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About the same time two wealthy enthusiasts, the Duchesse
d'Aiguillon, a niece of Cardinal Richelieu, and Madame
de la Peltrie, were likewise inspired by the Relations
to undertake charitable work in New France. These ladies
founded, respectively, the Hotel-Dieu of Quebec and the
Ursuline Convent. In 1639 Madame de la Peltrie, who had
given herself as well as her purse to the work, arrived
in Quebec, accompanied by Mother Marie de I'Incarnation
and two other Ursulines and three Augustinian nuns. The
Ursulines at once began their labours as teachers with
six Indian pupils. But a plague of small-pox was raging
in the colony, and for the first year or two after their
arrival these heroic women had to aid the sisters of the
Hotel-Dieu in fighting the pest.

The Jesuits themselves were busy with the education of
the Indians and had already established a college and
seminary for the instruction of young converts. The
colony, however, was not growing. The Hundred Associates
had not carried out the terms of their charter. There
were less than four hundred settlers in the whole of New
France, and only some three hundred soldiers to guard
the settlements from attack. Canada as yet was little
more than a mission; and such it was to remain for another
twenty and more years.

CHAPTER VI

THE MARTYRS

We have observed that the Hurons were at war with the
Five Nations and that Iroquois scalping parties haunted
the river routes and the trails to waylay Huron canoemen
and cut off hunters and stragglers from their villages.
When or how the feud began, between the Iroquois on the
one side and the Hurons and Algonquins on the other, no
man can tell. It antedated Champlain; and, as we have
seen, he had involved the French in it. There were, no
doubt, many bloody encounters of which history furnishes
no record. At first the warriors had fought on equal
terms, the weapons of all being the bow and arrow, the
tomahawk, the knife, and the war-club. But now the Iroquois
had firearms, procured from the Dutch of the Hudson, and
were skilled in the use of the musket, which gave them
a great advantage over their Huron and Algonquin foes.

On the south-east frontier of Huronia, about four miles
from Orillia, stood a town of the clan of the Rock,
Contarea, a 'main bulwark of the country.' The inhabitants
were pagans who had resisted the missionaries, and refused
them permission to build a chapel, not even deigning to
listen to their appeals. In the early summer of 1642 the
people of Contarea were living in fancied security; and
when runners brought word that in the forests to the east
a large force of Iroquois were encamped, the Contarean
warriors felt confident that, from behind their strong
palisades, they could resist any attack. No Iroquois
appeared; and, believing the rumour false, many of the
warriors left the town for the accustomed hunting and
fishing grounds. Suddenly, early on a June morning, the
sleepy guards were roused by savage yells. The Iroquois
were upon them. The alarm rang out; the towers were
manned, and the palisades lined with defenders. But in
vain. Arrows and bullets swept towers and palisades, and
through breaches made in the walls in rushed a horde of
bloodthirsty demons. In a few minutes all was over; the
town became a shambles; young and old fell beneath the
tomahawks of the infuriated invaders. Then the torch!
And the Iroquois hied them back in triumph to their homes
by the Mohawk, exulting in this first effective blow at
the enemy in his own country.

When news arrived of the destruction of Contarea, there
was wild alarm in the mission towns. But it was no part
of the Iroquois plan to attack at once the other Huron
strongholds. Huronia could wait until the tribes of the
St Lawrence and the Ottawa, allies of the Hurons, should
be destroyed. Then the Five Nations could concentrate
their forces on the Hurons.

And so six years passed over the Jesuits in the
mission-fields. Scalping parties occasionally haunted
the outskirts of the villages where they were stationed.
The Iroquois frequently attacked the annual fleet of
canoes on its journey to Quebec, and on several occasions
captured and carried off priests and their assistants.
But during these years no large body of Iroquois invaded
Huronia. The insatiable warriors of the Five Nations were
busy devastating the St Lawrence and the Ottawa, pressing
the tribes back and ever back, until scarcely a wigwam
could be seen between Ville Marie and Lake Nipissing.
The Algonquins who had not fallen had left their villages
and had sought safety on the bleak shores and islands of
Georgian Bay, or among the Hurons.

