This File was uploaded September 29th 1999 in honor of
Rene' Goupil, surgeon and lay apostle who was martyred on September 29,
1642 - the first of the 8 Canadian Martyrs
SAINTS LIVED HERE
The Story of the Martyr's Shrine
by J.G. Shaw
INTRODUCTION
On Sacred Ground
Those who come to visit Martyrs' Shrine as visitors or as true pilgrims
will experience something that will move any faithful Christian. This experience
in some ways can only be compared to standing in the Catacombs or in the
Coliseum at Rome. What one is given here is a direct human experience,
the soul being touched through every human sense. The very ground upon
which he walks was trod before him by another man who was ready to give
all that in him lay for the service of the God who had created him. The
hill that rises nearby had even before him been climbed by men who would
not give up because they were overwhelmed with the power of Faith. They
could not give up because there were people around them who were in dire
need of that same Faith.
That little stretch of fiat ground down by the river was home for some
ten years to men who had forsaken the greatest comfort in France to sleep
in smoke-filled bark cabins, to feed on cornmeal that tasted so much like
paste and when seasoned with rotting fish offered no pleasure to their
palate, and to live their lives with alien men and women because Christ
said, "Go ye and teach all nations." Because Christ said, "Take up your
cross and follow Me" they let themselves be captured and dragged through
woods, burned at the torture stake, stripped of their flesh, their hearts
torn out, rather than fail the obligations of their baptismal vows.
The old residence where these men had lived was, as we will see, burned
to the ground, and for many years was nothing but a ruin. It is now reconstructed
and the pilgrim to the Martyrs' Shrine can well imagine how they lived.
One of the new buildings is a reconstruction of the old Indian Chapel,
scarcely ten paces from the river. Within the walls of Ste-Marie were buried
two of the missionaries. Their bodies had been carried in and, mutilated
though they were, had been stretched out on slabs of elm bark. These two
men, priests of God forever, had lain there for some two hours while their
fellow Jesuits, donne's and workmen gathered round to hear eyewitnesses
tell how the bodies came to be marked, with that cut, and that cut, and
that cut.
The men of the time walked around in reverence as a true pilgrim of
today will do, where these men, Brebeuf and Lalemant, had given their lives
for the Faith. The men of that day could do this in reality - the pilgrim
and visitor of today only in their own minds. But the place was sanctified
then and is sanctified now because the martyrs were there.
Then the carpenter had the coffins finished, straight and true, with
the big flat nails hammered out of rough iron; the shoemaker, who was a
handy man with heavy canvas and needle, had the bodies wrapped in a sailor's
winding sheet.
And then Father Ragueneau, Superior of the mission in 1649, had said
the Mass. As it was a Sunday, possibly he said not a Requiem Mass but a
Mass of Thanksgiving that God had called their fellow missionaries to martyrdom.
One could hear the chant of the Gloria in the loneliness of that wilderness
home. The chant of prayers, as the priests and brothers, donne's and workmen,
offered their last homage to the soldiers of Christ who died in battle
for Him, would not be heard again on this spot for nearly 300 years.
And the pilgrim of today, looking at the stone over the grave of St.
John de Br6beuf can well imagine the burial of long ago. He stands near
where the Martyrs were buried in that ground; more precisely, in that little
bit of earth 7 feet, 4 inches long and 3 feet, 6 inches wide.1 He looks
at it and cannot help but say a prayer.
Father Ragueneau, in the burial service, had said, "Return to dust."
He had reached down and picked up a handful of earth. All seemed to be
over. Very soon their flock would have to flee to a nearby island for temporary
shelter. And in a year the whole place would be abandoned as the last remnants
of the Huron nation fled to the shelter of Quebec and security distance
gave to what is now the State of Michigan.
(1) From 1955 Report of The Canadian Catholic Historical Association,
"The Excavation of the Indian Church at Ste-Marie," by Rev. Denis A.
Hegarty, 5.3.
"Careful measurements were taken before further material was lifted.
The disturbed sand formed a rectangle, 88 inches long and 42 inches wide.
Its long dimension was not quite at right angles to the major axis of the
building but turned 15 degrees to the west; in other words, as it turned
out, it lay exactly north and south. Its southwestern corner was 20 inches
from the south wall, 2 feet from the west wall; its northwest corner was
9 feet, 2 inches from the west wall.
"On the following Monday, August 16, work progressed not only on the
marked area, but also on its surroundings, so as to leave a clear space
all around it. In this way the outline remained clear as long as the weather
did, for either rain or wind could, and at times did, interfere with the
picture.
"At the 36-inch level a nail was uncovered in a vertical position,
pointed downwards. It was 3½ inches long, square and handmade, similar
to those found in the coffins in the graveyard. At its upper end, for about
an inch under the head, there was wood impregnated with rust. By 10 o'clock
on Tuesday morning the heads of other nails had come to light at the same
level arranged vertically in lines roughly parallel with the sides of the
marked area. when the uncovering of the 36-inch level was completed, there
appeared a general dark area, contrasting with the surrounding sand, and
bounded by clear inch-wide lines of decayed vegetable matter, stained with
rust at the places occupied by the nails. At some spots, especially along
the southern end, the outline was fringed by a faint red line, suggesting
the material had been painted or daubed with red ochre. Photographs in
colour were taken before any further work, and other photographs taken
at intervals while the work progressed. There could not be the slightest
doubt that this was the remains of a wooden box. Its outside measurements
were 79 inches in length, 33 inches wide at the top (the north end) and
30 inches at the bottom. Its inside measurements were 77, 31 and 28 inches
respectively. These unusual dimensions would have fitted well with the
historical tradition of Brebeuf's outstanding physique. The average height
of the French peasant of the seventeenth century was 5 feet, 4½
inches, but this box was big enough for a man of 6 feet, 3 inches. The
largest measurements of the coffins found in the graveyard were 6 feet
long, 24 inches wide at the head and 19 inches at the foot."
In the burial Father John de Brebeuf and Father Gabriel Lalemant had
returned to the earth. But when their brethren fled, the relics of these
men would be taken with them for in their minds these relics were too sacred
to be left to the desecration of time. And when, nearly 300 years later,
a church would be erected on the nearby hill, some of these relics would
be returned.
As the pilgrim leaves the graveside of Brebeuf and goes out of the chapel
into the open his eyes will turn perhaps to the north. There the Church
of St. Joseph, in honour of the Martyrs, raises two tall steeples overlooking
the beloved home of tile missionaries. In that church Our Lord is present
as He was years ago in the little chapel from which the pilgrim has just
come.
When the pilgrim to Martyrs' Shrine kneels before Our Lord he is filled
undoubtedly with many questions. He cannot help but ask himself, "Who were
these men - where did they come from - what did they do - how did they
do it - and why?"
When he has found his answers to these questions the pilgrim cannot
help but salute the memory of the Martyrs who were faithful to the vows
of their baptism. That baptism which is also the privilege of the pilgrim.
The answers he finds are the very warp and wood of the story of Martyrs'
Shrine, the story of Ste-Marie-among-the-Hurons.
CHAPTER ONE
Why Ste-Marie Was Founded
There are weaknesses (among the Hurons) unimaginable to one
who has not witnessed them. But, after all, these are rational creatures,
capable of Paradise and hell, redeemed by the Blood of Jesus Christ, and
of Whom it is written "other sheep have I who are not of this fold; them
also must I bring." And for this reason He sends to seek them in the hedges
and everywhere.(JESUIT RELATIONS xvii, 127)
The story of Ste-Marie was written down on paper for us by
the men who lived it. They wrote it on the spot, like a diary, while the
things were happening. Their diary letters were published as they were
received in France and became one of the world's most famous records of
adventure, history and sanctity - The Jesuit Relations.
From these Relations we can find the answers to the questions a pilgrim
asks at Ste-Marie. We can learn from the words of cultured men who lived
there why they decided to establish Ste-Marie, how they went about it,
who were their companions, what went on there and how the place met its
end.
The words at the head of this chapter were written by Father Jerome
Lalemant in his first Relation from Huronia. They express the single purpose
of all missionaries in all missions from the beginning of Christianity
until today. They contain the one and only reason why there were Jesuits
in Huronia at all that June of 1639. They also suggest some of the difficulties
they faced.
The ten Jesuits gathered in a cabin by the shores of Lake Huron were
of one mind about the task that lay ahead of them. They were there to bring
Christianity to the Hurons and the Hurons to Christianity.
The one question in their minds was "How?" How could Christianity best
be planted, protected and made to grow?
Out of their answer to this question came Ste-Marie,"…our second fatherland,
our home of innocent delights • …the cradle of this Christian Church, the
temple of God and the home of the servants of Jesus Christ."
Jesuits Choose Huronia
When the French settled in Quebec, their immediate neighbours were Indians
of the Algonqujan family of Nations. They were nomads,
who carried their tepee-poles on their backs and set them up wherever
the hunting, fishing or trading was good.
These Algonquins were allies of the Hurons, an Iroquoian people living
800 miles inland at the eastern end of the lake that bears their name.
