The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century Part 11

It matters little whether we live or die." The patient remained silent, or grumbled his dissent. The Jesuit, after enlarging for a time, in broken Huron, on the brevity and nothingness of mortal weal or woe, pa.s.sed next to the joys of Heaven and the pains of h.e.l.l, which he set forth with his best rhetoric. His pictures of infernal fires and torturing devils were readily comprehended, if the listener had consciousness enough to comprehend anything; but with respect to the advantages of the French Paradise, he was slow of conviction. "I wish to go where my relations and ancestors have gone," was a common reply.

"Heaven is a good place for Frenchmen," said another; "but I wish to be among Indians, for the French will give me nothing to eat when I get there." [ It was scarcely possible to convince the Indians, that there was but one G.o.d for themselves and the whites. The proposition was met by such arguments as this: "If we had been of one father, we should know how to make knives and coats as well as you."--Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637, 147. ] Often the patient was stolidly silent; sometimes he was hopelessly perverse and contradictory. Again, Nature triumphed over Grace. "Which will you choose," demanded the priest of a dying woman, "Heaven or h.e.l.l?" "h.e.l.l, if my children are there, as you say," returned the mother. "Do they hunt in Heaven, or make war, or go to feasts?"

asked an anxious inquirer. "Oh, no!" replied the Father. "Then,"

returned the querist, "I will not go. It is not good to be lazy."

But above all other obstacles was the dread of starvation in the regions of the blest. Nor, when the dying Indian had been induced at last to express a desire for Paradise, was it an easy matter to bring him to a due contrition for his sins; for he would deny with indignation that he had ever committed any. When at length, as sometimes happened, all these difficulties gave way, and the patient had been brought to what seemed to his instructor a fitting frame for baptism, the priest, with contentment at his heart, brought water in a cup or in the hollow of his hand, touched his forehead with the mystic drop, and s.n.a.t.c.hed him from an eternity of woe. But the convert, even after his baptism, did not always manifest a satisfactory spiritual condition. "Why did you baptize that Iroquois?" asked one of the dying neophytes, speaking of the prisoner recently tortured; "he will get to Heaven before us, and, when he sees us coming, he will drive us out." [ Most of the above traits are drawn from Le Mercier's report of 1637. The rest are from Brebeuf. ]

Thus did these worthy priests, too conscientious to let these unfortunates die in peace, follow them with benevolent persecutions to the hour of their death.

It was clear to the Fathers, that their ministrations were valued solely because their religion was supposed by many to be a "medicine," or charm, efficacious against famine, disease, and death. They themselves, indeed, firmly believed that saints and angels were always at hand with temporal succors for the faithful. At their intercession, St. Joseph had interposed to procure a happy delivery to a squaw in protracted pains of childbirth; [ Brebeuf, Relation des Hurons, 1636, 89. Another woman was delivered on touching a relic of St. Ignatius. Ibid., 90. ] and they never doubted, that, in the hour of need, the celestial powers would confound the unbeliever with intervention direct and manifest. At the town of Wenrio, the people, after trying in vain all the feasts, dances, and preposterous ceremonies by which their medicine-men sought to stop the pest, resolved to essay the "medicine" of the French, and, to that end, called the priests to a council. "What must we do, that your G.o.d may take pity on us?" Brebeuf's answer was uncompromising:--

"Believe in Him; keep His commandments; abjure your faith in dreams; take but one wife, and be true to her; give up your superst.i.tious feasts; renounce your a.s.semblies of debauchery; eat no human flesh; never give feasts to demons; and make a vow, that, if G.o.d will deliver you from this pest, you will build a chapel to offer Him thanksgiving and praise."

[ Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637, 114, 116 (Cramoisy). ]

The terms were too hard. They would fain bargain to be let off with building the chapel alone; but Brebeuf would bate them nothing, and the council broke up in despair.

At Ossossane, a few miles distant, the people, in a frenzy of terror, accepted the conditions, and promised to renounce their superst.i.tions and reform their manners. It was a labor of Hercules, a cleansing of Augean stables; but the scared savages were ready to make any promise that might stay the pestilence. One of their princ.i.p.al sorcerers proclaimed in a loud voice through the streets of the town, that the G.o.d of the French was their master, and that thenceforth all must live according to His will. "What consolation," exclaims Le Mercier, "to see G.o.d glorified by the lips of an imp of Satan!" [ Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637, 127, 128 (Cramoisy). ]

Their joy was short. The proclamation was on the twelfth of December.

