A temporary peace followed, in 1645, and the hope of the Jesuits was rekindled, for they now had five missions in as many Huron towns, and another established for Algonkins who were resident in the Huron district. But in July, 1648, the Iroquois attacked Teanaustayé, the chief Huron village, and while encouraging the frenzied defense Father Daniel lost his life at the hands of the enemy. He was thus the first Jesuit martyr in the Huron mission, and the second in New France,—for Jogues had been tortured to death in the Iroquois towns, two years before. The spirit of the Hurons was crushed in this bloody foray; large bands, deserting their towns, fled in terror to seek protection of the Petuns, while others made their way to the Manitoulin Islands of Lake Huron, and even as far west as the islands of Green Bay and the matted pine forests of Northern Wisconsin. Here and there a town was left, however, and one of the largest of these, called St. Ignatius by the Jesuits, was stormed by a thousand Iroquois, March 16, 1649. The three survivors fled through the woods to neighboring St. Louis, where were Brébeuf, now grown old in his service of toil, and young Gabriel Lalemant. Bravely did they aid in defending St. Louis, and administering to wounded and dying; but at last were captured, and being taken to the ruined town of St. Ignatius were most cruelly tortured until relieved by death. Early in November, Fathers Garnier and Chabanel met their death in the Petun country, the former at the hands of Iroquois, the latter being killed by a Huron who imagined that the presence of the Jesuits had brought curses upon his tribe.
The missions in the Huron country were now entirely abandoned. A few of the surviving Jesuits followed their flocks to the islands in Lake Huron; but in June, 1650, the enterprise was forsaken, and the missionaries, with a number of their converts, retired to a village, founded for them, on the Island of Orleans, near Quebec. This settlement being in time ravaged by the Iroquois, a final stand was made at Lorette, also in the outskirts of Quebec, which mission exists to this day.
The great Huron mission, which had been conducted for thirty-five years, had employed twenty-nine missionaries, of whom seven had lost their lives in the work. This important field forsaken, many of the missionaries had returned to Europe disheartened, and apparently the future for Jesuit missions in New France looked gloomy enough. The Iroquois had now practically destroyed the Montagnais between Quebec and the Saguenay, the Algonkins of the Ottawa, and the Hurons, Petuns, and Neutrals. The French colonies of Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal, had suffered from repeated raids of the New York confederates, and their forest trade was now almost wholly destroyed. In this hour of darkness, light suddenly broke upon New France. The politic Iroquois, attacked on either side by the Eries and the Susquehannas, and fearing that while thus engaged their northern victims might revive for combined vengeance, sent overtures of peace to Quebec, and cordially invited to their cantonments the once detested black gowns.
V. The Iroquois Mission.
Champlain had early made enemies of the Iroquois, by attacking them as the allies of his Algonkin neighbors. This enmity extended to all New France, and lasted, with brief intervals of peace, for over half a century. We have seen that Jogues was the first of his order (1642) to enter the Iroquois country, as a prisoner of the Mohawks, the easternmost of the five tribes of the confederacy. Two years later, Bressani, while on his way to the Huron missions, was also captured by the Mohawks, passed through a similar experience of torture, was sold to the Dutch, and transported back to France, and, again like Jogues resumed his hazardous task of attempting to tame the American savage. During the first peace (May, 1646), Jogues, now in civilian costume, paid a brief visit to his former tormentors on the Mohawk, this time conveying only expressions of good-will from the governor of New France. His political errand accomplished, he returned to Quebec; but in August was back again, with a young French attendant named Lalande, intent on opening admission among the Iroquois. Meanwhile, there had been a revulsion of sentiment on their part, and the two Frenchmen had no sooner reached the Mohawk than they were tortured and killed.