The Hurons lived in fixed villages, their various families and clans bound
together in a stable, though loose and exceedingly democratic, form of
government. They were also a trader nation who bartered for furs from nations
to the south, to the west and to the north and brought them east through
the Algonquins to sell to the French.
The Huron trail from Quebec to Georgian Bay was the logical line of
French advance into the continent. Champlain followed it and the Franciscans,
the first missionaries to the area, had arrived just ahead of him.
The missionaries saw in the relative stability of the Hurons, much better
ground for sowing the seed of Faith than among the ever-wandering Algonquins.
That is why the Franciscans, and the Jesuits who came after them, chose
to concentrate so much effort on a place so far from the protection of
Quebec.
The root of the missionary problem lay in the Huron "weaknesses" Father
Lalemant mentions. Those weaknesses included things for which other men
might have been inclined to find a stronger word - abominable living habits,
a compulsion to carry out whatever outrageous urge occurred to them in
dreams, a fondness for inflicting tortures, and a tendency to capricious
slaughter.
By the time Father Lalemant was writing, the living habits had become
an old story to the ten priests. The veteran and pioneer among them, John
de Brebeuf, had been sharing the food and shelter and hardships of the
Hurons for eight years. All of them were familiar with the Huron dwellings.
It was a long windowless, tunnel shaped structure covered with rough bark.
Every eight feet along its length, a fire glowed in the dark for cooking
and warmth. Smoke filled the cabin and found its way out by slits left
permanently open along the ridgepole. Two families, one on either side,
shared each fire.
There were no divisions and therefore no privacy. Every act performed,
night or day, by man, woman, child or dog, was done in the presence of
all the rest. Some of the cabins were 200 feet long and held as many families
as a good sized apartment house.
In these surroundings the missionaries lived and exercised their ministry.
Father Lalemant writes:
"If you go to visit them in their cabins, - and you must go there oftener
than once a day if you would perform your duty as you ought - you will
find there a little picture of hell. You will see nothing as a rule, but
fire and smoke and on every side naked bodies, black and half-roasted,
mingled pell-mell with the dogs, which are held as dear as the children
of the house, and share beds, plates and food with their masters.
"Everything is in a cloud of dust, and, before you go within, you will
not reach the end of the cabin before you are completely befouled with
soot, filth and dirt."
The Missionaries Adapt
The missionaries' way of eating and sleeping was in every way similar to
that of the Indians." The staple food was a mush made of ground corn which
Father Chaumonot likened to "the paste we use in France to put on wallpaper,"
and Samuel Champlain compared to "the slop we feed to pigs." The seasoning
was pieces of fish "rank with internal rottenness."
As Father Du Peron wrote in 1639 (Thwaites J.R. XV April 27, 1639):
"I reached the house of our Fathers at six o'clock in the evening.
They received me with every evidence of kindness and good will, although
their entertainment was no better than that of the Indians, for the comforts
of life with us are the same as those of the natives, - that is, a porridge
made of the meal of Indian corn and water, morning and evening, and for
a drink a flagon of water. Sometimes the Indians put in pieces of cinders,
to season the sagamite', at other times a handful of little waterflies,
which are like the gnats of Provence; they esteem these highly, and make
feasts of them. The more prudent keep some fish after the fishing season,
to break into the sagamite during the year; about half of a large carp
is put in for fourteen persons, and the more tainted the fish is, the better,"
Sleeping accommodations are described by Father Lalemant: "A mat upon the
ground, or upon a piece of bark, is your bed; the fire, your candle; the
holes through which the smoke passes, your windows - which are never closed;
bent poles, covered with bark your walls and roof, through which the wind
enters from all sides."
These conditions became routine to the missionaries. So did the witnessing
of death by torture.
They had seen the ritual followed when an Iroquois prisoner was brought
back to the village. He would be assigned to a family that had lost a warrior
in battle. The family could either adopt him to recoup their lost manpower
or turn him back to the Council for torture and death. If he was a feared
warrior, he was inevitably paid the tribute of being assigned to the stake.
Correct procedure required that the preliminary torture chewing or chopping
off fingers, and applying burning coals, torches or red hot tomahawks to
the most sensitive parts of the body - start one day and last throughout
the night before the culminating frenzy around the death stake the next
day.
The customary interval between minor torture and death brought the missionaries
into intimate first-hand contact with all this horror. Their zeal seized
upon this opportunity to speak to the condemned men of the meaning of life
and death, of heaven and hell and of God's infinite mercy. (After one successful
Huron raid in 1638, they baptized every one of a hundred Iroquois captives
put to death in the Huron villages.)
This meant they were as intimate with the kind of death they might expect
as with the sort of daily life they had to live. Each Jesuit knew that
from moment to moment, all through his life in Huronia, he was a leading
candidate for just such an end. It could come through falling into the
hands of the Iroquois. It could also come at the whim of some Huron whose
demon might inform him that the black-robe was responsible for some particular
community disaster like famine, plague or defeat in war. It could come,
as it almost had come twice already, by solemn decision of an unfriendly
council of the tribe.
But neither the hard life nor the fearful death had anything to do with
the decision to found Ste-Marie.
These were occupational hazards. All who came after Brebeuf had known
about them in detail before volunteering for New France. They had been
pondered in prayer and meditation and were part of the life they had chosen
as Jesuit missionaries. At each priest's daily offering of himself, they
were willingly embraced as acceptable means of winning grace for the souls
in his charge.
The pressing problem, the apparently insurmountable obstacle that made
them re-shape their plans, was, strange as it may sound, the normal recreations
and social customs of the Huron people.
The Power of Dreams
Brebeuf and his companions could put up with the greatest hardships and
the coarsest living conditions. They could accept the probability of torture
and death. What they could not abide in patience, what they gathered to
pray and plan against with all the strength of their souls, was an all
pervading pagan atmosphere that left the Christian life no more room to
breathe than a seedling primrose choked in weeds.
And that was the sort of atmosphere created by the only way of life
the Huron knew.
The Huron, individually and as a people, was ruled by, and completely
subservient to, dreams, personal demons and feasts that were often orgies
of immoral practice.
This would have been problem enough had the individual's dream or demon
affected only himself. But the whole community was involved in the fulfilment
of whatever might be asked in a dream by one man's personal "demon". Religion,
patriotism and personal integrity demanded the cooperation of each and
made the "demon's" desire a matter of importance to all.
The dreams commanded ceremonies, dances or feasts, each of which could
take up three or five days. These took place so frequently that they were
the major occupation of the Hurons during the winter months - the only
time of the year they were all at home. In addition to disrupting life
in the villages, they had an all-but-absolute hold over the minds and wills
of individuals.
The dream, both Brebeuf and Lalemant tell us, was the principal god
of the country. Whatever it commanded had to be carried out - and that
immediately - under penalty of bringing disaster not only upon the defaulter
but also upon the whole community.
How could anyone lead a Christian life in the midst of such chaos? Could
a convert reasonably be expected to withstand the tremendous social pressure
brought upon him to participate in those feasts and ceremonies which must
be forbidden him?
Brebeuf had faced these questions for eight years. Because of them he
had waited seven years before baptizing his first Huron adult in good health.
To find an answer to them, he had prayed long hours into many nights and
added severe bodily penances to the daily hardships of his missionary life.
Jerome Lalemant, the new Superior, had come from France with these two
questions uppermost in his mind.He had spent a year learning how real they
were and consulting about them with the veterans of the Huron mission -
Brebeuf, Daniel, Le Mercier, Jogues, Gamier and Ragueneau. (What a roll-call
of admirable men!)
During the early summer of 1639, when the Hurons were scattered on their
various expeditions and the missionaries had time to come together at Ossossan6,
one answer was found to the several aspects of both questions.
Sainte-Marie I
The previous plan of establishing separate residences in each of the principal
Huron towns would be abandoned. There would be a single central Jesuit
residence for all Huronia erected as an entity by itself apart from, and
unconnected with, any Huron community. Missionaries would go out from this
house to their assigned territories and return to it at appointed intervals.
There were multiple advantages to such a residence:
1) It would be stable, not having to be torn down and rebuilt
every time a Huron village moved its site.
2) Standing apart in a freely-chosen location it would be accessible
at all times, free of interference at the whim of any clan or village council.
3) It would be peaceful and normally quiet. The bell could ring its
summons to the orderly duties of the day with the regularity of a Jesuit
Community back in France. There would be a time and place for undisturbed
prayer, meditation, retreats and consultations. It could become, even in
this wild land, a centre of Religious Life comparable to the monasteries
that rose as focus points of spiritual living among the plains and hills
of medieval Europe.
4) The Hurons could come and see how the Christian principles preached
to them worked out in practice. Converts and prospective converts could
come for instruction and encouragement against the pressures endangering
the stability of their new faith.
5) The residence would serve, as did the monasteries of old, as a centre
of civilization. It would teach by example the Indians the proper use of
their lands and native materials, the trades and crafts, and in general,
the ways of civilized living.
