Part 2 — A BAD BEGINNING FOR A SAINT; OR, THE EARLY LIFE OF FATHER CHAUMONOT, A CELEBRATED MISSIONARY IN CANADA.

Lives of saints are somewhat discouraging reading at times to poor mortals, who feel that they have a good deal of human nature in them, and that somehow human nature is more disposed to play the part of mistress than of handmaiden to grace.

These holy souls seem from the cradle so innocent, so faithful, that they appear a higher creation than ourselves, and accordingly it is no less consoling than encouraging at times to find early shortcomings overcome by a tardy fidelity to grace, and sanctity attained.

In the early annals of Canada, there are few names more revered than that of Father Peter Mary Joseph Chaumonot, whose impassioned eloquence gathered round him at Onondaga the braves and sachems of the Iroquois, wondering to hear their unlabial language flow so smoothly from the lips of a white man—who founded at Montreal the Society of the Holy Family, which has been such a potent instrument in maintaining in Canadian homes the true family spirit of Catholicity and devotion—and who founded near Quebec a new Loretto in this Western world for the Huron Indians, whom he so long directed and guided, after he saw himself deprived of the martyr’s crown which so many of his fellow-laborers won near the shores of Lake Huron.

Yet good Father Chaumonot, we are sorry to say, began life as a young scamp; and to encourage those who sometimes despair of mauvais sujets whom Providence has placed under their charge, we will give the story of his early years in Chaumonot’s own inimitable language. Late in life, by command of his superiors, he wrote an autobiographical account, and from it we extract:

“For my father I had a poor vine-dresser and for mother a poor schoolmaster’s daughter. At the age of six, they placed me with my grandfather, five or six leagues from our village, that I might learn to read and write. They then took me home, but only for a short time, one of my uncles, a priest residing at Châtillon-sur-Seine, having had the kindness to take me to his house, so that I might study in the college in that place.

“When I had made some progress in Latin, my uncle wished me to learn plain chant, under one of my class who was a musician. This fellow persuaded me to leave Châtillon and follow him to Beaune, where we were to study under the Fathers of the Oratory. As I did not wish to undertake this journey without funds, I stole about a hundred sous from my uncle while he was in the church. With this we took flight.

“We travelled by by-ways to Dijon, whence we made our way to Beaune. There we put up with a townsman, but as my finances were short, I wrote to ask my mother to have the goodness to supply me with money and clothes, so that I might pursue my studies at Beaune, where I hoped to make more rapid progress than at Châtillon. The letter fell into my father’s hands, and he answered me that he would send me nothing; that I must return; and that he would make peace with my uncle for me.

“This reply filled me with dismay. To return to my uncle was to expose myself to be pointed at as a thief, and yet to stay any longer at Beaune was out of the question. So I resolved to run around the world as a vagabond, rather than bear the shame my rascality deserved. I started from Beaune with the intention of going to Rome, though I had not a sou or a change. I travelled alone for half a day; then I fell in with two young men of Lorraine, who saluted me and asked me whither I was going. “To Rome,” quoth I, “to gain the pardons.” They applauded my design, and entertained me with the object of their own journey to Lyons.

“Meanwhile I was thinking what was to become of me, and what I was to live on, if I continued my journey. Begging was in my ideas too degrading, I could not bring myself to work for my living, and there was little chance of my doing it, for I was unaccustomed to labor and knew no trade. Fortunately, my two Lorrainers, who were no better stocked with money than I was, began to beg from door to door in the first town we came to. Who was dumfounded to see them ply this trade? Myself, who, after some deliberation, concluded to imitate them rather than starve, so powerfully had their example made easy what had previously appeared impossible. Such was my apprenticeship as a beggar, but as I was only a beginner at the trade, I gained but a wretched livelihood. However, I flattered myself that on reaching a city so large as Lyons, some good fortune would turn up. But, alas! I was astonished to find myself arrested by the sentinels, who let my companions pass on account of their passports, and detained me because I had none.

“I did not know what was to become of me, or even where I was to get shelter. I saw many large buildings, but I durst not ask the least corner there to pass the night in. At last, spying a wretched shed opposite a glass furnace, I crept under it. Would to heaven I had then had sense enough to take my sufferings as an expiation of my sins, and united my poverty to that of my Saviour lying in a stable!

“Next morning, seeing at the river-side a boat where people were embarking to cross the Rhone, I begged the boatman to give me a passage out of charity. This he did, because in fact the city paid him to carry beyond the river all the beggars who were refused entrance into the city.

“When I got to the other side, I met a young man who promised to make the tour to Italy with me.

“We had just started off together when we met a priest returning from Rome. He did his best to persuade us to forego our projected pilgrimage and return home. Among other reasons, he told us that our want of passports would prevent our getting entrance into any city on our way. I asked him whether he had one, and he had no sooner shown it to me than I begged him to allow me to make a copy of it, which I did on the spot, inserting my own name and my companion’s instead of his.