The mission was prospering under the guidance of Paul
Ragueneau, who in 1645 succeeded Lalemant as superior,
when the latter journeyed to Quebec to take over the
office of superior-general of the Canada mission. Ste
Marie, a wilderness Mecca of the faith, entertained yearly
thousands of Indians, many of whom professed Christianity.
On one occasion seven hundred Indians sought this sanctuary
within a fortnight, and to each of these the fathers from
their abundant stores gave two meals. About the walls
fields of corn, beans, pumpkins, and wheat spread fair
to the eye. Within the enclosure all was activity. Ambroise
Brouet was busy in his kitchen; Louis Gauber was at his
forge; Pierre Masson, when not occupied at his tailor's
bench, was hard at work in the garden, the pride of the
mission; Christophe Regnaut and Jacques Levrier were
mending or fashioning shoes and moccasins; Joseph Molere
prepared potions for the sick and had charge of the
laundry; and Charles Boivin, the master-builder,
superintended the erection of new buildings or the
strengthening and improving of those already built. The
appearance of permanency about the place was enhanced by
the fowls, pigs, and cattle. There were two cows and two
bulls, which had been brought with incredible toil from
Quebec.

The teaching and example of the fathers were winning a
way to the hearts of the Indians. In 1648 eleven or twelve
mission stations stood throughout Huronia, among the
Algonquins, and among the Petuns, now settled in the Blue
Hills south of Nottawasaga Bay. Seven of these stations
had chapels and in six it had been found necessary to
establish residences. In some of the villages, such as
Ossossane, the Christians outnumbered the pagans. The
Christian Hurons gave active help to the fathers in the
work of the mission, some among their own people, and
others among the Petuns and the Neutrals. The chapels
had bells--on some discarded kettles served this purpose--to
call the flocks to worship; and crosses studded the land.
Huronia was in a fair way of being completely won; and
the missionaries were already looking to the unexplored
regions round and beyond Lake Superior, and even to the
land of the Iroquois. Then, with the suddenness of a
volcanic eruption, their flocks were scattered and their
dearest hopes crushed.

In 1647 there was no communication between Ste Marie and
Quebec. Owing to the danger from Iroquois along the route,
the annual canoe-fleet did not go down, although a small
party of Hurons, it seems, went as far as Ville Marie.
The necessities of the mission were, however, urgent,
and in the spring of the following year Father Bressani
set out with a strong contingent of two hundred and fifty
Huron warriors, fully half of whom were Christians. No
sooner had this expedition begun its descent of the Ottawa
than an Iroquois war-party, which had wintered near Lake
Nipissing, stole southward through the forests towards
Huronia.

Contarea had been destroyed. The dangerous position of
St Jean-Baptiste, situated near the site of Cahiague on
Lake Simcoe, whence Champlain had set out against the
Iroquois in 1615, had led the Jesuits to abandon it. St
Joseph or Teanaostaiae, with about two thousand inhabitants,
was therefore the frontier town on the south-east of
Huronia. Father Daniel, in charge of this station, had
just returned from his annual eight-day retreat at Ste
Marie. For four years he had laboured in this mission;
and, though his flock had been a stiff-necked one, his
work had brought its reward. On the 4th of July his little
chapel was crowded for the celebration of early Mass,
and as he gazed at the congregation of his converts his
spirit rejoiced within him. He had just finished the
service, when shrill through the morning air rang the
cry: 'The Iroquois! The Iroquois!' Rushing out he saw
the foe already hacking at the palisades and many of the
defenders falling beneath a storm of arrows and bullets.
His first thought for his flock, he hurried back into
the chapel, beseeching them to save themselves. They
pressed about him, praying for baptism and for absolution;
and, as they held to him appealing hands, he dipped his
handkerchief in the font and baptized the crowd by
aspersion. Then he boldly strode to the door of his chapel
and faced the enemy. For a moment the savage fiends
hesitated before the stern-eyed priest standing in his
vestments, protecting, as it seemed, the flock that
cowered behind him; but only for a moment. Yelling defiance
at the white medicine-man, they directed their weapons
against him; and this dauntless soldier of the Cross
received the crown of martyrdom which he had prayed might
be his. His slayers fell upon his body, stripped it of
clothing, mutilated it, and cast it into the now flaming
chapel, a fitting funeral pyre for the first martyr of
the Huron mission. The entire village was given to the
flames, and the smoke of the burning cabins and palisades
rolled over the forest. A small village not far away, on
the trail to Ossossane, shared the same fate. The slaughter
glutted the ferocity of the Iroquois for the time being;
and, with some seven hundred prisoners, they stole back
to their villages south of Lake Ontario.

After this calamity the pall of a great fear hung over
the Hurons. Paralysed and inert, the warriors took no
steps to defend the country against the Iroquois peril.
In spite of the exhortations of the Jesuits, they lay
idle in their wigwams or hunted in the forest, dejectedly
awaiting their doom.

