Chapter VI (2)

The Iroquois then dropped the mask, and war parties swept through the French colony, filling it with fire and blood. Yet the influence of the missionaries had not been in vain. One able man, Garakonthié, had listened and studied, though his unmoved countenance gave no token of interest or assent. He became the protector of the Indian Christians and of French prisoners, as well as an open advocate of peace. Saonchiogwa, the Cayuga sachem, embraced his views, and in the summer of 1660 appeared at Montreal as an envoy of peace, restoring some prisoners and demanding a missionary for Onondaga. The Governor of Canada hesitated to ask any of the Jesuit Fathers to undertake so perilous a duty; but as the lives of the French at Onondaga depended on it, Father Le Moyne intrepidly undertook the mission. He was waylaid by Oneidas, but escaped, and reached Oswego. Garakonthié came out to meet him. Once more peace was ratified. Nine prisoners accompanied Garakonthié to Montreal, Le Moyne remaining; but so frail was the newly established peace, that war parties from Mohawk and Onondaga slew, near Montreal, two zealous Sulpitians, the Rev. Messrs. Vignal and Le Maître. Though aware that any moment might be his last, Le Moyne labored on at Onondaga and Cayuga among Huron captives and native Iroquois, many, especially women, having become Christians, and instructing others whom they brought to the missionary. His labors ended in the spring of 1661, when he returned to Canada with the rest of the French captives.

Again war was resumed, and though there were negotiations for peace, and even applications for missionaries, the French Government, weary of being the sport of Indian treachery, resolved to humble the Iroquois. Regular troops and a body of colonists were sent from Europe, and preparations made for a vigorous war. Forts were erected on the Sorel River and Lake Champlain to cover Canada and aid in operations against the Mohawks and Oneidas. The western cantons, influenced by Garakonthié, proposed peace, and their proposals were accepted. Then, in 1665, De Courcelles led a force, on snow-shoes, to the very castles of the Mohawks, and though the tribe was warned in time to escape, their flight had its effect on the other cantons. The Oneidas asked for peace, and the Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas renewed their request. De Tracy, the Viceroy of Canada, led in person a force of twelve hundred French and one hundred Indians to the Mohawk country, and laid it waste, burning all their towns and destroying all their stores of provisions.

This exhibition of strength compelled the Mohawks to sue for peace. All the cantons united in the treaty, and all solicited missionaries. Once more were the Jesuits to undertake to propagate Christianity in the towns of the Iroquois league, which had been so uniformly hostile to the French and their allies. In July, 1667, Fathers Fremin, Bruyas, and Pierron set out for the field of their mission work, trusting their lives to a Mohawk party. They reached Gandawagué, and there and elsewhere found Christians. A chapel in honor of St. Mary was raised, and Fremin, sending Bruyas to Oneida, began his labors seriously. Pierron, after visiting Albany, returned to Quebec, and in May, 1668, Onondaga was assigned to Father Julian Garnier. Then De Carheil began St. Joseph’s mission at Cayuga; and Fremin, leaving Pierron on the Mohawk, set out for the Seneca country to establish a mission there.

Missionaries were thus at their labors in all the cantons, reviving the faith of the captive Hurons, and winning the better disposed to the faith. At Onondaga, Garakonthié during his life was the great stay of the missions. He did not at once embrace Christianity; but after mature deliberation was baptized with great solemnity in the cathedral of Quebec in 1669, and persevered to his death, respected by English, Dutch, and French, and by the Indians of the Five Nations, as a man of remarkable ability and virtue. The Mohawk canton gave to the faith Catharine Ganneaktena, an Erie captive, who founded subsequently a mission village on the St. Lawrence; Catharine Tehgahkwita, a Mohawk girl whom Canada reveres to this day as a saint; the Chief Assendasé; and subsequently Kryn, known as the Great Mohawk: Oneida gave the Chief Soenrese. Everywhere the missionaries found hearers, and among them many with courage enough to throw off the old ideas and accept Christianity with the strict obligations it imposed. The liquor which was sold without check at Albany made drunkenness prevalent throughout the castles of the Five Nations, brutalizing the braves; and these degraded men became tools of the medicine-men, who, clinging to the old belief, rallied around them the old Pagan party. But it is a remarkable fact that the Jesuit missionaries, while they did not succeed in making the Five Nations Christian, overthrew the worship of Agreskoué, or Tharonhiawagon, their old divinity, so completely that his name disappeared; and even those Iroquois who to this day refuse to accept Christianity, nevertheless worship Niio or Hawenniio, God or the Lord, who is no other than the God preached by the Jesuits in their almost hopeless struggle in the seventeenth century.

The Christians in the cantons were subjected to so many annoyances and petty persecutions, that gradually some sought homes with the Hurons at Lorette; but when, in 1669, the Jesuits offered La Prairie de la Magdelaine, a tract owned by them opposite Montreal, the Iroquois Christians began there the mission of St. Francis Xavier. The opportunity of being free from all molestation, of enjoying their religion in peace, led many to emigrate from the castles in New York, and a considerable village grew up, which the French fostered as a protection to Canada. This mission in time was moved up to Sault St. Louis, and became the present village of Caughnawaga, of which St. Regis is an offshoot. About the same time Iroquois Christians gathered at the Sulpitian Mission of the Mountain formed a village there beside that of the Algonquins, and this, removed to the Lake of the Two Mountains, still subsists, the same church serving for the flock divided in language.

These missions, continually recruited by accessions of converts from New York, afforded the missionaries the best opportunity for improving the Indians, and the spirit of religious fervor prevailed. The daily devotions, the zeal and piety of these new Christians, won encomiums from the bishop and clergy and from the civil authorities.

The sachems of the league saw with no favorable eye this emigration which was building up Iroquois settlements in Canada; for at Quinté Bay, Lake Ontario, was a third, chiefly of Cayugas, among whom the Sulpitians became missionaries. Finding their own efforts to recall the emigrants fruitless, the sachems complained to the English authorities. Dongan, the able governor of New York, whose great object was to exclude the French from the territory south of the great lakes, took up the matter in earnest. He brought over English Jesuits to replace those of France in the missions in the cantons from the Mohawk to Seneca Lake, and offered the Christian Iroquois in Canada a tract at Saratoga, promising them a missionary and special protection. The fall of James II. prevented the successful issue of this plan; but the opposition made manifest in the English policy roused the old feeling in the Iroquois, and when De la Barre, and subsequently Denonville, marched to attack the Iroquois, the missionaries, no longer safe, abandoned their missions. John de Lamberville, at Onondaga, was the last of the missionaries, and he remained in his chapel till news arrived that Denonville had seized many of the Iroquois in order to send them to the galleys in France, and was advancing at the head of an army. His life was forfeited, but the magnanimous sachems would not punish him for the crime of another. They sent him safely back under an escort.

