THE JESUIT RELATIONS.

[Sidenote: 1880.]

When the children met Col. Ingham the next week, Fergus said that as they came out he had been telling the others that he had always wished that people would tell more of the beginnings of America. “To tell the truth,” said Fergus, “I had supposed they did not know; but when we made our camp on the Maguadavik River last summer, when I really felt as if we were the first settlers in a wilderness, I wondered very much whether John Smith did just that thing at Jamestown, or whether he began in some other way.”

“We may as well confess,” said Col. Ingham, “that our people here were very reticent; also, they seem to have had very little paper, very few pens, and almost no ink. My mother used to say that they must have taken solemn oaths that they would record nothing interesting; and when you do find a bright bit of early New England narrative, it is because some faithful ‘modern’ has gone over a dozen old stories and picked out one plum here and one there, and put them all into one cake for you.

“But there do exist narratives that go into just the sort of detail you ask for, Fergus. Fortunately for us, the Jesuit fathers, who were the special literary men of their time, were obliged to write letters home from the points where they were at work, and more fortunately the Society of Jesuits found it advisable to print them. Within a few years past these narratives have been translated and printed in this country. You will find them in the best of the large Public Libraries. You will find that some of them come very near your own homes.”

“Does not Mr. Parkman quote them?”

“Yes, and his skilful use of them and other materials like them is what makes his books so fascinating for you boys. Here is a story of a poor fellow who tried the hospitality of the Six Nations,--the French, you know, called them ‘Iroquois.’”

“Why, we rode out to see them from Syracuse, when I made my famous visit to Grace.”

“The same. See how they would have treated you a hundred and fifty years ago had you been a French girl.

“Father Isaac Jogues was born of good family in the city of Orleans, France. He was sent out into New France in the year 1636, and was attached to the Mission among the Hurons, where he stayed for six years. At the end of this time he was sent to Quebec on some of the business connected with the Mission there. The following is his own narrative.”

FATHER JOGUES’S STORY.

[Sidenote: 1636.]

The Superior of the Huron Mission sent for me and proposed to me a journey to Quebec,--a terrible journey on account of the difficulty of the travelling there and back, and also because of the ambuscades of Iroquois, who murder many of the Indians friendly to the French.

This was merely a proposition, not in any way a command, but I accepted eagerly in spite of all the dangers and hazards. We started off then and began our journey and our dangerous adventures at the same time.

The distance was three hundred leagues, and in this distance we had to make forty carriages of our boats and all our baggage around rapids and waterfalls. Although the Indians were very expert in this method of travelling, we experienced several little shipwrecks which were attended with loss of our baggage and danger to our lives. But at last, after thirty-five days’ hard travel, we reached Three Rivers, from which place we descended to Quebec. We finished our business at Quebec in a fortnight, and on the first day of August, 1642, we started from Three Rivers on our homeward voyage. We had passed the first day and night and were proceeding quietly on the second morning when some of the men in the first canoe shouted to us that they had seen some footprints on shore. We all landed and examined the tracks they had seen. We could not agree as to what they were. Some said Iroquois, and others said that they were Algonquins, friends of ours. But Eustace Ahatsistari said:--

“Algonquins or Iroquois it matters little; there are not more of them than there are of us, so let us go on without fear.” Eustace was our captain, and all the rest deferred to him both because of his feats of arms and for his prudence and goodness.

So we went onward, up the river; but we had scarcely got on half a league when a volley of arquebuse balls came upon us from an ambuscade on shore. The Hurons, for the most part, were so frightened at the noise that they abandoned their canoes and their arms and fled into the depths of the woods. Otherwise the discharge did us small harm, for only one Huron was wounded, and he but slightly in his hand.

There were four of us Frenchmen, one of whom had escaped with the Hurons, and eight or ten Christian Indians, and together we made such head against the enemy that, although it was thirty to ten or a dozen, the issue would have been doubtful had not another band of forty Iroquois, who were hiding on the other side of the river, opened fire upon us.

