V] <^ //. /. e. e). 'w ^^i vi 7 /A IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 IIM 11112.5 itt 12.2 iia6 l.i %', 12,0 1.8 Photographic Sciences Corporation / o {■/ W ^ ^ -^^ :A Va 4' fA 1.25 1.4 1.6 ■^ 6" — ► ^ '<,• #. (meaning "CON- TINUED"), or the symbol V (meaning "END "), whichever applies. Un des symboles suivants apparaitra sur la dernidre image de cheque microfiche, selon le cas: le symbole — ^ signifie "A SUIVRE", le symbole V signifie "FIN". Maps, plates, charts, etc., may be filmed at different reduction ratios. Those too large to be entirely included in one exposure are filmed beginning in the upper left hand corner, left to right and top to bottom, as many frames as required. The following diagrams illustrate, the method: Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent §tre filmds d des taux de reduction diff6rents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour gtre reproduit en un seu! cliche, il est filmd d partir de Tangle sup6rieur gauche, de gauche d droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images n6cessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la m^thode. rrata o pelure, □ 32X 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 QUEEN'S QUARTERLY Vol. V. APRIL, 1898. No. 4 All .irticles IntiiuliiiH for i>iil)licatioii, books for n. view. <,\cli;m«cs,— and all correspomknce rtlaliiiH thereto— should l)e addressed to the editors, Box A, Queen's University, Kingston, Out. THE JESUIT RELATIONS. IN these days of cablegrams, telegrams and shorthand the idea of perusing sixty octavo volumes of three hundred pages each, devoted to the sayings and doings of a few members of a religious society in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in one quarter of the globe, seems at lirst sight rather overpowering. Yet Mr. Reuben Gold Thwaites, the secretary of the State His- torical Society of Wisconsin, evidently expected us to read all these volumes when he sent his agent to solicit our subscription to " The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents ; Travels and Ex- plorations of the French Canadian Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610-1791." We undertook the task when we sub- scribed, and now we can say we have read eight of the series with interest, with pleasure and we trust with profit.* Parkman tells us that " few passages of history are more striking than those which record the efforts of the earlier French Jesuits to convert the Indians-.-they are of dramatic and philo- sophic interest. Tiie Relations appeal equally to the spirit of religion and the spirit of romantic adventure." Bancroft says, "The history of Jesuit missions is connected with the origin of every celebrated town in the annals of French America. Not a cape was turned, not a river entered, but a Jesuit led the way." (A little inexact is the latter statement.) Kip writes, " There is no page of our country's history more touching and romantic than that which records the labours and sufferings of the Jesuit 'This paper was written November, 1897. A ■^ w i ... . , . 1 1 = , ,1,1 • > ■ y I ■ I • . •, • • , , ; • • • •! • \i>' • t • • •«• • ".• « • • N-< • • • • • I t * THI-: Ji:SLlT 1 ! I .1 (i 1^ The few who hved to j:,'row old, though bowed by the toils of a long mission still kindled with the fervour of apostolic zeal." The Relations are, in fact, the journals kept by by the Jesuits while labouring to plant the cross among the Indians of New France. It was their duty to transmit to their Superior at Mon- treal, or Quebec, a written record of their doings ; they had occa- sionally to come back from their distant fields of labour and go into retreat at the central home of the mission. The Superior annually made up a narrative, or relation, of the most important events in his large missionary jurisdiction which he forwarded to the Provincial of the order in France, who in his turn carefully scrutinised and re-edited the reports before he handed them to the printer. The Relations proper begin with Le Jeune's " Brieve Relation dii voyage de la Nouvelle France,'^ which appeared in a duodecimo volume in 1632, neatly printed and bound in vellum, and }ear by year there issued from the press of Sebastien Cra- moisy, at the sign of the Storks, Rue St. Jactjues, Paris, a similar volume until 1673, when the series ceased, probably owing to the influence of Count Frontenac to whom the Jesuits were distaste- ful. In addition to these forty volumes (technically known to collectors as Cramoisys) many similar publications appeared, a few before but the majority after. The Relations at once be- came popular in the court circles of France, their regular appear- ance was always awaited with the keenest interest and assisted greatly in creating and fostering the enthusiasm of pious philan- thropists who for many years maintained these missions. About half a century ago Dr. O'Callaghan, editor of The Documentary History of New York, and Dr. Shea, in his History of the Catholic Missions Among the Indian Tribes of the United States and Father Martin, S. J., of Montreal, drew the attention of the literary world to the great value of the Relations as store- houses of contemporary information. A scramble at once began for Cramoisys, collectors found them very scarce, the devout readers of the XVI Ith century had actually worn them out. The only complete set in America is in the Lennox library, New York. In 1858 the Canadian Government reprinted the Cramoisys, with a few additions, in three large octavo volumes under the editorship of Father Martin. These, too, are now rare. Shea and O'Callaghan each brought out very small edi- } 2.5^' ouicicN's (,)i;.