A name was chosen for the residence and a site selected. The house
would be called Ste-Marie, its church dedicated to St. Joseph. It would
be built where the annual flotilla from Quebec could reach it directly.
Canoes destined for the missions could peel off from the rest on reaching
Huronia, paddle down a deep bay and enter through a little river into the
heart of the Huron country without having to pass any of the principal
towns.
CHAPTER TWO
Life at Ste-Marie
The place is situated in the middle of the country, on the shore of a beautiful
river, not more than a quarter of a league in length, which joins together
two lakes.
One, extending to the West and verging a little towards the North, might
pass for a fresh-water sea; the other lies toward the South and has a contour
of hardly less than two leagues. (From the RELATIONS of 1639-40, written
at Ste-Marie-among-the-Hurons, May 27, 1640)
Father Jerome Lalemant could not have left us a more recognizable description
of the location of Ste-Marie. To day's pilgrim can climb the hill at Martyrs'
Shrine, as Father Lalemant may have done himself, and look down upon two
lakes, the little river that joins them and the clearly-marked site of
the old mission residence.
Life at Ste-Marie began in a single bark-covered Huron-style cabin.
Though it looked Huron from the outside, the five workmen who served the
ten Jesuits had made the interior into something much more elaborate than
an Indian longhouse. Its separate compartments were primitively decorated
and furnished. One of them was a private chapel which served temporarily
as the mission Church.
Father Lalemant had closed the residence at Ossossane' and moved everything
from there to Ste-Marie by the autumn of 1639. Fathers Brebeuf, Jogues
and Ragueneau, who had remained at the other residence of St Joseph's (a
tumbledown cabin they shared with a Huron family in Teanostaye', principal
town of the Hurons, 12 miles south of Ste-Marie), joined them in the spring
of 1640.
"And thus we have now in all the country," writes Father Lalemant, "but
a single house which is firm and stable,- the vicinity of the waters being
very advantageous to us for supplying the want, in these regions, of every
other vehicle; and the lands being fairly good for the native corn, which
we intend, as time goes on, to harvest for ourselves."
Land-clearing and building turned the flat space by the river into a
busy scene of orderly activity. Reinforcements arrived during the summer
and by the autumn of 1640 Father Lalemant could draw up a "Catalogus Personarum"
that must have satisfied even his passion for organization.
There were 28 names on it and all were categorized ac cording to their
assignments. Among the 13 priests, Father Brebeuf was listed as "Advisor
to the superior, spiritual director, in charge of the chapel and one of
two confessors for the Jesuits."
One lay brother, Dominic Scot (probably of Irish or Scottish origin),
appears as "tailor".
The lay staff consisted of 6 "Donne's", 2 "Adolescents", 2 "Boys",
and 4 "Workmen not Donne's".
The Donnes
The donne's were something new on the missions, and, for that matter, in
the Church. They were laymen who, without becoming religious, bound themselves
by solemn written promise to the service of the mission without other pay
than their support. Their service to the Huron mission went beyond the
use of their labours and talents. They could do things either forbidden
to the Jesuits or impractical for them - such as carrying muskets for hunting
or defense. Moreover, their exemplary lives provided an effective antidote
to the unlovely impression of the fruits of Christian teaching left by
roving fur traders and coureurs-de-bois who 'led lives conformable neither
to the Huron ethic nor to their own.
They were ahead of their time (it took Pope Pius xli's Apostolic Constitution
of 1947 to clarify and recognize as a state of perfection the sort of life
these men intended) and the idea of donne's attached to the Jesuits did
not long survive the Huron mission itself. Their value to Huronia, however,
and to the central residence in particular can scarcely be over-estimated.
Without them, Ste-Marie could not have
become what it was. Two of the eight canonized martyrs, Jean de la
Lande and Rene' Goupil, were donnes. A third, donne' Jacques Douart, whose
grave may still be visited in the old Indian cemetery at Martyrs' Shrine,
was the first of the mission staff to die by the hand of Indians in Huronia.
One of their number, that first year of Ste-Marie, was William Couture,
working for the first time alongside Father Isaac Jogues whom he would
accompany in less than three years down the long Iroquois torture trail
to the Mohawk valley. There was a carpenter among them, Charles Boivin,
and a pharmacist, Joseph MolIere. Donne Robert Le Coq was listed as "buyer"
or "chief of supply", and Christopher Regnault, the shoemaker who left
such a vivid account of the martyrdoms of Brebeuf and Lalemant, was among
those early workers.
The "Adolescents" were apparently young men serving some sort of probation
to become donne's, as the two in this first list did by 1643, or learning
the Huron language so as later to engage in the fur trade. One of them
was Pierre Boucher, a notable figure in the history of New France and future
Governor of Three Rivers.
The presence of boys, about twelve to sixteen years of age, so far from
home and in such exposed conditions, should not surprise us as much as
it does. In those days, as centuries before and for long afterwards, good
parents held it a duty to push their sons out of the nest about that age
and send them away to test their strength and learn discipline in the household,
the atelier or on the farm of another master. The high-born sent their
sons for a taste of court life - St. Aloysius Gonzaga at the Spanish Court,
St.
Thomas More serving the table of Cardinal Morton. The more lowly committed
their boys by formal contract for periods of years to a man who would teach
them a trade or some other useful occupation. They were also sent to places
of danger. Drummer boys kept step with the front ranks in major battles,
and cabin boys, no older than the boys at Ste-Marie, stood on burning decks
right down to our own century.
There were boys at Ste-Marie throughout its existence and none of them
ever came to any harm there. At least one of them made good use of his
training. He was Charles Le Moyne, defender of Montreal and father of d'Iberville,
de Bienville and their five famous brothers, the Seven Macchabees of New
France.
The Growth of Ste-Marie
The speed of the transition from Indian living to an organized Christian
community is remarkable. Less than a year after the arrival of the first
Jesuits, the basic arrangements of personnel and the way of life at Ste-Marie
had taken shape. There would be changes, additions and constant development
but the pattern had been set. Laybrothers, donne's, boys and hired
workmen would build and run the central residence leaving the missionaries
free for their apostolic journeys. They were under the supervision of the
two or three Jesuits assigned to Ste-Marie the year round. However, the
central residence was also a mission centre for the nearest villages, so
even the Ste-Marie priests had to be free to make their regular visitations.
The Jesuit Relations do not give us a building-by-building acount of
the growth of Ste-Marie. The missionaries, as we shall see when we speak
of their ministry, had more important things to write home about during
those years. But they have left us a sufficiently complete picture to allow
interpretation of the details uncovered by archaeologists.
In the Relation of 1644 we read:
"This House is not only an abode for ourselves but it is also the continual
resort of all the neighbouring tribes, and still more of the Christians
who come from all parts for various necessities. We have therefore
been compelled to establish a hospital there for the sick, a cemetery for
the dead, a church for public devotions, a retreat for pilgrims, and finally,
a place apart from the others where non-believers - who are only admitted
by the day when passing that way - can always hear some good words respecting
their salvation . . . the hospital is so distinct from our dwelling that
not only men and children, but even women can be admitted to it."
We get some idea of the size to which the place had grown by 1644.
The Governor of New France sent soldiers to protect the Huron flotilla
against Iroquois attack. Although there were already 14 priests, 2 brothers,
11 donnes, 6 boys and youths and 3 hired workmen living there, "22 soldiers
were lodged in our own house in Huronia, and ate at our own table."
In 1647 there were 42 Frenchmen at Ste-Marie, " . eighteen being of
our Society, while the remainder were chosen persons, most of whom have
resolved to live and die with us. . . "By 1648 this number had increased
to 66, 27 of whom were Jesuits and 27 donne's. The Indians, as had
been hoped, were attracted to Ste-Marie in increasing numbers. The statistics
given for 1647-48 complete our picture of the people who made Ste-Marie
such a busy place. They also prove that the total enclosed area was quite
as large as many a Huron village.
The Relations say: "This house is a resort for the whole country, where
the Christians find a hospital in their sickness, a refuge in the height
of alarms, and a hostel when they come to visit us.
"During the past year we have reckoned over 3,000 persons to whom we
have given shelter, - sometimes, within a fortnight, six or seven hundred
Christians; and, as a rule, three meals to each one. This does not include
a large number who incessantly come hither to pass the whole day, and to
whom we give charity; so that, in a strange country, we feed those who
themselves should supply us with the necessities of life.
Huron Pilgrims
As early as 1642, Father Lalemant had described the spirit in which the
Indians came to Ste-Marie: . . . we often have the consolation of receiving
Christians who come from various parts of the country to make their devotions
here with more peace than they can in their towns. For this purpose we
have built them a hospice, a cabin of bark, in which God has given us the
means of lodging and feeding these good pilgrims in their own country.
"During the winter there is always a good number here over weekends.
They come on Saturday, from places four and five leagues away, spend Sunday
in devotions, and leave on Monday."
