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Meanwhile from Old France to New came succors and reinforcements
to the missions of the forest. More Jesuits crossed the sea to urge
on the work of conversion. These were no stern exiles, seeking on
barbarous shores an asylum for a persecuted faith. Rank, wealth,
power, and royalty itself, smiled on their enterprise, and bade them
God-speed. Yet, withal, a fervor more intense, a self-abnegation
more complete, a self-devotion more constant and enduring, will
scarcely find its record on the page of human history.
Holy Mother Church, linked in sordid wedlock to governments and
thrones, numbered among her servants a host of the worldly and the
proud, whose service of God was but the service of themselves,--and
many, too, who, in the sophistry of the human heart, thought
themselves true soldiers of Heaven, while earthly pride, interest,
and passion were the life-springs of their zeal. This mighty Church
of Rome, in her imposing march along the high road of history,
heralded as infallible and divine, astounds the gazing world with
prodigies of contradiction: now the protector of the oppressed, now
the right arm of tyrants; now breathing charity and love, now dark
with the passions of Hell; now beaming with celestial truth, now
masked in hypocrisy and lies; now a virgin, now a harlot; an
imperial queen, and a tinselled actress. Clearly, she is of earth,
not of heaven; and her transcendently dramatic life is a type of the
good and ill, the baseness and nobleness, the foulness and purity,
the love and hate, the pride, passion, truth, falsehood, fierceness,
and tenderness, that battle in the restless heart of man.
It was her nobler and purer part that gave life to the early
missions of New France. That gloomy wilderness, those hordes of
savages, had nothing to tempt the ambitious, the proud, the
grasping, or the indolent. Obscure toil, solitude, privation,
hardship, and death were to be the missionary's portion. He who set
sail for the country of the Hurons left behind him the world and all
its prizes. True, he acted under orders,--obedient, like a soldier,
to the word of command: but the astute Society of Jesus knew its
members, weighed each in the balance, gave each his fitting task;
and when the word was passed to embark for New France, it was but
the response to a secret longing of the fervent heart. The letters
of these priests, departing for the scene of their labors, breathe a
spirit of enthusiastic exaltation, which, to a colder nature and a
colder faith, may sometimes seem overstrained, but which is in no
way disproportionate to the vastness of the effort and the sacrifice
demanded of them.
[The following are passages from letters of
missionaries at this time. See "Divers Sentimens,"
appended to the Relation of 1635.
"On dit que les premiers qui fondent les Eglises
d'ordinaire sont saincts: cette pensée m'attendrit si
fort le cœur, que quoy que ie me voye icy fort inutile
dans ceste fortunée Nouuelle France, si faut-il que
i'auoüe que ie ne me sçaurois defendre d'vne pensée qui
me presse le cœur: Cupio impendi, et superimpendi pro
vobis, Pauure Nouuelle France, ie desire me sacrifier
pour ton bien, et quand il me deuroit couster mille
vies, moyennant que ie puisse aider à sauuer vne seule
âme, ie seray trop heureux, et ma vie tres bien employée."
"Ma consolation parmy les Hurons, c'est que tous les
iours ie me confesse, et puis ie dis la Messe, comme si
ie deuois prendre le Viatique et mourir ce iour là, et
ie ne crois pas qu'on puisse mieux viure, ny auec plus
de satisfaction et de courage, et mesme de merites, que
viure en un lieu, où on pense pouuoir mourir tous les
iours, et auoir la deuise de S. Paul, Quotidie morior,
fratres, etc. mes freres, ie fais estat de mourir tous
les iours."
"Qui ne void la Nouuelle France que par les yeux de
chair et de nature, il n'y void que des bois et des
croix; mais qui les considere auec les yeux de la grace
et d'vne bonne vocation, il n'y void que Dieu, les
vertus et les graces, et on y trouue tant et de si
solides consolations, que si ie pouuois acheter la
Nouuelle France, en donnant tout le Paradis Terrestre,
certainement ie l'acheterois. Mon Dieu, qu'il fait bon
estre au lieu où Dieu nous a mis de sa grace!
veritablement i'ay trouué icy ce que i'auois esperé, vn
cœur selon le cœur de Dieu, qui ne cherche que Dieu."] |
All turned with longing eyes towards the mission of the Huron;
for here the largest harvest promised to repay their labor, and here
hardships and dangers most abounded. Two Jesuits, Pijart and Le
Mercier, had been sent thither in 1635; and in midsummer of the next
year three more arrived,--Jogues, Chatelain, and Garnier. When,
after their long and lonely journey, they reached Ihonatiria one by
one, they were received by their brethren with scanty fare indeed,
but with a fervor of affectionate welcome which more than made
amends; for among these priests, united in a community of faith and
enthusiasm, there was far more than the genial comradeship of men
joined in a common enterprise of self-devotion and peril.1
On their way, they had met Daniel and Davost descending to Quebec,
to establish there a seminary of Huron children,--a project long
cherished by Brébeuf and his companions.
