In September, 1639, new missionaries arrived. Unfortunately, an Indian in one of the canoes of their flotilla was infected with the small-pox, and that disease was thus introduced into the country. The malady began to spread with fearful rapidity, and, as usual, the origin of this evil, as of all others, was attributed to the missionaries. Persecution was at once renewed, the cross was violently dragged down from their houses, their cabins were invaded, their crucifixes torn from their persons, one of them was cruelly beaten, and all were threatened with death. So great was their peril at one time that they calmly prepared themselves for martyrdom. They were finally ordered peremptorily from the town. In the midst of these persecutions, the heart of Father Brébeuf was consoled with a vision: the Blessed Virgin, as the Mother of Sorrows, came to console her son and to confirm his courage; she appeared to him with her heart transfixed with swords. At once his resolution was taken; he remained at his post of danger and of care, and continued his missionary labors.
In consequence of these repeated persecutions, and the constant exposure of the fathers to the renewal of them by the malice of the medicine-men, it was determined to erect a missionary residence apart from the villages and their vicious population, which might prove a safe retreat for the fathers in time of trouble, and a convenient place for instructing the catechumens and others well disposed to receive the faith. During the years that Father Brébeuf was at Ossossané, displaying the most heroic zeal and disinterested charity, he had met with the blackest ingratitude from the persons whom he had fed by depriving himself of nourishment, and on one occasion he was ignominiously beaten in public. The other fathers had suffered similar indignities and maltreatment. While glorying, like the saints, in these sufferings for the sake of God and his church, he yet saw the necessity, for the sake of the mission, of a separate residence. It was this necessity that originated St. Mary's on the river Wye.
In the various missions whose establishments we have mentioned, there had been baptized up to the summer of 1640 about one thousand persons: of these two hundred and sixty were infants, and though some of them were restored to health, by means apparently miraculous, most of them went in baptismal purity to swell the ranks of the church triumphant in heaven. It was about this time that Father Brébeuf ceased to be superior of the mission, and was succeeded by Father Jerome Lalemant. The Jesuit, ever true to his institute, passed from command to obedience with the gladness and alacrity known only to the humble soldiers of the cross. His career as superior, arduous and glorious, was also abundant in fruit to the church. He was indeed the father of the Huron mission. Our eloquent Bancroft, in speaking of his and his companions' labors to introduce Christianity among the aborigines of our continent, says that St. Joseph's chapel, wherein, "in the gaze of thronging crowds, vespers and matins began to be chanted, and the sacred bread was consecrated by solemn Mass, amazed the hereditary guardians of the council-fires of the Huron tribes. Beautiful testimony of the equality of the human race! the sacred wafer, emblem of the divinity in man, all that the church offered to the princes and nobles of the European world, was shared with the humblest of the savage neophytes. The hunter, as he returned from his wild roamings, was taught to hope for eternal rest; the braves, as they came from war, were warned of the wrath that kindles against sinners a never-dying fire, fiercer far than the fires of the Mohawks; and the idlers of the Indian villages were told the exciting tale of the Saviour's death for their redemption."
Father Brébeuf, already the founder of so many missions, now starts out with unabated ardor to open others. Accompanied by Father Chaumonot, he advanced into the country of the Neutrals, naming the first town he entered "All Saints." He pushed onward to the Niagara, to the residence of Tsoharissen, the chief whom all the Neuter towns obeyed. Hither the calumnies of some hostile Hurons had preceded him, and represented Echon as the most terrible of sorcerers. The two missionaries were repulsed on all sides, and in their retreat from place to place were pursued by the arrows of their enemies. Still they persevered, and they succeeded in visiting eighteen towns, preached the Gospel in ten of them, and announced for the first time the words of truth to at least three thousand souls. During these labors, the keen eye of Brébeuf saw the importance to New France of an occupation of the Niagara by missions and trading posts; the travels of the missionaries would be greatly shortened, the warlike Iroquois restrained, the Hurons saved from a war of extermination, and the whole interior continent opened to European civilization and the faith of Christ. The plan of Father Brébeuf received little attention at court: a neglect which decided the fate of empires. We cannot determine precisely how far Father Brébeuf advanced into the country; only one town received the missionaries, which they called St. Michael's. They, however, approached as far into the Iroquois country as was possible; still Bancroft says it is uncertain that he ever stood upon the territory of our republic.
