History of the early missions in western Canada

Preface

This work is an expansion and a development of a sketch prepared some time ago, and published in the "Jubilee Volume," issued on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the consecration of His Grace, the Archbishop of Toronto. The critical reader will at once notice that it has been hastily written, and that the varying phases of composition and style betoken frequent interruption and annoying breaks. It has been composed during leisure moments snatched from the busy life of a Parish Priest. Yet it is a beginning and will, I trust, be an incentive to others who have time and talent to lend their aid in gathering material for the Ecclesiastical History of this Province. The sources of information concerning the early history of the Catholic Church in Canada are very copious. The "Jesuit Relations" are an inexhaustible well of information, and, with regard to accuracy, touching the condition and character of the Indians of North America, their authority is invaluable. Francis Parkman says that after the closest examination he is satisfied that the missionaries wrote in perfect good faith, and that these letters hold a high place as authentic and trustworthy documents. Bancroft, Jared Sparks and others bear sim-

VI

PREFACE.

ilar testimony. Commencing with Father Biard, 1611, and Lalemant, 1626, the "Jesuit Relations" are continuous from 1632 to 1672. The whole series was reprinted at Quebec in 1858, in three volumes, octavo, under the supervision and editorship of Father Martin. Later on, this eminent Priest published in 1861, " Relations In edites," which brought the authentic account of the Indian Missions down to 1679. He supplemented the above by publishing the lives of several of the early missionaries, and the " Relation Abreg^e " of Bressani. It is well to bear in mind that after the dispersion of the Hurons in 1650, the Jesuit Fathers could scarcely be said to have any fixed Missions in Ontario, save in the neighborhood of Sault Ste. Marie, until after the foundation of Detroit, when Father De la Richardie, in about 1728, established a Mission on the Canadian side for the Petun-Hurons. Michillimackinac, the shores of Lake Michigan, the northern coast of Lake Huron and, later on, the territory along the Mississippi were meantime the scenes of their labor. In the collection of material for this volume I have received valuable aid from Father Jones, of St. Mary s College, Montreal ; Father Rouxel, of the Seminary of St. Sulpice ; Mr. J. H. Coyne, St. Thomas ; Mr. James Bain, of the Toronto Library, and John Henderson, M.A., of this city. When I add that the late Gilmarj^ Shea spent ten years in compiling his "History of the Catholic Missions among the Indian

PREFACE. vii

Tribes in the United States/' a work of five hundred pages, the reader will have some idea of the time and labor involved in the preparation of this volume. I have tried all through to be historically accurate, have arranged and put together the material which I found scattered here and there among the old authors, have brushed the dust and mildew from valuable bits of ancient chronicle, and now offer them for the instruction and, I trust, the edification of my readers.

The Deaneuy, St, Catharines, Ontario, June 1st, 1893.

Indians of North America Z)mA;e|

Histoire de la Colonie Francaise (3 vols.) Faillon,

Christian Missions. (2 vols.) Marshall.

Relations des Jesuites. (3 vols.)

Vie de P. Jean De Brebeuf Martin.

" "P. Isaac Jogues Martin.

Relation de la Nouvelle France Bressani.

Narrative and Critical History of America (8 vols.) Justin Winsor.

Vie de Monsieur Olier Lajeure.

History of Catholic Missions among the Indian Tribes of the

United States Shea,

" Western " " " DeSmet.

Vie de Mile Mance Le Blond.

Voyages de S. Champlain. (3 vols.) ■ —

Early Jesuits in North America Kip.

The Early J esuit Missions in North America Parhman.

La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West do.

Chaumonot, s* Vie ecrite par luimeme

Histoire de Nouvelle France. (6 vols.) Charlevoix.

" de Montreal Dollier de Casson.

Abr^ge de la Mission de Kente do.

Canada in the 17th Century . . Boucher.

Voyage de M. M. Dollier de Casson et de Galinee. 1669-70.

Histoire du Canada. (4 vols.) Sagard.

History of Canada. (5 vols. ) Kingsford.

Life of M. Olier Headley Thompson.

Buffalo and the Senecas Ketchum.

Missions in Western New York Timon.

Annals of Fort Mackinac Kelton.

Documentary History of New York O'Callaghan.

First Establishment of the Faith in New France Le Clercq.

North- West Territory (Report) Hind.

Missionary Labors Verroyst.

Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Shea.

Memoire Perot.

Canadian Archives Douglas Brymner.

History of the United States Bancroft.

I

EARLY MISSIONS IN WESTERN CANADA.

CHAPTER L

THE NATIVE TRIBES.

Their Divisions and Sub-divisions — The Totems — Moral Condition of the Tribes — Their Ferocity and Cruelty — Their Thirst for Blood — Their Religious Conceptions — Their Redeeming Features — Rosseaii's "Ideal Man."

Before entering upon a history of the heroism and self-denial of the priests of the Catholic Church who attempted the reclamation and conversion of the Nomadic tribes of Western Canada, let us rapidly survey the divisions, sub-divisions, and general moral condition of the fierce and crafty race of men who roamed the forests of Canada along the banks of the St. Lawrence and on the margins of the great lakes. Of the eight great nations of savages, divided into four hundred and sixty-five tribes, who pied the vast prairies and desolation of wilderness ^ g between the Esquimaux country of Labrador, the Mississippi and the Atlantic, three only claimed the exelusive privilege of calling the waters and hunting-grounds of this great Dominion their own. These were the Algonquin, the Huron-Iroquois and the Sioux or Dacotah. These nations having each a generic language, were divided into tribes, which were again sub-divided into clans or families. The Huron-Iroquois nation was composed of eleven or twelve separate tribes speaking a common language, but differing in patois or dialect. The Attiwendarons of the Niagara peninsula, the Tinnontates or Tobacco nation of the Blue Ridge, the Erie or Cat nation, the Andastes of the Susquehanna, and several other tribes occupying lands stretching from Lake Huron to Lake Erie, and far into Western New York, were members of the great Huron or Wyandot nation, that in the fifteenth century broke apart from the Iroquois and formed separate and distinct confederacies. The families, tribes, and nations were recognized and distinguished by symbolic signs or emblems called totems. There was the national totem, akin to the English lion; the tribal totem, similar to the heraldic emblem of a Scotch clan, and the family totem, like unto the House of York, or the English Howards. The wolf, bear, beaver, deer, snipe, heron, hawk, turtle or snake, painted on the doors of their wigwams, indicated the family or tribe of the occupants. It is worthy of note that the Wild-Oats of Lake Michigan had for their tribal totem an eagle perched on a cross. A remarkable fact, which goes far to prove

THE NATIVE TRIBES.

that the American savage was familiar with the disastrous effects of intermarriage with blood relations was, that no warrior ever took a wife from a family that bore the same totem as his own. Among the Iroquois, no man could marry a woman of his own tribe, for they were all within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity, and, even to this day, among the remnants settled on government reservations, this prohibition is still enforced. The moral debasement of the tribes was something appalling. A frightful heirloom of entailed and indefeasible accursedness, in association with senseless ignorance and brutal customs, was the only inheritance to which they could look forward. All their lives the victims of unrestrained and brutal passions, that opened wide the door to every species of hard-hear tedness, and every degree of cruelty, their regeneration would never have come from themselves, and could only be accomplished by men dowered with tireless patience and God-like attributes. The insatiable and loathsome cruelty, the ignorance and hideous superstition, that overshadowed the land and its people, were calculated to awe the stoutest heart that dared to redeem them.

If, now when we move amid the green mounds that mark their graves, or with curious eye inspect their rude trinkets and only treasures — the clay-pipe, the arrowhead and the wampum — the soft sadness of pity steals over us, we must not forget that their inhuman hardheartedness was unparalleled in the history of our fallen humanity.

" The}^ are not men," moaned an unfortunate woman whose child the Iroquois had torn from her breast, boiled and devoured in her presence, " they are wolves." It is difficult to conceive a more atrocious refinement of cruelty than that of exposing a living, naked body in a broiling sun, on the margin of some marsh, where the victim perished from famine or an accumulation of torture, induced by reptiles and mosquitoes. Unable to move hand, foot or any portion of his body, burning with fever and devoured with thirst, he was left to die a dreadful, lingering death, with water at his feet and buzzards moving and circling around him, in loathsome expectation of the hour when it would be safe for them to feast upon the unhappy victim. Yet, this was not an uncommon method of punishing their enemies. There is a subtle connection between cruelty and lust which no metaphysical enquiry has yet satisfactorily explained, and hence we are not surprised to read that they had no conception of morality even in the abstract. In truth, until the coming among tliem of the priests of the Catholic Church, they had no word to give expression to the idea of virtue, morals, religion, faith and the like.

