Catholic Indian Missions of Canada

The French discoverers of Canada did not fail to impress the aborigines they met with a vague idea of the religion they professed. Thus, on 3 July 1534, when Jacques Cartier reached Baie des Chaleurs, he presented the Indians with prayer beads, and shortly afterwards erected a large cross with the inscription "Vive le Roide France", thereby combining patriotism with religion. In his second expedition (1535) he was accompanied by two chaplains, who, of course, could not impart much instruction to the Eskimos, Micmacs, Algonquins, and Hurons with whom they came into contact, yet must have indicated in some way the interest the newcomers took in their spiritual welfare. Moreover this important voyage ultimately resulted in the conversion and baptism of Donnacona, the Quebec chief kidnapped to France by the discoverer. Likewise, when the Sieur de Monts established his colony (1604) in what was to become known as Acadia, he had with him priests who soon turned their attention to the surrounding tribes. In the course of time a few Micmacs received baptism (1619), and their companions ever manifested the greatest attachment for the compatriots of their missionaries. Two priests, Father Pierre Biard and Edmond Massé, left Dieppe for Port Royal (26 January, 1611), and started their ministrations among the natives by a wise show of prudence, which some were tempted to regard as an excessive dilatoriness in admitting into the Church. Four years later more important missions were commenced on the arrival at Quebec, then founded seven years, of Fathers Denis Jamay, Jean Dolbeau, and Joseph Caron, Recollects, accompanied by a lay brother. While the first-named remained at the French fort, Father Dolbeau went to instruct the Montagnais who repaired to Tadoussac at the mouth of the Saguenay, and Father Le Caron went to the Hurons in the West. Champlain, in order to secure the friendship of the latter, the most numerous of the Indian bands in his vicinity, deemed it good policy to espouse their cause against their inveterate enemies, the powerful Iroquois of the South. This step eventually embroiled the French colony in incessant hostilities. Well meant though it undoubtedly was, and perhaps necessary under the circumstances, the French leader's intervention in the inter-tribal politics of the natives likewise resulted in their paying more heed to the war songs and the satisfaction of their passions than to the question of their spiritual advancement. Le Caron worked faithfully, evangelizing the savages and paving the way for other priests by the preparation of a dictionary of the Huron language. Having made a trip to France, he returned (1623) with Father Nicholas Viel and Brother Gabriel Sagard, the future historian of the early Catholic missions in Canada.

Yet the results of the Recollects' labours were but indifferent. So these religious generously yielded their places to the Jesuits, who reached Quebec on 19 June, 1625, the first to arrive being Fathers Jerome Lalemant, E. Massé, and Jean de Brébeuf. Father Massé had already laboured among the Micmacs of what is now Nova Scotia. He renewed his exertions in their midst, while Brébeuf succeeded Le Caron at the head of the Huron mission, whither he was accompanied by three other priests from France (1626). One of these, a zealous Franciscan, Father de la Roche Daillion, directed his steps towards the Neutral nation, on which he could make no impression. He finally left (1627), while Brébeuf's Jesuit companion had also to return East in the course of the same year. Brébeuf laboured heroically amidst the most discouraging apathy, if not hostility, of the Hurons. In 1633, after a temporary absence from his post, he returned West with Fathers Antoine* Daniel and Ambroise Devost. Incredible hardships led them to the village of Ihonatiria, where they met a pleasant reception. Thence they visited hamlet after hamlet, teaching and exhorting the Indians, at first with no very great success. In the East Fathers Dolbeau and Jamay, with Brother Duplessis, were displaying their zeal on behalf of the roving Montagnais and Algonquins of the Saguenay, Ottawa, and Lower St. Lawrence. In 1636 Father Dolbeau had even extended his activities to the outlying bands of the Labrador Eskimos. Thus were missions established at Tadoussac for the Montagnais; at Gaspé for that tribe and the Micmacs; for the latter alone at Miscou, New Brunswick, and at Three Rivers for the Montagnais and the Algonquins. As a rule, those Indians, though lower than the Hurons in the social scale, showed themselves more amenable to Christian ideals.

