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CHRONICLES OF CANADA
Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton
In thirty-two volumes
Volume 4
THE JESUIT MISSIONS
A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness
By THOMAS GUTHRIE MARQUIS
TORONTO, 1916
CHAPTER I
THE RECOLLET FRIARS
For seven years the colony which Champlain founded at
the rock of Quebec lived without priests. [Footnote:
For the general history of the period covered by the
first four chapters of the present narrative, see 'The
Founder of New France' in this Series.] Perhaps the lack
was not seriously felt, for most of the twoscore inmates
of the settlement were Huguenot traders. But out in the
great land, in every direction from the rude dwellings
that housed the pioneers of Canada, roamed savage tribes,
living, said Champlain, 'like brute beasts.' It was
Champlain's ardent desire to reclaim these beings of the
wilderness. The salvation of one soul was to him 'of more
value than the conquest of an empire.' Not far from his
native town of Brouage there was a community of the
Recollets, and, during one of his periodical sojourns in
France, he invited them to send missionaries to Canada.
The Recollets responded to his appeal, and it was arranged
that several of their number should sail with him to the
St Lawrence in the following spring. So, in May 1615,
three Recollet friars--Denis Jamay, Jean d'Olbeau, Joseph
Le Caron--and a lay brother named Pacificus du Plessis,
landed at Tadoussac. To these four men is due the honour
of founding the first permanent mission among the Indians
of New France. An earlier undertaking of the Jesuits in
Acadia (1611-13) had been broken up. The Canadian mission
is usually associated with the Jesuits, and rightly so,
for to them, as we shall see, belongs its most glorious
history; but it was the Recollets who pioneered the way.
When the friars reached Quebec they arranged a division
of labour in this manner: Jamay and Du Plessis were to
remain at Quebec; D'Olbeau was to return to Tadoussac
and essay the thorny task of converting the tribes round
that fishing and trading station; while to Le Caron was
assigned a more distant field, but one that promised a
rich harvest. Six or seven hundred miles from Quebec, in
the region of Lake Simcoe and the Georgian Bay, dwelt
the Hurons, a sedentary people living in villages and
practising a rude agriculture. In these respects they
differed from the Algonquin tribes of the St Lawrence,
who had no fixed abodes and depended on forest and stream
for a living. The Hurons, too, were bound to the French
by both war and trade. Champlain had assisted them and
the Algonquins in battle against the common foe, the
Iroquois or Five Nations, and a flotilla of canoes from
the Huron country, bringing furs to one of the trading-
posts on the St Lawrence, was an annual event. The
Recollets, therefore, felt confident of a friendly
reception among the Hurons; and it was with buoyant hopes
that Le Caron girded himself for the journey to his
distant mission-field.
On the 6th or 7th of July, in company with a party of
Hurons, Le Caron set out from the island of Montreal.
The Hurons had come down to trade, and to arrange with
Champlain for another punitive expedition against the
Iroquois, and were now returning to their own villages.
It was a laborious and painful journey--up the Ottawa,
across Lake Nipissing, and down the French River--but at
length the friar stood on the shores of Lake Huron, the
first of white men to see its waters. From the mouth of
the French River the course lay southward for mere than
a hundred miles along the east shore of Georgian Bay,
until the party arrived at the peninsula which lies
between Nottawasaga and Matchedash Bays. Three or four
miles inland from the west shore of this peninsula stood
the town of Carhagouha, a triple-palisaded stronghold of
the Hurons. Here the Indians gave the priest an enthusiastic
welcome and invited him to share their common lodges;
but as he desired a retreat 'in which he could meditate
in silence,' they built him a commodious cabin apart from
the village. A few days later Champlain himself appeared
on the scene; and it was on the 12th of August that he
and his followers attended in Le Caron's cabin the first
Mass celebrated in what is now the province of Ontario.
Then, while Le Caron began his efforts for the conversion
of the benighted Hurons, Champlain went off with the
warriors on a very different mission--an invasion of the
Iroquois country. The commencement of religious endeavour
in Huronia is thus marked by an event that was to intensify
the hatred of the ferocious Iroquois against both the
Hurons and the French.
Le Caron spent the remainder of the year 1615 among the
Hurons, studying the people, learning the language, and
compiling a dictionary. Champlain, his expedition ended,
returned to Huronia and remained there until the middle
of January, when he and Le Caron set out on a visit to
the Petun or Tobacco Nation, then dwelling on the southern
shore of Nottawasaga Bay, a two-days' journey south-west
of Carhagouha. There had been as yet no direct communication
between the French and the Petuns, and the visitors were
not kindly received. The Petun sorcerers or medicine-men
dreaded the influence of the grey-robed friar, regarded
him as a rival, and caused his teachings to be derided.
