The White and the Gold (25 page)

The rest of the day, which remained fair, was spent in preparing the first crude living quarters. Tents of birch bark were pitched, and the work was started of cutting down trees for the palisade behind which the small settlement would nestle. It is recorded that, having neither candles nor oil for the lamps, the women caught fireflies and placed them in glass phials to provide some illumination.

Work began in real earnest the next morning. A ditch had to be dug behind which the wooden palisade would be raised, and the Sieur de Montmagny was the first to take spade in hand. This much accomplished, and the island having been formally handed over to Maisonneuve as the representative of the Company of Montreal, the governor boarded one of the ships. He must have been glad to be returning, for the purpose of the new company had meant misunderstandings from the first and much back bristling and hard feelings. There must have been in his mind, however, a sense of reluctance,
of pity for the resolute group. It was such a small company which remained. They stood, it seemed, on the rim of the world. The sun still shone warmly and a slight spring breeze stirred in the heavy cover of trees, but danger and the black face of catastrophe hovered above them.

Neither time nor space allows of telling in detail the story of the first days in Montreal. A few facts must suffice: how reinforcements arrived on September 15, consisting of fifteen men under Monsieur de Repentigny and including Gilbert Barbier, a carpenter, who was to prove one of the most useful members; how the boats continued to ply up and down the river, bringing on the supplies which had been left at Quebec; how a habitation capable of holding sixty people and a chapel were erected inside the now formidable palisade; how the season waned and winter came; and how on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany, Maisonneuve had a path cleared through the snow to the top of the mountain and placed there a great wooden cross which would stand for many years, a symbol of the faith which had brought these fine people across the ocean and set them down in their crowded sanctuary on the bottom lands.

During these first months nothing was heard of the Iroquois, although it was taken for granted that they lurked somewhere in the huddle of islands at the junction of the rivers and that their angry eyes often surveyed the life going on behind the high rampart of logs. Maisonneuve and his followers expected an attack every day, and they counted each hour of delay a respite granted them by a beneficent God.

But the Iroquois did not strike and the tall cross continued to look down reassuringly from the top of the mountain.

V
ILLE MARIE de Montréal, as the devout band called their rude little settlement, was the farthest outpost and on that account the danger spot in the war with the Iroquois. The Indians left them alone at first, but this did not lend any sense of security. The garrison could feel the blow poised above them and ready to fall.

There was no longer any security along the St. Lawrence. On August 3, 1643, a party of Huron converts, more than a score, were making their way up the river. With them was Father Jogues and two young Frenchmen; Isaac Jogues, scholar and saintly figure, delicate of body and gentle of spirit, one of the best beloved of the Jesuits. Hugging the shore for safety, they neared Lake St. Pierre and here they found themselves in a nest of small islands, a reedy and overhung part of the river. Here came to reality the picture Maisonneuve had conceived of Montreal. Each tree trunk rising out of the water became a Mohawk brave, each bulrush a hostile tomahawk. Forty naked figures sprang at the startled occupants of the canoes. In a brief conflict many of the Hurons were killed. The savages carried off as prisoners the three Frenchmen and a score of their terrified allies.

The captives were taken to the village of the victorious Mohawks. Goupil, one of the young companions of Jogues, was killed, and the other, Couture, was drafted ultimately into the tribe. The Hurons were burned at the stake, two or three at a time. Father Jogues was tortured continuously and with fiendish zest, becoming no more than
a mutilated shell. With the assistance of Dutch traders, nevertheless, he managed to escape and was smuggled down the Hudson to the fur post at Albany. Later he was put on a boat and sent home to France. Time had not succeeded in patching him up; the nails had been torn from his fingers, his hands were shapeless stumps, his arms had been sawed to the bone with ropes. It was no more than a wraith of humanity that the French people received in reverent acclaim. The Queen expressed a desire to see him and, on his entrance, she went down on her knees and kissed his unsightly hands. Convinced that duty called him back, Father Joques returned to Canada the following year and willingly undertook the most dangerous of all assignments.

The Mohawks, always the most belligerent and relentless of the Five Nations, had finally been brought to an agreement of peace with the French. It was felt that a representative should be sent among them and, as Father Jogues was thoroughly familiar with the language and the customs of the tribe, he was selected to go. In addition to acting as an ambassador, he was to establish a mission for which, prophetically enough, a name had been selected, the Mission of the Martyrs. It seemed at first that his errand had been carried out with complete success. The Mohawks were disposed to be friendly at last. They listened to the harangues of the frail little priest and they accepted the belts of wampum he had brought and the other gifts, one of them a box which he left with them on starting back as a pledge that he would return.

Leaving the box proved to be a mistake. The Mohawks were divided into three families, the Bear, the Wolf, and the Tortoise. They were already at loggerheads among themselves over continuing the peace. The Bears were savagely determined to start the war afresh, and the pacific inclinations of the other families had no weight with them. After the departure of the mission, the medicine men of the Bears began to say that the box contained spells and that they were responsible for the famine from which the tribe was suffering. It was not hard to convince the savage rank and file with such a story.

In the meantime the question was being debated at Quebec as to whether the Mission of the Martyrs should be continued immediately. At first it was concluded that Father Jogues should remain in Montreal for the winter at least. A short time after, the decision was reversed and the good father received orders to repair to the
Mohawk country. He obeyed without question but with a presentiment that death awaited him at the hands of the antagonistic Bears. This feeling was expressed in a letter he wrote to a friend in France.
Ibo et non redibo
, he declared. “I go but I shall not return.”

