CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY THE ANNA ALLEN WRIGHT LIBRARY ENDOWMENT FUND Cornell University Library F 1054.S14H31 The cross-bearers of the Saguenay 3 1924 006 345 700 ^u DATE DUE Cornell University Library The original of tliis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924006345700 A MONTAGNAIS ClHEF. Frontispiece. NIHIL OBSTAt S. M. McGRATH, Chanc. IMPMMATUB. + NEIL McNEIt ARCHBISHOP OF TORONTO COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1920 BT J, M. DENT & SONS, LTD., TORONTO ,.;;;M-< """'^ 1, ^1/ Av ^/Ac^-' By the same author Early Missions in Western Canada The CATHOI.IC Church in the Niagara Peninsuita Pioneers of the Cross in Canada Days and Nights in the Tropics By Path and Trah, The Cathouc Church in Utah ' Here and There in Mexico Travei* TaivKS Essays in Occultism pRE-HisTORic Man in America The Cross- Bearers Of The Saguenay BY THE VERY REV. R. W. HARRIS D.D.. LL.D.. LITT-D. MCMXX LONDON AND TORONTO .^>»> "" J. M. DENT Sr SONS, LIMITED '''X S "i: TO THE REVEREND M. CLINE, M.A. WITH THE WARMEST ASSURANCE OF MY DEEP PERSONAL REGARD AND ESTEEM. CONTENTS Preface Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter BOOK I. — Tadousac and the Franciscans I. Introduction II. TadOusac To-day III. Tadousac in Early Times IV. The Doom op the Trading Post V. The Coming op the Franciscans VI. With the Savages 7 11 21 31 37 47 53 BOOK II.— The Montagnais Chapter VII. The Algonquins Chapter VIII. The Montagnais Chapter IX. The Montagnais Tribe . Chapter X. Tent Lipe op the Montagnais Chapter XI. Superstitions and Myths op the Montagnais Chapter XII. The Montagnais Medicine-Man Chapter XIII. Religion and Morals Chapter XIV. Other Characteristics 61 69 75 81 87 99 121 135 BOOK III.— Trail-Breakers and Path-Finders Chapter XV. The Missionaribs .... 149 Chapter XVI. Sstting Out for Lake St. John . 157 Chapter XVII. On the Way to Piougami' . 161 Chapter XVIII. The "RivEe of Death" 165 Chapter XIX. Other Path-Finders . 173 Chapter XX. The Fate of the Iroquois 179 Chapter XXI. The Traii<-Breaker . 183 Chapter XXII. The Lone Priest 193 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS A MoNTAGNAis Chibp . Frontispiece Warping a Boat Facing page 81 On Lakb Mistassini . . . . 87 Scapfoi,d Burial 88 Chi-chi-koue ..... , ' 100 Applying Yellow Paint . . . Ill Extracting the Evil Manitou 126 River Portage 161 The Carry . 162 Mountain Portage . . . 187 Sanson's Map . 203 On the Paper Wrapper is an illustration of Rattles, which are mentioned on page 101. BOOK I. TADOUSAC AND THE FRANCISCANS Pref ace The eminent Jesuit, Father T. J. Campbell, in his authoritative work. Pioneer Priests Among the Algonquins has done more than any living man to perpetuate the memories of the intrepid and self-sacrificing Jesuit missionaries whose names illumine the history of Canada, and whose achievements for God and civilization almost stagger belief. The liyes and works of these saintly men are a great Christian Odyssey. Around their mem- ory is a halo of superhuman glory — the glory of prophets, rather than that of merely dis- tinguished , men. Father Campbell deals largely with the religious and spiritual side of the missionaries. This volume treats ex- clusively of the Montagnais (the Quebec Algonquin) tribes, of the scenery of the forests and lakes east and north of the Saguenay River, and of the secular achievements of the pioneer missionaries. A word or two of explanation is necessary as to the use of the name Recollet as used in the pages of this book. The many and vari- ous names adopted by different branches of 8 PRKFACE the Franciscan tree are confusing. The word Franciscan is the family name common to all the members of the seraphic order whether they be religious, religieuses, or simply tertiaries, that is, members of the third order. From the venerable Franciscan tree, plahted by Saint Francis in 1209, came many branches, each bearing a different name. In 1517 Pope Leo X. formed these denominational societies into one body and conferred upon it a generic name, the Friar Minors of the Regular Observance. The members of some of these absorbed com- munities considered the articles of the Char- ter or Constitution too severe, and His Holi- ness Leo X, when appealed to, permitted these Protestants to form a separate congre- gation — with its own constitution — ^which adopted the name of Friars Minors Conven- tuals. Many members of the Regular Observance, encouraged by the zeal of holy and illustrious men, asked for a more rigorous Rule and formed, with Papal consent, the societies called The Reformed, The Alcantarins, and The Recollets. In 1897, Leo XIII. sup- pressed the Recollets, the Alcantarins and the Reformed by uniting them with the Observants, conferring on the consolidated body the generic name of Friars Minors. CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 9 There are now in the great Franciscan family but three independent communities with a "General" for each branch residing at Rome. These are the Friars Minors ; the Friars Minors Conventual, and the Friars Minors Capucins. The Friars Minors, the Conventuals, and- the Capucins (or as we say, Capuchins), are three different branches of the Franciscan Order, but the Friars Minors is the only body to which the word Franciscan is by custom applied. In presenting to the public this volume I gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. Simon Lapointe, K.C., of Chicoutimi, Quebec, for valuable assistance when I was col- lecting material for the chapters on Tadousac and the Saguenay River; also to Thomas Mulvey, Esq., M.A., Under-Secretary of State, for topographical maps of the Lake St. John and Mistassini regions. I may add that to avoid the repetition of almost unpronounce- able names the seven or eight families or tribes of Quebec Algonquins are grouped under the common name of Montagnais. Thb Author. CHAPTER I. Introduction In all history there are no more valuable or edifying pages than those recording the lives and labours of the Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries among the Indian tribes of Canada in the seventeenth and early -eighteenth centuries. The intense faith, zeal and self-abasement of these great men com- mand our admiration and respect, though the heroism of their self-effacement , and self- sacrifice can hardly be appreciated to-day. when reading the annals (recording the achievements and discoveries of the adven- turous men) of these early times in New France we ought to remember that the missionaries confronted the perils of the wilderness that they might make known to savage man the sublime doctrines of Christianity arid raise him to a plane of decency and clean living, while the aim of the coureurs de hois and the officers of the fur companies was the accumulation of wealth which was made possible by trade with the Indians. The missionaries went everywhere, seai'ch- •ing out the most obscure places and tribes, and venturing their lives for the salvation of 11 12 INTRODUCTION souls, for God and France. Long before anthropology became a science and the "Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man" was accepted as an axiomatic truth, the missionary fathers preached to the tribes the unity of the human race — that "God hath made from one all mankind to dwell upon the face of the earth." They ventured in frail barks on waters often tempestuous and dangerous; they penetrated a vast wild- erness extending in unbroken continuity from Tadousac to Lake Superior ; they surrendered themselves with the resignation of martyrs to hunger, cold, and often to brutal treat- ment ; they ate and slept in miserable huts of bark and endured without protest or complairtt the horrors of Indian winter lodges full of all abominations ; of uncleanness, of smoke, dogs, vermin and stench. Filled with apostolic zeal, they offered to God, on behalf of perishing souls, the sacrifice of bodily repose, of all the refined enjoyment of Christian society, of Christian civilization and of life itself, that they might "win all to Christ." Truly, may we say of them what Jesus, the son of Sirach, said of the just, the men of mercy of his day : "Their bodies are buried in peace and their names liveth from generation to generation." Their love CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 13 for the souls of the savages, their marvellous zeal, their heroism under cold, privation, hunger and a lingering death are abiding proofs of what may be endured by men of faith, and of the grace of God influencing and fortifying the soul of man. These French missionaries were men of great heart and steady purpose. Every man of them was educated, trained and fitted for the accomplishment of one great end — the Christianizing and civilizing of the savage hordes to whom they were sent. If the recognition of a common bond which unites the races of the earth' and the units of these races in one humanity be one of the noblest truths known to our race ; if to endure a life- time of suffering in order to lead into the light the men and women seated in the shadow of death, to remove the barriers which ignorance, prejudice and false conceptions of the dignity of man and the sacredness of human life have erected constitute greatness of oul, then these heroic priests reaciied the level of greatness, and posterity will some day immortalize them in granite and marble. If, to be a saint is to actualize and make real, visible, palpable and substantial our conception of all that constitutes evangelical perfection, then these missionaries — Francis- cans and Jesuits — ^have earned and are en- 14 INTRODUCTION