After an uncomfortable month Champlain and Le Caron
returned to Carhagouha, where they remained until the
20th of May, and then set out for Quebec.
When Le Caron reached Quebec on the 11th of July (1616)
he found that his comrades had not been idle. A chapel
had been built, in what is now the Lower Town, close to
the habitation, and here Father Jamay ministered to the
spiritual needs of the colonists and laboured among the
Indians camped in the vicinity of the trading-post. Father
d'Olbeau had been busy among the Montagnais, a wandering
Algonquin tribe between Tadoussac and Seven Islands, his
reward being chiefly suffering. The filth and smoke of
the Indian wigwams tortured him, the disgusting food of
the natives filled him with loathing, and their vice and
indifference to his teaching weighed on his spirit.
The greatest trial the Recollets had to bear was the
opposition of the Company of St Malo and Rouen, which
was composed largely of Huguenots, and had a monopoly of
the trade of New France. Many of the traders were actively
antagonistic to the spread of the Catholic religion and
they all viewed the work of the Recollets with hostility.
It was the aim of the missionaries to induce the Indians
to settle near the trading-posts in order that they might
the more easily be reached with the Gospel message. The
traders had but one thought--the profits of the fur trade;
and, desiring to keep the Indians nomadic hunters of
furs, they opposed bringing them into fixed abodes and
put every possible obstacle in the way of the friars.
Trained interpreters in the employ of the company for
both the Hurons and the various Algonquin tribes were
ordered not to assist the missionaries in acquiring a
knowledge of the native languages. The company was pledged
to support six missionaries, but the support was given
with an unwilling, niggardly hand.
At length, in 1621, as a result of the complaints of
Champlain and the Recollets, before the authorities in
France, the Company of St Malo and Rouen lost its charter,
and the trading privileges were given to William and
Emery de Caen, uncle and nephew. But these men also were
Huguenots, and the unhappy condition of affairs continued
in an intensified form. Champlain, though the nominal
head of the colony, was unable to provide a remedy, for
the real power was in the hands of the Caens, who had in
their employment practically the entire population.
Yet, in spite of all the obstacles put in their way, the
Recollets continued their self-sacrificing labours. By
the beginning of 1621 they had a comfortable residence
on the bank of the St Charles, on the spot where now
stands the General Hospital. Here they had been granted
two hundred acres of land, and they cultivated the soil,
raising meagre crops of rye, barley, maize, and wheat,
and tending a few pigs, cows, asses, and fowls. There
were from time to time accessions to their ranks. Between
the years 1616 and 1623 the fathers Guillaume Poullain,
Georges le Baillif, Paul Huet, Jacques de la Foyer,
Nicolas Viel, and several lay brothers, the most noted
among whom was Gabriel Sagard-Theodat, laboured in New
France. They made attempts to christianize the Micmacs
of Acadia, the Abnaki of the upper St John, the Algonquin
tribes of the lower St Lawrence, and the Nipissings of
the upper Ottawa. But the work among these roving bands
proved most disheartening, and once more the grey-robed
friars turned to the Hurons.
The end of August 1623 saw Le Caron, Viel, and Sagard in
Huronia. Until October they seem to have laboured in
different settlements, Viel at Toanche, a short distance
from Penetanguishene Bay, Sagard at Ossossane, near
Dault's Bay, an indentation of Nottawasaga Bay, and Le
Caron at Carhagouha. It does not appear that they were
able to make much of an impression on the savages, though
they had the satisfaction of some baptisms. During the
winter Sagard studied Indian habits and ideas, and with
Le Caron's assistance compiled a dictionary of the Huron
language. [Footnote: Sagard's observations were afterwards
given to the world in his 'Histoire du Canada et Voyages
des Peres Recollects en la Nouvelle-France.'] Then, an
June 1624, Le Caron and Sagard accompanied the annual
canoe-fleet to Quebec, and Viel was left alone in Huronia.
The Recollets were discouraged. They saw that the field
was too large and that the difficulties were too great
for them. And, after invoking 'the light of the Holy
Spirit,' they decided, according to Sagard, 'to send one
of their members to France to lay the proposition before
the Jesuit fathers, whom they deemed the most suitable
for the work of establishing and extending the Faith in
Canada.' So Father Irenaeus Piat and Brother Gabriel
Sagard were sent to entreat to the rescue of the Canadian
mission the greatest of all the missionary orders--an
order which 'had filled the whole world with memorials
of great things done and suffered for the Faith'--the
militant and powerful Society of Jesus.