“Oh! why did I not then offer to God the hardships of nakedness, fatigue, heat, cold, and the thousand other miseries I suffered on that journey! I should have had the happiness of drawing down upon me the blessings of heaven. Our common Father would not have refused them to me, beholding in me some traits of the poverty and sufferings of his Son, but alas! my pride and other sins, which rendered me more like the devil than I was to our Lord by my poverty, were great obstacles to grace in me. Yet, O my God! thou hadst thy views in permitting me to commit fault on fault, folly on folly! Thou didst deign to set me free from all inordinate love to my parents, which, had I remained always with them, would have prevented my consecrating myself entirely to thee. Thou didst design that when I grew up the remembrance of my trials should make me sympathize with more love and gratitude in the sufferings of thy Son.

“But I should be tedious were I to recount all the faults I committed, and all the miseries that befel me on my way. I shall give only the principal adventures.

“The first that occurs to my mind is that, when in Savoy, I entered the court of our college at Chambéry, where I asked in Latin for alms. One of the fathers was so touched at my wretched state that he gave me supper, and even promised to take me back to Lyons, whither he was about to go, and send me from that point to Châtillon. At first I thanked him as well as I could, and promised to follow him, but as soon as he left me I took flight, my money always terrifying me from the thought of returning to my parents. Was I not out of my senses, and did I not well deserve all the evils that befel me, when I refused such kind offers for my own quiet, and the comfort of my poor family? How deplorable was the blindness of my proud spirit, to choose to face countless dangers and hardships, rather than undergo a wholesome reprimand!

“In a village in Savoy we met a good parish priest, who took us to his house, and, after giving us supper, allowed us to sleep on the bed of his servant, whom he had sent to Chambéry. This gentleman slept in a room over his valet’s, which was entered by a ladder, at the top of which was a trap-door, which our host neglected to close properly, so that about midnight a cat pursuing her prey threw it down. The noise was sufficient to awake the priest, who imagined that we were trying to enter his room for no good purpose. So he jumped out of bed and, attired as he was, rushed out on a balcony, crying Murder! murder! murder! at the top of his voice. No less alarmed, I ran up the ladder and reassured him by explaining the innocent cause of all the trouble. Fortunately for us, the neighbors were not awakened by their pastor’s voice.

“Here is another adventure where we ran greater risk. In a town in the Valteline we found a French garrison reduced to a very small number of soldiers, so that the officers urged us strongly to enlist. I would have consented to get my bread every day in this manner, in the hunger I suffered, but my wiser comrade would hear nothing of it. All they got from us was our consent to await the arrival of the commissary, who was daily expected. They led us to hope that we should receive the same pay as real soldiers. Meanwhile, they wished to see what figure we would cut on parade. It was easy enough to travesty into a soldier my comrade, who was a big fellow; but as I appeared a mere boy, from my youth and small body, there was some difficulty in finding a sword to suit me. That which they judged best suited to my size had an eel or snake skin scabbard, and for want of belt or baldric they tied it around with an ass’ halter. I appeared so ridiculous in this that they resolved to put me to bed as sick when the commissary came. While awaiting that event, we lived on the king’s bread, and my comrade was in a constant shiver lest we should be regarded as interlopers or be detained there in spite of ourselves. He made the danger out so great that I yielded to his urging. Bent on pursuing our pilgrimage to Rome, we started one fine morning, but had not travelled more than a mile and a half when we were arrested by some soldiers, who had orders to seize all deserters they found and take them back to their officers. ‘Alas!’ I cried with tears, ‘have I the look of a military man? I am a poor student, who has taken a vow to go to Rome.’ So pathetic was my accent that it touched them, and they let us go. If God had not given them compassion for us, what would have become of us? He saved us from another danger after we had entered Italy.

“Towards nightfall we reached a hostelry by the roadside, where we proposed to sleep, but we counted without our host. We had scarcely eaten our wretched supper, which he made us pay for as dearly as he wished, when, in spite of all our demands that he would at least give us shelter in one of his stables, he barbarously drove us out. It would not have been so bad could we have slept by the light of the stars, but there were none, and the weather, which was overcast, soon poured down on us a drenching rain. Our clothes were all soaked, and, to cap the climax, the road was full of holes and ditches that we did not see, so that we made almost as many tumbles as steps.

“We were well-nigh used up when a gleam of light enabled us to make out a stable. As we crawled towards it, we found a great stack of straw quite near it. We climbed up on it and made a hole in the top to creep in. As we were chilled through, especially our feet, we put them under each other’s arm-pits, lying so that my head was opposite my companion’s. We were just beginning to get warm when some large dogs, scenting us, came running up barking furiously. At this noise the people ran out of the farm-house and tried to drive us off with stones. This new kind of hail did not suffer us to remain in our quarters, and fear of the dogs prevented our leaving them. I then thought it high time to speak, and my skill in getting up tears served my turn here as it had already done in getting us off when arrested as deserters. So I began to shout out in Latin: Nos sumus pauperes peregrini. As the last word is Italian also, it informed these good people who we were. They took pity on us, called off their dogs, and left us to pass the rest of the night in peace.