titled to all the honours of canonization. But these brave and saintly men did not confine their time and talents exclusively to teaching, instructing and civilizing the roving hordes of inhospitable regions. Many of- them opened up unexplored territories and cut the trails to unknown lands. Of these was Jean Dequen, who ascended the Saguenay and discovered Lake Kenogami, Bell Riyer and Lake St. John. Of these also were Father Buteux who, in 1651, reached — ^first of white men — the St. Maurice and sources of the Matawin in the land of the Attika- megues, and Fathers Dablon and Druillettes who, in 1661, were the first to break the way to the head waters of the Nekouba river. Of these a;lso was Charles Albanel, who scaled the height of land and tramped and canOed overland from the St. Lawrence to the Hudson Bay. They explored the territory from Tadousac to the Mistassini and from Quebec to Labrador. They charted the newly- explored land, described the tribes they had visited, the botany of the country, named rivers and mountains, and bequeathed to us an accurate map of the land as it then was. Nothing apparently escaped their obser- vation and search. Father Albanel records the physical peculiarities of James' Bay — its CROSS-BEARKRS OF THE SAGUENAY 15 brackish water, its shallowness, the incredibly long reflux of its tide, the charm and softness of the climate, the flora and fertihty of the land. Father Cr^pieul descends to the minutest details, even to the study and examination of the foetal fawn of a moose "no bigger than a man's thumb." "I was filled with admira- tion for the wisdom of the Creator," he writes, "who can enclose in so small a compass so many different parts all so well adapted to their functions." Father de Beaulieu, one of the greatest mathematicians of his time, passed hours by torch light dissecting and examining the anatomy of the wild animals brought to camp by his Montagnais companions and hunters. They gathered medicinal plants (les simples) catalogued and classified them. They opened the first path through the Laurentides from Lake St. John to Quebec. This is shown on Father Laure's wonderful map of 1730 and Benin's chart of 1774. They began the first model farm in Canada, some of the fruit trees of which, at the mouth of the Metabat- chouan, Lake St. John, were standing in 1889. They opened at Tadousac the first school for Indian children, wrote catechisms and translated prayer books and books of devotion 16 V INTRODUCTION into Huron and Algonquin, , and taught the Indian children music and singing.* They did more. From Tadousac, Chicou- timi and the missions of the North they sent accurate descriptions of the lands they visited and the tribes they instructed. They described Lake Mistassini, gave the names of the tribes .living on its shores, and left us invaluable treatises on the habits, manners and customs of the Algonquins of the St. Lawrence. When the Franciscan, or Jesuit missionaries fear- lessly penetrated uncharted lands, they were confronted with almost insuperable, obstacles. The land was to be explored, the tribes to be civilized, superstition to be eradicated and the faith to be preached. And there is no record of failure in their noble mission. ^ They plunged into unexplored regions with no weapons but a breviary and a crucifix, no guide but a compass, and often with no other companions than their own zeal and the grace of God. They went from tribe to tribe canoeing lakes and rivers, scaling mountains, encompassed by privations, surrounded by desolations of solitude and by an unbroken * Father Labrosse writes in his Relation, 1778 : "I taught many savages to read, write and sing by note, to assist properly at Mass and at the Ceremonies of Vespers." He distributed thousands of catechisms and devotional- leaflets, written in Algonquin, among the various tribes.. CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 17 and pathless wilderness, "God also bearing them witness by signs and wonders, and divers miracles, and gifts of "the Holy Ghost according to His will." — Heb. 2:4. They were confronted with toils and diffi- culties of an unaccustomed experience, and blazed the trail, in many instanceSj with their own blood. In savage encampments and among scattered tribal families they raised aloft the cross with the appealing image of the Crucified Christ, "Whose head was bowed down even as droops the yellow head of corn." The extent of the territory covered by the zeal and marvellous energy of the missionaries is almost incredible. Across the repellent breasts of barbarous regions these saintly and wonderful men wandered, instructing, teaching, preaching, toiling, and dying in camps or in forests, showing on the whole such a record of bravery and zeal as to invite the admiration of heroic souls and men of lofty courage. And amid all their dangers, labours, and trials, they were mapping the land, describing rivers and mountains and recording the habits of the Indians with an accuracy of detail and a fidelity to truth that have withstood the examination of the keenest critics. Separated from the world, frpm ambition, from home, honours and ecclesiastic 18 INTRODUCTION promotion, they became very near and familiar friends with God. We may, without exag- geration, repeat of them what Thomas k Kempis said of the martyrs of the early church : "Saints and friends of Christ, they served our Lord in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness, labour and weariness, in watching and fastings, in prayers and holy meditation, in persecution and reproach." In nightly hours borrowed from days of self- sacrifice, they wrote for those who were to come after them narratives and letters, essays on native manners, descriptions of the land, of the customs, ceremonies and rites of the tribes. They mapped and delineated whole regions, named mountains, rivers and valleys, and left us an invaluable library on aboriginal man and savage nature. In this incompar- able collection are included dissertations on botany, geology, zoology, ethnology, and on tribal languages and dialects. They omitted nothing. In their edifying letters we find accurate descriptions of locali- ties and of natural curiosities, a wealth of historical and legendary information, reports on manners and customs, interspersed with characteristic anecdotes and bits of folk-lore. Their writings have proved of inestimable value tb secular historians who have enlarged CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 19 the sphere and are now exploiting the abori- ginal past. There is not in the history of heroic endeavour a more inspiring chapter than that which records the deeds of self- denial, the apostolic labours and the affection of these lonely priests for their spiritual children of the forest. To a fervor that was intense and an abnegation that was entire, they added a devotion that was indefatigable and admirable. They brought to the dis- charge of their exalted office an unselfishness that was apostdlic and a fortitude under privation and suffering which, since Apostolic times, have hardly a parallel in human history. Of the brave and saintly soldiers of the Cross who fought the wilderness in Canada in those early days many won the crown of martyrdom. All these were slaughtered in savage fields for the faith and fell beside the standard of the Cross, breathing loyalty to God and man in their last agonies. The words of the inspired writer are seldom more fittingly applied than to these voluntary victims for God and Christian civilization ; "The souls of the just are in the hands of God, and the torment of death shall not touch them. In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die ; and their departure was taken for misery and their going away from us for utter destruction. For though in the sight of men they stiffered torture, yet is their hope full of immortality." CHAPTER II. Tadousac To-day. Hidden among firs and boulders on a sloping spur of the primordial Laurentides reposes the picturesque French-Canadian vil- lage of Tadousac. Situated on the eastern bank of the mysterious Saguenay near its confluence with the St. Lawrence, it presents a most inviting retreat, a sylvan resort whose soft witchery fascinates, and whose early history compels both attention and respect. This ancient and attractive village houses a population of six hundred souls. It has a number of handsome villas and, during the summer months, is liberally patronized by tourists and health seekers. Here the St. Lawrence — 300 miles from the sea and 120 miles below Quebec — is twenty-one miles wide, and on a cloudless day the mountains of the south shore are sharply outlined and loom large against a deep blue sky. The white-painted houses of Cacouna are clearly visible and at Riviere-du-Loup may be seen the Hospital of the Precious Blood and the church of St. Patrice, whose roof of polished tin reflects the brightness of a glorious Canadian sun. 21 22 TADOUSAC TO-DAY Champlain's description of the Bay of Tadousac, the mountains rising majestically around the entrance to the Saguenay and the dark forest encompassing the weird place, would fit, without a change of word, the topographical conditions as they exist to-day.