To the west of these, missionary operations were thenceforth to be concentrated chiefly with a view towards the conversion of the tribes of the Huron confederacy. By the end of 1635 Fathers Daniel and Devost, going to Quebec, met two priests proceeding to the north, and at Three Rivers Father Isaac Jogues, newly arrived from France. This missionary soon after left with a party of Hurons with whom he was to make his apprenticeship of the hardships in store for him. From the central mission of St. Joseph, or Ihonatiria, some twenty-eight towns were visited, the inhabitants of which proved as fickle as they were superstitious. Hence continual dangers for the missionaries nearly culminated in their death at the hands of those for whose salvation they were devoting themselves. In 1638 there were nine priests working zealously in thirty-two villages of some twelve thousand souls. Gradually they established the residences of the Conception, St. Mary's, and St. Joseph's, named after the one at Ihonatiria. Thence they visited the Petuns (1639), and in 1641 Fathers Charles Raymbault and Isaac Jogues went among the Ottawas. Then, smallpox having made its appearance among the Hurons, fresh dangers ensued for the missionaries, ever considered the cause of such visitations. They now turned their attention to the Neutrals, a powerful nation settled on the peninsula between Lakes Erie and Ontario, where they experienced new insults, and met with very few consolations (1640-41). Though they thus visited eighteen villages, trying to win over the people by their gentleness and their devotion to their interests, they were everywhere greeted with maledictions and raillery. Nevertheless it would seem as if their patience and fortitude must have at length struck those uncouth savages, for in 1645 they invited them to their country, promising a better reception for the tireless apostles. The days of the Neutrals, however, were numbered; the Iroquois were to be the unconscious executors of the justice of God upon them.

To the north of Huronia lay the territory of the Algonquins who counted at that time no less than one hundred and four distinct groups. One of these, the Nipissings, was visited by Fathers Claude Pijart and Raymbault (1640), who were cordially received. Though they soon made a number of baptisms, their success was scarcely commensurate with their exertions. Little by little, however, the Nipissings tired of the missionaries, and, as if by way of punishment, they were in 1650 exterminated by the Iroquois. Unfortunately good and bad alike had too often to suffer by the invasions of those warlike aborigines. In the summer of 1652 Father Jogues and Brother René Goupil were surprised by a party of that nation, who shockingly mutilated and shamefully tortured the former, and put the latter to death (see GOUPIL and JOGUES). In common with practically all the missionaries of the time, Father Jogues was a native of France; an Italian, Father Francis Joseph Bressani, was soon to walk in his footsteps. Nothing daunted by torments which, humanly speaking, should have proved fatal, Bressani, after his experience with the Mohawks, returned to Canada (1645) and consecrated his unfailing energies to the welfare of the Hurons, who could not help regarding him as a hero. Meantime, constantly harassed by the Iroquois, who had burnt several of their villages, the Hurons were rapidly marching to their doom. Yet, thanks to the fearlessness of their spiritual guides, mission work grew apace among them. Indeed about 1648 Father Bressani felt warranted to write that "whereas at the date of their arrival they found not a single soul possessing a knowledge of the true God, at the present day, in spite of persecution, want, famine, war, and pestilence, there is not a single family which does count some Christians." Better still, the converts were living up to the Christian standard of morality, and the general tone of the nation's society was gradually undergoing a decided change for the better. But the implacable Iroquois would not allow them to profit peacefully by the ministrations of their priests. One by one their villages were attacked and destroyed. In the spring of 1648 St. Joseph's was annihilated and its missionary, Father Daniel, killed while comforting his flock. Next came the turn of the fortified town of St. Louis where the lionhearted Brébeuf and his companion, Father Lalemant, were martyred (see BRÉBEUF). St. Ignatius village suffered a similar attack, and most of its inhabitants were butchered. Then St. Mary's was assailed by the enemy; but, warned in time, it succeeded in repulsing the attack. Numerous Huron villages were successively razed, and many of their people massacred, while others were led off to the land of the invaders, there to undergo torture, perpetual captivity, or death.

