but the complexion of his mind is
best reflected in his private letters.] |
When, on the following morning, the warriors of St. Jean returned
from their rash and bootless sally, and saw the ashes of their
desolated homes and the ghastly relics of their murdered families,
they seated themselves amid the ruin, silent and motionless as
statues of bronze, with heads bowed down and eyes fixed on the
ground. Thus they remained through half the day. Tears and wailing
were for women; this was the mourning of warriors.
Garnier's colleague, Chabanel, had been recalled from St. Jean by an
order from the Father Superior, who thought it needless to expose
the life of more than one priest in a position of so much danger. He
stopped on his way at St. Matthias, and on the morning of the
seventh of December, the day of the attack, left that town with
seven or eight Christian Huron. The journey was rough and difficult.
They proceeded through the forest about eighteen miles, and then
encamped in the snow. The Indians fell asleep; but Chabanel, from an
apprehension of danger, or some other cause, remained awake. About
midnight he heard a strange sound in the distance,--a confusion of
fierce voices, mingled with songs and outcries. It was the Iroquois
on their retreat with their prisoners, some of whom were defiantly
singing their war-songs, after the Indian custom. Chabanel waked his
companions, who instantly took flight. He tried to follow, but could
not keep pace with the light-footed savages, who returned to St.
Matthias, and told what had occurred. They said, however, that
Chabanel had left them and taken an opposite direction, in order to
reach Isle St. Joseph. His brother priests were for some time
ignorant of what had befallen him. At length a Huron Indian, who had
been converted, but afterward apostatized, gave out that he had met
him in the forest, and aided him with his canoe to cross a river
which lay in his path. Some supposed that he had lost his way, and
died of cold and hunger; but others were of a different opinion.
Their suspicion was confirmed some time afterwards by the renegade
Huron, who confessed that he had killed Chabanel and thrown his body
into the river, after robbing him of his clothes, his hat, the
blanket or mantle which was strapped to his shoulders, and the bag
in which he carried his books and papers. He declared that his
motive was hatred of the Faith, which had caused the ruin of the
Hurons. [Mémoires touchant la Mort et les Vertus des Pères, etc.,
MS.] The priest had prepared himself for a worse fate. Before
leaving Sainte Marie on the Wye, to go to his post in the Tobacco
Nation, he had written to his brother to regard him as a victim
destined to the fires of the Iroquois. [Abrégé de la Vie du P. Noël
Chabanel, MS.] He added, that, though he was naturally timid, he was
now wholly indifferent to danger; and he expressed the belief that
only a superhuman power could have wrought such a change in him.
["Ie suis fort apprehensif de mon naturel; toutefois,
maintenant que ie vay au plus grand danger et qu'il me
semble que la mort n'est pas esloignée, ie ne sens plus
de crainte. Cette disposition ne vient pas de moy."--Relation
des Hurons, 1650, 18.
The following is the vow made by Chabanel, at a time
when his disgust at the Indian mode of life beset him
with temptations to ask to be recalled from the mission.
It is translated from the Latin original:--
"My Lord Jesus Christ, who, in the admirable disposition
of thy paternal providence, hast willed that I, although
most unworthy, should be a co-laborer with the holy
Apostles in this vineyard of the Hurons,--I, Noël
Chabanel, impelled by the desire of fulfilling thy holy
will in advancing the conversion of the savages of this
land to thy faith, do vow, in the presence of the most
holy sacrament of thy precious body and blood, which is
God's tabernacle among men, to remain perpetually
attached to this mission of the Hurons, understanding
all things according to the interpretation and disposal
of the Superiors of the Society of Jesus. Therefore I
entreat thee to receive me as the perpetual servant of
this mission, and to render me worthy of so sublime a
ministry. Amen. This twentieth day of June, 1647."] |
Garreau and Grelon, in their mission of St. Matthias, were
exposed to other dangers than those of the Iroquois. A report was
spread, not only that they were magicians, but that they had a
secret understanding with the enemy. A nocturnal council was called,
and their death was decreed. In the morning, a furious crowd
gathered before a lodge which they were about to enter, screeching
and yelling after the manner of Indians when they compel a prisoner
to run the gantlet. The two priests, giving no sign of fear, passed
through the crowd and entered the lodge unharmed. Hatchets were
brandished over them, but no one would be the first to strike. Their
converts were amazed at their escape, and they themselves ascribed
it to the interposition of a protecting Providence. The Huron
missionaries were doubly in danger,--not more from the Iroquois than
from the blind rage of those who should have been their friends.
[Ragueneau, Relation des Hurons, 1650, 20. One of these two
missionaries, Garreau, was afterwards killed by the Iroquois, who
shot him through the spine, in 1656, near Montreal.--De Quen,
Relation, 1656, 41.]
1 The Indian name of St. Jean was Etarita; and
that of St. Matthias, Ekarenniondi.
2 The above particulars of Garnier's death rest
on the evidence of a Christian Huron woman, named Marthe, who saw
him shot down, and also saw his attempt to reach the dying Indian.
She was herself struck down immediately after with a war-club, but
remained alive, and escaped in the confusion. She died three months
later, at Isle St. Joseph, from the effects of the injuries she had
received, after reaffirming the truth of her story to Ragueneau, who
was with her, and who questioned her on the subject. (Mémoires
touchant la Mort et les Vertus des Pères Garnier, etc., MS.).
Ragueneau also speaks of her in Relation des Hurons, 1650, 9. --The
priests Grelon and Garreau found the body stripped naked, with three
gunshot wounds in the abdomen and thigh, and two deep hatchet wounds
in the head.]
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The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century, 1867
Jesuits
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