Part 2

In 1615, Champlain thought the time ripe for the institution of Indian missions upon the St. Lawrence, a spiritual field hitherto neglected, and introduced to Quebec four members of the fraternity of Récollets, the most austere of the three orders of Franciscans; these were Fathers Denis Jamay, Jean d'Olbeau, and Joseph le Caron, and a lay brother, Pacifique du Plessis. To D'Olbeau was assigned the conversion of the Montagnais of the Lower St. Lawrence; Le Caron went to the Hurons, or Wyandots, in the vast stretch of forested wilderness west of the Ottawa River, and before the coming of autumn had established a bark chapel in their midst; Jamay and Du Plessis remained in the neighborhood of Quebec, ministering to the colonists and the wandering savages who came to the little settlement for purposes of trade or sociability, or through fear of scalp-hunting Iroquois. For ten years did these gray friars practice the rites of the church in the Canadian woods, all the way from the fishing and trading outpost of Tadoussac to the western Lake of the Nipissings. Barefooted, save for heavy wooden sandals, coarsely clad in gown and hood, enduring in a rigorous climate, to which they were unused, all manner of hardships by flood and field, they were earnestly devoted to their laborious calling in a time when elsewhere the air of New France was noisy with the strife of self-seeking traders and politicians. Yet somehow their mission seemed without important result. Even less successful was the enterprise of some fellow Récollets, who, in 1619, began independent work among the French fishermen and Micmacs of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Gaspé, but were forced in 1624, after many disasters, to abandon their task, three of them joining the party at Quebec.

The little band on the St. Lawrence, although thus reinforced, felt impelled, in 1625, to invite the powerful aid of the Jesuits, who in the face of great odds were just then holding most successful missions in Asia, Africa, and South America. In response to the call, three fathers of the black gown came to Quebec this year,--Massé, who had been of the old Acadian mission, Charles Lalemant, and that giant among them, in both stature and deeds, Jean de Brébeuf. Immediately the work began to broaden, but the records of the dual mission do not give evidence of many converts,--a few Huron youth taken to France, and there instructed and baptized, being the chief gains. The wandering habits of the Indians were not favorable to persistent instruction of the young, and adults were unwilling to commit themselves to the new doctrine, even when not openly opposed to its promulgation. The summer months were usually spent by the missionaries at Tadoussac, Quebec, and Three Rivers, where trading parties from the tribes were wont to assemble; and, when the latter scattered for their winter hunts, the missionaries accompanied them, sharing the toils, dangers, and discomforts of the movable camps, and often suffering much from positive abuse at the hands of their not over-willing hosts.

The settlements of Port Royal and Quebec were at this time wretched little hamlets of a few dozen huts each, surrounded by a palisade, and these fell an easy prey to small English naval forces (1628-29). With their fall, ended the slender mission of the Récollets and Jesuits, who were in triumph carried off to England. For a few months, France did not hold one foot of ground in North America. But as peace had been declared between France and England before this conquest, the former received back all of its possessions, and the inevitable struggle for the mastery of the continent was postponed for four generations longer.

With the release of Canada to France, in 1632, the Jesuits were by the home authorities placed in sole charge of the spiritual interests of both settlers and Indians, and the history of their greatest missions begins at this time. On the fifth of July, there landed at Quebec, Fathers Paul le Jeune and Anne de Nouë, and a lay brother named Gilbert. Le Jeune was the superior, and at once devoted himself to learning the language and customs of the savages, and so studying the enormous field before him as intelligently to dispose of his meagre forces.

THE INDIANS.