On the twenty-first, a noted sorcerer came to Ossossane. He was of a dwarfish, hump-backed figure,--most rare among this symmetrical people,--with a vicious face, and a dress consisting of a torn and shabby robe of beaver-skin. Scarcely had he arrived, when, with ten or twelve other savages, he ensconced himself in a kennel of bark made for the occasion. In the midst were placed several stones, heated red-hot.

On these the sorcerer threw tobacco, producing a stifling fumigation; in the midst of which, for a full half-hour, he sang, at the top of his throat, those boastful, yet meaningless, rhapsodies of which Indian magical songs are composed. Then came a grand "medicine-feast"; and the disappointed Jesuits saw plainly that the objects of their spiritual care, unwilling to throw away any chance of cure, were bent on invoking aid from G.o.d and the Devil at once.

The hump-backed sorcerer became a thorn in the side of the Fathers, who more than half believed his own account of his origin. He was, he said, not a man, but an _oki_,--a spirit, or, as the priests rendered it, a demon,--and had dwelt with other _okies_ under the earth, when the whim seized him to become a man. Therefore he ascended to the upper world, in company with a female spirit. They hid beside a path, and, when they saw a woman pa.s.sing, they entered her womb. After a time they were born, but not until the male oki had quarrelled with and strangled his female companion, who came dead into the world. [ Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637, 72 (Cramoisy). This "pet.i.t sorcier" is often mentioned elsewhere. ] The character of the sorcerer seems to have comported reasonably well with this story of his origin. He pretended to have an absolute control over the pestilence, and his prescriptions were scrupulously followed.

He had several conspicuous rivals, besides a host of humbler compet.i.tors.

One of these magician-doctors, who was nearly blind, made for himself a kennel at the end of his house, where he fasted for seven days. [ See Introduction. ] On the sixth day the spirits appeared, and, among other revelations, told him that the disease could be frightened away by means of images of straw, like scarecrows, placed on the tops of the houses.

Within forty-eight hours after this announcement, the roofs of Onnentisati and the neighboring villages were covered with an army of these effigies. The Indians tried to persuade the Jesuits to put them on the mission-house; but the priests replied, that the cross before their door was a better protector; and, for further security, they set another on their roof, declaring that they would rely on it to save them from infection. [ "Qu'en vertu de ce signe nous ne redoutions point les demons, et esperions que Dieu preserueroit nostre pet.i.te maison de cette maladie contagieuse."--Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637, 150. ]

The Indians, on their part, anxious that their scarecrows should do their office well, addressed them in loud harangues and burned offerings of tobacco to them. [ Ibid., 157. ]

There was another sorcerer, whose medical practice was so extensive, that, unable to attend to all his patients, he sent subst.i.tutes to the surrounding towns, first imparting to them his own mysterious power.

One of these deputies came to Ossossane while the priests were there.

The princ.i.p.al house was thronged with expectant savages, anxiously waiting his arrival. A chief carried before him a kettle of mystic water, with which the envoy sprinkled the company, [ 1 ] at the same time fanning them with the wing of a wild turkey. Then came a grand medicine-feast, followed by a medicine-dance of women.

[ 1 The idea seems to have been taken from the holy water of the French.

Le Mercier says that a Huron who had been to Quebec once asked him the use of the vase of water at the door of the chapel. The priest told him that it was "to frighten away the devils". On this, he begged earnestly to have some of it. ]

Opinion was divided as to the nature of the pest; but the greater number were agreed that it was a malignant oki, who came from Lake Huron. [ 1 ]

As it was of the last moment to conciliate or frighten him, no means to these ends were neglected. Feasts were held for him, at which, to do him honor, each guest gorged himself like a vulture. A mystic fraternity danced with firebrands in their mouths; while other dancers wore masks, and pretended to be hump-backed. Tobacco was burned to the Demon of the Pest, no less than to the scarecrows which were to frighten him. A chief climbed to the roof of a house, and shouted to the invisible monster, "If you want flesh, go to our enemies, go to the Iroquois!"--while, to add terror to persuasion, the crowd in the dwelling below yelled with all the force of their lungs, and beat furiously with sticks on the walls of bark.

[ 1 Many believed that the country was bewitched by wicked sorcerers, one of whom, it was said, had been seen at night roaming around the villages, vomiting fire. (Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637, 134.) This superst.i.tion of sorcerers vomiting fire was common among the Iroquois of New York.--Others held that a sister of etienne Brule caused the evil, in revenge for the death of her brother, murdered some years before. She was said to have been seen flying over the country, breathing forth pestilence. ]

Besides these public efforts to stay the pestilence, the sufferers, each for himself, had their own methods of cure, dictated by dreams or prescribed by established usage. Thus two of the priests, entering a house, saw a sick man crouched in a corner, while near him sat three friends. Before each of these was placed a huge portion of food,--enough, the witness declares, for four,--and though all were gorged to suffocation, with starting eyeb.a.l.l.s and distended veins, they still held staunchly to their task, resolved at all costs to devour the whole, in order to cure the patient, who meanwhile ceased not in feeble tones, to praise their exertions, and implore them to persevere.

