IV. The Huron Mission.
At the time of the advent of the French, the Hurons (or Wyandots), allied in origin and language to the Iroquois, numbered about 16,000 souls, and dwelt in several large villages in a narrow district on the high ground between Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay of Lake Huron. Their dwellings were bark cabins, clustered within stoutly-palisaded walls, and near each fortified town were fields of corn, beans, pumpkins, and tobacco. Agricultural in habit, keen traders, and in the main sedentary, these semi-naked savages made short hunting and fishing expeditions, and laid up stores for the winter. They were better fighters than the Algonkins around them, yet were obliged gradually to withdraw northward and westward from Iroquois persecution, and during the period of the Jesuit missions were almost annihilated by the latter. To the southwest, across a wide stretch of unpopulated forest, were the allies and kindred of the Hurons, the Tionontates, called also Petuns, or Tobacco Nation, a term having its origin in their custom of cultivating large fields of tobacco, which commodity they used in a wide-spread barter with other tribes. To the southeast of the Petuns, west of Lake Ontario and on both sides of the gorge of Niagara, were the peaceful Atiwandaronks, who, being friends alike of Iroquois, Algonkins, and Hurons, were known as the Neutral Nation. To the eastward of the Neutrals, strongly intrenched in the interlocking basins of the Genesee and the Mohawk, lay the dread confederacy of the Iroquois, who in time were to spread like a pestilence over the lands of all their neighbors.
The intelligence and mobility of the Hurons rendered the early prospects for missionary effort among them more promising than with the rude and nomadic Algonkins. But while at first the missionaries of New France were well received, the innate savagery of these people in time asserted itself. Their medicine-men, as bitterly fanatical as the howling dervishes of the Orient, plotted the destruction of the messengers of the new faith; the introduction of European diseases was attributed to the "black gowns;" the ravages of the Iroquois were thought to be brought on by the presence of the strangers; the rites of the church were looked upon as infernal incantations, and the lurid pictures of the Judgment, which were displayed in the little forest chapels, aroused unspeakable terror among this simple people; finally, an irresistible wave of superstitious frenzy led to the blotting out of the mission, accompanied by some of the most heart-rending scenes in the history of Christian evangelization.
It will be remembered that in 1615 the Récollet friar, Joseph le Caron, made his way into the far-away country of the Hurons, but returned in the following year, having learned much of their language and customs. Five years later, another of his order, William Poulin, took up the weary task, being joined in 1623 by Fathers Le Caron and Nicholas Viel, and the historian of the Récollet missions, Brother Gabriel Sagard. All of them soon left the field, however, save Viel, who alone, amid almost incredible hardships, attained some measure of success; but in 1625, when descending the Ottawa to meet and arrange for co-operation with the Jesuit Brébeuf, at Three Rivers, he was willfully drowned by his Indian guide in the last rapid of Des Prairies River, just back of Montreal. Such is the origin of the name of the dread Sault au Récollet.
In 1626, the Jesuits Brébeuf and Anne de Nouë, having received some linguistic instruction from Récollets who had been in the Huron field, proceeded thither, with a Récollet friar, Joseph de la Roche Daillon, to resume the work which the Récollets had abandoned. Daillon attempted a mission to neighboring Neutrals, but, being roughly handled by them, rejoined his Jesuit friends among the Hurons. Two years later, he returned to Quebec, having been preceded by De Nouë, who found it impossible to master the difficult language of their dusky flock. Brébeuf, now left alone, labored gallantly among these people, and, winning the hearts of many by his easy adoption of their manners, gathered about him a little colony of those favorably inclined to his views. He was recalled to Quebec in 1629, arriving there just in time to fall into the hands of Louis Kirk, and be transported to England.
When Canada was restored to France, by the treaty of St. Germain, the Jesuits were given sole charge of the Indian missions, but it was 1634 before the Huron mission could be reopened. In September, Brébeuf, Antoine Daniel, and Davost returned to Brébeuf's old field, and commenced, in the large town of Ihonatiria, the greatest Jesuit mission in the history of New France. Others soon joined them. Additional missions were opened in neighboring towns, some of the strongest of these being each served by four fathers, who were assisted by laymen donnés, or given men; while in the cultivation of the soil, and the fashioning of implements and utensils both for the fathers and for the Indians, numerous hired laborers, from the French colonies on the St. Lawrence, were employed in and about the missions. Charles Garnier and Isaac Jogues, with their attendants, made a tour of the Petun villages; other Jesuits were sent among the Neutrals; and even the Algonkins as far northwestward as Sault Ste. Marie were visited (1641) by Raymbault and Jogues, and looked and listened with awe at the celebration of the mass. In 1639, there was built, on the River Wye, the fortified mission house of St. Mary's, to serve as a center for the wide-spread work, as a place for ecclesiastical retreat for the fathers, and a refuge when enemies pressed too closely upon them.