An Iroquois war-party twelve hundred strong spent the
winter of 1648-49 on the upper Ottawa; and as the snows
began to melt under the thaws of spring these insatiable
slayers of men directed their steps towards Huronia. The
frontier village on the east was now St Ignace, on the
west of the Sturgeon river, about seven miles from Ste
Marie. It was strongly fortified and formed a part of a
mission of the same name, under the care of Brebeuf and
Father Gabriel Lalemant, a nephew of Jerome Lalemant.
About a league distant, midway to Ste Marie, stood St
Louis, another town of the mission, where the two fathers
lived. On the 16th of March the inhabitants of St Ignace
had no thought of impending disaster. The Iroquois might
be on the war-path, but they would not come while yet
ice held the rivers and snow lay in the forests. But that
morning, just as the horizon began to glow with the first
colours of the dawn, the sleeping Hurons woke to the
sound of the dreaded war-whoop. The Iroquois devils had
breached the walls. Three Hurons escaped, dashed along
the forest trail to St Louis, roused the village, and
then fled for Ste Marie, followed by the women and children
and those too feeble to fight. There were in St Louis
only about eighty warriors, but, not knowing the strength
of the invaders, they determined to fight. The Hurons
begged Brebeuf and Lalemant to fly to Ste Marie; but they
refused to stir. In the hour of danger and death they
must remain with their flock, to sustain the warriors in
the battle and to give the last rites of the Church to
the wounded and dying.

Having made short work of St Ignace, the Iroquois came
battering at the walls of St Louis before sunrise. The
Hurons resisted stubbornly; but the assailants outnumbered
them ten to one, and soon hacked a way through the
palisades and captured all the defenders remaining alive,
among them Brebeuf and Lalemant.

The Iroquois bound Brebeuf and Lalemant and led them back
to St Ignace, beating them as they went. There they
stripped the two priests and tied them to stakes. Brebeuf
knew that his hour had come. Him the savages made the
special object of their diabolical cruelty. And, standing
at the stake amid his yelling tormentors, he bequeathed
to the world an example of fortitude sublime, unsurpassed,
and unsurpassable. Neither by look nor cry nor movement
did he give sign of the agony he was suffering. To the
reviling and abuse of the fiends he replied with words
warning them of the judgment to come. They poured boiling
water on his head in derision of baptism; they hung
red-hot axes about his naked shoulders; they made a belt
of pitch and resin and placed it about his body and set
it on fire. By every conceivable means the red devils
strove to force him to cry for mercy. But not a sound of
pain could they wring from him. At last, after four hours
of this torture, a chief cut out his heart, and the noble
servant of God quitted the scene of his earthly labours.

Lalemant, a man of gentle, refined character, as delicate
as Brebeuf was robust, also endured the torture. But the
savages administered it to him with a refinement of
cruelty, and kept him alive for fourteen hours. Then at
last he, too, entered into his rest.

Ten years before Brebeuf had made a vow to Christ: 'Never
to shrink from martyrdom if, in Your mercy, You deem me
worthy of so great a privilege. Henceforth, I will never
avoid any opportunity that presents itself of dying for
You, but will accept martyrdom with delight, provided
that, by so doing, I can add to Your glory. From this
day, my Lord Jesus Christ, I cheerfully yield unto You
my life, with the hope that You will grant me the grace
to die for You, since You have deigned to die for me.
Grant me, O Lord, so to live, that You may deem me worthy
to die a martyr's death Thus my Lord, I take Your chalice,
and call upon Your name. Jesu! Jesu! Jesu!' How nobly
this vow was kept.

CHAPTER VII

THE DISPERSION OF THE HURONS

Meanwhile at Ste Marie Ragueneau and his companions
learned from Huron fugitives of the fate of their comrades;
and waited, hourly expecting to be attacked. The priests
were attended by about twoscore armed Frenchmen. All day
and all night the anxious fathers prayed and stood on
guard. In the morning three hundred Huron warriors came
to their relief, bringing the welcome news that the Hurons
were assembling in force to give battle to the invaders.
These Hurons were just in time to fall in with a party
of Iroquois, already on the way to Ste Marie. An encounter
in the woods followed. At first some of the Hurons were
driven back; but straight-away others of their band rushed
to the rescue; and the Iroquois in turn ran for shelter
behind the shattered palisades of St Louis. The Hurons
followed, and finally put the enemy to rout and remained
in possession of the place.

