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In the summer of 1647 the Huron dared not go down to the French
settlements, but in the following year they took heart, and resolved
at all risks to make the attempt; for the kettles, hatchets, and
knives of the traders had become necessaries of life. Two hundred
and fifty of their best warriors therefore embarked, under five
valiant chiefs. They made the voyage in safety, approached Three
Rivers on the seventeenth of July, and, running their canoes ashore
among the bulrushes, began to grease their hair, paint their faces,
and otherwise adorn themselves, that they might appear after a
befitting fashion at the fort. While they were thus engaged, the
alarm was sounded. Some of their warriors had discovered a large
body of Iroquois, who for several days had been lurking in the
forest, unknown to the French garrison, watching their opportunity
to strike a blow. The Huron snatched their arms, and, half-greased
and painted, ran to meet them. The Iroquois received them with a
volley. They fell flat to avoid the shot, then leaped up with a
furious yell, and sent back a shower of arrows and bullets. The
Iroquois, who were outnumbered, gave way and fled, excepting a few
who for a time made fight with their knives. The Huron pursued. Many
prisoners were taken, and many dead left on the field. [Lalemant,
Relation, 1648, 11. The Jesuit Bressani had come down with the
Huron, and was with them in the fight.] The rout of the enemy was
complete; and when their trade was ended, the Huron returned home in
triumph, decorated with the laurels and the scalps of victory. As it
proved, it would have been well, had they remained there to defend
their families and firesides.
The oft-mentioned town of Teanaustayé, or St. Joseph, lay on the
south-eastern frontier of the Huron country, near the foot of a
range of forest-covered hills, and about fifteen miles from Sainte
Marie. It had been the chief town of the nation, and its population,
by the Indian standard, was still large; for it had four hundred
families, and at least two thousand inhabitants. It was well
fortified with palisades, after the Huron manner, and was esteemed
the chief bulwark of the country. Here countless Iroquois had been
burned and devoured. Its people had been truculent and intractable
heathen, but many of them had surrendered to the Faith, and for four
years past Father Daniel had preached among them with excellent
results.
On the morning of the fourth of July, when the forest around basked
lazily in the early sun, you might have mounted the rising ground on
which the town stood, and passed unchallenged through the opening in
the palisade. Within, you would have seen the crowded dwellings of
bark, shaped like the arched coverings of huge baggage-wagons, and
decorated with the totems or armorial devices of their owners
daubed on the outside with paint. Here some squalid wolfish dog lay
sleeping in the sun, a group of Huron girls chatted together in the
shade, old squaws pounded corn in large wooden mortars, idle youths
gambled with cherry stones on a wooden platter, and naked infants
crawled in the dust. Scarcely a warrior was to be seen. Some were
absent in quest of game or of Iroquois scalps, and some had gone
with the trading-party to the French settlements. You followed the
foul passage-ways among the houses, and at length came to the
church. It was full to the door. Daniel had just finished the mass,
and his flock still knelt at their devotions. It was but the day
before that he had returned to them, warmed with new fervor, from
his meditations in retreat at Sainte Marie. Suddenly an uproar of
voices, shrill with terror, burst upon the languid silence of the
town. "The Iroquois! the Iroquois!" A crowd of hostile warriors had
issued from the forest, and were rushing across the clearing,
towards the opening in the palisade. Daniel ran out of the church,
and hurried to the point of danger. Some snatched weapons; some
rushed to and fro in the madness of a blind panic. The priest
rallied the defenders; promised Heaven to those who died for their
homes and their faith; then hastened from house to house, calling on
unbelievers to repent and receive baptism, to snatch them from the
Hell that yawned to ingulf them. They crowded around him, imploring
to be saved; and, immersing his handkerchief in a bowl of water, he
shook it over them, and baptized them by aspersion. They pursued
him, as he ran again to the church, where he found a throng of
women, children, and old men, gathered as in a sanctuary. Some cried
for baptism, some held out their children to receive it, some begged
for absolution, and some wailed in terror and despair. "Brothers,"
he exclaimed again and again, as he shook the baptismal drops from
his handkerchief,--"brothers, to-day we shall be in Heaven."
The fierce yell of the war-whoop now rose close at hand. The
palisade was forced, and the enemy was in the town. The air quivered
with the infernal din. "Fly!" screamed the priest, driving his flock
before him. "I will stay here. We shall meet again in Heaven." Many
of them escaped through an opening in the palisade opposite to that
by which the Iroquois had entered; but Daniel would not follow, for
there still might be souls to rescue from perdition. The hour had
come for which he had long prepared himself. In a moment he saw the
Iroquois, and came forth from the church to meet them. When they saw
him in turn, radiant in the vestments of his office, confronting
them with a look kindled with the inspiration of martyrdom, they
stopped and stared in amazement; then recovering themselves, bent
their bows, and showered him with a volley of arrows, that tore
through his robes and his flesh. A gun shot followed; the ball
pierced his heart, and he fell dead, gasping the name of Jesus. They
rushed upon him with yells of triumph, stripped him naked, gashed
and hacked his lifeless body, and, scooping his blood in their
hands, bathed their faces in it to make them brave. The town was in
a blaze; when the flames reached the church, they flung the priest
into it, and both were consumed together.
[Ragueneau, Relation des Hurons, 1649, 3-5; Bressani,
Relation Abrégée, 247; Du Creux, Historia Canadensis,
524; Tanner, Societas Jesu Militans, 531; Marie de
l'Incarnation, Lettre aux Ursulines de Tours, Quebec,
1649.
Daniel was born at Dieppe, and was forty-eight years old
at the time of his death. He had been a Jesuit from the
age of twenty.] |
Teanaustayé was a heap of ashes, and the victors took up their
march with a train of nearly seven hundred prisoners, many of whom
they killed on the way. Many more had been slain in the town and the
neighboring forest, where the pursuers hunted them down, and where
women, crouching for refuge among thickets, were betrayed by the
cries and wailing of their infants.
The triumph of the Iroquois did not end here; for a neighboring
fortified town, included within the circle of Daniel's mission,
shared the fate of Teanaustayé. Never had the Huron nation received
such a blow.
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The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century, 1867
Jesuits
in North America
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