[wiTHRow] JESUIT MISSIONS OF CANADA 207 



like a tiger ou liis pre}', on the straggling parties of their foes. Their 

 victims they tortured with cleuioniac cruelty. They hacked the body 

 witli knives and shells, scorched it with burning brands, and after, 

 with fiendish ingenuity, exhausting every mode of suffering, in their 

 unJiallowed frenzy they devoured the quivering flesh. '' They are not 

 men, but wolves," said a wretched victim of their rage. Tlhe blood- 

 curdling story of the tortures of Pères Bressani and Jogues reads more 

 like Dante's distempered dream of the horrors of the Malebolgian 

 abyss, than like the acts of human beings.^ 



This tempest of heafchen rage, in 1648, was let loose on the 

 Christian missions. The storm burst on the frontier village of St. 

 Joseph, situated not far from the present town of Barric, Ont., on the 

 morning of July 4th. This village had two thousand inhabitants, and 

 was well fortified, but most of the warriors were absent at the hunt, or 

 on distant journeys. Père Daniel, who for fourteen years had here 

 laboured in the Gospel, arrayed in the vestments of his office had just 

 finished the celebration of the mass in the crowded mission cbapel, 

 when the dread warwhoop of the Iroquois was heard. The painted 

 savages rushed through the unprotected openings in the palisade, mur- 

 dering all whom they met. 



Unable to baptize separately the multitude who, hitherto impeni- 

 tent, now sought this ordinance, Père Daniel dipped his handkerchief 

 in water and, shaking it over the terrified crowd, exclaimed : " My 

 brethren, to-day we shall be in heaven." ^ Absolving the dying, and 

 baptizing the penitent, he refused to escape. " My, brothers," he cried 

 to his flock. " I will die here. We shall meet again in Heaven." ^ 

 Boldly fronting the foe, he received in ^is bosom a sheaf of arrows, and 

 a ball from a deadly arquebuse. " He fell," says the contemporary 

 chronicler, " murmuring the name of Jesus, and yielding, joyously, his 

 soul to God, — truly a good shepherd who gave his life for his sheep.* 



Seven hundred persons, mostly women or children were captured 

 or killed. The body of the proto-martyr of the Huron Mission was 

 burned to ashes, but his intrepid spirit, it was believed, appeared again 



^ Bressani, in a letter to the General of his Order at Rome, apologized 

 for the bad writing and the blood smears on the paper, by the statement that 

 only one finger was left on his mutilated and unhealed hand. His ink was a 

 mixture of gunpowder and water; his table the ground. Sometimes the 

 victim w^ould write his woes in his own blood on bark or beaver skin. 



- " Mes Frères, nous serons aiijourdluiy dans le Ciel." — Raguencau. Rela- 

 tion des Hurons, 1649, p. 3. 



* " Fuyez, mes Frères. Pour moy ie dois mourir icy ; nous nous rever- 

 rons dans le Ciel." — Ib., p. 4. 



* " II tomba prononçant le nom de Jésus, en rendant heureusement son 

 âme à Dieu, vrayment un bon Pasteur, qui expose et son âme et sa vie pour 

 le salut de son troupeau." — Ih., p. 4. 