Scarcely had the new-comers arrived, when they were attacked by a
contagious fever, which turned their mission-house into a hospital.
Jogues, Garnier, and Chatelain fell ill in turn; and two of their
domestics also were soon prostrated, though the only one of the
number who could hunt fortunately escaped. Those who remained in
health attended the sick, and the sufferers vied with each other in
efforts often beyond their strength to relieve their companions in
misfortune. [Lettre de Brébeuf au T. R. P. Mutio Vitelleschi, 20
Mai, 1637, in Carayon, 157. Le Mercier, Relation des Huron, 1637,
120, 123.] The disease in no case proved fatal; but scarcely had
health begun to return to their household, when an unforeseen
calamity demanded the exertion of all their energies.
The pestilence, which for two years past had from time to time
visited the Huron towns, now returned with tenfold violence, and
with it soon appeared a new and fearful scourge,--the small-pox.
Terror was universal. The contagion increased as autumn advanced;
and when winter came, far from ceasing, as the priests had hoped,
its ravages were appalling. The season of Huron festivity was turned
to a season of mourning; and such was the despondency and dismay,
that suicide became frequent. The Jesuits, singly or in pairs,
journeyed in the depth of winter from village to village,
ministering to the sick, and seeking to commend their religious
teachings by their efforts to relieve bodily distress. Happily,
perhaps, for their patients, they had no medicine but a little senna.
A few raisins were left, however; and one or two of these, with a
spoonful of sweetened water, were always eagerly accepted by the
sufferers, who thought them endowed with some mysterious and
sovereign efficacy. No house was left unvisited. As the missionary,
physician at once to body and soul, entered one of these smoky dens,
he saw the inmates, their heads muffled in their robes of skins,
seated around the fires in silent dejection. Everywhere was heard
the wail of sick and dying children; and on or under the platforms
at the sides of the house crouched squalid men and women, in all the
stages of the distemper. The Father approached, made inquiries,
spoke words of kindness, administered his harmless remedies, or
offered a bowl of broth made from game brought in by the Frenchman
who hunted for the mission. [Game was so scarce in the Huron
country, that it was greatly prized as a luxury. Le Mercier speaks
of an Indian, sixty years of age, who walked twelve miles to taste
the wild-fowl killed by the French hunter. The ordinary food was
corn, beans, pumpkins, and fish.] The body cared for, he next
addressed himself to the soul. "This life is short, and very
miserable. It matters little whether we live or die." The patient
remained silent, or grumbled his dissent. The Jesuit, after
enlarging for a time, in broken Huron, on the brevity and
nothingness of mortal weal or woe, passed next to the joys of Heaven
and the pains of Hell, which he set forth with his best rhetoric.
His pictures of infernal fires and torturing devils were readily
comprehended, if the listener had consciousness enough to comprehend
anything; but with respect to the advantages of the French Paradise,
he was slow of conviction. "I wish to go where my relations and
ancestors have gone," was a common reply. "Heaven is a good place
for Frenchmen," said another; "but I wish to be among Indians, for
the French will give me nothing to eat when I get there." [It was
scarcely possible to convince the Indians, that there was but one
God for themselves and the whites. The proposition was met by such
arguments as this: "If we had been of one father, we should know how
to make knives and coats as well as you."--Le Mercier, Relation des
Huron, 1637, 147.] Often the patient was stolidly silent; sometimes
he was hopelessly perverse and contradictory. Again, Nature
triumphed over Grace. "Which will you choose," demanded the priest
of a dying woman, "Heaven or Hell?" "Hell, if my children are there,
as you say," returned the mother. "Do they hunt in Heaven, or make
war, or go to feasts?" asked an anxious inquirer. "Oh, no!" replied
the Father. "Then," returned the querist, "I will not go. It is not
good to be lazy." But above all other obstacles was the dread of
starvation in the regions of the blest. Nor, when the dying Indian
had been induced at last to express a desire for Paradise, was it an
easy matter to bring him to a due contrition for his sins; for he
would deny with indignation that he had ever committed any. When at
length, as sometimes happened, all these difficulties gave way, and
the patient had been brought to what seemed to his instructor a
fitting frame for baptism, the priest, with contentment at his
heart, brought water in a cup or in the hollow of his hand, touched
his forehead with the mystic drop, and snatched him from an eternity
of woe. But the convert, even after his baptism, did not always
manifest a satisfactory spiritual condition. "Why did you baptize
that Iroquois?" asked one of the dying neophytes, speaking of the
prisoner recently tortured; "he will get to Heaven before us, and,
when he sees us coming, he will drive us out." [Most of the above
traits are drawn from Le Mercier's report of 1637. The rest are from
Brébeuf.]