The existence of rival tribes among the Red Indians of North America, was, perhaps, the most formidable obstacle in the path of the missionaries. It has always been impossible to make any hard-and-fast classification; yet the Indians presented a considerable variety of types, ranging from the Southern Indians, some of whose tribes were in a relatively high stage of material advancement and mental calibre, down to the savage root-eaters of the Rocky Mountain region. The migrations of some of the Indian tribes were frequent, and they occupied overlapping territories, so that it is impossible to fix the tribal boundaries with any degree of exactness. Again, the tribes were so merged by intermarriage, by affiliation, by consolidation, by the fact that there were numerous polyglot villages of renegades, by similarities in manner, habits, and appearance, that it is difficult even to separate the savages into families. It is only on philological grounds that these divisions can be made at all. In a general way we may say that between the Atlantic and the Rockies, Hudson Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, there were four Indian languages in vogue, with great varieties of local dialect:

I. The Algonkins were the most numerous, holding the greater portion of the country from the unoccupied "debatable land" of Kentucky northward to Hudson Bay, and from the Atlantic westward to the Mississippi. Among their tribes were the Micmacs of Acadia, the Penobscots of Maine, the Montagnais of the St. Lawrence, the ill-defined tribes of the country round about Lake St. John, and the Ottawas, Chippewas, Mascoutens, Sacs, Foxes, Pottawattomies, and Illinois of the Upper Lakes. These savages were rude in life and manners, were intensely warlike, depended for subsistence chiefly on hunting and fishing, lived in rude wigwams covered with bark, skins, or matted reeds, practised agriculture in a crude fashion, and were less stable in their habitations than the Southern Indians. They have made a larger figure in our history than any other family, because through their lands came the heaviest and most aggressive movement of white population, French or English. Estimates of early Indian populations necessarily differ, in the absence of accurate knowledge; but it is now believed that the number was never so great as was at first estimated by the Jesuit fathers and the earliest English colonists. A careful modern estimate is, that the Algonkins at no time numbered over 90,000 souls, and possibly not over 50,000.

II. In the heart of this Algonkin land was planted the ethnic group called the Iroquois, with its several distinct branches, often at war with each other. The craftiest, most daring, and most intelligent of North American Indians, yet still in the savage hunter state, the Iroquois were the terror of every native band east of the Mississippi, before the coming of the whites, who in turn learned to dread their ferocious power. The five principal tribes of this family--Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, all stationed in palisaded villages south and east of lakes Erie and Ontario--formed a loose confederacy styled by themselves and the French "The Long House," and by the English "The Five Nations," which firmly held the waterways connecting the Hudson and Ohio rivers and the Great Lakes. The population of the entire group was not over 17,000--a remarkably small number, considering the active part they played in American history, and the control which they exercised through wide tracts of wilderness. Related to, but generally at war with them, were the Hurons of Canada, among whom the Jesuits planted their earliest missions. Champlain, in an endeavor to cultivate the friendship of his Huron and Algonkin neighbors, early made war on the Iroquois, and thus secured for New France a heritage of savage enmity which contributed more than any other one cause to cripple its energies and render it at last an easy prey to the rival power of the English colonies.

III. The Southern Indians occupied the country between the Tennessee River and the Gulf, the Appalachian Ranges and the Mississippi. Of a milder disposition than their Northern cousins, the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles were rather in a barbarous than in a savage state; by the time of the Revolution, they were not far behind the white proprietors in industrial or domestic methods, and numbered not above 50,000 persons. With them, this story of the Jesuit missions has little to do; the Louisiana mission, an offshoot of that of New France, did faithful work here, but the documentary result was neither as interesting nor as prolific, and necessarily occupies but small space in the present series.

IV. The Dakotah, or Sioux, family occupied for the most part the country beyond the Mississippi. They were and are a fierce, high-strung people, genuine nomads, and war appears to have been their chief occupation. The Jesuits worked among them but in slight measure, on the waters of the Upper Mississippi; they met this family, chiefly in the persons of the Winnebagoes, one of their outlying bands, which at the time of the French occupation was resident on and about Green Bay of Lake Michigan, at peace and in confederacy with the Algonkins who hedged them about.

