3. Suspicion Regarding the Black Robes. Calling Down the Thunderbirds, an Epidemic and the Terrors it Spread. Paradise and Hell. Jesuit Methods of Salvation for the Perishing. Danger to the Jesuits. A Sentence of Death and a Farewell Feast. Missionaries Amid Man-like Beasts. “The Narrow Gate of Paradise.” The Lives of Two Martyrs. Tortures and Deliverance. (Cont.)

The danger to the Jesuits, however, did not pass. The decision of the general assembly regarding them remained undetermined only because there were those among the Native Americans who sided with the Jesuits and moderated the rage of the hostile party. The latter, however, did not abandon their view of the Jesuits as the chief culprits of the people’s calamity, and began to hold separate secret councils. After one such council, some converts secretly informed the Jesuits that their death had been decided upon. A foreboding of this was the increasing boldness of the savages toward them, so that with every exit from the hut they had to expect a tomahawk or stone. Jesuit Ragéneau wore a cross with a crucifix and the image of a skull on his chest. A Native American, thinking it was sorcery, tore the cross from him. The missionary tried to take it back, but the Native American seized a hatchet and raised it over the Jesuit. Ragéneau stood motionless, expecting the blow. This firmness so affected the savage that, muttering, he lowered the hatchet and withdrew. A Native American attacked Jesuit Lemercier with a burning firebrand and, thrusting it at his face, said he should be burned alive; and one young warrior openly said: “I have eaten enough colored meat of our enemies; now I want to taste white meat, and I will eat yours.” In view of such a state of affairs, the Jesuits plainly saw their danger. They, a handful of brave men cast away into a wild wilderness, could expect help from nowhere but above, and preparing themselves for death, they prayed only that their blood would serve as the seed of Christianity. Brébeuf had a vision—of a cross that slowly moved toward them across the sky from the land of the Iroquois. “How great is this cross?” asked the other Jesuits. “Oh, great enough to crucify all of us on it,” he answered[1]. Foreseeing certain destruction, Fr. Brébeuf wrote a farewell letter to Quebec to the head of the mission, Lejeune, entrusting its delivery, in case of his death, to some of the converts. The letter breathes unconquerable Christian zeal and entire self-sacrifice, which distinguished these missionaries[2]. In view of the threatening danger, the Jesuits nevertheless did not lose their composure and attempted one measure to soothe the rage of the Native Americans. Among the Hurons was a custom by which those condemned to death gave a farewell feast. The Jesuits organized such a feast, inviting the savages to it, who came gloomily and with sidelong glances, ate their share, and left the feast in silence. The effect of this measure seemed at first uncertain, but in fact proved beneficial to the Jesuits. The Native Americans were pleased with the feast, which gave new strength and courage to the supporters of the missionaries. After the feast a whole week passed peacefully for the Jesuits[3], and the expressions of the Native Americans brightened, which was also aided by a decrease in deaths. Gradually the threatening danger passed entirely; the Jesuits were delivered from death, although they took this as an ill omen for the mission, since only the blood of martyrs serves as the seed of Christians[4].

The mission among the Hurons was an outpost of civilization and Christianity, cast away in the wilderness, separated from the European coastal colonies by an impassable distance of thousands of versts. The only path of communication between them was the Saint Lawrence River with its various tributaries; but even this path was convenient only for the Native Americans, who with their birchbark canoes sometimes sailed along the river and sometimes made their way through dense forests, avoiding rapids or hiding from hostile bands roaming the woods seeking men as much as game. The missionaries ventured on this path only in extreme necessity, when all the means necessary to continue the mission were exhausted. Since the opening of the mission among the Hurons, the Jesuits had made considerable progress, had many converts and even more catechumens; with the growth of the work, the need for means to conduct it increased, but meanwhile they became exhausted to the utmost. Clothes and pictures wore out, paper was used up, bread for mass was scarcely obtained through sparse wheat planting, and wine was so scarce that the Jesuits used it only a drop at mass[5]. By 1642 the mission had come into such a deplorable state that the Jesuits decided to send one of their members to Quebec to acquire the necessary means and articles for the mission. The task fell to Isaac Jogues, who set out with a party of Hurons who were carrying their furs for barter with the French. The journey was extremely tiring; up to thirty times they had to carry the canoes and all their contents over dry land on their backs; but the travelers were nonetheless very glad and considered themselves fortunate when they arrived in Quebec, having avoided the main danger of this route, an encounter with the war parties of the fierce Iroquois, who were the mortal enemies of the Hurons and lay in wait for them on the river.