Thus did these worthy priests, too conscientious to let these
unfortunates die in peace, follow them with benevolent persecutions
to the hour of their death.
It was clear to the Fathers, that their ministrations were valued
solely because their religion was supposed by many to be a
"medicine," or charm, efficacious against famine, disease, and
death. They themselves, indeed, firmly believed that saints and
angels were always at hand with temporal succors for the faithful.
At their intercession, St. Joseph had interposed to procure a happy
delivery to a squaw in protracted pains of childbirth; [Brébeuf,
Relation des Hurons, 1636, 89. Another woman was delivered on
touching a relic of St. Ignatius. Ibid., 90. ] and they never
doubted, that, in the hour of need, the celestial powers would
confound the unbeliever with intervention direct and manifest. At
the town of Wenrio, the people, after trying in vain all the feasts,
dances, and preposterous ceremonies by which their medicine-men
sought to stop the pest, resolved to essay the "medicine" of the
French, and, to that end, called the priests to a council. "What
must we do, that your God may take pity on us?" Brébeuf's answer was
uncompromising:--
"Believe in Him; keep His commandments; abjure your faith in dreams;
take but one wife, and be true to her; give up your superstitious
feasts; renounce your assemblies of debauchery; eat no human flesh;
never give feasts to demons; and make a vow, that, if God will
deliver you from this pest, you will build a chapel to offer Him
thanksgiving and praise." [Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637,
114, 116 (Cramoisy). ]
The terms were too hard. They would fain bargain to be let off with
building the chapel alone; but Brébeuf would bate them nothing, and
the council broke up in despair.
At Ossossané, a few miles distant, the people, in a frenzy of
terror, accepted the conditions, and promised to renounce their
superstitions and reform their manners. It was a labor of Hercules,
a cleansing of Augean stables; but the scared savages were ready to
make any promise that might stay the pestilence. One of their
principal sorcerers proclaimed in a loud voice through the streets
of the town, that the God of the French was their master, and that
thenceforth all must live according to His will. "What consolation,"
exclaims Le Mercier, "to see God glorified by the lips of an imp of
Satan!" [Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637, 127, 128 (Cramoisy).
]
Their joy was short. The proclamation was on the twelfth of
December. On the twenty-first, a noted sorcerer came to Ossossané.
He was of a dwarfish, hump-backed figure,--most rare among this
symmetrical people,--with a vicious face, and a dress consisting of
a torn and shabby robe of beaver-skin. Scarcely had he arrived,
when, with ten or twelve other savages, he ensconced himself in a
kennel of bark made for the occasion. In the midst were placed
several stones, heated red-hot. On these the sorcerer threw tobacco,
producing a stifling fumigation; in the midst of which, for a full
half-hour, he sang, at the top of his throat, those boastful, yet
meaningless, rhapsodies of which Indian magical songs are composed.
Then came a grand "medicine-feast"; and the disappointed Jesuits saw
plainly that the objects of their spiritual care, unwilling to throw
away any chance of cure, were bent on invoking aid from God and the
Devil at once.
The hump-backed sorcerer became a thorn in the side of the Fathers,
who more than half believed his own account of his origin. He was,
he said, not a man, but an okies,--a spirit, or, as the
priests rendered it, a demon,--and had dwelt with other okies
under the earth, when the whim seized him to become a man. Therefore
he ascended to the upper world, in company with a female spirit.
They hid beside a path, and, when they saw a woman passing, they
entered her womb. After a time they were born, but not until the
male oki had quarrelled with and strangled his female companion, who
came dead into the world. [Le Mercier, Relation des Huron, 1637, 72
(Cramoisy). This "petit sorcier" is often mentioned elsewhere. ] The
character of the sorcerer seems to have comported reasonably well
with this story of his origin. He pretended to have an absolute
control over the pestilence, and his prescriptions were scrupulously
followed.
