Meantime in 1654, through the efforts of Father Le Moyne to whom a monument has been erected in the city of Syracuse, a line of missions was established in the very country of the Iroquois. It extended all along the Mohawk from the Hudson to Lake Erie. Many of the Iroquois were converted such as Garagontia, Hot Ashes and others, the most notable of whom was the Indian girl, Tegakwitha, who fled from the Mohawk to Caughnawaga, a settlement on the St. Lawrence opposite Lachine which the Fathers had established for the Iroquois converts. The record of her life gives evidence that she was the recipient of wonderful supernatural graces. These New York missions were finally ruined by the stupidity and treachery of two governors of Quebec, de la Barre and de Denonville, and also by the Protestant English who disputed the ownership of that territory with the French. By the year 1710 there were no longer any missionaries in New York, except an occasional one who stole in, disguised as an Indian, to visit his scattered flock. There were three Jesuits with Dongan, the English governor of New York during his short tenure of office, but they never left Manhattan Island in search of the Indians.
Attention was then turned to the Algonquins, and there are wonderful records of heroic missionary endeavor all along the St. Lawrence from the Gulf to Montreal, and up into the regions of the North. Albanel reached Hudson Bay, and Buteux was murdered at the head-waters of the St. Maurice above Three Rivers. The Ottawas in the West were also looked after, and Garreau was shot to death back of Montreal on his way to their country, which lay along the Ottawa and around Mackinac Island and in the region of Green Bay. The heroic old Ménard perished in the distant swamps of Wisconsin; Allouez and Dablon travelled everywhere along the shores of Lake Superior; a great mission station was established at Sault Ste. Marie, and Marquette with his companion Joliet went down the Mississippi to the Arkansas, and assured the world that the Great River emptied its waters in the Gulf of Mexico. A statue in the Capitol of Washington commemorates this achievement and has been duplicated elsewhere.
The beatification of Jogues, Brébeuf, Lalemant, Daniel, Gamier, Chabanel and the two donnés, Goupil and Lalande, is now under consideration at Rome. Their heroic lives as well as those of their associates have given rise to an extensive literature, even among Protestant writers, but the most elaborate tribute to them is furnished by the monumental work consisting of the letters sent by these apostles of the Faith to their superior at Quebec and known the world over as "The Jesuit Relations." It comprises seventy-three octavo volumes, the publication of which was undertaken by a Protestant company in Cleveland. (See Campbell, Pioneer Priests of North America.)
On March 25, 1634, the Jesuit Fathers White and Altham landed with Leonard Calvert, the brother of Lord Baltimore, on St. Clement's Island in Maryland. With them were twenty "gentlemen adventurers," all of whom, with possibly one exception, were Catholics. They brought with them two hundred and fifty mechanics, artisans and laborers who were in great part Protestants. It took them four months to come from Southampton and, on the way over, all religious discussions were prohibited. They were kindly received by the Indians, and the wigwam of the chief was assigned to the priests. A catechism in Patuxent was immediately begun by Father White, and many of the tribe were converted to the Faith in course of time, as were a number of the Protestant colonists. Beyond that, very little missionary work was accomplished, as all efforts in that direction were nullified by a certain Lewger, a former Protestant minister who was Calvert's chief adviser. The adjoining colony of Virginia, which was intensely bitter in its Protestantism, immediately began to cause trouble. In 1644 Ingle and Claiborne made a descent on the colony in a vessel, appropriately called the "Reformation." They captured and burned St. Mary's, plundered and destroyed the houses and chapels of the missionaries, and sent Father White in chains to England, where he was to be put to death, on the charge of being "a returned priest." As he was able to show that he had "returned" in spite of himself, he was discharged.
Calvert recovered his possessions later, and then dissensions began between him and the missionaries because of some land given to them by the Indians. In 1645 it was estimated that the colonists numbered between four and five thousand, three-fourths of whom were Catholics. They were cared for by four Jesuits. In 1649 the famous General Toleration Act was passed, ordaining that "no one believing in Jesus Christ should be molested in his or her religion." As the reverse of this obtained in Virginia, at that time, a number of Puritan recalcitrants from that colony availed themselves of the hospitality of Maryland, and almost immediately, namely in 1650, they repealed the Act and ordered that "no one who professed and exercised the Papistic, commonly known as the Roman Catholic religion, could be protected in the Province." Three of the Jesuits were, in consequence, compelled to flee to Virginia, where they kept in hiding for two or three years. In 1658 Lord Baltimore was again in control, and the Toleration Act was re-enacted. In 1671 the population had increased to 20,000, but in 1676 there was another Protestant uprising and the English penal laws were enforced against the Catholic population. In 1715 Charles, Lord Baltimore, died. Previous to that, his son Benedict had apostatized and was disinherited. He died a few months after his father. Benedict's son Charles, who was also a turncoat, was named lord proprietor by Queen Ann, and made the situation so intolerable for Catholics that they were seriously considering the advisability of abandoning Maryland and migrating in a body to the French colony of Louisiana. As a matter of fact many went West and established themselves in Kentucky.
Of the Jesuits and their flock in Maryland, Bancroft writes: "A convention of the associates for the defence of the Protestant religion assumed the government, and in an address to King William denounced the influence of the Jesuits, the prevalence of papist idolatry, the connivances of the previous government at murders of Protestants and the danger from plots with the French and Indians. The Roman Catholics in the land which they had chosen with Catholic liberality, not as their own asylum only, but as the asylum of every persecuted sect, long before Locke had pleaded for toleration, or Penn for religious freedom, were the sole victims of Protestant intolerance. Mass might not be said publicly. No Catholic priest or bishop might utter his faith in a voice of persuasion. No Catholic might teach the young. If the wayward child of a Catholic would become an apostate the law wrested for him from his parents a share of their property. The disfranchisement of the Proprietary related to his creed, not to his family. Such were the methods adopted to prevent the growth of Popery. Who shall say that the faith of the cultivated individual is firmer than the faith of the common people? Who shall say that the many are fickle; that the chief is firm? To recover the inheritance of authority Benedict, the son of the Proprietary, renounced the Catholic Church for that of England, but the persecution never crushed the faith of the humble colonists."
The extent of the Jesuit missions in what is now Canada and the United States may be appreciated by a glance at the remarkable map recently published by Frank F. Seaman of Cleveland, Ohio. On it is indicated every mission site beginning with the Spanish posts in Florida, Georgia and Virginia, as far back as 1566. The missions of the French Fathers are more numerous, and extend from the Gulf of Mexico to Hudson Bay, and west to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. Not only are the mission sites indicated, but the habitats of the various tribes, the portages and the farthest advances of the tomahawk are there also. Lines starting from Quebec show the source of all this stupendous labor.