XIX. CHAP. tawa till they came to its largest western branch, thence to its head waters, and thence across the wilderness to 1634. their villages on Georgian bay and Lake Simcoe. The faith and zeal of these two men sustained them during their toilsome journey of nine hundred miles, and though their feet were lacerated and their garments torn, they rejoiced in their sufferings. Here in a grove they built, with their own hands, a little chapel, in which they celebrated the ceremonies of their church. The Red Man came to hear the morning and evening prayers; though in a language which he could not understand, they seemed to him to be addressed to the Great Spirit, whom he himself worshipped. Six missions were soon established in the villages around these lakes and bays. Father Brebeuf spent four hours of every morning in private prayer and self-flagellations, the rest of the day in catechizing and teaching. Sometimes he would go out into the village, and as he passed along would ring his little bell and thus invite the grave warriors to a conference, on the mysteries of his religion. Thus he labored for fifteen years. These teachings had an influence on the susceptible heart of the great Huron chief Ahasistari. He professed himself a convert and was baptized. Often as he escaped uninjured from the perils of battle, he thought some powerful spirit watched over him, and now he believed that the God whom the white man worshipped was that guardian spirit. In the first flush of his zeal he exclaimed: "Let us strive to make all men Christians." Thousands of the sons and daughters of the forest listened to instruction, and the story of their willingness to hear, when told in France, excited a new interest. The king and queen and nobles vied with each other in manifesting their regard by giving encouragement and aid to the missionaries, and by presents to the converts. A college, to educate men for these missions, was founded at Quebec, two years before the founding of Harvard. Two XIX. years afterward the Ursuline convent was founded at CHAP Montreal for the education of Indian girls, and three young nuns came from France to devote themselves to 1635 that labor. They were received with demonstrations of joy by the Hurons and Algonquins. Montreal was now chosen as a more desirable centre for missionary operations. The tribes most intelligent and powerful, most warlike and cruel, with whom the colonists came in contact, were the Mohawks, or Iroquois, as the French named them. They were a confederacy consisting of five nations, the Senecas, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, and the Mohawks-better known to the English by the latter name. This confederacy had been formed in accordance with the counsels of a great and wise chief, 1539. Hiawatha. Their traditions tell of him as having been specially guided by the Great Spirit, and that amid strains of unearthly music, he ascended to heaven in a snowwhite canoe. They inhabited that beautiful and fertile region in Central New York, where we find the lakes and rivers still bearing their names. Their territory lay on the south shore of Lake Ontario, and extended to the head-waters of the streams which flow into the Chesapeake and Delaware bays, and also to the sources of the Ohio. These streams they used as highways in their war incursions. They pushed their conquests up the lakes and down the St. Lawrence, and northward almost to the frozen regions around Hudson's bay. They professed to hold many of the tribes of New England as tributary, and extended their influence to the extreme east. They made incursions down the Ohio against the Shawnees, whom they drove to the Carolinas. They exercised dominion over the Illinois and the Miamis. They were the inveterate enemies of the Hurons, and a terror to the French settlements-especially were they hostile to the missions. In vain the Jesuits strove to teach them; French influence could never penetrate XIX. CHAP. South of Ontario. The Mohawks closely watched the passes of the St. Lawrence, and the intercourse between 1635. the missionaries stationed on the distant lakes and their head-quarters at Montreal was interrupted, unless they travelled the toilsome route by the Ottawa and the wil derness beyond. 