II. The Montagnais Mission.
This was centered at Tadoussac, and ministered to the Montagnais, Bersiamites, Porcupines, Oumaniwek, Papinachois, and other tribes of the Lower St. Lawrence and the Saguenay. Tadoussac had, from the earliest historic times, been a favorite harbor and trading-station for the French; for, being at the junction of two great rivers, it was convenient as a place of assembly for the natives of the lower country. The first priests in the district had said mass there; but it was not until 1640 that a Jesuit mission was formed by Father Jean du Quen, its sphere of influence soon reaching to the upper waters of the Saguenay, Lake St. John, Hudson Bay, and the coast of Labrador. Du Quen was actively assisted by Charles Meiachkwat, a Montagnais convert, who erected the first chapel, became a catechist, and made extended tours through the neighboring tribes. In time, there were associated with Du Quen, Fathers Buteux and Druillettes. Protracted missionary tours were made by them, with results which were considered satisfactory as compared with other missions; although they had serious difficulties to contend with, in the prevalent intemperance which the fur trade introduced among the natives, the belief in dreams, the laxity of morals, and the wiles of medicine-men, or sorcerers, as they were called by the Jesuits.
For the first few years, the missionaries spent their winters in Quebec, ministering to the colonists, and each spring went down to Tadoussac to meet the summer trading parties; but greater persistency of effort was deemed desirable, and thereafter, instead of returning home in the autumn, they followed the Indians upon their winter hunts, and in the course of these wanderings endured the usual privations and hardships of traveling camps. Bailloquet, Nouvel, Beaulieu, Albanel, De Crépieul, Dalmas, Boucher, Peter Michael Laure, and Jean Baptiste Labrosse, are other names of Jesuit fathers who at different periods were engaged upon this toilsome mission.
In 1670, Tadoussac was almost deserted, owing to Iroquois raids and the ravages of smallpox; the Montagnais and kindred tribes were in hiding, through the vast country between Lake St. John and Hudson Bay. They were still followed by their devoted shepherds, whom no hardship could discourage. The following year, Crépieul began a mission on Hudson Bay, and here in 1694 his auxiliary Dalmas was killed. Laure (1720-37) left us a monument of his labors in a Montagnais grammar and dictionary. Labrosse, the last of his order at Tadoussac, instructed many of his flock to read and write, and left a legacy of native education, which has lasted unto the present day; he lived and taught long after his order had been suppressed in New France, and died at Tadoussac in 1782.