“After many hardships and sufferings we reached Ancona. Alas! who can express the wretched condition to which my vagabond life had reduced me! From head to foot, everything about me inspired horror. I was barefooted, having been obliged to throw away my shoes, which were broken and galled me. My shirt was rotting, my tattered clothes swarmed with vermin, my uncombed head was filled with so horrible a disease that it swarmed with worms and matter of most loathsome stench.... It was only at Ancona that I was aware of the extent of this disease, when on scratching it I found a worm on my hand. At the sight of this my consternation was unspeakable. ‘Must I, then,’ I said to myself, ‘in punishment of my villanies, be eaten alive by worms and vermin? I no longer wonder that when I take off my hat before people, they show wonder and horror at the sight. What is to become of me? Am I not a sickening sight to all the world? O sad chastisement of my pride!’

“After all, I resumed courage as I approached the Holy House of Loretto. Perhaps the Blessed Virgin, who performs so many miracles in this sacred spot in favor of the wretched, will take pity on my misery! Ah! why had I not then the knowledge I subsequently acquired of the wonders wrought by her in that sanctuary in favor of soul and body? I should have had a far different confidence in her power and goodness!

“Although I invoked her coldly enough, she showed me that, independently of our merit and disposition, she is pleased to exercise towards us the duties of a real mother; and as one of these duties is to see to the cleanliness of their children, thou didst regard me in that light, O Blessed Virgin! unworthy as I was and am to be adopted by thee as thy son. Thou didst inspire a young man whom I was never able to discover with the will and power to heal my head. Thou knowest better than I how it was accomplished. Yet I will not omit in token of gratitude to set down what I know.

“On leaving the Holy House of Mary, an unknown person, who seemed to be a young man and who was perhaps an angel, said to me with an air and tone of pity: ‘My dear boy, what a wretched head you have! Come, follow me, I will try to apply some remedy.’ I followed him: he took me outside the church, behind a large pillar, where no one passed. Having reached this retired spot, he made me sit down, and bade me remove my hat. I obeyed. He cut off all my hair with scissors, rubbed my poor head with a white cloth, and, without my feeling any pain, entirely removed all trace of the disease and its hideous accompaniments. He then put my hat on again. I thanked him for his charity; he left me, and I am yet to see a better physician or experience a more wretched disease.

“If the least lady had done me this service by her lowest valet, should I not render her all possible thanks? And if, after such a charity, she had offered always to serve me in the same way, how should I not feel bound to honor, obey, and love her all my life! Pardon, Queen of angels and of men! pardon me, that after receiving from thee so many marks convincing me that thou hast adopted me as thy son, I have been so ungrateful as for whole years to act more as a slave of Satan than the child of a Virgin Mother. Oh! how good and charitable art thou, since, in spite of the obstacles my sins have raised to thy graces, thou hast never ceased to draw me towards good; till thou hast caused me to be admitted into the holy Society of Jesus, thy Son.

“My comrade and I resumed the road to Rome, after spending three days at Loretto; but God stopped me at Terni, in Umbria, to change my beggar life for a place as valet. I was begging from door to door as usual, when a venerable old man, a doctor of laws, invited me to stay with him to attend him in the house and accompany him to town. I was so weary of my beggar’s trade that I readily accepted the citizen’s offer to become his lackey; I even did the lowest tasks, for there was nothing that did not seem sweet and honorable compared to the hardships and humiliations which had made me loathe my mendicant life.

“I had been some time at Terni, but as I had not picked up enough Italian to confess in that language, I made my confession in Latin to a father of the Society of Jesus. After my confession, he questioned me as to my studies. I told him that I was in rhetoric when I allowed myself to be led astray. He manifested the regret he felt to see me reduced to so low a condition after starting so well in my education. He urged me to resume my studies; and to facilitate this he proposed, if I chose, to have me received into the college, where I would advance in science and virtue. I took his proposal ill, imagining he wished to make a Jesuit of me; but in the sequel I had every reason to believe that this wise religious merely wished to give me at first the place of a young secular who taught the lowest class in the college. Would to God I had then commenced to do so! How many sins I should have avoided! I did indeed go two days after to see the father and remind him of it, but as I did not know his name, I was stupid enough to ask for ‘the father who heard my confession.’ The scholars in the college yard to whom I put this question roared at my folly, and that was enough to send me back quicker than I came. However, I asked the doctor whom I served what kind of people the Jesuits were. He answered me carelessly that they received only persons of rank and talent, that their order was less austere than others, and that you could leave it even after taking the vows. These last traits with which he described them did not displease me. I would willingly have entered among them for a time. I was not yet fit for the kingdom of God, as I looked behind me before putting my hand to the plough.

“As I began to understand Italian, I read devotional books in that language, and among the rest one, The Lives of the Fathers of the Desert, inspired me with the desire of becoming a hermit. Thereupon, without consulting any one, I left my master’s house with the view of going to bury myself in some wilderness in France after I had visited Rome.