* It is sufficient for our purpose to record the contour of the mountains, the flow and width of the Saguenay, the sand dunes and receding forests which have not altered since the memorable morning of May 24th, 1603, when the daring explorer moored his ship. La Bonne-Renomm6e, in the Bay of Tadousac. THE WITCHERY OF TADOUSAC. I well remember the pleasant morning I entered the cleanly-kept, yet primitive village park and from its southern rim began to get command of a prospect which, as it then appeared in the lambent light and sunshine, seemed to me a perfect scene of natural and ravishing beauty and of quiet but rugged grandeur. The majestic St. Lawrence slowly moving to the sea, the dunnish purple-grey clouds trembling over the Saguenay, the opalescence of the calm bay, the village • Champlain's history of his explorations, fortunately, is extant. In it, among other experiences of absorbing interest, are recorded the events and stirring incidents so intimately associated with Tadousac from 1603 to 1631. CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 23 feathered with spruce, the everlasting and awe-inspiring mountains towering to imperial heights, and the pine forest stretching end- lessly to the north, formed a colossal scene of wondrous beauty. From where I stood I gazed upon a magnificent landscape unfolding itself, a fascinating and alluring panorama of rivers, mountains, islands and forest. The view was rich, full and complete, and on all sides the prospect embraced variety, sublimity and beauty. The air I breathed was fragrant with the odour of pine, of balsam-fir, juniper and spruce. The repose and isolation of my retreat, the sensual softness of the lambent air, and the calm of the hour filled the park with a dreamy drowsiness of pleasant languor. It was a veritable siesta of nature on a ravish- ing summer's day. The peaceful quiet of the woods was like unto the peace of the Lord, and the summer mists drifting in from the lordly St. Lawrence, encompassed me round about. The shades of the dead visited me and my memory was cstrried back to the long ago, when traders, savage hunters, and Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries mingled here indiscriminately together and laid the foundations of our history. Before me rolled le Grand Fleuve — the St. Lawrence — sown with fir-covered islands and. 24 TADOUSAC TO-DAY among them, beyond the range of my bino- culars, Isle aux Coudres, where, on September 7th, 1535, Jacques Cartier with his men landed, and the chaplain of his ship, La Grande Hermine, offered up the Holy Sacrifice. To my right, buttressed for seventy miles by granite walls of primordial rock, flowed the dark-brown waters of the gloomy Saguenay bearing to the St. Lawrence contributions surrendered by far-away northern lakes, rivers and streams. Northward 'stretched the rock-pine, fir and spruce lands and, between forest and river, hidden like a plover's nest among rocks, reposed the ancient village, through which a virgin rivulet purls night and day. From my position on the rim of a granite platform I looked down upon the residence of Monsieur le Cure, half hidden in birch trees, the summer hotel, the comfortable homes of the friendly people, the school and the parish church of Ste. Croix, on the consecrated altar of which the "Clean Oblation" is daily offered. Many of these buildings dominate the sandy beach, whose waters at high tide almost overlap their foundations. The story of the patronal name of the fine church carries us back to the days when Father Dequen, in 1641, raised the first cross at the head of the bay. Father Buteux, who CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 25 succeeded him, transplanted the cross to a more elevated site, where, seen by the ships far out in the St. Lawrence, it symbolized the conquest of the land for Christ and Chris- tianity. Carried on the brawny shoulders of a Montagnais chief and followed by the missionary and his bronzed converts, the great cross of cedar was raised on a position commanding a view of the Saguenay and the St. Lawrence. Henceforth Tadousac became known as the Mission of the Holy Cross — Sainte-Croix. In 1648 an humble frame church was built, to which came four times every day, for instruction and prayers, large numbers, of Indian neophytes and catechumens. "In this church," as we read in the Relation of Father Le Jeune, "instructions were given and praises to God sung in Huron, Algonquin, and in the Montagnais and Miscouin lan- guages." Nine hundred Indians assembled in the summer of 1649 in and around this church of the Holy Cross. When, in 1668, Bishop Laval visited Tadousac, he confirmed one hundred and forty-nine Indians, members of different tribes and clans. From where I stood I saw the venerable and modest little Algonquin chapel, so ten- derly apostrophised by Octave Cr^mazie, under the magic of whose pen "common 26 TADOUSAC TO-DAY things took on beauty like a dress and all the land was an enchanted place." This unpretentious and ancient chapel is filled to repletion with memories of the times when black-robed priests and fur-clad hunters of Peribonka exchanged friendly greetings outside its sacred walls. In these early days Tadousac — now an attractive summer resort — ^was known to Basque fishermen and French traders under the name of Traite de Tadoussae — The Tadou- sac Trading Post^ — for Tadousac was the great mart to which furs ahd peltries werfe brought by Algonquin hunters from Northern forests. They gathered here from uncharted and mysterious regions ; from lands where the mighty hunters — those spectral heroes of the Nibelungenlied — ^would have revelled ; from the dark and mysterious forests whose weird silence was like unto that of the gloomy regions of which De Quincey dreamed and the Minnesingers sang. Then Tadousac was famous and known over nearly all Europe. Hakluyt in his book The Principal Navigations and Voyages, 1610, refers to it as a place of importance, and in the early maps it is marked as the capital of the kingdom of Saguenay. Hither came, in these unremembered days, the brayed (clothed with breech-cloth) Mon- CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 27 tagnais, Papinichois and Bersiamites, with their squaws, babies and wolfish dogs, carry- ing their furs and peltries in bundles and packages. They canoed the River of Death (Saguenay) ; they skirted the northern shores of the St. Lawrence; they came by path and trail, over mountains, rivers, and swales, and when they entered Tadousac, raised their tents and shacks and opened la traite — the trade. On the green sward, on shelving granite, by the doors of their lodges they displayed priceless furs — ^furs of the black squirrel and lynx, of the otter, fox, mink, fisher, and marten. They also brought down, by canoe and pack, pelts of the bear, caribou and moose, which they traded for knives, hatchets, iron arrow tips, tobacco, swords, kettles, blankets, clothes, biscuits, raisins, and porcelain beads. Then, after months of haggling and bartering, and when the market was sold put, these Algonquin wild men and women— Bersiamites, Pore-Epics, Kenogami and Papinichois — ^returned to the Labrador coast, to Chicoutimi, Peribonka and the Maskoubiti forests. And once again silence, loneliness and aban- donment possessed the deserted place, and from Tadousac to Chicoutimi, for seventy miles, there was but a desolation of wilder- ness through whose mountainous body of 28 TADOUSAC TO-DAY imperishable granite the sullen Saguenay rolled its gloomy waters. To this historic trading post also came the Franciscan friar Paul Huet, who, pro- tected from a swarm of mosquitoes by two sailors armed with spruce brancheis, said Mass in a bark chapel; and Father Gervais Mohier, who fled into the woods when, for the first time, he heard the yelps, barks, and ferocious cries of naked and painted Mon- tagnais, armed with spears, scalping knives and battle clubs, engaged in the blood-curdl- ing war-dance. From Tadousac went out the priest ex- plorers of Lakes Kenogami, St. John and Mis- tassini and the overland Expedition, or- ganised, in 1674, by Father Albanel for the discovery of Hudson's Bay. For a hundred years and more Tadousac was the head- quarters for all the missionary and exploring expeditions organized to instruct the tribes and exploit the vast regions north of the St. Lawrence. It was to this centre of trade that the Algonquin converts to the Faith came, from the forest lands of the Lower St. Lawrence and the highlands of Nekouba, for instruction and to receive the sacraments. On a plot of ground, now included in the humble graveyard , of Tadousac, Pierre de Chauvin, Lieutenant of the King, built the CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 29 first house erected in Canada, and thirty years after the erection of Chauvin's house, Tadou- sac became the missionary centre from which the Jesuit fathers left to evangeHze the north- ern tribes and the wandering famihes trading with the Esquimaux. To Tadousac came also in these early times Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries to instruct the Montagnais, when the tribes from the far north annually descended to barter their furs with French traders. From here departed for regions of eternal solitude to preach to the nomadic bands of Algonquins, the Franciscan friar Dolbeau, and tiie Jesuit missionaries Dequen, Nouvel, Bailloquet, Dablon, Druillettes and Albanel. In ,the course of time, civilization entered the Tadousac and Saguenay regions and began to tame the stubborn soil. In places the land is cleared; pulp mills are eating up its forests; settlements and villages are appearing. On a commanding site, overlooking the wonderful Saguenay, nine miles below the last of the great rapids or falls, French-Can- adian energy has built a city, the name of which perpetuates the memory of the Algon- quin Chicoutimi, in whose precincts are great pulp mills, and a cathedral and setninary unsur- passed for solidity and architectural effect by any ecclesiastical buildings east of Montreal. CHAPTER III. Tadousac in Early Times. On September 1st, Jacques Cartier, the discoverer of Canada, approached the Sague- nay and anchored in the Bay of Tadousac. In his Bref-Recit, or brief narrative of his voyages, he tells us that he was astonished to see spouting at the mouth of the river a shoal of white whales, "a kind of fish," he declares, "which no man had ever heard of, or ever before seen." These white whales, (porpoises) called beluga, may be seen to-day playing around the entrance of the Saguenay. Further on in his Bref-Recit he tells us that, at a later time at the mouth of the Saguenay, he "met with four boats full of wild men, who as far as we could perceive, very fearfully came towards us, so that some of them went back again, and the others came so near us that they might hear and understand one of our wild men, upon whose word they came to us."