Father Lalemant also speaks of others who made round trips of 30 to
60 miles and spent three or four days at Ste-Marie. The Relation of 1644
tells of the fervour aroused in these new Christians when they found themselves
gathered with kindred spirits in a truly Christian atmosphere:
"Then it is that seeing themselves all of one mind, they talk to each
other from the heart. They inspire each other. They hold discussions on
how to advance Christianity, on how to establish the Faith in their country
so that they will see the one true God adored in it."
In addition to the accommodation for the Christian Indians, there was
a visitors' compound. This was not merely a device of the missionaries
to separate the baptized from the unbaptized and leave the Christians peace
to pursue their devotions undisturbed. It was quite in accord with the
customs of the Hurons who had their cabins in a separate place when visiting
the village of another clan or nation.
Ste-Marie, then, was not only a Jesuit residence and a mission centre.
It was also a place of pilgrimage. In 1644 it became one by right and by
Papal Decree as well as infact.
A Papal Brief, dated at Rome, February 18, 1644, officially named Ste-Marie
a place of pilgrimage and granted a plenary indulgence under customary
conditions to all "pilgrims" who visited the church on the Feast of St.
Joseph. This Brief was the first ecclesiastical document issued to the
Church in what is now the Province of Ontario. It made Ste-Marie the first
place of pilgrimage in the Americas north of Mexico. It is noteworthy that
the Brief was issued by Urban VIII, the very Pope who drew up strict orders
against anticipating the judgment of the Church by free use of such titles
as "Holy", "Blessed" or "Saint". The same papal champion of responsible
statement granted one of the pioneers of Ste-Marie, Father Isaac Jogues,
permission to say Mass with his mangled hands, saying, "It is not fitting
that a martyr of Christ should not be permitted to drink the Blood of Christ."
The Jesuits were the centre of life at Ste-Marie geographically as well
as spiritually. Their original residence-with-chapel was the nucleus.
This grew into two residences and a private chapel standing in their own
palisaded area with two groupings of buildings on either side. The French
quarters, workshops, storehouses and barns were to the north.
The Huron quarters with Church, cemetery, hostel, hospital and other
structures was to the south. The compound for visiting Indians was adjacent
to the Huron quarters on the side of Ste-Marie inland from the river. A
narrow waterway, which could be cut off from the river by lowering a gate,
separated
the Jesuit compound from the working quarters at the French end and permitted
canoes to be loaded or unloaded from either side.
Each of the divisions had its own encircling palisade. An outer palisade
seems to have tied the Huron, Jesuit and French compounds into one
and provided double protection for the whole. Gateways in the palisades
provided free access from one section of Ste-Marie to the other.
Daily Life at Ste-Marie
Even as the entire existence of the place revolved around the comings and
goings of the missionaries, so was its daily and hourly routine ordered
to the religious community lifefollowed by the Jesuits when at home. That
routine was carried over from Ossossane' where Father Lalemant did not
have too much success persuading his Huron neighbours to respect it. "At
four the bell rings for us to rise," Father Du Peron wrote, "then Meditation,
after which we celebrate Mass in turn until eight. Silence is kept in the
meanwhile, each one being engaged in his spiritual reading, or the recitation
of the Little Hours." (Thwaites J.R. XV 165 April 27, 1639.)
On that foundation of cloistered prayer and meditation, the Jesuits
built each day at Ste-Marie. At eight o'clock doors were thrown wide open
for the Indians and the round of instruction, visitation and other assignments
began. At two o'clock, "the bell gives the sign for the Examination of
Conscience, which is followed by dinner, during which a chapter of the
Bible is read . . . we say grace in Huron, for the sake of the Indians
who are present."
Work was resumed until, "at four o'clock we dismiss the Hurons who are
not Christians, and we recite together Matins and Lauds. Then we hold a
consultation of three quarters of an hour on the progress or obstacles
of the Mission." Following that, "we take up the study of the language
until half-past six, when we have supper." During supper, someone was appointed
to read aloud from a spiritual book. The book being read at the time Father
Du Peron was writing his letter was Philagie de Jesus by Father Du Barry.
The formal end of the day was eight o'clock with "the Litany and Examination
of Conscience." Ste-Marie came awake each day, lived and went back
to sleep around this monastic routine of the Jesuit enclosure at its centre.
On the French side, men worked the dawn till-dark schedule of a pioneer
farm. The first sight of the sun brought the first sounds of mounting activity.
The crow of a rooster, the clucking of hens, the grunting of pigs, the
lowing of cattle, the restless movement of animals waiting to be released
for the day. The rattle of pails, the clatter of wood on iron as doors
were unhasped, the cries of the men who fed and tended the stock. The stir
in the cookhouse giving way to the clang of a hammer against a blacksmith's
anvil,the ring of an axe, the swish of an adze smoothing a beam, the loud
cry of a Huron calling from the other side of the river for the boy at
the ferry to come and boat him across.
A Home of Peace
In the Huron enclosure, the normally formless day of Indians at home was
given unwonted regularity by the French timetable. Mass, instructions and
devotions at fixed hours in their own church kept the Christians answering
bells as faithfully as the donne' pharmacist and his assistants in the
hospital. The pagan visitors, whether they had come out of curiosity
or from need of food or refuge, swarmed about the place. Privacy was a
concept totally alien to them. Never having known it, they felt no need
for it themselves and had no notion that others might think it at times
desirable. They stood around or squatted before any demonstration of the
white man's magic that took
their fancy. They stared wordless for hours or chatted excitedly among
themselves according to their moods.
They went over to the barns and laughed at the trouble these strange
men had taken just to house animals. They tapped their foreheads suggestively
when they saw good corn fit for the fami~y kettle being thrown to the beasts
who could very well forage for themselves. They marvelled at the 'birds-that-did-not-fly'
and gaped at the size of the eggs they laid. Pigs were a puzzle. Were they
little bears without fur or overgrown porcupines with no quills? And why
should anyone want to take milk from a cow?
They fingered the cloth Brother Scot was sewing and asked what animal
it came from. They liked the sharpness of his needles and tried to steel
one when he was not looking.
A barber trimming a brother's beard provided a sidesplitting carnival
attraction. The blacksmith at his forge was a fearsome picture.
Ste-Marie must have made a satisfying picture to any blackrobe looking
down on it from the hill on which today's Martyrs' Shrine stands. Within
the palisades, missionaries, workmen, Hurons and visitors from other tribes
moved among the orderly buildings. Around it lay the area of tilled land
which had increased and prospered year by year. The animals brought so
marvelously by canoe from Quebec grew fat in their pastures.
The four large crosses raised at the corners of Ste-Marie and the Church
standing so prominently in the centre, spoke of the purpose of the place
and told the reason why the trails that led to it from the four points
of the compass were so busy so often.
Spiritually and materially, Ste-Marie had become what it was intended
to be - a little Christendom in a pagan world. But even as the "Home of
Peace" was beginning to exert its full influence on the Hurons, the Iroquois
were about to put an end to Huronia.
CHAPTER THREE
The Huron Mission
In this third of the new world included under the name of New France, there
are two kinds of Indians, the Wandering and tile Sedentary. Since our Society
has undertaken tile conversion of both, there are two principal missions
- one for the Wandering - the other for the more Sedentary tribes.
The first takes in all the country from the mouth of the St. Lawrence
up to us. And the second, which bears the name of "Mission to the Hurons"
consequently includes all the other peoples, especially those who dwell
towards the West and the South as far as the land may extend, - and beyond,
if islands are discovered there, inhabited by men redeemed by the Blood
of Jesus Christ, and capable of Paradise.
If someone asks when we shall carry out this great plan - since we have
hardly yet made a beginning or advanced one step since we have been here
- my first answer is that even if this is not to be accomplished until
shortly before the end of the world, yet it is always necessary to begin
before ending.(JESUIT RELATIONS, 1639; Thwaites XVI, 233)
The above quotation tells us that Huronia was planned as a sort of missionary
base camp for the spiritual conquest of a continent. A vision worthy of
great minds was to be realized through conversion of the Hurons. The years
in which saints walked the grounds at Martyrs' Shrine saw that vision give
its brightest promise of becoming reality.
The ten years of Ste-Marie were harvest time in the Huron mission. The
Franciscans had come first and explored the possibilities. Brebeuf and
his fellow pioneers - Daniel Garnier, Chaumonot, Chastelain, Jogues and
Ragueneau - had broken the ground, planted the seed of Faith, and made
certain that it would grow in this soil.
The soil they worked was the mind and the heart of the Huron. Brebeuf's
accomplishment, the all-important first step of the mission, was to have
won acceptance in those minds and those hearts. This achievement made the
first seven years, 1626-1629 and 1634-1638, the most truly successful period
of the Jesuit stay in Huronia. And this despite the fact that there was
little in the way of convert statistics to prove progress.
By the time Jerome Lalemant arrived in August 1638, Brebeuf had been
given status as a chief, entitled to sit with other chiefs as representative
of his "clan" in the councils of the nation.
The Hurons had learned to make a distinction between the blackrobes
and other whites who had come among them as traders or coureurs-de-bois.