1642. An expedition from the lakes had slipped through to Quebec, and now it endeavored to return. As the fleet approached the narrows, suddenly the Mohawks attacked it; most of the Frenchmen and Hurons made for the opposite shore. Some were taken prisoners, among whom was Father Jogues. The noble Ahasistari, from his hiding-place, saw his teacher was a prisoner; he knew that he would be tortured to death, and he hastened to him: "My brother," said he, "I made oath to thee, that I would share thy fortune, whether death or life; here I am to keep my vow." He received absolution at the hands of Jogues, and met death at the stake in a manner becoming a great warrior and a faithful convert. Father Jogues was taken from place to place; in each village he was tortured and compelled to run the gauntlet. His fellow-priest, Goupil, was seen to make the sign of the cross on the forehead of an infant, as he secretly baptized it. The Indians thought it a charm to kill their children, and instantly a tomahawk was buried in the poor priest's head. The Dutch made great efforts, but in vain, to ransom Jogues, but after some months of captivity he made his escape to Fort Orange, where he was gladly received and treated with great kindness by the Dominie Megapolensis. Jogues went to France, but in a few years he was again among his tormentors as a messenger of the gospel; ere long a blow from a savage ended his life. A similar fate was experienced by others. Father Bressani was driven from hamlet to hamlet, sometimes scourged by all the inhabitants, and tortured in every pos XIX. sible form which savage ingenuity could invent,-yet he CHAP survived, and was at last ransomed by the Dutch. The Abenakis of Maine sent messengers to Montreal 1642. asking missionaries. They were granted, and Father Dreuilettes made his way across the wilderness to the Penobscot, and a few miles above its mouth established a mission. The Indians came to him in great numbers. He became as one of themselves, he hunted, he fished, he taught among them, and won their confidence. He gave a favorable report of the place, and the disposition of the tribes, and a permanent Jesuit mission was there established. On one occasion Father Dreuilettes visited the Apostle Eliot at Roxbury. The noble and benevolent work in which they were engaged, served in the minds of these good men to soften the asperities existing between the Catholic and the Puritan, and they bid each other God speed. At this time there were sixty or seventy devoted mis- 1646. sionaries among the tribes extending from Lake Superior to Nova Scotia. But they did not elevate the character of the Indian; he never learned to till the soil, nor to dwell in a fixed abode; he was still a rover in the wide, free forest, living by the chase. The Abenakis, like the Hurons, were willing to receive religious instructions; they learned to chant matins and vespers, they loved those who taught them. It is not for us to say how many of them received into their hearts a new faith. The continued incursions of the ferocious Mohawks kept these missions in peril. Suddenly one morning they attacked the mission of St. Joseph on Lake Simcoe, founded, as we have seen, by Brebeuf and Daniel. The time chosen was when the warriors were on a hunting excursion, and the helpless old men, women, and children fell victims to savage treachery. The aged priest Daniel, at the first war-cry, hastened to give absolution to all the 1648. converts he could reach, and then calmly advanced from XIX. CHAP. the chapel in the face of the murderers. He fell pierced with many arrows. These marauding expeditions broke 1648. up nearly all the missions in Upper Canada. The Hurons were scattered, and their country became a huntingground for their inveterate enemies. Many of the Huron converts were taken prisoners and adopted into the tribes of the Five Nations. Some years 1661. after, when a treaty was made between those nations and the French, the presence of these converts excited hopes that they would receive Jesuit teachers. A mission was established among the Onondagas, and Oswego, their principal village, was chosen for the station. In a year or two missionaries were laboring among the other tribes of the confederacy. But the French, who had an eye to securing that fertile region, sent fifty colonists, who began a settlement at the mouth of the Oswego. The jealousy of the Indians was excited; they compelled the colonists to leave their country, and with them drove away the missionaries. Thus ended the attempts of the French to possess the soil of New York. 1666 The zeal of the Jesuits was not diminished by these untoward misfortunes; they still continued to prosecute their labors among the tribes who would receive them. Away beyond Lake Superior one of their number lost his way in the woods and perished, and the wild Sioux kept his cassock as an amulet. Into that same region the undaunted Father Allouez penetrated; there, at the largest town of the Chippewas, he found a council of the chiefs of many different tribes. They were debating whether they should take up arms against the powerful and warlike Sioux. He exhorted them to peace, and urged them to join in alliance with the French against the Iroquois ; he also promised them trade, and the protection of the great king of the French. Then he heard for the first time of the land of the Illinois, where there were no trees, but vast plains covered with long grass, on which grazed |