* To the Bay of Tadousac came in 1600 the * The Indians whom Cartier brought to France when return- ing from his first voyage and who were now, on his second voyage, acting as interpreters. 31 32 TADOUSAC IN EARI,Y TIMES ship of Pierre de Chauvin, who had been a distinguished Captain in the service of Henry IV., while as his Heutenant in command of another boat was Francois Grav6 or Pont- Grav§ and the Sieur de Monts who came out, as Chauvin's guest, to see the country. At Tadousac, Chauvin estabhshed a trading post, leaving sixteen men in possession, osten- sibly as settlers. Suffering with cold and hunger, some of them deserted and, consorting with the Montagnais, married Indian women, while a few eked out a miserable existence at the post, awaiting the return of the ship which came in 1602. Pont-Grav6 complained that when he was at the entrance to the Saguenay his ship was fired upon by Basque or Spanish fishermen and traders who, for many years, before the coming of Chauvin, Pont-Grave, or De Monts, trafficked with the Montagnais of the Sag- uenay for furs. To this place came Samuel Champlain, explorer, coloniser, and Governor of New France. His vessel. La Bonne-Renommee, anchored in the Bay of Tadousac, May 24th, 1603. From here he sailed up the Saguenay for seventy-five miles to the rapids beyond Chicoutimi and, near here, on the western side of the Saguenay, he formed an alliance against the Iroquois, with the Ottawa Algon- - CROSS-BEARERS OE THE SAGUENAY 33 quins, the Montagnais of the Saguenay and the Etchemins of New Brunswick who were re- turning with a hundred reeking scalps torn from the heads of Mohawk and Seneca warriors. Tadousac in 1615 was declared, with Que- bec and Three Rivers, to be an official trading post of the Company of Merchants, and in 1763, it attained to the dignity of "First of the King's Posts," and became the capital of the Kingdom of Saguenay. To Tadousac came in 1639 the saintly Madame de la Peltrie accompanied by three nuns, to open at Quebec the first Ursuline Convent in the New World. Here in July, 1629, a few days after the surrender of Quebec to Admiral Louis Kertk, occurred the pitiful death and awful mutila- tion of the body of Captain Jacques Michel, a French Calvinist, a brave and experienced officer, who held bommand under Kertk. Some days after the capitulation of Quebec, Champlain and the Jesuit Fathers, Masse, de Noue and John de Brebeuf, were brought to Tadousac as prisoners of war, for which post ^ Admiral Kertk and his Lieutenant Michel had already sailed. Admiral Kertk, addressing himself to the priests, is reported by Champlain to have said : "Gentlemen, you had certainly some busi-. iless in Canada, if it was only to enjoy what 34 TADOUSAC IN EARLY TIMES belonged to M. de Caen, of which you have dispossessed him." "Pardon me, sir," respprided Father Bre- beuf, "it was only the pure intention of pro- moting the glory of God which brought us here, exposing ourselves to all dangers and perils for that object, and the conversion of the savages of this country." Michel, interrupting him, cried out: "Yes, yes, convert the savages; rather it was to convert the beavers." To which the Father impulsively replied : "That statement is false." Michel, lifting his hand to strike, said : "Only for respect to my General, I'd knock you down for giving me the lie." Brebeuf replied: , "Pardon me, sir, I did not intend to give you the lie. I would be very sorry to do so, the language I used is that of the schools when an untenable question is proposed, not considering it an insult. Therefore I ask you to pardon me, and to believe that I did not use the term with any intention of wound- ing your feelings." Michel was furious and indulged in so much profanity and vile language that Champlain said to him : "Bon Dieu! How boldly you curse and swear for a Reformer." CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUEN AY 35 "I know I do," exclaimed Michel, "but I'd rather be hung than that I should let another day pass without cuffing that Jesuit." That night Michel, with a few companions; drank heavily and, when in a drunken stupor, was struck with apoplexy and died miserably the following day. He was buried with all the honors due to his rank as captain of his ship. When his body was laid to rest in a grave filled in with the earth and stones of Tadousac, taps were sounded and the granite walls of the Saguenay returned the salute of guns fired over his remains. 'Three years aftpr Michel's burial, the Jesuit Father, Paul Le Jeune, landed at Tadousac on his way to Quebec. Passing the grave of Michel one morning, he was informed by his Indian companion that the Montagnais had taken the body from the grave and fed it to their dogs. "They exhumed the body, hung it on the limb of a tree, and then, cutting^ it in pieces, fed it to the dogs." Father Le Jeune than adds: " It isnotagood thingfor aman to blaspheme against God and His elect nor to conspire against his King, nor be a traitor to his country.* *BelaUon, 1635, par Paul le Jeune. Voyages de la Nouvelle-France, par Champlain I. Ill eh. VI, p. 255. Les Jesuits et La Nouvelle-France, par Camille de Rochemon- teix. Tome Premier, ch. II, p. 174. 36 TADOUSAC IN EARLY TIMES From 1615 to 1628 Tadousac was visited every summer by devout RecoUet mission- aries who instructed in Christian doctrine the representatives of the remote tribes who annually assembled at the post to meet the French traders. In 1633, the Jesuit Fathers succeeded the RecoUets and established missions among the tribes of the interior and on the northern and southern shores of the St. Lawrence from Malbaie to Labrador, and from Ile-Verte to the Baie des Chaleurs. The primitive chapels of Tadousac were rude enclosures of brush and bark. In 1648,. Father Dequen built the first frame chapel which was replaced in 1659 by a brick or stone building. This church was destroyed by fire in 1665, and replaced in 1671 by Father de Crdpieul. The picturesque little frame chapel now beside the humble cemetery of Tadousac, was built by the Jesuit priest, Father Co- quart in 1747. CHAPTER IV. Thh Doom of the Trading Post. It is interesting to note, when examining the Jesuit Relations, the attention the Fathers gave to every detail which concerned locaUties, the Indians and the missions. For instance, in the Relation for 1663-65, we read, that at Tadousac in the early days of April: "Two or three days before Faster, a third comet appeared," and that: "At the same time, we had news from Fathers Gabriel Druillette and Henry Nouvelle, who wintered with the savages around . Tadousac and have already baptised among them about fifty persons." "On the fifteenth of October, 1663, at nine o'clock in the evening, there was an earth- quake which caused a great cracking of the slates on our house. This shock was preceded by a report louder than that of two hundred cannon, which continued for about the space of a Miserere." "On Saint Mathias' day, 24th February, 1665, the shocks were so violent around Tadousac that the savages and one of our Fathers who was wintering in the neigh- bourhood with them, declare that they were not less severe than those felt at Quebec in 37 38 DOOM OI? THE TRADING POST that famous earthquake which occurred in the year 1663." In the Relation for 1669-70, we read: "I was quite surprised at seeing one good man whom I wished to instruct for confession. ' It is sixteen years,' said he to me, 'since you baptised me at Tadousac, and taught me what it was necessary to beheve, what I must do and what to shun, and what I must pray for, in order to be saved. Since that time, I have carefully followed your instructions, and I do not know that I have forgotten anything." The strong and long arm of Ecclesiastical law and civil enactments reached out, even in those primitive times, as far as Chicoutimi and Tadousac. In 1659, the zealous and daring missionary, Father Albanel, had per- formed a marriage without observing all the formalities and rubrics prescribed for the administration of the Sacrament. There was something more than a ."great sensation" caused, for the good priest was perilously near losing his sacerdotal faculties. The Relation reads: "April, Feast of St. Mark, 1659, Father Albanel arrived from Tadousac. Before leaving Tadousac, he had married a Frenchman named Frangois Pelletier to a Christian savage woman without publishing any banns, and without giving notice of it CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 39 to the relatives, ' or to Monseigneur, the Bishop, or to Monsieur the Governor; this caused a great sensation." Possibly, Father Francois de Crdpieul had this case in mind when, nearly twenty years after the event, he wrote his instructions