The others had abused the Indian hospitality and gone their own ways. They
had taken what they wanted where they found it, attached themselves to
no family or clan and given nothing of themselves in repayment to the nation.
Brebeuf and his men, on the other hand, had come to stay. They took
nothing and wanted only to give. The Hurons did not understand this. They
had misgivings about the motives behind it, but they accepted it.
The existence of the Christian fact, whatever it might be, had become
part of the furniture of their minds. Brebeuf and his early companions
had created a spiritual Ste-Marie in the Huron mind before the physical
establishment could exist.
By 1638 they had a number of catechumens who had proved themselves over
a satisfactory period. It was time to move forward.
In his Relation of 1639, Jerome Lalemant reports the first statistical
progress: "On St. Joseph's day of last year we had only him (Joseph Chiwatenhwa)
and his family, of those baptized, who made a profession of Christianity;
one year afterward, on the same day, there were nearly a hundred in the
country making the same profession."
Missionary Activity
During the year of the opening of Ste-Marie, Father Lalemant's genius for
organization led him to send the missionaries out with orders to take a
cabin by cabin, and fire by fire, census of Huronia. He tells us its.result:
"In these five missions there are 32 hamlets and straggling villages, which
comprise in all about 700 cabins, about 2,000 fires, and about 12,000 persons."
The five missions were really regional mission centres with smaller villages
attached to each.
Around November 1st, All Saints' Day, the missionaries went out two
by two to their districts. They returned in the spring to make their reports
before that year's Relations was sent with the Huron flotilla to Quebec
(and also to find out whether or not they were going to be sent with it).
All the Jesuits tried to be together at Ste-Marie at least one other time
during the year, perhaps in July or at the beginning of August to greet
the returning flotilla. Apart from those times, the missions placed such
demands upon them that there were periods when only one priest was in residence
at Ste-Marie.
There is nothing in the Relations to suggest that the de Ipartures from
Ste-Marie differed from the matter-of-fact Jesuit tradition of casual partings.
A man has been living in one house for six months or twenty years. He is
sent somewhere else. He opens the door and goes.
However, that first November, 1639, at Ste-Marie may have been a little
different. They all lived in one bark cabin and it would have been hard
not to notice that someone was leaving. It is quite likely that a constantly
diminishing group of blackrobes and buckskin-clad helpers stood by the
River Wye and watched each pair of missionaries take its different direction.
Fathers Chaumonot and Du Peron were ferried across the Wye and
watched as they disappeared along a woodland trail pointed towards the
low hills to the west. They would cross those hills by a familiar path
to their old home at Ossossane' on Georgian Bay. The Superior, Father Jerome
Lalemant, had assigned himself also to this mission of La Conception. They
would be busy all winter with systematic visitation of the leading town
of the Bear Clan and twelve surrounding villages.
The opposite direction was taken by Fathers Anthony Daniel and
Simon Le Moyne. They walked around the top of Wye Marsh, heading along
a southeasterly route to Lake Simcoe. Their destination was the new mission
of St. John the Baptist at Cahiague' centre of the Rock Clan, from which
they would go out to two villages they had named St. Joachim and St. Elizabeth.
When Fathers Brebeuf and Chastelain left, they went directly south,
perhaps across the width of Wye Marsh, to Teanostay6, centre of the Cord
Clan. The Mission of St. Joseph II had been established there the previous
year and had two satellite missions, St. Michel and St. Ignace.
Those three towns, Ossossane' on Georgian Bay, Cahiague' near
Lake Simcoe and Teanostaye' to the south, spanned the width of Huron territory
and were its principal fortresses against Iroquois attack. A curving line
drawn through them was approximately the southern border of Huronia.
The fourth pair of missionaries setting out from Ste-Marie that
November 1, were headed beneath that border. Two future martyrs, Charles
Gamier and Isaac Jogues, went to the Tobacco Nation, allies of the Hurons,
who lived towards the Bruce Peninsula around Nottawasaga Bay. Their mission
included ten villages and was called the Mission of The Apostles.
The fifth mission for that year was Ste-Marie itself. The Jesuits
who had watched their companions fan out west, east and south, had missionary
work of their own to do. The inhabitants of the villages closest to them
seem to have been the "poor relations" in the Huron family. Fathers Pierre
Pijart and Joseph Poncet served them that year in four missions - Ste-Anne,
St. Louis, St. Denis and St. John the Evangelist. Nor was Father Le Mercier,
assistant to the ~Superior, freed by his responsibility for the temporal
affairs of the mission from making his missionary rounds.
This pattern of going out from Ste-Marie to missions which were
themselves centres of a small circle of villages was in general adhered
to throughout the existence of Ste-Marie.
The Broader Vision
But the larger plan began to show its shape as early as 1640-41.
Brebeuf and Chaumonot pushed farther south, past the Tobacco
Nation, to the land of the Neutral Nation, near Lakes Ontario and Erie.
Isaac Jogues and Charles Raymbault left Ste-Marie by canoe
and hugged the north shore of Lake Huron along its full length till they
arrived at Sault-Ste-Marie.
Expansion in a third direction came through a nation of
Algonquins who spent the winter "two gunshots" from Ste-Marie. The two
Jesuits who served them followed their nomad charges north to their Lake
Nipissing hunting grounds to start a wandering mission named after the
Holy Spirit.
Those three journeys show the Jesuit vision taking solid shape.
They also demonstrate the strategic value of the central location of Ste-Marie-among-the-Hurons.
The missionaries were at the western terminus of the only
route into the interior open to the French. From it, they would go south,
past the Neutrals, the Iroquois and the Susquehannas to England's Virginia,
bending westward to the Ohios and the Illinois.
They would go west across the Great Lakes to whatever unknown
lands lay beyond.
They would follow the Algonquins north to James Bay and curve
back along its easterly waters to link their "Sedentary" and their "Wandering"
missions in a chain stretching from the Atlantic to wherever the continent
might extend.
The basis of it all was to be a Christian Huronia with Ste-Marie
as its capital.
But the missionaries were in a race with death.
Iroquois Pressure
The natural and human enemies of the Huron people were closing in
on the nation. Plague and famine gave the medicine men a chance to blame
the blackrobe for letting loose the sickness demons. Iroquois attacks were
so fierce and frequent that the journey to Quebec became a matter of running
the gauntlet of ambush by the five Iroquois nations-Seneca, Onondaga, Cayuga,
Oneida and Mohawk.
In 1641, Brebeuf ran the gauntlet safely on his way back to Quebec.
The flotilla of 1642 was not so fortunate. It reached its destination
safely but was attacked by Mohawks on the way back, just one day out from
Three Rivers. Among the captives taken were Father Isaac Jogues and two
donn6s, William Couture and Rene Goupil.
Father Jogues was severely tortured, then held as a captive-slave
for a year until the Dutch at Fort Orange helped him escape to New Amsterdam
and France. William Couture, the lay equivalent of Brebeuf, so won the
admiration of the Iroquois by his strength and fortitude that they adopted
him and sent him back later as an ambassador to the French. Rene' Goupil,
surgeon and lay apostle on his way to join the staff of the hospital at
Ste-Marie, was put to death in the Mohawk village of Ossernenon on September
29, 1642. He was the first to die of the eight canonized martyrs of the
Huron mission.
As the Iroquois pressure increased, so did the rate of conversions
in Huronia. In 1644, Father Lalemant was reporting that the growth of Christianity
around the mission-centres had required modification of his original plan
for a single Jesuit residence in all Huronia: "Contrary to what obtained
in previous years, our Fathers are steadily em- ployed during the summer
as in winter. Our missions have become residences. The chapels have everywhere
been enlarged."
This September, Father Paul Ragueneau relieved Father Lalemant
as Superior of the Huron mission and Father Brebeuf came back to Huronia.
It was a dangerous summer on the Great River Route.
Three of our Huron flotillas left Quebec only to be intercepted by the
Iroquois. The fourth, with Br6beuf at one of the paddles, got through with
the aid of "22 soldiers sent out from France by the Queen." The soldiers
returned to Quebec the following summer. In 1646, Father Isaac Jogues,
having returned to New France and gone to convert the Iroquois who had
tortured him, met martyrdom in the Mohawk Valley, October 18. A day after
him, at the same place, Donne Jean de la Lande suffered the same fate.
No news got to Quebec from Huronia in 1647. The Iroquois came
so close to the Huron country in such strength as to compel the abandonment
of Cahiague' at the northern end of Lake Simcoe. This had been the nation's
major defense against attack from the east. The interior villages were
now wide open to surprise att~k along one of the most travelled routes
from Iroquois country.
At the same time the Huron sorcerers made one last fierce attempt
to incite the die-hard pagans to violence against the missionaries. The
conspiracy resulted in the murder on April 28, 1648, of another donne',
22-year-old Jacques Douart. His head was split by a tomahawk just a little
way outside the palisades of Ste-Marie.
Yet Father Brebeuf could sit down calmly by a fireplace in the
central residence, on June 2nd of the same year, and write to the Father
General in Rome: "In one way the condition of our affairs is excellent
. . Our Christians are making good progress, not only in numbers, but in
virtue as well. Many opportunities are offered us to preach the gospel
far and wide.. There were 1300 baptisms to report since the last
Relation.