Upon this the Hurons lost courage, and those who could fled, abandoning their comrades to the enemy. One Frenchman, René Goupil, being left alone, was surrounded and captured, together with some of the brave Hurons. I also was taken and so was our brave Captain Eustace. One other Frenchman who had been captured, seeing an opportunity, escaped, but suddenly the thought coming to him that he was abandoning his Faith and his comrades, he stopped short and determined to come back to us. But as he turned he saw five of the Iroquois rushing up to him. One of them aimed his arquebuse at him but missed. The Frenchman’s piece did not miss, and the Indian fell back stone-dead. As soon as he had fired the other four Indians threw themselves upon him with the madness of lions, or rather of devils. They beat him with clubs, they bit him with their teeth, they tore him with their nails and transfixed him with their swords. As I approached him to give him some comfort they fell upon me also and used me badly. In fact, so enraged were they against the French that they cruelly tortured René Goupil and me also, biting our fingers with their teeth in a terrible manner and beating us with sticks.

Finally they all came together again. Those who had been chasing the Hurons returned, and they began all together to rejoice over their prey with loud shouts of joy.

We started, then, to be conducted into a strange country. One old man refused to embark when the Iroquois took to their boats, and the Indians murdered him. There were twenty-two of us in all. For the thirteen days which were taken up in the journey I suffered almost insupportable bodily tortures and mental distresses beyond comparison. Hunger, the glowing heat, the threats and hatred of these leopards, the pain of our wounds,--all these were nothing to the inward grief that I felt at the thought of our Hurons, all firm Christians. I had thought that they would have been the support of this growing Church, and I saw them condemned to death.

A week after we left the banks of the great River St. Lawrence we fell in with two hundred Iroquois who had just returned from an excursion against the French and their Indian allies. As soon as they saw us they thanked the Sun for having put us in their power, and immediately afterward fired a volley from their arquebuses as a salute to the victors. They then sought out a level plain upon the hill and then went to find clubs and thorny sticks. Thus armed they placed themselves in two rows, one hundred on one side and one hundred on the other, and having stripped us of our clothing they forced us to pass through this path of pain and anguish. As we ran by they delivered lusty blows upon our backs with all their strength. They made me run last that I might be the more exposed to their rage. I had hardly run half-way when I fell to the ground from the pain and from the blows. Seeing this the Indians redoubled their efforts. I was unable to force myself to rise, partly through my weakness and partly because I thought I might as well die there. Seeing me fall they threw themselves upon me, and God alone knows how long they beat me. But when they saw that I had not fallen by accident and that I was really too near death to arise, since their anger was not yet appeased, and also because they wished to carry me alive into their own country, they picked me up and carried me, all bleeding, out of the torture, but soon began again to ill-treat me. It would take too long to tell of the sufferings they inflicted upon me. They broke one of my fingers, they crushed the others with their teeth, and also tore my flesh by their nails, with the rage of demons, and when my strength failed me they applied fire to my arms and legs. They treated my companions in like manner. Among the Hurons the brave and valiant christian, Eustace, was treated most cruelly.

These warriors having offered up a sacrifice of our blood pursued their way, and we went ours. On the tenth day after our departure we arrived at a place where we quitted our boats to march on land. This part of the journey was very painful. The Iroquois who had charge of me, having more baggage than he could carry easily, placed a heavy load upon my own back, torn and mangled as it was. For three days we ate nothing but berries which we picked as we went along. The heat of the day, at the hottest part of the summer, and the pain of our wounds weakened us so that we had to march behind the rest. One night when we were a little way from the others I suggested to René Goupil that he should escape. In fact we might have done it, but for my part I would rather have suffered all kinds of torment than have abandoned those whom I might have been able to console. René, seeing that I wished to follow my little flock, would not quit me. “I will die with you,” said he, “and I will never abandon you.”

One night we arrived at a little river distant about a quarter of a league from the first village of the Iroquois. We found on the banks an assemblage of men and boys armed with sticks with which they beat us with their usual cruelty. I had on my hands but two finger-nails left. These they tore off with their teeth, cutting the flesh to the bone with their own long finger-nails.

