For years they met with but discouragement, grief, and care,
Scowls and menaces, distrust, and persecution everywhere;
Fierce jealousies, stirred up by the tribal “medicine men”;
A subtle pagan power, cunningly concealed, and when
Their ascendancy was threatened, stirred the dark, benighted mind
To acts of cruel violence—a superstition blind.
Thus suffering hunger, thirst, cold, heat, almost in despair,
And the powers of darkness combined; the spirit of the air
Echoed demon laughter; up from the deeps it rose and fell;
Up in derision from the very maw and counterscarp of hell;
And the wolf howled down the phantom corridors of the night,
And lost spirits shrieked, and all of good seemed put to flight.
But ’mid it all those devotees toiled on incessantly;
As one they sought God’s help in prayer and pleading unity.
Though scoffed and mocked, they importuned the Huron warriors still
To espouse the Saviour’s cause and obey His loving will.
And when the deadly pestilence subdued the nation’s pride,
And pale death stalked among the sad wigwams far and wide,
And a thousand braves were stricken in this disastrous hour,
And a thousand maidens perished by its fell, destroying power.
The aged and the children, too, were in hundreds swept away,
And the Huron hearts were breaking ’mid the horrors of the day;
And pitiful distress and helplessness reigned everywhere,
And the nation bowed in mourning in the frenzy of despair.
’Twas then the Hurons realized the Jesuits’ noble worth,
Learned to love their pale-faced brothers in that time of death and dearth;
For moving ’mid the dying and the stricken night and day,
Nursing, soothing, absolving, and bearing the dead away,
Won they the Hurons, and the Saviour’s story they receive,
Taught in their adversity to repent and to believe.
Thus was that strange people redeemed and Christianized,
And God’s cause established, and the Jesuits signalized.
The Hurons sought war no more—’mid blessings of peace and love,
Longed for Manitou, and “the happy hunting grounds above.”
But a scourge more dreadful now on the repentant nation fell:
The unsparing Iroquois, with the malignancy of hell,
Swept down upon the Hurons, caught by stealth, and unprepared.
All, all that hideous slaughter met—not one, not one was spared.
Though fighting sternly to the last, with the courage of despair,
They could not stem that fierce onslaught—pale death was rampant there.
Their palisaded towns were burned in rage by scores and scores,
And exterminating war reigned round Lake Huron’s lovely shores.
Amid it all Brébœuf, of the Huron mission, stood
With the gentle Lalemant, a brother supremely good;
And they absolved and blessed, fearless of their impending fate,
Caring for the wounded and dying, braving the foeman’s hate;
Amid the dreadful carnage, surrounded by flashing knives,
Red with the blood of the Hurons, red with a thousand lives!
Captives at last, by bloody hands borne to the torture post
With hundreds more, and surrounded by a gibing, fiendish host,
They met death by the most awful torture without a groan,
Blessing e’en the hands that mangled and seared to the very bone.
Aye, without a murmur, those steadfast souls bore the pain,
Exhorting all to look to God, that they should meet again
Where the cruel torture and life’s dread sufferings are o’er,
Meet Manitou in endless life, where sorrow comes no more.
And thus perished those martyred, heroic, devoted souls
For the cause of Christ; and as long as the grim ages roll
Shall their immortal deeds and imperishable fame be sung,
Till the last trump to waken the dead through all space be rung.