The story of the hardships and sufferings of the devoted missionaries, as told us by Rochemonteix, Shea, and Parkman, and with rare modesty recorded in the documents to be contained in this series, is one of the most thrilling in the annals of humanity. Space forbids us here to dwell upon the theme. No men have, in the zealous exercise of their faith, performed hardier deeds than these Jesuits of the Huron mission; yet, after three years of unremitting toil, they could (1640) count but a hundred converts out of a population of 16,000, and these were for the most part sick infants or aged persons, who had died soon after baptism. The rugged braves scorned the approaches of the fathers, and unmercifully tormented their converts; the medicine-men waged continual warfare on their work; smallpox and the Iroquois were decimating the people.
Jogues was (1642) sent down to the colonies for supplies for the missions, but with his Huron companions was captured by an Iroquois war-party, who led them to the Mohawk towns. There most of the Hurons were killed, and Jogues and his donné, René Goupil, were tortured and mutilated, and made to serve as slaves to their savage jailers. Finally Goupil, a promising young physician, was killed, and Jogues, being rescued by the Dutch allies of the Mohawks, was sent to Europe. Supplies thus failing them, the Huron missionaries were in a sad plight until finally (1644) relieved by an expedition to the lower country undertaken at great hazards by Brébeuf, Garreau, and Noël Chabanel. The same season, Francis Joseph Bressani, attempting to reach the Huron missions, had been captured and tortured by Mohawks; like Jogues, he was rescued through Dutch intercession and sent back to Europe, but both of these zealots were soon back again facing the cruel dangers of their chosen task.
A temporary peace followed, in 1645, and the hope of the Jesuits was rekindled, for they now had five missions in as many Huron towns, and another established for Algonkins who were resident in the Huron district. But in July, 1648, the Iroquois attacked Teanaustayé, the chief Huron village, and while encouraging the frenzied defense Father Daniel lost his life at the hands of the enemy. He was thus the first Jesuit martyr in the Huron mission, and the second in New France,—for Jogues had been tortured to death in the Iroquois towns, two years before. The spirit of the Hurons was crushed in this bloody foray; large bands, deserting their towns, fled in terror to seek protection of the Petuns, while others made their way to the Manitoulin Islands of Lake Huron, and even as far west as the islands of Green Bay and the matted pine forests of Northern Wisconsin. Here and there a town was left, however, and one of the largest of these, called St. Ignatius by the Jesuits, was stormed by a thousand Iroquois, March 16, 1649. The three survivors fled through the woods to neighboring St. Louis, where were Brébeuf, now grown old in his service of toil, and young Gabriel Lalemant. Bravely did they aid in defending St. Louis, and administering to wounded and dying; but at last were captured, and being taken to the ruined town of St. Ignatius were most cruelly tortured until relieved by death. Early in November, Fathers Garnier and Chabanel met their death in the Petun country, the former at the hands of Iroquois, the latter being killed by a Huron who imagined that the presence of the Jesuits had brought curses upon his tribe.
The missions in the Huron country were now entirely abandoned. A few of the surviving Jesuits followed their flocks to the islands in Lake Huron; but in June, 1650, the enterprise was forsaken, and the missionaries, with a number of their converts, retired to a village, founded for them, on the Island of Orleans, near Quebec. This settlement being in time ravaged by the Iroquois, a final stand was made at Lorette, also in the outskirts of Quebec, which mission exists to this day.
The great Huron mission, which had been conducted for thirty-five years, had employed twenty-nine missionaries, of whom seven had lost their lives in the work. This important field forsaken, many of the missionaries had returned to Europe disheartened, and apparently the future for Jesuit missions in New France looked gloomy enough. The Iroquois had now practically destroyed the Montagnais between Quebec and the Saguenay, the Algonkins of the Ottawa, and the Hurons, Petuns, and Neutrals. The French colonies of Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal, had suffered from repeated raids of the New York confederates, and their forest trade was now almost wholly destroyed. In this hour of darkness, light suddenly broke upon New France. The politic Iroquois, attacked on either side by the Eries and the Susquehannas, and fearing that while thus engaged their northern victims might revive for combined vengeance, sent overtures of peace to Quebec, and cordially invited to their cantonments the once detested black gowns.