No wonder, then, if the Hurons lost heart and, sought safety in flight and dispersion. Their devoted pastors followed them in their exile. They at first gathered remnants of their once nation on an island in Lake Huron, called today Christian Island, while the Petun village of Etharita succumbed under the blows of the southern aborigines, and with it Father Charles Garnier who, though in the grasp of death, dragged himself to minister to the spiritual needs of his afflicted flock. His companion, Father Noel Chabanel, was at the same time the victim of an apostate Huron who flung his body into the river. The one consolation in the midst of these ruins was the constancy with which the converts stuck to their faith even when in the land of their executioners. So thoroughly did they share the fortitude of their pastors, that many of them not only confessed their faith in Christ at the peril of their lives but even exhorted their persecutors to embrace it themselves. Some of the fugitives went west, while others found a temporary refuge on the desert islands of Lake Huron, or among the Neutrals who had soon themselves to flee for their lives. Meanwhile the exiles of Christian Island, after untold sufferings, retired in the spring of 1650 to the neighbourhood of Quebec, finally settling at the Lorette Mission (see HURON INDIANS). Their chief occupation having ceased with the practical extinction of the Hurons as a people, the Jesuit missionaries now turned their attention to the fierce Iroquois, repeating the prodigies of self-denial with which their victims had been favored. Against their tenacious perseverance and devotion to duty no bigotry can stand. To Protestants as well as to Catholics they are nothing short of heroes of Christian fortitude. To the west of Huronia proper was the land of the Petuns who boasted nine or ten villages with a population of perhaps ten thousand in 1640. Two missions, that of St. John's and that of St. Mathias, had been established among them. These Indians were commencing to yield to the influence of grace when they, too, had to retire before the victorious march of the ruthless Iroquois.

In 1652 we find them at Michillimakinac, whence they set out on a series, of peregrinations which landed them among tribes of the United States, by whom they were ultimately absorbed. The other remnant of the Huron nation fared better. About 1665 they enjoyed the ministrations of an able and pious priest, Father Joseph M. Chaumonot, a pioneer missionary who bad given no less than fifty-three years of his life to the ill-fated Hurons (d. 1692).

Considered as a nation, the Hurons had been wiped off the face of the earth. Such of the priests as were not required for missionary work within what is now the American Union then turned their attention toward the more pacific tribes nearer home. The Micmacs had from the first accepted Christianity (see MICMACS). On 29 July, 1657, Gabriel De Queylus, Gabriel Souart, and Dominique Galinier, members of a newly founded ecclesiastical society, the Sulpicians. accompanied by M. d'Allet a deacon of the same institute, arriving at Quebec, immediately proceeded to the village of Ville-Marie, now Montreal, where they replaced the Jesuits in the charge of the local parish. Though more especially destined for work among the whites, the Sulpicians did not overlook the salvation of the native tribes. Thus, ten years after their arrival in Canada (1667), they ministered to the Ottawas and other Algonquin groups. Bishop De Montmorency-Laval, the first prelate in the colony, entrusted to them the care of a mission established at Quinte Bay on Lake Ontario, for the benefit of the Cayugas, an Iroquois tribe, and many adopted Hurons settled in their midst. Their success with the adult population was not complete; but their very presence paved the way towards establishing missionary stations all along the western shore of Lake Ontario (1669). Soon after, the Sulpicians were succeeded in that field by the Recollects who had just returned to Canada. Father Louis Hennepin and others laboured with energy, but harvested only tares, and the natives gradually returned south; all traces of a mission on the Canadian side of the lake disappeared.