Thus the Jesuit missions in New York ended virtually in 1687. Father Milet, captured at Fort Frontenac, was a prisoner at Oneida from 1689 to 1694; and in spite of a severe law passed by New York in 1700, Bruyas, the very next year, endeavored to revive the Iroquois missions; but they never recovered any of their old importance, and were finally abandoned in 1708, when the last Jesuit missionary retired to Albany. Thenceforth the Jesuits devoted themselves to their mission at Sault St. Louis; though at a later period the Sulpitian Picquet gathered a new mission at the Presentation, now Ogdensburg, in 1748.

During the period of the main missions in the tribes from 1668 to 1687, the baptisms—chiefly of infants, and adults in danger of death—were about two hundred and fifty a year in the Five Nations; no permanent church or mission-house was erected, and the result of their teachings was the only monument. This was not slight: many were sincere Christians, frequenting Montreal and Philadelphia for the practice of their religion, while the Moravian and other later missionaries found these converts, from a knowledge of Christian thought and prayers, valuable auxiliaries in enabling them to reach the heathen Iroquois. Pennsylvania, which had English Jesuit missionaries in her borders, wisely employed their influence to attract Catholic Iroquois to the chapel in Philadelphia, in order to win through them the good-will of the cantons.

Towards the close of the Jesuit missions in New York, the Recollects appeared within the Iroquois limits at Quinté Bay and Niagara, during La Salle’s sway; but they made no serious effort to found a mission, though Father Hennepin obtained Bruyas’ works on the Mohawk language, in order to fit himself for the task. After the extinction of the Jesuits, secular priests continued the missions at Sault St. Louis and St. Regis, which still exist.

THE OTTAWA MISSIONS.—In the geographical distribution of the country, the district around Lake Superior acquired at an early period the name of the country of the Ottawas, from the first tribe which opened intercourse with the French. The Jesuits, after establishing their missions among the Hurons, soon extended their care to the neighboring Algonquin tribes, and in 1641 Father Jogues and Father Raymbault visited the Chippewas of Sault Ste. Marie. But the overthrow of the Wyandots and the desertion of their country interrupted for years all intercourse between the French on the St. Lawrence and the tribes on the upper lakes. Yet in 1656 an Ottawa flotilla reached the St. Lawrence, and the missionaries Garreau and Druillettes set out with them for the West; but near Montreal Island they were ambushed by the Iroquois, and Garreau was left weltering in his blood. Undeterred by his fate or by the hardships and perils of the long journey, the aged Menard, a veteran of the Huron and Cayuga missions, set out, encouraged by Bishop Laval, with another Ottawa flotilla, in July, 1660, expecting no fate but one that would appall most men. “Should we at last die of misery,” he wrote, “how great our happiness will be!” Paddling all day, compelled to bear heavy burdens, deprived of food, and even abandoned by his brutal Ottawa guides, Menard at last reached a bay on the southern shore of Lake Superior on the festival of St. Teresa, and named it in her honor. It was apparently Keweenaw Bay. “Here,” he wrote, “I had the consolation of saying mass, which repaid me with usury for all my past hardships. Here I began a mission, composed of a flying church of Christian Indians from the neighborhood of the settlements, and of such as God’s mercy has gathered in here.” A chief at first received him into his wigwam, but soon drove him out; and the aged priest made a rude shelter of fir branches piled up, and in this passed the winter laboring to instruct and console some as wretched as himself. In the spring his zeal led him to respond to a call from some fugitive Hurons who were far inland. He set out, but was lost at a portage, and in all probability was murdered by a Kickapoo, in August, 1661.

Claude Allouez was the next Jesuit assigned to this dangerous post. In the summer of 1665 he set out, and reaching Chegoimegon Bay on Lake Superior on the first of October, began the mission of La Pointe du St. Esprit, content to labor there alone with no mission station and no countrymen except a few fur-traders between his chapel and Montreal. For thirty years he went from tribe to tribe endeavoring to plant the faith of which he was the envoy. He founded the mission at Sault Ste. Marie, those in Green Bay, the Miami, and, with Marquette, the Illinois mission. He was the first of the missionaries to meet the Sioux and to announce the existence of the great river Mesipi. His first labors were among the Chippewas at Sault Ste. Marie, the Ottawas at La Pointe, and the Nipissings at Lake Alimpegon. When reinforced by Fathers Nicolas, Marquette, and Dablon, the last two took post at Sault Ste. Marie; and Allouez, leaving the Ottawa mission to Father Marquette, who soon had the Hurons also gather around him at La Pointe, proceeded to Green Bay, where he founded, in December, 1669, the mission of St. Francis Xavier and a motley village of Sacs and Foxes, Pottawatamies, and Winnebagoes. His visits soon extended to other towns on the bay and on Fox River.

At these missions the Jesuits, after their daily mass, remained for a time to instruct all who came; then they visited the cabins to comfort the sick, and to baptize infants in danger of death. Study of the dialects of the various tribes cost hours of patient toil; and reaching the western limit of the Algonquin tribes, they were already in contact with the Winnebagoes and Sioux of a radically different stock,—the Dakota.

Marquette was preparing the way to the lodges of the Sioux, when the folly of the Hurons and Ottawas provoked that tribe to war. The Hurons fled to Mackinac, the Ottawas to Manitouline, and Marquette was compelled to defer his projected Sioux and Illinois missions.

The field seemed full of promise, and other missionaries were sent out. They labored amid great hardships, and suffered much from the brutality of the Indians. With tribes that were constantly shifting their camping-grounds, it was difficult to maintain any regular system of instruction for adults, or to bring the young to frequent the chapel with any assiduity. Lay brothers, skilled as smiths and workers in metal, were powerful auxiliaries in winning the good-will of the Indians, as they repaired guns and other weapons and utensils. They were the first manufacturers of the West, visiting the copper deposits of Lake Superior, to obtain material for crucifixes, medals, and other similar objects, which the missionaries distributed among their converts. Yet even these lay brothers and their helpers, the volunteer _donnés_, were not free from danger, and tradition claims that one of them was killed by the brutal men whom they had so long served so well.

