The Jesuit Missions | Page 4

at the rock of
Quebec lived without priests. [Footnote: For the general history of the
period covered by the first four chapters of the present narrative, see
'The Founder of New France' in this Series.] Perhaps the lack was not
seriously felt, for most of the twoscore inmates of the settlement were
Huguenot traders. But out in the great land, in every direction from the
rude dwellings that housed the pioneers of Canada, roamed savage
tribes, living, said Champlain, 'like brute beasts.' It was Champlain's
ardent desire to reclaim these beings of the wilderness. The salvation of
one soul was to him 'of more value than the conquest of an empire.' Not
far from his native town of Brouage there was a community of the
Recollets, and, during one of his periodical sojourns in France, he
invited them to send missionaries to Canada. The Recollets responded
to his appeal, and it was arranged that several of their number should
sail with him to the St Lawrence in the following spring. So, in May
1615, three Recollet friars--Denis Jamay, Jean d'Olbeau, Joseph Le
Caron--and a lay brother named Pacificus du Plessis, landed at
Tadoussac. To these four men is due the honour of founding the first
permanent mission among the Indians of New France. An earlier
undertaking of the Jesuits in Acadia (1611-13) had been broken up. The

Canadian mission is usually associated with the Jesuits, and rightly so,
for to them, as we shall see, belongs its most glorious history; but it
was the Recollets who pioneered the way.
When the friars reached Quebec they arranged a division of labour in
this manner: Jamay and Du Plessis were to remain at Quebec; D'Olbeau
was to return to Tadoussac and essay the thorny task of converting the
tribes round that fishing and trading station; while to Le Caron was
assigned a more distant field, but one that promised a rich harvest. Six
or seven hundred miles from Quebec, in the region of Lake Simcoe and
the Georgian Bay, dwelt the Hurons, a sedentary people living in
villages and practising a rude agriculture. In these respects they differed
from the Algonquin tribes of the St Lawrence, who had no fixed abodes
and depended on forest and stream for a living. The Hurons, too, were
bound to the French by both war and trade. Champlain had assisted
them and the Algonquins in battle against the common foe, the Iroquois
or Five Nations, and a flotilla of canoes from the Huron country,
bringing furs to one of the trading- posts on the St Lawrence, was an
annual event. The Recollets, therefore, felt confident of a friendly
reception among the Hurons; and it was with buoyant hopes that Le
Caron girded himself for the journey to his distant mission-field.
On the 6th or 7th of July, in company with a party of Hurons, Le Caron
set out from the island of Montreal. The Hurons had come down to
trade, and to arrange with Champlain for another punitive expedition
against the Iroquois, 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 at length the friar stood on
the shores of Lake Huron, the first of white men to see its waters. From
the mouth of the French River the course lay southward for mere than a
hundred miles along the east shore of Georgian Bay, until the party
arrived at the peninsula which lies between Nottawasaga and
Matchedash Bays. Three or four miles inland from the west shore of
this peninsula stood the town of Carhagouha, a triple-palisaded
stronghold of the Hurons. Here the Indians gave the priest an
enthusiastic welcome and invited him to share their common lodges;
but as he desired a retreat 'in which he could meditate in silence,' they

built him a commodious cabin apart from the village. A few days later
Champlain himself appeared on the scene; and it was on the 12th of
August that he and his followers attended in Le Caron's cabin the first
Mass celebrated in what is now the province of Ontario. Then, while Le
Caron began his efforts for the conversion of the benighted Hurons,
Champlain went off with the warriors on a very different mission--an
invasion of the Iroquois country. The commencement of religious
endeavour in Huronia is thus marked by an event that was to intensify
the hatred of the ferocious Iroquois against both the Hurons and the
French.
Le Caron spent the remainder of the year 1615 among the Hurons,
studying the people, learning the language, and compiling a dictionary.
Champlain, his expedition ended, returned to Huronia and remained
there until the middle of January, when he and Le Caron set out on a
visit to the Petun