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The River Wye enters the Bay of Glocester, an inlet of the Bay of
Matchedash, itself an inlet of the vast Georgian Bay of Lake Huron.
Retrace the track of two centuries and more, and ascend this little
stream in the summer of the year 1648. Your vessel is a birch canoe,
and your conductor a Huron Indian. On the right hand and on the
left, gloomy and silent, rise the primeval woods; but you have
advanced scarcely half a league when the scene is changed, and
cultivated fields, planted chiefly with maize, extend far along the
bank, and back to the distant verge of the forest. Before you opens
the small lake from which the stream issues; and on your left, a
stone's throw from the shore, rises a range of palisades and
bastioned walls, inclosing a number of buildings. Your canoe enters
a canal or ditch immediately above them, and you land at the
Mission, or Residence, or Fort of Sainte Marie.
Here was the centre and base of the Huron missions; and now, for
once, one must wish that Jesuit pens had been more fluent. They have
told us but little of Sainte Marie, and even this is to be gathered
chiefly from incidental allusions. In the forest, which long since
has resumed its reign over this memorable spot, the walls and
ditches of the fortifications may still be plainly traced; and the
deductions from these remains are in perfect accord with what we can
gather from the Relations and letters of the priests. [Before me is
an elaborate plan of the remains, taken on the spot.] The fortified
work which enclosed the buildings was in the form of a
parallelogram, about a hundred and seventy-five feet long, and from
eighty to ninety wide. It lay parallel with the river, and somewhat
more than a hundred feet distant from it. On two sides it was a
continuous wall of masonry,1 flanked
with square bastions, adapted to musketry, and probably used as
magazines, storehouses, or lodgings. The sides towards the river and
the lake had no other defenses than a ditch and palisade, flanked,
like the others, by bastions, over each of which was displayed a
large cross.2 The buildings within were,
no doubt, of wood; and they included a church, a kitchen, a
refectory, places of retreat for religious instruction and
meditation,3 and lodgings for at least
sixty persons. Near the church, but outside the fortification, was a
cemetery. Beyond the ditch or canal which opened on the river was a
large area, still traceable, in the form of an irregular triangle,
surrounded by a ditch, and apparently by palisades. It seems to have
been meant for the protection of the Indian visitors who came in
throngs to Sainte Marie, and who were lodged in a large house of
bark, after the Huron manner.4 Here,
perhaps, was also the hospital, which was placed without the walls,
in order that Indian women, as well as men, might be admitted into
it.5
No doubt the buildings of Sainte Marie were of the roughest,--rude
walls of boards, windows without glass, vast chimneys of unhewn
stone. All its riches were centered in the church, which, as
Lalemant tells us, was regarded by the Indians as one of the wonders
of the world, but which, he adds, would have made but a beggarly
show in France. Yet one wonders, at first thought, how so much labor
could have been accomplished here. Of late years, however, the
number of men at the command of the mission had been considerable.
Soldiers had been sent up from time to time, to escort the Fathers
on their way, and defend them on their arrival. Thus, in 1644,
Montmagny ordered twenty men of a reinforcement just arrived from
France to escort Brébeuf, Garreau, and Chabanel to the Huron, and
remain there during the winter.5 These
soldiers lodged with the Jesuits, and lived at their table.6
It was not, however, on detachments of troops that they mainly
relied for labor or defense. Any inhabitant of Canada who chose to
undertake so hard and dangerous a service was allowed to do so,
receiving only his maintenance from the mission, without pay. In
return, he was allowed to trade with the Indians, and sell the furs
thus obtained at the magazine of the Company, at a fixed price. [Registres
des Arrêts du Conseil, extract in Faillon, II, 94.] Many availed
themselves of this permission; and all whose services were accepted
by the Jesuits seem to have been men to whom they had communicated
no small portion of their own zeal, and who were enthusiastically
attached to their Order and their cause. There is abundant evidence
that a large proportion of them acted from motives wholly
disinterested. They were, in fact, donnés of the mission,7
--given, heart and hand, to its service. There is probability in the
conjecture, that the profits of their trade with the Indians were
reaped, not for their own behoof, but for that of the mission.8
It is difficult otherwise to explain the confidence with which the
Father Superior, in a letter to the General of the Jesuits at Rome,
speaks of its resources. He says, "Though our number is greatly
increased, and though we still hope for more men, and especially for
more priests of our Society, it is not necessary to increase the
pecuniary aid given us."9
Much of this prosperity was no doubt due to the excellent management
of their resources, and a very successful agriculture. While the
Indians around them were starving, they raised maize in such
quantities, that, in the spring of 1649, the Father Superior thought
that their stock of provisions might suffice for three years.
