Thus ended the Huron mission in Upper Canada, which was begun by the Recollect Le Caron in 1615, and which had employed twenty-nine missionaries, seven of whom had yielded up their lives as the best earnest of their sincerity and devotion to the cause of Christian progress.
The Jesuit missions were by this time reduced to a most shadowy state. The Iroquois had almost entirely swept away the Montagnais tribes on the St. Lawrence above the Saguenay; they had cut to pieces most of the bands of Algonquins on the Ottawa, while the country of the Hurons, Petuns, and Neuters was a desert. The trading-posts of the French at Montreal, Three Rivers, and Quebec were almost forsaken; no longer did flotillas come laden with peltries to gladden the merchants, and give missionaries an opportunity to address distant tribes. Several missionaries returned to Europe, as there seemed no field to be reached in America.
Suddenly, however, such a field presented itself. The Iroquois, who had carried off a missionary—Father Poncet—from near Quebec, proposed peace. They were in a fierce war with the Eries and Susquehannas, and probably found that in their bloodthirsty march they were making the land a desert, cutting off all supplies of furs from Dutch and French alike. At all events, they restored Poncet, and, proposing peace, solicited missionaries.
The Iroquois Mission.—War with the Iroquois had been almost uninterrupted since the settlement of Canada. Champlain found the Canadian tribes of every origin arrayed against the fierce confederation which in their symbolic language “formed a cabin.” The founder of Canada had gone to the very heart of the Iroquois country, and at the head of his swarthy allies had given them battle on the shores of Lake Champlain and on the borders of Lake Oneida. But the war had brought the French colony to the brink of ruin, and swept its allies from the face of the earth.
Now peace was to open to missionary influence the castles of this all-conquering people, and a foothold was to be gained there; and not only this, but, relieved from war, Canada was to open intercourse with the great West, and new missions were to be attempted in the basin of the upper lakes and in the valley of the Mississippi. The missionaries of Canada were thus to extend their labors within the present limits of our republic on the north, as the Franciscans of Spain were doing along the southern part from Florida to New Mexico.
The Recollect Joseph de la Roche d’Allion had already in early days crossed the Niagara from the west; Jogues and Raymbault had planted the cross at Sault Ste. Marie; Father Jogues had attempted to found a mission on the banks of the Mohawk; but his body, with the bodies of Goupil and Lalande, had mouldered to dust in our soil.
Father Simon le Moyne, who had succeeded to the Indian name of Jogues, and who inherited his spirit, was the interpreter in the recent negotiations, and had been invited to Onondaga and the Mohawk. For the former, the seat of the council-fire of the Iroquois league, he set out from Quebec July 2, 1654, and reached Onondaga by a route then new to the French, passing through the St. Lawrence, Lake Ontario, and the Oswego. He was favorably received at Onondaga, and the sachems, formally by a wampum belt, invited the French to build a house on Lake Ontario.
There was already a Christian element in the Iroquois cantons. Each of the cantons contained hundreds of Hurons, all instructed in the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, and not a few openly professing it; while in the Seneca country was a town made up of the Scanonaenrat Hurons, Petuns, and Neuters. Le Moyne found wherever he went Christians eager to enjoy his ministry.