for those preparing for the Montagnais missions: "Long prayers in public are not to be recom- mended, and marriages of white men to Indian women ought not to be celebrated, ' if the approval of the Bishop has not been obtained." Tadousac, in the 17th century, was not only the headquarters of the fur trade and the center for the inissions of the Saguenay and Lake St. John territories, but a port where the European ships to and from Quebec called, and from which departed the undaunt- ed missionary Fathers for the tribes hunting in northern and north-eastern forests. Although a missionary center and a trading post of great importance, Tadousac was, from time to time, abandoned to solitude, was eaten up by forest fires and its population ravaged by pestilence and small-pox. Before it became a permanent missionary station it was a rendezvous for the fur traders and a place to which the Algonquins came to barter their furs and peltries. Here also came a Franciscan or Jesuit Father from Quebec who, for the two or three months that the 40 DOOM OF THE TRADING POST fur market was open, instructed the Indians, perfected their knowledge of the Algonquin dialects and cultivated the friendship of many of the savages from northern regions. When the market was sold out, the traders sailed for France or went on to Quebec. The Montagnais returned to their hunting lands accompanied often by the missionaiy, and Tadousac was abandoned to its rocks and solitude. In the Relation for 1652, we read: "Tadousac is deserted except at- the time of the arrival of the ships. Then a mission is given to the wandering barbarians who as^ semble there from various parts, from a dis- tance of three hundred miles and more, and are instructed for two or three months." In 1661, Iroquois warriors entered Tadousac and, after slaughtering the inhabitants who failed to escape, including three French fisher- men, burned the post, the Church and the warehouse. The Indians of the surrounding lands, fleeing from the wrath of the Iroquois, fled for refuge to their kinsmen the Papin- achois, and not until the return of Father Druillettes, in 1663, did they venture to come back. In 1702, the Superior General of the missions of New France, unable to spare a priest for Tadousac, closed the Saguenay mission. It was re-opened in the month of June, 1720, by CROSS-BEARERS OE THE SAGUENAY 41 Father Laure and from that time until now Tadousac has always had the ministrations of a priest. In his Relation, written in 1720, Father Laure says: "There was never in Tad- ousac more than one French house and a few lodges of savages who came here to exchange their furs." Again writing in 1733 he tells us: "At the mouth of the river is the chief trading place or capital of the Province of Saguenay. This is Tadousac, consisting of one wooden house and a store. It must be admitted that the situation is very fine and well suited for a place to build a city. The post is attractive and healthy. It was at one time a thriving mission where as many as three thousand Indians assembled to trade and to whom three Jesuit Fathers ministered. ' ' In this interest- ing letter he dwells on the beauty of Tadousac in summer time, "its thousand diminutive trees and wild flowers," the cooling breezes, the canoes and ships passing up and down the St. Lawrence and the Saguenay. He regrets that there were only twenty-five Mont- agnais families living there, and mourns over the destruction by fire of the Chapel of the Holy Cross. In 1670 Tadousac was consumed by a forest fire which for three days ravaged the Saguenay lands. This fire destroyed the 42 DOOM OF THB TRADING POST only house and store in the place, the Indian chapel and the small building where the missionary Fathers slept and took their meals during the late spring and early summer while the savages were trafficking with the traders. , When Father Charlevoix, the historian and traveller, visited Tadousac in 1721, he saw "no house, nor habitation nor sign of life," and when the botanist, Andre Michaux, entered the~ harbour, in 1803, on his way to Lake Mistassini, there was only a solitary shelter — a Montagnais "wind-break" in the deserted post. If the bodies of all who died of fever, small- pox and other diseases in the historic place since Cartier's landing in 1535, could be re- materialised, reconstructed and built into "a pyramid, the base of the pyramid would be as broad, and bulk as large as the foundation of Cape Trinity and its apex would reacli as high as that of Cape Eternity. When, in 1657, Father Albanel was leaving Tadousac to winter with the moose hunters, east of Lake Kenogami, he mourned that of twelve hundred savages who camped around the mouth of the Saguenay in the spring of 1655, eleven hundred perished of a loathsome con- tagious disease. The Relation for 1670 records that "Father CROSS-BKARERS OF THE SAGUBNAY 43 Albanel spent most of the past winter among the dead and dying in Tadousac and its neighbourhood. During this terrible winter two hundred and fifty Christian Indians died from small-pox in ten weeks." In the history of Tadousac two facts challenge our attention and respect. It was for nearly two centuries the place of trade to which converged almost every summer fur- laden representatives of the wild tribes of Papinachois, Montagnais, Misstassini, Outa- bitibec, Esquimaux, Ktchemins, Gaspians, Algonquins and smaller bodies from the Seven Islands and inland forests north of the St. Lawrence River. But the fame and name of the fascinating village is forever embedded in our Canadian annals by reason of its. intimate association with the early missions. When we enter the period embracing the heroic lives and illustrious names of the great Franciscans and Jesuits who, departing from Tadousac, devoted themselves to civilizing and Christianizing the wandering hordes of the uncharted regions of northern wastes, we enter again the "Cycle of Roman Martyrs." The splendid self-sacrifice, devotion, and immolation of these saintly men invest this village with properties of consecration. Their sanctity and heroism dignify and ennoble the annals of the sacred ground. Henceforth 44 DOOM (OF THE TRADING POST "its history," writes Arthur Buies in his delightful monograph Le Saguenay et la Basin du Lac Saint- Jean, "is hardly any other than that of the missions which were held here from 1640 to 1782 by the Jesuit Fathers and after 1782 by secular priests." Beginning with 1615, when the Franciscan and RecoUet Fathers assumed charge of the Tadousac mission, the very stones speak to us of God, of immortality, of Redemption — of all that enlarges the horizon of the soul even to the infinite. The study of the lives of the early missionaries show in high relief to the man of plastic imagination — the sanct- ity of a Dolbeau, the heroism of a Le Jeune and the religious intrepidity of a Dequen, a Dablon and an Albanel, heroes and saints who, for love of perishing souls, for God and France, dared the wilderness and challenged the spectres of cold, starvation and death. On treading its consecrated soil the annals of its past inspire the mind with a laudable desire to trace anew the footsteps of these saintly men and to salute its mountains, unconscious witnesses of their courage and holiness. The venerable Indian Chapel and the very stones of the place are sanctified by the footprints of apostles and martyrs who here nourished the plant of Christian civiliza- tion. They are all mementoes, not alone of CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 45 a sacred antiquity, but of the inspired efforts of great souls to energise and realize the sub- lime hope of our Divine Lord "that we all may be one." Where stood the primitive bark chapel raised in 1648, by the Montagnais neophytes of Father Dequeh, there arises to-day an attractive stone temple built by the gener- ■ osity of another race. The first white priest and his Indian converts have been in their graves for almost three hundred years, but, on the consecrated altar of the white man's church, there is offered to-day the same un- changeable Sacrifice in the same unchange- able language that the great priest offered to the same adorable God centtiries ago. Be- tween this Church and Father Coquart's Montagnais Chapel of 1747 is the humble grave-yard sown with unpretentious monu- ments to the memory of the dead whose bodies are here returning to their primitive elements. In this consecrated plot of ground no man may separate the dust of Algonquin men and ;ivomen from that of the Bretons, Normans and Canadians whose remains are here interred. Here,- among Indians and whites, they should have buried the body of Pere Labrosse and, over all, raised a monument of Xaurentian granite. And into this monument should be chiselled these words from the Kpistle of 46 DOOM OF the; TRADING POST St. Paul to the Romans: "The sufferings of this world are not to be compared with the glory to come that shall be revealed to us." (Rom. VIII, 15). CHAPTER V. The Coming of the Franciscans. "In 1624, five RecoUet missions had been established at Tadousac, Quebec, and Three Rivers; at Carhagouha, in the Huron country, and among the Nipissings. There was an- other, in Acadia, on St. John River (New Brunswick)."