The Jesuit Father, Paul Ragueneau, than whom no man was better qualified to know, wrote his Superior in France that " morality was unknown among the tribes,

THE NATIVE TRIBES.

and a shocking license of unrestrained intercourse everywhere obtained." Among a people who had no regard for chastity, it was not to be expected that any respect would be had for the sanctity of w^oman's nature. Hence, among them woman was treated with a callous disregard for the weakness of her sex, the memory of which sends a blush to the cheek of our manhood. Affrighted man recoils with horror from the perusal of woman's degradation as penned by the eloquent Le Jeune. The honor and heart of man can never be impeached with meaner or fouler crimes than are there recorded. All the menial offices of the camp, the heavy burdens of the chase, the labors of the cornfield, in a word, all that implied hard work was her allotted portion. Her infirmities excited no commiseration ; and with the crippled, maimed and weak, she was more often a victim of contempt than an object of pity. Is it any wonder then that woman become so utterly shameless, hard-hearted and cruel — that in vindictiveness and fierceness, she surpassed, as Chaumonot tells us, the brutality of man ? The crowning infamy of all the inhuman abominations of the American Indian, was his utter contempt and disregard for human life. Savage as he was by inheritance, and brutal as his passions had made him, it was yet to be hoped that the instinct which moves one animal to spare another of its own species, would have lingered amid the wreck and ruin of his fallen nature. Such, however,

EAELY MISSIONS IN WESTERN CANADA.

was not the case. The most trivial accident or a thirst for blood, at times led to a war which often ended in the dispersion or annihilation of a tribe. Frequently, and for no other end than acquiring renown and scalps, the Indian warrior gathered his braves around him, and after haranguing them on the great deeds of their ancestors, and their own past and prospective exploits, raised the familiar war-whoop and moved out to a mission of bloodslied and pillage. With the cunning of the fox and the ferocity of the tiger, they fell upon their prey in the darkness of night or in the dawning morning, and indiscriminately slaughtered men, women and children " They approached like foxes," writes one of the missionaries, " attacked like lions, and disappeared like birds." " I crept around them them like a wolf, said a Chippewa Chief," telling of an attack he made on a Sioux family. " I crawled up to them like a snake ; I fell upon them like lightning ; I cut down two men and scalped them." Their prisoners were treated with unparalleled brutality. Some were mutilated inch by inch until they expired from extremity of suffering, others were reserved to be tortured by fire, and by a refinement of cruelty surpassing belief, their agonies were prolonged from day to day. There was a tradition among the Mohawks that the night after a great battle between the Iroquois and the Eries, the forest was lighted by a thousand fires, at each of which an Erie was roasting alive. Others of their cap-

THE NATIVE TRIBES.

tives they cut to pieces, boiled and devoured with unspeakable relish. " I saw the Iroquois," writes Father Bressani, " tear out the heart from a Huron captive whom they had killed, and in the presence of the other prisoners roast and devour it." In a word, says the heroic Lalemant, " they eat human flesh with as much appetite and more relish than hunters eat the meat of the deer."* It would appear that they set no value on the attributes of nature which made them superior to the animals around them. Ferocity, strength, activity and endurance alone excited their admiration, and, as a result, they approached, as near as it was possible for human beings, to the condition of the wild beasts in which these qualities predominate. To make a hero of the American Indian, as is often done by writers of fiction, is to raise a monument to cruelty on a pedestal of lust. Their religious conceptions were no higher than their moral actions. They believed all things to be animated with good or bad spirits ; and when on the war trail they not unfrequently sacrificed human beings to propitiate the OJcis or Manitoiis that influenced the future of the tribes. " On the third day after my arrival among the Iroquois," writes Father

*The American Indian was not, properly speaking, a cannibal. The hideous practice of eating their enemies partook rather of the nature of a superstition than any thirst for human flesh. In partaking of the flesh of his enemy, particularly if he showed superior courage, the Indian warrior believed that he was acquiring the strength, fortitude and courage of his foe.

EA.RLY MISSIONS IN WESTERN CANADA.

