|
|
The town of Ossossané, or Rochelle, stood, as we have seen, on
the borders of Lake Huron, at the skirts of a gloomy wilderness of
pine. Thither, in May, 1637, repaired Father Pijart, to found, in
this, one of the largest of the Huron towns, the new mission of the
Immaculate Conception. [The doctrine of the immaculate conception of
the Virgin, recently sanctioned by the Pope, has long been a
favorite tenet of the Jesuits.] The Indians had promised Brébeuf to
build a house for the black-robes, and Pijart found the work in
progress. There were at this time about fifty dwellings in the town,
each containing eight or ten families. The quadrangular fort already
alluded to had now been completed by the Indians, under the
instruction of the priests. [Lettres de Garnier, MSS. It was of
upright pickets, ten feet high with flanking towers at two angles.]
The new mission-house was about seventy feet in length. No sooner
had the savage workmen secured the bark covering on its top and
sides than the priests took possession, and began their preparations
for a notable ceremony. At the farther end they made an altar, and
hung such decorations as they had on the rough walls of bark
throughout half the length of the structure. This formed their
chapel. On the altar was a crucifix, with vessels and ornaments of
shining metal; while above hung several pictures,--among them a
painting of Christ, and another of the Virgin, both of life-size.
There was also a representation of the Last Judgment, wherein
dragons and serpents might be seen feasting on the entrails of the
wicked, while demons scourged them into the flames of Hell. The
entrance was adorned with a quantity of tinsel, together with green
boughs skillfully disposed.
| ["Nostre Chapelle estoit extraordinairement bien
ornée, . . nous auions dressé vn portique entortillé de
feüillage, meslé d'oripeau, en vn mot nous auions
estallé tout ce que vostre R. nous a enuoié de beau,"
etc., etc.--Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637, 175,
176.--In his Relation of the next year he recurs to the
subject, and describes the pictures displayed on this
memorable occasion.--Relation des Hurons, 1638, 33.] |
Never before were such splendors seen in the land of the Huron.
Crowds gathered from afar, and gazed in awe and admiration at the
marvels of the sanctuary. A woman came from a distant town to behold
it, and, tremulous between curiosity and fear, thrust her head into
the mysterious recess, declaring that she would see it, though the
look should cost her life. [Ibid., 1637, 176.]
One is forced to wonder at, if not to admire, the energy with which
these priests and their scarcely less zealous attendants1
toiled to carry their pictures and ornaments through the most
arduous of journeys, where the traveler was often famished from the
sheer difficulty of transporting provisions.
A great event had called forth all this preparation. Of the many
baptisms achieved by the Fathers in the course of their
indefatigable ministry, the subjects had all been infants, or adults
at the point of death; but at length a Huron, in full health and
manhood, respected and influential in his tribe, had been won over
to the Faith, and was now to be baptized with solemn ceremonial, in
the chapel thus gorgeously adorned. It was a strange scene. Indians
were there in throngs, and the house was closely packed: warriors,
old and young, glistening in grease and sunflower-oil, with uncouth
locks, a trifle less coarse than a horse's mane, and faces perhaps
smeared with paint in honor of the occasion; wenches in gay attire;
hags muffled in a filthy discarded deer-skin, their leathery visages
corrugated with age and malice, and their hard, glittering eyes
riveted on the spectacle before them. The priests, no longer in
their daily garb of black, but radiant in their surplices, the
genuflections, the tinkling of the bell, the swinging of the censer,
the sweet odors so unlike the fumes of the smoky lodge-fires, the
mysterious elevation of the Host, (for a mass followed the baptism,)
and the agitation of the neophyte, whose Indian imperturbability
fairly deserted him,--all these combined to produce on the minds of
the savage beholders an impression that seemed to promise a rich
harvest for the Faith. To the Jesuits it was a day of triumph and of
hope. The ice had been broken; the wedge had entered; light had
dawned at last on the long night of heathendom. But there was one
feature of the situation which in their rejoicing they overlooked.
