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CHAPTER XXV.

1648, 1649.

SAINTE MARIE.

- CHURCH.

THE CENTRE OF THE MISSIONS. FORT. - CONVENT. - HOSPITAL.
CARAVANSARY.
THE INMATES OF SAINTE MARIE.
DOMESTIC ECONOMY. MISSIONS. A MEETING OF JESUITS.
THE DEAD MISSIONARY.

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THE river Wye enters the Bay of Glocester, an inlet of the Bay of Matchedash, itself an inlet of the vast Georgian Bay of Lake Huron. Retrace the track of two centuries and more, and ascend this little stream in the summer of the year 1648. Your vessel is a birch canoe, and your conductor a Huron Indian. On the right hand and on the left, gloomy and silent, rise the primeval woods; but you have advanced scarcely half a league when the scene is changed, and cultivated fields, planted chiefly with maize, extend far along the bank and back to the distant verge of the forest. Before you opens the small lake from which the stream issues; and on your left, a stone's throw from the shore, rises a range of palisades and bastioned walls, enclosing a number of buildings. Your canoe enters a canal or ditch imme

1648.]

CENTRE OF THE MISSIONS.

463

diately above them, and you land at the Mission, or Residence, or Fort of Sainte Marie.

Here was the centre and base of the Huron missions; and now, for once, one must wish that Jesuit pens had been more fluent. They have told us but little of Sainte Marie, and even this is to be gathered chiefly from incidental allusions. In the forest, which long since has resumed its reign over this memorable spot, the walls and ditches of the fortifications may still be plainly traced; and the deductions from these remains are in perfect accord with what we can gather from the Relations and letters of the priests. The fortified work which enclosed the buildings was in the form of a parallelogram, about a hundred and seventy-five feet long, and from eighty to ninety wide. It lay parallel with the river, and somewhat more than a hundred feet distant from it. On two sides it was a continuous wall of masonry,2 flanked with square bastions, adapted to musketry, and probably used as magazines, storehouses, or lodgings. The sides towards the river and the lake had no other defences than a ditch and palisade, flanked, like the others, by bastions, over each of which was displayed a large cross.

The buildings within were, no doubt,

1 Before me is an elaborate plan of the remains, taken on the spot.

2 It seems probable that the walls, of which the remains may still be traced, were foundations supporting a wooden superstruc ture. Ragueneau, in a letter to the General of the Jesuits, dated March 13, 1650, alludes to the defences of Sainte Marie as ple palissade."

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8" Quatre grandes Croix qui sont aux quatre coins de nostre en

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clos." Ragueneau, Relation des Hurons, 1648, 81.

of wood; and they included a church, a kitchen, a refectory, places of retreat for religious instruction and meditation,1 and lodgings for at least sixty persons. Near the church, but outside the fortification, was a cemetery. Beyond the ditch or canal which opened on the river was a large area, still traceable, in the form of an irregular triangle, surrounded by a ditch and apparently by palisades. It seems to have been meant for the protection of the Indian visitors who came in throngs to Sainte Marie, and who were lodged in a large house of bark, after the Huron manner. Here, perhaps, was also the hospital, which was placed without the walls, in order that Indian women, as well as men, might be admitted into it.3

No doubt the buildings of Sainte Marie were of the roughest, - rude walls of boards, windows without glass, vast chimneys of unhewn stone. All its riches were centred in the church, which, as Lalemant tells us, was regarded by the Indians as one of the wonders of the world, but which, he adds, would have made but a beggarly show in France. Yet one wonders, at first thought, how so much labor could

1 It seems that these places, besides those for the priests, were of two kinds,—“vne retraite pour les pelerins (Indians), enfin vn lieu plus separé, où les infideles, qui n'y sont admis que de iour au passage, y puissent tousiours receuoir quelque bon mot pour leur salut." Lalemant, Relation des Hurons, 1644, 74.

