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More than eight months had passed since the catastrophe of St.
Joseph. The winter was over, and that dreariest of seasons had come,
the churlish forerunner of spring. Around Sainte Marie the forests
were gray and bare, and, in the cornfields, the oozy, half-thawed
soil, studded with the sodden stalks of the last autumn's harvest,
showed itself in patches through the melting snow.
At nine o'clock on the morning of the sixteenth of March, the
priests saw a heavy smoke rising over the naked forest towards the
south-east, about three miles distant. They looked at each other in
dismay. "The Iroquois! They are burning St. Louis!" Flames mingled
with the smoke; and, as they stood gazing, two Christian Huron came,
breathless and aghast, from the burning town. Their worst fear was
realized. The Iroquois were there; but where were the priests of the
mission, Brébeuf and Lalemant?
Late in the autumn, a thousand Iroquois, chiefly Seneca and Mohawk,
had taken the war-path for the Huron. They had been all winter in
the forests, hunting for subsistence, and moving at their leisure
towards their prey. The destruction of the two towns of the mission
of St. Joseph had left a wide gap, and in the middle of March they
entered the heart of the Huron country, undiscovered. Common
vigilance and common sense would have averted the calamities that
followed; but the Huron were like a doomed people, stupefied, sunk
in dejection, fearing everything, yet taking no measures for
defense. They could easily have met the invaders with double their
force, but the besotted warriors lay idle in their towns, or hunted
at leisure in distant forests; nor could the Jesuits, by counsel or
exhortation, rouse them to face the danger.
Before daylight of the sixteenth, the invaders approached St.
Ignace, which, with St. Louis and three other towns, formed the
mission of the same name. They reconnoitered the place in the
darkness. It was defended on three sides by a deep ravine, and
further strengthened by palisades fifteen or sixteen feet high,
planted under the direction of the Jesuits. On the fourth side it
was protected by palisades alone; and these were left, as usual,
unguarded. This was not from a sense of security; for the greater
part of the population had abandoned the town, thinking it too much
exposed to the enemy, and there remained only about four hundred,
chiefly women, children, and old men, whose infatuated defenders
were absent hunting, or on futile scalping-parties against the
Iroquois. It was just before dawn, when a yell, as of a legion of
devils, startled the wretched inhabitants from their sleep; and the
Iroquois, bursting in upon them, cut them down with knives and
hatchets, killing many, and reserving the rest for a worse fate.
They had entered by the weakest side; on the other sides there was
no exit, and only three Huron escaped. The whole was the work of a
few minutes. The Iroquois left a guard to hold the town, and secure
the retreat of the main body in case of a reverse; then, smearing
their faces with blood, after their ghastly custom, they rushed, in
the dim light of the early dawn, towards St. Louis, about a league
distant.
The three fugitives had fled, half naked, through the forest, for
the same point, which they reached about sunrise, yelling the alarm.
The number of inhabitants here was less, at this time, than seven
hundred; and, of these, all who had strength to escape, excepting
about eighty warriors, made in wild terror for a place of safety.
Many of the old, sick, and decrepit were left perforce in the
lodges. The warriors, ignorant of the strength of the assailants,
sang their war-songs, and resolved to hold the place to the last. It
had not the natural strength of St. Ignace; but, like it, was
surrounded by palisades.
Here were the two Jesuits, Brébeuf and Lalemant. Brébeuf's converts
entreated him to escape with them; but the Norman zealot, bold scion
of a warlike stock, had no thought of flight. His post was in the
teeth of danger, to cheer on those who fought, and open Heaven to
those who fell. His colleague, slight of frame and frail of
constitution, trembled despite himself; but deep enthusiasm mastered
the weakness of Nature, and he, too, refused to fly.
Scarcely had the sun risen, and scarcely were the fugitives gone,
when, like a troop of tigers, the Iroquois rushed to the assault.
Yell echoed yell, and shot answered shot. The Huron, brought to bay,
fought with the utmost desperation, and with arrows, stones, and the
few guns they had, killed thirty of their assailants, and wounded
many more. Twice the Iroquois recoiled, and twice renewed the attack
with unabated ferocity. They swarmed at the foot of the palisades,
and hacked at them with their hatchets, till they had cut them
through at several different points. For a time there was a deadly
fight at these breaches. Here were the two priests, promising Heaven
to those who died for their faith,--one giving baptism, and the
other absolution. At length the Iroquois broke in, and captured all
the surviving defenders, the Jesuits among the rest. They set the
town on fire; and the helpless wretches who had remained, unable to
fly, were consumed in their burning dwellings. Next they fell upon
Brébeuf and Lalemant, stripped them, bound them fast, and led them
with the other prisoners back to St. Ignace, where all turned out to
wreak their fury on the two priests, beating them savagely with
sticks and clubs as they drove them into the town. At present, there
was no time for further torture, for there was work in hand.
The victors divided themselves into several bands, to burn the
neighboring villages and hunt their flying inhabitants. In the flush
of their triumph, they meditated a bolder enterprise; and, in the
afternoon, their chiefs sent small parties to reconnoiter Sainte
Marie, with a view to attacking it on the next day.
Meanwhile the fugitives of St. Louis, joined by other bands as
terrified and as helpless as they, were struggling through the soft
snow which clogged the forests towards Lake Huron, where the
treacherous ice of spring was still unmelted. One fear expelled
another. They ventured upon it, and pushed forward all that day and
all the following night, shivering and famished, to find refuge in
the towns of the Tobacco Nation. Here, when they arrived, they
spread a universal panic.
