Chapter III

Thus commenced those dread incursions Of the relentless Iroquois; Unceasing in their deadly hatred, They burst with frightful cruelty, At hours or moments unexpected, On the despairing Hurons there, Slaying, burning, and desolating The Huron Nation everywhere. All their good towns were laid in ashes, And thousands slain in bloody strife; Hunted and pursued forever, Their certain doom the scalping knife. Amid it all they prayed unceasing, Through dire distress and fell despair— Pled for mercy and deliverance, And for Divine protecting care. Driven at last to desperation, They left their homes and stole away, And gained the Island of St. Joseph, In the lovely Georgian Bay. Here they built a fortressed mission, And by thousands huddled round, With the stern winter time upon them, A storm-swept region, iron-bound. There with suffering and privation, And their dread foemen lurking near, With pestilence in thousands slaying, And tortured by consuming fear, They prayed for peace and preservation, Sustained in that dread anxious hour By the assurance of the Great Spirit, Trusting still His mighty power. All through that direful time malignant, Of persecution, blood, and flame, The intrepid Jesuits preached unceasing, Absolved and blessed in Jesus’ name. Driven by want and sheer starvation, O’erwhelmed now and desolate, They leave their lone bleak island fortress In desperate, appalling state. Hell only hath a rage co-equal To the ferocious Iroquois. Again they fell upon the Hurons, Gloating like fiends, with hideous glee; Torturing, exterminating, burning, Glutting their diabolic hate, Red demons of incarnate fury, A hideous and satanic state. In vain the Huron braves did rally, Fighting all desperately there, Only to fall in the dread melee; Beaten, massacred everywhere, They fled now through the awesome forest, Fled by river, and stream, and rill, Seeking all vainly for concealment By lonely vale and towering hill. For an implacable foe pursues, And o’er this wide expanse so fair Was a reign of woe unutterable, With grim death revelling everywhere. And it ceased not for a moment, That frightful carnage, by night nor day, Till en masse the Hurons perished, Swept from their mother earth away. No more Lake Simcoe and Lake Huron, Nor all that great wide reach between, Shall echo to the Huron’s war song. A weird strange life, which like a dream Hath floated out by mystic spaces, Down the silence of ceaseless flow, Lost and mouldering with the ages, Fifty and two hundred years ago. And I pause in reverie dreamful By Lake Huron’s liquid tide, But no primeval forest greets me. O’er the expansion far and wide Are dotted homes, reposing peaceful, Gemmed by river, hill and stream, Crowned by the sunlight’s golden glory, Where pagan wigwams once were seen.