[ "En fin il leur fallut rendre gorge, ce qu'ils firent a diuerses reprises, ne laissants pas pour cela de continuer a vuider leur plat."--Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637, 142.--This beastly superst.i.tion exists in some tribes at the present day. A kindred superst.i.tion once fell under the writer's notice, in the case of a wounded Indian, who begged of every one he met to drink a large bowl of water, in order that he, the Indian, might be cured. ]

Turning from these eccentricities of the "n.o.ble savage" [ 1 ] to the zealots who were toiling, according to their light, to s.n.a.t.c.h him from the clutch of Satan, we see the irrepressible Jesuits roaming from town to town in restless quest of subjects for baptism. In the case of adults, they thought some little preparation essential; but their efforts to this end, even with the aid of St. Joseph, whom they constantly invoked, [ 2 ]

were not always successful; and, cheaply as they offered salvation, they sometimes railed to find a purchaser. With infants, however, a simple drop of water sufficed for the transfer from a prospective h.e.l.l to an a.s.sured Paradise. The Indians, who at first had sought baptism as a cure, now began to regard it as a cause of death; and when the priest entered a lodge where a sick child lay in extremity, the scowling parents watched him with jealous distrust, lest unawares the deadly drop should be applied. The Jesuits were equal to the emergency. Father Le Mercier will best tell his own story.

[ 1 In the midst of these absurdities we find recorded one of the best traits of the Indian character. At Ihonatiria, a house occupied by a family of orphan children was burned to the ground, leaving the inmates dest.i.tute. The villagers united to aid them. Each contributed something, and they were soon better provided for than before. ]

[ 2 "C'est nostre refuge ordinaire en semblables necessitez, et d'ordinaire auec tels succez, que nous auons sujet d'en benir Dieu a iamais, qui nous fait cognoistre en cette barbarie le credit de ce S. Patriarche aupres de son infinie misericorde."--Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637, 153.--In the case of a woman at Onnentisati, "Dieu nous inspira de luy vouer quelques Messes en l'honneur de S. Joseph."

The effect was prompt. In half an hour the woman was ready for baptism.

On the same page we have another subject secured to Heaven, "sans doute par les merites du glorieux Patriarche S. Joseph." ]

"On the third of May, Father Pierre Pijart baptized at Anonatea a little child two months old, in manifest danger of death, without being seen by the parents, who would not give their consent. This is the device which he used. Our sugar does wonders for us. He pretended to make the child drink a little sugared water, and at the same time dipped a finger in it.

As the father of the infant began to suspect something, and called out to him not to baptize it, he gave the spoon to a woman who was near, and said to her, 'Give it to him yourself.' She approached and found the child asleep; and at the same time Father Pijart, under pretence of seeing if he was really asleep touched his face with his wet finger, and baptized him. At the end of forty-eight hours he went to Heaven.

"Some days before, the missionary had used the same device (_industrie_) for baptizing a little boy six or seven years old. His father, who was very sick, had several times refused to receive baptism; and when asked if he would not be glad to have his son baptized, he had answered, No.

'At least,' said Father Pijart, 'you will not object to my giving him a little sugar.' 'No; but you must not baptize him.' The missionary gave it to him once; then again; and at the third spoonful, before he had put the sugar into the water, he let a drop of it fall on the child, at the same time p.r.o.nouncing the sacramental words. A little girl, who was looking at him, cried out, 'Father, he is baptizing him!' The child's father was much disturbed; but the missionary said to him, 'Did you not see that I was giving him sugar?' The child died soon after; but G.o.d showed His grace to the father, who is now in perfect health."

[ Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637, 165. Various other cases of the kind are mentioned in the Relations. ]

That equivocal morality, lashed by the withering satire of Pascal,--a morality built on the doctrine that all means are permissible for saving souls from perdition, and that sin itself is no sin when its object is the "greater glory of G.o.d,"--found far less scope in the rude wilderness of the Hurons than among the interests, ambitions, and pa.s.sions of civilized life. Nor were these men, chosen from the purest of their Order, personally well fitted to ill.u.s.trate the capabilities of this elastic system. Yet now and then, by the light of their own writings, we may observe that the teachings of the school of Loyola had not been wholly without effect in the formation of their ethics.