Jogues, " they sacrificed an Algonquin woman in honor of Areskoui, their war-god, inviting the grim demon as if he was present, to come and feast with them on the murdered woman's flesh." They had no idea of God as we understand the word. The sighing of the winds, the melancholy moan of the midnight forest, the clash of thunder, the gleam of lightning, were the voices of the shadow-phantoms that hovered in the air around them.

Every animal was animated with a spirit, and diseases, plagues and pestilence were the awful effects of the anger of some Oki or Manitou. In the vile abominations of their lives there were, however, some redeeming features. The members of a tribe were friendly towards each other, they had a tender consideration for and a generosity towards one another that was not excelled in civilized society. They were true to each other in their friendships, held eloquence in high repute, were remarkably hospitable, and, in times of famine, divided with each other the morsel that chance or the fortune of the hunt cast in their way. They were a courageous people, but their valor was disgraced by its brutality; and no form of vice, however loathsome, or cruelty, however fiendish, to an enemy, met with condemnation, or, indeed, attracted attention. Such, briefly, were the prevailing traits in the character and life of the American savages. Day after day, for many a dreary age, the sun looked down upon their enormous wickedness till, wasted with desola-

THE NATIVE TRIBES.

tion, they faded from off the face of the earth, supplying, by their ruin, additional strength to the prophecy of Isaiah that, " The people who will not serve God shall perish." The American Indian approached, as near as it was possible, to Rosseau's " Ideal Man," in a state of nature. He was untainted by civilization, was moved only by natural impulses, and was not yet depraved by meditation, " I'homme qui meditate est un animal deprave," and was a living example of the French infidel's false philosophy. Chateaubriand's assertion, that man, " without religion, was the most dangerous animal that walked the earth," found its verification in almost every savage that roamed the. American continent.

Chapter II. The Franciscans Or Recollets

The Missionaries — Francis of Assisium — His Con version — His love of the poor — His visit to Pope Innocent the Third — Founding of the Franciscans— Their Preaching — The Franciscans in Canada — Joseph Le Caron — His journey to the Hurons — Le Caron with the Hurons — Champlain — Le Caron among the Tinnontates — Hardships of Missionary life — Sagard and Viel — The RecoUets in the Maritime Provinces— End of the RecoUet Mission.

We have now to ask ourselves what manner of men were they who conceived, and, under accumulated hardships, in a measure bore into effect the magnificent resolve of Christianizing these half humanized hordes. The men who were selected by the Church from her missionary and teaching orders were, many of them, members of noble and honorable families. They had graduated in the best schools of Europe, and some of them — like Galinee, the Sulpician — had a European reputation for scholarship ; others had cultivated a literary taste so remarkable for its chasteness and purity as to merit the praises of the ablest scholars and historians of America. They were cultured and refined, animated with an ardent zeal for the salvation of souls, and a courage so heroic as to elicit the admiration of savage

THE FRANCISCANS OR RECOLLETS.

warriors who were themselves the embodiment of courage and endurance. Three centuries before the w^aters of the St. Lawrence were disturbed by the bark of Jacques Cartier, a young man, a son of wealthy parents, lay at death's door. Hope was almost abandoned, when gradually a change for the better took place, and the haughty young Francis of Assisium rose from his sick bed, an altered man. Reflections came to him during the weary weeks of his recovery ; reflections that wrought an extraordinary, a supernatural, change in the man. Before his illness he was merry-hearted and careless, was given to fine clothes and the fashionable amusements of his day. But now he held these things in strange contempt, his love of amusement and worldly display went out from him, and there came in to take their place in his soul, love of poverty, commiseration for the poor, and sympathy for all kinds of human suflering. Ringing in his ears, as if with metallic clearness, were the words of the gospel, " Do not possess gold nor silver nor money in your purses." They came to him as messengers from another world, and his heart answered with a pledge of obedience. Then casting from him his purse and golden ornaments, he took off" his shoes, threw aside his fashionable raiment, clothed himself in a rough tunic girded with a rope, and entered on a career of self-denial and penitential preaching that has won for him a place among the saints of the Catholic Church. Gnawing at his heart.