Of these missions, that at Mackinac, with its Hurons and Ottawas, became the largest and most fervent. The former were more easily recalled to their long-forgotten Christian duties, and the Ottawas benefited by their example. Between 1670 and 1680 this mission, then at Point St. Ignace, numbered five hundred Hurons and thirteen hundred Ottawas.

The missions at Green Bay could show much less progress among the Sacs and Foxes, Mascoutens, Pottawatamies, and Menomonees.

Father Marquette, setting out in June, 1673, from Mackinac with Louis Jolliet, ascended the Fox, and reaching the Wisconsin by a portage, entered the Mississippi, which they descended to the villages of the Quappas or Arkansas. Returning by way of the Illinois River, the Jesuit gave the Kaskaskias the first instructions, and was so encouraged that he returned to found a mission, but died before he could reach his chapel at Mackinac. This Illinois mission was continued by Allouez, who visited it regularly for several years from his headquarters among the Miamis.

There had arisen by this time a strong government opposition to the Jesuits, based partly on a hostility to the order which had always prevailed in France, but heightened in Canada by the fact that in the struggle between the civil authorities and the bishop with his clergy in regard to the selling of liquor to the Indians, the Jesuits were regarded as the most stanch and active adherents of the bishop. This feeling led to the recall of the Recollects. They found, however, few avenues for their labors. Several were assigned to Cavelier de la Salle, to accompany him on his explorations. One was stationed at Fort Frontenac, and Father Hennepin made some attempt to acquire a knowledge of Iroquois; but no mission work is recorded there or at Niagara, where Father Watteau was left.

Father Gabriel de la Ribourde, with Hennepin and Zenobius Membré, proceeded westward, and when La Salle established his post on the Illinois, which he called Fort Crèvecœur, the three Franciscans attempted a mission. Then Father Zenobius took up his residence in an Illinois wigwam. He found great difficulty, and was not destined to continue the experiment long. Hennepin, sent off by La Salle, descended to the Mississippi, and fell into the hands of the Sioux, who carried him up to the falls which still bear the name he conferred, “St. Anthony’s.” He was rescued after a time by Du Lhut, but can scarcely be said to have founded a mission. The Iroquois drove the French from Fort Crèvecœur by their attack on the Illinois, Father Gabriel was killed on the march by wandering Indians, and the attempted Recollect mission closed. After La Salle’s descent of the Mississippi and departure from the west, Allouez resumed his labors in Illinois, and was followed by Gravier, who placed the mission on a solid basis, and reduced the language to grammatical rules. Binneteau, the Marests, Mermet, and Pinet came to join in the good work. The Illinois seemed to show greater docility than did the tribes on Lake Superior and Green Bay. The missionaries were stationed among the Kaskaskias, Cahokias, Peorias, and Tamaroas. French settlements grew up in the fertile district, and marriages with converted Indian women were not uncommon. These missions flourished for several years, and a monument of the zeal of the Jesuits exists in a very extensive and elaborate dictionary of the language, with catechism and prayers, apparently the work of Father le Boulanger.

When Iberville reached the mouth of the Mississippi he was accompanied by Jesuit Fathers; but at that time no regular mission was attempted at the mouth of the river.

The Seminary of Quebec resolved to enter the wide field opened by the discovery of the Mississippi. Under the authority of the Bishop of Quebec, the Rev. Francis de Montigny, the Rev. Messrs. St. Côme and Davion were sent to Louisiana in 1698. They took charge of the Tamaroa mission on the Illinois, and attempted missions among the Natchez, Taensas, and Tonicas; but the Rev. Mr. St. Côme, who was stationed at Natchez, and the Rev. Mr. Foncault were killed by roving Indians. Then the priests of the Quebec Seminary withdrew from the lower Mississippi, but continued to labor at Tamaroa, chiefly for the French, till the closing years of French rule.

The Indian missions of Louisiana were then assigned to the Jesuits, who were allowed to have a residence in New Orleans, but were excluded from all ministry among the colonists. Their principal missions, among the Arkansas, Yazoos, Choctaws, and Alibamons were continued till the suppression of the order. At the time of the Natchez outbreak, the Jesuit Father du Poisson, who had stopped at the post to give the settlers the benefit of his ministry in the absence of their priest, was involved in the massacre; Father Souel was butchered by the Yazoos whom he was endeavoring to convert, and Father Doutreleau escaped in a most marvellous manner. In the subsequent operations of the French against the Chickasaws, Father Sénat, accompanying a force of French and Illinois as chaplain, was taken and put to death at the stake, heroically refusing to abandon the wounded and dying.

These Louisiana missions extended to the country of the Sioux, where several attempts were made by Father Guignas, who was long a prisoner, and by other Jesuit Fathers. Aubert died by the hands of the Indians while trying to reach and cross the Rocky Mountains with La Verenderye.

The increasing hostility to the Jesuits naturally weakened their missions, which received a death-blow from the suppression of the order in France,—a step carried out so vindictively in Louisiana, that all the churches at their Indian missions were ordered to be razed to the ground.

As Canada fell to England and Louisiana to Spain, the work of the Jesuit missionaries in French North America ended. Their record is a chapter of American history full of personal devotedness, energy, courage, and perseverance; none can withhold the homage of respect to men like Jogues, Brebeuf, Garnier, Buteux, Gravier, Allouez, and Marquette. Men of intelligence and education, they gave up all that civilized life can offer to share the precarious life of wandering savages, and were the first to reveal the character of the interior of the country, its soil and products, the life and ideas of the natives, and the system of American languages. They made known the existence of salt springs in New York, and of copper on Lake Superior; they identified the ginseng, and enabled France to open a lucrative trade in it with China; they planted the first wheat in Illinois and the first sugar in Louisiana. Their missions did not equal in results those of the Franciscans in Florida, Texas, New Mexico, and California,—not from any lack of personal ability or devotion to their work, but because they were at the mercy of trading companies, which allowed them a stipend just sufficing for their moderate wants; but neither company nor government made any outlay for such mission-work as would have enabled the missionaries to carry out any general plan for civilizing the natives. The Spanish Government, on the contrary, dealt directly with the missionaries, and did all to insure the success of their teaching. When a mission was to be established in Texas, New Mexico, or California, with the missionaries went a party of soldiers to erect a _presidio_ or garrison-house as the nucleus of a settlement. These soldiers took their families with them; civilized Indians from Mexico who had acquired some European arts and trades were also sent, as being able to understand the character of the Indians better. With the party went horses, cattle, sheep, swine, agricultural implements, grain and seeds for planting, looms, etc. Then a mission was established, and as converts were made in the neighboring tribes, they were brought into the mission, and there taught to read and write in Spanish, instructed religiously, and trained to agriculture and trades. The mission was under discipline like a large factory, and each family shared in the profit.

