It was shortly after this that Father Jogues was compelled to witness the horrid spectacle of human sacrifice offered to the demon Aireskoi. How wonderful are the ways of divine Providence! for it was in the midst of this act, the lowest point in the scale of human degradation and of insult to God, that a human soul is regenerated by one of the Christian sacraments, and that soul is the victim itself of the superstitious rite. A woman was chosen for the victim, and was tied to the stake. The savages formed a line, and as they approached the stake each one did his share in burning, cutting, or otherwise torturing the unhappy victim. Father Jogues had previously instructed the woman. He took no part, of course, in this awful and wicked sacrifice, but he availed himself of an opportunity to press forward in the crowd, and as the victim bowed to receive [pg 115] the sacrament from his hands, the missionary poured the baptismal waters on her head, in the midst of the raging flames of the heathen sacrifice.
An effort was now made by his friends in Canada to secure the release of Father Jogues. Some braves of the Sokoki tribe, living on the Connecticut, had been captured by the Algonquins, and were now led forth for torture. The French governor procured their liberation, committed them to the care of the hospital nuns, and, after their wounds were healed, sent them back to their own country, with a request that they would induce their tribe to send an embassy to their allies the Mohawks to intercede for the relief of Father Jogues. The embassy was accordingly sent, the Mohawks lit their council fires, the Sokoki presents were accepted, but the main question was parried, and finally the old promise to send him back to Three Rivers was the only result. Perceiving now more than ever the dignity and importance of their prisoner, the Mohawks led him forth in triumph to show their allies that even the powerful French nation was tributary to the Iroquois. This cruel journey, two hundred and fifty miles long, was over a rugged and barren country, and many were the sufferings our missionary had to endure. Yet this journey was not without its peculiar consolations to Father Jogues. On one occasion he baptized five dying infants; and as he passed through the cabins in search of souls, he heard the voice of a former benefactor, the Indian who had so generously cut loose the cords that bound him to the cross of logs hoisted in the air in the village of Tinniontiogen, crying to him from his bed of misery and death. Father Jogues embraced his benefactor with a burst of gratitude and sympathy. Unable to reward him with worldly goods or temporal relief, the father instructed him in the truths of eternal life, bestowed upon the willing convert the treasure of the faith, and shortly before his death sealed all with the sacrament of baptism.
After his return to the village he was rushed upon one day by an infuriated savage, whose club laid him almost lifeless on the ground. Every day he was thus exposed to some imminent peril. His life was suspended upon the merest chance or savage caprice or passion. The good old woman who had adopted him, and whom he called his aunt, was his only friend in that vast region. She advised him to make his escape, but he believed it to be the will of God that he should remain there.
In August, 1643, he had to accompany a portion of the tribe on a hunting and fishing party, during which he visited for the second time the Dutch at Rensselaerswyck, the present city of Albany. The inhabitants again made a generous effort to secure the liberation of Father Jogues, but their appeal to the savage Mohawk was in vain. It was here, too, amid the dangers and distractions that encompassed him at Rensselaerswyck, that he produced that beautiful monument of taste and learning, as well as of apostolic zeal and love, the relation of his captivity and sufferings to his superior, which has been so greatly admired for its pure and classic Latin. In this letter, he says: “I have baptized seventy since my captivity, children, and youth, and old men of five different tongues and nations, that men of every tribe, and tongue, and nation, might stand in the presence of the Lamb.”
While engaged in helping the Iroquois to stretch their nets for fish, he heard of more Huron prisoners brought to the village, two of whom had already expired at the stake unbaptized. Obtaining the permission of his good aunt who had adopted him, he at once dropped the fish-nets, and returned to the village in order that he might set his net for human souls. On his way to the village he passed through Rensselaerswyck. Van Curler insisted on his making his escape by flight, since certain death awaited him at the village, and offered a shelter and a passage on board of a ship destined first for Virginia and then for Bordeaux or Rochelle. It has already been related that Father Jogues had resolved to regard the Mohawk as his mission, he therefore hesitated to accept the generous offer of the Dutch, though inevitable death would soon remove him from that chosen field. But Van Curler and the minister of the settlement, John Megapolensis, pressed their appeal with such powerful arguments that the missionary promised to consider it, and asked one night for prayer and consultation with his soul and with God. After fervent supplication for the aid of heaven in deciding the matter with impartiality, and after much reflection, Father Jogues, knowing that if he returned to the village death would soon remove him from it, and convinced that his return to France or Canada would prove the only means of founding a regular mission in the Mohawk, resolved to attempt his escape, and went in the morning to announce his resolution to Van Curler and Megapolensis. They then arranged together the plan of escape. Returning to the custody of his guards, he accompanied them to their quarters. When they all retired at night to their barn to rest, the Iroquois slept around the father, in order to secure him closely within, while without the premises were guarded by ferocious watch-dogs. In his first attempt early in the night, the dogs rushed upon him and tore his leg dreadfully with their teeth, and he was obliged to return into the barn. Towards daybreak a second attempt was more successful; the dogs were silenced; the prisoner quietly escaped over the fence, and ran limping and suffering with his lacerated limb fully a mile to the river where the ship lay. But here he found the bark sent by Van Curler for his escape lying high and dry and immovable on the beach, and the vessel was not within hailing distance. In these straitened circumstances, he had recourse to prayer. In making another effort to move the bark he seemed to be gifted with renewed strength, and soon the boat was afloat, and thus he succeeded alone in reaching the vessel. He was immediately concealed in the bottom of the hold, and a heavy box was placed over the hatch. In the filth of this narrow and unventilated place he remained two days and nights, suffering extremely from his wound, from hunger and the noisome air.