\Kri:i\LV. tions, cliielly of documents tiiat had not appeared in print before. These are now being reissued by Mr. 'I'hwaites, together with much material hitherto unpubHshed and some of the works of Abbes Lavcidiere, Casgrain and Martin. The original text is given with an English rendering ; we are promised maps, engrav- ings, portraits and fac-similes of writings and notes historical, biographical, archaeological and miscellaneous. The scries will consist of sixty octavo volumes. These Jesuits wandered about the continent from the ice-bound rocky shores of Hudson's Bay and Labrador on the north to Kentucky and Louisiana in the south, and from Nova Scotia and Massachusetts in the east to Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin on the west ; they launched their frail canoes upon the swift waters of the Mississippi, the St. John and the St. Law- rence ; they braved the stormy winds and waves on all the inland seas, to add lustre to their Redeemer's crown by plucking brands from the burning; they visited such widely scattered tribes as the Abenakis and the Arkansas, the Cherokees, the Chickesaws, the Choctasvs and the Crees, the Foxes and the Hurons, Irocjuois and Illinois, the Miamis and the Micmacs, Neuters and Nipiss- ings, Ottawas and Penobscots, Porcupines and Pottavvattomies, the Seminoles and the Sioux, the .Susquehannas and the Winne- bagoes, the Wyandots and the Yazoos. To descend from generalities to particulars. The series fitly begins with Lescarbot's La Conversion dcs Sauva ■ «llilfcH* *.K^. -m I III". Ii:sri|- K'ELATIONS. 259 asserted that the ICvil Spirit often came to them and aj,>proved or disapproved of their schemes and plans. They had p[reat faith in dreams. Hiard thonfjht, Iiowever, tha^ " of the one supreme God they had a certain slender notion, but they were so pre- vented by false ideas and custom that they really worshipped the Devil." Of the Indians of Cape Breton, leather Perrault tells us, (\'ol. \TII) " We have not up to the prerent noticed any more religion amonpf these poor savages than among the brutes." Lalemant in 1626 (Vol. IV.) speaking of the natives around (.juebec, says, " They believe in the immortality of the soul, and in fact, they assure you that after death they go to heaven where they eat mushrooms and hold intercourse with each other." "They have no form of divine worship or any kind of prayers. They believe, however, that there is One who made all but they do not render him any homage." On the other hand Le jeune says they believed in certain Genii of the air who could (ortell future events and were consulted through the medicine-men. At feasts the men threw some grease into the tire, saying, " Make us find something to eat. Make us find something to eat." He considered this a prayer and an offering to tiie Genii. He tells us (Vol. VI) that the children prayed, but " O my God what prayers they make ; in the morning when tiiey come out of their cabins they shout ' Cotne porcu- pines, come beavers, come elks!'" He heard Indians pray for the spring, for deliverance from evil, and for the Manitou not to cast his eyes upon their enemies so that they might kill them. They were great singers, and sang not only for amusement but for a thousand superstitious purposes ; not one of them understood what he was singing, except when they sang for recreation. They accompanied their songs with the rattling of a drum ; and the singing, the drumming, with the howling choruses of the spectators, were deemed very efficacious in restoring the sick and the dying to health. At first some of the Indians accepted baptism merely as a sign of friendship with the F"rench, so the Jesuits early deter- mined to baptise no adult unless he had been well instructed in the mysteries of the faith and catechi/ed. When teaching their language the crafty Red-men sometimes deceived the good Fathers, palming off indecent words and expressions upon them. I 260 QTEEN'S gUARTKRI.Y. which they went about innocently preaching for beautiful sen- tences from the i,'ospel. Of the Hurons, Hrebcul saysin 16^5 (Vol. VIII): " It is so clear, so cviiicnt that there is a Divinity who has made heaven and earth, that our Ilurous cannot entirely ignore it. And al- though the eyes of their mind are very much obncured by the darkness of long ignorance, by their vices and their sins they stiil see something of it. Hut they misapprehend Him grossly, and having the knowledge of Ciod they do not render him the honor, the love nor the service that is due him. For they have neither temples, nor priests, nor feasts, nor any ceremonies. They say a woman named Kataentsic made the earth and men, and governs it with the aid of her little son, Jouskeha. lie looks after the things of life, and is considered good ; she has the care of souls, causes death, and so deemed wicked." According to the Montagnais, one Atachocan created the world and all that is therein. Once upon a time there was a iiood and the world was lost in the waters, Nfessou sent out a raven to find a small piece of the earth, but water was everywhere ; then he made an otter dive, but the flood was too deep ; then a musk-rat was sent down and he brought back some soil, out of this Messou restored everything, and marrying a little lady muskrat he repeopled the earth and lived happily ever afterwards. He gave a certain savage the gift of immortality done up in a little package, with strict orders to keep it closed, while he did so he and his friends were immortal ; alas the man's wife was very curious and opened the parcel ; the whole thing flew away and since then Indians have died. Le Jeune considered the Manitou might be called the Devil, he was regarded as the origin of evil ; after all, however, he was not so very malicious. His wife was a regular she-devil. He did not hate men, but he was present at every battle and scrim- age ; those whom he then looked upon lived, the others died. She was the cause of all diseases ; but for her men would not die ; she feeds upon their flesh, beginning on the inside. Her robes are made of the hair of her victims ; her voice roars like the flame of fire; but her language is not intelligible to mortal ear. •■:. t!l -r-f" t "ft. t ■ > * f I III-; ji:snr kI'LAiions. 