In 1626, the Huron mission was again attempted by Father Brébeuf. He, together with Father Joseph de la Roche Dallion and the Jesuit Anne de Nouë, was sent to Three Rivers, to attempt a passage to the Huron country. When the Indian flotilla arrived at Three Rivers, the Hurons were ready to receive Father de la Roche on board, but being unaccustomed to the Jesuit habit, and objecting, or pretending to object, to the portly frame of Father Brébeuf, they refused a passage to him and his companion, Father Nouë. At last, some presents secured a place in the flotilla for the two Jesuits. The missionaries, after a painful voyage, arrived at St. Gabriel, or La Rochelle, in the Huron country, and took up the mission which the Recollects Le Caron and Viel had so nobly pioneered.

The Hurons, whose proper name was Wendat, or Wyandot, were a powerful tribe, numbering at least thirty thousand souls, living in eighteen villages scattered over a small strip of land on a peninsula in the southern extremity of the Georgian Bay. Other tribes, kindred to them, stretched through New York and into the continent as far south as the Carolinas. Their towns were well built and strongly defended, and they were good tillers of the soil, active traders, and brave warriors. They were, however, behind their neighbors in their domestic life and in their styles of dress, which for both sexes were exceedingly immodest. Their objects of worship were one supreme deity, called the Master of Life, to whom they offered human sacrifices, and an infinite number of inferior deities, or rather fiends, inhabiting rivers, cataracts, or other natural objects, riding on the storms, or living in some animal or plant, and whom they propitiated with tobacco. Father Brébeuf had acquired sufficient knowledge of their language to make himself understood by the natives, and he was greatly assisted by the instructions and manuscripts of Fathers Le Caron and Viel. Father Nouë, being unable to acquire the language, by reason of his great age and defective memory, returned to Quebec in 1627, and was followed the next year by Father de la Roche, who had made a brave but unsuccessful effort to plant the cross among the Attiarandaronk, or Neutrals. The undaunted Brébeuf was thus in 1629 left alone among the Hurons. He soon won their confidence and respect, and was adopted into the tribe by the name of Echon. Though few conversions rewarded his labors among them during his three years' residence, still he was amply compensated by his success in gaining their hearts, acquiring their language, and thoroughly understanding their character and manners. So completely had he gained the good-will of the Hurons, that, when he was about to return in 1629 to Quebec, whither his superior had recalled him, in consequence of the distress prevailing in the colony, the Indians crowded around him to prevent him from entering the canoes, and addressed him in this touching language; "What! Echon, dost thou leave us? Thou hast been here now three years, to learn our language, to teach us to know thy God, to adore and serve him, having come but for that end, as thou hast shown; and now, when thou knowest our language more perfectly than any other Frenchman, thou leavest us. If we do not know the God thou adorest, we shall call him to witness that it is not our fault, but thine, to leave us so." Deeply as he felt this appeal, the Jesuit could know no other voice when his superior spoke; and having given every encouragement to those who were well disposed toward the faith, and explained why he should go when his superior required it, he embarked on the flotilla of twelve canoes, and reached Quebec on the seventeenth of July, 1629. Three days after his arrival at Quebec, that port was captured by the English under the traitor Kirk, who bore the deepest hatred toward the Jesuits, whose residence he would have fired upon could he have brought his vessel near enough for his cannon to bear upon it. He pillaged it, however, compelling the fathers to abandon it and fly for safety to Tadoussac. But Father Brébeuf and his companions were, together with Champlain, detained as prisoners. Amongst the followers of Kirk was one Michel, a bitter and relentless Huguenot, who was by his temperament and infirmities prone to violence, and who vented his rage especially against the Jesuits. He and the no less bigoted Kirk found in Father Brébeuf an intrepid defender of his order and of his companions against their foul calumnies, while at the same time his noble character showed how well it was trained to the practice of Christian humility and charity.

On the occasion here particularly alluded to, Kirk was conversing with the fathers, who were then his prisoners, and, with a malignant expression, said:

"Gentlemen, your business in Canada was to enjoy what belonged to M. de Caen, whom you dispossessed."

"Pardon me, sir," answered Father Brébeuf, "we came purely for the glory of God, and exposed ourselves to every kind of danger to convert the Indians."

Here Michel broke in: "Ay, ay, convert the Indians! You mean, convert the beaver!"

Father Brébeuf, conscious of his own and his companion's innocence, and deeming the occasion one which required at his hands a full and unqualified denial, solemnly and deliberately answered:

"That is false!"

The infuriated Michel, raising his fist at his prisoner in a threatening manner, exclaimed:

"But for the respect I owe the general, I would strike you for giving me the lie."