CI1A.F. xxxf. KESULT OF THE MISSIONS. 173 



it by suffering tlie fate of a martyr. But after all, what was 

 the result? Did the missionaries of New France, after 1 50 

 years of zeal and exertion, leave behind them a single 

 Indian tribe whom they had actually converted to Chris- 

 tianity ? Li the interior at least, where there were at one 

 time about twenty missions of the Jesuits, there is little, 

 if any, trace of such conversion. It is said, indeed, that 

 silver crucifixes are still to be found hanging at the necks 

 of distant Indians ; and so would anything else which 

 their ancestors had received and handed down to them as 

 ornamental trinkets. We look in vain for any dawning 

 of moral improvement, or the slightest trace of benefit 

 obtained, among those remote and uncivilised nations to 

 which the mission extended. As far as the improvement 

 of the Indian race was concerned, the labour was thrown 

 away ; and it is to be lamented that no experience sufficed 

 to convince the Government of France that the mode 

 adopted was not likely to effect the object in view.' * 



But if no trace was transmitted of the labours of that 

 long Une of missionaries who Hved and died between 1611 

 and 1672, some of their missions still remain in name at 

 least, and pious stories of their wonderful conversions of 

 the heathen and the suffering of the holy fathers still fall 

 mournfully on the ears of the French Canadians. 



Among the female converts in Canada, none holds so 

 conspicuous a place as ' la jeune Tegahkouita, vierge 

 Iroquoise ! ' 



'Tegahkouita was born in the country of the Mohawks ; 

 her father was a pagan Iroquois, her mother an Algonquin 



* Halkett's Notes respecting tlie North American Indians. 