* Before we enter upon the narrative re- cording the labours and sacrifices of the Franciscans on the Montagnais missions, we ought to know something of the reasons which moved Champlain to petition for them, and the intricate process through which the pet- ition passed and was finally granted. After Champlain had given to the land and the few houses he had built upon it the name Quebec, he was moved by his strong Catholic instincts and faith to procure priests for his colony and missionaries for the Cana- dian tribes. " Having noticed in my previous voyages," writes Champlain, " that the people whom I visited are without any knowledge of God or religion, having neither faith nor laws * Jesuit Relations, Vol. IV., p. 259. The RecoUet Fathers were Franciscans, members of what was called "The Rule of strict observance." 47 48 COMING OF THE FRANCISCANS to govern them, but living like brute beasts, I am of the opinion that it would be for me a grave fault if I did not endeavour to employ some means by which they could come to the knowledge of the true God. For this reason I am determined on my return to seek, for some good religious priests who are filled with zeal and have at heart the glory of God." In 1614 he appealed to the Franciscan Fathers of the Province of Saint-Denis, France, to accept the honour of sending priests of their Order to evangelize the savages of New France and minister to the settlers in and around Quebec. While the Franciscans cheerfully acceded to his request, they in- formed him that before they could commit themselves to the laudable enterprise, certain formalities had to be complied with and per- missions obtained from the ecclesiastical and civil authorities. Fortunately the Council, known as the States General, was then in session at Paris, and among the members were the Cardinals, Archbishops andBishops of the RoyalDomain. The Prelates, when Champlain's petition was presented to them, readily granted his re- quest and offered to contribute to the expense of the mission. The Minister General of the Franciscans now appealed to His Holiness, Pope Paul V., CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 49 for his approval. He was supported in his address to the pontiff by the King of France, who wrote to his HoHness that he would be much pleased to have the Franciscans sail for Canada and assume the responsibility of establishing religion in the new country "to make known to the savages the doctrines of the Catholic Church, and to administer baptism and the other sacraments.* By a brief dated May 26th, 1615, Paul V. granted permission to the Franciscans to leave for Canada, attaching to the authoriza- tion a codicil specifying their privileges and the limitations of their authority on the Canadian mission. The four members of the Saint Denys' House of the Franciscans who volunteered for foreign service after finishing a spiritual retreat of seven days, bade good-bye to their relatives, brethren and friends, and entered, bare-footed, on the road to Honfleur, from which port they sailed April 24th, 1615, for Canada. While they are experiencing a rough time on a tempestuous sea, let us learn something about them. The Superior of the heroic little band, Denys Jamet, was a man of undaunted cour- age, virtue, and zeal. At the time he volun- teered for the mission to which he was now * Les Franciscans et le Canada, Vol. I. 50 COMING OF THE FRANCISCANS sailing, he held the Presidency of the Mon- astery of Montargis, an office he willingly surrendered to obey what he believed to be a call from God. His companion, Joseph Le Caron, before taking the Vows of St. Francis, in 1610, had been for years a diocesan priest and Preceptor to the Duke of Orleans. When he expressed a wish to be chosen for the Canadian mission he was well-informed on the severity of the climate, the immensity of the forests and the degradation of the Indians. Jean Dolbeau was only a few years ordained to the priesthood, was burning with apostolic zeal and inflamed with an ardent charity. He was destined to be the first to experience the trials and hardships of a winter with the savages. Pacifique Duplessis had been a druggist for some years before he asked to be admitted to the Order as a lay-brother. He was a faithful and useful man, of great piety and zeal, but unfortunately he died and was buried at Quebec three years after coming to the country. On May 25th, 1615, their ship anchored in the harbour of Tadousac, where the Francis- cans landed and rested for a few days. The land offered them no hospitable welcome. A desolation of sand dunes, innumerable CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 51 storm-washed boulders, an endless forest shrouded in darkness and tenanted with wild beasts, and menacing mountains bristling with dwarfed pines and birches invited them to prolonged suffering and friendly graves. If they recoiled with sadness from the forbidding face of their adopted country, it was but a momentary manifestation of human weakness. Falling on their knees they invoked the protection of the Guardian Angels of the land and sang a Te Deum of praise and thanksgiving to God, Who had made choice of them for the arduous work of the Canadian mission. These devoted men were the pion- eers of the Cross in New France. Champlain, who had crossed the Atlantic with the Fran- ciscans, accompanied them on their way to Quebec, where they arrived on June 2nd. Encouraged by Champlain, the Fathers began and in three weeks completed, the Church of the Immaculate Conception, the first sacred struc- ture erected in Canada. On June 25th, in the presence of Champlain and his sailors. Father Dolbeau with solemn rites offered up the Holy Sacrifice — the first Mass celebrated in the city of Quebec* *The first Mass said in New France^if Cartier had no priest on board his ship on his first or second voyage — was, according to Champlain, offered up at Riviere des Prairies, Montreal, June 24, 1615. See annotations of Laverdiere (1615, p. 16, note 1 ; also Vol. Souv. of Pere Odoric M. Jouve, p. 46). Champlain, Pont-Grave, a few French sailors and Indians assisted at the Mass celebrated by the Franciscan friar Jaenet. 52 COMING OF THE FRANCISCANS From 1615, when the Franciscans landed in Canada, till the year 1629, when Quebec. sur- rendered to the English, they were the pion- eers of the faith in the country. In 1615, Le Caron left Quebec to evangelize the Hurons of the Georgian Bay regions. Jamet alternated between Quebec and Three Rivers, ministering to the French at these posts, while good brother Pacifique attended to the temporalities of their little home at Quebec, instructed the Indian children, and baptized dying infants. Father Dolbeau, after a brief stay at Quebec, sailed for Tadousac, where he opened the first mission to the Algonquins. chapte:r VI. With thb Savages. DOLBEAU. On|December 2nd, 1615, Father Dolbeau sailed for Tadousac and in the depth of winter entered at once on his mission to the Mon- tagnais. Never did apostoHc man face a more trying experience or enter upon a more severe apprenticeship. UnfamiHar with the Montagnais dialects, which presented almost unsurmountable difficulties of con- struction and pronunciation, unseasoned to the severity and hardships of a Canadian winter and untrained to the use of the snow- shoe, the heroic missionary almost succumbed to starvation and the horrors of tribal encamp- ments. While Le Caron was entombed in Huron forests, one thousand miles to the west and Champlain was exploring the upper Ottawa and Georgian Bay regions, Father Dolbeau, in company with a band of Bersiam- ites, snow-shoed the territory north-east of the Saguenay, instructing as best he could the wandering families he encountered. Compelled at times to live in a filthy shack, in which were crowded promiscuously 53 54 WITH THE SAVAGES together savage men, women and children crawling with vermin ; to sleep in brush cabins where the smoke was suJBfocating; to drag his sleigh on snow shoes through the darkling woods and, when game was scarce, to eat only once in two or three days, the heroic priest endured a purgatory of suffering, pati- ently borne, unlike anything his French imagination had pictured. Unable to endure the hardship of travel over snow and ice and the abominations of a Montagnais lodge, his health broke down. Suffering the severe pains of smoke-blindness, he was brought back to Tadousac. From Tadousac he sailed for Quebec, where he remained till he recovered his sight and health. Undaunted by his terrible experience, the brave Franciscan, on the opening of spring, again left for the Montagnais country, visiting the camps of the Papinachois, the Bersiam- ites and outlying bands of the Labrador Esquimaux. La Potherie records that many years after the death of this exemplary priest, traces of his travels and many of the salutary effects of his instructions remained with the Gulf savages.