| Montreal and the Five Nations. |
The Governor, who vainly attempted to dissuade the founders of Montreal from going so far afield, was right in his warnings. Very few were the French in North America, their struggle for existence was hard, their enemies were watchful and unrelenting. Safety lay in concentration, in making Quebec a strong and comparatively populous centre, in keeping aloof from the Iroquois, instead of straying within their range. To form a weak settlement 160 miles higher up the river than Quebec, within striking distance of the Five Nations, was to provoke the Indians and to offer them a prey. This was the immediate result of the foundation of Montreal. Year after year went by, and there was the same tale to tell: a tale of a hand to mouth existence, of settlers cooped up within their palisades, ploughing the fields at the risk of their lives, cut off by twos and threes, murdered or carried into captivity. Moreover, between Montreal in its weakness and the older and stronger settlement at Quebec, there was an element of jealousy. What with rival commandants and rival ecclesiastics, controversy within and ravening Iroquois without, the early days of the French in Canada were days of sorrow.
| The Huron missions. |
Far away from civilization in the seventeenth century was Montreal, but further still was the Huron country. The first white man to visit the Hurons was the Recollet friar, Le Caron, in the year 1615, and from that date onward, till Kirke took Quebec, a very few Franciscan and Jesuit priests preached their faith by the shores of Georgian Bay. Suspended for a short time, while the English held Canada, the missions were resumed by the Jesuits in 1634, foremost among the missionaries being Father de Breboeuf, who had already worked among the Hurons, and came back to work and die.
Few stories are so dramatic, few have been so well told2 as the tale of the Huron missions. No element of tragedy is wanting. The background of the scene gives a sense of distance and immensity. The action is comprised in very few years, years of bright promise, speedily followed by absolute desolation. The contrast between the actors on either side is as great as can be found in the range of human life, between savages almost superhuman in savagery, and Christian preachers almost superhuman in endurance and self-sacrifice; and all through there runs the pity of it, the pathos of a religion of love bearing as its first-fruits barren martyrdom and wholesale extermination.
2 By Francis Parkman in The Jesuits in North America.
Between Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay the Hurons dwelt, accessible to the Frenchmen only by the Ottawa river and Lake Nipissing, for the Iroquois barred the alternative route up the St. Lawrence and by Lake Ontario. Montreal was left far behind, and many miles of a toilsome, dangerous route were traversed, until by the shores of the great freshwater sea were found the homes of a savage but a settled people. To men inspired by religion and by Imperial views of religion, who looked to be the ministers of a world-wide power, including and dominating all the kingdoms of the earth, the greatness of the distances, the remoteness of the land, the unbounded area of unknown waters stretching far off to the west, were but calls to the imagination and incentives to redoubled effort.
But, ambitious as they were, the Jesuits were not mere enthusiasts: they were practical and politic men, diplomatists in the American backwoods as at the Court of France. Not wandering outcasts, like the Algonquins of the lower St. Lawrence; not, like the Iroquois, wholly given to perpetual murder; with some peaceful impulses, traders to a small extent, and tillers of the ground, and above all, since Champlain first came among them, sworn allies of the French—the Hurons seemed such a people as might be moulded to a new faith, and become a beacon attracting other North American natives to the light of Christianity. So the Jesuit fathers went among them in 1634, and in 1640 built and fortified a central mission station—St. Marie—a mile from where a little river—the Wye—flows into an inlet of Lake Huron.
To convert a race of suspicious savages is no easy task. The priests carried their lives in their hands. They were pitted against native sorcerers, they were called upon to give rain, they were held responsible for small-pox. Yet year by year, by genuine goodness and by pious fraud, they made headway, until some eleven mission posts were in existence among the Hurons and the neighbouring tribes, the most remote station being at the outlet of Lake Superior. The promise was good. Money was forthcoming from France. There were eighteen priests at work, there were lay assistants, there was a handful of French soldiers. Earthly as well as spiritual wants were supplied at St. Marie, and far off in safety at Quebec was a seminary for Huron children. It seemed as though on the far western horizon of discovery and colonization, the Roman Catholic Church was achieving a signal triumph, its agents being Frenchmen, and its political work being credited to France. Yet after fifteen years all was over, and the land was left desolate without inhabitants. The heathen learnt from their Christian teachers to obey and to suffer, but in learning they lost the spirit of resistance and of savage manhood. As in Paraguay, a more submissive race, under Jesuit influence, dwindled in numbers, so even the Hurons, after the French priests came among them, seem to have become an easier prey than before to their hereditary foes.
| Destruction of the missions by the Iroquois. Dispersion of the Hurons. |