Having finished his business, Fr. Isaac set out with his party on the return journey. The journey against the current was even more difficult, but the party worked the oars bravely and cheerfully, pleased with the successful completion of their task. All was quiet around and only the sound of water cut by the oars of twelve canoes was heard. Suddenly the shore forest shuddered at a wild war cry, a hail of bullets and arrows fell upon the travelers, and a flotilla of Iroquois war canoes came out from the brush to meet them. The Hurons, seized with horror and surprise, ran ashore and, throwing everything, fled, leaving the missionary with two young Frenchmen who had voluntarily agreed to serve the Jesuits, and several baptized Native Americans. Soon the entire party was either killed or taken captive; among the latter were the Frenchmen and the missionary. Considering them the leaders of the party, the Iroquois attacked them with particular fury, stabbed them with knives, beat them with clubs, and gnawed at their fingers with their teeth. Then the victors, with wild exultation, loaded their canoes with booty and captives and set out for home, deep into what is now New York State. After thirteen days they arrived at the first Iroquois village. The victors’ cries announced their arrival, and from the village rushed crowds of old and young Native Americans with clubs in their hands. Before the entrance to the village all lined up in two rows, forming a narrow passage, and through this “narrow gate of paradise,” as Jogues expressed it, the captives one by one had to pass under the cries of exulting Iroquois, who struck them with clubs. One blow knocked Fr. Isaac from his feet, but other blows immediately forced him to rise, and he staggered through the entire row. Then began a series of tortures and torments too revolting even to describe. They gnawed his hands, cut off his fingers, pulled out the hair on his head and beard. At last, when he had lost so much blood that he was brought to unconsciousness, they bound him to stakes driven into the ground at night, stretching his limbs so that lying on his back he could not move in the slightest. Having satisfied their brutality, the Native Americans set their children to “soften up” the Frenchmen, and these little demons took hot coals from the fires and laid them on the naked bodies of the captives, threw hot ash on them, amusing themselves with its hissing on the bloodied bodies of the sufferers[6].

The cruelty of the Iroquois was not only bestial, but refined. They tortured and tyrannized the captives so as not to deprive them of life but to prolong it for further torments. After the first fit of brutality, they allowed the captives to recover somewhat and then led them to neighboring villages, and in each place the sufferers had to endure another series of the same torments. Meanwhile war parties of Iroquois brought new captive Hurons, among whom were even those converted to Christianity by the Jesuits. The martyr missionary did not miss any opportunity, amid his very suffering, to convert them to the faith. Once he succeeded in converting two captive Hurons to Christianity, but there was no water for baptism. A corn cob was thrown to them for food, and a few drops of dew were found on it. With these drops Fr. Isaac baptized them. Three of the captive Hurons were burned alive, and the missionary and the Frenchmen awaited the same fate. But the assembled council of Native Americans decided to keep them alive, although one of the Frenchmen soon paid with his life for teaching an Iroquois boy to make the sign of the cross, which seemed to the boy’s father to be sorcery. Constant attempts on his life threatened Isaac, and he lived in hourly expectation of the tomahawk, a blow of which he would have considered deliverance from suffering. But death seemed to shun him. In time, the Native Americans, seeing his meekness, gave him considerable freedom. Late in autumn, a party of Iroquois set out on their customary winter hunt and took the Jesuit with them. Hungry and scarcely clothed, he struggled after the Native Americans through impenetrable forests, bearing heavy burdens loaded upon him. At camp Fr. Isaac gathered wood, lit fires, and cooked the game. But since the Native Americans had beforehand dedicated all their game to the god of the hunt (Aresku), Fr. Isaac did not dare to touch the demonic offering, and thus hungered amid plenty, subsisting on bark and roots. He slept in a smoky hut with the dogs, but sometimes in the middle of the night he would go into the forest to pray and recite from memory passages of sacred Scripture that he had retained. In a lonely place he would carve the form of a cross on bark and, kneeling amid snow and ancient pines, half-clad in dirty hide, he would pray with tears, and in this he found his only comfort. The Native Americans soon grew weary of him and sent him back to the village, where he was given to a Native American family in place of a relative killed in war. There he was a constant witness to the brutality of the Iroquois. War parties constantly brought captives, tortured them, and burned them. Life became unbearable to him, and he longed for death. His only comfort amid this nest of barbarism and inhumanity was that he secretly conversed with children, instructed them in the truths of Christianity, and baptized many, while awaiting death from the tomahawk or fire. But he was not destined to die there. A party of Iroquois, setting out with furs to the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (present-day New York), took him with them, hoping to get a good ransom for him. The Dutch offered them a ransom, but the Native Americans asked so much that the matter seemed hopeless; the sufferer had again to return to the land of his tormentors. Then one Dutchman took pity on him and offered a means to escape the Native Americans. Isaac long hesitated to accept this method of salvation, but finally resolved to flee. The Dutchman hid him in his house and concealed him until the Native Americans left the colony. Then the Jesuit boarded a ship and sailed to France, where he was received as a ghost, as he was thought to have perished. Word of him reached the royal court, and Queen Anne of Austria, calling him to herself, kissed his hands mangled by the Iroquois. The self-sacrificing missionary, however, was not captivated by this fame and honor; he threw himself at the feet of his superior and asked permission to return again to missionary work. But then a difficulty arose. His hands were so mangled that according to canon he could not perform the Eucharist. The matter was submitted for the consideration of the pope[7]. Having heard the exposition of the matter, the pope exclaimed in rapture: “It is unworthy that a martyr of Christ should not drink the blood of Christ,” and the missionary set out on his missionary work the very next spring, only to never return. Setting out as an envoy to negotiate peace with the Iroquois, who had expressed a willingness to make peace with the French, he perished from the treacherous tomahawk of his former tormentors[8].