EARLY MISSIONS IN WESTERN CANADA.

not merely buzzing in his brain, the words kept smiting him, " Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, neither scrip for your journey, neither two coats, nor yet staves, for the workman is worthy of his meat." Once before, beggars had changed the face of the world, with no other equipment than faith and God's grace. And why not again ? Francis of Assisium went out into the world with no doubt of his mission, with no fear for the morrow, for did not God provide for the young ravens whom Francis loved and spoke to in ecstacy of joy ? Barely giving himself time to snatch a few hours' sleep, he continued his journey and passed on into the city of Rome and knelt at the feet of that great Pope, Innocent the Third, asking his blessing and recognition. The Pontiff was walking in his garden of the Lateran when Francis entered. Startled by the sudden apparition of the young man, thinned to emaciation, shoeless, half-clad, bare-headed, withal a beggar of gentleness and visible refinement, Innocent asked him his mission. The Pontiff's eye penetrated through the rags of the beggar and saw the saint. The Pope approved of his project, and Francis returned home carrying in his pocket a draught of his afterwards famous " Rule." Gathering unto himself twelve others, all young, all aglow with the same divine fire, he began his extraordinary career. Nearly all of knightly rank and gentle blood, they surrendered their claim to everything in the

THE FRANCISCANS OR RECOLLETS.

shape of property, and, following their great leader's example, stripped themselves of all worldly possessions, and literally became beggars for Christ's sake. Barefooted beggars they were, and as money was the root of all evil, they would not touch even with the tips of their fingers, the accursed thing, " Ye cannot serve God and mammon," Francis said, in Christ's own words. These apostles of poverty, of pity, of devouring love for their fellow creatures, went forth two by two to preach the gospel anew to the poor. Called to liA^e among the people, to subsist upon alms, to bear the hardest toil, their mission was to reconcile the people with faith, to give a living example of Christian patience, devoted sacrifice and self-denial. If ever men preached Christ, these men did. They had no system, no views, they combated no opinions, they took no side. Discussion, controversy, and theological dispute they left to the rhetoricians and the schoolmen. That Christ had died, had risen again and was alive for evermore was an indisputable but awful fact. Francis and his companions in their day were known as Fratres Minores, but future generations, out of love and admiration for this wonderful saint, insist on calling them Franciscans. Their mission was to the poor, to those masses sweltering in foul hovels with never a roof to cover them, huddling in groups, alive with vermin, covered with ghastly wens ; lepers too shocking for the people to gaze upon, and driven outside the walls to

EARLY MISSIONS IN WESTERN CANADA.

die in the lazar houses. To these came Francis with a message of hope and consolation. To these outcasts, wherever found, came those other twelve to whom the saint had communicated love for the poor and sublime self -surrender, " We are come," they said affectionately, ' as your friends, nay even as your servants to live among you, to wash your sores and to help you to bear the burden of disease and wretchedness. Our Lord sends us to you. We too are beggars, and have not whereon to lay our heads. Christ died for you as well as for us, and there is hope beyond the grave." As they spoke so they lived, and as it was said of Him of old, that He had not whereon to lay His head, neither had those who were now walking in His footsteps. In the presence of these stupendous acts of self-denial and heroic love the cynic was silenced, the proud man hung down his head, and the rich man was recalled to his duty. In 1215, the Franciscans held their first Chapter at the Church of the Portiuncula. Their members began to increase, and from Italy they flowed over into France, Germany, Spain and England. In France a branch of the Franciscans took the name of Recollets, who devoted themselves to the care of foreign missions. When Champlain returned to France after his first visit to Canada in 1607, he waited upon Bernard du A^erger, the Superior of the Recollets, requesting that missionaries be sent to Canada to bear the message of the gospel to the roving" hordes that filled

THE FRANCISCANS OR RECOLLETS.