261 The Indians believed that not only men and other animals, but all thin/;s have souls which are immortal ; the souls are the shadows ol the orij^'inals. The souls of men and of beasts after death ^,'0 away to the far distant west, eatiuf,' bark and old wood on their dismal journey, seeing by nif,'ht but blind by day. They deemed the milky-way the path of the souls to that ha[)[)y land where the souls of the men hunted the souls of beavers and porcupines, runninp; over the soul of the snow upon the souls of their snow-shoes, shooting,' with the soul of their bow tin; souls of their arrows, and killinf,' with the souls of their knives. The burial customs were very touching ; the dead body was swathed and tied up in skins, not lengthwise but with the knees against the stomach and the head on the knees. It was placed in the grave in a sitting posture, liiard says, (Vol. Ill) they bury with the dead all that he owned, such as his bow, his arrows, his his skins and all his other an ■ 'os, even his dogs if they have not been eaten at the funeral feast (and so sent on in readiness for the deceased). The sup/'vors r?dded t^ these a number of such offerings, as tokens of ..lendsliip. .v man's grave was marked with bow, arrow and shield ; a soman's by spoons and ornaments. The obse(|uies ^nished the> tied hum the grave, and from that time on hated all memory of the dead. Only the souls of the buried kettles and furs ind knives went off with the soul of the dead man to be used bv him in the spirit land. Lefeune recounts the burial of several little ones who died in the faith. One wee corpse was handed to hitn wrapped in beaver skins and covered with a large piece of bark. He tciulerly placed it in a coffin and buried it with all possible solemnity. " The simple people were enchanted seeing five priests in surplices honoring this little Cana- dian angel, chanting what is ordained by the church, covering the coffin with a beautiful pall and strewing it with llowers. When it came to lowering him into the grave the mother placed his cradle therein with a few other things, according to their cus- tom. Then she drew some milk from her widowed breust and burnt it that her babe's soul might have drink." Aftei the funeral the Fathers gave a feast of Indian corn-meal and prunes to induce these simple folk to come to them in case of sickness. One child before being given up for burial had his face painted blue, black and red. Father Le Jeune, however, refused on E 262 QUEEN'S QUARTERLY another occasion to allow two dogs to be bnried with a httle girl in the cemetery, saying that the French buried there would not be plea'-nl if such ugly beasts were placed among them, (Vol. VIII.) We find in " The Occurrences of 1613 and 1614," and in Biard's letter of May 1614 (Vol. Ill) and in his Relation of 1616 (Vols. Ill and IV) accounts of the attack of the Englisii upon the mission of St. Sauveur, under Argall of Virginia, and his destruction of the French forts at St. Croix and Port Royal, and the transportation of the Jesuits to the English colony and thence to England, whence they found their way to France. And in the Relation Riard again discourses of the French discoveries in Can- ada, its climate and its peoples, their dwellings, knowledge and customs; he dilates on his own movements around the Bay of Fundy, and tells of the colony on Mount Desert, He found that the natives while skillful wrestlers did not understand boxing at all, their way of fighting among themselves was like that of the women in France, " they fly for the hair and holding on to this they struggle and jerk in a terrible fashion, and it they are equally matched, they keep it up one whole day or even two, without stopping, until some one separates them. " Here we part wiih good Father Biard. This Argall of whom lie said so much had, only a month or two before he shattered the hopes of the Jesuits, kidnapped the far-famed Poccahontas, the most interesting of all interesting Indian princesses, the benefac- tress and saviour of the Jamestown colony, craftily luring heron board his ship, then treacherously carrying her away from her home. Speaking of this destruction of Port Royal and St. Croix, Parkman says, " In a semi-piratical descent, an obscure stroke of lawless violence, began the strife of France and England, Protes- tantism and Rome, which for a century and a half, shook the struggling communities of North America, and closed at last in the memorable triumph on the Plains of Abraham." F"or some nine years the Recollet friars attended to the spiri- tual wants of New France, but they found themselves unequal to the great task and so invited the Jesuits to return to aid in the evangelisation of the Indians. In April 1625 three "black gowns" arrived; Charles Lalemant, our old friend of Port Royal, Eiiemond Mass'' and Jean de Hrebeuf; and took up their resi- THE JESUIT RELATIONS 263 dence temporarily with the Recollets at Quebec. In the fourth vohime we liave five letters of Lalemant's, (the head of the new mission,) the first announces their arrival to Champlain, the governor ; the second gives the same news to the head of the Recollets ; the third letter, written in August 1626, tells the General of the Order, at Rome, how they had diligently studied th(; language during the winter and that Brebeuf had been stay- ing with the Indians, Next we have a letter from our Lalemant to his brother Jerome, (a Jesuit in Francej ; in it he is not complimentary to the poor Indians ; from morning till night (he writes) they have no other thought than to fill their stomachs ; they are real beggars, yet as proud as they can be ; polygynists ; dirty ; killing their parents when too old to walk, for their parents* good ; practising unparalelled cruelties on their enemies. They be- lieved that there is a hole through the earth, that the sun sets by going in at one end, rises by coming out of the other. He speaks of the difficulties of acquiring the language and of the slowness in converting the savages and says that he is sending over to France a little Huron boy to be: educated. In 1627 Laleman*^ went to France fo^- supplies, on his return he was captured by the English Admiral, Kirk (acting on behalf of Sir Wni. Alexander to whom James I. had granted Nova Scotia), and sent back to France. In 1629, in ignorance that Kirk had captured Quebec, Lalemant again tried to return to Canada : the elements defeated this attempt and he and his band of missionaries were shipwrecked on the Canso rocks, two of the fathers were drowned; Lalemant escaped, and returning to France in a fishing vessel was again shipwrecked, getting to land this time on a shallop in his slippers and night-cap ftruly an airy attire). The last letter in the volume tells the story of his perils by sea. In 1632 Emery de Caen arrived in Quebec to receive back that stronghold from Kirk and with him came the Jesuits Le Jeune and De None to re-open their mission. Vols. V to IX are filled with the Relations of La Jeune, the new Superior in Canada, addressed to the French Provincial detailing the events of the mission in 1632 and following years ; that of 1632 is the first of the Cramoisy series. The good father made good use of his eyes (these must have been excellent for by holding a firetly near a book he could read at night very 'j^-*-4i*v 264 OUEEN'S OLARNERLY, ' ^•" easily) and gives a very interesting description of the native costumes. He says, (Vol. V) "When I first saw Indians enter our captain's room, where I happened to be, it seemed to me that I was lookinf^ at those maskers who run about in France at Carnival time. There were some whose noses were painted blue, the eyes, eyebrows and cheeks painted black, and the rest of the face red ; and these colors are bright and shining like those of our masks ; others had black, red and blue stripes drawn from the ears to the mouth. Still others were entirely black, except the upper part of the brow and around the ears to the chin. There were some who had one black stripe, like a wide ribbon, drawn from one ear to the other, across the eyes, and three little stripes on the cheeks. Their natural color is like that of those French beggars who aie half roasted in the sun, and I have no doubt that the savages would be very white if well covered. To describe how they were dressed would be difficult indeed. All the men, when it is a little warm, go naked, with the exception of a piece of skin, which falls from just below the middle to the thighs. When it is cold, or probably in imitation of Europeans, they cover themselves with furs but so awkwardly that it does not prevent the greater part of their bodies being seen. I have seen some of them dressed in bear skins just as St. John the Baptist is painted. This fur, with the hair outside, was worn under one arm and over the other, hang- ing to the knees. They were girdled around the body with a cord made of dried intestines. Some are entirely dressed. They are like the Grecian philosopher who would wear nothing he had not made. It would not take a great many years to learn all their crafts. All go bareheaded, men and women ; their hair, which is uniformly black, is long, greasy and shiny, and is tied behind except when they wear mourning. The women are de- cently covered ; they wear skins fastened together on their shoulders with cords ; these hang from the neck to the knees. They girdle themselves also with a cord, the rest of the body, the head, the arms and the legs being uncovered. Yet there are some who wear sleeves, stockings and shoes, but in no other fashion than that which necessity has taught them." " In wearing the hair each one follows his own fancy. Some wear it long and hanging over to one side like women, and short and tied up on /' 4 '- '\ THE JESUIT RELATIONS. 265 tlie other, so skillfully that one ear is concealed and the other uncovered. Some of them are shaved just where others wear a long moustache. I have seen some that had a large strip, closely shaved, extending across the head, passing from the crown to the middle of the forehead. Others wear in the same place a sort of queue of hair, which stands out because they have shaved all around it. Oh how weak is the spirit of man." Lalemant says the men pulled out their beards to be more agreeable to the women. The women of Canada certainly were industrious, even if the men were not, according to Biard not only did they fulfil the onerous duties that naturelaid upon them, but in addition they car- ried dead game to camp, they were the hewers of wood and drawers of water ; they made and repaired the household utensils; pre- pared the food, skinned the game and prepared the hides like fullers, sewed the garments, caught fish, gathered clams, often hunted, made the