Father Brebeuf made no mention in his letter that although he
was stationed at Ste-Marie he did not enjoy the warmth of the residence
too often. He was the anonymous priest referred to in Ragueneau's Relation
of that year: "The Mission of Ste-Marie comprises twelve or thirteen villages.
A single Father, with great fatigue, goes the round continually visiting
them." Nor did he consider it of sufficient importance to note that he
had assisted at the moving to a new site of St. Ignace, a village in which
he was well known since he had served it nine years previously when it
was attached to Teanostaye'.
Shadows of Destruction
Exactly one month after Brebeuf wrote his letter, Father Daniel finished
his annual retreat at Ste-Marie and returned to his mission of St. Joseph
at Teanostaye'. Two days later, on July 4, 1648, the Iroquois descended
upon the place and burnt it to the ground. Seven hundred men, women and
children died or were taken captive in the raid, but "a number greater
than this" were able to escape in the direction of Ste-Marie because Father
Daniel walked in his vestments towards the Iroquois, drew their fire upon
himself, and gained for them the time they needed.
With two of its three largest towns gone and the third away off
to the west against Georgian Bay, all southern and eastern Huronia was
exposed to the Iroquois. Ste-Marie had lost the outer ring of fortified
towns which gave it se curity. St. Ignace was now the first village in
the path of any invaders entering the country from the direction of Lake
Simcoe. The stage was set for the last act of the Huron tragedy.
The missionaries, however, had no least feeling of anything coming
to an end. Death was individual. The mission would go on. They lived so
close to martyrdom, had contemplated its face so well, esteemed its Christian
value so highly, that when it visited them it came not as a stranger but
as an expected acquaintance, even as a friend.
They did all they could, however, to preserve the lives of their
charges and to save Huronia. Father Ragueneau almost apologizes for his
material preparations in a letter to Rome dated just fifteen days before
Brebeuf and Gabriel Lalemant were martyred and the Huron nation effectively
destroyed. He mentions the eight soldiers who had been sent from Quebec
and goes on: " . . . we are so threatened by the hostile rage of our enemies
that, unless we wish our enterprise and ourselves to perish in an hour,
- and indeed wish that the Faith, now widely spread in these lands, should
be utterly destroyed - it was quite necessary for us to seek the protection
of these men, who devote themselves to both domestic duties and farm work,
and also to the building of fortifications and to military service."
Far from asking for temporal help, he says they do not need it:
"For we have larger supplies from fishing and hunting than formerly and
we have not merely fish and eggs, but also pork and milk products, and
even cattle, from which we hope for great addition to our store."
In spite of the number of Indian guests receiving food and hospitality
having reached 6,000 for the year, the storehouses were full enough for
him to report that they had supplies on hand sufficient for three years.
He is obviously talking of a prosperous mission, looking only
to the future. Baptisms for the year were 1700, "not counting many whom
we shall mention below as baptized by Father Anthony Daniel, the number
of whom could not be accurately given."
He speaks enthusiastically of a new mission on Manitoulin Island,
which they have named the Island of Ste-Marie. The closing of this letter
breathes peace and confidence such is the condition of this house, 'and
indeed of the whole mission, that I think hardly anything could be added
to the piety, obedience, humility, patience and charity of our brethren
and to their scrupulous observance of the rules.
"We are all of one heart, one soul, one spirit of the Society.
Nay, what must seem more wonderful, out of all the men attached to the
house, of conditions and nature so varied, - servants, boys, donne's, soldiers
- there is not one who does not seriously attend to his soul's salvation.
As a result, vice finds no place here, virtue rules, and the place is a
home of holiness."
Iroquois Close In
Before that hope-filled letter could get as far as Three Rivers, the Iroquois
terror had struck again, this time with final devastation.
John de Brebeuf and Gabriel Lalemant (nephew of Jerome) were captured
a scant three miles from Ste-Marie, taken to St. Ignace, three miles farther
east, tortured and put to death.
That was March 16 and 17. At midnight on March 19, the inhabitants
of Ossossane', the one remaining large town, heard a false alarm that the
Iroquois were upon them. They streamed out from their palisades in panic
and fled through the night across the ice of Nottawasaga Bay to the Petun
villages 33 miles away.
On May 1, Father Ragueneau sent out his Relation for the year.
In it he wrote:
"Part of the Huron country, as a consequence of the losses sustained,
now lies desolate. Fifteen villages have been abandoned, their inhabitants
scattering where they could in the thickets and forests, on the lakes and
rivers in the islands, most of them unobserved by the enemy. Others have
betaken themselves to the neighbouring nations better able to bear the
stress of war.
"In less than a fortnight our House of Ste-Marie has found itself
stripped bare on every side. It is the only one left standing in the terror-stricken
region, the most exposed to the incursions of the enemy. Those who have
forsaken their former dwellings, have set fire to them themselves, less
they should serve as shelter and stronghold to the Iroquois."
The Relation tells us that while the attack was at its height,
the Jesuits and all others at Ste-Marie had no thought that their defenses
were enough to hold off such a strong force of Iroquois: ". . . for we
all regarded ourselves as so many victims consecrated to Our Lord, who
must await from His hand the hour when they should be sacrificed for His
glory, without undertaking to delay or to wish to hasten the moments thereof."
The Iroquois, however, inexplicably withdrew without even attempting
an attack. Father Ragueneau at once turned his mind to the problem of distributing
his forces to suit the new conditions: "The Christians who are fugitives
have not lost their souls with their goods. They bear in their hearts the
true Faith, which makes of them a living Church."
As for the pagans. "The Nations that remain to be converted belong
to Jesus Christ, who gives us enough light for reasonable hope that we
can make them a wholly Christian people in spite of past losses and desolations."
Plans for a New Ste-Marie
Once again, as ten years before, the one question was "How?" The answer
given ten years ago had proved its worth. There should be a central mission
residence from which missionaries could go out and to which the Indians
could come. It should be accessible from Quebec and opening out on new
nations to be converted.
The answer, in other words, was again Ste-Marie. But a Ste-Marie
standing in the midst of desolated country that Hurons and Algonquins feared
to approach was useless for its purpose. All the planning and work, all
the sweat and blood that had gone into making this place did not alter
that fact. Neither did the sentimental attachment they had for this work
of their hands, this home of their hearts, this consolation of their souls.
It was useless. A new Ste-Marie would have to be built elsewhere.
Father Ragueneau studied the situation. The Hurons had fled along
the north and south shores of Lake Huron. They had for the most part dispersed
among Algonquin, Tobacco and Neutral villages already reached by the missionaries.
Those who had stayed near home were on a small island not far off the Huron
mainland. He wanted a place accessible to all those and in a location as
relatively protected and as strategically situated as had been the present
residence when Huronia was still strong.
He found it in the new mission established on the island of Ste-Marie,
the present Manitoulin Island: " . . . because in that place we shall be
better able than in any other to occupy ourselves with the conversion of
the Hurons and the Algonquins; for we shall approach the Algonquins . .
. and
countless other allied peoples, continually proceeding westward and
removing ourselves from the Iroquois.
"From that same place, we shall be able also to send by canoe,
to the Tobacco Nation and the peoples of the Neutral Nation who desire
us, some of our Fathers
Moreover, in that island of Ste-Marie we shall always be able,
more conveniently than in any other place, to maintain and preserve the
trade of the Algonquins and Hurons with our French at Three Rivers and
Quebec..."
Father Ragueneau consulted with his fellow Jesuits and all agreed.
The matter was settled. A new Ste-Marie would be built on Manitoulin Island.
The centre of the mission would move westward. Its radius would be enlarged.
The scattered Hurons would gradually gather around it. The missionaries
would be closer to Sault-Ste-Marie, which would become another jumping-off
point for trips along the shores of Lakes Superior and Michigan. The future
of the mission was assured.
Hurons Propose Christian Island
But before that Relation of May 1, 1649, could be finished, dated and sent,
a meeting took place that changed the future of the Huron mission and decided
its fate.
"Since the above writings," says Father Ragueneau, "twelve of
the most considerable Captains have come to entreat us, in the name of
all this poor desolate People, that we should have pity on their misery."
With that meeting, held at Ste-Marie between March 20 and May 1, 1649,
the story of the Huron mission turned to tragedy.
The protagonist of the tragedy was the Blackrobe, his goal the
conversion of the Indians, his obstacle the Iroquois, his fatal weakness
willingness to sacrifice himself for the souls he had come to save. This
meeting was the dramatic crisis, the moment of tension before the turning
point in tragedy.
The twelve captains brought a message and a plea. The message
was that they represented several hundred Huron families who had decided
to reassemble on St. Joseph's Island, just off the mainland of Huronia.
They knew they were too weak to withstand the Iroquois alone. But if the
missionaries and their household would stay with them,"they esteemed themselves
too strong not to defend themselves with courage."
The meeting was a long one, fraught with tension and emotion.