“As I left the city I met my doctor’s daughter, and explained my intention to her, so that they should not be alarmed at my sudden disappearance. After I had travelled a few leagues, I thought I would try whether I could live on herbs like the anchorites. I took some growing wheat, put it in my mouth, chewed it, but could not swallow it, so I fell back on my trade of beggar, which did not prevent my suffering considerably from hunger, even in Rome, for I did not know the religious houses where alms were given at stated days and hours. The novitiate of the Jesuits at St. Andrew’s is one of these charitable places, and the only one I knew. Although my would-be vocation to the eremitical life was somewhat shaken, I started from Rome intending to return to France. Retracing the same road I came by, I reached Terni, but not daring to return to my master, I retired to a soap-maker of my acquaintance, where I spent the night. The next morning he told the doctor, who was good enough to invite me back to his service. I at once accepted his offer, renouncing for ever beggary, for which I had now a greater horror than ever.

“My good master had an intimate friend called Il Signore Capitone, who some time after my return to Terni told my doctor that he would like to have me at his house as tutor to his two sons, who were studying at the college of the Society of Jesus. My master consented, and, after speaking to me, sent me to his friend. I was received with open arms, and presented the next day to our fathers, who put me in rhetoric. I was not long studying under them without feeling stimulated to imitate the virtues which I admired in these worthy servants of God. One thing prevented openness with my confessor, and it was that I could not bring myself to acknowledge my low birth, for up to this time I had boasted that my father was a procureur du roi (district attorney), and I was ashamed to unsay it or keep on saying it. Several months rolled on in this combat of nature and grace, the latter pressing me to declare my vocation, the former preventing it. However, God, wishing me to be received into the Society, prepared the occasion.

“A young ecclesiastic paid by the fathers taught one of the lower classes, but, getting tired of it, asked to be relieved. They cast their eyes on me, and promised me the same salary. The gentleman with whom I dwelt consenting, I became regent or teacher. God gave me grace to economize my earnings, and when I had a pretty good sum I divided it between the churches and the poor. I even tried to imitate at least in something the great St. Nicholas, by throwing some money one night into a house where there was a girl in want.

“Our Lord rewarded me well for these liberalities by the great grace he did me by calling me strongly to the religious state. One day among others, while they were celebrating in the church the feast of Blessed Francis Borgia, not then canonized, I was so touched by the sermon of the Jesuit father that, to follow as far as I could the example of the blessed Francis, I made a vow to leave the world and enter religion either among the Jesuits, if they were willing to receive me, or, in case they deemed me unworthy of that favor, among the Capuchins or Recollects.”

We will not follow his account of some interior struggles that followed. When the provincial of the order arrived at Terni, the accounts given were so favorable that Chaumonot was received and sent with good letters to the novitiate of St. Andrew’s at Rome. “I was twenty-one years old,” says he, “when I entered the novitiate May 18, 1632.” But he did not finish it there. A nobleman had founded a novitiate at Florence, and young Chaumonot with others was sent there six months after his entrance. The master of novices here, less austere than his former one, encouraged him to reveal the great deception that troubled his conscience.

“One of the first things I asked this second master of novices was that, to punish my pride, he should question me in public as to the condition of my parents, my coming into Italy, and how I had been employed. I hoped thus to expiate to some extent my faults, and especially the falsehood I had uttered to conceal my low birth. He consented. One day, when all the novitiate was assembled, he questioned me on all these points. God gave me grace to practise the humiliation which he had inspired, and I publicly declared who I was, how and why I had left France, and what had been my adventures in Italy. The holy man added to my avowal as I had proposed making it, another act of mortification that I had not counted on. He told me to sing one of my village songs, and for this purpose made me mount on a trunk as my stage. I tried to obey, but the music was not long. My memory could bring up only a dancing tune. I started it. After the first couplet, the father stopped me, crying: ‘Shame! what a ridiculous song! If you don’t know a better one, never sing again.’”

His joy in the abode of religion was unbounded. To find himself admitted among young men so far superior to him in all that the world esteems, gave him constant occasions for zeal and fervor. Yet his trials were not ended. The health which had stood the hardships of his gipsy life now became so impaired that there was some hesitation whether he should be allowed to take his vows.

But heaven favored his desires. He returned to Rome, and was thence sent to the college at Fermo, to his intense delight; for it was but a short distance from that Holy House which was to his last breath the one beloved spot of earth to his warm heart, throbbing with love for the Holy Family.

He easily won permission to make a pilgrimage to that shrine; and the young French runaway of former days, a spectacle to excite pity and horror, would not now be recognized in the talented young Italian Jesuit, Calmanotti. His mother tongue even was lost, but a French father at Loretto gave him some books in his native language, and urged him to recover it. After a time it came back, and he could read with ease.

As a teacher, he won the favor of his pupils and his superiors, for he seemed to possess the donum famæ, that singular gift which constitutes popularity, and wins its way with men of all nations and places.

While pursuing his theology at Rome, he became acquainted with Father Poncet de la Rivière, a Parisian Jesuit just completing his divinity course in the Holy City, destined at a later day to be hurried through Northern New York by savage captors and to reach the Mohawk amid torture and suffering.