the forests from Quebec to Lake Huron. In compliance with his wish, and with the authority of the Pope, there sailed with him — 24th April, 1615 — on his return to New France, four members of the Franciscan Order, Joseph Le Caron, John D'olbeau, Denis Jamay and Pacifique Duplessis, a lay brother. Father D'olbeau immediately be^an his mission to the Montagnais of the Saugenay region, with whom he passed a winter of great suffering and affliction. Never did man endure a ruder or more severe apprenticeship. Unacquainted, with their language, which presented almost insurmountable difficulties of pronunciation and construction, unseasoned to the hardships of a Canadian winter, and untrained to the use of the snowshoe, the pious missionary almost succumbed to the horrors of a tribal encampment. Still, he bent to his work with an admirable fortitude, and patiently sustained the burden of his position till he conquered the language and compiled his famous " Dictionary of the Montagnais Language." He was a man of eminent piety, virtue and zeal, and has left his name indelibly stamped on the early records of our ecclesiastical history. On the 1st of July, 1615, in company with a band of Hurons and Algonquins of the Ottawa, Father Joseph Le Caron started on his wondrous journey of seven hundred miles to the shores of the great Lake of the Hurons. Sailing up the St. Lawrence, amid a silence only broken by the splash of the paddle, they entered the Ottawa, rounded the islands of Alumette, and, at length, reached the tributary water of the Mat ta wan. For forty miles or more they continued their journey. Bearing the canoes on their shoulders, they crossed a seven mile portage,* and, through an opening in the forest, Le Caron, the first of white men, looked out upon the placid waters of Lake Nipissing. Skirting along its picturesque shores, they entered French River, whose placid current bore them to the great Lake of the Hurons, precisely one month before Champlain's canoes shot into its waters. For more than a hundred miles they sailed through the tortuous channels of the Georgian Bay. Around them on every side, as if floating on the waters, arose a thousand islands, thickly wooded, green with emerald moss, and rank with luxuriant vegetation. The great Manitoulin lay directly on their front, they hugged the eastern shore, sailed by Byng Inlet, Point au Barrie and Shawanga Bay, coasted by the picturesque shores of Parry Sound, and, sweeping on past the Seven Miles Narrows, Moose Point and Midland, beached their canoes at the entrance to the Bay of Matchedash, to the west of the Harbor of Penetanguishene. Following through woods and thickets an Indian trail, they passed broad meadows, fields of maize, beds of vegetables and entered the pallisaded Huron town of Otoucha. Here, in what is now the

* Booth's Railway now covers this portage,

THE FRANCISCANS OR RECOLLETS.

northern and western portion of Simcoe County, embracing the peninsula formed by the Nottawasaga and Matchedash Bays, the River Severn and Lake Simcoe were the fishing and hunting grounds of the great nation of the Wyandots or Hurons, comprising a population, according to Champlain, of twenty or thirty thousand souls,* a confederacy of four distinct tribes, afterwards increased to five by the addition of the Tinnontates. Perhaps of all the races of red men, the Hurons, " living like brute beasts, without law, without religion, without God," were the least liable to be attracted by, or become attached to, the practices of a Christian life. They were given over completely to sensuality, feasting and pleasure. " Their every inclination," writes the good missionary " is brutal. They are naturally gluttonous, having their farewell feasts, their complimentary feasts, war, peace, death, health and marriage feasts." Father Le Caron, bound by his vow to the life of a beggar, was, however, received hospitably by them. A wigwam was built for his convenience in the town of Caragouha, near Nottawasaga Bay, where he ofi'ered his first mass. He was

* Champlain, no doubt, included the Tinnontates in his estimate. The inference of the census commissioners would lead one to suppose that ten or twelve thousand would be a faic estimate. See Census of Canada 1871, Vol. IV., page 52, for details. But when the Jesuits took the census in 1639, notwithstanding that disease and war had thinned the Huron ranks, there was still a population of twelve thousand, not including the Tinnontates.

B joined one month afterwards by Champlain, mass was again chanted, a Te Deum sung, and the cross, the emblem of man's salvation, planted on the shores of Lake Huron. Thus, two hundred and eighty years ago, with solemn mass, with holy blessing and the "Te Deum," the standard of the cross was elevated, the law of the gospel proclaimed, and the work of christianizing the Canadian tribes begun. For six months this great Franciscan missionary, amid the hardships and perils of his solitary life, continued to study the language of the tribe, and, with a patience and zeal truly heroic, endeavored to make known the great saving truths of Christianity On February 1st, 1616, he visited the Tinnontates or Tobacco Nation, who occupied lands in what are included now within the limits of Collingwood, Nottawasaga and Sunnidale townships, but, being received with fear and suspicion, he was cruelly treated and compelled to return to Caragouha, where he spent the winter instructing the Wyandot tribes and preparing the first dictionary of the Huron language. On the 20th May, 1616, in company with a band of Hurons who were going down to Three Kivers to exchange their furs and peltries, he left for Montreal, and, in the spring of 1623, accompanied by Father Nicholas Viel and Brother Gabriel Sagard (afterwards the historian of the Huron missions), he returned to the tribes, who received him with open arms, built him a chapel at Ossasanee, where he said mass every day and