This etext was produced by Gardner Buchanan
CHRONICLES OF CANADA
Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton
In thirty-two volumes
THE JESUIT MISSIONS
A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness
By THOMAS GUTHRIE MARQUIS
TORONTO, 1916
For seven years the colony which Champlain founded atthe rock of Quebec lived without priests. [Footnote:For the general history of the period covered by thefirst four chapters of the present narrative, see 'TheFounder of New France' in this Series.] Perhaps the lackwas not seriously felt, for most of the twoscore inmatesof the settlement were Huguenot traders. But out in thegreat land, in every direction from the rude dwellingsthat housed the pioneers of Canada, roamed savage tribes,living, said Champlain, 'like brute beasts.' It wasChamplain's ardent desire to reclaim these beings of thewilderness. The salvation of one soul was to him 'of morevalue than the conquest of an empire.' Not far from hisnative town of Brouage there was a community of theRecollets, and, during one of his periodical sojourns inFrance, he invited them to send missionaries to Canada.The Recollets responded to his appeal, and it was arrangedthat several of their number should sail with him to theSt Lawrence in the following spring. So, in May 1615,three Recollet friars—Denis Jamay, Jean d'Olbeau, JosephLe Caron—and a lay brother named Pacificus du Plessis,landed at Tadoussac. To these four men is due the honourof founding the first permanent mission among the Indiansof New France. An earlier undertaking of the Jesuits inAcadia (1611-13) had been broken up. The Canadian missionis usually associated with the Jesuits, and rightly so,for to them, as we shall see, belongs its most glorioushistory; but it was the Recollets who pioneered the way.
When the friars reached Quebec they arranged a divisionof labour in this manner: Jamay and Du Plessis were toremain at Quebec; D'Olbeau was to return to Tadoussacand essay the thorny task of converting the tribes roundthat fishing and trading station; while to Le Caron wasassigned a more distant field, but one that promised arich harvest. Six or seven hundred miles from Quebec, inthe region of Lake Simcoe and the Georgian Bay, dweltthe Hurons, a sedentary people living in villages andpractising a rude agriculture. In these respects theydiffered from the Algonquin tribes of the St Lawrence,who had no fixed abodes and depended on forest and streamfor a living. The Hurons, too, were bound to the Frenchby both war and trade. Champlain had assisted them andthe Algonquins in battle against the common foe, theIroquois or Five Nations, and a flotilla of canoes fromthe Huron country, bringing furs to one of the trading-posts on the St Lawrence, was an annual event. TheRecollets, therefore, felt confident of a friendlyreception among the Hurons; and it was with buoyant hopesthat Le Caron girded himself for the journey to hisdistant mission-field.
On the 6th or 7th of July, in company with a party ofHurons, Le Caron set out from the island of Montreal.The Hurons had come down to trade, and to arrange withChamplain for another punitive expedition against theIroquois, and were now returning to their own villages.It was a laborious and painful journey—up the Ottawa,across Lake Nipissing, and down the French River—but atlength the friar stood on the shores of Lake Huron, thefirst of white men to see its waters. From the mouth ofthe French River the course lay southward for mere thana hundred miles along the e