One day this father placed in the hands of his young and brilliant countryman one of those Jesuit Relations our bibliomaniacs now prize so highly. Chaumonot read with wonder and excited interest the narrative of the heroic Brébeuf and his call for religious to labor with him in converting the Indians of New France. To him it was a personal call, and he responded. There were obstacles, but he applied for everything, permission to abridge his course of study, permission to be ordained, permission to start as early as possible for France to catch the ships on their annual voyage.

Yet with all his eagerness and haste, he clung to one spot of Italy. He could not leave it without kneeling once more as a pilgrim in the Santa Casa, and bearing it in his heart of hearts to the New World, till he could erect there a Loretto on the model of that he so revered. His devotion to the Holy Family led him to adopt the name of Joseph and Mary, and to choose for saying his first Mass the Loretto Chapel, erected after the model of the Santa Casa by Cardinal Pallotti.

An unfortunate hiatus in his autobiography prevents our following him through France, and witnessing his meeting with his family and his long farewell. The uncle, we can well believe, readily pardoned the escapade of one who was now showing such devotion and self-sacrifice; while the mother must have pressed to her heart the son now more than ever dear to her.

The Canada fleet sailed from Dieppe, and thither Chaumonot and Poncet bent their way. The fleet and its voyage are historical. As the old chronicle remarks, it bore “a College of Jesuits, a House of Hospital Nuns, and an Ursuline Convent,” the last accompanied by Madame de la Peltrie, the foundress and Mother Mary of the Incarnation, as first superior. Of the Hospital Nuns—whose contemplated establishment was endowed by Richelieu’s niece, the Duchess d’Aiguillon, and the great cardinal himself—Mary Guenet of St. Ignatius had in chapter been appointed to assume direction. The passage of the ocean was not without its risks. Richelieu’s attempt to create a French navy, and his motto, so adroitly alluding to the arms of France:

had excited jealousy, and cruisers, privateers of all kinds, were ready to sweep away the cargoes destined for the colonies the far-sighted minister sought to create.

But fearless of this danger the fleet swept out of Dieppe on the 4th of May, 1639, and the convent life, with almost daily Masses, made the flagship vie in its regularity with the time-honored monasteries of the Old World.

But if the danger of hostile cruisers did not alarm them, the feast of the Holy Trinity came with a new peril. Dense fogs hung over the bosom of the ocean while the Masses were offered. Just as they had risen from their adoration, a sailor on the deck shrieked: “Mercy! mercy! we are all lost!” Through the lifting vapors he caught, within two fathoms of the ship’s side, the flash and the glitter of ice. While all sank in prayer, offering vows and Masses, and the Ursuline Sister St. Joseph began to chant the Litany of Loretto, the vanishing mist showed them the fearful extent of their danger. The iceberg towered high above their topmast, its summit still wreathed in a cloud of mist, while far and wide it extended over the sea. “You would have called it a city,” says Mother Mary of the Incarnation, “and there are cities which are far less extensive than this berg,” with turrets and spires, streets and dwellings, as it were of crystal.

The sails were straining, the wind being full in their favor, and the iceberg advancing. All passed in a moment. Captain Bontems’ voice rang out, but providentially the man at the wheel, appalled by terror, gave a wrong movement, the wind suddenly changed, and the vessel was saved, as the ice fairly grazed it, and bore away from the magnificent object that so recently sent a thrill through every heart—even the best pilots averring that it was a miracle, as no human skill could have saved them.

Still storms and fogs delayed the ships, and it was not till the 15th of July that they entered the port of Tadoussac on the lower St. Lawrence. Transferred to a fishing-smack, the whole party were here detained several days, but at last on the 1st of August reached the lower town of Quebec.

The gallant Knight of Malta, Huault de Montmagny, Governor-General of Canada, received them at the wharf, and the city made it a general holiday. As the nuns stepped on the American soil which was to be the scene of their labors for God and the Indians, they knelt to kiss the earth. All then proceeded to the church, where a Te Deum was chanted.

Father Chaumonot was not to linger long at Quebec. A letter of August 7th announces that he with three other fathers was about to start for the Huron country. His stormy sea voyage of three months was followed by a month’s journey over the rivers and lakes and through the vast forests of the New World. On the 10th of September, the six Hurons ran their bark canoe ashore at the end of Lake Tsirorgi, where Father Jerome Lalemant was at the moment in a rude cabin he had recently thrown up.

Chaumonot was on the field of his labor. Strange indeed was all around him. “Our dwellings are of bark, like those of the Indians, with no partitions except for the chapel. For want of table and furniture, we eat on the ground and drink out of bark. Our kitchen and refectory furniture consists of a great wooden dish full of sagamity, which I can compare to nothing but the paste used for wall paper. Our bed is bark with a thin blanket; sheets we have none, even in sickness; but the greatest inconvenience is the smoke, which, for want of a chimney, fills the whole cabin.”

“Our manner of announcing the Word of God to the Indians is not to go up into a pulpit and preach in a public place; we must visit each house separately, and by the fire explain the mysteries of our holy faith to those who choose to listen to it.”

