1643-1644.—Vimont. Relation ... ès années 1643 et 1644. Paris, 1645. Pages 8, 256, 4, 147 (marked 174).
Contents: Report, giving account of the Capture of Father Bressani; Huron Report by Hierosme Lalemant; War of the Five Nations against the Hurons.
References: Carayon, no. 1,273; Harrisse, no. 83; Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 576; Lenox, p. 6. O’Callaghan, no. 1,223. Recently priced at $50.
Copies: CB., GB., HC., L., M., OHM.
Father F. G. Bressani was in the country from 1642 to 1645, and in his Breve Relatione d’alcune missioni de PP. della Compagnia di Giesu nella Nuova Francia, Macerata, 1653, pp. iv, 127, he gave an account of the rise and progress of the Huron mission. He promised a map and plates, but they do not appear in the copies known, of which two are in the Carter-Brown (Catalogue, vol. ii. no. 750) and Lenox (Contributions, p. 8) libraries; and others were sold in the Brinley (no. 67) and O’Callaghan (no. 1,232) sales. Cf. Carayon, p. 1,317; Leclerc, no. 684 (350 francs); and Shea’s Charlevoix, p. 80. Père Martin had to bring a copy from Rome to make his French translation, Relation abrégée de quelques missions ... dans la Nouvelle France, Montreal, 1852. This version had the Creuxius map, as already stated; another of the Huron country (p. 280), and numerous notes, with a memoir of Bressani by the editor. Cf. Parkman’s Jesuits, p. 253, with references; Shea’s Charlevoix, ii. 174, with note, and his Perils of the Ocean and Wilderness, p. 104; O’Callaghan’s New Netherland; Archbishop Spalding’s Miscellanea.
The first martyr of the Huron mission was Père Antoine Daniel, killed July 4, 1648 (Parkman’s Jesuits, p. 373). Field (Indian Bibliography, p. 146) says some curious, though perhaps not very authentic, information regarding the Hurons can be got from Sieur Gendron’s Quelques Particularitéz du Pays des Hurons, par le Sieur Gendron, which appeared in Davity’s Déscription Générale de l’Amerique, edited by Jean Baptiste de Rocoles, Troyes et Paris, 1660, and was reprinted in New York in 1868. Cf. Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 873; Lenox, p. 18; and Field, no. 598. A fac-simile of a corner map in Creuxius’s larger map, giving the Huron country, is given herewith. Parkman also gives a modern map with the missions and villages marked, and tells the fate of this people after their dispersement, at the end of his Jesuits. See Canadian Monthly, ii. 409.
Dr. Shea gives the following list of martyrs among the Canadian Jesuits, with the dates of their deaths: Isaac Jogues, 1646; Antoine Daniel, 1648; Jean Brebeuf, Gabriel Lallemant, Charles Garnier, and Natalis Chabanel, 1649; Jacques Buteux, 1652; Leonard Garreau, 1656, and René Menard, 1661. And of the Sulpitians: Guillaume Vignal and Jacques Le Maître, 1661. Les Jésuites-Martyrs du Canada, Montreal, 1877, includes Martin’s translation of Bressani’s Relation Abrégée, and sections on the “Caractère des Sauvages et de leur pays,” on their conversion, and on the “Mort de Quelqes Pères.”
1644-1645.—Vimont. Relation ... ès années 1644 et 1645. Paris, 1646. Pages 8, 183, 1.