But when we see them, in the gloomy February of 1637, and the gloomier months that followed, toiling on foot from one infected town to another, wading through the sodden snow, under the bare and dripping forests, drenched with incessant rains, till they descried at length through the storm the cl.u.s.tered dwellings of some barbarous hamlet,--when we see them entering, one after another, these wretched abodes of misery and darkness, and all for one sole end, the baptism of the sick and dying, we may smile at the futility of the object, but we must needs admire the self- sacrificing zeal with which it was pursued.

CHAPTER IX.

1637.

CHARACTER OF THE CANADIAN JESUITS.

JEAN DE BReBEUF.--CHARLES GARNIER.--JOSEPH MARIE CHAUMONOT.-- NOeL CHABANEL.--ISAAC JOGUES.--OTHER JESUITS.--NATURE OF THEIR FAITH.-- SUPERNATURALISM.--VISIONS.--MIRACLES.

Before pursuing farther these obscure, but noteworthy, scenes in the drama of human history, it will be well to indicate, so far as there are means of doing so, the distinctive traits of some of the chief actors.

Mention has often been made of Brebeuf,--that masculine apostle of the Faith,--the Ajax of the mission. Nature had given him all the pa.s.sions of a vigorous manhood, and religion had crushed them, curbed them, or tamed them to do her work,--like a dammed-up torrent, sluiced and guided to grind and saw and weave for the good of man. Beside him, in strange contrast, stands his co-laborer, Charles Garnier. Both were of n.o.ble birth and gentle nurture; but here the parallel ends. Garnier's face was beardless, though he was above thirty years old. For this he was laughed at by his friends in Paris, but admired by the Indians, who thought him handsome. [ "C'est pourquoi j'ai bien gagne quitter la France, ou vous me fesiez la guerre de n'avoir point de barbe; car c'est ce qui me fait estimes beau des Sauvages."--Lettres de Garnier, MSS. ]

His const.i.tution, bodily or mental, was by no means robust. From boyhood, he had shown a delicate and sensitive nature, a tender conscience, and a p.r.o.neness to religious emotion. He had never gone with his schoolmates to inns and other places of amus.e.m.e.nt, but kept his pocket-money to give to beggars. One of his brothers relates of him, that, seeing an obscene book, he bought and destroyed it, lest other boys should be injured by it. He had always wished to be a Jesuit, and, after a novitiate which is described as most edifying, he became a professed member of the Order. The Church, indeed, absorbed the greater part, if not the whole, of this pious family,--one brother being a Carmelite, another a Capuchin, and a third a Jesuit, while there seems also to have been a fourth under vows. Of Charles Garnier there remain twenty-four letters, written at various times to his father and two of his brothers, chiefly during his missionary life among the Hurons.

They breathe the deepest and most intense Roman Catholic piety, and a spirit enthusiastic, yet sad, as of one renouncing all the hopes and prizes of the world, and living for Heaven alone. The affections of his sensitive nature, severed from earthly objects, found relief in an ardent adoration of the Virgin Mary. With none of the bone and sinew of rugged manhood, he entered, not only without hesitation, but with eagerness, on a life which would have tried the boldest; and, sustained by the spirit within him, he was more than equal to it. His fellow-missionaries thought him a saint; and had he lived a century or two earlier, he would perhaps have been canonized: yet, while all his life was a willing martyrdom, one can discern, amid his admirable virtues, some slight lingerings of mortal vanity. Thus, in three several letters, he speaks of his great success in baptizing, and plainly intimates that he had sent more souls to Heaven than the other Jesuits.

[ The above sketch of Garnier is drawn from various sources.

Observations du P. Henri de St. Joseph, Carme, sur son Frere le P. Charles Garnier, MS.--Abrege de la Vie du R. Pere Charles Garnier, MS.

This unpublished sketch bears the signature of the Jesuit Ragueneau, with the date 1652. For the opportunity of consulting it I am indebted to Rev. Felix Martin, S. J.--Lettres du P. Charles Garnier, MSS. These embrace his correspondence from the Huron country, and are exceedingly characteristic and striking. There is another letter in Carayon, Premiere Mission.--Garnier's family was wealthy, as well as n.o.ble.