The mission of the French Jesuits to these widely-scattered hordes of savages forms one of the most thrilling chapters in human history. It is impossible, in this brief Introduction, to attempt anything more than the barest outline of the theme; Rochemonteix, Shea, and Parkman have told the story in detail, from differing points of view, and with these authorities the student of the following documents in the case is presumed to be familiar. A rapid summary of results will, however, be useful; and this we may best obtain, at the expense of occasional repetition of narrative, by following the fortunes of the pioneers of the Cross through the several district missions into which their work was naturally divided.

I. THE ABENAKI MISSION.

This mission was chiefly in Maine and Acadia, and on Cape Breton Island. The Abenakis (or Abnakis) were a strong but mild-mannered Algonkin tribe, settled in villages or cantonments; but, like others of their race, in the habit of taking long semi-annual journeys,--each winter to hunt, and each summer to fish. We have seen that the French Jesuits, Biard and Massé, were in the field as early as 1611, soon after the establishment of Port Royal; their predecessor being the secular French priest, Fléché, who had been introduced to the country by Poutrincourt, the patentee. Biard and Massé met with many discouragements, chiefly the opposition of Poutrincourt's son, Biencourt (sometimes called Baron St. Just), who had been left in charge of the colony. Nevertheless the missionaries learned the native language, and made many long journeys of exploration, one of Biard's trips extending as far as the mouth of the Kennebec. They were later joined by a lay brother, Du Thet, and by Fathers Quentin and Lalemant. Joining the new French colony on Mt. Desert Island, in the spring of 1613, the establishment was almost immediately destroyed by the Virginian Argall. In the skirmish, Du Thet was killed.

In 1619, a party of Récollets, from Aquitaine, began a mission on St. John River, in Acadia, but five years later, as we have seen above, abandoned the task, the survivors joining the Quebec mission of their order. Other Récollets were in Acadia, however, between 1630 and 1633, and later we have evidence of a small band of Capuchins ministering to French settlers on the Penobscot and Kennebec; but it is probable that they made no attempt to convert the natives.

A Jesuit mission was founded on Cape Breton in 1634, by Father Julian Perrault; and a few years later, Father Charles Turgis was at Miscou. Other missionaries soon came to minister to the Micmacs, but for many years their efforts were without result; and sickness, resulting from the hardships of the situation, caused most of the early black gowns to retreat from the attempt. Finally, an enduring mission was established among these people, and, until about 1670, was conducted with some measure of success by Fathers Andrew Richard, Martin de Lyonne, and James Fremin. About 1673, the Récollets took up the now abandoned work, occasionally aided by secular priests from the Seminary of Quebec, and Jesuits, until at last the Micmacs from Gaspé to Nova Scotia were declared to be entirely converted to the Catholic faith.

Father Gabriel Druillettes, of the Jesuit mission at Sillery, near Quebec, went to the Kennebec country in 1646, invited thither by converted Abenakis who had been at Sillery, and during visits, extending through a period of eleven years, was more than ordinarily successful in the task of gaining Indian converts to Christianity. In 1650, he made a notable visit to the Puritans of Eastern Massachusetts, during which was discussed the proposed union between New France and New England, against the Iroquois. Upon the final departure of Druillettes in 1657, the Abenakis were but spasmodically served with missionaries; occasionally a Jesuit appeared among them, but the field could not be persistently worked, owing to the demands upon the order from other quarters. The fathers now sought to draw Abenaki converts to Sillery, and later to St. Francis de Sales, at the falls of the Chaudière, which soon became almost exclusively an Abenaki mission.

In 1688, Father Bigot, of this mission, again entered the field of the Kennebec, at the same time that Rev. Peter Thury, a priest of the Quebec Seminary, opened a mission on the Penobscot, and the Récollet F. Simon gathered a flock at Medoktek, near the mouth of the St. John. They were in time aided and succeeded by others: the Jesuits being Julian Binneteau, Joseph Aubery, Peter de la Chasse, Stephen Lauverjeat, Loyard, and Sebastian Rale; the death of Rale, the greatest of them all, at the hands of New England partisans in the border strife of 1724, is a familiar incident in American history. Jesuits succeeded to the Penobscot mission in 1703, and with great zeal, but amid continual hardships and discouragements, carried on the principal work among the Abenakis until the downfall of New France in 1763. The majority of the Kennebec converts, however, emigrated to the mission of St. Francis de Sales, and from there frequently went forth upon avenging expeditions against the New England borderers.

