It Happened Here --The Other French and Indian Wars --Part II The Jesuits and The Ordeals of  Fr.  Jogues

From their earliest efforts at settlement, the French were motivated not only to make a profit for their sponsors but also to save the souls of the indigenous people they encountered by converting them to Christianity.  Franciscan and Sulpician priests accompanied the first explorers and settlers, to be replaced by the Jesuit order in 1635/6.

In August of 1642 twelve canoes made their way upstream along the northern shore of Lac St. Pierre, a widening in the St. Lawrence River between Trois Rivieres and Montreal, near where the Richelieu River empties in. In the lead canoe was Father Issac Jogues, a Jesuit priest who had led missionary efforts among the Huron peoples and the Tobacco tribes of the Great Lakes for the last several years.  He was returning with critical supplies for the struggling mission in Huron territory--clothing for the priests, altar vessels, bread and wine for the Eucharist, and writing supplies*. With him were some forty Christian and non-Christian Hurons, and  Rene Goupill and Guillaume Couture, donnes of the Jesuits (layman who out of religious motives had volunteered for service to the order).  

Suddenly, the stillness of the lake was shattered by the crash of muskets and the war-whoops of attacking Indians. Most of Jogues' Huron party immediately jumped from their canoes and attempted to escape through the dense undergrowth along shore. The remaining Hurons and Jogues lay-assistants abandoned resistance when from both shores, canoes filled with Iroquois warriors appeared from their hiding places eliminating all possibility of flight. Jogues slipped into the bull-rushes and might have made his escape but when he saw his donne Rene Goupill, and several of his converts in the hands of the Iroquois, he returned to share their fate. So too did Guillaume Couture, but not before killing an attacking Mohawk that attempted to kill him. The Iroquois frenzied by the success of their attack and enraged by the death of one of their own, immediately began to abuse their white prisoners with tortures traditional among many of the eastern tribes. Jogues and Coture were beaten senseless by fists and war clubs. Their finger-nails were ripped from their fingers and the ends of their fingers chewed by their captors.

Immediately, with their captives, the the Iroquois war party began their return to the Mohawk towns, from where they had come, up** the Richelieu river, and up the lake known to the French by the name of its French discoverer (Champlain). After eight days they met an Iroquois war party heading north. The Iroquois celebrated and the captives were forced to run a gauntlet of warriors armed with sticks and clubs from both parties, suffering severe beatings. At night, young warriors kept up the tortures of their captives who were staked, hand and foot to the ground, reopening wounds on their captives fingers, burning them with firebrands and pulling hair from their heads and beards.

La Chute River falls, surrounded by the village of Ticonderoga

 Soon after, the French captives entered territory unknown to them, ascending a river, portaging around a falls and continuing up
a large and beautiful lake. From there they continued to the principal village of the Mohawks, Ossernenon.
                

The lake, (now called Lake George) looking South from Mt. Defiance

On Black Pt. Road, Ticonderoga

                             

Rt 5S, Auriesville

At Ossernenon the three frenchmen and several  Hurons of their party suffered their worst beatings as the whole town turned out to form a long gauntlet into the town. Afterwards, in the town they were strung up on scaffolds and Jogues and Goupill both suffered a thumb to be cut off.
After several days they were paraded to two other Mohawk towns where their tortures continued.



      
           ANDAGORON
          MIDDLE MOHAWK CASTLE
          OF THE BEAR CLAN 1642
          LOCATED ON HILL TOP.
          DESTROYED IN DE TRACY'S
          RAID OF 1666 Location: ON NYS 5S ABOUT 2 MIS. WEST OF FULTONVILLE
        (This NYSHM has disappeared.)

•  SITE OF
  T-CAN-DE-RO-GA OR
  TEN-ON-ON-TO-GEN. LOWER
  CASTLE MOHAWKS' WOLF CLAN
  LAST MOHAWK INDIAN VILLAGE
  IN VALLEY, 1700-1775Location: ON TOWN RD. AT FORT HUNTER

         (Ten-on-on-to-gen may have preceded T-can-de-ro-ga and thus been here in1642 when Jogues 
           was a captive. This NYSHM stood at Fort Hunter until it was undermined by flooding from     
           Hurricane Irene in 2011.  It had not been reset as of this posting.)
         






               Another town identified by Fr. Jogues
                  was Canagere, near the present-day 
                  hamlet of Sprakers








Eventually, after periods of severe torture, the young Couture, who was admired for his bravery in killing the Mohawk who had attempted to kill him, was adopted by an Indian family to replace a lost son; Goupill and Jogues became slaves, required to gather wood and do menial tasks.
The Jesuit and his donne took every opportunity to secretly practice their faith, baptizing and absolving Huron captives brought in and condemned to death by burning and the children of Mohawks who had became deathly sick. Goupil fell under suspicion of witchcraft for teaching little children to make the sign of the cross and when he was observed making the sign of the cross on a sick child's forehead, the child's alarmed grandfather had him murdered. Jogues, too, fell under suspicion and was warned if any of the Mohawks war parties failed in their raids or suffered losses of their warriors, he would be held responsible, and would suffer further torture and be burned at the stake. For months Jogues suffered the agony of watching war parties depart and return, knowing if they succeeded he would have to witness the torture and death of their French and Indian captives, and if they failed, he would face his own torture and death.

In July, the following year, Jogues captors required him to write them a note, to give to the French, requesting a parlay to talk peace terms. Jogues doubted the Indians' sincerity and in the note he composed, using a mixture of French, Latin and Huron,  he warned the French.