The defect of the system was that no provision was made for the gradual settling apart from the mission of those who showed ability and judgment, allowing them to manage for themselves, and replacing them by others. They were kept too long in the degree of vassals, with no incentive to acquire manhood and independence. Accordingly, when the missions were suppressed, the Indians, who had never acted for themselves, were left in a state of helplessness.

Such a system in Canada would have saved the Indians of the St. Lawrence Valley and Upper Canada. What was accomplished, was effected by the indomitable energy of individuals,—the Jesuits, laboring most earnestly and continuously, effecting most; the Sulpitians ranking next; then the Priests of the Foreign Missions, and the Recollects. In our time the work of winning the Indians to the Catholic faith, or retaining them among its adherents, has devolved almost entirely on the Oblates of Mary Immaculate in Canada and Oregon, the Jesuits and Benedictines in the United States.

CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.

THE works bearing directly or mainly on the history of the Catholic missions in Canada and the other parts of the northern continent once claimed by France embrace so large a collection, that, instead of the missions being an incident in the civil history, the civil history of French America for much of its first century has to be gleaned from the annals of its missionary work.

For the first Recollect mission,—1615-1629,—the main authority is Sagard, _Le Grand Voyage du Pays des Hurons, situé en l’Amérique vers la Mer douce, és derniers confins de la Nouvelle France, dite Canada_, Paris, Denys Moreau, 1632; enlarged a few years later, and published as _Histoire du Canada et Voyages que les Frères Mineurs Recollects y ont faicts pour la conversion des infidelles_, Paris, Claude Sonnius, 1636. To each of these works is appended a _Dictionnaire de la Langve Hvronne_, Paris, 1632. Sagard’s work is very diffuse, rich in details on Indian life and customs, but gives little as to the civil history of Canada.[681]

Le Clercq, _Établissement de la Foi_, 2 vols. 12mo, 1691, translated as _Establishment of the Faith_, 2 vols. 8vo, New York, 1881,[682] gives in the first volume a clearer and more definite account of the ecclesiastical history of Canada for the period embraced in the first Recollect mission.

The _Voyages de Champlain_, Paris, 1619, gives some account of the introduction of the Recollects into Canada.[683] In Margry, _Découvertes et Établissements des Français_, Paris, 1875, there are two memoirs by the Recollects, drawn up to obtain permission to return to Canada,—one made in 1637 (vol. i. p. 3), the other in 1684 (p. 18),—both bearing on their earlier labors.

Le Clercq refers in two places[684] to “an ample Relation given to the public” by the Recollects of Aquitaine for an account of their labors in Acadia; but the work is still unknown to bibliographers and students.

For the later Recollect missions, the sources to be consulted are Father Christian Le Clercq, _Nouvelle Relation de la Gaspésie_, Paris, 1691, and the second volume of his _Établissement de la Foi_. Hennepin, in his _Description de la Louisiane_, Paris, 1683, 1688, translated as _Description of Louisiana_, New York, 1881, gives an account of his own missionary career; but his _Nouvelle Découverte_ expands his former work, and introduces matter of doubtful authenticity, while his _Nouveau Voyage_ is based on the second volume of Le Clercq.[685]

As bearing on the Recollect missions, cf. the _Voyage au Nouveau Monde_ of Father Crespel, Amsterdam, 1757; in English in _Perils of the Ocean and Wilderness_, Boston.[686]

* * * * *

On the Jesuit missions, the works to be consulted are, for the first attempt in Acadia, Biard, _Relation de la Nouvelle France, de ses Terres, Naturel des Terres, et de ses Habitans_, Lyons, 1616, reprinted in the _Relations des Jésuites_, Quebec, 1858, and in fac-simile by Dr. O’Callaghan; the accounts in the _Annuæ Litteræ Societatis Jesu_ for 1612, Lyons, 1618, and for 1611, Douay, 1618; Biard’s letter in Carayon’s _Première Mission des Jésuites au Canada_, pp. 1-105; and an adverse view in Lescarbot, _Histoire de la Nouvelle France_, 3d ed., Paris, 1618.

For the missions of Canada proper, the series of _Jesuit Relations_, as they are generally called, volumes issued in Paris, beginning with the “Lettre du Père Charles l’Allemant,” Paris, 1627 (also vol. xiii. of the _Mercure Français_), as _Relation de ce qui s’est passé en la Nouvelle France en l’année MDCXXVI_, and continued annually from the _Briève Relation du Voyage de la Nouvelle France_, by Father Paul le Jeune, printed by Cramoisy at Paris in 1632, down to the year 1672, comprising in all a series of forty-one volumes. Besides the religious information which it was their main object to convey, in order to interest the pious in France in their mission work, the Jesuits in these _Relations_ give much information as to the progress of geographical discovery, the resources and fauna of the country, the Indian nations, their language, manners, and customs, their wars and vicissitudes. The volumes have been much sought by collectors, and the whole series was reprinted by the Canadian Government at Quebec in 1858, in three large octavo volumes, under the title of _Relations des Jésuites_. Though some _Relations_ were reprinted and translated into Latin, complete sets have never been common. In Le Clercq’s _Établissement de la Foi_ there is a bitter and satirical review of these Jesuit _Relations_, but the writer evidently had only eight or nine of the volumes; and Arnauld, the great enemy of the Jesuits, having his attention drawn to them by Le Clercq’s work, found great difficulty in getting copies of any, but finally discovered fourteen in “a great library.” Dr. E. B. O’Callaghan drew attention to them in a paper before the New York Historical Society, and several collectors endeavored to complete sets. Mr. James Lenox obtained nearly all, reprinting two that exist in almost unique copies. Matter was prepared for subsequent volumes by the Superiors of the Canada missions, and the _Relations_ for 1672-73, 1675, 1673-79, 1696, and separate _Relations_ bearing on the Abenaki, Illinois, and Louisiana missions have been printed to correspond with the old _Relations_; and many of these were reprinted under the title of _Relations Inédites de la Nouvelle France_, 2 vols., 12mo, Paris, 1861. The autobiography of the missionary Chaumonot has also been issued (New York, 1858; Paris, 1869); and _Lives of Father Isaac Jogues and Brebeuf_, by Father Felix Martin (Paris, 1873, etc.). One work called forth by the Jesuit missions in Canada is the _Mœurs des Sauvages Amériquains comparées dux mœurs des premiers Temps_, by Father Lafitau, long a missionary at Sault St. Louis, and author also of a treatise on the Ginseng.[687]

1656-1684 (_John S. Clark_, 1879).]