Now followed an Indian battle of almost unparalleled
ferocity. Never did Huron warriors fight better than in
this conflict at the death-hour of their nation. Against
the Hurons within the palisades came the Iroquois in
force from St Ignace. All day long, in and about the
walls of St Louis, the battle raged; and when night fell
only twenty wounded and helpless Hurons remained to
continue the resistance. In the gathering darkness the
Iroquois rushed in and with tomahawk and knife dispatched
the remnant of the band.

But the Iroquois had no mind for further fighting, and
did not attack Ste Marie. They mustered their Huron
captives--old men, women, and children--tied them to
stakes in the cabins of St Ignace, and set fire to the
village. And, after being entertained to their satisfaction
by the cries of agony which arose from their victims in
the blazing cabins, they made their way southward through
the forests of Huronia and disappeared.

Panic reigned throughout Huronia. After burning fifteen
villages, lest they should serve as a shelter for the
Iroquois, the Hurons scattered far and wide. Some fled
to Ste Marie, some toiled through the snows of spring to
the villages of the Petuns, some fled to the Neutrals
and Eries, some to the Algonquin tribes of the north and
west, and some even sought adoption among the Iroquois.
Ste Marie stood alone, like a shepherd without sheep:
mission villages, chapels, residences, flocks--all were
gone. The work of over twenty years was destroyed. Sick
at heart, Ragueneau looked about him for a new situation,
a spot that might serve as a centre for his band of
devoted missionaries as they toiled among the wanderers
by lake and river and in the depths of the northern
forest.

He first thought of Isle Ste Marie (Manitoulin Island)
as the safest place for the headquarters of a new mission,
but finally decided to go to Isle St Joseph (Christian
Island), just off Huronia to the north. There, on the
bay that indents the south-east corner of the island, he
directed that land should be cleared for the building.
The work of evacuating Ste Marie began early in May, and
on the 15th of the month the buildings were set on fire.
The valuables of the mission were placed in a large boat
and on rafts; and, with heavy hearts, the fathers and
their helpers went aboard for the journey to their new
home twenty miles away.

The new Ste Marie which the Jesuits built on Isle St
Joseph was in the nature of a strong fort. Its walls were
of stone and cement, fourteen feet high and loopholed.
At each corner there was a protecting bastion, and the
entire structure was surrounded by a deep moat. It was
practically impregnable against Indian attack, for it
could not be undermined, set on fire, or taken by assault.
A handful of men could hold it against a host of Iroquois.

About the sheltering walls of Ste Marie the Indians
gathered, to the number of seven or eight thousand by
the autumn of 1649. Here the missionaries continued the
good work. The only outposts now were among the Algonquins
along the shore of Georgian Bay, and the Petun missions
of St Mathias, St Matthieu, and St Jean. But the Petuns
were presently to share the fate of the Hurons; and
Garnier and Chabanel, who were stationed at St Jean, were
to perish as had Daniel, Brebeuf, and Lalemant.

During the autumn Ragueneau learned that a large body of
Iroquois were working their way westward towards St Jean.
He sent runners to the threatened town, and ordered
Chabanel to return to Ste Marie and warned Garnier to be
on his guard. On the 5th of December Chabanel set out
for Ste Marie with some Petun Hurons, and Garnier was
left alone at St Jean. Two days later, while the warriors
were out searching for their elusive foes, a band of
Senecas and Mohawks swept upon the town, broke through
the defences, and proceeded to butcher the inhabitants.
Garnier fell with his flock. In the thick of the slaughter,
while baptizing and absolving the dying, he was smitten
down with three bullet wounds and his cassock torn from
his body. As he lay in agony the moans of a wounded Petun
near by drew his attention. Though spent with loss of
blood, though his brain reeled with the weakness of
approaching death, he dragged himself to his wounded red
brother, gave him absolution, and then fell to the ground
in a faint. On recovering from his swoon he saw another
dying convert near by and strove to reach his side, but
an Iroquois rushed upon him and ended his life with a
tomahawk.

In a sense Chabanel was less fortunate than Garnier. On
the day following the massacre of St Jean he was hastening
along the well-beaten trail towards Ste Marie, when the
sound of Iroquois war-cries in the distance alarmed his
guides, and all deserted him save one. This one did worse,
for he slew the priest and cast his body into the
Nottawasaga river. This murderer, an apostate Huron,
afterwards confessed the crime, declaring that he had
committed it because nothing but misfortune had befallen
him ever since he and his family had embraced Christianity.