II. THE MONTAGNAIS MISSION.

This was centered at Tadoussac, and ministered to the Montagnais, Bersiamites, Porcupines, Oumaniwek, Papinachois, and other tribes of the Lower St. Lawrence and the Saguenay. Tadoussac had, from the earliest historic times, been a favorite harbor and trading-station for the French; for, being at the junction of two great rivers, it was convenient as a place of assembly for the natives of the lower country. The first priests in the district had said mass there; but it was not until 1640 that a Jesuit mission was formed by Father Jean du Quen, its sphere of influence soon reaching to the upper waters of the Saguenay, Lake St. John, Hudson Bay, and the coast of Labrador. Du Quen was actively assisted by Charles Meiachkwat, a Montagnais convert, who erected the first chapel, became a catechist, and made extended tours through the neighboring tribes. In time, there were associated with Du Quen, Fathers Buteux and Druillettes. Protracted missionary tours were made by them, with results which were considered satisfactory as compared with other missions; although they had serious difficulties to contend with, in the prevalent intemperance which the fur trade introduced among the natives, the belief in dreams, the laxity of morals, and the wiles of medicine-men, or sorcerers, as they were called by the Jesuits.

For the first few years, the missionaries spent their winters in Quebec, ministering to the colonists, and each spring went down to Tadoussac to meet the summer trading parties; but greater persistency of effort was deemed desirable, and thereafter, instead of returning home in the autumn, they followed the Indians upon their winter hunts, and in the course of these wanderings endured the usual privations and hardships of traveling camps. Bailloquet, Nouvel, Beaulieu, Albanel, De Crépieul, Dalmas, Boucher, Peter Michael Laure, and Jean Baptiste Labrosse, are other names of Jesuit fathers who at different periods were engaged upon this toilsome mission.

In 1670, Tadoussac was almost deserted, owing to Iroquois raids and the ravages of smallpox; the Montagnais and kindred tribes were in hiding, through the vast country between Lake St. John and Hudson Bay. They were still followed by their devoted shepherds, whom no hardship could discourage. The following year, Crépieul began a mission on Hudson Bay, and here in 1694 his auxiliary Dalmas was killed. Laure (1720-37) left us a monument of his labors in a Montagnais grammar and dictionary. Labrosse, the last of his order at Tadoussac, instructed many of his flock to read and write, and left a legacy of native education, which has lasted unto the present day; he lived and taught long after his order had been suppressed in New France, and died at Tadoussac in 1782.

III. THE QUEBEC AND MONTREAL MISSIONS.

These included the several missions at Quebec, Montreal, Three Rivers, Sillery, Bécancourt, and St. Francis de Sales, which were designed for the wandering Montagnais of the district, those Algonkins of the West who could be induced to come and settle on the lower waters, and in later years such Abenakis of Acadia and Maine as sought an asylum upon distinctively French soil.

We have seen that Récollets were first at Quebec, ministering both to colonists and Indians, and that, in 1625, they invited the Jesuits to aid them. In 1629, the joint mission came to a close through the surrender of Quebec to the English. When the mission was reopened in 1632, Jesuits alone were in charge, their operations being at first confined to the neighboring Montagnais, although they soon spread throughout the entire Canadian field. In 1658, Bishop Laval founded the Seminary of Quebec, whereupon the Jesuits resigned their parishes among the colonists, and thereafter confined themselves to their college and the Indian missions. In addition to their parish work, the priests of the seminary conducted missions in Acadia, Illinois, and on the lower Mississippi.