The Devil had taken alarm. He had borne with reasonable composure
the loss of individual souls snatched from him by former baptisms;
but here was a convert whose example and influence threatened to
shake his Huron empire to its very foundation. In fury and fear, he
rose to the conflict, and put forth all his malice and all his
hellish ingenuity. Such, at least, is the explanation given by the
Jesuits of the scenes that followed.2
Whether accepting it or not, let us examine the circumstances which
gave rise to it.
The mysterious strangers, garbed in black, who of late years had
made their abode among them, from motives past finding out,
marvelous in knowledge, careless of life, had awakened in the
breasts of the Huron mingled emotions of wonder, perplexity, fear,
respect, and awe. From the first, they had held them answerable for
the changes of the weather, commending them when the crops were
abundant, and upbraiding them in times of scarcity. They thought
them mighty magicians, masters of life and death; and they came to
them for spells, sometimes to destroy their enemies, and sometimes
to kill grasshoppers. And now it was whispered abroad that it was
they who had bewitched the nation, and caused the pest which
threatened to exterminate it.
It was Isaac Jogues who first heard this ominous rumor, at the town
of Onnentisati, and it proceeded from the dwarfish sorcerer already
mentioned, who boasted himself a devil incarnate. The slander spread
fast and far. Their friends looked at them askance; their enemies
clamored for their lives. Some said that they concealed in their
houses a corpse, which infected the country,--a perverted notion,
derived from some half-instructed neophyte, concerning the body of
Christ in the Eucharist. Others ascribed the evil to a serpent,
others to a spotted frog, others to a demon which the priests were
supposed to carry in the barrel of a gun. Others again gave out that
they had pricked an infant to death with awls in the forest, in
order to kill the Huron children by magic. "Perhaps," observes
Father Le Mercier, "the Devil was enraged because we had placed a
great many of these little innocents in Heaven."
| ["Le diable enrageoit peutestre de ce que nous
avions placé dans le ciel quantité de ces petits
innocens."--Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1638, 12
(Cramoisy).] |
The picture of the Last Judgment became an object of the utmost
terror. It was regarded as a charm. The dragons and serpents were
supposed to be the demons of the pest, and the sinners whom they
were so busily devouring to represent its victims. On the top of a
spruce-tree, near their house at Ihonatiria, the priests had
fastened a small streamer, to show the direction of the wind. This,
too, was taken for a charm, throwing off disease and death to all
quarters. The clock, once an object of harmless wonder, now excited
the wildest alarm; and the Jesuits were forced to stop it, since,
when it struck, it was supposed to sound the signal of death. At
sunset, one would have seen knots of Indians, their faces dark with
dejection and terror, listening to the measured sounds which issued
from within the neighboring house of the mission, where, with bolted
doors, the priests were singing litanies, mistaken for incantations
by the awe-struck savages.
Had the objects of these charges been Indians, their term of life
would have been very short. The blow of a hatchet, stealthily struck
in the dusky entrance of a lodge, would have promptly avenged the
victims of their sorcery, and delivered the country from peril. But
the priests inspired a strange awe. Nocturnal councils were held;
their death was decreed; and, as they walked their rounds,
whispering groups of children gazed after them as men doomed to die.
But who should be the executioner? They were reviled and upbraided.
The Indian boys threw sticks at them as they passed, and then ran
behind the houses. When they entered one of these pestiferous dens,
this impish crew clambered on the roof, to pelt them with snowballs
through the smoke-holes. The old squaw who crouched by the fire
scowled on them with mingled anger and fear, and cried out, "Begone!
there are no sick ones here." The invalids wrapped their heads in
their blankets; and when the priest accosted some dejected warrior,
the savage looked gloomily on the ground, and answered not a word.
Yet nothing could divert the Jesuits from their ceaseless quest of
dying subjects for baptism, and above all of dying children. They
penetrated every house in turn. When, through the thin walls of
bark, they heard the wail of a sick infant, no menace and no insult
could repel them from the threshold. They pushed boldly in, asked to
buy some trifle, spoke of late news of Iroquois forays,--of
anything, in short, except the pestilence and the sick child;
conversed for a while till suspicion was partially lulled to sleep,
and then, pretending to observe the sufferer for the first time,
approached it, felt its pulse, and asked of its health. Now, while
apparently fanning the heated brow, the dexterous visitor touched it
with a corner of his handkerchief, which he had previously dipped in
water, murmured the baptismal words with motionless lips, and
snatched another soul from the fangs of the "Infernal Wolf."3
Thus, with the patience of saints, the courage of heroes, and an
intent truly charitable, did the Fathers put forth a nimble-fingered
adroitness that would have done credit to the profession of which
the function is less to dispense the treasures of another world than
to grasp those which pertain to this.