CHAPTER II
THE JESUITS AT QUEBEC
The 15th of June 1625 was a significant day for the colony
of New France. On that morning a blunt-prowed, high-pooped
vessel cast anchor before the little trading village that
clustered about the base of the great cliff at Quebec.
It was a ship belonging to the Caens, and it came laden
to the hatches with supplies for the colonists and goods
for trade with the Indians. But, what was more important,
it had as passengers the Jesuits who had been sent to
the aid of the Recollets, the first of the followers of
Loyola to enter the St Lawrence--Fathers Charles Lalemant,
Ennemond Masse, Jean de Brebeuf, and two lay brothers of
the Society. These black-robed priests were the forerunners
of an army of men who, bearing the Cross instead of the
sword and labouring at their arduous tasks in humility
and obedience but with dauntless courage and unflagging
zeal, were to make their influence felt from Hudson Bay
to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the sea-girt shores of
Cape Breton to the wind-swept plains of the Great West.
They were the vanguard of an army of true soldiers, of
whom the words
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die,
might fittingly have been written. The Jesuit missionary
in North America had no thought of worldly profit or
renown, but, with his mind fixed on eternity, he performed
his task ad majorem Dei gloriam, for the greater glory
of God.
The Jesuits had sailed from Dieppe on the 26th of April
in company with a Recollet friar, La Roche de Daillon,
of whom we shall presently hear more. The voyage across
the stormy Atlantic had been long and tedious. On a vessel
belonging to Huguenots, the priests had been exposed to
the sneers and gibes of crew and traders. It was the
viceroy of New France, the Duc de Ventadour, a devout
Catholic, who had compelled the Huguenot traders to give
passage to these priests, or they would not have been
permitted on board the ship. Much better could the
Huguenots tolerate the humble, mendicant Recollets than
the Jesuits, aggressive and powerful, uncompromising
opponents of Calvinism.
As the anchor dropped, the Jesuits made preparations to
land; but they were to meet with a temporary disappointment.
Champlain was absent in France, and Emery de Caen said
that he had received no instructions from the viceroy to
admit them to the colony. Moreover, they were told that
there was no room for them in the habitation or the fort.
To make matters worse, a bitter, slanderous diatribe
against their order had been distributed among the
inhabitants, and the doors of Catholics and Huguenots
alike were closed against them. Prisoners on the ship,
at the very gate of the promised land, no course seemed
open to them but to return on the same vessel to France.
But they were suddenly lifted by kindly hands from the
depths of despair. A boat rowed by men attached to the
Recollets approached their vessel. Soon several friars
dressed in coarse grey robes, with the knotted cord of
the Recollet order about their waists, peaked hood hanging
from their shoulders, and coarse wooden sandals on their
feet, stood before them on the deck, giving them a
wholehearted welcome and offering them a home, with the
use of half the buildings and land on the St Charles.
Right gladly the Jesuits accepted the offer and were
rowed ashore in the boat of the generous friars. On
touching the soil of New France they fell on their knees
and kissed the ground, in spite of the scowling traders
about them.
The disappointment of these aggressive pioneers of the
Church must have been great as they viewed Quebec. It
was now seventeen years since the colony had been founded;
yet it had fewer than one hundred inhabitants. In the
whole of Canada there were but seven French families and
only six white children. Save by Louis Hebert, the first
to cultivate the soil at Quebec, and the Recollets, no
attempt had been made at agriculture, and the colony was
almost wholly dependent on France for its subsistence.
When not engaged in gathering furs or loading and unloading
vessels, the men lounged in indolence about the
trading-posts or wandered to the hunting grounds of the
Indians, where they lived in squalor and vice. The avarice
of the traders was bearing its natural fruit, and the
untiring efforts of Champlain, a devoted, zealous patriot,
had been unavailing to counteract it. The colony sorely
needed the self-sacrificing Jesuits, but for whom it
would soon undoubtedly have been cast off by the mother
country as a worthless burden. To them Canada, indeed,
owed its life; for when the king grew weary of spending
treasure on this unprofitable colony, the stirring appeals
of the Relations [Footnote: It was a rule of the Society
of Jesus that each of its missionaries should write a
report of his work. These reports, known as Relations,
were generally printed and sold by the booksellers of
Paris. About forty volumes of the Relations from the
missions of Canada were published between 1632 and 1672
and widely read in France.] moved both king and people
to sustain it until the time arrived when New France was
valued as a barrier against New England.