* LE CARON. The saintly Dolbeau was succeeded at *Histoire de VAmerique : M. de Bacqueville de la Potherie, Vol. II. p. 173. CROSS-BEARERS OE THE SAGUENAY 55 Tadousac in 1618 by the Huron missionary Father Joseph Le Caron, the friend of Champ- lain and one of the most sympathetic and admirable personalities among the many Fran- ciscan Fathers who, from 1615 to 1629, followed the tribes through the Canadian wilderness. Undeterred by the advice of Champlain, this remarkable priest accomp- anied a number of Huron Indians who were returning from Three Rivers to their hunting grounds on the Georgian Bay. Arriving at Caragouha in the Georgian Bay region, half- starved and exhausted from the hardships of the voyage, he began at once to study the Huron language. After acquiring a partial familiarity with the Huron gutturals, he tried to instruct the savages in the essential truths of religion and to teach the children how to pray and to sing. He was the first apostle of the Hurons and, except Etienne Brule, the first white man who ever penetrated the Huron forests. On August 12th, 1615, he celebrated at Caragouha the first Mass ever offered up in Canada west of Mon- treal. He remained with the Hurons nine months, when he was called, or went of his own volition, to France on business connected with the Canadian missions. Returning in 1617, he passed the winter 1618-19 with the Mon- tagnais at Tadousac. Here he devoted him- 56 WITH THE SAVAGES self heart and soul to the training of the Indians. He dwelt upon the disorders which prevailed among them, taught them how to make the sign of the Cross, how to say the beads, the ordinary prayers and the ten com- mandments, and imparted to them general ideas of the Christian religion. He opened a school where he taught the children the rudiments of education and how to sing the Canticles and Chants of the Church. In time he acquired a thorough knowledge of the Montagnais language, which enabled him to extend the sphere of his labours and to write a Montagnais grammer and vocabulary.. Never was there a more tender-hearted and lovable priest than this humble and gentle friar. He was dowered with a peculiar and exquisite sweetness of nature which seems to have enchanted everyone with whom he came in contact. To him and his companions on the missions, Canada and the Church owe a deep debt of gratitude. RETURN OP THK FRANCISCANS TO FRANCE. In 1629, after the surrender of Quebec, the Franciscan fathers returned to France. They were the first to break the path and open a way through the forests of Quebec and Ontario. The Franciscans were never wanting in the CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 57 hour of trial; they were eminently men of practical minds — of action and business, of letters and science. Their education and traini;ng had taught them the knowledge of themselves, called by, St. Francis " a mysteri- ous and excellent study," and their travels and association with civilized and savage men taught them the knowledge of their fellow- men. The Franciscans were not only the first missionaries to Canada, but they were the first teachers and the first to open schools in our Dominion. The school which they open- ed in their monastery of Our Lady of the Angels at Quebec was the beginning of all the schools in Canada. They also compiled grammars and dictionaries of the Montagnais, Algonquin and Huron languages. "In presence of the heroism and indomit- able faith of these first missionaries," writes Dr. Anderson in his History of the Anglican Church in the Colonies, "we would prove false to history and to truth if we allowed a narrow- minded spirit to influence us in withholding the homage of our respect and admiration." When in the month of October, 1916, Quebec and its citizens dedicated the splendid monu- ment they raised on the Place-d'Armes to perpetuate and honor the memories and names of Denys Jamet, Jean Dolbeau, Joseph Le 58 WITH THE SAVAGES Caron and Pacifique Duplessis, spiritual sons of St. Francis d'Assisi, they won the applause of all who admire courage, faith, sincerity, and divine zeal. BOOK II. THE MONTAGNAIS CHAPTER VII. Thb Algonquins. Before we begin to study the habits, man- ners and customs of the particular tribes and sub-tribes, with whom the missionary Fathers from Tadousac were brought into intimate contact, it is expedient to know something of the parent tree of which these tribes were the offshoots and branches. The Algonquin family covered, at one period in its history, a larger territory than any other aboriginal people with whom our American ethnologists deal. WHENCE came; they ? Back into the dark night of the ages the densest obscurity conceals all that we know or can know of the Algonquin Indians. "They were here before the time of Cartier." Under these words is hidden a measureless eternity; The mountains, tree- wrapped, desolate and storm-swept, were here before Egypt was or Methuselah born, but when did the red man first scale them, when came he here and why? Is he of a race older than our own, whose 61 62 THE ALGONQUINS forebears escaped the Deluge or whose land the destroying waters left untouched? Who are these men of an indigenous race, who waste away while we grow strong, who retire when we move forward, who die where we survive, and become poor as we prosper and grow rich? A people who have no literature, who leave no monuments, who have no national or tribal memories of the past, are a people who have no history. "Our Indians," wrote the great Archbishop Tache of St. Boniface, in 1868, "have no chronicles, no annals, no written monuments, no records of any kind whatso- ever." That this statement, alluding to the past of the tribes of the Northwest, applies to savages wherever found, we learn from the writings of travellers and explorers of every age. " I could find no monuments or marks of antiquity among these Indians (of Guiana) " writes thfe naturalist Waterton, in his "Wan- derings in South America," "I have seen nothing amongst them which tells me that they existed here for a century; though for aught I know to. the contrary they may have been here before the Redemption. Were I, by any chance, to meet the son of the father who moulders here, he could tell me that his father was famous for slaying tigers and ser- pents and caymen, and noted in the chase CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 63 of the tapir and wild boar, but that he re- members little or nothing of his grandfather." Similarly, for us the Algonquins, before Champlain's coming and the time of the mission- ary fathers, were as if they were non-existent. Indeed, from the fragmentary information in our possession, we only know that all the great tribal families of America have had, like the nations of Asia and Europe, their days of prosperity and failure. Some divi- sions of tiie aboriginal race had, before their descent to savagery, produced from within themselves chroniclers of their past history. Such are the Aztecs of Mexico and the Mayas of Yucatan and Chiapas. Nearly aU the tribal nations inhabiting America before its discovery have disappeared, leaving no documentary or monumental re- cords. Their deeds and their past have no historians. Their achievements and their lives are but legends like unto those which the Chinese include in their Annals, but which they expressly designate as "Parts outside of History." The pre-Columbian history of the American Indian is embraced in the enigmatical words " Pre-historic America." The history of the tribes o the Canadian Wilderness before the dawning of the six- teenth century is a blank, and the great events and deeds in their lives are buried beyond the hope of a resurrection. 64 THE ALGONQUINS CLASSIFICATION AND DIVISION. When in 1647 Father Dequen canoed the Saguenay on his way to Lake St. John, the Algonquin family by geographic classification fell into four tribal divisions. , These were : 1. Eastern Division, embracing all the Algonquin tribes living along the Atlantic Coast. 2. Central Division, including, tribes and tribal family groups hunting in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin. 3. Northern Division, extending from the extreme northwest of the Algonquin area to the far west, and claiming as their hunting reserves both banks of the Ottawa, all lands north of the Great Lakes and regions on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. 4. Northeastern Division, embracing the tribes roaming through the forests of eastern Maine, the Maritime Provinces and all the eastern and northeastern lands of Quebec Province. In this article we are concerned only with that group of the fourth division which includes the Montagnais, Bersiamite, Nas- capee, Mistassini, Papinachois, the Atti- kamigues or White Fish, and groups of fami- CROSS-BKARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 65 . lies and sub-tribes, affiliated with or federated with the stronger and more numferous bodies. These tribes, known to the French as Les Algonquins Inferieurs, to distinguish them from the western tribes of the Great Lakes, are the only members of the national body which interest us at present, and with which we will deal in this review. But, before doing so, we may remark incidentally that the history of the Algonquins embraces the names of some great men. Among them is King Philip, who threatened the expansion of the Puritan colony; Pontiac, who laid siege to Detroit and whom Parkman honoured with a biography; Black Hawk and Francis, the Prophet; and Tecumseh, the celebrated Shawnee warrior and orator, whom John D. Hunter, who was present when Tecumseh addressed the Osage warriors, admitted was the greatest orator he had ever heard. As a rule, it is impossible to discriminate accurately between tribes, family groups and sub-tribes, for, in the regions north and north- east of Tadousac, the Indians were often grouped into small communities, each band taking its name from a river, stream, lake or hill. There are now no living representatives of some of the smaller bodies mentioned in the Jesuit Relations. All the members of the 66 THE AI.GONQUINS Algonquin family, living in the time of Father Le Jeune in what is now the Province of Quebec, were retrograding through being too long confined within narrow limits and through intermarriage among themselves. From a state of arrested development they began slowly to decay and the records of all the races of ancient and modern times show that when a people begin to experience the effects of decay the end is not, ethnologically, far off. As the early explorations of the Jesuit missionaries advanced north and east of the Saguenay River the Algonquin tribes of these desolate regions were the first to feel the effect of