Canada, Sir John George Bourinot [best time to read books .TXT] 📗

who had taken a deep interest in the settlement of Canada and proved it by his bounty. Madame de la Peltrie and her companions, the Jesuit historian tells us naively, embraced the little Indian girls "without taking heed whether they were clean or not."

It was during Montmagny's term of office that the city of Montreal was founded by a number of religious enthusiasts. Jerome le Royer de la Dauversiere, receiver of taxes at La Fleche in Anjou, a noble and devotee, consulted with Jean Jacques Olier, then a priest of St. Sulpice in Paris, as to the best means of establishing a mission in Canada. Both declared they had visions which pointed to the island of Mont Royal as the future scene of their labours. They formed a company with large powers as seigniors as soon as they had obtained from M. de Lauzon, one of the members of the Company of Hundred Associates, a title to the island. They interested in the project Paul de Chomedey, Sieur {134} de Maisonneuve, a devout and brave soldier, an honest and chivalric gentleman, who was appointed the first governor by the new company. Mdlle. Jeanne Mance, daughter of the attorney-general of Nogent-le-Roi, among the vine-clad hills of Champagne, who had bound herself to perpetual chastity from a remarkably early age, gladly joined in this religious undertaking. The company had in view the establishment of communities of secular priests, and of nuns to nurse the sick, and teach the children--the French as well as the savages. Madame de Bullion, the rich widow of a superintendent of finance, contributed largely towards the enterprise, and may be justly considered the founder of Hotel Dieu of Montreal.

Maisonneuve and Mdlle. Mance, accompanied by forty men and four women, arrived at Quebec in August, 1641, when it was far too late to attempt an establishment on the island. Governor de Montmagny and others at Quebec disapproved of the undertaking which had certainly elements of danger. The governor might well think it wisest to strengthen the colony by an establishment on the island of Orleans or in the immediate vicinity of Quebec, instead of laying the foundations of a new town in the most exposed part of Canada. However, all these objections availed nothing against the enthusiasm of devotees. In the spring of 1642, Maisonneuve and his company left Quebec. He was accompanied by Governor de Montmagny, Father Vimont, superior of the Jesuits, and Madame de la Peltrie, who left the Ursulines very abruptly and inconsiderately {135} under the conviction that she had a mission to fill at Mont Royal.

On the 17th May, Maisonneuve and his companions landed on the little triangle of land, the Place Royale of Champlain, formed by the junction of a stream with the St. Lawrence. They fell immediately on their knees and gave their thanks to the {136} Most High. After singing some hymns, they raised an altar which was decorated by Madame de la Peltrie and Mdlle. Mance, and celebrated the first great mass on the island. Father Vimont, as he performed this holy rite of his Church, addressed the new colonists with words which foreshadowed the success of the Roman Catholic Church in the greatest Canadian city, which was first named Ville-Marie.

A picket enclosure, mounted with cannon, protected the humble buildings erected for the use of the first settlers on what is now the Custom-house Square. The little stream--not much more than a rivulet except in spring--which for many years rippled between green, mossy banks, now struggles beneath the paved street.

An obelisk of gray Canadian granite now stands on this historic ground. Madame de la Peltrie did not remain more than two years in Ville-Marie, but returned to the convent at Quebec which she had left in a moment of caprice. Mdlle. Mance, who was Madame de Bullion's friend, remained at the head of the Hotel Dieu. The Sulpicians eventually obtained control of the spiritual welfare, and in fact of the whole island, though from necessity and policy the Jesuits were at first in charge. It was not until 1653 that one of the most admirable figures in the religious and educational history of Canada, Margaret Bourgeoys, a maiden of Troyes, came to Ville-Marie, and established the parent house in Canada of the Congregation de Notre-Dame, whose schools have extended in the progress of centuries from Sydney, on the island of Cape Breton, to the Pacific coast.

Yet during these years, while convents and hospitals were founded, while brave gentlemen and cultured women gave up their lives to their country and their faith, while the bells were ever calling their congregations to mass and vespers, the country was defended by a mere handful of inhabitants, huddled together at Quebec, at Three Rivers, and at the little settlement of Ville-Marie. The canoes of the Iroquois were constantly passing on the lakes and rivers of Canada, from Georgian Bay to the Richelieu, and bands of those terrible foes of the French and their Indian allies were ever lurking in the woods that came so dangerously close to the white settlements and the Indian villages.

