Thus the Jesuit missions in New York ended virtually in 1687. Father Milet, captured at Fort Frontenac, was a prisoner at Oneida from 1689 to 1694; and in spite of a severe law passed by New York in 1700, Bruyas, the very next year, endeavored to revive the Iroquois missions; but they never recovered any of their old importance, and were finally abandoned in 1708, when the last Jesuit missionary retired to Albany. Thenceforth the Jesuits devoted themselves to their mission at Sault St. Louis; though at a later period the Sulpitian Picquet gathered a new mission at the Presentation, now Ogdensburg, in 1748.
During the period of the main missions in the tribes from 1668 to 1687, the baptisms—chiefly of infants, and adults in danger of death—were about two hundred and fifty a year in the Five Nations; no permanent church or mission-house was erected, and the result of their teachings was the only monument. This was not slight: many were sincere Christians, frequenting Montreal and Philadelphia for the practice of their religion, while the Moravian and other later missionaries found these converts, from a knowledge of Christian thought and prayers, valuable auxiliaries in enabling them to reach the heathen Iroquois. Pennsylvania, which had English Jesuit missionaries in her borders, wisely employed their influence to attract Catholic Iroquois to the chapel in Philadelphia, in order to win through them the good-will of the cantons.
Towards the close of the Jesuit missions in New York, the Recollects appeared within the Iroquois limits at Quinté Bay and Niagara, during La Salle’s sway; but they made no serious effort to found a mission, though Father Hennepin obtained Bruyas’ works on the Mohawk language, in order to fit himself for the task. After the extinction of the Jesuits, secular priests continued the missions at Sault St. Louis and St. Regis, which still exist.
The Ottawa Missions.—In the geographical distribution of the country, the district around Lake Superior acquired at an early period the name of the country of the Ottawas, from the first tribe which opened intercourse with the French. The Jesuits, after establishing their missions among the Hurons, soon extended their care to the neighboring Algonquin tribes, and in 1641 Father Jogues and Father Raymbault visited the Chippewas of Sault Ste. Marie. But the overthrow of the Wyandots and the desertion of their country interrupted for years all intercourse between the French on the St. Lawrence and the tribes on the upper lakes. Yet in 1656 an Ottawa flotilla reached the St. Lawrence, and the missionaries Garreau and Druillettes set out with them for the West; but near Montreal Island they were ambushed by the Iroquois, and Garreau was left weltering in his blood. Undeterred by his fate or by the hardships and perils of the long journey, the aged Menard, a veteran of the Huron and Cayuga missions, set out, encouraged by Bishop Laval, with another Ottawa flotilla, in July, 1660, expecting no fate but one that would appall most men. “Should we at last die of misery,” he wrote, “how great our happiness will be!” Paddling all day, compelled to bear heavy burdens, deprived of food, and even abandoned by his brutal Ottawa guides, Menard at last reached a bay on the southern shore of Lake Superior on the festival of St. Teresa, and named it in her honor. It was apparently Keweenaw Bay. “Here,” he wrote, “I had the consolation of saying mass, which repaid me with usury for all my past hardships. Here I began a mission, composed of a flying church of Christian Indians from the neighborhood of the settlements, and of such as God’s mercy has gathered in here.” A chief at first received him into his wigwam, but soon drove him out; and the aged priest made a rude shelter of fir branches piled up, and in this passed the winter laboring to instruct and console some as wretched as himself. In the spring his zeal led him to respond to a call from some fugitive Hurons who were far inland. He set out, but was lost at a portage, and in all probability was murdered by a Kickapoo, in August, 1661.
Claude Allouez was the next Jesuit assigned to this dangerous post. In the summer of 1665 he set out, and reaching Chegoimegon Bay on Lake Superior on the first of October, began the mission of La Pointe du St. Esprit, content to labor there alone with no mission station and no countrymen except a few fur-traders between his chapel and Montreal. For thirty years he went from tribe to tribe endeavoring to plant the faith of which he was the envoy. He founded the mission at Sault Ste. Marie, those in Green Bay, the Miami, and, with Marquette, the Illinois mission. He was the first of the missionaries to meet the Sioux and to announce the existence of the great river Mesipi. His first labors were among the Chippewas at Sault Ste. Marie, the Ottawas at La Pointe, and the Nipissings at Lake Alimpegon. When reinforced by Fathers Nicolas, Marquette, and Dablon, the last two took post at Sault Ste. Marie; and Allouez, leaving the Ottawa mission to Father Marquette, who soon had the Hurons also gather around him at La Pointe, proceeded to Green Bay, where he founded, in December, 1669, the mission of St. Francis Xavier and a motley village of Sacs and Foxes, Pottawatamies, and Winnebagoes. His visits soon extended to other towns on the bay and on Fox River.
At these missions the Jesuits, after their daily mass, remained for a time to instruct all who came; then they visited the cabins to comfort the sick, and to baptize infants in danger of death. Study of the dialects of the various tribes cost hours of patient toil; and reaching the western limit of the Algonquin tribes, they were already in contact with the Winnebagoes and Sioux of a radically different stock,—the Dakota.
Marquette was preparing the way to the lodges of the Sioux, when the folly of the Hurons and Ottawas provoked that tribe to war. The Hurons fled to Mackinac, the Ottawas to Manitouline, and Marquette was compelled to defer his projected Sioux and Illinois missions.
The field seemed full of promise, and other missionaries were sent out. They labored amid great hardships, and suffered much from the brutality of the Indians. With tribes that were constantly shifting their camping-grounds, it was difficult to maintain any regular system of instruction for adults, or to bring the young to frequent the chapel with any assiduity. Lay brothers, skilled as smiths and workers in metal, were powerful auxiliaries in winning the good-will of the Indians, as they repaired guns and other weapons and utensils. They were the first manufacturers of the West, visiting the copper deposits of Lake Superior, to obtain material for crucifixes, medals, and other similar objects, which the missionaries distributed among their converts. Yet even these lay brothers and their helpers, the volunteer donnés, were not free from danger, and tradition claims that one of them was killed by the brutal men whom they had so long served so well.