For the Louisiana mission there are some letters in the _Lettres Édifiantes_, which are also given in Rt. Rev. W. I. Kip, _Early Jesuit Missions in North America_, New York, 1847. The close of that mission is described in Carayon, _Bannissement des Jésuites de la Louisiane_, Paris, 1865. Besides the works in French, there is a _Breve Relatione d’alcune Missione_, by Father Joseph Bressani, a Huron missionary captured and tortured by the Mohawks. It appeared at Macerata in 1653, and a French translation of it by F. Félix Martin was issued in Montreal in 1852. The work of Du Creux, _Historia Canadensis_, Paris, 1664, gives a summary of the mission work of the Jesuits in Canada. Father Marquette’s account of his voyage down the Mississippi was first printed by Thevenot, _Recueil de Voyages_, Paris, 1681, and was translated into Dutch and issued by Vander Aa. It was printed from the original manuscript by Mr. James Lenox,—_Récit des Voyages et des Descouvertes du R. Père Jacques Marquette_,—and had been previously translated and published by J. G. Shea in his _Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley_, New York, 1852.

* * * * *

The history of the Sulpitian missions is to be found chiefly in recent works: Faillon, _Histoire de la Colonie Française en Canada_, 3 vols., Montreal, 1854; _Vie de la Sœur Bourgeoys_, 1853; _Vie de Mlle. Mance_, 2 vols., 1854. Belmont, _Histoire du Canada_, Quebec, 1840; Dollier de Casson, _Histoire de Montreal_, Montreal, 1869; and _Voyage de MM. Dollier et Galinée_, Montreal, 1875, are printed from manuscripts of early missionaries of that body.

Of the missions founded by the Seminary of Quebec nothing has been printed except the _Relation de la Mission du Mississippi du Séminaire de Québec en_ 1700, New York, 1861. The vast and successful Spanish missions, extending from the Chesapeake to the Gulf of California, have a literature of their own, of which it is not our province to treat.

NOTE.—The map on the preceding page is a reproduction of a part of a map by Gen. John S. Clark, showing the missionary sites, 1656-1684, in the Iroquois country. It appeared in Dr. Charles Hawley’s _Early Chapters of Cayuga History_, Auburn, 1879, which had an Introduction on the _Jesuit Relations_ by Dr. Shea.

THE JESUIT RELATIONS,

AND OTHER MISSION RECORDS.

A CHRONOLOGICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY BY THE EDITOR.

THE main bibliographical sources for this study pertain to the Jesuit missions, as follows:—

LE PÈRE AUGUSTE CARAYON: _Bibliographie historique de la Compagnie de Jésus, ... depuis leur Origine jusqu’à nos jours_, Paris, 1864, 4º.

HENRY HARRISSE: _Notes sur la Nouvelle France_, 1545-1700, Paris, 1872. He says, no. 49, that no library (1870-71) has a complete set of the _Jesuit Relations_; and adds that, including those of 1616 and 1627, a full set consists of fifty-four volumes, nine of which are second editions, and one a Latin translation. He had inspected all but one.

E. B. O’CALLAGHAN: a catalogue raisonnée (1632-1672), in the _N. Y. Hist. Soc. Proc._, 1847, p. 140, also printed separately. Field (_Indian Bibliography_, no. 1,146), in noticing this essay, says that Dr. O’Callaghan enumerates only forty titles, of which the Carter-Brown Collection had thirty-six; Harvard College, thirty-five; Henry C. Murphy, twenty-nine. “Of the forty-eight now [1873] known to exist, Mr. Murphy has secured all but three.” Dr. O’Callaghan at that time named twenty libraries, public and private, in the United States which had sets more or less imperfect. The volumes of some years were not very scarce, those of 1648-1649 and 1653-1654 being known in ten copies in these libraries, while there were at that time no copies at all of the years 1655 and 1659; and these, marked by titles varying from the usual form, are still the rarest of the series.

The O’Callaghan pamphlet was reissued at Montreal in 1850 in a French translation by Father Martin, the superior of the Jesuits in Canada, who amended the text in places, and included the Biard _Relation_ of 1613. He also gave an account of unprinted ones still preserved in Canada which were written subsequent to 1672, when the annual printing of them ceased.

Deriving help from this and other sources, Dr. O’Callaghan issued privately, in 1853, a broadside, with an amended list of the _Relations_ and their several principal repositories,—State Library, Albany; Harvard College Library; the Parliamentary Library, Quebec; and the private libraries of Mr. Carter-Brown of Providence, Mr. Lenox of New York, Rev. Mr. Plante, Mr. O. H. Marshall of Buffalo, and Mr. George Bancroft.

In June, 1870, Dr. O’Callaghan issued a circular asking information of owners of the volumes for a second edition of his tract; but I cannot learn that the new edition was ever published. At the sale of Dr. O’Callaghan’s library December, 1882, his _Catalogue_, p. 105, showed 31 of the series; and they brought $1,068.45. Dr. O’Callaghan contributed a paper on the _Relations to the International Magazine_, iii. 185.

CARTER-BROWN LIBRARY: _Catalogue_, vol. ii. p. 164.