In 1642, Father Isaac Jogues was returning from the missions on Lake Huron, with Couture, an interpreter, and Goupil, a young medical attendant--both donnes or lay followers of the Jesuits. They were in the company of a number of Hurons who were bringing furs to the traders on the St. Lawrence, when the Iroquois surprised them at the western end of Lake St. Peter's. The prisoners were taken by the Richelieu to the Mohawk country and Father Jogues was the first Frenchman to pass through Lake George[1]--with its picturesque hills and islets--which in a subsequent journey he named Lac du Saint-Sacrament, because he reached it on the eve of Corpus Christi. The Frenchmen were carried from village to village of the Iroquois, and {138} tortured with all the cruel ingenuity usual in such cases. Goupil's thumb was cut off with a clam shell, as one way of prolonging pain. At night the prisoners were stretched on their backs with their ankles and wrists bound to stakes. Couture was adopted into the tribe, and was found useful in later years as an intermediary between the French and Mohawks. Goupil was murdered and his body tossed into a stream rushing down a steep ravine. Despite his sufferings Father Jogues never desisted from his efforts to baptise children and administer the rites of his Church to the tortured prisoners. On one occasion he performed the sacred office for a dying Huron with some rain or dewdrops which were still clinging to an ear of green corn which had been thrown to him for food. After indescribable misery, he was taken to Fort Orange, where the Dutch helped him to escape to France, but he returned to Canada in the following year.

Bands of Iroquois continued to wage war with relentless fury on all the Algonquin tribes from the Chaudiere Falls of the Ottawa to the upper waters of the Saguenay. Bressani, a highly cultured Italian priest, was taken prisoner on the St. Lawrence, while on his way to the Huron missions, and carried to the Mohawk villages, where he went through the customary ordeal of torture. He was eventually given to an old woman who had lost a member of her family, but when she saw his maimed hands--one split between the little finger and the ring-finger--she sent him to the Dutch, who ransomed and sent him to France, whence he came back like Jogues, a year later.

In 1645 the Mohawks made peace with the French, but the other members of the Five Nations refused to be bound by the treaty. Father Isaac Jogues ventured into their country in 1646, and after a successful negotiation returned to consult the governor at Quebec; but unhappily for him he left behind a small box, filled with some necessaries of his simple life, with which he did not wish to encumber himself on this flying visit. The medicine-men or sorcerers, who always hated the missionaries as the enemies of their vile superstitious practices, made the Indians believe that this box contained an evil spirit which was the origin of disease, misfortune, and death. When Father Jogues came back, he found the village divided into two parties--one wishing his death, the other inclined to show him mercy, and after infinite wrangling between the factions, he was suddenly killed by a blow from a tomahawk as he was entering a long-house, to attend a feast to which he had been invited. His body was treated with contumely, and his head affixed to a post of the palisades of the village. He was the first martyr who suffered death at the hands of the Iroquois.

The "black robe" was now to be seen in every Indian community of Canada; among the Hurons and Algonquins as far as Lake Huron, among the White Fish tribe at the head-waters of the Saguenay, and even among the Abenakis of the Kennebec. Father Gabriel Druilletes, who had served an apprenticeship among the Montagnais, was in charge of this Abenaki mission, and in the course of years {140} visited Boston, Plymouth, and Salem, in the interests of the Canadian French, who wished to enter into commercial relations with New England, and also induce its governments to enter into an alliance against the Iroquois. The authorities of the New England confederacy eventually refused to evoke the hostility of the dangerous Five Nations. Father Druilletes, however, won for Canada the enduring friendship of the Abenakis, as Acadian history shows.

It is impossible within the limited space of this chapter to give any accurate idea of the spirit of patience, zeal, and self-sacrifice which the Jesuit Fathers exhibited in their missions among the hapless Hurons. For years they found these Indians very suspicious of their efforts to teach the lessons of their faith. It was only with difficulty the missionaries could baptise little children. They would give sugared water to a child, and, apparently by accident, drop some on its head, and at the same time pronounce the sacramental words. Some Indians believed for a long time that the books and strings of beads were the embodiment of witchcraft. But the persistency of the priests was at last rewarded by the conversion, or at all events the semblance of conversion, of large numbers of Hurons. It would seem, according as their fears of the Iroquois increased, the Hurons gave greater confidence to the French, and became more dependent on their counsel. In fact, in some respects, they lost their spirit of self-reliance. In some villages the converts at last exceeded the number of unbelievers. By {141} 1647 there were eighteen priests engaged in the work of eleven missions, chiefly in the Huron country, but also among the Algonquin tribes on the east and northeast of Lake Huron or at the outlet of Lake Superior. Each mission had its little chapel, and a bell, generally hanging on a tree. One central mission house had been built at Ste. Marie close to a little river, now known as the Wye, which falls into Thunder Bay, an inlet of Matchedash Bay. This was a fortified station in the form of a parallelogram, constructed partly of masonry, and partly of wooden palisades, strengthened by two bastions containing magazines. The chapel and its pictures attracted the special admiration of the Indians, whose imagination was at last reached by the embellished ceremonies of the Jesuits' church. The priests, thoroughly understanding the superstitious character of the Indians, made a lavish use of pictorial representations of pain and