During an Iroquois attack upon Quebec, seven years later (1653), Father Joseph Anthony Poncet was taken prisoner by the marauders and carried to the Mohawk, where he suffered in the same manner as his predecessors; but his captors being now desirous of a renewal of peace with the French, spared his life, and sent him back to Quebec with overtures for a renewal of negotiations. Early in July, 1654, Father Simon le Moyne was sent forth upon a tour of inspection, and returned to Quebec in September, with glowing reports of the fervor of his reception by both Mohawks and Onondagas. It was determined to rear a mission among the latter, and thither (1655),—a four weeks' voyage,—proceeded Claude Dablon and Peter Mary Joseph Chaumonot; while, to appease the jealous Mohawks, Le Moyne at the same time reopened a brief but unprosperous mission among that tribe.
At first, Dablon and Chaumonot had high hopes of their Onondaga enterprise; but mistrust soon arose in the minds of the natives, and Dablon found it necessary to proceed to Quebec and obtain fresh evidences of the friendship of the French. He returned in the early summer of 1656, accompanied by Fathers Francis Le Mercier, superior of the Canadian mission, and René Ménard, two lay brothers, and a party of French colonists under a militia captain, who designed founding a settlement in the land of the Iroquois. By the close of the year, the work was in a promising stage; a number of Christianized Hurons, who had been adopted into the confederacy, formed a nucleus for proselyting, several Iroquois converts had been made, and all five of the tribes had been visited by the missionaries.
Fathers Paul Ragueneau and Joseph Imbert Dupéron, who had been sent out from Quebec in July, 1657, to assist the Onondaga mission, reached it only after many perils en route; for meanwhile, there had been a fresh Iroquois uprising against the Hurons and Ottawas, in which Father Leonard Garreau lost his life near Montreal, and the entire confederacy was soon in an uproar against the white allies of its ancient enemies. The intrepid Le Moyne joined the party in November, and in the following March (1658), on learning that all of the French had been condemned to death, the entire colony stole away in the night, and reached Montreal only after a long and hazardous voyage. The great Iroquois mission, which had promised so happily and cost so much in blood and treasure, was now thought to be a thing of the past.
There was, however, still another chapter to the story. In the summer of 1660, after two years of bloody forays against New France, a Cayuga sachem, who had been converted at Onondaga, came to Montreal as a peace messenger, asking for another black gown to minister to the native converts and a number of French captives in the Iroquois towns. Once more, Le Moyne cheerfully set out upon what seemed a path to death; but he passed the winter without molestation, and in the spring following was allowed to return to Canada with the French prisoners.
It was five years later (1665), before the government of New France felt itself sufficiently strong to threaten chastisement of the raiding Iroquois, who had long been making life a torment in the colonies on the St. Lawrence. The Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas sued for peace; but the Mohawks were obstinate, and their villages were wasted by fire until they too asked for mercy and the ministrations of the Jesuits. Fathers James Fremin, James Bruyas, and John Pierron were sent out in 1667; later, they were assisted by Julian Garnier, Stephen de Carheil, Peter Milet, and Boniface, so that by the close of 1668 a mission was in progress in each of the five cantonments. A few notable converts were made, among them Catharine Tegakouita, known as the "Iroquois saint;" Catharine Ganneaktena, an Erie captive who afterwards founded a native mission village on the banks of the St. Lawrence; the head-men Assendasé, Kryn, and Soenrese. But a great success was never possible; here as elsewhere, the vices and superstitions of the tribesmen were deep-rooted, and they had not yet reached a stage of culture where the spiritual doctrines of Christianity appealed strongly, save to a few emotional natures. The converts were subjected to so many annoyances and dangers, that isolation was thought essential, and there was established for them opposite Montreal the palisaded mission of St. Francis Xavier; this settlement, fostered by the French as a buffer against Iroquois attack on the colonists, was subsequently removed to Sault St. Louis, and is known in our day as Caughnawaga. This mission, and that of the Sulpitians on Montreal Mountain—later removed to the neighboring Lake of the Two Mountains,—and at Quinté Bay, were frequently recruited by Iroquois Christians, who were carefully instructed by the missionaries in the arts of agriculture and the rites of the church.