"Hunting and fishing," he says, "are better than heretofore"; and he
adds, that they had fowls, swine, and even cattle.10
How they could have brought these last to Sainte Marie it is
difficult to conceive. The feat, under the circumstances, is truly
astonishing. Everything indicates a fixed resolve on the part of the
Fathers to build up a solid and permanent establishment.
It is by no means to be inferred that the household fared
sumptuously. Their ordinary food was maize, pounded and boiled, and
seasoned, in the absence of salt, which was regarded as a luxury,
with morsels of smoked fish. [Ragueneau, Relation des Hurons, 1648,
48.]
In March, 1649, there were in the Huron country and its neighborhood
eighteen Jesuit priests, four lay brothers, twenty-three men serving
without pay, seven hired men, four boys, and eight soldiers.11
Of this number, fifteen priests were engaged in the various
missions, while all the rest were retained permanently at Sainte
Marie. All was method, discipline, and subordination. Some of the
men were assigned to household work, and some to the hospital; while
the rest labored at the fortifications, tilled the fields, and stood
ready, in case of need, to fight the Iroquois. The Father Superior,
with two other priests as assistants, controlled and guided all. The
remaining Jesuits, undisturbed by temporal cares, were devoted
exclusively to the charge of their respective missions. Two or three
times in the year, they all, or nearly all, assembled at Sainte
Marie, to take counsel together and determine their future action.
Hither, also, they came at intervals for a period of meditation and
prayer, to nerve themselves and gain new inspiration for their stern
task.
Besides being the citadel and the magazine of the mission, Sainte
Marie was the scene of a bountiful hospitality. On every alternate
Saturday, as well as on feast-days, the converts came in crowds from
the farthest villages. They were entertained during Saturday,
Sunday, and a part of Monday; and the rites of the Church were
celebrated before them with all possible solemnity and pomp. They
were welcomed also at other times, and entertained, usually with
three meals to each. In these latter years the prevailing famine
drove them to Sainte Marie in swarms. In the course of 1647 three
thousand were lodged and fed here; and in the following year the
number was doubled. [Compare Ragueneau in Relation des Hurons, 1648,
48, and in his report to the General in 1649.] Heathen Indians were
also received and supplied with food, but were not permitted to
remain at night. There was provision for the soul as well as the
body; and, Christian or heathen, few left Sainte Marie without a
word of instruction or exhortation. Charity was an instrument of
conversion.
Such, so far as we can reconstruct it from the scattered hints
remaining, was this singular establishment, at once military,
monastic, and patriarchal. The missions of which it was the basis
were now eleven in number. To those among the Huron already
mentioned another had lately been added,--that of Sainte Madeleine;
and two others, called St. Jean and St. Matthias, had been
established in the neighboring Tobacco Nation.12
The three remaining missions were all among tribes speaking the
Algonquin languages. Every winter, bands of these savages, driven by
famine and fear of the Iroquois, sought harborage in the Huron
country, and the mission of Sainte Elisabeth was established for
their benefit. The next Algonquin mission was that of Saint Esprit,
embracing the Nipissings and other tribes east and north-east of
Lake Huron; and, lastly, the mission of St. Pierre included the
tribes at the outlet of Lake Superior, and throughout a vast extent
of surrounding wilderness.13
These missions were more laborious, though not more perilous, than
those among the Hurons. The Algonquin hordes were never long at
rest; and, summer and winter, the priest must follow them by lake,
forest, and stream: in summer plying the paddle all day, or toiling
through pathless thickets, bending under the weight of a birch canoe
or a load of baggage,--at night, his bed the rugged earth, or some
bare rock, lashed by the restless waves of Lake Huron; while famine,
the snow-storms, the cold, the treacherous ice of the Great Lakes,
smoke, filth, and, not rarely, threats and persecution, were the lot
of his winter wanderings. It seemed an earthly paradise, when, at
long intervals, he found a respite from his toils among his brother
Jesuits under the roof of Sainte Marie.
Hither, while the Fathers are gathered from their scattered stations
at one of their periodical meetings,--a little before the season of
Lent, 1649,14 let us, too, repair, and
join them. We enter at the eastern gate of the fortification, midway
in the wall between its northern and southern bastions, and pass to
the hall, where, at a rude table, spread with ruder fare, all the
household are assembled,--laborers, domestics, soldiers, and
priests.