For some months after the death of Garnier and Chabanel
the Jesuits maintained the mission of St Mathias among
the Petuns in the Blue Hills. Here Father Adrien Greslon
laboured until January 1650, and Father Leonard Garreau
until the following spring. Garreau was then recalled,
leaving not a missionary on the mainland in the Huron or
the Petun country.

The French and Indians on Isle St Joseph, though safe
from attack, were really prisoners on the island. Mohawks
and Senecas remained in the forests near by, ready to
pounce on any who ventured to the mainland. When winter
bridged with ice the channel between the island and the
main shore, it was necessary for the soldiers of the
mission to stand incessantly on guard. And now another
enemy than the Iroquois stalked among the fugitives. The
fathers had abundant food for themselves and their
assistants; but the Hurons, in their hurried flight, had
made no provision for the winter. The famishing hordes
subsisted on acorns and roots, and even greedily devoured
the dead bodies of dogs and foxes. Disease joined forces
with famine, and by spring fully half the Hurons at Ste
Marie had perished. Some fishing and hunting parties left
the island in search of food, but few returned.

It soon appeared that for the Hurons to remain on the
island meant extinction. Two of the leading chiefs waited
on Father Ragueneau and begged him to move the remnant
of their people to Quebec, where under the sheltering
walls of the fortress they might keep together as a
people. It was a bitter draught for the Jesuits; but
there was no other course. They made ready for the
migration; and on the 10th of June (1650) the thirteen
priests and four lay brothers of the mission, with their
donnes, hired men, and soldiers, in all sixty French,
and about three hundred Hurons, entered canoes and headed
for the French River. On their way down the Ottawa they
met Father Bressani, who had gone to Quebec in the previous
autumn for supplies, and who now joined the retreating
party. And on the 28th of July, after a journey of fifty
days, all arrived safely at the capital of New France.

[Footnote: For a time the Hurons encamped in the vicinity
of the Hotel-Dieu. In the spring of 1651 they moved to
the island of Orleans. Five years later their settlement
was raided by Mohawks and seventy-one were killed or
taken prisoner. The island was abandoned and shelter
sought in Quebec under the guns of Fort St Louis, and
here they remained until 1668, when they removed to
Beauport. In the following year they were placed at
Notre-Dame-de-Foy, about four miles from Quebec. In 1673
a site affording more land was given them on the St
Charles river about nine miles from the fortress. Here
at Old Lorette a chapel was built for them and here they
remained for twenty-four years. In 1697 they moved to
New Lorette--Jeune Lorette--in the seigneury of St Michel,
and at this place, by the rapids of the St Charles, four
or five hundred of this once numerous tribe may still be
found.]

The war-lust of the Five Nations remained still unsatiated.
They continued to harass the Petuns, who finally fled in
terror, most of them to Mackinaw Island. Still in dread
of the Iroquois, they moved thence to the western end of
Lake Superior; but here they came into conflict with the
Sioux, and had to migrate once more. A band of them
finally moved to Detroit and Sandusky, where, under the
name of Wyandots, we find them figuring in history at a
later period. The Iroquois then found occasion for quarrels
with the Neutrals, the Eries, and the Andastes; and soon
practically all the Indian tribes from the shores of
Maine to the Mississippi and as far south as the Carolinas
were under tribute to the Five Nations. Only the Algonquin
tribes of Michigan and Wisconsin and the tribes of the
far north had not suffered from these bloodthirsty
conquerors.

The Huron mission was ended. For a quarter of a century
the Jesuits had struggled to build up a spiritual empire
among the heathen of North America, but, to all appearances,
they had struggled in vain. In all twenty-five fathers
had toiled in Huronia. Of these, as we have seen, four
had been murdered by the Iroquois and one by an apostate
Huron. Nor was this the whole story of martyrdom. Six
years after the dispersion Leonard Garreau was to die by
an Iroquois bullet while journeying up the Lake of Two
Mountains on his way to the Algonquin missions of the
west. Another of the fathers, Rene Menard, while following
a party of Algonquins to the wilds of Wisconsin, lost
his way in the forest and perished from exposure or
starvation; and Anne de Noue, Brebeuf's earliest comrade
in Huronia, in an effort to bring assistance to a party
of French soldiers storm-bound on Lake St Peter, was
frozen to death. But misfortune did not cool the zeal of
the Jesuits. Into the depths of the forest they went
with their wandering flocks, and raised the Cross by lake
and stream as far west as the Mississippi and as far
north as Hudson Bay. Already they had found their way
into the Long Houses of the Iroquois.

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