But the hostile Hurons, not contented with the furious persecution they had raised against the fathers in their own country, pursued them into their new mission. Two Huron deputies soon arrived, and proclaimed a tempting reward for such as would deliver the country from those devoted men. While the council was engaged in debating the question of his expulsion or death, Father Brébeuf was making his examen of conscience in the cabin where he lodged, and suddenly he beheld a fearful spectre: the figure held three darts, which were successively hurled against him and his companion, but were averted by an unseen hand. Presaging evil from the vision, the two fathers made their confessions to each other, and, thus prepared to die, they went to rest. They afterward learned from their post, who returned to the cabin late at night, that the session of the council was long and stormy; three times the young braves had insisted on butchering them on the spot, but were restrained by the sachems. But now, such was the state of the feeling aroused against them, that they could not advance a step in safety. Turned from every shelter, and encountering death at every step, they wandered as outcasts over the country. Believing that their longer continuance was only calculated to increase the savage hatred of the people against them, and retard the introduction of the faith, the fathers retreated to the Neuter town which they had named All Saints. Here they wintered and spent the time in instructing the people. In the spring, they advanced as far as Teotongniatou, or St. Williams, where a charitable woman gave them a shelter. While thus lingering, Father Brébeuf arranged his Huron dictionary to the Neuter dialect, in which he had made considerable progress in four months. No sooner had the ameliorating influences of spring rendered travelling just possible, even to such travellers as those who had been accustomed for years to brave every hardship, than Father Brébeuf and his companions started on one of the most extraordinary journeys on record. Already spent with fatigues and privations, and pursued by danger, Father Brébeuf had to remain six days in the woods, sleeping on the snow, and without a covering or shed over his head. The cold was so intense that the trees themselves did split with a noise like the crack of a rifle. A special Providence protected him, for he exhibited no evidence that he had been cold or exposed. Loaded with the provisions which he was compelled to carry, as there were no relays on the way, he travelled two days across a lake of ice; and while thus struggling onward, his heart and eyes lifted up to heaven, he fell upon the ice. His portly frame gave such violence to his fall that he was unable to rise from the ice. After a long time he was lifted up by one of his companions, and then found that his extremities were palsied, and he could not lift his feet from the ground. Besides, his collar-bone was broken. He bore the last in silence, as it was not apparent. This fact was only discovered two years later by the surgeon who attended him at Quebec. In vain his companions begged the privilege of drawing him the remaining thirty-six miles of the journey in a sled, and at other times to assist him on the way; he declined all their generous offers, and labored onward, scarcely able to drag one foot after the other. It was thus he crossed the level country, and when he came to the mountains, he crept up on his hands and feet, and allowed himself to slide down on the opposite side, retarding his too rapid descent with his bruised and aching hands. Thus he completed his journey, which for love of suffering, patience, and humility compares with some of the most heroic achievements recorded of the saints. His companions went forward on other labors, but Father Brébeuf, while waiting for the next flotilla bound for Quebec, determined to take what he styled his "repose"—a repose busily spent in making important arrangements for the missions, which his superior knowledge of everything relating to them enabled him alone to effect.
On the passage to Three Rivers, Father Brébeuf was accompanied by Sondatsaa, an exemplary catechumen, and a party chiefly Christians or catechumens. They arrived at Three Rivers after a narrow escape from the murderous blades of the Mohawks, who were lying in wait for them. Finding it impossible for Fathers Ragueneau and Menard to reach their missions in Huronia without a strong guard, Father Brébeuf proceeded with Father Ragueneau and Sondatsaa to Sillery, in order to obtain succor for them. Here, moved by the entreaties of all, and especially of Sondatsaa himself, and having completed his instruction, Father Brébeuf consented to baptize that zealous convert. The ceremony was performed at Sillery, on the 27th of June, with great pomp, and in the presence of a concourse of Indians. The Chevalier de Montmagny was godfather to the convert, who received the Christian name of Charles. He now returned, a Christian, to his own country, bearing in his little flotilla the two fathers destined for the Huron mission. While Father Brébeuf was dwelling at Sillery, the next flotilla of Hurons that came bore its usual freight of calumnies against Echon. They now accused him of being colleagued with the Iroquois for the destruction of the Hurons. This renewal of calumny checked, for a time, his success; but he continued his preparations and arrangements for the Neuter mission and his endeavors to convert his persecutors to the faith. He endeavored to persuade some of these Hurons to remain and winter with him, in order to receive instructions. Two of them, who were left behind in the chase, were induced to remain, and Father Brébeuf, after the usual instruction and probation, had the consolation of receiving these into the one fold of the One Shepherd. He also succeeded in gaining a number of other Huron converts. Father Nimont, struck with the happy results of his labors, resolved to detain him another winter at Sillery. It was during this summer that Father Jogues came to Sillery for supplies. Here these future martyrs met in the prosecution of their noble labors; but soon the unconquerable Brébeuf saw his saintly companion set forth on his perilous mission over the country infested by the Iroquois, to carry relief to the Huron missionaries. Himself was soon to follow.