Scarcely had the Jesuits made themselves at home in the
convent of the Recollets when they began planning for
the mission. It was decided that Lalemant and Masse should
remain at Quebec; but Brebeuf, believing, like the
Recollets, that little of permanent value could be done
among the ever-shifting Algonquins, desired to start at
once for the populous towns of Huronia. In July, in
company with the Recollet La Roche de Daillon, Brebeuf
set out for Three Rivers. The Indians--Hurons, Algonquins,
and Ottawas--had gathered at Cape Victory, a promontory
in Lake St Peter near the point where the lake narrows
again into the St Lawrence. There, too, stood French
vessels laden with goods for barter; and thither went
the two missionaries to make friends with the Indians
and to lay in a store of goods for the voyage to Huronia
and for use at the mission. The captains of the vessels
appeared friendly and supplied the priests with coloured
beads, knives, kettles, and other articles. All was going
well for the journey, when, on the eve of departure, a
runner arrived from Montreal bringing evil news.
For a year the Recollet Nicolas Viel had remained in
Huronia. Early in 1624 he had written to Father Piat
hoping that he might live and die in his Huron mission
at Carhagouha. There is no record of his sojourn in
Huronia during the winter 1624-25. Alone among the savages,
with a scant knowledge of their language, his spirit must
have been oppressed with a burden almost too great to be
borne; he must have longed for the companionship of men
of his own language and faith. At any rate, in the early
summer of 1625 he had set out for Quebec with a party of
trading Hurons for the purpose of spending some time in
retreat at the residence on the banks of the St Charles.
He was never to reach his destination. On arriving at
the Riviere des Prairies, his Indian conductors, instead
of portaging their canoes past the treacherous rapids in
this river, had attempted to run them, and a disaster
had followed. The canoe bearing Father Viel and a young
Huron convert named Ahaustic (the Little Fish) had been
overturned and both had been drowned.
[Footnote: This rapid has since been known as Sault au
Recollet and a village near by bears the name of Ahuntsic,
a corruption of the young convert's name. Father A. E.
Jones, S. J., in his 'Old Huronia' (Ontario Archives),
points out that no such word as Ahuntsic could find a
place in a Huron vocabulary.]
The story brought to Cape Victory was that the tragedy
had been due to the treacherous conduct of three
evil-hearted Hurons who coveted the goods the priest had
with him. On the advice of the traders, who feared that
the Hurons were in no spirit to receive the missionaries,
Brebeuf and Daillon concluded not to attempt the ascent
of the Ottawa for the present, and returned to Quebec.
Ten years later, such a report would not have moved
Brebeuf to turn back, but would have been an added
incentive to press forward.
CHAPTER III
IN HURONIA
The Jesuits, with the exception of Brebeuf, spent the
winter of 1625-26 at the convent of the Recollets, no
doubt enduring privation, as at that time there was a
scarcity of food in the colony. Brebeuf, eager to study
the Indians in their homes, joined a party of Montagnais
hunters and journeyed with them to their wintering grounds.
He suffered much from hunger and cold, and from the
insanitary conditions under which he was compelled to
live in the filthy, smoky, vermin-infested abodes of the
savages. But an iron constitution stood him in good stead,
and he rejoined his fellow-missionaries none the worse
for his experience. He had acquired, too, a fair knowledge
of the Montagnais dialect, and had learned that boldness,
courage, and fortitude in suffering went far towards
winning the respect of the savages of North America.
On the 5th of July the eyes of the colonists at Quebec
were gladdened by the sight of a fleet of vessels coming
up the river. These were the supply-ships of the company,
and on the Catherine, a vessel of two hundred and fifty
tons, was Champlain, on whom the Jesuits could depend as
a friend and protector. In the previous autumn Lalemant
had selected a fertile tract of land on the left side of
the St Charles, between the river Beauport and the stream
St Michel, as a suitable spot for a permanent home, and
had sent a request to Champlain to secure this land for
the Jesuits. Champlain had laid the request before the
viceroy and he now brought with him the official documents
granting the land. Nine days later a vessel of eighty
tons arrived with supplies and reinforcements for the
mission. On this vessel came Fathers Philibert Noyrot
and Anne de Noue, with a lay brother and twenty labourers
and carpenters.