The superior soon recognized in the young father—to whom the Hurons gave the name of Oronhiaguehee (the Bearer of Heaven)—a great facility for languages, as well as zeal, courage, and perseverance.

Father Chaumonot began his Huron labors at a critical moment. The mission among the Wyandot tribes, renewed by the great apostle Brébeuf soon after the restoration of Canada to France, had been fruitful in crosses and gave little to encourage the ministers of religion.

Most of these Indians, obdurate in their errors and superstitions, not only turned a deaf ear to the teachings of the missionaries, but, regarding them as powerful sorcerers, attributed to them every misfortune that befel the tribe or any individual. In those wild communities, every one rights his own wrongs, real or imaginary. Hence the fearless Jesuits actually carried their lives in their hands, never free from danger, or without the probability of being tomahawked.

The flotilla that brought up Father Chaumonot and Poncet carried also the deadly small-pox. As it devastated town after town, the missionaries were compelled to bear the responsibility of this new scourge. Their very efforts to reach the sick, to baptize and instruct, were resisted with superstitious terror; they were driven from cabins; and often, on reaching a town, would find every lodge closed against them.

Their crosses were cut down, the crucifix torn from their necks, the tomahawk often menaced their lives while on their errands of mercy or at prayer in their cabins.

It was a position to appall the stoutest heart. Yet Chaumonot entered on his work with alacrity and courage, fit associate for those who had already braved all the risks and perils. None faltered or hesitated.

They took, however, at this time an important step. To enable them to act more independently and give them at all times a place for retreats, as well as a centre of mission work, they established St. Mary’s, the first mission settlement in the West. It was on the river Wye, easy of access from all the towns where they had been laboring. From it the fathers, generally two together, proceeded to the towns assigned as their field of labor.

The large fortified town of Ossossane was entrusted to Father Ragueneau, and Chaumonot was named his assistant. Here the opposition and obduracy were such that they had actually driven out the missionaries. The young Jesuit went forth bravely into this hardened field—Ossossane and twelve neighboring towns.

In St. Teresa, as the missionaries styled one of these villages, a young man solicited instruction and seemed to hear it with pleasure. While Father Ragueneau was speaking, another Indian rushed furiously in and ordered the two missionaries to be gone. As Father Ragueneau rose, the young man whom he had been instructing sprang upon him, tore his crucifix violently from his neck, and, brandishing his tomahawk, bade him prepare to die. “I fear not death,” said Ragueneau; “you should thank me for what I have just taught you. If you wish to kill me I shall not fly, for death will place me in heaven.” His tomahawk was raised, and he dealt the blow. “Father Chaumonot and I thought that we that moment beheld our long-cherished desire gratified,” but the blow was averted—how they knew not. As he raised his hatchet again his arm was caught.

One day the two fathers were passing near a cabin full of sick Hurons, whom they were not permitted to see. A bright little boy ran out and welcomed them with kind words. His danger of taking the epidemic touched them. Father Ragueneau felt impelled not to lose the opportunity which Providence seemed to offer them to baptize him, and he asked our young missionary to baptize him secretly. Father Chaumonot took up a handful of snow, and, melting it in his hand, poured it upon his head. The little fellow smiled, and then, as though he had accomplished his errand, ran back to his death-stricken home. A few days later they heard that he had sunk under the fatal malady.

The next year he was sent to the Arendaenronnon with Father Daniel. As the great object was to learn the language, his experienced companion made him daily visit a certain number of cabins and pick up all the words he could, writing them down. “So great a repugnance had I to making these visits,” he tells us, “that every time I entered a cabin I seemed to be going to the torture, so much did I shrink from the railleries to which I was subjected.”

After this rude apprenticeship he set out with the great Father Brébeuf to attempt to establish a mission among the Attiwandaronk, a tribe lying on both sides of the Niagara, or, as they called it and one of their towns near the Senecas, Onguiaahra. This tribe, fiercer and more brutal than the Hurons, had hitherto observed a neutrality between them and the Iroquois—a fact which led the French to call them the Neutral Nation. A journey of four days and nights through the woods from Teananstayae on the Huron frontier brought them to Kandoucho, the first of the Neuter towns.

In the beginning they were well received, and all awaited the return of the great chief Tsohahissen from war, there being no one in his absence to treat with them; but gradually pagan Hurons came, and represented the missionaries as great magicians who sought their ruin. Then every door was closed against them, and they often nearly perished at night, deprived of all shelter. After visiting eighteen towns, they sadly turned back towards Kandoucho, but the snow came on so rapidly that they could not proceed beyond Teotongniaton. There they found a charitable woman who not only welcomed them to her cabin, but during their twenty-five days’ stay was their patient and intelligent instructor in her language, enabling them to adapt the dictionary and grammar of the Huron language to that of this nation.

Yet even this good woman could not protect her guests from all injury. A crazy fellow in her cabin spat upon Father Chaumonot, tore his cassock, and kept up such a din that they could not sleep, and tore from their persons any object that took his fancy.