canoes and even set up the tents at night when on the march. So useful were they that the chiefs liked to have many of them to wife. The order the Indians maintained in their occupations aided them in preserving peace in their household. The vvomen and the men both knew what they had to do, and one never meddled with the work of the other. The men made the frames of the canoes, the women sewed the bark ; the men shaped the wood of the snow shoes, the women did the net work ; the men went hunting and killed the animals, the women followed them and skinned the game and cleaned the hides. They would make fun of a man who did a woman's work. Le Jeune (Vol. V, p. 181) says that the Indian women had great power, that if a man did not keep his promise to a French- man he thought it sufficient excuse to say that his wife did not wish him to do it. The young women were not allowed to eat out of the same dish as their husbands nor to take any part in the management of affairs, and, in fact, were treated as children until they were mothers. Graphic, too, is the Father's description of the tortures in- flicted on some Iroquois prisoners by Montagnais Indians at Tadousac ; the women were as incarnate fiends in their actions as were the men. /•' m^rm 266 gUEEN S grAKTEKLY. Le jeune tells how he began his educational work with a little Indian boy on one side and a little negro (who had been left behind by the English) on the other. Tabic napkins were not in vogue among the Indians near guebec in 1633. Le Jeune in describing a dinner of roasted eels says that the little boy who handed them rubbed his greasy hands upon his hair, the others rubbed theirs on the dogs, while he was given some powder of dry and rotten wood wherewith to wipe his. The natives took fat or oil with their strawberries and raspberries, and deemed a solid piece of grease a bonne bouche. They particularly delighted in drinking water from a greasy vessel. At first they thought the French drank "blood and ate wood", thus naming the wine and biscuits. Le Jeune in liis efforts to learn the language of the Indians compiled a dictionary and a grammar, and paid iiis native teacher with tobacco ; (some of the native tobacco pouches were made out of the hands of Iroquois, skillfully prepared with all the nails left on). He considered the pronunciation of the Algonquins altogether charming and agreeable, and that "though called barbarian the language was very regular." The little school of two had increased to over twenty in 1633 and to them the good father taught the Pater, the Ave and the Credo in their own language ; the Pater was in rhyme ; there was a little catechising too ; and the children were shown how to make the sign of the cross : the lessons finished, the pupils were rewarded with a bowl full of peas. When a drunken Indian killed a Frenchman, the natives said it was the brandy, not the savage, wiio committed the murder, "Put your wine and your brandy in prison : it is your drinks that do all the evil and not we." The Jesuits had expected that some of their number would return with the Hurons to their country, near what is now the Georgian Bay, after the annual visit of these savages to guebec in the summer of 1633, and they anticipated great results from a mission among these Indians who were settled cultivators of the soil and not wandering hunters like the Algonquins around guebec. All was arranged, but at the last moment a difficulty arose in consequence of the murder of a Frenchman by an Indian on the Ottawa, and the Hurons positively refused to give passage / «•• THE JESUIT RELATIONS. 267 / to the Fathers. Great was the disappointment, greater was the spirit of resignation. "We hate the cause of this chastisement, but love the hand that strikes us, very confident that He who drew light out of darkness will draw good from this misfortune." In his letter of 1634 (Vol. VI) Le Jeune is able to tell his Provincial that the mission to the Hurons has at last been begun and that Brebeuf and Davost, with three brave young men and two little boys, have gone to the Huron Country, without bag- gage, save the altar ornaments, and without money. In the Rela- tion of 1634 Le Jeune gives a few samples to show that "the winter in New France is not so severe that some flowers of Para- dise may not be gathered there:" the conversion, baptism and happy deaths of some seven savages are recorded at consider- able length, "the first fruits of a land that had borne little else than thorns since the birth of the centuries." All were baptized in extremis : some of the Indians thought that baptism shortened their lives, it certainly shortened their names, e. g. Memichti- gouchiouiscoucou was called Marguerite; Ouroutinoucaucu, Marie. Le Jeune had a definite plan for his work : he advocated the F^rench making themselves feared by the Iroquois, and teach- ing the Canadian Indians to clear and cultivate the land, and establishing seminaries among them for the children. He gives a detailed account of the religious belief, habitations and supersti- tions of the Montagnais tribe (among whom he had passed the winter) their fasts, food, drinks, clothing, ornaments, rites and customs. He praises their intelligence, contentment, fortitude, good nature, generosity; but condemns them for their inveterate habit of mockery and ridicule, their want of compassion, their vindictiveness to their enemies, love of slander and lying, thieving habits, gluttony, drunkenness, impudent habit of begging, vile language and dirtiness in their habits, their postures, homes and eating. Their food he says "is very little, if any, cleaner than the swill given to animals, and not always