The Jesuits chose a site for the buildings at a bend in
the St Charles river a mile or so from the fort. Here,
opposite Pointe-aux-Lievres (Hare Point), on a sloping
meadow two hundred feet from the river, they cleared the
ground and erected two buildings--one to serve as a
storehouse, stable, workshop, and bakery; the other as
the residence. The residence had four rooms--a chapel,
a refectory with cells for the fathers, a kitchen, and
a lodging-room for the workmen. It had, too, a commodious
cellar, and a garret which served as a dormitory for the
lay brothers. The buildings were of roughly hewn planks,
the seams plastered with mud and the roofs thatched with
grass from the meadow. Such was Notre-Dame-des-Anges. In
this humble abode men were to be trained to carry the
Cross in the Canadian wilderness, and from it they were
to go forth for many years in an unbroken line, blazing
the way for explorers and traders and settlers.
Almost simultaneously with the arrival of Noyrot and Noue
a flotilla of canoes laden deep with furs came down from
the Huron country. Brebeuf had made up his mind to go to
far Huronia; Noue and the Recollet Daillon had the same
ambition; and all three besought the Hurons to carry them
on the return journey. The Indians expressed a readiness
to give the Recollet Daillon a passage; they knew the
'grey-robes'; but they did not know the Jesuits, the
'black-robes,' and they hesitated to take Brebeuf and
Noue, urging as an excuse that so portly a man as Brebeuf
would be in danger of upsetting their frail canoes. By
a liberal distribution of presents, however, the Hurons
were persuaded to accept Brebeuf and Noue as passengers.
Towards the end of July, just when preparations were
being made to break ground for the residence of
Notre-Dame-des-Anges, the three fathers and some French
assistants set out with the Hurons on the long journey
to the shores of Georgian Bay. Brebeuf was in a state of
ecstasy. He longed for the populous towns of the Hurons.
He had confidence in himself and believed that he would
be able to make the dwellers in these towns followers of
Christ and bulwarks of France in the New World. For
twenty-three years he was to devote his life to this
task; for twenty-three years, save for the brief interval
when the English flag waved over Quebec, he was to dominate
the Huron mission. He was a striking figure. Of noble
ancestry, almost a giant in stature, and with a soldierly
bearing that attracted all observers, he would have shone
at the court of the king or at the head of the army. But
he had sacrificed a worldly career for the Church. And
no man of his ancestors, one of whom had battled under
William the Conqueror at Hastings and others in the
Crusades, ever bore himself more nobly than did Brebeuf
in the forests of Canada, or covered himself with a
greater glory.
The journey was beset with danger, for the Iroquois were
on the war-path against the Hurons and the French, and
had attacked settlers even in the vicinity of Quebec.
The lot of the voyagers was incessant toil. They had to
paddle against the current, to haul the canoes over
stretches where the water was too swift for paddling,
and to portage past turbulent rapids and falls. The
missionaries were forced to bear their share of the work.
Noue, no longer young, was frequently faint from toil.
Brebeuf not only sustained him, but at many of the
portages, of which there were thirty-five in all, carried
a double load of baggage. The packs contained not only
clothing and food, but priestly vestments, requisites
for the altar, pictures, wine for the Mass, candles,
books, and writing material. The course lay over the
route which Le Caron had followed eleven years before,
up the Ottawa, up the Mattawa, across the portage to Lake
Nipissing, and then down the French River. Arrived in
Penetanguishene Bay, they landed at a village called
Otouacha. They then journeyed a mile and a half inland,
through gloomy forests, past cultivated patches of maize,
beans, pumpkins, squashes, and sunflowers, to Toanche,
where they found Viel's cabin still standing. For three
years this was to be Brebeuf's headquarters.
Huronia lay in what is now the county of Simcoe, Ontario,
comprising the present townships of Tiny, Tay, Flos,
Medonte, and Oro. On the east and north lay Lakes Simcoe
and Couchiching, the Severn river, and Matchedash Bay;
on the west, Nottawasaga Bay. Across the bay, or by land
a journey of about two days, where now are Bruce and Grey
counties, lived the Petuns, and about five days to the
south-west, the Neutrals. The latter tribe occupied both
the Niagara and Detroit peninsulas, overflowed into the
states of Michigan and New York, and spread north as far
as Goderich and Oakville in Ontario. All these nations,
and the Andastes of the lower Susquehanna, were of the
same linguistic stock as the Iroquois who dwelt south of
Lake Ontario. Peoples speaking the Huron-Iroquois tongue
thus occupied the central part of the eastern half of
North America, while all around them, north, south, east,
and west, roamed the tribes speaking dialects of the
Algonquin.
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