It was a scene that might recall a remote half feudal, half
patriarchal age, when, under the smoky rafters of his antique hail,
some warlike thane sat, with kinsmen and dependants ranged down the
long board, each in his degree. Here, doubtless, Ragueneau, the
Father Superior, held the place of honor; and, for chieftains
scarred with Danish battle-axes, was seen a band of thoughtful men,
clad in a threadbare garb of black, their brows swarthy from
exposure, yet marked with the lines of intellect and a fixed
enthusiasm of purpose. Here was Bressani, scarred with firebrand and
knife; Chabanel, once a professor of rhetoric in France, now a
missionary, bound by a self-imposed vow to a life from which his
nature recoiled; the fanatical Chaumonot, whose character savored of
his peasant birth,--for the grossest fungus of superstition that
ever grew under the shadow of Rome was not too much for his
omnivorous credulity, and miracles and mysteries were his daily
food; yet, such as his faith was, he was ready to die for it.
Garnier, beardless like a woman, was of a far finer nature. His
religion was of the affections and the sentiments; and his
imagination, warmed with the ardor of his faith, shaped the ideal
forms of his worship into visible realities. Brébeuf sat conspicuous
among his brethren, portly and tall, his short moustache and beard
grizzled with time,--for he was fifty-six years old. If he seemed
impassive, it was because one overmastering principle had merged and
absorbed all the impulses of his nature and all the faculties of his
mind. The enthusiasm which with many is fitful and spasmodic was
with him the current of his life,--solemn and deep as the tide of
destiny. The Divine Trinity, the Virgin, the Saints, Heaven and
Hell, Angels and Fiends,--to him, these alone were real, and all
things else were nought. Gabriel Lalemant, nephew of Jerome Lalemant,
Superior at Quebec, was Brébeuf's colleague at the mission of St.
Ignace. His slender frame and delicate features gave him an
appearance of youth, though he had reached middle life; and, as in
the case of Garnier, the fervor of his mind sustained him through
exertions of which he seemed physically incapable. Of the rest of
that company little has come down to us but the bare record of their
missionary toils; and we may ask in vain what youthful enthusiasm,
what broken hope or faded dream, turned the current of their lives,
and sent them from the heart of civilization to this savage outpost
of the world.
No element was wanting in them for the achievement of such a success
as that to which they aspired,--neither a transcendent zeal, nor a
matchless discipline, nor a practical sagacity very seldom surpassed
in the pursuits where men strive for wealth and place; and if they
were destined to disappointment, it was the result of external
causes, against which no power of theirs could have insured them.
There was a gap in their number. The place of Antoine Daniel was
empty, and never more to be filled by him,--never at least in the
flesh, for Chaumonot averred, that not long since, when the Fathers
were met in council, he had seen their dead companion seated in
their midst, as of old, with a countenance radiant and majestic.15
They believed his story,--no doubt he believed it himself; and they
consoled one another with the thought, that, in losing their
colleague on earth, they had gained him as a powerful intercessor in
heaven. Daniel's station had been at St. Joseph; but the mission and
the missionary had alike ceased to exist.
1 It seems probable that the walls, of which the
remains may still be traced, were foundations supporting a wooden
superstructure. Ragueneau, in a letter to the General of the
Jesuits, dated March 13, 1650, alludes to the defences of Saint
Marie as "une simple palissade."
2 "Quatre grandes Croix qui sont aux quatre coins de
nostre enclos."--Ragueneau, Relation des Hurons, 1648, 81.
3 It seems that these places, besides those for the
priests, were of two kinds,--"vne retraite pour les pelerins
(Indians), enfin vn lieu plus separé, où les infideles, qui n'y sont
admis que de iour au passage, y puissent tousiours receuoir quelque
bon mot pour leur salut."--Lalemant, Relation des Hurons, 1644, 74.
4 At least it was so in 1642. "Nous leur auons
dressé vn Hospice ou Cabane d'écorce."--Ibid., 1642, 57.
5 "Cet hospital est tellement separé de nostre
demeure, que non seulement les hommes et enfans, mais les femmes y
peuuent estre admises."--Ibid., 1644, 74.
6 Vimont, Relation, 1644, 49. He adds, that some
of these soldiers, though they had once been "assez mauvais garçons,"
had shown great zeal and devotion in behalf of the mission.
7 Journal des Supérieurs des Jésuites, MS. In 1648,
a small cannon was sent to Sainte Marie in the Huron canoes.--Ibid.
8 See ante, chapter 16 (page 214), "donnés". Garnier
calls them "séculiers d'habit, mais religieux de cœur."--Lettres,
MSS.