even so clean. One day some shoes which had just been taken off, fell into our drink, they soaked there as long as they pleased and were withdrawn without exciting any special attention and then the water was drunk as if nothing had happened. I am not very fastidious (he adds) but I was not very thirsty as long as this malmsey lasted." He tells of their manner of hunting and fishing, and of sundry 26H yUliliN'S gUAKTliKl.V I and divers animals that lived in Canada ; one of these at fust {,'lance he thought ought to be called Jupiter's little dog; later, he deemed it unworthy of being called Pluto's ilog, no sewer ever smclled so bad ; finally (he says) "I believe the sin smellcd by St Catherine of Sienna must have had the same vile odor." The humming bird charmed him, he called it a little prodigy of nature, the tlower-bird, the flower of birds, God seemed to him more wonderful in it than in the larger animals. The Language, he says, was both very rich and very poor: all words for piety, devotion, virtue, for the things of the other life, the language of learned men, words referring to government, justice, rewards, punishment, the arts and sciences, were wanting from the lips of the Indians, as the thoughts of them were from their mind. Yet in some directions "this language is fairly gorged with richness". There was an infinite number of proper nouns which could be given in French only by circumlocutions, verbs such as neither the Greeks, nor Latins, nor any Europeans possessed the like ; verbs to signify action towards a live object, other verbs to signify the same action towards inanimate things, and yet again other verbs for the same action towards several objects; different words were used to signify the same act upon land and upon water; different adjectives were joined to different nouns {c. /,^ the word for "cold" applied to a "dog," differed from "cold" applied to "wood''). Adjectives and nouns were conjugated like Latin impersonal verbs. Besides the names of each particular thing, they had an infinite number of words which signified several things together. In despair the poor priest exclaims " This is enough to shew the richness of their language. I believe they have other riches which I have not been able to discover up to the present." Brebeuf tells us that the Huron language had distinctions of genders, number, tense, person, moods. In Cape Breton, accord- ing to Father Perrault, the natives were so clever that to disguise their language they added a syllable to every word. Then we have in this Relation of 1634, (Vol. VII) an account of the wretched life, hair breadth escapes, hardships, dangers, and sufferings endured by this devoted missionary during the winter which he spent wandering through the forests and moun- tains on the southern shore of the St. Lawrence with a small i THE JESUIT RELATIONS. 269 band of Indians. The bed he slept on " had not been made up since the creation of the world," the cold was bad enouo;h, the heat from the fires in crowded cabins was worse, but the smoke was martyrdom, " it almost killed me," he writes, " and made me weep continually, although I had neither grief nor sadness in my heart." For hours at a time he had to lie with hi'? mouth on the ground in order to breathe. Of the dogs he does not complain much, he was often thankful for the heat they gave him when lying on his legs or body. In summing up he says, "the cold, heat, annoyance of dogs ; sleeping in the open air and upon bare ground ; the position I had to assume, rolling myself up in a ball or crouching down, or sitting without a seat or a cushion ; hunger, thirst, the poverty and filth of their smoked meats, sickness — all these things were merely play to me in comparison with the smoke and the malice of the Sorcerer, or medicine man, (who was one of the party) with whom I have always been on a bad foot- ing," The Sorcerer was a terrible blasphemer and a fearful im- poster, and God did not fail to strike him, for the year had not expired when his cabin took fire and he was dreadfully scorched, roasted and burned. During that terrible winter the good father often ate " scrapings of bark, bits of leather and similar things," and yet they never made him ill ; once he made a good meal off the skin of a smoked eel which he had thrown to the dogs a few days before ; hunger at times compelled him to seek the little twigs on the trees and eat them with delight. When the Indians had no food they frequently made a banquet of smoke, their fond- ness for tobacco was beyond belief. " Let us say with compas- sion that they pass their lives in smoke, and at death fall into the fire," remarks the pious Jesuit. The seventh volume concludes with Le Jeune's " Relation of what occured in New France in the year 1635." Up to this time the Relations have been the production of the Superior alone, in this and subseqent ones the work is composite, the missionaries in the different parts of the field having sent to Quebec the reports of their labors, the Superior arranged them and added his own comments and story before sending them to France. Le Jeune begins with hopeful anticipations of the growth and prosperity of Canada and especially rejoices over the interest taken in the mis- sion by the people of the old land ; laymen were aiding with their 270 QUEEN'S QUARTERLY. money, priests and nuns were longing to come over and help in the good work. At this time they had six different mission stations : St. Anne, at Cape Breton; St. Charles, at Miskow (on the Bay of Chaleurs); Notre Dame de Recouvrance, at Kebec, near the Fort; Notre Dame de Anges, (the oldest of all) half a league from Kebec; the Conception, at