114 PERSECUTION. [1637-40. 



The mysterious strangers, garbed in black, who 

 of late years had made their abode among them, 

 from motives past finding out, marvellous in knowl- 

 edge, careless of life, had awakened in the breasts 

 of the Hurons mingled emotions of wonder, per- 

 plexity, fear, respect, and awe. From the first, 

 they had held them answerable for the changes 

 of the weather, commending them when the crops 

 were abundant, and upbraiding them in times of 

 scarcity. They thought them mighty magicians, 

 masters of life and death ; and they came to them 

 for spells, sometimes to destroy their enemies, and 

 sometimes to kill grasshoppers. And now it was 

 whispered abroad that it was they who had be- 

 witched the nation, and caused the pest which 

 threatened to exterminate it. 



It was Isaac Jogues who first heard this ominous 

 rumor, at the town of Onnentisati, and it proceeded 

 from the dwarfish sorcerer already mentioned, who 

 boasted himself a devil incarnate. The slander 

 spread fast and far. Their friends looked at them 

 askance ; their enemies clamored for their lives. 

 Some said that they concealed in their houses a 

 corpse, which infected the country, — a perverted 

 notion, derived from some half-instructed neophyte, 

 concerning the body of Christ in the Eucharist. 

 Others ascribed the evil to a serpent, others to a 

 spotted frog, others to a demon which the priests 

 were supposed to carry in the barrel of a gun. 

 Others again gave out that they had pricked an 

 infant to death with awls in the forest, in order 

 to kill the Huron children by magic. " Perhaps." 



