The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century | Page 3

A Meeting of Jesuits.--The Dead Missionary.
CHAPTER XXVI
.
1648.
ANTOINE DANIEL.
Huron Traders.--Battle at Three Rivers.--St. Joseph.-- Onset of the Iroquois.--Death of Daniel.--The Town destroyed.
CHAPTER XXVII
.
1649.
RUIN OF THE HURONS.
St. Louis on Fire.--Invasion.--St. Ignace captured.-- Br��beuf and Lalemant.--Battle at St. Louis.--Sainte Marie threatened.-- Renewed Fighting.--Desperate Conflict.--A Night of Suspense.-- Panic among the Victors.--Burning of St. Ignace.-- Retreat of the Iroquois.
CHAPTER XXVIII
.
1649.
THE MARTYRS.
The Ruins of St. Ignace.--The Relics found.--Br��beuf at the Stake.-- His Unconquerable Fortitude.--Lalemant.--Renegade Hurons.-- Iroquois Atrocities.--Death of Br��beuf.--His Character.-- Death of Lalemant.
CHAPTER XXIX
.
1649, 1650.
THE SANCTUARY.
Dispersion of the Hurons.--Sainte Marie abandoned.--Isle St. Joseph.-- Removal of the Mission.--The New Fort.--Misery of the Hurons.--Famine.-- Epidemic.--Employments of the Jesuits.
CHAPTER XXX
.
1649.
GARNIER.--CHABANEL.
The Tobacco Missions.--St. Jean attacked.--Death of Garnier.-- The Journey of Chabanel.--His Death.--Garreau and Grelon.
CHAPTER XXXI
.
1650-1652.
THE HURON MISSION ABANDONED.
Famine and the Tomahawk.--A New Asylum.-- Voyage of the Refugees to Quebec.--Meeting with Bressani.-- Desperate Courage of the Iroquois.--Inroads and Battles.-- Death of Buteux.
CHAPTER XXXII
.
1650-1866.
THE LAST OF THE HURONS.
Fate of the Vanquished.-- The Refugees of St. Jean Baptiste and St. Michel.-- The Tobacco Nation and Its Wanderings.--The Modern Wyandots.-- The Biter Bit.--The Hurons at Quebec.--Notre-Dame de Lorette.
CHAPTER XXXIII
.
1650-1670.
THE DESTROYERS.
Iroquois Ambition.--Its Victims.--The Fate of the Neutrals.-- The Fate of the Eries.--The War with the Andastes.-- Supremacy of the Iroquois.
CHAPTER XXXIV
.
THE END.
Failure of the Jesuits.--What their Success would have involved.-- Future of the Mission.

INTRODUCTION.
NATIVE TRIBES.
DIVISIONS.--THE ALGONQUINS.--THE HURONS.--THEIR HOUSES.-- FORTIFICATIONS.--HABITS.--ARTS.--WOMEN.--TRADE.--FESTIVITIES.-- MEDICINE.--THE TOBACCO NATION.--THE NEUTRALS.--THE ERIES.-- THE ANDASTES.--THE IROQUOIS.--SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ORGANIZATION.-- IROQUOIS INSTITUTIONS, CUSTOMS, AND CHARACTER.-- INDIAN RELIGION AND SUPERSTITIONS.--THE INDIAN MIND.
America, when it became known to Europeans, was, as it had long been, a scene of wide-spread revolution. North and South, tribe was giving place to tribe, language to language; for the Indian, hopelessly unchanging in respect to individual and social development, was, as regarded tribal relations and local haunts, mutable as the wind. In Canada and the northern section of the United States, the elements of change were especially active. The Indian population which, in 1535, Cartier found at Montreal and Quebec, had disappeared at the opening of the next century, and another race had succeeded, in language and customs widely different; while, in the region now forming the State of New York, a power was rising to a ferocious vitality, which, but for the presence of Europeans, would probably have subjected, absorbed, or exterminated every other Indian community east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio.
The vast tract of wilderness from the Mississippi to the Atlantic, and from the Carolinas to Hudson's Bay, was divided between two great families of tribes, distinguished by a radical difference of language. A part of Virginia and of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Southeastern New York, New England, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Lower Canada were occupied, so far as occupied at all, by tribes speaking various Algonquin languages and dialects. They extended, moreover, along the shores of the Upper Lakes, and into the dreary Northern wastes beyond. They held Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana, and detached bands ranged the lonely hunting-round of Kentucky.
[ The word Algonquin is here used in its broadest signification. It was originally applied to a group of tribes north of the River St. Lawrence. The difference of language between the original Algonquins and the Abenaquis of New England, the Ojibwas of the Great Lakes, or the Illinois of the West, corresponded to the difference between French and Italian, or Italian and Spanish. Each of these languages, again, had its dialects, like those of different provinces of France. ]
Like a great island in the midst of the Algonquins lay the country of tribes speaking the generic tongue of the Iroquois. The true Iroquois, or Five Nations, extended through Central New York, from the Hudson to the Genesee. Southward lay the Andastes, on and near the Susquehanna; westward, the Eries, along the southern shore of Lake Erie, and the Neutral Nation, along its northern shore from Niagara towards the Detroit; while the towns of the Hurons lay near the lake to which they have left their name.
[ To the above general statements there was, in the first half of the seventeenth century, but one exception worth notice. A detached branch of the Dahcotah stock, the Winnebago, was established south of Green Bay, on Lake Michigan, in the midst of Algonquins; and small Dahcotah bands had also planted themselves on the eastern side of the Mississippi, nearly in the same latitude.
There was another branch of the Iroquois in the Carolinas, consisting of the Tuscaroras and kindred bands. In 1716 they were joined to the Five Nations. ]
Of the Algonquin populations, the densest, despite a recent epidemic which had swept them off by thousands, was in New England. Here were Mohicans, Pequots, Narragansetts, Wampanoags, Massachusetts, Penacooks, thorns in the side of the Puritan. On the whole, these savages were favorable specimens of the Algonquin stock, belonging to that section of it which tilled the soil, and