9 The Jesuits, even at this early period, were often
and loudly charged with sharing in the fur-trade. It is certain that
this charge was not wholly without foundation. Le Jeune, in the
Relation of 1657, speaking of the wampum, guns, powder, lead,
hatchets, kettles, and other articles which the missionaries were
obliged to give to the Indians, at councils and elsewhere, says that
these must be bought from the traders with beaver-skins, which are
the money of the country; and he adds, "Que si vn Iesuite en reçoit
ou en recueille quelques-vns pour ayder aux frais immenses qu'il
faut faire dans ces Missions si éloignées, et pour gagner ces
peuples à Iesus-Christ et les porter à la paix, il seroit à
souhaiter que ceux-là mesme qui deuroient faire ces despenses pour
la conseruation du pays, ne fussent pas du moins les premiers à
condamner le zele de ces Peres, et à les rendre par leurs discours
plus noirs que leurs robes."--Relation, 1657, 16.
In the same year, Chaumonot, addressing a council of the Iroquois
during a period of truce, said, "Keep your beaver-skins, if you
choose, for the Dutch. Even such of them as may fall into our
possession will be employed for your service."--Ibid., 17.
In 1636, La Jeune thought it necessary to write a long letter of
defense against the charge; and in 1643, a declaration, appended to
the Relation of that year, and certifying that the Jesuits took no
part in the fur-trade, was drawn up and signed by twelve members of
the company of New France. Its only meaning is, that the Jesuits
were neither partners nor rivals of the Company's monopoly. They
certainly bought supplies from its magazines with furs which they
obtained from the Indians.
Their object evidently was to make the mission partially
self-supporting. To impute mercenary motives to Garnier, Jogues, and
their co-laborers, is manifestly idle; but, even in the highest
flights of his enthusiasm, the Jesuit never forgot his worldly
wisdom.
9 Lettre du P. Paul Ragueneau au T. R. P. Vincent Carafa, Général de
la Compagnie de Jésus à Rome, Sainte Marie aux Huron, 1 Mars, 1649 (Carayon).
10 Lettre du P. Paul Ragueneau au T. R. P.
Vincent Carafa, Général de la Compagnie de Jésus à Rome, Sainte
Marie aux Hurons, 1 Mars, 1649 (Carayon).
11 See the report of the Father Superior to the
General, above cited. The number was greatly increased within the
year. In April, 1648, Ragueneau reports but forty-two French in all,
including priests. Before the end of the summer a large
reinforcement came up in the Huron canoes.
12 The mission of the Neutral Nation had been
abandoned for the time, from the want of missionaries. The Jesuits
had resolved on concentration, and on the thorough conversion of the
Huron, as a preliminary to more extended efforts.
13 Besides these tribes, the Jesuits had become
more or less acquainted with many others, also Algonquin on the west
and south of Lake Huron; as well as with the Puan, or Winnebago, a
Dacotah tribe between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi.
The Mission of Sault Sainte Marie, at the outlet of Lake Superior,
was established at a later period. Modern writers have confounded it
with Sainte Marie of the Huron.
By the Relation of 1649 it appears that another mission had lately
been begun at the Grand Manitoulin Island, which the Jesuits also
christened Isle Sainte Marie.
14 The date of this meeting is a supposition
merely. It is adopted with reference to events which preceded and
followed.
15 "Ce bon Pere s'apparut après sa mort à vn des
nostres par deux diuerses fois. En l'vne il se fit voir en estat de
gloire, portant le visage d'vn homme d'enuiron trente ans, quoy
qu'il soit mort en l'âge de quarante-huict. . . . Vne autre fois il
fut veu assister à vne assemblée que nous tenions," etc.--Ragueneau,
Relation des Hurons, 1649, 5.
"Le P. Chaumonot vit au milieu de l'assemblée le P. Daniel qui
aidait les Pères de ses conseils, et les remplissait d'une force
surnaturelle; son visage était plein de majesté et d'éclat."--Ibid.,
Lettre au Général de la Compagnie de Jésus (Carayon, 243).
"Le P. Chaumonot nous a quelque fois raconté, à la gloire de cet
illustre confesseur de J. C. (Daniel) qu'il s'étoit fait voir à lui
dans la gloire, à l'âge d'environ 30 ans, quoiqu'il en eut près de
50, et avec les autres circonstances qui se trouuent là (in the
Historia Canadensis of Du Creux). Il ajoutait seulement qu'à la vue
de ce bien-heureux tant de choses lui vinrent à l'esprit pour les
lui demander, qu'il ne savoit pas où commencer son entretien avec ce
cher défunt. Enfin, lui dit-il: "Apprenez moi, mon Père, ce que ie
dois faire pour être bien agréable à Dieu."--"Jamais," répondit le
martyr, "ne perdez le souvenir de vos péchés."--Suite de la Vie de
Chaumonot, 11.
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The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century, 1867
Jesuits
in North America
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