Columbus and Other Heroes of American Discovery

by N. D'Anvers

The storm broke first on the village of St. Joseph, now almost entirely Christianized. The able-bodied members of the community were away at the chase; the women and children fell an easy prey to the Mohawk warriors. Father Daniel, the head of the mission, while administering the last rites of the church to the dying and the dead, fell at last beneath the poisoned arrows of the Iroquois, and was finally dispatched by a blow from a hatchet. Next St. Ignatius and then St. Louis were overpowered, and in the latter our old friend Brébœuf and his companion Sallemand met their death, the first after three, the second after seventeen hours of torture.

From St. Louis, the tide of invasion swept westward to Georgian Bay, where the Hurons had made a feeble effort to rally. Again they were defeated, and in their despair they sent a message by Father Dreuillette, a zealous missionary who had long been at work among the north-west tribes, to New England, with an entreaty for succor. But, as we shall presently see when we return to the colonies on the coast, the energies of the newly-formed federation were all required to meet the necessities of home defense, and no help came to the sufferers in the north. Dreuillette worked his way back by a new route to the St. Lawrence, that was all. Three years of almost constant massacres, in which many a noble death was met, alike by native converts and their teachers, were at last succeeded by a lull. The Iroquois were sated with bloodshed; or, as some of the French authorities tell us, their hearts had been touched by the teaching of some of their prisoners. In any case, peace was made in 1650, and it was scarcely concluded, before a missionary was ready to risk his life by making a fresh effort to convert the men at whose hands his brethren had already suffered so much.

A certain Father Le Moyne, who had been the envoy intrusted by the Hurons with the ratifications of peace, pitched his tent on the Mohawk River, and a little later an Italian priest named Dablon, and a French missionary named Chaumonot, settled at Onondaga, chief village of the tribe of the same name dwelling on the banks of the Oswego, a river of the modern state of New York flowing into Lake Ontario. Wonderful to relate, they not only escaped death, but were received with eager welcome. A chapel sprang up as if by magic, and Chaumonot soon found himself in a position to visit the Senecas, the most powerful of the Five Nations, who lived far away in the west of the present State of New York, on a lake named after them, which is connected with Lake Ontario by the rivers Oswego and Seneca. Here, as at Onondaga, the natives seemed glad to receive the good tidings of the Gospel; but, as they declined to interpret “peace on earth” beyond the limits of their own tribe, and persecuted their neighbors the Eries with reckless cruelty, their missionary soon found himself at issue with them.

Disputes now arose, and of a little body of fifty Frenchmen who had settled on the Oswego, thinking the days of the old horrors were over, several were murdered. This, of course, aroused the terror and indignation of the survivors, who were compelled to make their escape as best they could, reluctantly accompanied by the missionaries. So ended the second attempt at converting the Iroquois; but not all the good seed sown was lost, and now and again, afterward, some fierce warrior of the Five Nations gave touching proof that he had not forgot the teaching of the good white men.

Meanwhile, the work of the missionaries in opening up the districts about the Great Lakes was being largely supplemented by energetic fur-traders, and in 1656 two young Frenchmen, accompanied by a number of Ottawas, appeared at St. Louis, astonishing their countrymen in that now flourishing settlement by the accounts they gave of yet other inland seas far away in the West, and yet other native tribes, differing in almost every respect, alike from the Hurons, Algonquins, and the Iroquois.

Here was a new field for missionary effort, and Dreuillette, the unsuccessful messenger to Maine, and Gareau, a Huron missionary, were chosen to lead the way in this fresh spiritual campaign. Accompanied by some of the Ottawas already mentioned, they were ascending the Ottawa, when they were attacked by the Mohawks, and Gareau was killed. Dreuillette, however, escaped, and advanced into the present Ontario, making his way thence to the banks of the Saguenay, long since discovered by Cartier, whence he undertook several short trips to the North-east, of which, however, few details have been preserved, though they greatly paved the way for the advance of the fur-trade.

While Dreuillette was laboring in the North, René Mesnard, who had been one of the missionaries to the Iroquois, excited by the accounts given by two fur-traders, who had spent a winter on the banks of Lake Superior, started to found a church among the fierce Sioux, or Dacotahs, dwelling in those remote districts. He reached the southern shores of Lake Superior in the autumn of 1660, and in the spring of the following year began his journey toward the modern state of Minnesota, which lies between the south-western extremity of the great lake and the Dakota territory. Letters describing his progress were occasionally received at Quebec, but they suddenly ceased; and after much anxiety on his account, rumors were brought in by traders that he had become separated from his companions, and lost his way in the forests on the south of the Bay of Chagwamegan, and must have perished miserably. The event proved that they were right. Mesnard’s body was found in the forest by a native, who long concealed the fact, lest he should be accused of the murder of the white man. The cassock and breviary of Mesnard having, however, been preserved as amulets by the Sioux, led to inquiries being made, and the truth was discovered.

In 1665, a fresh impulse was given to missionary effort in Canada by the transference of the country to a new West Indian Company, under the direct patronage of Louis XIV., who, recognizing the importance of the rich fur-yielding districts of New France, sent out a regiment to protect the traders. True, about this time New Netherland was conquered by the English, who thus became very formidable rivals to the French; but the Iroquois still separated the two European nations, and yet a little longer the evil day of the loss of Canada was deferred.

The first hero to go forth under the new government was Father Allouez, who, following in the footsteps of Mesnard, arrived on the banks of Lake Superior early in September, 1666. Embarking on its waters in a native canoe, he reached the village of Chagwamegan, on the bay of the same name, where members of no less than ten different native races were assembled, discussing how best to prevent a threatened war between the Sioux and the Chippewas.

Scarcely pausing to rest after his long journey, Allouez advanced into the very midst of the dusky crowd, and, partly by promises of present help against the common enemy, partly by his eloquent description of the joys of eternity to the true believer, he quickly made many converts. He had, as it were, dropped down from the skies, straight from the home of the Good Spirit. He was invited to remain; and accepting the hospitality tendered to him, he founded the mission of St. Esprit, to which, in an incredibly short space of time, flocked Hurons and Ottawas, with members of distant western tribes whose very names had never before been heard of; the Potawatomies, or worshipers of the sun, the Illinois, the Sacs, the Foxes, and many another race, sinking their differences for a time in their common eagerness to share the good tidings of great joy which the white man was said to have brought.