THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA
In 1641 the waters of the St. Lawrence rolled through a virgin wilderness, where in the vastness of the lonely woodlands, harborage was foundat only three points - at Quebec, at Montreal and at Three Rivers. Here, and in the scattered missions was the whole of New France - a population of some three hundred souls in all. And now, over these miserable settlements, rose a war-cloud of frightful portent.
It was thirty-two years since Champlain had first attacked the Iroquois. They had nursed their wrath for more than a generation, and at length their hour was come. The Dutch traders at Fort Orange, now Albany, had supplied them with fire-arms. The Mohawks, the most easterly of the Iroquois nations, had, among their seven or eight hundred warriors, no less than three hundred armed with the arquebuse.
In parties of from ten to a hundred or more, they would leave their towns on the River Mohawk, descend Lake Champlain and the River Richelie, lie in ambush on the bank of the St. Lawrence, and attack the passing boats or canoes. Sometimes they hovered about the fortifications of Quebec and Three Rivers, killing stragglers, or luring armed parties into ambushes. They followed like hounds on the trail of travelers and hunters; broke in upon unguarded camps at midnight; and lay in wait for days and weeks to intercept the Huron traders on their yearly descent to Quebec.
In the early morning of August 2, 1642, twelve Huron canoes were moving slowly along the northern shore of the expansion of the St. Lawrence known as the Lake of St. Peter. There were on board about forty persons, including four Frenchmen, one of them being the Jesuit, Isaac Joques. They were on their way back to the Huron mission who were in need of clothing for the priests, vessels for the altars, of bread and wine for the eucharist, writing materials, basically everything.
Included in the forty were a few Huron converts, among them a noted Christian Chief Eustache Ahatsistari, the remainder were still heathen returning with the proceeds of their bargains with the French fur traders. Jogues sate in one of the leading canoes, with him were two young men, Rene Goupil and Guillaume Couture, donnes of the mission - tat is to say laymen who, from a religious motive and without pay, had attached themselves to the service of the Jesuits.
Couture was a man of intelligence and vigor, and of a character equally disinterested. Both were, like Jogues in the foremost canoes; while the fourth Frenchman was with the unconverted Hurons, in the rear.
The twelve canoes had reached the western end of the Lake of St. Peter, where it is filled with innuberable islands. The forest was close on their right, they kept near the shore to avoid the current, and the shallow water before them was covered with a dense growth of tall bulrushes. Suddenly the silence was frightfully broken. The war-whoop rose from among the rushes, mingled with the reports of guns and whistling of bullets; and several Iroquois canoes, filled with warriors, pushed out from their concealment, and bore down on Joques and his companions.
The Hurons in the rear were seized with a shameful panic. They lept ashore; left canoes, baggage and weapons; and fled into the woods. The French and the Christian Hurons made fight for a time; but when they saw another fleet of canoes approaching from opposite shores or islands, they lost heart, and those escaped who could. Coupil was seized and triumphant yells, as were also several of the Huron converts. Jogues sprang into the bulrushes, and might have escaped; but when he was Goupil and the neophytes in the clutches of the Iroquois, he had no heart to abandon them, but came out from his hiding place, and gave himself up to the astonished victors. A few of them had remained to guard the prisoners; the rest were chasing the fugitives. Jogues mastered his agony, and began to baptize those of the captive converts who need baptism.
Couture had eluded pursuit; but when he thought of Jogues and of what perhaps awaited him, he resolved to share his fate, and, turning, retraced his steps. As he approached five Iroquois ran forward to meet him; and one of them snapped a gun at his breast, but it missed fire. In this confusion and excitement, Couture fired his own pice, and laid the savage dead. The remaining four sprang upon him, stripped off all his clothing, tore away his finger nails with his teeth, gnawed his fingers with the fury of famished dogs and trust a sword through one of his hands.
Jogues broke from his guards, and rushing to his friend, threw his arms about his neck. The Iroquois dragged him away, beat him with their fists and war clubs till he was senseless, and when the revived, lacerated his fingers with their teeth, as they had done those of Couture. Then they turned upon Goupil, and treated him with the same ferocity. The Huron prisoners were left for the present unharmed. More of them were brought in every moment, till at length the number of captives amounted in all to twenty-two, while three Hurons had been killed in the fight and pursuit. The Iroquois, about seventy in number, now embarked with their prey; but not until they had knocked on the head of an old Huron, whom Jogues, with his mangled hands, had just baptized, and who refused to leave the place. Then, under a burning sun, they crossed to the spot on which the town of Sorel now stands, at the mouth of the River Richelieu, where they encamped.
Their course was southward, up the River Richelieu and Lake Champlain; thence by by of Lake George, to the Mohawk towns. The pain and fever or their wounds, and the clouds of mosquitoes, which they could not drive off, left the prisoners with no peace by day, nor sleep by night. On the eighth day, they learned that large Iroquois war party, on their way to Canada, were near at hand; and they soon approached their camp, on a small island near the southern end of Lake Champlain. The warriors, two hundred in number saluted their victorious countrymen with volleys from their guns; then, armed with clubs and thorny sticksranged themselves in two lines, between which the captives were compelled to pass up the side of a rocky hill. On the way, they were beaten with such fury, that Jogues, who was the last in line, fell powerless, drenched in blood and half dead. As the chief man among the French captives, he fared the worst. His hands were again mangled , and fire applied to his body; while the Huron chief, Eustache, was subjected to tortures even more atrocious. When, at night, the exhausted sufferers tried to rest, the young warriors came to lacerate their wounds and pull out their hair and beards.