After they had satisfied their cruelty they carried us in triumph into the first village, where all the young people were without the gates ranged in rows, armed with sticks, some of them with iron tips which they got from the Dutch. We had to march around among those young people and receive beatings and torturings like those I have described to you. When night had come they brought us to the cabins to be sport for the children. They gave us a little Indian meal boiled in water. They made us lie down, binding us, hand and foot, to four posts stuck in the ground, in the form of a Saint Andrew’s Cross. The children, to teach further cruelty to their parents, threw live coals and hot ashes upon our stomachs, taking pleasure in seeing our flesh grill and blacken. O God! what a night! To remain in a very constrained position without the power of moving, to be unable to defend ourselves from the attack of the thousands of vermin which assailed us from every side, to be still suffering from recent wounds, to have nothing on which to sustain life,--in truth, these are grave torments, but God is over all. At sunrise they carried us out again, and for three days and three nights we endured tortures which I have been trying to describe.

We passed in this way through these villages, and in each village we were beaten and tortured terribly. Finally they allowed us to settle down and try to cure our wounds.

* * * * *

When these poor captives had got back a little of their strength, the chiefs of the country began to talk of sending them back to Three Rivers to return them to the French. The business went so far that they considered that it was all arranged; but finally the chiefs found that they could not agree as to the terms, and so the Father and his companions were left as before, in the fear each moment that they would be put to death.

These barbarians have the custom of giving the prisoners, whom they do not wish to put to death, to those families who have lost some of their number in war. These persons take the place of the dead and become members of the family, which alone holds the power of life and death over them. In such cases no one else dares to do anything to them; but when they keep some one as public prisoner, without giving him to any one in particular, the poor man is at all times in danger of instant death. If some wretch kills him, no one cares. He is only enabled to drag on his miserable life through the charity of those who take pity on him. In such a condition was our good Father, and so also was one of his companions. The other Frenchmen had been given to a family in place of an Iroquois warrior who had fallen in battle....

The Father’s narrative goes on:--

I left the village in which I was held captive, on Saint Ignatius’ day, to go with some Iroquois on an excursion for trading and fishing. After we had finished our business with the Dutch we set to fishing at a place on the river seven or eight leagues below the Dutch village. While we were cleaning the fish we had caught, there came a report that a band of Iroquois had returned from an expedition against the Hurons, of whom they had killed five or six and captured four. Of these four prisoners they had burned two in my village with great cruelties. At this my heart was weighed down with a bitter regret that I had neither been able to see these poor victims nor to console and baptize them. I feared too that something of the sort might happen again, and I therefore went to an old woman who had been very kind to me and said to her:--

“My aunt, I wish to return to our village. I cannot stay here. It is not that I expect to be treated more kindly at the village, where indeed I am daily exposed to every species of torture and am compelled to be witness of most horrible cruelties, but my heart tells me that I should allow no man to suffer death without endeavoring to offer him baptism.”

She approved of my words and gave me something to eat on the road. I embarked in the first canoe that was going up the river to our village, accompanied and conducted by five or six Iroquois. When we had reached the Dutch on the river, I learned that our village was much incensed against all the French, and that they only awaited my return in order to burn me alive.

The cause of this was as follows. Some time ago, among all the bands of Iroquois who were continually going upon the war-path against the Algonquins, the Hurons, and the French, there was one band which took the idea of going to spy out the French and their savage allies. Among this band was a Huron who had been captured by the Iroquois and had been adopted into the tribe. This man came to me to ask if I had any letters to send to the French, hoping no doubt to get some information in this way. But as I did not doubt that the French would be upon their guard against him, and moreover as I thought it very necessary that the French should know something of the plans and designs of their enemies, I found means of procuring a bit of paper upon which to write a message. I knew very well the danger to which I exposed myself, and I knew too that if anything should happen to these warriors the blame would fall upon me; that they would hold me responsible and would accuse my letters. I foresaw that I should be put to death, but death seemed to me easy and agreeable when I reflected that it would be used for the well-being and consolation of the French, and the poor Indians who learn from them the word of the Lord. I gave, then, my letter to the young warrior, who never returned. The story that his comrades brought back was that he had carried the letter to the fort of Richelieu, and that as soon as the French had caught sight of them they had fired a cannon at them so that they had fled, scattering in all directions, leaving one of their canoes, together with their guns and powder and ball and some other baggage.