LENOX LIBRARY: _Contributions_, no. ii., _The Jesuit Relation_, etc., New York, 1879. The _Relation_ of 1659, of which the copy in the Library of the Canadian Parliament was supposed to be unique, was reprinted in fac-simile by Mr. Lenox. In 1854, at the destruction of the Parliamentary Library at Montreal, its series of these _Relations_, forty-three in number (except eight), and including this unique volume, was destroyed. This _Contribution_ shows the Lenox Library to possess forty-nine out of the series of fifty-five, counting different editions of the forty-one titles, from 1632 to 1672, making the fifty-five to include two translations and twelve second or later editions. The Lenox series lacks nos. 1, 28, and 35, as enumerated, and of no. 35 the Carter-Brown Library has the only copy known in America. The Lenox Library also lacks the first issue of no. 2, and the second issue of nos. 3 and 5. It has four duplicates, with slight variations.

These _Relations_ will also be found entered under their respective authors in Sabin’s _Dictionary_ and in Field’s _Indian Bibliography_.

* * * * *

The reason of the rarity of these books may lie in part in the smallness of the editions, but probably most in the avidity of readers, and consequent destruction; for Charlevoix says, “They were at the time extremely relished in France.” Of their character, the same authority says: “There is no other source to which we can apply for instruction as to the progress of religion among the savages, or for a knowledge of these people, all of whose languages the Jesuits spoke. The style of these _Relations_ is extremely simple; but this simplicity itself has not contributed less to give them a great celebrity than the curious and edifying matter they contain.” Father Martin, in his translation of Bressani, speaks (p. 8) Of these _Relations_ as the most precious monument, and sometimes the only source, of the history of Canada, and praises the impartial use made of them by Bancroft and Sparks. Parkman says of them: “Though the productions of men of scholastic training, they are simple and often crude in style, as might be expected of narratives hastily written in Indian lodges or rude mission-houses in the forest, amid annoyances and interruptions of all kinds. In respect to the value of their contents, they are exceedingly unequal.... The closest examination has left me no doubt that these missionaries wrote in perfect good faith, and that the _Relations_ hold a high place as authentic and trustworthy historical documents. They are very scarce, and no complete collection of them exists in America.” Shea (_Le Clercq_, i. 381) has a note of the contemporary discrediting of the _Relations_ by rival orders.

The series was reprinted by the Canadian Government in 1858 in three octavo volumes, with bibliographical notes and synopses, containing—vol. i. 1611, 1626, 1632 to 1641; ii. 1642 to 1655; iii. 1656 to 1672. These reprinted volumes are not now easy to find, and have been lately priced at £7 10_s._ and 100 francs. Field, _Indian Bibliography_, no. 1,177; Lenox, _Jesuit Relations_, p. 14.

There have been three supplemental and complemental issues of allied and later _Relations_; one was printed at the expense of Mr. Lenox, and the others had the editorial care of Dr. O’Callaghan and Dr. Shea, of which notice will be taken under their respective dates. See the lists of Shea’s “Cramoisy Series” (100 copies printed) in the _Lenox Contributions_, p. 15; Field, _Indian Bibliography_, nos. 129 and 1,397; and _Menzies Catalogue_, no. 1,811; and the _O’Callaghan Catalogue_ for Dr. O’Callaghan’s series (25 copies printed). Dr. Shea’s acquaintance with the subject was first largely evinced by his _History of the Catholic Missions among the Indian Tribes of the United States_, 1529-1854, published, at the instance of Jared Sparks, in New York in 1855 (Field, no. 1,392); and he published a list of early missionaries among the Iroquois in the _Documentary History of New York_, iv. 189.

The earliest summarizing of these _Relations_ or of those before 1656, was by the Père du Creux (or Creuxius, b. 1596, d. 1666) in his _Historiæ Canadensis, sev Novæ Franciæ, libri decem_, Paris, 1664 (pp. xxvi, 810, 4, map and thirteen plates). There are copies in Harvard College, Carter-Brown, Lenox, and New York Historical Society libraries. Cf. Rich (1832), no. 333, £1 16_s._; Brinley, no. 82, $80; Carayon, no. 1,322; Harrisse, no. 120; Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 945, with fac-simile of title; Leclerc, _Bibl. Amér._ no. 706, 500 fr.; Ternaux, no. 823; Lenox, p. 10; O’Callaghan, no. 699; Huth, i. 367; Sunderland, vol. ii. no. 3,561; Charlevoix (Shea’s edition), i. 81, who says: “This extremely diffuse work was composed almost exclusively from the Jesuit _Relations_. Father du Creux did not reflect that details read with pleasure in a letter become unsupportable in a continuous history.” “It contains, however,” says Dr. Shea, “some curious statements, showing that he had other material.” The map, _Tabula Novæ Franciæ anno 1660_, extends so as to include Hudson’s Bay, Newfoundland, the Chesapeake, and Lake Superior; and it has a corner-map, “Pars regionis Huronum hodie desertæ.” The map has been reproduced in Martin’s translation of Bressani’s _Relation_ of 1653, and is given in part on another page of the present volume.

The _Relations_ were not much noticed by writers at the time, and few allusions to them appear in contemporaneous works. One of the few books which drew largely from them is _Le Nouveau Monde ou l’Amérique Chrestienne.... Par M^e Charles Chavlmer, Historiographe de France_. Paris, 1659.

The story of the missions of New France necessarily makes part of the general works of Charlevoix and the other Catholic historians, particularly the _Histoire du Canada_ of Brasseur de Bourbourg, Paris, 1859, who depends largely upon Bancroft for his facts. Mr. Parkman, not bound by the same ties, gives a view of the Jesuits’ character, in his _Jesuits in North America_, which has been questioned by their adherents. His book, however, is of the first importance; and Dr. George E. Ellis, in the _Atlantic Monthly_, September, 1867, recounts, in a review of the book, the historian’s physical disability, which has from the beginning of his labor sadly impeded the progress of his work. Cf. also Dr. Ellis’s sustained estimate of Parkman, in his _Red Man and White Man in North America_, p. 259. The story of the Jesuits’ trials contained in the _Lettres Edifiantes_ is translated in Bishop W. I. Kip’s _Early Jesuit Missions in North America_, 1846, and again, 1866. Cf. also _Magazine of American History_, iii. 767; M. J. Griffin in _Canadian Monthly_, i. 344; W. B. O. Peabody’s “Early Jesuit Missionaries in the Northwest,” in _Democratic Review_, May, 1844, reprinted in Beach’s _Indian Miscellany_; Judge Law on the same subject, in _Wisconsin Historical Society’s Collections_, iii. 89; and Thébaud on the natives and the missions, in _The Month_, June, 1877; Poole’s _Index_ gives other references, p. 683. Dr. Shea, at the end of his _Catholic Missions_, p. 503, gives a list of his sources printed and in manuscript.