Its members seem to have been strongly attached to each other, and the young priest's father was greatly distressed at his departure for Canada. ]

Next appears a young man of about twenty-seven years, Joseph Marie Chaumonot. Unlike Brebeuf and Garnier, he was of humble origin,--his father being a vine-dresser, and his mother the daughter of a poor village schoolmaster. At an early age they sent him to Chatillon on the Seine, where he lived with his uncle, a priest, who taught him to speak Latin, and awakened his religious susceptibilities, which were naturally strong. This did not prevent him from yielding to the persuasions of one of his companions to run off to Beaune, a town of Burgundy, where the fugitives proposed to study music under the Fathers of the Oratory.

To provide funds for the journey, he stole a sum of about the value of a dollar from his uncle, the priest. This act, which seems to have been a mere peccadillo of boyish levity, determined his future career. Finding himself in total dest.i.tution at Beaune, he wrote to his mother for money, and received in reply an order from his father to come home. Stung with the thought of being posted as a thief in his native village, he resolved not to do so, but to set out forthwith on a pilgrimage to Rome; and accordingly, tattered and penniless, he took the road for the sacred city. Soon a conflict began within him between his misery and the pride which forbade him to beg. The pride was forced to succ.u.mb. He begged from door to door; slept under sheds by the wayside, or in haystacks; and now and then found lodging and a meal at a convent. Thus, sometimes alone, sometimes with vagabonds whom he met on the road, he made his way through Savoy and Lombardy in a pitiable condition of dest.i.tution, filth, and disease. At length he reached Ancona, when the thought occured to him of visiting the Holy House of Loretto, and imploring the succor of the Virgin Mary. Nor were his hopes disappointed. He had reached that renowned shrine, knelt, paid his devotions, and offered his prayer, when, as he issued from the door of the chapel, he was accosted by a young man, whom he conjectures to have been an angel descended to his relief, and who was probably some penitent or devotee bent on works of charity or self-mortification. With a voice of the greatest kindness, he proffered his aid to the wretched boy, whose appearance was alike fitted to awaken pity and disgust. The conquering of a natural repugnance to filth, in the interest of charity and humility, is a conspicuous virtue in most of the Roman Catholic saints; and whatever merit may attach to it was acquired in an extraordinary degree by the young man in question.

Apparently, he was a physician; for he not only restored the miserable wanderer to a condition of comparative decency, but cured him of a grievous malady, the result of neglect. Chaumonot went on his way, thankful to his benefactor, and overflowing with an enthusiasm of grat.i.tude to Our Lady of Loretto.

[ "Si la moindre dame m'avoit fait rendre ce service par le dernier de ses valets, n'aurois-je pas dus lui en rendre toutes les reconnoissances possibles? Et si apres une telle charite elle s'etoit offerte a me servir toujours de mesme, comment aurois-je d l'honorer, lui obeir, l'aimer toute ma vie! Pardon, Reine des Anges et des hommes! pardon de ce qu'apres avoir recu de vous tant de marques, par lesquelles vous m'avez convaincu que vous m'avez adopte pour votre fils, j'ai eu l'ingrat.i.tude pendant des annees entieres de me comporter encore plutot en esclave de Satan qu'en enfant d'une Mere Vierge. O que vous etes bonne et charitable! puisque quelques obstacles que mes peches ayent pu mettre a vos graces, vous n'avez jamais cesse de m'attirer au bien; jusque la que vous m'avez fait admettre dans la Sainte Compagnie de Jesus, votre fils."--Chaumonot, Vie, 20. The above is from the very curious autobiography written by Chaumonot, at the command of his Superior, in 1688. The original ma.n.u.script is at the Hotel Dieu of Quebec.

Mr. Shea has printed it. ]

As he journeyed towards Rome, an old burgher, at whose door he had begged, employed him as a servant. He soon became known to a Jesuit, to whom he had confessed himself in Latin; and as his acquirements were considerable for his years, he was eventually employed as teacher of a low cla.s.s in one of the Jesuit schools. Nature had inclined him to a life of devotion. He would fain be a hermit, and, to that end, practised eating green ears of wheat; but, finding he could not swallow them, conceived that he had mistaken his vocation. Then a strong desire grew up within him to become a Recollet, a Capuchin, or, above all, a Jesuit; and at length the wish of his heart was answered. At the age of twenty-one, he was admitted to the Jesuit novitiate. [ 1 ] Soon after its close, a small duodecimo volume was placed in his hands. It was a Relation of the Canadian mission, and contained one of those narratives of Brebeuf which have been often cited in the preceding pages. Its effect was immediate. Burning to share those glorious toils, the young priest asked to be sent to Canada; and his request was granted.

[ 1 His age, when he left his uncle, the priest, is not mentioned.

But he must have been a mere child; for, at the end of his novitiate, he had forgotten his native language, and was forced to learn it a second time.