After a stay of four months and a half they finally abandoned this field, and the Neuter Nation rejected its last call, for it was soon after destroyed by the Iroquois.

Still greater suffering awaited him. With the early summer he joined Father Daniel once more. They entered the cabin of a dying woman in the town of St. Michael to baptize her; one of her relatives, incensed at this, awaited them without, and as Father Chaumonot issued forth tore off his hat with one hand, and with the other dealt him a terrible blow with a stone. “I was stunned by the blow,” says he, “and the assassin seized his tomahawk to finish me, but Father Daniel wrested it from his hands. I was taken to our host’s cabin, where another Indian was my charitable physician. Seeing the large tumor I had on my head, he took another sharp stone to make some incision, through which he endeavored to press out all the extravasated blood, and then bathed the top of my head with cold water, in which some pounded roots were steeped. He took some of this infusion into his mouth and squirted it into the incisions. This treatment was so successful that I was soon well. God was satisfied with my desire of martyrdom, or rather deemed me unworthy to die a victim to the hatred of the first of our sacraments.”

Amid such men, with all the horrors of war—for the Iroquois from New York were gradually conquering the land—Chaumonot labored on, suffering in health but undaunted and unappalled, even when, in 1648, Father Daniel perished in his village, and in the following March Father Brébeuf and his young associate Gabriel Lalemant underwent the fearful torture which gave them the highest crown among our martyrs.

A general panic seized the Hurons after this last blow. “At the time of this greatest defeat of the Huron nation,” says Father Chaumonot, “I had charge of a town almost entirely Christian. The Iroquois, having attacked the villages about ten miles off, gave our braves a chance to sally out and attack them; but the enemy were in greater force than they supposed, and our men were defeated. Two days after their defeat news came that all our warriors were killed or taken. It was midnight when the intelligence came, and at once every cabin resounded with wailing, sobs, and piteous cries. You could hear nothing but wives bewailing their husbands, mothers mourning for their sons, and relatives lamenting the death or captivity of those nearest to them. Thereupon an old man, justly fearing lest the Iroquois might dash on the town, now deprived of its defenders, began to run through the town crying: ‘Fly! fly! let us escape; the hostile army is coming to take us.’

“At this cry I ran out and hastened from cabin to cabin to baptize the catechumens, confess the neophytes, and, arm all with prayer. As I made my round I saw that they were all abandoning the place, to take refuge with a nation about thirty-three miles distant. I followed these poor fugitives with the view of giving them spiritual aid, and as I did not even think of taking any provisions, I made the whole journey without eating or drinking or ever feeling any fatigue. While marching on, I thought only and busied myself only with administering consolation to my flock, instructing some, confessing others, baptizing those who had not yet received that sacrament. As it was still winter, I was forced to administer baptism with snow-water melted in my hands. What showed me clearly that my strength in flight was given me from on high, is that a Frenchman in the party, a man incomparably stronger in constitution than I, almost perished on the way, spent with weariness and overexertion.”

He was with the surviving missionaries when they committed to the grave at St. Mary’s the bodies of Brébeuf and Lalemant; and when tidings came of Garnier’s heroic death, and of Chabanel’s disappearance, he accompanied the Hurons who fled to St. Joseph’s Island in Lake Huron. There is nothing in the annals of the missions more touching than Father Chaumonot’s letters describing the fearful sufferings of the fugitives there.

When they at last resolved to seek a refuge at Quebec with their allies the French, Father Chaumonot bore them company, bidding adieu to the land which for eleven years had been the constant scene of his labors.

No missionary had more thoroughly entered into the Indian character or identified himself with them in thought. To him, therefore, they gave the name which the illustrious Brébeuf had borne, that of Hechon; and he was naturally the one to whose direction they were committed on Isle Orleans.

His labors on the Huron language were now probably completed. He had thoroughly mastered it, and drew up a grammar and dictionary, which continued for years to be the guide, not only for Huron, but for all the kindred Iroquois languages. “It pleased God,” he says, “to give my work so much benediction, that there is no turn or subtlety in Huron, nor manner of expression, that I am not acquainted with, or have not, so to say, discovered.” This knowledge he attributed as much to prayer as to his natural talent and assiduity.

His grammar was published some years since in the second volume of the Collections of the Quebec Literary and Historical Society, and is one of the most important of those linguistic treasures which American ethnology owes to the early Catholic missionaries.

Father Chaumonot had scarcely organized his Huron church on Isle Orleans when he was summoned to a new field. The Iroquois, their hands reeking with the blood of Goupil, Jogues, Daniel, Brébeuf, Lalemant, Garnier, asked for missionaries. They began to respect the faith which gave such heroes, able to read the grandeur of Christianity in the virtues of its apostles.

Father le Moyne had led the way to Onondaga. Dablon and Chaumonot followed. In a general assembly of the cantons, Father Chaumonot proclaimed the faith with such eloquence, and in a style so adapted to reach the Indian mind, that the Indians lost their cold indifference, and applauded loudly, while Father Dablon himself listened in wonder to the language of his fellow-missioner. The mission was established. Huron captives formed a nucleus, around which gathered Iroquois converts, warriors and matrons, sachems and orators.