Of the tribes encountered by the Jesuits, there is no better compact account than Mr. Parkman gives in the Introduction to his _Jesuits in North America_, where he awards (p. liv) well-merited praise to Lewis H. Morgan’s _League of the Iroquois_, and qualified commendation to Schoolcraft’s _Notes on the Iroquois_, and gives (p. lxxx) a justly severe judgment on his _Indian Tribes_. Mr. Parkman’s Introduction first appeared in the _North American Review_, 1865 and 1866.

This sketch follows one by Mr. C. C. Baldwin, accompanying an article on “Early Indian Migrations in Ohio,” in the _American Antiquarian_, i. 228 (reprinted in _Western Reserve Historical Society’s Tracts_, no. 47), in which he conjecturally places the position of the tribes occupying that valley at the opening of the seventeenth century. The key is as follows: 1, Ottawas; 2, Wyandots and Hurons: 3, Neutrals; 4, Iroquois; 5, Eries; 6, Andastes, or Susquehannahs; 7, Algonquins; 8, Cherokees; 9, Shawnees; 10, Miamies; 11, Illinois; 12, Arkansas; 13, Cherokees. (On the Andastes see Hawley’s _Cayuga History_, p. 36.)

There is another map of the position of the Indians in 1600 in George Gale’s _Upper Mississippi_, Chicago, 1867, p. 49; and Dr. Edward Eggleston gives one of wider scope in the _Century Magazine_, May, 1883, p. 98. Cf. Henry Harvey’s _History of the Shawnee Indians_, 1681-1854, Cincinnati, 1855; and a paper by D. G. Brinton on the Shawnees and their migrations, in the _Historical Magazine_, x. 21. Judge M. F. Force, in _Some Early Notices of the Indians of Ohio_, Cincinnati, 1879, an address before the Philosophical and Historical Society of Ohio, has tracked the changing habitations of the tribes of that region. There is a paper by S. D. Peet on the location of the Indian tribes between the Ohio and the Lakes, in the _American Antiquarian_, i. 85. William H. Harrison controverted the view that the Iroquois ever conquered the valley of the Ohio, in his “Discourse on the Aborigines of the Valley of the Ohio,” which was printed at Cincinnati in 1838, at Boston in 1840, and in the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio’s _Transactions_, vol. i. part 2d, p. 217; but compare C. C. Baldwin’s “Iroquois in Ohio, and the Destruction of the Eries,” in _Western Reserve Historical Society’s Tracts_, no. 40. David Cusick (a Tuscarora) published _Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations_, at Tuscarora Village, 1825, and again at Lockport, N. Y., 1848. An historical sketch of the Wyandots will be found in the _Historical Magazine_, v. 263; and Peter Clarke (a Wyandot) has published the _Origin and Traditional History of the Wyandots_. See references in Poole’s Index under Hurons, Iroquois, Indians, etc.]

There is a rare book containing contemporary accounts of the savages, which was written at Three Rivers in 1663, by the governor of that place, the Sieur Pierre Boucher, and published in Paris in 1664, under the title, _Histoire veritable et naturelle des Mœurs et Productions du Pays de la Nouvelle France, vulgairement dite le Canada_. The author, says Charlevoix (Shea’s edition, i. p. 80), should not be confounded with the Jesuit of the same name; and he calls the book under consideration a “superficial but faithful account of Canada.” There are copies in the Harvard College, Lenox (_Jesuit Relations_, p. 10), and Carter-Brown (_Catalogue_ ii. 941) libraries.[688]

Another early account is the _Mémoire sur les Mœurs ... des Sauvages_, by Nicholas Perrot, which remained in manuscript till it was edited by Father Tailhan, and printed in 1864.[689]

The Jesuit Lafitau published at Paris in 1724 his _Mœurs des Sauvages Amériquains_ in two volumes, with various plates, which in the main is confined to the natives of Canada, where he had lived long with the Iroquois. Charlevoix said of his book, twenty years later, “We have nothing so exact upon the subject;” and Lafitau continues to hold high rank as an original authority, though his book is overlaid with a theory of the Tartaric origin of the red race. Mr. Parkman calls him the most satisfactory of the elder writers. (Field, no. 850; Carter-Brown, vol. iii. nos. 344, 345, 472; Sabin, vol. x. p. 22.) There was a Dutch version, with the same plates, in 1731.

Bacqueville de la Potherie’s _Histoire de l’Amérique Septentrionale_, in four volumes, with a distinctive title to each (1722 and 1753), is mainly a history of the Indians with which the French came in contact. He wrote early in the last century, and his book saw several editions, evincing the interest it created. His information is at second hand for the early portions of the period covered (since Cartier); but of the later times he becomes a contemporary authority. (Field, no. 66,)

Of less interest in relation to the seventeenth century is Le Beau’s _Voyage Curieux et Nouveau parmi les Sauvages de l’Amérique Septentrionale_, published at Amsterdam in 1738,—a work, however, of a semi-historical character, (Field, no. 901.)

Cadwallader Colden’s _History of the Five Indian Nations_ was printed by Bradford in New York in 1727, and is now very rare. Dr. Shea reprinted it in 1866, and in his introduction and notes its somewhat curious bibliographical history is learnedly traced. (Carter-Brown, vol. iii. nos. 393, 394; Field, _Indian Bibliography_, 341; Menzies, 429, $210; Sabin, vol. v. p. 222.) The three later London editions (1747, 1750, 1755) were altered somewhat by the English publishers, without indicating the variations they introduced. (Carter-Brown, vol. iii. nos. 847, 922, 1,049.) A portrait of Colden is given in the _Historical Magazine_, ix. 1. Sulte, in his _Mélanges_, p. 184, has an essay on the respective positions of the Iroquois and Algonquins previous to the coming of the Europeans.

D. G. Brinton, at the end of chap. i. of his _Myths of the New World_, characterizes the different writers on the mythologies of the Indians; and Mr. Parkman, _Jesuits_, etc., p. lxxxviii, notes some of the repositories of Iroquois legends.