The year following the return of the Jesuits to Canada, Father Buteux, of that order, began his labors at Three Rivers, which was a convenient gathering-place for the fur trade. The village was frequently raided by Iroquois, but remained until the fall of New France one of the prominent centers of missionary influence. The efforts of Buteux, which lasted until his death at the hands of Iroquois in 1652, met with considerable success. His custom, like that of the other missionaries, was to be present at the French posts during the annual trading "meets," and when the savages returned to the wilderness, to accompany some selected band. In thus following the nomadic tribes, he made some of the longest and most toilsome journeys recorded in the annals of the Society of Jesus, and shared with his flock all the horrors of famine, pestilence, and inter-tribal war.

It was soon realized by the missionaries that but meagre results could be obtained until the Indians were induced to lead a sedentary life. Their wandering habit nullified all attempts at permanent instruction to the young; it engendered improvidence and laziness, bred famine and disease; and the constant struggle to kill fur-bearing animals for their pelts rapidly depleted the game, while the fur trade wrought contamination in many forms. Missionary efforts were at first conducive to the interests of the fur trade, by bringing far-distant tribes within the sphere of French influence; but so soon as the Jesuit sought to change the habits of the natives, to cause them to become agriculturists instead of hunters, and to oppose the rum traffic among them, then the grasping commercial monopoly which controlled the fortunes of New France, and was merely "working" the colony for financial gains, saw in the Jesuit an enemy, and often placed serious obstacles in his path.

In pursuance of the sedentary policy, and also to protect the wretched Montagnais from Iroquois war-parties, the Jesuits, in 1637, established for them a palisaded mission four miles above Quebec, at first giving it the name St. Joseph, but later that of Sillery, in honor of Commander Noël Brulart de Sillery, of France, who had given ample funds for the founding of this enterprise. Here were at first gathered twenty of the Indians, who began cultivation of the soil, varied by occasional hunting and fishing trips, which the missionaries could not prevent. The little town slowly grew in importance, both Algonkins and Montagnais being represented in its population. Three years later, nuns opened a hospital at Sillery, for the reception of both French and Indian patients, and thus greatly added to the popularity of the mission. But in 1646 the nuns removed their hospital to Quebec; a few years later, the church and mission house were destroyed by fire; disease made sad havoc in the settlement; the thin soil became exhausted through careless tillage; Iroquois preyed upon the converts, until at last the Algonkins almost entirely disappeared; and although their place was taken by Abenakis from Maine and Acadia, until the attendance became almost solely Abenaki, the enterprise waned. In 1685, it was abandoned in favor of St. Francis de Sales, a new mission established at the falls of the Chaudière River, not far from the St. Lawrence. Beyond a monument of later days, to the memory of Fathers Massé and De Nouë, whose names are prominently connected with this work, nothing now remains to mark the site of the old Sillery mission.

From St. Francis, the mission work began to spread into Maine. Of its character and extent there, mention has already been made. St. Francis achieved a certain measure of prosperity, as Indian missions go. It became in time a source of serious trouble to the New England borderers, for many a French and Indian war-party was here fitted out against the latter, during the series of bloody conflicts which marked the three-quarters of a century previous to the fall of New France. Finally, in September, 1759, Maj. Robert Rogers descended upon the village with his famous rangers, and in retaliation pillaged and burned the houses, and killed "at least two hundred Indians." New France soon after fell into the hands of the English, and, the Jesuits being suppressed, we hear little more of St. Francis de Sales.

In 1641, the missionary settlement of Montreal was founded by Maisonneuve. The Jesuits were the first resident clergy, and soon began mission work among the neighboring Indians and those who resorted thither from the valleys of the Lower St. Lawrence and the Ottawa. Soon, however, the Sulpitians, established in Paris by the Abbé Olier, one of the Society of Montreal, took charge of the mission on Montreal Island, which in after years was moved to the Sault au Récollet, and thence to the Lake of the Two Mountains, where there was gathered a polyglot village composed of Iroquois, Algonkins, and Nipissings. Upon the opening of the English régime, the Jesuit and Récollet missions were suppressed, but those of the Sulpitians were undisturbed, so that this mission at the lake is the oldest now extant in Canada.