When these news were brought to the village they cried out that my letters were the cause of this treatment. The report went around and at last came to my ears; they reproached me with their bad luck and spoke of nothing but burning me, and if I had been at the village at the return of the warriors, fire, rage, and cruelty would have cost me my life. Unhappily another band returning from Montreal, where they had been beaten by the French, told of one of their men who had been killed and two who were wounded. Everybody considered me the cause of this ill-luck and was awaiting my return with impatience.

To resume my story. The Captain of the post of Dutch, where we were at this time, knowing pretty well the state of the Indians’ mind toward me, and knowing too that the Chevalier de Montmagny had forbidden the Indians of New France to make any attacks upon the Dutch, showed me the means of saving myself. “Here,” said he to me, “here is a ship at anchor which is to sail in a few days. Get into it quietly. It is going first to Virginia and then to Bordeaux or La Rochelle.”

I thanked him much for the offer, but told him the Indians would surely find out that he had assisted me to escape and might cause his people some trouble.

“No, no,” said he, “fear nothing, get on board. The chance is good, you will never find a better one.”

I was perplexed at his words, doubting whether it would not redound more to the glory of God if I should expose myself to the danger of fire and to the fury of the Iroquois, with the hope of saving some poor soul. I said then to him that I held the occasion to be of such importance that I could not immediately come to a decision, and I begged of him to give me the night to think it over. He was much astonished, but granted my request, and I promised to tell him on the next morning what resolve I had come to.

I spent the night in meditation and prayer, and came at last to the conclusion that it would be more agreeable to God if I should take this chance which was offered me to escape.

When day was come, therefore, I paid my respects to the Dutch Governor and told him my thoughts and the resolution to which I had come. He called the owners of the vessel and told them his plan, begging them to receive and hide me, and, in a word, to carry me back to Europe. They replied that if I could once set foot on the deck of the vessel I might be sure that I should not leave it until I landed at the wharf at Bordeaux or La Rochelle.

“Very well, then,” said the Governor to me, “return with your Indians, and towards evening or at night come quietly to the river. You will find a little boat which I shall have placed there that you may go secretly to the ship.”

After giving my humble thanks to these gentlemen I went away from the Hollanders that I might the better conceal my plan. At night I retired with ten or a dozen Iroquois into a barn where we were to pass the night. Before lying down I went out of the place to see how I might most easily escape. The dogs of the Hollanders, who were roaming about, seeing me come out, fell upon me. One of them bit a large piece out of my leg, which gave me such pain that I returned as soon as possible into the barn. The Iroquois immediately shut the door tightly and lay down round about me. There was one of them whose duty it was to take especial care in guarding me, and he lay down in front of the door of the barn.

Seeing myself shut up in this way I feared that I might never be able to escape. I passed all this night without sleep, and in the morning I heard the crowing of the cocks. Soon after, the servant of a Dutch workman, who had given us shelter in his barn, entered by some door, I know not what. I made him a sign softly, since I did not understand Flemish, to drive away the dogs. He went out and I after him, taking all my baggage, namely, a breviary and a crucifix. As soon as I got out of the barn, without making any noise or awakening my guards, I passed through the gate in the fence surrounding the farm and ran straight to the river in which the ship was at anchor. In doing this I had great difficulty, on account of my wounded leg, but finally accomplished the distance, and found the boat, as the captain had told me. But unfortunately the tide had gone down, and the boat was high and dry on land. I could not push it into the water on account of its weight, and so I shouted out to the ship. I do not know whether they heard me or not; at any rate, nobody appeared.

The sun was by this time rising and would soon apprise the Iroquois of the theft of myself which I had made. Fearing that they would find me engaged in my innocent amusement I left off shouting, and, praying God to increase my strength, I applied myself once more to the boat. I did so well that I soon got the stern in the water and after that the rest of it. Having got it afloat, I jumped into it, and rowed quickly to the ship without being perceived by any of the Iroquois.