A valuable paper on the origin of the Iroquois confederacy, by Horatio Hale, is printed in _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._, xix. 241; and Mr. C. C. Baldwin has a paper on the Iroquois in Ohio in the _Western Reserve Historical Society_, no. 40, and another paper on the early Indian migrations, in no. 47. Mr. Hale has further extended our knowledge by the curious learning of his _Iroquois Book of Rites_, Cincinnati, 1883; and he also printed in the _American Antiquarian_, January and April, 1883 (also separately Chicago, 1883), a scholarly paper on _Indian Migrations as evidenced by Language_.

So far as relates to the more easterly tribes coming within the range of the Jesuits’ influence, Parkman’s description can be compared with the plain matter-of-fact enumerations which make up the picture in Palfrey’s _New England_, which are derived from authorities enumerated in his notes. See various papers in the _Canadian Journal_.

The general historians of New France necessarily give more or less attention to the study of the Indians as the Jesuits found them; and such a study is an integral part of Dr. George E. Ellis’s learned monograph, _The Red Man and the White Man in North America_, whose account of the different methods of converting the natives, pursued by the French and the English, may be compared with that in Archbishop Spalding’s _Miscellanea_, i. 333.

* * * * *

[In the enumeration below the initials of the repositories of copies signify: =C.=, Library of Congress; =CB.=, Carter-Brown Library, Providence; =F.=, Mrs. J. F. Fisher, Alverthorpe, Penn.; =GB.=, Hon. George Bancroft, Washington; =HC.=, Harvard College; =J.=, Jesuits’ College, Georgetown, D.C.; =K.=, Charles H. Kalbfleisch, New York; =L.=, Lenox Library, N.Y.; =M.=, the late Henry C. Murphy, Brooklyn, L.I.; =OHM.=, O. H. Marshall, Buffalo; =NY.=, New York State Library, Albany; =SJ.=, St. John’s College, Fordham, N.Y.; =V.=, Catholic Bishop of Vincennes, Indiana.

Space is not taken in these notes to give full titles nor exhaustive collations, which can be found in the authorities referred to, the figures following them being to _numbers_; but the references to the _Lenox Contributions_ is necessarily to pages.]

=1580.=—The Lenox bibliography begins the series of allied works with _A Shorte and briefe narration of the two Navigations and Discoveries to the northweast partes, called Newe France_, London, 1580. Harrisse, _Notes sur la Nouvelle France,_ no. 5.

=1605.=—De Monts’ Commission. See chapter iv.

=1609.=—_Coppie d’une lettre envoyée de la Nouvelle France, par le Sieur Cōbes,_ Lyons. (Harrisse, no. 20; Lenox, p. 3; Sabin, xiii. no. 56,083.) Dated “Brest-en-Canada, 13 Février, 1608.” The Carter-Brown _Catalogue_ (vol. ii. no. 80) shows only a manuscript copy. Brunet speaks of a single copy, sold and bought for America.

=1610.=—_La Conversion des Savages ... baptizés en la Nouvelle France_, Paris. Harrisse, no. 21; Lenox, p. 3; Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 99.

=1610.=—_Lettre missive, touchant la conversion ... du grand Sagamos_, Paris. Lenox, p. 3; Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 103 (manuscript only.)

=1611.=—_Missio Canadensis. Epistola ex Porturegali in Acadia._ This is a reprint, made for Dr. O’Callaghan at Albany in 1870 (25 copies), following the letter as given in the _Annuæ litteræ Societatis Jesu_, 1611 and 1612. (Cf. Lenox, p. 18; Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 119.) Carayon says that this Annual extends from 1581 (imprint, 1583) to 1614; and then again, 1650-1654. There are incomplete sets in the Harvard College and Carter-Brown libraries. From the same source Dr. O’Callaghan also reprinted _Relatio rerum gestarum in Nova Francia_, 1613, which relates to Biard’s mission.

=1613.=—_Contract d’association des Jésuites au trafique de Canada_, Lyons. (Harrisse, no. 28.) Tross’s reprint on vellum (12 copies only) is in the Lenox (p. 4) and Carter-Brown (vol. ii. no. 148) Collections.

=1611-1613.=—_Canadicæ Missionis Relatio ab anno 1611 usque ad annum 1613, auctore Josepho Juvencio._ Dr. O’Callaghan’s reprint, no. 4. (O’Callaghan, no. 1,980; Lenox, p. 18.)

=1612.=—_Relation dernière de ce qui s’est passé au voyage du Sieur de Poutrincourt en la Nouvelle France_, Paris. A description of the voyage of Biard and Masse from Dieppe, Jan. 26, 1611. (Cf. Harrisse, no. 26.)

COPY: HC.

Upon this early mission, see Carayon, _Première mission des Jésuites au Canada, lettres et documents inédits_, Paris, 1864. (Sabin, vol. iii. no. 10,792.) These letters and others are cited by Harrisse, nos. 397-400, 404-406. (Cf. Parkman’s _Pioneers_, p. 263.) Charlevoix (Shea’s ed., p. 87) cites Juvency’s _Historiæ Societatis Jesu pars quinta_, book xv., Rome, 1710, as elucidating events in Acadia in 1611. (Harrisse, no. 402.) For the trading relations of the Jesuits, see Lescarbot (1618), p. 665; Champlain (1632), p. 100, and references in Harrisse, no. 28, and Parkman’s _Old Régime_, p. 328. These early Acadian missions are treated in the _Catholic World_, xii. 628, 826; xxii. 666, and in _Historical Magazine_, xv. 313, 391; xvi. 41.

The subject of the Capuchins and other Catholics on the Maine coast at an early date is followed in _Historical Magazine_, viii. 301, and in _Maine Historical Collections_, i. 323. Cf. Poor’s _Gorges_, p. 98.

=1613-1614.=—_Relatio rerum gestarum in Nova-Francia Missione annis 1613 et 1614._ Lugduni. No. 6 of Dr. O’Callaghan’s reprints, Albany, 1871. Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 170; O’Callaghan, no. 1,250; Lenox, p. 19.

=1616.=—_Relation de la Nouvelle France ... faicte par le P. Pierre Biard_, Lyons. Chaps. i. to viii. are on the country and its inhabitants. Chap. xi. is on the arrival of the Jesuits in 1611; and in Harrisse’s opinion, it constitutes a reply to the _Factum escrit et publié contre les Jésuites_,—a publication of which we can find no other trace. It also describes the labors of the missionaries and the cruelties of Argall. See chap. iv.