CHAPTER 29
1649, 1650.
THE SANCTUARY.
DISPERSION OF THE HURONS. SAINTE MARIE ABANDONED. ISLE SAINT  JOSEPH.  REMOVAL OF THE MISSION. THE NEW FORT. MISERY OF THE HURONS. FAMINE.  EPIDEMIC. EMPLOYMENTS OF THE JESUITS.
All was over with the Hurons.  The death-knell of their nation had struck.  Without a leader, without organization, without union, crazed with fright and paralyzed with misery, they yielded to their doom without a blow.  Their only thought was flight.  Within two weeks after the disasters of Saint  Ignace and Saint  Louis, fifteen Huron towns were abandoned, and the greater number burned, lest they should give shelter to the Iroquois.  The last year's harvest had been scanty; the fugitives had no food, and they left behind them the fields in which was their only hope of obtaining it.  In bands, large or small, some roamed northward and eastward, through the half-thawed wilderness; some hid themselves on the rocks or islands of Lake Huron; some sought an asylum among the Tobacco Nation; a few joined the Neutrals on the north of Lake Erie.  The Hurons, as a nation, ceased to exist.

Hitherto Sainte Marie had been covered by large fortified towns which lay between it and the Iroquois; but these were all destroyed, some by the enemy and some by their own people, and the Jesuits were left alone to bear the brunt of the next attack.  There was, moreover, no reason for their remaining.  Sainte Marie had been built as a basis for the missions; but its occupation was gone: the flock had fled from the shepherds, and its existence had no longer an object.  If the priests stayed to be butchered, they would perish, not as martyrs, but as fools.  The necessity was as clear as it was bitter.  All their toil must come to nought.  Sainte Marie must be abandoned.  They confess the pang which the resolution cost them; but, pursues the Father Superior, "since the birth of Christianity, the Faith has nowhere been planted except in the midst of sufferings and crosses.  Thus this desolation consoles us; and in the midst of persecution, in the extremity of the evils which assail us and the greater evils which threaten us, we are all filled with joy: for our hearts tell us that God has never had a more tender love for us than now." 

Several of the priests set out to follow and console the scattered bands of fugitive Hurons.  One embarked in a canoe, and coasted the dreary shores of Lake Huron northward, among the wild labyrinth of rocks and islets, whither his scared flock had fled for refuge; another betook himself to the forest with a band of half-famished proselytes, and shared their miserable rovings through the thickets and among the mountains.  Those who remained took counsel together at Sainte Marie.  Whither should they go, and where should be the new seat of the mission? They made choice of the Grand Manitoulin Island, called by them Isle Sainte Marie, and by the Hurons Ekaentoton.  It lay near the northern shores of Lake Huron, and by its position would give a ready access to numberless Algonquin tribes along the borders of all these inland seas.  Moreover, it would bring the priests and their flock nearer to the French settlements, by the route of the Ottawa, whenever the Iroquois should cease to infest that river.  The fishing, too, was good; and some of the priests, who knew the island well, made a favorable report of the soil.  Thither, therefore, they had resolved to transplant the mission, when twelve Huron chiefs arrived, and asked for an interview with the Father Superior and his fellow Jesuits.  The conference lasted three hours.  The deputies declared that many of the scattered Hurons had determined to reunite, and form a settlement on a neighboring island of the lake, called by the Jesuits Isle Saint  Joseph; that they needed the aid of the Fathers; that without them they were helpless, but with them they could hold their ground and repel the attacks of the Iroquois.  They urged their plea in language which Ragueneau describes as pathetic and eloquent; and, to confirm their words, they gave him ten large collars of wampum, saying that these were the voices of their wives and children.  They gained their point.  The Jesuits abandoned their former plan, and promised to join the Hurons on Isle Saint  Joseph.

They had built a boat, or small vessel, and in this they embarked such of their stores as it would hold.  The greater part were placed on a large raft made for the purpose, like one of the rafts of timber which every summer float down the Saint  Lawrence and the Ottawa.  Here was their stock of corn, in part the produce of their own fields, and in part bought from the Hurons in former years of plenty, pictures, vestments, sacred vessels and images, weapons, ammunition, tools, goods for barter with the Indians, cattle, swine, and poultry.  Sainte Marie was stripped of everything that could be moved.  Then, lest it should harbor the Iroquois, they set it on fire, and saw consumed in an hour the results of nine or ten years of toil.  It was near sunset, on the fourteenth of June.  The houseless band descended to the mouth of the Wye, went on board their raft, pushed it from the shore, and, with sweeps and oars, urged it on its way all night.  The lake was calm and the weather fair; but it crept so slowly over the water that several days elapsed before they reached their destination, about twenty miles distant.