In the morning they resumed their journey. And now the lake narrowed to the semblance of a tranquil river. Before them was a woody mountain and close on their right a rocky promontory, and between these flowed a stream, the outlet of Lake George. On those rocks, more than a hundred years after, rose the ramparts of Ticonderoga. They landed, shouldered their canoes and baggage, and took way through the woods. First of the white men, Jogues and his companions gazed on the romantic lake the bears the name, not of it's gentle discoverer, but of the dull Hnoverian king.
Again, the canoes were launched, and the wild floatilla glided on it's way - now in the shadow of the heights, now on the broad expanse, now among the devious channels of the narrows, beset with woody islets, where the hot air was redolent of the pine, the spruce and the cedar.
The Iroquois landed at or near the future site of Fort William Henry, left their canoes, and with their prisoners, began their march for the nearest Mohawk town. Each bore his share of the plunder. Even Jogues, though his lacerted hands were in a frightful condition and his body covered with bruises, was forced to stagger on with the rest under a heave load. He with his fellow prisoners, and indeed the whole party, were half starved, subsisting chiefly on wild berries. They crossed the upper Hudson, and, in thirteen days after leaving the St. Lawrence, neared the wretched goal of their pilgrimage, a palisaded town, standing on a hill by the banks of the River Mohawk.
The whoops of the victors announced their approach, and the savage hive sent forth is swarms. They thronged the side of the hill, the old and the young, each with a stick, or a slender iron rod, bought from the Dutchmen on the Hudson. They ranged themselves in a double line, reaching upward to the entrance of the town; and through this "narrow road of Paradise," as Jogues calls it, the captives were led in single file, Couture in front, after him a half-score of Hurons, and at last Jogues. As they passed, they were assaulted with yells, screeches, and a tempest of blows. One, heavier than the others, knocked Jogue's breath from his body, and stretched him on the ground; but it was death to lie there, and regaining his feet, he staggered on with the rest. When they reached the town, the blows ceased, and they were all placed on a scaffold, or high platform, in the middle of the place. The three Frenchmen had fared the worst, and were frightfully disfigured. Goupil, especially, was streaming with blood, and livid with bruises from head to foot.
They were allowed a few minutes to recover their breath, undisturbed, except by the hootings and gibes of the mob below. Then a chief called out, "Come let us caress these Frenchmen," and the crowd, knife in hand, began to mount the scaffold. They ordered a Christian Algonquin woman, a prisoner among them, to cut off Jogue's left thumb, which she did; and a thumb of Goupil was also servered, a clam-shell being used as the instrument, in order to increase the pain. It is needless to specify further the tortures to which they were subjected, all designed to cause the greatest possible suffering without endangering life. At night, they were removed from the scaffold, and placed in one of the houses, each stretched on his back, with his limbs extended, and his ankles and wrists bound fast to stakes driven into the earthen floor. The children now profited by the examples of their parents, and amused themselves by placing live coals and red-hot ashes on the naked bodies of the prisoners, who, bound fast, and covered with wounds and bruises which made every movement a torture, were sometimes unable to shake them off.
In the morning, they were again placed on the scaffold, where during this and two following days, they remained exposed to the taunts of the crowd. Then they were led in triumph to the second Mohawk town, and afterwards to the third, suffering at each repetition of cruelties, the details of which would be as monotonous as revolting.
In a house in the town of Teonontogen, Jogues was hung by the writes between two of the upright poles which supported the structure, in such a manner that his feet could not touch the ground; and thus he remained for some fifteen minutes, in extreme torture, until, as he was on the point of swooning, an Indian, with an impulse of pity, but the cords and released him. While they were in this town, four fresh Huron prisoners just taken were brought in and placed on the scaffold with the rest. Jogues, in the midst of his pain and exhaustion, took the opportunity to convert them. An ear of green corn was thrown to him for food, and he discovered a few rain-drops clinging to the husks. With these he baptized two of the Hurons. The remaining two received baptism soon after from a brook which the prisoners crossed on the way to another town.
Couture, though he had incensed the Indians by killing one of their warriors, had gained their admiration by his bravery; and, after toturing him most savagely, they adopted him into one of their families, in place of a dead relative. Thenceforth he was comparatively safe. Jogues and Goupil were less fortunate. After a while, Goupil was killed by the Indians, but Jogues did manage to escape with the help of the Dutchmen at Fort Orange.
It was not until July 5, 1644, when the Iroquois responding to an offer of peace from the French reappeared at Three Rivers, bringing with them two men of renown, ambassadors of the Mohawk nation. There was a fourth man of the part, and as they approached, the Frenchmen on the shore recognized, to their great delight, Guillaume Couture, who had long since been given up as dead. In dress and appearance he was an Iroquois. He had gained a great influence over his captors, and this embassy of peace was due in good measure to his persuasions.
It was during the negotiations, a couple of days later, that Couture was returned to the French. However, that winter, in order to hold the Mohawk to the faith, Couture stayed with them along with Jogues.
From "The Jesuits in North America" by Parkman
