French Pathfinders in North America

by William Henry Johnson

Chapter X

JESUIT MISSIONARY PIONEERS

Unselfishness of the Better Class of Jesuits.—Their Achievements in Exploration.—The Great Political Scheme of which they were the Instruments.—Indian Superstitions.—Danger!—The Touching Story of Isaac Jogues.—Ferocity of the Five Nations.—Ruin of the Hurons and of the Jesuit Missions among them.

A class of men whose aims were singularly unselfish were the missionaries of the Roman Catholic Church, mostly Jesuits, that is, members of the Society of Jesus. The first object of the best of them was to convert the Indians and establish a great branch of the Catholic Church in the wilds of America. There were others, however, whose first aim was to increase the power of France. These politician-priests were well represented by the famous Father Allouez who, while he preached the gospel to the Indians, took still greater pains to preach the glory of the French King, whose subjects he wished to make them. On one occasion, supported by a French officer and his soldiers, drawn up under arms, he thus addressed a large assemblage of Indians gathered at Sault Ste. Marie:

"When our King attacks his enemies, he is more terrible than the thunder: the earth trembles; the air and the sea are all on fire with the blaze of his cannon; he is seen in the midst of his warriors, covered over with the blood of his enemies, whom he kills in such numbers that he does not count them by the scalps, but by the streams of blood which he causes to flow. In each city he has storehouses where there are hatchets enough to cut down all your forests, kettles enough to cook all your moose, and beds enough to fill all your lodges. His house is higher than the tallest of your trees and holds more families than the largest of your towns. Men come from every quarter of the earth to listen to and admire him. All that is done in the world is decided by him alone."

But we are not now concerned with such scheming priests. We wish to sketch very briefly the story of some of those faithful and single-hearted men who were true missionaries of religion. In their journeys into the wilds they often proved themselves pathfinders, penetrating regions never before trodden by the foot of a white man. Many a tribe got its first impression of our race from these peaceful preachers. A mission priest, Le Caron, was the first white man who saw Lake Huron. Another, the heroic Jogues, was the first of our race to see Lake George. Thus the work of Catholic missionaries must have a large place in any truthful account of early New France. In fact, the history of Canada is for a long time the history of Jesuit activity.

These men were in the habit of sending to their superiors in the Old World copious accounts of all that they saw or did. These reports, which are known as the "Jesuit Relations," form a perfect storehouse of information about early Canadian affairs and about the Indians with whom the French were in contact.

These Jesuit priests commonly were highly educated men, accustomed to all the refinements of life—some of them of noble families—and we can only measure their devotion to the cause of religion when we realize the contrast between their native surroundings and the repulsive savagery into which they plunged when they went among the Indians. Think of such a man as Father Le Jeune, cultivated and high-minded, exiling himself from his white brethren for a whole season, which he spent with a band of Algonquins, roaming the wintry forests with them, sharing their hunger and cold and filth, sometimes on the verge of perishing from sheer starvation, at other times, when game chanced to be plentiful, revolted by the gorging of his companions, at all times disgusted by their nastiness. "I told them again and again," he writes, "that if dogs and swine could talk, they would use just such speech;" a remark which shows, by the way, that the good friar did not think so highly of dumb animals as we do in these more enlightened days.