320 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



Erect fifty to one hundred of these houses in an irregular group 

 and you will have a Huron town; set up twenty of these towns in an 

 area of about twenty-five miles square; fortify with palisades those on 

 the east and south and you have the Huron Nation which Brebeuf, 

 estimated in 1635 to be composed of 30,000 souls. 



The Jesuit Fathers came to Quebec to christianize the savages and 

 they selected the Hurons as the special field of their mission. The 

 question at once arises as to why they chose this people so far removed 

 from Quebec. They were the traders who came down every year from 

 the great upper country with their canoes packed with furs; they were 

 a sedentar}' nation; Champlain had formed a sort of alliance with them 

 against their enemies of the south; the Eecollet Fathers had been back 

 and forth from 1615 to 1628; and Lalemant in his Eelation of 1639 

 states that the Huron Country was " one of the principal fortresses and 

 like a donjon keep of the devils." If the evil one could be over- thrown 

 amono: the terrible Hurons the way would be opened up for the conver- 

 sion lof the Tionnontates or Tobacco Nation, the Neutrals, the Fries, the 

 Andastes and possibly even tlie Six Nations. The very dangers of the 

 Huron Nation appealed with special attractiveness to the devoted 

 Jesuits, who gladly went in by the one door open to them to the great 

 Huron-Iroquois nations even if that door led to martyrdom. The 

 history of humanity has given us many pictures of the sacrifice of man 

 for his fellowmen, but apart from the great sacrifice of the Saviour of 

 mankind and the sufferings of the martyrs of the early church, it is 

 doubtful whether there is any other picture quite so thrilling and so full 

 of human suffering as the self-sacrificing of the Jesuit missionaries for 

 the salvation of the Huron Nation. 



I need not enter into the details of the visit of Champlain to the 

 Huron Nation. You are doubtless familiar with the main facts, — how 

 on a tour of exploration he went up the Ottawa in the summer of 1615, 

 crossed by Lake Nipissing and the French Eiver to Georgian Bay and 

 arrived at the Huron Country. He found the people living in eighteen 

 villages divided among four tribes. A great gathering of the Indians 

 assembled at the village of Cahiagué and it was decided to send a band 

 to attack the Iroquois. Champlain decided to accompany them. They 

 left Cahiagué, a village of about two hundred cabins, situated at or near 

 Orillia, lon the 1st of September and paiddled their flotilla of canoes 

 down the Trent to Lake Ontario. The Andastes, their southern allies 

 were to have assisted. After five weeks' journey they had crossed Lake 

 Ontario and had come into the enemies' country. Their allies had 

 failed to come to their help, the Hurons were repulsed, and on the 18th 

 of October were retreating across the eastern end of Lake Ontairio. 

 Champlain was compelled to spend the winter with the Hurons. Along 



