In the beginning they were well received, and all awaited the return of the great chief Tsohahissen from war, there being no one in his absence to treat with them; but gradually pagan Hurons came, and represented the missionaries as great magicians who sought their ruin. Then every door was closed against them, and they often nearly perished at night, deprived of all shelter. After visiting eighteen towns, they sadly turned back towards Kandoucho, but the snow came on so rapidly that they could not proceed beyond Teotongniaton. There they found a charitable woman who not only welcomed them to her cabin, but during their twenty-five days’ stay was their patient and intelligent instructor in her language, enabling them to adapt the dictionary and grammar of the Huron language to that of this nation.
Yet even this good woman could not protect her guests from all injury. A crazy fellow in her cabin spat upon Father Chaumonot, tore his cassock, and kept up such a din that they could not sleep, and tore from their persons any object that took his fancy.
After a stay of four months and a half they finally abandoned this field, and the Neuter Nation rejected its last call, for it was soon after destroyed by the Iroquois.
Still greater suffering awaited him. With the early summer he joined Father Daniel once more. They entered the cabin of a dying woman in the town of St. Michael to baptize her; one of her relatives, incensed at this, awaited them without, and as Father Chaumonot issued forth tore off his hat with one hand, and with the other dealt him a terrible blow with a stone. “I was stunned by the blow,” says he, “and the assassin seized his tomahawk to finish me, but Father Daniel wrested it from his hands. I was taken to our host’s cabin, where another Indian was my charitable physician. Seeing the large tumor I had on my head, he took another sharp stone to make some incision, through which he endeavored to press out all the extravasated blood, and then bathed the top of my head with cold water, in which some pounded roots were steeped. He took some of this infusion into his mouth and squirted it into the incisions. This treatment was so successful that I was soon well. God was satisfied with my desire of martyrdom, or rather deemed me unworthy to die a victim to the hatred of the first of our sacraments.”
Amid such men, with all the horrors of war—for the Iroquois from New York were gradually conquering the land—Chaumonot labored on, suffering in health but undaunted and unappalled, even when, in 1648, Father Daniel perished in his village, and in the following March Father Brébeuf and his young associate Gabriel Lalemant underwent the fearful torture which gave them the highest crown among our martyrs.
A general panic seized the Hurons after this last blow. “At the time of this greatest defeat of the Huron nation,” says Father Chaumonot, “I had charge of a town almost entirely Christian. The Iroquois, having attacked the villages about ten miles off, gave our braves a chance to sally out and attack them; but the enemy were in greater force than they supposed, and our men were defeated. Two days after their defeat news came that all our warriors were killed or taken. It was midnight when the intelligence came, and at once every cabin resounded with wailing, sobs, and piteous cries. You could hear nothing but wives bewailing their husbands, mothers mourning for their sons, and relatives lamenting the death or captivity of those nearest to them. Thereupon an old man, justly fearing lest the Iroquois might dash on the town, now deprived of its defenders, began to run through the town crying: ‘Fly! fly! let us escape; the hostile army is coming to take us.’
“At this cry I ran out and hastened from cabin to cabin to baptize the catechumens, confess the neophytes, and, arm all with prayer. As I made my round I saw that they were all abandoning the place, to take refuge with a nation about thirty-three miles distant. I followed these poor fugitives with the view of giving them spiritual aid, and as I did not even think of taking any provisions, I made the whole journey without eating or drinking or ever feeling any fatigue. While marching on, I thought only and busied myself only with administering consolation to my flock, instructing some, confessing others, baptizing those who had not yet received that sacrament. As it was still winter, I was forced to administer baptism with snow-water melted in my hands. What showed me clearly that my strength in flight was given me from on high, is that a Frenchman in the party, a man incomparably stronger in constitution than I, almost perished on the way, spent with weariness and overexertion.”
He was with the surviving missionaries when they committed to the grave at St. Mary’s the bodies of Brébeuf and Lalemant; and when tidings came of Garnier’s heroic death, and of Chabanel’s disappearance, he accompanied the Hurons who fled to St. Joseph’s Island in Lake Huron. There is nothing in the annals of the missions more touching than Father Chaumonot’s letters describing the fearful sufferings of the fugitives there.
When they at last resolved to seek a refuge at Quebec with their allies the French, Father Chaumonot bore them company, bidding adieu to the land which for eleven years had been the constant scene of his labors.
No missionary had more thoroughly entered into the Indian character or identified himself with them in thought. To him, therefore, they gave the name which the illustrious Brébeuf had borne, that of Hechon; and he was naturally the one to whose direction they were committed on Isle Orleans.