The Huron chiefs were summoned to a great council, to discuss the
state of the nation. The crisis demanded all their wisdom; for,
while the continued ravages of disease threatened them with
annihilation, the Iroquois scalping-parties infested the outskirts
of their towns, and murdered them in their fields and forests. The
assembly met in August, 1637; and the Jesuits, knowing their deep
stake in its deliberations, failed not to be present, with a liberal
gift of wampum, to show their sympathy in the public calamities. In
private, they sought to gain the good-will of the deputies, one by
one; but though they were successful in some cases, the result on
the whole was far from hopeful.
In the intervals of the council, Brébeuf discoursed to the crowd of
chiefs on the wonders of the visible heavens,--the sun, the moon,
the stars, and the planets. They were inclined to believe what he
told them; for he had lately, to their great amazement, accurately
predicted an eclipse. From the fires above he passed to the fires
beneath, till the listeners stood aghast at his hideous pictures of
the flames of perdition,--the only species of Christian instruction
which produced any perceptible effect on this unpromising auditory.
The council opened on the evening of the fourth of August, with all
the usual ceremonies; and the night was spent in discussing
questions of treaties and alliances, with a deliberation and good
sense which the Jesuits could not help admiring. [Le Mercier,
Relation des Hurons, 1638, 38.] A few days after, the assembly took
up the more exciting question of the epidemic and its causes.
Deputies from three of the four Huron nations were present, each
deputation sitting apart. The Jesuits were seated with the Nation of
the Bear, in whose towns their missions were established. Like all
important councils, the session was held at night. It was a strange
scene. The light of the fires flickered aloft into the smoky vault
and among the soot-begrimed rafters of the great council-house,4
and cast an uncertain gleam on the wild and dejected throng that
filled the platforms and the floor. "I think I never saw anything
more lugubrious," writes Le Mercier: "they looked at each other like
so many corpses, or like men who already feel the terror of death.
When they spoke, it was only with sighs, each reckoning up the sick
and dead of his own family. All this was to excite each other to
vomit poison against us."
A grisly old chief, named Ontitarac, withered with age and
stone-blind, but renowned in past years for eloquence and counsel,
opened the debate in a loud, though tremulous voice. First he
saluted each of the three nations present, then each of the chiefs
in turn,--congratulated them that all were there assembled to
deliberate on a subject of the last importance to the public
welfare, and exhorted them to give it a mature and calm
consideration. Next rose the chief whose office it was to preside
over the Feast of the Dead. He painted in dismal colors the woful
condition of the country, and ended with charging it all upon the
sorceries of the Jesuits. Another old chief followed him. "My
brothers," he said, "you know well that I am a war-chief, and very
rarely speak except in councils of war; but I am compelled to speak
now, since nearly all the other chiefs are dead, and I must utter
what is in my heart before I follow them to the grave. Only two of
my family are left alive, and perhaps even these will not long
escape the fury of the pest. I have seen other diseases ravaging the
country, but nothing that could compare with this. In two or three
moons we saw their end: but now we have suffered for a year and
more, and yet the evil does not abate. And what is worst of all, we
have not yet discovered its source." Then, with words of studied
moderation, alternating with bursts of angry invective, he proceeded
to accuse the Jesuits of causing, by their sorceries, the
unparalleled calamities that afflicted them; and in support of his
charge he adduced a prodigious mass of evidence. When he had spent
his eloquence, Brébeuf rose to reply, and in a few words exposed the
absurdities of his statements; whereupon another accuser brought a
new array of charges. A clamor soon arose from the whole assembly,
and they called upon Brébeuf with one voice to give up a certain
charmed cloth which was the cause of their miseries. In vain the
missionary protested that he had no such cloth. The clamor
increased.
