Gradually the Indians who had settled near Three Rivers were almost entirely won; while the Attikamegues, or White Fish Indians, dwelling far inland, came to ask a missionary to reside among them. They were of the Montagnais tongue, and remarkable for their gentle character. Father Buteux, charmed with their docility, instructed them; and at last, in 1651, ascended the river, and after a toilsome journey of fifty-three days, reached their country. All who had not become Christians already were anxiously awaiting his arrival; a rude chapel was raised, and the neophytes in their fervor crowded to it to listen or to pray. The next year Buteux set out once more to make a missionary visit to this interesting race; but the Iroquois were on their track, and the missionary while making a portage received two fatal wounds, and died amid his arduous duties. The tribe was soon nearly annihilated, the survivors seeking refuge among the remote lodges of the scattered Montagnais.
Among the converts at Three Rivers was Pieskaret, the most famous warrior of the Montagnais or Adirondacks, whose bravery was the terror of the Iroquois. But the Indians of that portion of the St. Lawrence valley were doomed,—nearly all were swept away by the Iroquois; and after the death of Buteux the Montagnais mission at Three Rivers seems to have numbered few Indians, nearly all the survivors having fled to their kindred tribes near Tadousac.
When the settlement at Montreal was formed in 1641 by Maisonneuve acting under the Society of Montreal, the Jesuits were the first clergymen of the new town, and began to labor among the Indians who gathered there from the St. Lawrence and Ottawa. This mission of the Jesuits was not, however, a permanent one. The Sulpitians,—a community of priests established in Paris by the Rev. John James Olier, one of the members of the Montreal society,—became the proprietors of the new settlement, and they continue still in charge of churches, institutions, and missions on or near Montreal island, after a lapse of more than two centuries. An Indian mission for Algonquins was begun on the mountain at a spot now known as the Priests’ Farm, chiefly by the liberality and zeal of the Rev. Mr. Belmont. Iroquois and Hurons also came, and the mission was removed to Sault au Récollet, and then to the Lake of the Two Mountains. Here it still exists, embracing an Iroquois village and one of Algonquin language, made up in no small part of Nipissings from the lake of that name. This is the oldest mission organization in Canada, the Sulpitians having been unmolested by the English Government, which put an end to the communities of the Jesuits and Recollects.
Above Montreal no permanent missions were attempted among the Algonquin bands dotted along the line of the Ottawa,—the Indians seeking instruction on their visits to the French posts and missions, or receiving missionaries from time to time, as their river was the great highway to the West.
The Huron Mission.—The Huron nation in Upper Canada, a confederacy of tribes allied in origin and language to the Iroquois, had been already the field of a mission conducted by Recollects, aided after a time by the Jesuits. When Canada was restored to France by the treaty of St. Germain, Brebeuf penetrated to his old mission, in 1634, accompanied by Fathers Daniel and Davost, and in September erected a log chapel in the town of Ihonatiria. Thus began the greatest of the Jesuit missions in Canada, which called forth the most intrepid courage of the heralds of Christianity, and triumphed over the heathen hostility in the tribes, only to perish at last by the hands of the terrible Iroquois.
The Hurons lived in palisaded towns, their bark cabins clustering within, while the fields where they cultivated corn, beans, pumpkins, and tobacco lay near. Their hunting and fishing excursions were comparatively short, and they laid up stores of provisions for winter. The opportunity for instructing the people was accordingly much greater than among the nomadic tribes of the Algonquin family. Brebeuf, already versed in the language, extended his studies and initiated his associates into its intricate peculiarities. The young were the first care, and catechetical instructions were daily given to all whom they could gather. The Lord’s Prayer and other devotions were taught; but it was not easy to secure continuous attendance. This led to the project of a school at Quebec, to which some of the most promising boys were sent. There, with less to tempt them, more progress was made; yet the result was but temporary, for the pupils on returning to the upper country threw aside their slight civilization.
As other missionaries arrived, the labors of the Fathers in the Huron country extended; but they found that the medicine-men were bitter enemies, foreseeing a loss of all their influence. The march of Europeans through America always spread new diseases. In the Huron country the ravages were severe. The medicine-men ascribed all to the missionaries. Cabins were closed against them; their lives were in constant peril. Their house was set on fire, and a council of the three tribes met to decide whether they should all be put to death. The undaunted missionaries prepared to meet their fate, committing their chapel service and the fruit of their Indian studies to Peter Tsiwendeentaha, their first adult convert. Their fearless conduct at last triumphed. Adults came to solicit instruction; Ossossare and Teananstayae became mission stations, four Fathers laboring in each, while Garnier and Jogues proceeded to the towns of the Tionontates, a kindred tribe, who from their cultivation and sale of tobacco were generally called by the French the Petun, or Tobacco tribe. As new stations were formed and chapels built in the Huron towns, the missionaries in 1639 erected on the River Wye the mission-house of St. Mary’s, to serve as a centre from which priests could be sent to any of the towns, and where they could always find refuge. They extended their labors to the Neutral Nation and to the Algonquin tribes lying near the Huron country, reaching as far as Sault Ste. Marie. The missionaries endured great hardships and sufferings on these journeys from hunger, cold, and accident,—Brebeuf having broken his collar-bone by a fall, and reaching his lodge only by a long and weary progress on his hands and knees. Their efforts seemed almost vain. In 1640 they could claim only one hundred Christians out of sixteen thousand Hurons; a few prominent chiefs had joined them, but the young braves would not submit to the law of the gospel. Christian families, and still more Christians in heathen families, were subjected to much persecution, till the number of catechumens in a town enabled them to take a firm stand.
Meanwhile the Five Nations, freely supplied with firearms by the Dutch, were annihilating the Huron tribes, already weakened by disease. The war interrupted intercourse between the Huron country and Quebec. Father Jogues, sent down in 1642 to obtain supplies for the mission, while journeying back, fell with many Hurons into the hands of the Mohawks, who killed most of the party, and led the rest with the missionary to their towns. The missionary and his attendant, René Goupil, were tortured and mutilated, reduced to the rude slavery of Indian life, and witnessed the execution of most of their Hurons. Full of missionary zeal, they endeavored to impart some ideas of Christianity; but the effort cost Goupil his life, and Jogues was with difficulty rescued by the Dutch, and sent to Europe.