The missionaries in the Huron country, by the loss of the supplies in the Huron flotilla, were reduced to great straits, till Brebeuf reached them with two assistants, Garreau and Chabanel, whom no dangers could deter. Father Bressani, returning to his western labors, was less fortunate; he too was captured, and endured all but death at the hands of the Mohawks. His sufferings led the charitable Dutch to effect his release. Yet neither Jogues nor Bressani faltered; both returned to Canada to continue their perilous work.
When a temporary peace gave the Huron mission a respite, there were five churches in as many towns, and one for Algonquins living in the Huron country. The voice of the missionary seemed to find more hearers, and converts increased; but the end was at hand.
In July, 1648, the Iroquois attacked Teananstayae. As the braves manned the palisades, Father Daniel was among them to give them the consolations of religion, to confess and baptize; then he hurried to the cabins to minister to the sick and aged. He found his chapel full, and urging them to flight from the rear, he closed the front portal behind him, and awaited the Iroquois braves, who had stormed the palisade and were swooping down on the cross-crowned church. Riddled by arrows and balls, he fell dead, and his body was flung into the burning church of St. Joseph.
The capture of this town seemed a death-blow to hope in the bosoms of the Hurons. They abandoned many of their towns, and fled to the islands of Lake Huron or the towns of the Petuns. They could not be aroused to any system of defence or precaution.
On the 16th of the ensuing March, a force of a thousand Iroquois stormed, at daybreak, the Huron town which the missionaries called St. Ignatius. So general and complete was the massacre, that only three escaped to the next large town, St. Louis. Here were stationed the veteran Brebeuf, companion of the early Recollect missioners in the land, friend of Champlain, and with him as associate the young Gabriel Lalemant. The Hurons urged the missionaries to fly; but, like Daniel, they remained, exercising their ministry to the last, and attending to every call of zeal. The Hurons repelled the first assault; but their palisade was carried at last, and the victorious Iroquois fired the cabins. The missionaries, while ministering to the wounded and dying, were captured. They were taken, with other captives, to the ruined town of St. Ignatius, and there a horrible torture began. They were bound to the stake; Brebeuf’s hands were cut off; Lalemant’s body bristled with awls and iron barbs; red-hot hatchets were pressed under their arms and between their legs; and around the neck of Brebeuf a collar of these weapons was placed. But the heroic old missionary denounced God’s vengeance on the savages for their cruelty and hatred of Christianity, till they cut off his nose and lips, and thrust a firebrand into his mouth. They sliced off his flesh and devoured it, and, scalping him, poured boiling water on his head, in mockery of baptism; then they hacked off his feet, clove open his chest, and devoured his heart. Lalemant was wrapped in bark to which fire was applied, and underwent many of the same tortures as the older missionary; he too was baptized in mockery, his eyes torn out and coals forced into the sockets. After torturing him all the night, his tormenters clove his head asunder at dawn.
St Mary’s was menaced; but the Huron fugitives there sent out a party which repulsed the Iroquois, who then retired, sated with their vengeance. The Huron nation was destroyed. Fifteen towns were abandoned. One tribe, the Scanonaenrat, submitted to the Iroquois, and removed to the Seneca country in a body, with many Hurons of other tribes. Some bands fled to the Petuns, Neuters, Eries, or Susquehannas. A part, following the first fugitives to the islands in Lake Huron, roamed to Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. These were in time brought back by later missionaries to Mackinac.
The Huron mission was overthrown. A few of the Jesuit missionaries followed the fugitives to St. Joseph’s Island; others joined Garnier in the Petun mission. But that too was doomed. Echarita was attacked in December, the Iroquois avoiding the Petun braves who had sallied out to meet them. Garnier, a man of singularly attractive character, earnest and devoted, though mortally wounded, dragged himself along on the ground to minister to the wounded, and was tomahawked as he was in the act of absolving one. Another missionary, Chabanel, was killed by an apostate Huron. Their comrades accompanied the fugitive Petuns as they scattered and sought refuge in the islands. The number of the Hurons and Petuns was too great for the limited and hasty agriculture to maintain. Great misery ensued. In June, 1650, the missionaries abandoned the Huron country, and descended to Quebec with a number of the Hurons. This remnant of a once powerful nation were placed on Isle Orleans; but the Iroquois swept many of them off, and the survivors found a home at Lorette, where their descendants still remain.