The sailors put me down in the hold to hide me, and I passed two days in the ship in such an uncomfortable manner that I feared each minute that I should die of suffocation. I remembered in this plight the story of Jonas in the belly of the whale.

On the second night of my captivity the Dutch minister visited me to tell me that the Iroquois were making a great disturbance about my disappearance, and that the Hollanders living around were afraid that they would burn down their houses and kill their beasts. They had good ground for this fear, for the Indians were provided with good arquebuses. I besought him to give me up to them if on account of me all this tumult was arising, and told him that I never had wished to save myself at the risk of others’ lives and goods.

Finally I came up from my hiding-place, and though the sailors were much ashamed, saying that they had given their word that I should be saved and that they must hold to it at all costs, I went on shore to the Governor’s house, where they concealed me. These goings and comings were achieved in the night so that I was not discovered. The Dutch Captain told me that it was necessary to yield to the storm and wait until the spirits of the Indians were a little calmed. So I am now a voluntary prisoner in the house of the Governor. The ship in which I was to sail has gone without me.

In another letter:--

Finally I am delivered. The Lord has sent one of his angels to take me out of captivity. The Iroquois have finally become pacified by the Dutch Governor, who gave them presents as a ransom to the amount, I believe, of three hundred livres, which I must return to him. When everything was straightened out I was sent to Manhattan, where the Governor of the whole country resides. He received me kindly, gave me a suit of clothes, and sent me across the ocean in a bark. We landed in Falmouth in England, and from thence I crossed over to France.

“Poor man!” said Laura, when the reading was done. “I do not wonder the frontier’s people came to hate the Indians.”

“It is worth while,” said Uncle Fritz, “when you hear people talk of Arcadian homes and the simplicity of nature to know what those words mean.”

The Pictorial History is generally lying on the table, or brought out before these American readings are finished; and Tom had the third volume open at the picture of the massacre at Schenectady, where two snow sentinels stood at the gateway of the palisades, and made no opposition to the French and Indians when they rushed in.

“This was long after Father Jogues, I suppose,” he said.

[Sidenote: 1689-90.]

“Oh, yes. The massacre did not happen until Leisler’s time, in the winter of 1689-90; and, by the way, one of the most vivid of the genuine American ballads was printed in Albany then and there about that massacre.”

“Where do you find about it, Uncle Fritz?”

[Sidenote: 1614-1775.]

“Oh, there is no local history better provided for than that of New York. Look there, on the lower shelf; there are twelve volumes of their documents which you owe to Mr. Bogart’s kindness.”

The children had learned by this time not to dread a book because it was big and had a dull name, and the various tables soon had different groups dipping through the big volumes. Letters of priests; letters of Indians, with their marks in place of signatures; quarrels of governors with their people; the awful tragedy when Leisler was executed; Captain Kidd and all his history,--unfolded themselves in the manner in which they were written down at the time; buried for a hundred years and more in archive-rooms, and then brought to light again. The children read a scrap here and a scrap there with fearful violation of chronology, but gaining just the “color” for the history which letters written at the time give, and which nothing else gives. Nothing is more surprising to young readers than to see how very small were the beginnings of an American State. Through the period of the century between Father Jogues and 1736 the whole population of the State of New York was a mere handful, Schenectady a frontier town, and Albany an insignificant fort.

The young people were surprised when the bell rang for tea. Hester confessed, as she walked out with Uncle Fritz, that there had been times when she should not have thought that she could have found half an hour’s amusement in reading old documents. “I owe that to you, Uncle Fritz,” she said prettily.

“Perhaps I have taught you how to skip,” he said. “That is one of the greatest of accomplishments.”

* * * * *

Here are two verses of the old ballad:--

“From forth the woods of Canada The Frenchmen tooke their Way The People of Schenectady To captivate and slay.

“They march’d for two & twenty Dais All through the deepest Snow; And on a dismal Winter Night They strucke the Cruel Blow.”