94 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VOL. I. 



bible and the sword usually travel together in the subjugation of pagan 

 nations. In the case of the Hurons, their trouble did not arise from any 

 difficulty with any Christian power, but they were continually subjected to 

 invasions by the unfriendly Iroquois. The Dutch settlers in the Province 

 of New York supplied the Iroquois with fire arms which they were not 

 slow to use against their enemies, the Hurons. The Iroquois and Huron 

 war, up to this time (IG40), was a desultory war, the Iroquois, by stealth, 

 getting into the Huron territory and making sudden onslaught on the not 

 so well armed Hurons, chopping them to pieces like bundles of sticks. In 

 1642, Father Jogues, who had been sent to Quebec for supplies of provi- 

 sions for the hard pressed Hurons, while journeying back fell in with the 

 Mohawks, the chief tribe of the Iroquois. The Mohawks massacred most 

 of the party and led the rest, with Father Jogues, to the missionary towns. 

 There were at this time five churches in as many towns of the Hurons. , 



M. DeMaisonneuve arrived out from France as Governor of Canada in 

 1642. He was, on his arrival in the country, advised not to go up the 

 river St. Lawrence beyond Quebec. He was courageous and determined, 

 and pushed his way up to Hochelaga or Montreal, which he fortified with 

 palisades and re-christened the place " Ville Ste. Marie." The French 

 inhabitants at this time were completely at the mercy of the savages. The 

 whole European population in Canada did not then exceed two hundred. 

 DeMaisonneuve, in his zeal for Christianity, and to afford the natives the 

 best opportunity fur practising it, gathered around him at Ville Ste. Marie, 

 the Indians who had embraced the new religion and invited them who had 

 a desire to become Christians to join their company. The Jesuits did the 

 same at Quebec. Could the missionaries have stayed the hands of the 

 Iroquois it is possible that the Huron nation might altogether have been 

 converted to Christianity. But this was not to be. The Iroquois were 

 constantly on the war path, and in 1648, commenced a war of extermina- 

 tion. On the 17th March of that year the Iroquois fell upon the Huron 

 missionary village of St. Louis, the station then taking the name of St. 

 Ignatius, which was then in the care of Pere Jean-de-Brebeuf and Pere 

 Gabriel Lalemant, both of whom, with most of the inhabitants, were put 

 to death. Fathers Brebeuf and Lalemant were, as one historian describes, 

 " subjected to torments such as devils alone would be thought capable of 

 inflicting ; all of which their colleagues reported they bore with an un- 

 faltering reliance on their Saviour, equal to that of the primitive martyrs." 



x\gain on the 4th July, 1648, a numerous body of the Iroquois fell 

 suddenly upon the flourishing village of St. Joseph (in the Huron country), 

 then superintended by Pere Anthony Daniel who had been resident among 

 the Hurons fourteen years. The Iroquois in this onslaught massacred the 