Father Jogues was then carried into the settlement to remain until all was quiet and it was time to embark. He was confided to the care of a man who permitted him to be thrust into a miserable loft, where he remained six weeks crouched behind a hogshead as his only shelter, with scarcely food sufficient to keep him alive, enduring every discomfort, and exposed to detection and recapture by the Iroquois or Mohawks, who incessantly haunted the house.
After six weeks thus spent, Father Jogues, accompanied by the minister, [pg 117] Dominie Megapolensis, took the first boat for New Amsterdam, as the city of New York was then called. The voyage lasted six weeks, during which Father Jogues became a great favorite with all on board. As they passed a little island in their route, the crew named it in honor of Father Jogues amid the discharge of cannon, and the Calvinist minister honored the Jesuit by contributing a bottle of wine to the festivities of the occasion. After an agreeable voyage, they arrived at New Amsterdam. The germ of the present monster city consisted then of a little fort garrisoned with sixty men, a governor's house, a church, and the houses of four or five hundred men scattered over and around the entire Island of Manhattan. There were many different sects and nations represented there. The director-general told Father Jogues that there were eighteen different languages spoken on the island. The Jesuit was enthusiastically received at New Amsterdam, for the people turned out in crowds to greet him. One of them, a Polish Lutheran, when he saw the mangled hands of Father Jogues, ran and threw himself at his feet to kiss his wounded hands, exclaiming, “O martyr of Christ! O martyr!” So practical, however, were the notions of the old Dutch inhabitants of the city about such matters, that they asked the missionary how much the company of New France would pay him for all he had suffered! Father Jogues made a vigilant search in New Amsterdam for Catholics. He found two: one, a Portuguese woman, with whom he could not converse, showed that she still clung to her faith by the pious pictures which were hanging round her room; the other, an Irishman, trading from Virginia, who availed himself of the father's presence to go to his confession. It was from the latter that he learned that the English Jesuits had been driven from Maryland by the Puritan rulers of that colony, and had taken refuge in Virginia.
He remained there three months altogether in the old Dutch colony. Receiving commendatory letters from William Kieft, the governor of New Netherland, he sailed from the majestic harbor of New Amsterdam on the 5th of November, 1643. The little vessel possessed no comforts or accommodations. The father's only bed was a coil of rope on deck, where he received severe drenchings from the waves breaking over him. A furious storm drove the vessel in on the English coast, near Falmouth, which was then in possession of the king's party: two parliamentary cruisers pursued the Dutch vessel, but she escaped and anchored at the wharf. The storm-beaten crew went ashore to enjoy themselves, leaving only Father Jogues and another person on board, when the vessel was boarded by robbers, who pointed a pistol at the missionary's throat and robbed him of his hat and coat. He appealed to a Frenchman, the master of a collier at the wharf, for relief, who took him on board his boat, gave him a sailor's hat and coat, all his own poverty could spare, and a passage to France. In this plight, this celebrated missionary, whose fame filled all France, landed on his native shore on Christmas morning, at a point between Brest and St. Pol de Leon.
He borrowed a more decent hat and cloak from a peasant near the shore, and hastened to the nearest chapel, to make his thanksgiving and unite in the glorious solemnity of Christmas. As it was early he had the consolation of approaching [pg 118] the tribunal of penance, and of receiving the Holy Eucharist, for the first time in sixteen months. The touching story of his captivity and sufferings among the savages subdued their hearts and drew floods of sympathizing tears from the peasants whose hospitality he shared. They offered him all they had to forward him on his journey. A good merchant of Rennes, then passing on his way, heard the thrilling incidents he related, and saw his mangled hands: touched with compassion, he took the missionary under his care, and paid his expenses to Rennes, where he arrived on the eve of the Epiphany. He went to the college of his order in that city, and as soon as it was known that he was from Canada, all the members of the community gathered round him to ask him if he knew Father Jogues, and whether he was yet alive and in captivity. He then disclosed his name, and showed the marks of his sufferings; all then pressed forward to embrace their saintly brother, and kiss his glorious wounds.
He reposed for a few days at the college at Rennes, and then pushed on towards Paris, to place himself again at the disposal of his superior, humbly and modestly intimating a desire, however, to be sent back to his mission in America. His fame had long preceded him, and, when he arrived at the capital, the faithful pressed forward in crowds to venerate him and kiss his wounds. The pious queen-mother coveted the same happiness, and he, whom we saw so recently the captive and slave of brutal savages, is now honored at the court of the first capital of Christendom. But the humility of Father Jogues took alarm at the honors paid to him. Throwing himself at his superior's feet, he entreated that he might be sent back to the wilderness from which he had just escaped. The superior consented; but an obstacle here presented itself. So great were the injuries inflicted upon his hands by the Mohawks that he was canonically disqualified from offering up the holy sacrifice of the Mass. Application for the proper dispensation was made to the Sovereign Pontiff, upon a statement of the facts. Innocent XI. was moved by the recital, and, with an inspired energy, exclaimed, “Indignum esse Christi martyrem, Christi non bibere sanguinem”—“It were unjust that a martyr of Christ should not drink the blood of Christ!” Pronounced by the Vicar of Christ on earth to be a martyr, though living, he now goes to seek a double martyrdom in death. In the spring he started for Rochelle, and F. Ducreux, the historian of Canada, sought the honor of accompanying him thither.