In the spring of 1643, Father Brébeuf proceeded to Three Rivers, where he was cheered by tidings of Father Jogues. That holy missionary, in returning from Sillery to bring succor to his companions in Huronia, had fallen a captive into the hands of the fierce Iroquois, and his fate was the object of intense anxiety. Father Brébeuf now learned that he was still living. The bold and generous Brébeuf arranged with a Huron, who was going out, to wait for letters to Father Jogues at Fort Richelieu; the father, bearing the letters, penetrated as far as the fort, but the courage of the Huron messenger failed; he had passed and was afraid to return, and the Jesuit was compelled to retrace his steps without succeeding in conveying a word of comfort and encouragement to his captive brother. In the spring of 1644, Father Bressani also, in endeavoring to reach Huronia, fell into the hands of the Iroquois. But the Huron missionaries must be succored at every hazard, and Father Brébeuf was now chosen for this perilous enterprise. Setting out in the summer, with an escort of twenty soldiers given to him by the governor, he reached the Huron missions in safety on the 7th of September. The Huron mission had ever been the dearest object of Father Brébeuf's heart. Restored now to his chosen vineyard, he devoted himself to the task of converting those tribes with a zeal and an energy worthy of his former glorious career. Year after year he continued his heroic labors; and, though our pen cannot follow him, step by step, through the trials, sacrifices, and exertions which his seraphic love inspired him to encounter, they were recorded in minutest detail by angelic pens in heaven. Success crowned the efforts of Father Brébeuf and his companions. Persecution ceased, and the whole country was becoming conquered to the faith. In August, 1646, Father Gabriel Lalemant, full of zeal and courage, was joined with Father Brébeuf in the mission of St. Ignatius, which embraced the town of St. Louis and some smaller villages. By this time, the horrid superstitions of the country had given way to the pure and holy rites of Catholic worship, and the cross, so lately despised, feared, and hated, had now become the object of love and veneration. Father Bressani writes: "The faith had now made the conquest of the entire country." "We might say they were now ripe for heaven; that naught was needed but the reaping-hook of death to lay the harvest up in the safe garner-house of paradise." "Religion seemed at last the peaceful mistress of the land."
Allusion has several times been made to the visions from on high which were mercifully sent to warn Father Brébeuf of danger impending, or to sustain him under the extraordinary afflictions, persecutions, and sufferings which at times seemed to exceed even his remarkable powers of endurance. Some of these have already been described. To the Protestant and non-Catholic mind, these miraculous communications to the saints are but the imaginings of morbid and diseased intellects. Parkman, in his Jesuits in North America, relates the following visions of Father Brébeuf only to classify them as psychological phenomena: "It is," he says, "scarcely necessary to add that signs and voices from another world, visitations from hell and visions from heaven, were incidents of no rare occurrence in the lives of these ardent apostles. To Brébeuf, whose deep nature, like a furnace white-hot, glowed with the still intensity of his enthusiasm, they were especially frequent. Demons, in troops, appeared before him, sometimes in the guise of men, sometimes as bears, wolves, or wild-cats. He called on God, and the apparitions vanished. Death, like a skeleton, sometimes menaced him; and once, as he faced it with an unquailing eye, it fell powerless at his feet. A demon, in the form of a woman, assailed him with the temptation which beset St. Benedict among the rocks of Subiaco; but Brébeuf signed the cross, and the infernal siren melted into air. He saw the vision of a vast and gorgeous palace, and a miraculous voice assured him that such was to be the reward of those who dwelt in savage hovels for the cause of God. Angels appeared to him, and more than once St. Joseph and the Virgin were visibly present before his sight. Once, when he was among the Neutral nation, in the winter of 1640, he beheld the ominous apparition of a great cross slowly approaching from the quarter where lay the country of the Iroquois. He told the vision to his companions.
"'What was it like? how large was it?' they eagerly demanded.
"'Large enough,' replied the priest, 'to crucify us all.'