Ragueneau, Bressani, and their companions waited in suspense at
Sainte Marie. On the one hand, they trembled for Brébeuf and
Lalemant; on the other, they looked hourly for an attack: and when
at evening they saw the Iroquois scouts prowling along the edge of
the bordering forest, their fears were confirmed. They had with them
about forty Frenchmen, well armed; but their palisades and wooden
buildings were not fire-proof, and they had learned from fugitives
the number and ferocity of the invaders. They stood guard all night,
praying to the Saints, and above all to their great patron, Saint
Joseph, whose festival was close at hand.
In the morning they were somewhat relieved by the arrival of about
three hundred Huron warriors, chiefly converts from La Conception
and Sainte Madeleine, tolerably well armed, and full of fight. They
were expecting others to join them; and meanwhile, dividing into
several bands, they took post by the passes of the neighboring
forest, hoping to waylay parties of the enemy. Their expectation was
fulfilled; for, at this time, two hundred of the Iroquois were
making their way from St. Ignace, in advance of the main body, to
begin the attack on Sainte Marie. They fell in with a band of the
Huron, set upon them, killed many, drove the rest to headlong
flight, and, as they plunged in terror through the snow, chased them
within sight of Sainte Marie. The other Huron, hearing the yells and
firing, ran to the rescue, and attacked so fiercely, that the
Iroquois in turn were routed, and ran for shelter to St. Louis,
followed closely by the victors. The houses of the town had been
burned, but the palisade around them was still standing, though
breached and broken. The Iroquois rushed in; but the Huron were at
their heels. Many of the fugitives were captured, the rest killed or
put to utter rout, and the triumphant Huron remained masters of the
place.
The Iroquois who escaped fled to St. Ignace. Here, or on the way
thither, they found the main body of the invaders; and when they
heard of the disaster, the whole swarm, beside themselves with rage,
turned towards St. Louis to take their revenge. Now ensued one of
the most furious Indian battles on record. The Huron within the
palisade did not much exceed a hundred and fifty; for many had been
killed or disabled, and many, perhaps, had straggled away. Most of
their enemies had guns, while they had but few. Their weapons were
bows and arrows, war-clubs, hatchets, and knives; and of these they
made good use, sallying repeatedly, fighting like devils, and
driving back their assailants again and again. There are times when
the Indian warrior forgets his cautious maxims, and throws himself
into battle with a mad and reckless ferocity. The desperation of one
party, and the fierce courage of both, kept up the fight after the
day had closed; and the scout from Sainte Marie, as he bent
listening under the gloom of the pines, heard, far into the night,
the howl of battle rising from the darkened forest. The principal
chief of the Iroquois was severely wounded, and nearly a hundred of
their warriors were killed on the spot. When, at length, their
numbers and persistent fury prevailed, their only prize was some
twenty Huron warriors, spent with fatigue and faint with loss of
blood. The rest lay dead around the shattered palisades which they
had so valiantly defended. Fatuity, not cowardice, was the ruin of
the Huron nation.
The lamps burned all night at Sainte Marie, and its defenders stood
watching till daylight, musket in hand. The Jesuits prayed without
ceasing, and Saint Joseph was besieged with invocations. "Those of
us who were priests," writes Ragueneau, "each made a vow to say a
mass in his honor every month, for the space of a year; and all the
rest bound themselves by vows to divers penances." The expected
onslaught did not take place. Not an Iroquois appeared. Their
victory had been bought too dear, and they had no stomach for more
fighting. All the next day, the eighteenth, a stillness, like the
dead lull of a tempest, followed the turmoil of yesterday,--as if,
says the Father Superior, "the country were waiting, palsied with
fright, for some new disaster."
On the following day,--the journalist fails not to mention that it
was the festival of Saint Joseph,--Indians came in with tidings that
a panic had seized the Iroquois camp, that the chiefs could not
control it, and that the whole body of invaders was retreating in
disorder, possessed with a vague terror that the Huron were upon
them in force. They had found time, however, for an act of atrocious
cruelty. They planted stakes in the bark houses of St. Ignace, and
bound to them those of their prisoners whom they meant to sacrifice,
male and female, from old age to infancy, husbands, mothers, and
children, side by side. Then, as they retreated, they set the town
on fire, and laughed with savage glee at the shrieks of anguish that
rose from the blazing dwellings.
| [The site of St. Ignace still bears evidence of the
catastrophe, in the ashes and charcoal that indicate the
position of the houses, and the fragments of broken
pottery and half-consumed bone, together with trinkets
of stone, metal, or glass, which have survived the lapse
of two centuries and more. The place has been minutely
examined by Dr. Taché.] |
They loaded the rest of their prisoners with their baggage and
plunder, and drove them through the forest southward, braining with
their hatchets any who gave out on the march. An old woman, who had
escaped out of the midst of the flames of St. Ignace, made her way
to St. Michel, a large town not far from the desolate site of St.
Joseph. Here she found about seven hundred Huron warriors, hastily
mustered. She set them on the track of the retreating Iroquois, and
they took up the chase,--but evidently with no great eagerness to
overtake their dangerous enemy, well armed as he was with Dutch
guns, while they had little beside their bows and arrows. They
found, as they advanced, the dead bodies of prisoners tomahawked on
the march, and others bound fast to trees and half burned by the
fagots piled hastily around them. The Iroquois pushed forward with
such headlong speed, that the pursuers could not, or would not,
overtake them; and, after two days, they gave over the attempt.
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The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century, 1867
Jesuits
in North America
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