Though the introduction of Calvinism led to the destruction of many a convent and shrine, and thinned by death the ranks of the mission orders, the zeal for the conversion of the Indians survived the wars of religion. Soon after Poutrincourt began his settlement in Acadia, it was made a reproach to him that nothing had been done for the conversion of the natives. He addressed a letter to the Pope, as if to put the fact of his orthodoxy beyond all question; and when it was proposed to send out Jesuit missionaries to labor among the Indians, he caused twenty-five of the natives to be baptized in token of his zeal for their spiritual welfare.
The establishment of a Jesuit mission was, however, decided upon. On the 12th of June, 1611, Fathers Peter Biard and Enemond Masse reached Port Royal. Some difficulties had been thrown in their way, and others met them in the petty settlement. They turned at once to study the Micmac language, so as to begin their mission labors among that nation of Algonquins. The aged Membertou, who had acquired some French, was their interpreter and first convert. Biard visited all the coast as far as the Kennebec, and tried to give some ideas of Christianity to the Abenakis on that river. Finding that little could be done at Port Royal, where the settlers hampered rather than aided their efforts, the Jesuits projected an independent mission settlement elsewhere. Their protector, Madame de Guercheville, obtained from the French king a grant of all the coast from the St. Lawrence to Florida. A vessel was sent out, the missionaries were taken on board, and a settlement was begun on Mount Desert Island. There a cross was planted, and Mass said at a rustic altar. But the Jesuits were not to carry out their mission projects. English vessels under Argall, from Virginia, attacked the ship and settlement of St. Savior; a Jesuit laybrother was killed; the rest of the settlers were sent to France or carried prisoners to Virginia. Thus ended the first Jesuit mission begun under French auspices.[677]
Meanwhile Champlain had succeeded in establishing a settlement on the St. Lawrence, and had penetrated to Lake Champlain and the rapids of the Ottawa. On all sides were tribes “living like brute beasts, without law, without religion, without God.” His religious zeal was quickened; for Quebec itself was destitute of ministers of religion. The Recollects, a reformed branch of the Franciscan order, were invited to enter the field. They accepted the mission, and in May, 1615, four of the Gray Friars landed at Quebec. Father John Dolbeau at once began a mission among the Montagnais,—the tribe occupying that portion of the St. Lawrence valley,—and wintered with them in their wandering hunter life, enduring all its hardships, and learning their language and ideas. The friendly Wyandots, from the shores of a far distant lake, were the tribe assigned to Father Joseph le Caron, and to the palisaded towns of this more civilized race he boldly ventured, without waiting for Champlain. In the summer of 1615 he set up his altar in a new bark lodge in the Huron town of Caragouha, near Thunder Bay, and began to learn a new strange tongue, so as to teach the flock around him.
The Recollects had thus undertaken to evangelize two races, who, with their kindred, extended from the ocean to the Mississippi, from the Chesapeake and Ohio to the frozen lands of the Esquimaux. Their languages, differing from all known to European scholars in vocabulary, forms, and the construction of sentences, offered incredible difficulties. The ideas these Indians held of a future state were so obscure, that it was not easy to find enough of natural religion by which to lead them to the revealed. Progress was naturally slow,—there was more to discourage than to cheer. Still the Franciscans labored on; and though their number was limited to six, they had in 1625 five missions at Tadousac, Quebec, Three Rivers, among the Nipissings, and in the Huron country.
Finding that the mission field in New France required an order bound to less scrupulous poverty than their own, the Recollects of Paris invited the Jesuits to aid them. Enemond Masse, of the unfortunate Acadian mission, with Charles Lalemant and John de Brebeuf, came over in 1625. The old opposition to the order was renewed. The Jesuits were homeless, till the Recollects opened the doors of their convent to them. Commanding resources from influential friends, they soon began to build, and brought over men to swell the settlement and cultivate the ground. They joined the Recollects in the missions already founded, profiting by their experience. This enabled the Church to extend its missions. Father Joseph de la Roche d’Aillon, leaving the Hurons, struck southwesterly, and founded a mission among the Neutral Nation, apparently on the eastern bank of the Niagara, and urged his countrymen to open direct communication by way of Lake Ontario with that fertile part of the country.
The little colony at Quebec was, however, on the verge of starvation; and after once baffling the English, Champlain surrendered in 1629, and the missions of the Recollects and Jesuits came to a close. A mere handful of converts was all the reward of their long and zealous labors, and these they were compelled to leave exposed to the danger of lapsing back into their original heathendom.
We cannot trace very distinctly the system adopted by the Recollects and their Jesuit auxiliaries during this first period of mission labor in Canada. Their usual course was to remain during the pleasant months at the French posts,—Quebec, Three Rivers, and Tadousac,—attending to the spiritual wants of the French and of the Indians who encamped near by for trade, and then to follow an Indian band on its winter hunt. The Recollects spoke despondingly. Some young men were taken to France and instructed there,—one, Peter Anthony, having the Prince de Guimené as his sponsor in baptism. But they found it almost impossible to keep the young for any prolonged instruction, and they hesitated to baptize adults, except in case of danger of death.
In the Huron country Father Nicholas Viel succeeded Le Caron, and had his little chapel at Quieunonascaran, cultivating a small patch of ground around his bark lodge. His success does not seem to have exceeded that of his fellow religious in the more nomadic tribes. While on his way to Quebec in 1625 he was treacherously hurled from his canoe by a Huron guide, and perished in the rapid waters near Montreal that still bear the name of Sault au Récollet.
Another Recollect, Father William Poullain, while on his way with some Frenchmen from Quebec to Sault St. Louis, fell into the hands of the Iroquois, who were about to torture him at the stake, when he was saved by an offer of an exchange made by his countrymen.