Three Rivers ; and Ihon- atiria, among the Hurons ; and the Superior expected shortly to have another one among these settled savages. The mission among the Hurons was deemed the most important, the greatest conversions were expected there and thither the greatest number of labourers should be sent. Scurvy had been epidemic at Three Rivers during the winter and many French had died, exhibiting in their manner of death " the altogether admirable effects of the grace of our Lord within their souls." Still the good man, when summer came, had to write " health prevails throughout all our settlements but not saintliness as yet." He hoped, however, if the Governors were careful Canada would be a " Jerusalem blessed oi God, composed of citizens destined for heaven." Twenty-two savages were baptized during the year ; of the nine thus admitted into the fold in older missions, six had passed out of this world when the Father wrote ; of the thirteen among the Hurons, twelve went liappily to God almost immediately they Ii ul entered His church here below. The famine had been sore in the land during the winter, dire tales of cannibalism came to the Fathers, and a poor savage who seemed to be groping for the light said, that of the many good things he had been told this prayer seemed the best of all to him, "Give us to-day our food, give us something to eat." This summer two more fathers went joyfully up to Huron Mission "they had to go bare-footed into the bark ships of the Indians, for fear of spoiling them and they did this gaily, with glad eyes and faces." Rumors of Turkish privateers caused much anxiety in Quebec over the ships coming from France, but these happily arrived and with them another Jesuit, Father de Quen. Father Brebeuf reported fully what befell himself and the other members of the Mission as they journeyed, the previous year, with their Red friends more than three hundred leagues to the Hurons' country by way of the Ottawa River : wading and pulling the canoes through some rapids and portaging round others made ■i' I. If IK JKSUir KICLATIONS. 371 \ . the journey tedious in the extreme ; thirty five times tliey carried their boats, and over fifty times dragged them. At every portage Brebeuf had to make at least four trips and tlie otiiers had scarcely fewer. Food, too, was scarce. The F'ather paddled as con- tinuously as the Indians and constantly had to walk in water, in mud, in theobscurity and entanglements of the forests, exposed to the stings of myriads of mosquitoes and gnats ; there was not time enough to recite the Breviary, except when weary and worn they camped at night, so weary that the body could do no more, yet their souls were filled with deep peace, feeling they were bear- ing the cross for the honor of our Lord and for the salvation of the poor barbarians. Father Davost was robbed and left, on the way, among the Algonquins, and was worn out when he reached the Huron land. Daniel, too, was abandoned and had to get another canoe. Brebeuf himself was nearly drowned. He arrived among the Hurons on the day of our Lady of the Snows after thirty days continuous toil with only one day of rest, (the others took much longer ), and was landed in the evening at the port of the village of Toanche. He had been there some years before, but when the Indians had left him he found that ihe old village had disappeared ; so after prostrating himself and thank- ing God, Our Lady and St. Joseph, he set off in the gathering twilight to find shelter. Soon he was greeted and welcomed by friends and all was well with him, for the Hurons were exceeding- ly hospitable towards strangers. The French settled themselves at Ihonatiria and soon had a cabin built, part was used for their home and part for their chapel. The Indians were astonished at the intelligence shewn by the French in their building. A clock created great astonishment, the savages thought it was alive as it struck, that it could hear (as one jocular Frenchman called out on the last stroke " That's enough " and it stopped) ; they named it " the captain of the day," and at last had to be told when it struck four it said, " Go away, we want to shut the door," when it struck twelve, " Come put on the kettle." The latter announcement was always heeded and the hungry savages were ever ready to eat with the French. Writing was beyond their conception. The wonderful things that the Jesuits had and did made the Indians docile and ready to accept what was told them concern- I 272 QUEEN'S QUARTERLY. *■ > ing the mysteries of the faith. Poor Brebeuf had neither the leisure nor the paper to say all he wished. He tells us that the Huron Country which was situated in the county of Sinicoe, near the Severn River, could be easily traversed in three or four days, that its soil produced much fjood Indian corn, that there were some twenty towns and about 30,000 souls, that the language was not difficult to master, that it was very complete and regular and spoken by about a do^en other nations, the Tobacco Nation, the Neuters, Iroquois, Susquehannas and Cats. Hrebeuf was glad to find that the Hurons had only one wife each and that marriage was not permitted among relatives. However, he admits, the mun made frecjuent changes of their wives and the women of their husbands. He deemed them lascivious, although in some leading points less so than many Christians who will blush some day in their presence " for there was no kissing or immodest caressing among them." They were gluttons, but often fasted two or three days at a time. They were lazy liars, thieves, pertinacious beggars and by some deemed vindictive. On the other hand our holy priest saw some rather