The Indians pleaded "more than three whole hours, with an eloquence as
powerful to bend us as the art of orators in the midst of France could
furnish to those who call these countries barbarous .
The conflict in Father Raguenean was between his love for the
Hurons and his better strategical and tactical sense. He argued with them
in vain that they would be better off on Manitoulin. It became evident
that the Hurons were determin~d to stay on St. Joseph's Island no matter
what the missionaries decided. They could not bring themselves to leave
the only land they knew as home and to consent by default to the annihilation
of their nation. The only question was whether or not the Jesuits would
stay with them and help them survive.
They reached their climax and touched Father Ragueneau's heart
when they called to their aid Echon, the Huron name for Father Br6beuf,
and pleaded with the Jesuits to act as he would have acted: " . . . he
had been the first apostle to the country, he had died to help them even
to his last breath; they hoped his example would move us; they said that
they knew our hearts could not refuse to die with them since they wished
to live as Christians." They promised they would turn the island into a
Christian Island.
They won. And the Huron mission as it had been planned was lost.
Their eloquence - or rather, the disposition of their souls, and
the reasons which nature could supply them - conquered us. We could not
doubt that God had chosen to speak to us by their lips; and although at
their coming we all had entertained another design, we all found ourselves
changed before their departure, and with a common consent we believed it
was necessary to follow God in the direction whither He chose to call us
. .
Withdrawal and Collapse
The Jesuits burned Ste-Marie-among-the-Hurons to the ground for the same
military reasons the Hurons had burned their dwellings before deserting
them. All that was moveable and worth saving was floated around the head
of the Huron Peninsula to St. Joseph's Island.
The island did become Christian and it is so named on our maps
today. But it also became a besieged fortress without either means for
holding out or purpose for doing so.
The Iroquois swept in again, right to the shores opposite the
island. Father Charles Gamier met death at his Petun mission of Etharita
on December 7, 1649. Noel Chabanel, the last of the eight canonized martyrs
to die, was tomahawked by an apostate Huron along the Nottawasaga River
on December 8.
Where there had been hope and plenty at Ste-Marie I, there was
starvation and despair at Ste-Marie II. Famine and disease brought the
besieged island to a pitiful state. The Hurons sent a captain to risk the
long journey to Quebec to find out if they would be received by the French
as a refugee nation. When he came back with a favourable answer the Hurons
once more turned to plead with Father Ragueneau. The Indians, in their
weakened state, could not hope to make this long and difficult migration
without the help of the Jesuits and the French. Would their spiritual Father
remain with them and see them to safety in a place where they could all
live as Christians?
After much prayer and consultation among themselves, the Jesuits
decided that their first duty as pastors lay with their flock. The awkward
flotilla of whole families of feeble wretches, 300 in all, burdened with
meagre possessions, made the long journey safely in forty-nine painful
days. They left St. Joseph's Island on June 10,1650, and arrived at Quebec
on July 28.
Father Ragueneau wrote: "It was not without tears that we left
a country which we loved, a country watered with the blood of our brothers,
and which promised us the same blessing." But there was much more emotion
in the words he had used to tell of the burning of their old home at Ste-Marie
among-the-Hurons.
"We were each faced with the necessity of bidding farewell to
that old home of Ste-Marie, to its architecture which, though plain, was
a masterpiece of art in the eyes of our poor Indians. We had to bid farewell
to its cultivated fields which provided us an abundant harvest. That spot
must be forsaken which I may call our second fatherland, our home of innocent
delights, since it had been the cradle of this Christian Church, the temple
of God and the home of the servants of Jesus Christ."
The Jesuits took back with them to Quebec two consolations: the sacred
relics of John de Brebeuf and Gabriel Lalemant; the knowledge that hundreds
of Huron Christian captives were at that moment carrying the truth of Christ
in places it had never reached before in the history of the world.
They also took back with them a tradition in the making; a tradition
that started when the bodies of John de Brebeuf and Gabriel Lalemant were
carried back reverently from St. Ignace and buried at old Ste-Marie with
rejoicing over their glorious deaths; a tradition of honouring holy and
valiant men which is carried on today by other Jesuits in the place where
it started, at the Shrine of the Jesuit Martyrs of North America, near
Midland, Ontario.
CHAPTER FOUR
Martyrs' Shrine at Ste-Marie Here then, I think was the house our Fathers
loved to call "notre maison de Ste-Marie" - may God grant that soon the
ruins of Ste-Marie may once again be ours and be profaned no more.(FATHER
CHAZZELLE, s.j., 1884)
The Iroquois did their work of ruin so thoroughly that a "Map of the
Region of the Hurons" dated 1660 bears the sub-title "now deserted."
But the Huron mission, the planting of the faith which had been
the purpose of the Jesuit missionaries, did not cease to bear fruit with
the physical destructioti of Huronia.
The dispersal of the Hurons was in fact a scattering of good seed
in new ground. As the missionaries continued their work in surrounding
nations, they kept discovering that the faith had arrived ahead of them
in the persons of Huron captives and refugees.
It took outside influences in the mother country to bring about
the withdrawal of the Jesuits from New France and the end of their 17th
Century mission.
It was almost 200 years after their departure from Christian Island
before the Jesuits returned to Canada.
During that time, the burnt remains of Ste-Marie's wooden structures
had gone back to the earth. The ruins of its stone construction had suffered
from both man and the elements. Grass and trees had grown over and around
them. Pioneer farmers had made free of the conveniently prepared stone.
There was not much visible by the Wye River to indicate the thriving establishment
that had once thronged with life and activity.
Indians of the Ojibway tribe had wandered back over the territory
by the time the first white settlers came. They probably knew the ruins
and used them as a landmark, just as the settlers did when marking off
their grants of land. There is mention of "certain French ruins" in a land
treaty drawn up between the British and the Ojibways in 1789.
A map in 1793 indicates them as "French ruins supposed to be the church
of St. Mary's."
A survey of the Township of Tay made in 1826 places the ruins
precisely on Concession III, Lot 16. In 1830, the site passed into the
hands of a settler. He was Pierre Ron- deau, a fur trader who had been
a private with the Michigan Fencibles in the War of 1812.
But up until the Jesuits returned, there had been no scientific
identification of the "French ruins" with old Ste-Marie.
The Jesuits Return
The first Jesuit superior at the return to Canada was Father Pierre Chazzelle.
He came to inspect the ruins in 1844 and since this day an unbroken succession
of Jesuits have laboured to restore Ste-Marie as the spiritual centre it
was built to be, and was, in the 17th century.
From that first visit by Father Chazzelle, the mind of the Jesuits
about Ste-Marie, their primary interest in it, their concept of its purpose,
has not changed.
In Father Chazzelle's account (significantly entitled "My Pilgrimage")
the unchanging reasons for the importance of Martyrs' Shrine as a place
of pilgrimage are clearly ex- pressed:
"But where then is the cemetery? where should we look for it?
Where shall we find the hallowed soil that received the torn and burnt
limbs of these 'martyrs of Jesus Christ'? 'On Sunday, March 21, 1649',
says Father Ragueneau, 'we buried the precious relics with so much consolation
and such tender feelings of devotion in all who attended the service, that
I know of none who would not have desired rather than feared such a death.'
Where were these precious relics deposited? Near the altar no doubt, where
the priest learns to immolate himself as did the Saviour of the world;
or else in the common burial ground where the Good Shepherd still loves
to be with His faithful flock. We know that part of this precious deposit
was later taken away, and if our wishes were fulfilled we should find what
Father Ragueneau calls 'the remains of cruelty itself, or rather of the
love of God which alone triumphs in the death of Martyrs'.
"Now an idea strikes me, Reverend Father, and a very natural one
too. Why not make excavations? It would not be a big undertaking in a place
like this and for the purpose I have in mind.
"Five days after my visit, when I was already far away and headed
for Toronto, a rumour was circulated that a man who wanted to study the
country's antiquities had been looking for a treasure in a certain place!
If th~y only knew that all I had been looking for were graves and a little
human dust!
"May God grant that soon the ruins of our Ste-Marie be ours and
profaned no more . . . Shall I ever be privileged to announce to Very Reverend
Father General that Ste-Marie of the Hurons exists, that I have said Mass
there? an altar would be quickly built, and then a little shrine.
And I still have hopes of finding St. Ignace, where Fathers de Brebeuf
and Lalemant were martyred. We should need only a few acres there, and
we could buy them easily. Thus, Father, we would have in Upper Canada,
two pieces of property very, very dear to our hearts." The graves
of saints, the places in which they had lived and shed their blood for
Christ, the altar of God they had raised on this ground - these were, and
are, the objects of Jesuit attention, the "treasure" that makes Martyrs'
Shrine a sacred place.
It took over a hundred years before substantial realization of
Father Chazzelle's dream. His successor or Jesuit Superior in Canada, Father
Felix Martin, was so zealously interested in the Martyrs that he became
the first modern authority on the Huron mission. His work was taken up
by Father Jones, s.j., who published in 1909 a monumental work on "Old
Huronia".
