Joseph Poncet, 1642-4; Joseph Imbert Duperon, 1642-3; Ambroise Daoust, 1643; Gabriel Druillettes, 1643-5; Isaac Jogues, 1645; Jacques Buteaux, 1645; Paul Le Jeune, 1645-6; Adrien Daran, 1646; Georges d'Eudemare, 1647-8; Jean de Quen, 1648-50; Pierre Bailloquet, 1648; Charles Albanel, 1650; André Richard, 1650; Siméon Le Moyne, 1650; Claude Pijart, 1650 to August 12, 1657.
Fifteen Jesuits resident in fifteen years. This does not account for names of other distinguished missionaries visiting, whose names appear on the registers as having officiated at Ville Marie baptisms, marriages, deaths and other documents during this early period. Mr. E. Z. Massicotte in his "Les Colons de Montreal de 1642-1667," gives some of these as follows:
- 1649—Jérome Lalemant, June 1st to 11th, May 19th to 24th.
- 1650—Paul Ragueneau, two days.
- 1655—Claude Dablon passed through Montreal in October, also on the 30th of March, 1666. He would also have signed 3-5-'62 a document concerning Hudson Bay.
- 1656—Joseph Marie Chaumont, October, the bearer of a message for the Iroquois in 1661, was at Montreal in 1662, resided at Montreal in 1663.
- 1656—Léonard Gareau, wounded in a combat on August 30th, buried September 2d.
- 1657—François? le Mercier, July 24th.
Of the Montreal Jesuits, there are some who merit special mention here.
JOSEPH ANTOINE PONCET DE LA RIVIERE
Joseph Antoine Poncet de la Rivière, of aristocratic birth, was born in Paris and entered the Society of Jesus in his nineteenth year as a novice. His studies finished, he came to New France in 1639. He shortly went to the Huron mission. We next find him, 1642-4, the first priest in charge of the mission chapel at the fort of Montreal. After this he ministered at Quebec. On his return from a visit to the Iroquois, he went down the St. Lawrence and was the first white man to glide through the Thousand Islands. He was giving the alarm to the colonists at Cape Rouge in the summer of 1653, when he was himself seized by the savages. He bore a remembrance of the ill treatment of his captivity in the form of a lost finger, which a little child had been ordered to cut off. He was afterwards released to the Dutch at Fort Orange and returned to Quebec on November 5th, "just nine times nine days after my capture," he says. We next know him as the storm centre of ecclesiastical differences between Montreal and Quebec. As a result of this Poncet was sent back to Europe. He was installed as French penitentiary at Loretto, and later was sent to Martinique, where he died on June 18, 1675.
ISAAC JOGUES
Isaac Jogues was born at Orléans, France, January 10, 1607. His first schooling was at Rouen and he entered the Jesuit novitiate at Paris in his seventeenth year. Having finished his studies and period of teaching we find him in his twenty-ninth year reaching Canada in 1636 in the same vessel as Champlain's successor, Montmagny. Two or three weeks later, that same October, Jogues began his missionary work, joining a flotilla of Huron canoes and sailing 900 miles over dangerous rivers and lakes, skirting rapids and precipices and making many toilsome "portages" through dense forests, pools and marshes, to the great Lake Huron which was known as "Fresh Water Sea."