It was then that, quite a number of Iroquois of the American Union having been won over to the Faith, a step was taken by their spiritual advisers of which the results were to last to our day. To withdraw them from the dangers of their pagan environment, the Jesuits induced them (1668) to settle at La Prarie, near Montreal, whence they moved (1676) to Sault St. Louis, and then to Caughnawaga. One of the chief reasons for that migration was the prevailing excesses, principally owing to the intoxicants dealt out by the Dutch. The French colony itself was not free from that greatest of curses for the American aborigine. But, in addition to the solemn promise to abstain therefrom which was exacted of all the newcomers into the model settlement, the stopping of the evil was more easy on Canadian than on American (or, as it was then; English) soil. As a matter of fact, the missionaries of New France, and especially their valiant head, Bishop Laval, fought it with unflagging perseverance, appealing to the French authorities whenever their representatives on the St. Lawrence proved unwilling to stay the spread of this scourge. In their new home at Sault St. Louis the Iroquois Christians gave great consolations. Thus one of the former torturers of Father de Brébeuf, Garonhiague by name, became one of the most zealous catechists of the new mission, and the war-chief Kryn shone by his virtues as much as by his courage. But the best known example of Christian efflorescence in that settlement was Catherine Tegakwitha, a native virgin surnamed the "Lily of the Mohawks", who died in 1678 after a short life passed in the practice of heroic virtues. About that time events shaped themselves in such a way as to further increase the extent of the missionary field in the East. The Abenakis, an Algonquin nation, ever a staunch ally of the French though most of its tribes were considerably nearer to the English, were attracting the attention of Father Gabriel Druillettes, who visited them repeatedly in their original homes. These natives were soon to swell the ranks of the Canadian Indians under the care of the Jesuits. After a series of hostilities in the course of which the English had at one time to agree to pay them tribute, the Abenakis were defeated on 3 Dec., 1679. Rather than remain neighbours to the victors, most of them immediately made their way to Canada and Acadia, where they have since remained.

The following year (1680) two Jesuits, the brothers Vincent and Jacques Bigot, were appointed to watch over the spiritual interests of the newcomers. These, gathered at the village of Sillery, joined St. Joseph's Mission which in 1681 counted already some five hundred or six hundred inhabitants, as yet unbaptized, but animated by excellent dispositions. Their congeners in Acadia, having heard of the welcome extended to them, asked for, and were granted, 1 July, 1683, a land concession of thirty-six square miles on the Chaudiere River, to which they flocked in large numbers. This was given the name of St. Francis' Mission. For over twenty years the Bigot brothers devoted their energies to the welfare of the Indians of both missions, and their zeal was rewarded by complete success. In 1708 other aborigines of the same stock were settled at Becancourt, with a view to serve as a rampart against the Iroquois. They "were all Christians, and practised with much edification the precepts of Christianity" (Charlevoix, "Journal Hist.", V, p. 164). Twelve years later (1720) they numbered about five hundred souls. A short time before (1716), the mission of Oka, or Lake of the Two Mountains, was established, where Christianized Iroquois and remnants of the Algonquin nation were gathered under the guidance of the Sulpicians. In these various foundations the secular authorities generously seconded the efforts of the missionaries by the grant of large tracts of land for the benefit of their charge.

Now that the French were more or less at peace with the Iroquois, and friendly with the other tribes in the East, they dreamt of fresh conquests in the West. The "Western Sea" (Pacific Ocean) was especially the object of their ambition. They commissioned the Sieur Pierre Gaulthier de Laverendrye to undertake an expedition in that direction, and in the summer of 1735 Father Jean Pierre Aulneau, S.J., accompanied him to the Lake of the Woods previous to attempting his ultimate mission, the conversion of the Mandans of the Upper Missouri. With a party of twenty Frenchmen, he was treacherously slain on an island of the same lake by the Sioux on 8 June of the following year. Father Claude Godefroy Coquart, of the same order, took his place (1743) as chaplain of the exploring expedition, and dwelt a short time at the present Portage la Prarie, but could accomplish nothing for the Western Indians. The mission of Michilimakinac, at the west end of Lake Huron, was then the base of operations for such expeditions. Thence also the Jesuits scoured the woods in quest of souls to save, and Ross Cox says that the impression they made on their wayward wards was such that, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the descendants of the latter had not forgotten "the good white fathers who, unlike other white men, never robbed or cheated them" (Adventures on the Columbia River", New York, P. 149). But with the exception of the reservations of the Abenakis and the Micmacs in the far East, all under the care of the Jesuits, most of the Catholic missions in Canada were along the St. Lawrence. Quite a few were at the various localities then called the Posts of the King, the Malbaie, Tadoussac, Mingan, Chicoutimi, and other places, concerning which Father Coquart addressed a memoir to the Intendant of New France under the date 5 April, 1750.

Shortly before, a