He had several conspicuous rivals, besides a host of humbler
competitors. One of these magician-doctors, who was nearly blind,
made for himself a kennel at the end of his house, where he fasted
for seven days. [See Introduction.] On
the sixth day the spirits appeared, and, among other revelations,
told him that the disease could be frightened away by means of
images of straw, like scarecrows, placed on the tops of the houses.
Within forty-eight hours after this announcement, the roofs of
Onnentisati and the neighboring villages were covered with an army
of these effigies. The Indians tried to persuade the Jesuits to put
them on the mission-house; but the priests replied, that the cross
before their door was a better protector; and, for further security,
they set another on their roof, declaring that they would rely on it
to save them from infection. ["Qu'en vertu de ce signe nous ne
redoutions point les demons, et esperions que Dieu preserueroit
nostre petite maison de cette maladie contagieuse."--Le Mercier,
Relation des Hurons, 1637, 150.] The Indians, on their part, anxious
that their scarecrows should do their office well, addressed them in
loud harangues and burned offerings of tobacco to them. [Ibid.,
157.]
There was another sorcerer, whose medical practice was so extensive,
that, unable to attend to all his patients, he sent substitutes to
the surrounding towns, first imparting to them his own mysterious
power. One of these deputies came to Ossossané while the priests
were there. The principal house was thronged with expectant savages,
anxiously waiting his arrival. A chief carried before him a kettle
of mystic water, with which the envoy sprinkled the company,2
at the same time fanning them with the wing of a wild turkey. Then
came a grand medicine-feast, followed by a medicine-dance of women.
Opinion was divided as to the nature of the pest; but the greater
number were agreed that it was a malignant oki, who came from Lake
Huron.3 As it was of the last moment to
conciliate or frighten him, no means to these ends were neglected.
Feasts were held for him, at which, to do him honor, each guest
gorged himself like a vulture. A mystic fraternity danced with
firebrands in their mouths; while other dancers wore masks, and
pretended to be hump-backed. Tobacco was burned to the Demon of the
Pest, no less than to the scarecrows which were to frighten him. A
chief climbed to the roof of a house, and shouted to the invisible
monster, "If you want flesh, go to our enemies, go to the
Iroquois!"--while, to add terror to persuasion, the crowd in the
dwelling below yelled with all the force of their lungs, and beat
furiously with sticks on the walls of bark.
Besides these public efforts to stay the pestilence, the sufferers,
each for himself, had their own methods of cure, dictated by dreams
or prescribed by established usage. Thus two of the priests,
entering a house, saw a sick man crouched in a corner, while near
him sat three friends. Before each of these was placed a huge
portion of food,--enough, the witness declares, for four,--and
though all were gorged to suffocation, with starting eyeballs and
distended veins, they still held staunchly to their task, resolved
at all costs to devour the whole, in order to cure the patient, who
meanwhile ceased not in feeble tones, to praise their exertions, and
implore them to persevere.
| ["En fin il leur fallut rendre gorge, ce qu'ils
firent à diuerses reprises, ne laissants pas pour cela
de continuer à vuider leur plat."--Le Mercier, Relation
des Hurons, 1637, 142.--This beastly superstition exists
in some tribes at the present day. A kindred
superstition once fell under the writer's notice, in the
case of a wounded Indian, who begged of every one he met
to drink a large bowl of water, in order that he, the
Indian, might be cured.] |
Turning from these eccentricities of the "noble savage"4
to the zealots who were toiling, according to their light, to snatch
him from the clutch of Satan, we see the irrepressible Jesuits
roaming from town to town in restless quest of subjects for baptism.
In the case of adults, they thought some little preparation
essential; but their efforts to this end, even with the aid of St.
Joseph, whom they constantly invoked,5
were not always successful; and, cheaply as they offered salvation,
they sometimes railed to find a purchaser. With infants, however, a
simple drop of water sufficed for the transfer from a prospective
Hell to an assured Paradise. The Indians, who at first had sought
baptism as a cure, now began to regard it as a cause of death; and
when the priest entered a lodge where a sick child lay in extremity,
the scowling parents watched him with jealous distrust, lest
unawares the deadly drop should be applied. The Jesuits were equal
to the emergency. Father Le Mercier will best tell his own story.