"If you will not believe me," said Brébeuf, "go to our house; search
everywhere; and if you are not sure which is the charm, take all our
clothing and all our cloth, and throw them into the lake."
"Sorcerers always talk in that way," was the reply.
"Then what will you have me say?" demanded Brébeuf.
"Tell us the cause of the pest."
Brébeuf replied to the best of his power, mingling his explanations
with instructions in Christian doctrine and exhortations to embrace
the Faith. He was continually interrupted; and the old chief,
Ontitarac, still called upon him to produce the charmed cloth. Thus
the debate continued till after midnight, when several of the
assembly, seeing no prospect of a termination, fell asleep, and
others went away. One old chief, as he passed out said to Brébeuf,
"If some young man should split your head, we should have nothing to
say." The priest still continued to harangue the diminished conclave
on the necessity of obeying God and the danger of offending Him,
when the chief of Ossossané called out impatiently, "What sort of
men are these? They are always saying the same thing, and repeating
the same words a hundred times. They are never done with telling us
about their Oki, and what he demands and what he forbids, and
Paradise and Hell." [The above account of the council is drawn from
Le Mercier, Relation des Huron, 1638, Chap. II. See also Bressani,
Relation Abrégée, 163.]
"Here was the end of this miserable council," writes Le Mercier; . .
. "and if less evil came of it than was designed, we owe it, after
God, to the Most Holy Virgin, to whom we had made a vow of nine
masses in honor of her immaculate conception."
The Fathers had escaped for the time; but they were still in deadly
peril. They had taken pains to secure friends in private, and there
were those who were attached to their interests; yet none dared
openly take their part. The few converts they had lately made came
to them in secret, and warned them that their death was determined
upon. Their house was set on fire; in public, every face was averted
from them; and a new council was called to pronounce the decree of
death. They appeared before it with a front of such unflinching
assurance, that their judges, Indian-like, postponed the sentence.
Yet it seemed impossible that they should much longer escape.
Brébeuf, therefore, wrote a letter of farewell to his Superior, Le
Jeune, at Quebec, and confided it to some converts whom he could
trust, to be carried by them to its destination.
"We are perhaps," he says, "about to give our blood and our lives in
the cause of our Master, Jesus Christ. It seems that His goodness
will accept this sacrifice, as regards me, in expiation of my great
and numberless sins, and that He will thus crown the past services
and ardent desires of all our Fathers here. . . . Blessed be His
name forever, that He has chosen us, among so many better than we,
to aid him to bear His cross in this land! In all things, His holy
will be done!" He then acquaints Le Jeune that he has directed the
sacred vessels, and all else belonging to the service of the altar,
to be placed, in case of his death, in the hands of Pierre, the
convert whose baptism has been described, and that especial care
will be taken to preserve the dictionary and other writings on the
Huron language. The letter closes with a request for masses and
prayers.
[The following is the conclusion of the letter (Le
Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1638, 43.)
"En tout, sa sainte volonté soit faite; s'il veut que
dés ceste heure nous mourions, ô la bonne heure pour
nous! s'il veut nous reseruer à d'autres trauaux, qu'il
soit beny; si vous entendez que Dieu ait couronné nos
petits trauaux, ou plustost nos desirs, benissez-le: car
c'est pour luy que nous desirons viure et mourir, et
c'est luy qui nous en donne la grace. Au reste si
quelques-vns suruiuent, i'ay donné ordre de tout ce
qu'ils doiuent faire. I'ay esté d'aduis que nos Peres et
nos domestiques se retirent chez ceux qu'ils croyront
estre leurs mei'leurs amis; i'ay donné charge qu'on
porte chez Pierre nostre premier Chrestien tout ce qui
est de la Sacristie, sur tout qu'on ait vn soin
particulier de mettre en lieu d'asseurance le
Dictionnaire et tout ce que nous auons de la langue.
Pour moy, si Dieu me fait la grace d'aller au Ciel, ie
prieray Dieu pour eux, pour les pauures Hurons, et
n'oublieray pas Vostre Reuerence.