On the way Jogues and his one white companion, a zealous young
donné
named Lalande, were warned by friendly members of the tribe that it would not be safe to proceed. The Hurons who accompanied them deserted at once, but the valiant little priest and his courageous aide decided they must carry out their instructions.

The warning delivered had not been an idle one. A war party of the Bears waylaid them before they reached the heart of the Mohawk country and carried them to their own village in triumph. Here they were beaten, and one of the belligerent braves cut strips of flesh from the back of the priest.

“Let us see,” he cried, “if this white flesh is the flesh of an
oki
[a bad magician].”

“I am a man like yourselves,” answered Father Jogues. “Why do you treat me like a dog?”

That evening the badly wounded missionary was summoned to a feast at the lodge of the new chief of the Bears. He arose at once, knowing that a refusal would be a mortal offense. At the entrance to the lodge Father Jogues bowed his head in going in, and an Indian standing just inside sank a tomahawk into his brain and then hacked his head free of his body. In the morning Lalande was dispatched in the same way.

The bodies were disposed of, but the heads were triumphantly elevated on the palisades of the village; a practice, as all familiar with the history of more civilized countries will recall, generally followed after executions.

Thus died Father Isaac Jogues, the first of the martyrs, the most gentle and perhaps the most to be pitied of all the brave band who were to give up their lives.

Before this tragic episode Governor Montmagny had planned to establish a fort where the Richelieu River empties into the St. Lawrence, this being the route the Iroquois war parties most often took. He arrived at the spot with a party of nearly one hundred men, including forty well-trained soldiers who had been sent out by Cardinal Richelieu the previous year. It was just eleven days after the unfortunate priests and his companions had been carried off, and the exultant tribesmen had paused long enough to elevate poles
along the riverbanks with the heads of the slain. Bark had been stripped from some of the trees and scenes had been daubed crudely on the trunks, including a likeness of the captured priest.

Victory had so emboldened the warriors of the Long House that they attacked the new fort before the palisades were completed. Two hundred strong, screeching their war cries and armed with their newly acquired guns, they charged right up to the walls and fired through the sentry holes at the surprised garrison. It was touch and go for some time, but after a furious struggle the white soldiers finally prevailed and drove the redskins off. The Iroquois, fuming in defeat, retreated to a fort of logs they had built three miles up the river.

The new fort did not accomplish its purpose of keeping the St. Lawrence clear. The Iroquois cut overland and the terror on the river continued to mount. With a gun in his hands the Iroquois warrior was irresistible against the Huron with nothing better than an iron tomahawk. The allies of the French deserted the territory along the river, retreating far back into the woods or huddling abjectly in the proximity of the forts. The St. Lawrence was so unsafe that the mail boats were intercepted three times. By a curious chance some of the letters thus seized came into the possession of Father Jogues during his captivity and were taken by him to France.

Later in the summer six men from the Montreal colony were surprised while cutting wood at the point on the river where Chambly now stands. Three were killed and the others were carried off. Two of them died at the stake and the last one made his escape, bringing back to the settlement the grim story of the fate of his comrades.

It was with a feeling of relief, therefore, that the little colony heard of special measures which the King was putting into effect for their assistance. He presented to the Montreal Company a ship of 250 tons, named the
Notre Dame de Montréal
, and it was dispatched at once with more settlers and supplies. There was added encouragement for them in the knowledge that the King, who in another year was to die at the early age of forty-two, wrote to the Sieur de Montmagny at Quebec with positive instructions “to assist and favor in every way in his power the Seigneur de Maisonneuve in such manner that there shall be no trouble or hindrance.” The reinforcements arrived at Montreal under the command of Louis d’Ailleboust, the Sieur de Coulanges, and the colony took fresh courage at once. The new-coming officer was a trained military engineer and one of
his first tasks was to strengthen the defenses of the camp. He deepened the moat and raised the palisades. Two new bastions were built which commanded the approaches to the walls.

It is essential at this point to pause and consider the motives behind the Montreal venture and the considerations which caused the settlers to persevere in the face of such conditions. The determination to found a mission at the meeting place of the rivers had stemmed from the visions of Dauversière, and it was therefore one of the spirit rather than the mind. Because that insistent and fanatical little man had seen the green mountainsides and the vast forests and had heard the roar of the rapids, those who rallied to his support would not listen to any change of purpose. The divine finger had pointed at Montreal, and so Montreal it must be. Common sense would have dictated acceptance of Montmagny’s advice and the selection of a location close to Quebec. It must be said that in the plans of the new company common sense had no place, not so much as the millionth part of a grain. Montreal lay so far out in the wilderness that a concerted attack by Iroquois forces would almost certainly have carried the walls. It was encompassed by such deadly peril now that the friendly Indians did not dare visit it, which prevented the settlers from accomplishing the purpose to which they were dedicated. Nevertheless, they refused to give up. Far away from all chance of immediate succor in the event of an attack, ill equipped and vulnerable, they waited serenely for whatever might befall. It was fanaticism in a high degree. But also it was magnificent; and it was to lead in the end to great things.

Having said this, the story leads at once to a prime example of the lack of reality in the control of the colony. The wife of Louis d’Ailleboust, who is generally referred to by her maiden name of Barbe de Boulogne, had accompanied him; with great reluctance, it must be said, and after refusing three times to do so. On arriving at the island she fell at once under the spell of Jeanne Mance and became completely imbued with the spirit which prevailed. Her husband had brought news for Jeanne which set the two new friends to excited planning. It was from the unknown benefactress, a contribution of forty-two thousand livres for the building of the Hôtel-Dieu.