2 At least it was so in 1642. "Nous leur auons dressé vn Hospice ou Cabane d'écorce." — Ibid., 1642, 57.

3 "Cet hospital est tellement separé de nostre demeure, que non seulement les hommes et enfans, mais les femmes y peuuent estre admises."-Ibid., 1644, 74.

1648.3

ITS INMATES.

465

have been accomplished here. Of late years, however, the number of men at the command of the mission had been considerable. Soldiers had been sent up from time to time, to escort the Fathers on their way, and defend them on their arrival. Thus, in 1644, Montmagny ordered twenty men of a reinforcement just arrived from France to escort Brébeuf, Garreau, and Chabanel to the Hurons, and remain there during the winter. These soldiers lodged with the Jesuits, and lived at their table.2 It was not, however, on detachments of troops that they mainly relied for labor or defence. Any inhabitant of Canada who chose to undertake so hard and dangerous a service was allowed to do so, receiving only his maintenance from the mission, without pay. In return, he was allowed to trade with the Indians, and sell the furs thus obtained at the magazine of the Company, at a fixed price. Many availed themselves of this permission; and all whose services were accepted by the Jesuits seem to have been men to whom they had communicated no small portion of their own zeal, and who were enthusiastically attached to their Order and their cause. There is abundant evidence that a large proportion of them acted from motives wholly disinterested. They were, in fact,

1 Vimont, Relation, 1644, 49. He adds, that some of these soldiers, though they had once been "assez mauvais garçons," had shown great zeal and devotion in behalf of the mission.

2 Journal des Supérieurs des Jésuites, MS. In 1648 a small cannon was sent to Sainte Marie in the Huron canoes. Ibid.

8 Registres des Arrêts du Conseil, extract in Faillon, ii 94.

donnés of the mission,1 — given, heart and hand, to its service. There is probability in the conjecture that the profits of their trade with the Indians were reaped, not for their own behoof, but for that of the mission. It is difficult otherwise to explain the confidence with which the Father Superior, in a letter

1 See ante, 202, note, and 309. Garnier calls them "séculiers d'habit, mais religieux de cœur."- Lettres, MSS.

2 The Jesuits, even at this early period, were often and loudly charged with sharing in the fur-trade. It is certain that this charge was not wholly without foundation. Le Jeune, in the Relation of 1657, speaking of the wampum, guns, powder, lead, hatchets, kettles, and other articles which the missionaries were obliged to give to the Indians, at councils and elsewhere, says that these must be bought from the traders with beaver-skins, which are the money of the country; and he adds, “Que si vn Iesuite en reçoit ou en recueille quelques-vns pour ayder aux frais immenses qu'il faut faire dans ces Missions si éloignées, et pour gagner ces peuples à Iesus-Christ et les porter à la paix, il seroit à souhaiter que ceux-là mesme qui deuroient faire ces despenses pour la conseruation du pays, ne fussent pas du moins les premiers à condamner le zele de ces Peres et à les rendre par leurs discours plus noirs que leurs robes."— Relation, 1657, 16.

In the same year, Chaumonot, addressing a council of the Iro quois during a period of truce, said, "Keep your beaver-skins, if you choose, for the Dutch. Even such of them as may fall into our possession will be employed for your service."— Ibid., 17.

In 1636, Le Jeune thought it necessary to write a long letter of defence against the charge; and in 1643, a declaration, appended to the Relation of that year, and certifying that the Jesuits took no part in the fur-trade, was drawn up and signed by twelve members of the Company of New France. Its only meaning is, that the Jesuits were neither partners nor rivals of the Company's monopoly. They certainly bought supplies from its magazines with furs which they obtained from the Indians.

Their object evidently was to make the mission partially selfsupporting. To impute mercenary motives to Garnier, Jogues, and their co-laborers is manifestly idle; but, even in the highest flightof his enthusiasm, the Jesuit never forgot his worldly wisdom

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