noble moral virtues shining among them ; there was a great love and union among them, they were extremely hospitable, wonder- fully patient in poverty, famine and sickness, and met death with- out the slightest falter or change of countenance. Father Perrault, of the Mission of Cape Breton, in his report describes the situation, climate, resources and natives of that island ; he praises the honesty, docility and modesty of the people. The Relation ends with "various sentiments and opinions of the Fathers who are in New France, taken from their last letters in 1635," ^ collection of religious experiences, observations and opinions concerning their holy work, the qualifications of a missionary (affability, humility, patience and a generous charity), and a solemn vow taken by them to God, the Holy Virgin and her glorious spouse St. Joseph, to secure by the goodness of Our Lord, the conversion of the people, through the meditation of his Holy Mother and her Holy Spouse. The latter half of vol. VIII and the whole of vol. IX are taken up with Le Jeune's part of the Relation of 1636 ; vol. X will consist of Brebeuf's contribution to that narrative. As usual the worthy Superior dilates at length concerning the baptisms ^ \r ^ .^ \ THE JESUIT KKI.ATIONS. ■273 dill inj; the year and of the happy death and interestinjj burials of many of the 115 savages made children of the Church, lie attributes much of the work done to the favour sliown by heaven since the taking of the special vows referred to above. He records that the Indians seemed no longer vexed at the baptism of their sick children ; for a while they had an idea that it was fatal to them, and now the more aged ones were beginning to wish to die Christians, and asking for baptism when they were sick, in order not to go down into tiie tires with which they were threatened. " As a good house-wife out of divers fleeces weaves one piece of clotii, as a bee gathers wax and honey out of many flowers and makes a nev/ bundle of all," so we have extracted what we present you from the works of these long-departed Fathers. R. Vashon Kogers. CANADIAN LAW IN REGARD TO RESPONSIBILITY. IV asked to write the saddest chapter in human history, one niiglit fairly say that the cruel treatment of the insane, in times gone by, would furnish material for the subject. The Egyptians are said to have been gentle and forbearing in their treatment of madnesST-aaid from ancient medical writings it is learned that the Greeks halKteasonable theories of the causes of mental defect, that is the Greelts who were furthest advanced in culture and science. Hippocrates was fully alive to the won- derful connection between body and mind, and realized the fact that insanity was not simply a divine visitation, but an outcome of bodily defect. The aesthetic culture and intellectual develop- ment of the Greeks gave way to the barbarism of the middle ages, and as can readily be understood, in the days of monasti- cism and religious asceticism, when the body was looked upon with contempt as being the lurking place of the devil, any rational theory of the causation of insanity had little chance to if \r T*^- 274 ()['EI:N S ()lIAKTi;iY, 9j- live. Persons wlio were insane were naturally treated as havinj,' been j;iven over to the possession of the devil, and as Maiulsley suj^'gests, they treated those possessed of the devil, as they would have treated the devil, couUl they have h:id the f,'0()d fortune to lay hold of him. The cruel treatment of the insane, lonj,' survived the belief in iliabolical possession, because the Church, aided by the metaphysicians, continued to block the wa/ of scientific in(|uiry, and thought it wronj; to enter on a study of mind by way of physical investigation. ICven to-day, amoni> the uneducated classes, the beliefs of the middle ages are conltnonly held, and it will be many a year before it will be possible to convince the average man, that Jack is not as good as his Master, in forming an estimate of a person's mental condition or measuring his respon- sibility. It is not difficult to understand this, for while it is true that the majority of the uneducated, and a large proportion of the so called well informed, speak of the brain as the organ of mind, as a matter of fact they regard the brain as something completely emancipated from the body, and in no way dependent on it. If their beliefs are analysed, it will be learned that they see nothing incongruous in looking for healthy action in a diseased organ. In spite of the prevalent theory that all people are born equal, as far as responsibility is concerned, as a matter of fact every man is a law unto himself. Given a person with sound heredity and favorable environment, both physical and moral, and his equipment for the tight in life is somewhat different from that of the physical weakling, already damned by a poor heredity and bad surroundings ; and yet these men are treated as equal, as far as regards responsibility, by many representatives of law and theology. The majority of newspapers take the same stand, and a very superficial study of the question reveals the fact, that in Canada at least, the subject of criminology is but little under- stood. Our penitentiaries and large prisons, as at present constituted, furnish all the proof necessary, to show that this idea of all persons being born equal in responsibility, is the one believed in by the many. Any one who takes the trouble to study practical psychology in a Canadian penitentiary, will be astound- ed at the want of regard for the subject of responsibility shown by our law, law founded on vyhat is speciously termed good commpri » »■';; > %■ ll ' I, ^ >