"Apres tout, nous supplions V. R. et tous nos Peres de
ne nous oublier en leurs saincts Sacrifices et prieres,
afin qu'en la vie et apres la mort, il nous fasse
misericorde; nous sommes tous en la vie et à l'Eternité,
"De vostre Reuerence tres-humbles et tres-affectionnez
seruiteurs en Nostre Seigneur,
"IEAN DE BREBEVF. FRANÇOIS IOSEPH LE MERCIER. PIERRE
CHASTELLAIN. CHARLES GARNIER. PAVL RAGVENEAV.
"En la Residence de la Conception, à Ossossané, ce 28
Octobre.
"I'ay laissé en la Residence de sainct Ioseph les Peres
Pierre Pijart et Isaac Iogves, dans les mesmes sentimens."] |
The imperilled Jesuits now took a singular, but certainly a very
wise step. They gave one of those farewell feasts--festins d'adieu--which
Huron custom enjoined on those about to die, whether in the course
of Nature or by public execution. Being interpreted, it was a
declaration that the priests knew their danger, and did not shrink
from it. It might have the effect of changing overawed friends into
open advocates, and even of awakening a certain sympathy in the
breasts of an assembly on whom a bold bearing could rarely fail of
influence. The house was packed with feasters, and Brébeuf addressed
them as usual on his unfailing themes of God, Paradise, and Hell.
The throng listened in gloomy silence; and each, when he had emptied
his bowl, rose and departed, leaving his entertainers in utter doubt
as to his feelings and intentions. From this time forth, however,
the clouds that overhung the Fathers became less dark and
threatening. Voices were heard in their defence, and looks were less
constantly averted. They ascribed the change to the intercession of
St. Joseph, to whom they had vowed a nine days' devotion. By
whatever cause produced, the lapse of a week wrought a hopeful
improvement in their prospects; and when they went out of doors in
the morning, it was no longer with the expectation of having a
hatchet struck into their brains as they crossed the threshold.
| ["Tant y a que depuis le 6. de Nouembre que nous
acheuasmes nos Messes votiues son honneur, nous auons
iouy d'vn repos incroyable, nons nous en emerueillons
nous-mesmes de iour en iour, quand nous considerons en
quel estat estoient nos affaires il n'y a que huict
iours."--Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1638, 44.] |
The persecution of the Jesuits as sorcerers continued, in an
intermittent form, for years; and several of them escaped very
narrowly. In a house at Ossossané, a young Indian rushed suddenly
upon François Du Peron, and lifted his tomahawk to brain him, when a
squaw caught his hand. Paul Ragueneau wore a crucifix, from which
hung the image of a skull. An Indian, thinking it a charm, snatched
it from him. The priest tried to recover it, when the savage, his
eyes glittering with murder, brandished his hatchet to strike.
Ragueneau stood motionless, waiting the blow. His assailant forbore,
and withdrew, muttering. Pierre Chaumonot was emerging from a house
at the Huron town called by the Jesuits St. Michel, where he had
just baptized a dying girl, when her brother, standing hidden in the
doorway, struck him on the head with a stone. Chaumonot, severely
wounded, staggered without falling, when the Indian sprang upon him
with his tomahawk. The bystanders arrested the blow. François Le
Mercier, in the midst of a crowd of Indians in a house at the town
called St. Louis, was assailed by a noted chief, who rushed in,
raving like a madman, and, in a torrent of words, charged upon him
all the miseries of the nation. Then, snatching a brand from the
fire, he shook it in the Jesuit's face, and told him that he should
be burned alive. Le Mercier met him with looks as determined as his
own, till, abashed at his undaunted front and bold denunciations,
the Indian stood confounded.