"On the third of May, Father Pierre Pijart baptized at Anonatea a
little child two months old, in manifest danger of death, without
being seen by the parents, who would not give their consent. This is
the device which he used. Our sugar does wonders for us. He
pretended to make the child drink a little sugared water, and at the
same time dipped a finger in it. As the father of the infant began
to suspect something, and called out to him not to baptize it, he
gave the spoon to a woman who was near, and said to her, 'Give it to
him yourself.' She approached and found the child asleep; and at the
same time Father Pijart, under pretence of seeing if he was really
asleep touched his face with his wet finger, and baptized him. At
the end of forty-eight hours he went to Heaven.
"Some days before, the missionary had used the same device (industrie)
for baptizing a little boy six or seven years old. His father, who
was very sick, had several times refused to receive baptism; and
when asked if he would not be glad to have his son baptized, he had
answered, No. 'At least,' said Father Pijart, 'you will not object
to my giving him a little sugar.' 'No; but you must not baptize
him.' The missionary gave it to him once; then again; and at the
third spoonful, before he had put the sugar into the water, he let a
drop of it fall on the child, at the same time pronouncing the
sacramental words. A little girl, who was looking at him, cried out,
'Father, he is baptizing him!' The child's father was much
disturbed; but the missionary said to him, 'Did you not see that I
was giving him sugar?' The child died soon after; but God showed His
grace to the father, who is now in perfect health."
| [Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637, 165. Various
other cases of the kind are mentioned in the Relations.] |
That equivocal morality, lashed by the withering satire of
Pascal,--a morality built on the doctrine that all means are
permissible for saving souls from perdition, and that sin itself is
no sin when its object is the "greater glory of God,"--found far
less scope in the rude wilderness of the Huron than among the
interests, ambitions, and passions of civilized life. Nor were these
men, chosen from the purest of their Order, personally well fitted
to illustrate the capabilities of this elastic system. Yet now and
then, by the light of their own writings, we may observe that the
teachings of the school of Loyola had not been wholly without effect
in the formation of their ethics.
But when we see them, in the gloomy February of 1637, and the
gloomier months that followed, toiling on foot from one infected
town to another, wading through the sodden snow, under the bare and
dripping forests, drenched with incessant rains, till they descried
at length through the storm the clustered dwellings of some
barbarous hamlet,--when we see them entering, one after another,
these wretched abodes of misery and darkness, and all for one sole
end, the baptism of the sick and dying, we may smile at the futility
of the object, but we must needs admire the self-sacrificing zeal
with which it was pursued.
1 "Ie luy preparay de ce que nous auions, pour le
receuoir, mais quel festin! vne poignée de petit poisson sec auec vn
peu de farine; i'enuoyay chercher quelques nouueaux espics, que nous
luy fismes rostir à la façon du pays; mais il est vray que dans son
cœur et à l'entendre, il ne fit iamais meilleure chere. La ioye qui
se ressent à ces entreueuës semble estre quelque image du
contentement des bien-heureux à leur arriuée dans le Ciel, tant elle
est pleine de suauité."--Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637, 106.
2 The idea seems to have been taken from the holy
water of the French. Le Mercier says that a Huron who had been to
Quebec once asked him the use of the vase of water at the door of
the chapel. The priest told him that it was "to frighten away the
devils". On this, he begged earnestly to have some of it.
3 Many believed that the country was bewitched by
wicked sorcerers, one of whom, it was said, had been seen at night
roaming around the villages, vomiting fire. (Le Mercier, Relation
des Hurons, 1637, 134.) This superstition of sorcerers vomiting fire
was common among the Iroquois of New York.--Others held that a
sister of Étienne Brulé caused the evil, in revenge for the death of
her brother, murdered some years before. She was said to have been
seen flying over the country, breathing forth pestilence.
4 In the midst of these absurdities we find
recorded one of the best traits of the Indian character. At
Ihonatiria, a house occupied by a family of orphan children was
burned to the ground, leaving the inmates destitute. The villagers
united to aid them. Each contributed something, and they were soon
better provided for than before.]
5 "C'est nostre refuge ordinaire en semblables
necessitez, et d'ordinaire auec tels succez, que nous auons sujet
d'en benir Dieu à iamais, qui nous fait cognoistre en cette barbarie
le credit de ce S. Patriarche aupres de son infinie misericorde."--Le
Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637, 153.--In the case of a woman at
Onnentisati, "Dieu nous inspira de luy vouër quelques Messes en
l'honneur de S. Joseph." The effect was prompt. In half an hour the
woman was ready for baptism. On the same page we have another
subject secured to Heaven, "sans doute par les merites du glorieux
Patriarche S. Joseph."]
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The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century, 1867
Jesuits
in North America
 |