Near the entrance of Matchedash Bay lie the three islands now known as Faith, Hope, and Charity.  Of these, Charity or Christian Island, called Ahoendoé by the Hurons and Saint  Joseph by the Jesuits, is by far the largest.  It is six or eight miles wide; and when the Hurons sought refuge here, it was densely covered with the primeval forest.  The priests landed with their men, some forty soldiers, laborers, and others, and found about three hundred Huron families bivouacked in the woods.  Here were wigwams and sheds of bark, and smoky kettles slung over fires, each on its tripod of poles, while around lay groups of famished wretches, with dark, haggard visages and uncombed hair, in every posture of despondency and woe.  They had not been wholly idle; for they had made some rough clearings, and planted a little corn.  The arrival of the Jesuits gave them new hope; and, weakened as they were with famine, they set themselves to the task of hewing and burning down the forest, making bark houses, and planting palisades.  The priests, on their part, chose a favorable spot, and began to clear the ground and mark out the lines of a fort.  Their men the greater part serving without pay  labored with admirable spirit, and before winter had built a square, bastioned fort of solid masonry, with a deep ditch, and walls about twelve feet high.  Within were a small chapel, houses for lodging, and a well, which, with the ruins of the walls, may still be seen on the south-eastern shore of the island, a hundred feet from the water.  Detached redoubts were also built near at hand, where French musketeers could aid in defending the adjacent Huron village.  Though the island was called Saint  Joseph, the fort, like that on the Wye, received the name of Sainte Marie.  Jesuit devotion scattered these names broadcast over all the field of their labors.

The island, thanks to the vigilance of the French, escaped attack throughout the summer; but Iroquois scalping-parties ranged the neighboring shores, killing stragglers and keeping the Hurons in perpetual alarm.  As winter drew near, great numbers, who, trembling and by stealth, had gathered a miserable subsistence among the northern forests and islands, rejoined their countrymen at Saint  Joseph, until six or eight thousand expatriated wretches were gathered here under the protection of the French fort.  They were housed in a hundred or more bark dwellings, each containing eight or ten families.  Here were widows without children, and children without parents; for famine and the Iroquois had proved more deadly enemies than the pestilence which a few years before had wasted their towns.  Of this multitude but few had strength enough to labor, scarcely any had made provision for the winter, and numbers were already perishing from want, dragging themselves from house to house, like living skeletons.  The priests had spared no effort to meet the demands upon their charity.  They sent men during the autumn to buy smoked fish from the Northern Algonquins, and employed Indians to gather acorns in the woods.  Of this miserable food they succeeded in collecting five or six hundred bushels.  To diminish its bitterness, the Indians boiled it with ashes, or the priests served it out to them pounded, and mixed with corn.  

As winter advanced, the Huron houses became a frightful spectacle.  Their inmates were dying by scores daily.  The priests and their men buried the bodies, and the Indians dug them from the earth or the snow and fed on them, sometimes in secret and sometimes openly; although, notwithstanding their superstitious feasts on the bodies of their enemies, their repugnance and horror were extreme at the thought of devouring those of relatives and friends.  An epidemic presently appeared, to aid the work of famine.  Before spring, about half of their number were dead.

Meanwhile, though the cold was intense and the snow several feet deep, yet not an hour was free from the danger of the Iroquois; and, from sunset to daybreak, under the cold moon or in the driving snow-storm, the French sentries walked their rounds along the ramparts.

The priests rose before dawn, and spent the time till sunrise in their private devotions.  Then the bell of their chapel rang, and the Indians came in crowds at the call; for misery had softened their hearts, and nearly all on the island were now Christian.  There was a mass, followed by a prayer and a few words of exhortation; then the hearers dispersed to make room for others.  Thus the little chapel was filled ten or twelve times, until all had had their turn.  Meanwhile other priests were hearing confessions and giving advice and encouragement in private, according to the needs of each applicant.  This lasted till nine o'clock, when all the Indians returned to their village, and the priests presently followed, to give what assistance they could.  Their cassocks were worn out, and they were dressed chiefly in skins.  They visited the Indian houses, and gave to those whose necessities were most urgent small scraps of hide, severally stamped with a particular mark, and entitling the recipients, on presenting them at the fort, to a few acorns, a small quantity of boiled maize, or a fragment of smoked fish, according to the stamp on the leather ticket of each.  Two hours before sunset the bell of the chapel again rang, and the religious exercises of the morning were repeated.  

Thus this miserable winter wore away, till the opening spring brought new fears and new necessities.