The next month, Jogues went with a group of his captors to fish on the Hudson, twenty miles below Ft. Orange and to trade with the Dutch, at the fort.  While there, news was received that the war-party carrying Jogues' note had delivered it, and that the French, after reading it had fired their cannon at the war-party. The Indians, suspecting treachery, were incensed and let it be known of their plans to surely torture and burn the Jesuit father when he returned to Ossernenon.

The Dutch at Ft. Orange had known for some time of Jogues capture and had offered the Mohawks a ransom for his release but now with the news that he would most certainly be burned at the stake when he returned to Ossernenon, Arendt Van Cuyler and other leaders of the Rensselearwyck community formed a plan.  Passage was arranged for him on a small Dutch trading vessel bound for France now lying at anchor in the Hudson below Fort Orange. Their guests, the Mohawks and their slave were given quarters in a farmer's house near the water, and a small skiff was left for Jogues to make his way, at night, to the ship anchored in midstream.  But Jogues was unsure if he should go.  Would leaving mean abandoning a mission God had selected for him? Or would staying be abetting his own murderers--in effect, committing suicide, a mortal sin?  After a sleepless night, he chose to go but his escape was plagued with setbacks. In the pre-dawn as he set out he was attacked by the farmer's dog who lacerated his leg. The farmer bound his wounds, but fearful of antagonizing his Indian guests tied the door latch.  The next night with the help of a hired man Jogues made his escape but found the skiff stranded in the mud at low tide and had to laboriously pole the boat across the mud to the anchored ship. The next several days the furious Indians raged through town demanding to know where he was and who was hiding him. The ship's captain, fearful of what the Indians might do, demanded the town's burghers take back their passenger. For six weeks, Jogues was hidden in the stiffling loft of the house of an old man, who ate most of the food the burghers brought to him.  Eventually the Indians left after accepting a cash payment for their loss and the Jesuit father was put on another boat leaving for England, only to suffer a final trial before crossing the North Atlantic. In the port of New Amsterdam, while the ship's crew was ashore carousing before embarking on their transatlantic voyage a gang of thieves boarded the boat and stole, among other things, Jogues' only suit of clothes, given to him by the burghers, which he was wearing. Finally, after many weeks the Jesuit father arrived home in his native France, destitute and nearly naked.

After a couple years, during which he regained his health and became something of a celebrity in France, Father Jogues returned to New France to continue his mission work among the Hurons.*** In the meantime, a fragile peace had been worked out between the Mohawks, and the French and their Algonquin neighbors.

Then, the Governor of New France asked something incredible of him; and more incredibly, he accepted! Issac Jogues knew and understood the Mohawks better than any other European. The governor asked him to return to the Mohawk villages as his ambassador to ensure the Mohawks honored the peace treaty, and as a Jesuit father to continue his mission to the Mohawks.  In May  1646 Jogues left Trois Rivieres with  two Algonquin ambassadors to begin his diplomatic and religious mission to the Mohawks, stopping along the lake he discovered four years before and taking some of its clear water blessing it for holy water and naming the lake Lac du St. Sacrement.
  

At Ossernenon members of the tortoise and wolf clans accepted his wampum belts and gifts and listened to his peace oratory but refused the gifts of  his Algonquin counterparts.  It was apparent the peace was coming apart! He was warned to depart with the Algonquins before the more conservative clans of the upper villages arrived.

Father Jogues left with the Algonquins and accompanied them back to their homelands before turning around and heading back to Mohawk territory.

In Jogues absence opinion continued to turn against the French and their Algonquin allies.  Some visiting Hurons attempting to ingratiate themselves with their hosts began telling stories how the Jesuits had brought spells that cause crops to fail and diseases that caused children to die. With caterpillars infesting their corn and diseases increasing that summer Mohawk fears were on the rise. A box left by Jogues with some common personal items in it became the center of attention and fears arose he may have left evil talismans.

In the forest south of Lac du St. Sacrement (Lake George) a war-party from the Bear clan, heading north, that had decided to break the peace treaty, ran into Jogues and his companion, a young donne named Lelande heading south.  They stripped and beat the pair, hustling them back to Ossernenon. There, members of the crowd shouted he would die tomorrow.  The next day Father Jogues was invited to a feast by a chief of the bear clan.  As he entered his longhouse he was cut down by a tomahawk. Lalande was killed the following day.

                                       Statue of Fr. Issac Jogues at the 
                                                head of Lac du St. Sacrement, in
                                                Lake George Battleground State Park

Jesuit Shrine of the North America Martyrs,
Ossernenon, Auriesville 







The death of Father Jogues, in 1646, followed by the destruction of the Huron mission towns and the destruction of the Huron nation itself in 1649, marked the nadir of the Jesuit missionary cause and would be followed by a period in which the Iroquois would wreak havoc on New France's closest allies, the Algonquin tribes along the St. Lawrence, and threaten the very existence of New France, itself.  A future post will discuss these developments, and the actions the French would take to counter the rampages of the Iroquois.

* For forty years the Jesuits would send annual narrative reports of their activities to the order's headquarters in Paris and their superiors would collect and publish them in an annual volume, The Jesuit Relations.  Along with Jogues' substantial correspondence they became primary source material for Francis Parkman's classic The Jesuits in North America in the 17th Century.

**A geographical reminder--The Lake George, Lake Champlain, Richielu River watershed flow north into the St.Lawrence River. so "up" (upstream, to higher elevations) is to the south !

***Jogues was given a special dispensation by the Pope to say Mass and handle the sacramental bread with his mutilated hands.