At that time the Jesuits were unable to obtain possession of the
site of old Ste-Marie. But in 1907, the Jesuit pastor at Waubaushne erected
a small shrine on a hilltop which had been identified by Father Jones as
the site of St. Ignace. The small frame chapel and its primitive hostel
served thousands of pilgrims for the next 18 years.
During these years the Cause for Canonization of the Martyrs had
been under study in Canada and in Rome. Their Beatification was announced
for June 21, 1925.
Father John Milway Filion, Provincial of the Jesuits of Upper
Canada, still of one mind with his predecessors, decided to start Father
Chazzelle's dream on its way to fulfilment. He obtained permission from
the property owner to celebrate the Beatification at the site of Ste-Marie
on the same day as the ceremonies at Rome.
The overwhelming and completely unexpected response of the faithful
on this occasion was the beginning of the present Shrine of the Canadian
Martyrs at Ste-Marie. No one was more surprised than Father Filion, when
6,000 people crowded around the open-air altar for the first Mass at old
Ste-Marie in almost 300 years.
The Most Rev. Neil McNeil, Archbishop of Toronto, celebrated the
Mass and the famous Paulist preacher, Father John Burke, gave the sermon.
Father Filion began to dream dreams. Here was the grave of the
saints and the place in which they had lived. There was the beautiful hillside.
This was the place for the Shrine.
He lost no time. Although the site of Ste-Marie was at that time
not available to the Jesuits, title was obtained to the adjacent acreage
including the hil~ across the road. By autumn, 1925, 50 workmen were
building the church, the rectory and the inn, under promise to have them
ready for the following summer.
Everything was sufficiently completed for the official opening
to be planned around the first anniversary of the Beatification, June 21,
1926.
The first organized pilgrimage arrived on the eve of the opening.
Cardinal O'Connell, Archbishop of Boston, with 600 of his people, stopped
at Midland on the way back by boat from the Chicago Eucharistic Congress.
The Cardinal blessed the Church.
Archbishop McNeil sang Pontifical High Mass at the official opening
the next day. Bishop M. F. Fallon, O.M.I.,preached the sermon. Other members
of the Canadian hierarchy present were Their Excellencies, the Most Reverends
I. T. Kidd, Bishop of Calgary; M. J. O'Brien, Bishop of Peterborough; D.
I. Scollard, Bishop of Sault-Ste-Marie and I. T. McNally, Bishop of Hamilton.
Pilgrimages came in increasing numbers during the next five years.
The bronze stations of the cross rose over Calvary Hill, the size of the
Inn was doubled and landscaping of the grounds, a work of many years, was
begun. In 1928, Father Filion was succeeded as Director of the Shrine
by Father Thomas J. Lally who served Martyrs' Shrine until he died there
in 1953.
June 29, 1930, was a great day at the Shrine. At Rome on that
day, Pope Pius XI, in the presence of 60,000 of the faithful, bestowed
the titles saint and martyr on eight of the Jesuit missionaries of New
France: John de Brebeuf, Isaac Jogues, Gabriel Lalemant, Charles Garnier,
Anthony Daniel, Noel Chabanel, Ren6 Goupil and John de la Lande. On the
same day, Archbishop Neil McNeil came once again to celebrate Pontifical
High
Mass at the place where the
faith was first planted in his archdiocese. There was a crowd of 13,000
pilgrims offering thanks with him around the stone altar marking the Twelfth
Station of the outdoor Way of the Cross.
Archaeological Study
The Canonization made more desirable than ever discovery of the graves
and sites of martyrdom. Intensive historical and archaeological research
began to bear fruit.
The site of the Huron village of St. Ignace, where Brebeuf and
Lalemant were martyred, was positively identified by the mutually corroborative
studies of several scholars. Canada's leading archaeologist, W. J. Wintemberg,
of the Division of Anthropology, National Museum of Canada, excavated the
site and found detailed proof that the scholars were right. The property
was purchased by a benefactor and donated to the Society of Jesus.
The feast of St. Joseph, 1940, saw an important step forward in
the history of Martyrs' Shrine. On that day, through the good intervention
of friends, the site of the old central residence of Ste-Marie-among-the-Hurons
once more passed into the possession of the Jesuit Order.
Archaeological investigation of the site was started in June,
1941. Mr. Kenneth Kidd and a team from the Royal Ontario Museum Department
of Archaeology worked for three summers on the area immediately surrounding
the visible stone remains.
In 1947, friends of the Shrine made a start on reconstructing
Ste-Marie. They worked from a plan based on descriptions in the Relations
interpreted in the light of Mr. Kidd's findings. Three stone bastions were
built where the lower parts of some sort of original stone structures remained
in a fair state of preservation. Certain developments made it desirable
to call a halt to the restoration and conduct further excavations.
Mr. Wilfrid Jury, Curator of the Museum of Indian Archaeology
at the University of Western Ontario, had completed investigation of the
site of St. Ignace and was working at St. Joseph II, site of Father Daniel's
martyrdom. He moved his excavating and research team to the Shrine for
the summers of 1948 to 1951. Extending his search beyond the area investigated
by Mr. Kidd, he proved that Ste-Marie had covered five or six times the
territory previously thought.
But the principal objective the Jesuits had in mind when they
set these investigations on foot had not yet been reached. Although the
principal church of the Residence and the cemetery were among the remarkable
discoveries made by Mr. Jury, there was still no sign of the graves of
the martyrs buried there.
Father Denis Hegarty, s.j., had joined the Shrine in 1949 and
worked with Mr. Jury for three summers. He continued the dig after Mr.
Jury had left. In 1954, by a nice combination of intelligent hypotheses
and patient research, he discovered within the lines of the Indian church
what the Jesuits had been hoping and praying would eventually be found,
the grave of St. John de Brebeuf. The grave was verified beyond reasonable
doubt on August 17. Working his way carefully down to where the bottom
of the coffin had decomposed into the earth, Father Hegarty came upon a
lead plaque, the coffin plate, bearing the name of the saint and the date
of his martyrdom.
The work of research into the archaeological remains of Ste-Marie-among-the-Hurons
is now finished at the Shrine. Traces of palisades were discovered in 1957
and corroborated in 1958, outside the increased area delineated by Mr.
Jury, and the exact burial place of St. Gabriel Lalemant is still to be
determined. This cannot now be done as a new complex of buildings has been
erected to give us a picture of Ste-Marie before it was destroyed in 1649.
The Spirit of Ste-Marie
With the grave of St. John de Brebeuf suitably marked and honoured, today
Martyrs' Shrine shares with old Ste-Marie a sense of one dominating presence
- the presence of a spirit whose only reason for existence is to draw men
toward God.
The centre of life at Martyrs' Shrine is, as at old Ste-Marie,
the Church of St. Joseph.
Pilgrims come from the four points of the compass as they did
to the old central residence. Brebeuf, Jogues, Daniel, Gamier, Chabanel
and Lalemant live at Ste-Marie again and preach in the recounting of their
stories by Jesuits who speak of them as they once spoke of St. Francis
Xavier and St. Ignatius at the same place. The 300-year-old dream of spiritual
conquest of a continent is still the object of planning and praying at
Ste-Marie.
In recent years, national pilgrimages of Canadians from many different
lands of origin have added their own flavour to a continuity between Ste-Marie
as it was yesterday and as it is today. Groups from Catholic countries
now engulfed by the new paganism came here to a "house of prayer" which
is at once a monument to the religious significance of martyrdom and a
promise of spiritual triumph after apparent national disaster. Hungarians,
Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croatians, Lithuanians, East Germans,
Latvians or Estonians fill the air of Ste-Marie with an even greater variety
of tongues than were heard there in the earlier days. where Europe once
provided Canada with a centre of Christian peace and hope, Canada now comforts
Europe with the same prayers at another altar in the same place.
Descendants of men who once worked here with the Martyrs come
to Ste-Marie proclaiming the faith of their fathers. Other Canadians flock
to it with their children. In family pilgrimage, they hand down from generation
to generation a vivid reminder of the heritage of Faith left to the nation
by the saintly men who lived and died among these hills.
Pope Urban viii's Brief of 1644 has been long ago renewed and
"pilgrims who come to this place" receive the Indulgences granted their
Huron predecessors in addition to many others granted by later Popes.
Martyrs' Shrine is not an historical monument to Ste-Marie-among-the-Hurons
and the men who served it.
It is Ste-Marie-a place where you come to pray in peace, where
you can talk to eight canonized saints and ask their advice and spiritual
aid. It is still "the temple of God and the home of the servants of Jesus
Christ."
And finally under the auspices of the Ontario Government, through the
Huronia Development Council, the University of Western Ontario has done
all it could to rebuild the Missionary Compound of Ste-Marie and make living
for us the life of three centuries ago in what is now the Province of Ontario.
As the visitor goes from house to workshop, from chapel to cemetery, from
forge to hospital, he is thrilled to share even a little the life of priest
and brother, donne and workman, young French trainee and dark-skinned Indian
of those long years ago.
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