There was no sparing of vice. Amid all the suspicion that lurked in the Indian mind against the motives of the missionaries, and compelled constant discourses and apologies, the fearless missionaries rebuked them for their evil life.

Once, when accusations were made that the blackgowns came to diminish their numbers and blight their race, Father Chaumonot boldly retorted the charge on the men, and showed them that, by their infidelity and harshness to their wives, their divorces, abandoning them, and overtasking their strength, they caused the death of their children, and were forced to adopt captives to fill their cabins. Christian marriage alone, he showed them, could save the race from extermination.

This advocacy of woman’s real rights closed the mouths of his assailants, and so won the women of Onondaga to the cause of Christianity that they wished to render public thanks to the fearless missionary. They gave him a great banquet, to which they came adorned in all their finest ornaments, to dance to the cadence of two native minstrels, while they sang his praises and thanked him for his advocacy.

Strange that alarmed statisticians in this country point now to the same causes as producing the rapid decline in the birth-rate of the Americans as a people, while the church, echoing Chaumonot’s sermon of two centuries ago, points to the sacrament of matrimony as the only sure hope for the country.

The Onondaga mission of 1655 is full of beautiful details. Its end was strange and romantic. A plot formed for the destruction of all the French was baffled by a secret flight, so adroitly managed that the Indians believed that the French had become invisible.

Montreal was the next field of our missionary. Here, in 1663, with the aid of Madame d’Ailleboust, Margaret Bourgeoys, foundress of the Congregation Sisters, Mother de Brésoles, of the Hôtel Dieu, and other pious persons, he founded a society which has for its model the Holy House of Nazareth, to which he was so devoted, and which has for two hundred years been the instrument of incalculable good in Canada—one of the mighty aids in maintaining the family faith and family piety—the Society of the Holy Family. Amid our great wants is such a society, to sanctify Christian families, by modelling them on that of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

The remnant of his Huron flock had gathered beneath the fort of Quebec, but before he returned permanently to them he was sent as chaplain to Fort Richelieu, at the mouth of the Sorel. Adapting himself to any life, he labored among those committed to him with his habitual zeal. He soon gained the hearts, not only of the private soldiers, but of the officers; and established among them regular practices of piety. One officer, touched by his words and example, hung up his sword at the altar, and, receiving in due time holy orders, was for many years a devoted missionary in Nova Scotia; while a soldier, formed by Father Chaumonot, devoted himself to the service of the missionaries, and became an excellent teacher.

At last he is with his Hurons, never to leave them. He reared for them the Chapel of Notre Dame de Foye, so called after a celebrated shrine of Mary near Dinan. A copy of the miraculous statue there venerated excited the devotion of his flock, and was the instrument of God’s blessings and favors. To commemorate these, the Hurons, through Father Chaumonot, sent to the Old World shrine a wampum belt with the inscription, “Beata quæ credidisti,” and this token of Indian homage was laid before the altar of Our Lady with the offerings of kings and princes. Others followed the example, and to this day celebrated shrines in Belgium, France, and Italy preserve the wampum belts sent from the depths of our forests by the converts of our early missionaries.

Six years later, the wants of the Indians compelled them to select a new site, where unbroken land and fuel were abundant. When it was chosen, Father Chaumonot carried out a long-cherished design, and with the alms of the Children of Mary in Europe and America erected a brick chapel of the exact dimensions and arrangement of the Santa Casa of Loretto. It soon became a renowned pilgrimage for the supernatural favors obtained there. And here in this favored sanctuary the servant of Mary spent nearly a quarter of a century, giving his time to God and his neighbor. He rose at two, spent four or five hours in prayer or contemplation, recited his office, said Mass, preaching almost daily, then attended to the affairs of the mission, instructing some of his colleagues in Huron, catechising children; after a slight repast at noon, he again spent some time in prayer, and visited some cabins to give special instructions. At nightfall, his chapel was filled for evening prayer, and with his private devotions he closed his day.

In 1689, he celebrated at the Cathedral of Quebec the fiftieth anniversary of his first Mass, being the first one who had ever there attained such years of ministry. The Governor and Intendant, with many other persons of distinction, sought the privilege of receiving at the hands of the venerable priest on this day.

At the close of the year 1692, he began to sink under a complication of disorders, and was conveyed to Quebec. He rallied for a time, but after suffering intense pains, which he bore with unshaken patience and admirable piety, he died the death of a saint. As such, his austerities, his mortifications, his uninterrupted union with God, his zeal and love for his neighbor, had long caused him to be regarded. All gathered around his venerated remains seeking some relic, and many afflicted in soul or body sought his intercession—as documents show, not without effect. His funeral was the most imposing yet seen in Canada. Such was the repute of his sanctity that even Frontenac, the Governor-General, bitter and fanatical in his hostility to the Jesuits, attended, as well as the Bishop of Quebec, who had long revered the aged missionary.

None who beheld his unpromising start in life could have dreamed of such a career or of such a close.