| [The above incidents are from Le Mercier, Lalemant,
Bressani, the autobiography of Chaumonot, the
unpublished writings of Garnier, and the ancient
manuscript volume of memoirs of the early Canadian
missionaries, at St. Mary's College, Montreal.] |
The belief that their persecutions were owing to the fury of the
Devil, driven to desperation by the home-thrusts he had received at
their hands, was an unfailing consolation to the priests. "Truly,"
writes Le Mercier, "it is an unspeakable happiness for us, in the
midst of this barbarism, to hear the roaring of the demons, and to
see Earth and Hell raging against a handful of men who will not even
defend themselves."5 In all the copious
records of this dark period, not a line gives occasion to suspect
that one of this loyal band flinched or hesitated. The iron Brébeuf,
the gentle Garnier, the all-enduring Jogues, the enthusiastic
Chaumonot, Lalemant, Le Mercier, Chatelain, Daniel, Pijart,
Ragueneau, Du Peron, Poncet, Le Moyne,--one and all bore themselves
with a tranquil boldness, which amazed the Indians and enforced
their respect.
Father Jerome Lalemant, in his journal of 1639, is disposed to draw
an evil augury for the mission from the fact that as yet no priest
had been put to death, inasmuch as it is a received maxim that the
blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.6
He consoles himself with the hope that the daily life of the
missionaries may be accepted as a living martyrdom; since abuse and
threats without end, the smoke, fleas, filth, and dogs of the Indian
lodges,--which are, he says, little images of Hell,--cold, hunger,
and ceaseless anxiety, and all these continued for years, are a
portion to which many might prefer the stroke of a tomahawk.
Reasonable as the Father's hope may be, its expression proved
needless in the sequel; for the Huron church was not destined to
suffer from a lack of martyrdom in any form.
1 The Jesuits on these distant missions were
usually attended by followers who had taken no vows, and could leave
their service at will, but whose motives were religious, and not
mercenary. Probably this was the character of their attendants in
the present case. They were known as _donnés_, or "given men." It
appears from a letter of the Jesuit Du Peron, that twelve hired
laborers were soon after sent up to the mission.
2 Several of the Jesuits allude to this supposed
excitement among the tenants of the nether world. Thus, Le Mercier
says, "Le Diable se sentoit pressé de prés, il ne pouuoit supporter
le Baptesme solennel de quelques Sauuages des plus signalez."--Relation
des Hurons, 1638, 33.--Several other baptisms of less note followed
that above described. Garnier, writing to his brother, repeatedly
alludes to the alarm excited in Hell by the recent successes of the
mission, and adds,--"Vous pouvez juger quelle consolation nous
étoit-ce de voir le diable s'armer contre nous et se servir de ses
esclaves pour nous attaquer et tâcher de nous perdre en haine de J.
C."
3 Ce loup infernal is a title often
bestowed in the Relations on the Devil. The above details are
gathered from the narratives of Brébeuf, Le Mercier, and Lalemant,
and letters, published and unpublished, of several other Jesuits.
In another case, an Indian girl was carrying on her back a sick
child, two months old. Two Jesuits approached, and while one of them
amused the girl with his rosary, "l'autre le baptise lestement; le
pauure petit n'attendoit que ceste faueur du Ciel pour s'y enuoler."
4 It must have been the house of a chief. The
Hurons, unlike some other tribes, had no houses set apart for public
occasions.
5 "C'est veritablement un bonheur indicible pour
nous, au milieu de cette barbarie, d'entendre les rugissemens des
demons, & de voir tout l'Enfer & quasi tous les hommes animez &
remplis de fureur contre une petite poignée de gens qui ne
voudroient pas se defendre."--Relation des Hurons, 1640, 31
(Cramoisy).
6 "Nous auons quelque fois douté, sçauoir si on
pouuoit esperer la conuersion de ce païs sans qu'il y eust effusion
de sang: le principe reçeu ce semble dans l'Eglise de Dieu, que le
sang des Martyrs est la semence des Chrestiens, me faisoit conclure
pour lors, que cela n'estoit pas à esperer, voire mesme qu'il
n'étoit pas à souhaiter, consideré la gloire qui reuient à Dieu de
la constance des Martyrs, du sang desquels tout le reste de la terre
ayant tantost esté abreuué, ce seroit vne espece de malediction, que
ce quartier du monde ne participast point au bonheur d'auoir
contribué à l'esclat de ceste gloire."--Lalemant, Relation des
Hurons, 1639, 56, 57.]
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The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century, 1867
Jesuits
in North America
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