contact with a superior race. These tribes were nomadic and lived by fishing and hunting. From the time of Champlain's defeat of the Onondagas in 1609, the hostility of the Iroquois to the Algonquins became deadly in its malignity. The formation of the Iro- quois confederacy, early in the seventeenth century, had assumed such strength and proportions that in 1648 the Algonquins renewed their appeal to the French for pro- tection. While the great central fact of our early history was the unalterable loyalty of the Iroquois to the English, the French could never be sure of the unshaken friendship CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 67 of the Algonquins. They^ were dispersed over an immense territory and unable to unite ; they lacked cohesiveness and the power to concentrate. They were disorganised and undisciplined, and, while their relations with the French were always friendly, one or two of the tribes, for example, the Fox tribe, were not to be trusted. For intelligence, courage and physical en- durance, the Algonquins were not surpassed by the Hurons or Iroquois, but, unable to organize, they failed to use the power ' and influence which belong to organised bodies. The alliances between themselves were with- out permanent cohesion. Fven- against the Iroquois — their ruthless and common enemy — they were incapable of combination. CHAPTER VIII. Thb Montagnais. The group of linguistically and closely related Algonquin tribes of the territory now included in the Province of Quebec was called by the early French, Montagnais — High- landers or Mountaineers — from the hilly char- acter of the country they inhabited. Although Dr. James Mooney, of the Bureau of American Ethnology, has from his great Indian lore and research, given us the; names of the Montagnais tribes, it is impossible to make a complete classification, for the dia- lects of many of the tribes and sub-tribes perished with them. The information that has come down to us is not full enough to furnish us with sufficient data to' make re- liable history. The sources of information are so remote as to be indistinct and to leave us in doubt whether certain bodies were con- federacies, tribes, families, or bands. From the Relations of Fathers Dequen, Albenal, Le Jeune and Crdpieul, we cannot always distinguish with unerring accuracy between settlements of one tribe and bands of another. It was always difficult to discriminate between tribes, bands and villages of the Mistassini 69 70 THE MONTAGNAIS and Lake St. John regions. They were continually shifting their habitats and were grouped only temporarily in communities and villages, and this makes a geographic classi- fication extremely difficult. Even the dia- lects of some of the tribes are known only by a few words found in the letters and manu- scripts of the Jesuit missionaries and early explorers. Some of the sub-tribes have en- tirely perished and have left no traditions. THEIR HUNTING GROUNDS. We have no reliable information on the boundaries of the lands over which the nine Montagnais tribes hunted and fished. From the mouth of the Saguenay to Lake St. John they claimed the regions on both sides of the river, including the present counties of Charle- voix and Chicoutimi. Their hunting grounds also covered a territory east and west of the Peribonka River, and the forests around the Ashuapmuichan, Mistassini and Mistassibi rivers. They also laid claim to all lands of Lake St. John county as far as the height of land line running from File Axe Lake to Lake Albanel and eastward to Manuan Lake. They roamed all over the northern watershed of the St. Lawrence, east of Tadousac, till they touched the territory of the Nascapees, CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 71 who, on the north-east, came in immediate contact with the Esquimaux of Labrador. In Father Laure's wonderful map, drawn in 1731, the Montagnais hunting-grounds covered all the territory from Lake Nekouba on the west to the shore of Lake St. Barnaba, and from the River St. Lawrence to Lake Mistassini. It was a region covered with forests, inountains, lakes, rivers, swamps and swales. Writing of the awful desolation of wilderness, as it was in 1641, Father Lalemant says, "Father Gabriel (Druilettes) went with the Montagnais, eighty or a hundred leagues from Quebec, into the land of shades, so to speak; that is to say, amid frightful mountains and forests, where the sun never looks upon the earth except by stealth." THE MONTAGNAIS TO-DAY. To-day the Montagnais roam over the southern watershed of Quebec Province as far as the southern parts of the Labrador Peninsula. They number about 3,000 and are regularly visited by the Oblate Fathers, who, in 1843, succeeded the Jesuits. Lew Wallace, in his Long Labrador Trail, says of those he met at Lake Michikamauin : "They are all under the influence of the Roman Catholic Church and are most devout in the observance of their religious obligations." 72 THE MONTAGNAIS To the north, between Bastmain River and Petite Kapan Lake, the territory belongs to the Nascapees, a Montagnais buffer tribe, which, for four centuries, has been inter- mittently at war with the Esquimaux of Labrador and the Ungava Bay country. While the early Jesuit missionaries occasion- ally got in touch with them, it was not until 1856 that permanent missions were opened among them by Fathers Babel and Arnauld. These Oblate missionaries established missions at Nekupan and Petetskupan on the North West River, and at the Hamilton Inlet and Seven Islands opposite Anticosti. Father Lemoine, who for many years lived with the Nascapees, published, in 1910, his Dictionnaire Francais- Montagnais, including a grammar of the language. ANIMAL LiP^e. Innumerable animals roamed over and filled this vast wilderness, among which which were the lynx and the fox, beaver, otter, porcupine, groundhog, squirrel, wolf, muskrat, bear, raccoon, moose, marten, rabbit, skunk, flying-squirrel, mink, weasel, mole, and field-mouse. There were snakes, lizards and frogs of many species and varieties. Add to these a countless number of birds. GROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 73 such as swans, brant and wild geese, cranes, teal, divers of many kinds, ernes, bitterns, herons, woodcocks, sandpipers, plovers, snipe, partridges, wild pigeons, starlings, eagles, turkeys, swallows, martins, ravens, crows, woodpeckers, hawks, and other birds of prey; quails, blackbirds, and ducks of at least twenty varieties, and an infinite number of smaller birds, which with almost all bird life, winged for the south every autumn, and returned as summer was coming to the land. The rivers and lakes teemed with fish, so that everywhere, — in the air, on the land, and in the water, there was superabundant life. CHAPTER IX. Tim MONTAGNAIS TrIBE. When, in 1647, Father Dequen stood — first of white men — on the shore of Lake St. John, the Montagnais lived in brush or bark cabins of primit ve construction. In summer the young boys and girls went entirely naked, the men wore only the hrayer or breech-cloth, but the women were, as a rule, decently dressed. In winter they all clothed them- selves with the furs of animals and wore shoes or moccasins of untanned leather. They were expert snowshoers, canoe and bowmen, sus- tained ,fatigue and hardship with Spartan stoicism, and knew intimately the habits and haunts of birds and animals. Speculation, theories, examination of early documents and investigation into all known sources of information fail to inform us when the Montagnais first entered into possession of their territory, whence they came, and from whom they inherited their language. We know nothing of their past; of their origin we have not even a tradition or a legend. All that we know of them we have learned from the letters of the French missionary priests who consorted with them in their 75 76 THB MONTAGNAIS TRIBE degradation, conformed to their ways of liv- ing, wintered with them, accompanied them in their wanderings, and endured the horrors of savagery that they might Hft them to a plane not merely of civilization, but of Chris- tian decency and morality. Contact with them in more recent times has taught us nothing. Their past is impene- trable to the eye of historic research, for the origin of the Montagnais, like that of the Mayas of Yucatan, is veiled by the mists of a very remote past. Among them there was no social organiza- tion or system of government. The chiefs and elders of the Montagnais assembled in the open, or in a large lodge, and talked over the matters affecting the interests and welfare of the people. Their decisions, however, compelled no obedience, for every man deemed himself free and independent, and did that which he considered best for himself. Each man's liberty was absolute and inviolable. A Montagnais realised Rousseau's conception of a perfect and "ideal man." He was un- tainted by civilization, did what he liked, was moved only by natural impulses, and if, accord- ing to the French deist: "I'homme qui reflechit est un animal deprave" — " The man who medi- tates is a depraved animal," then^ if the Mon- tagnais was not a free and independent man, CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 77 there was no absolute freedom or indepen- dence upon the earth. There were, however, tribal laws and conditions with which, for his own safety, he considered it wise to conform. Among the Montagnais,' murder, ingratitude, cowardice, and stealing from a tribal compan- ion were crimes punishable by death, by severe penalties, or by humilation. They knew nothing of morals and their acts and conduct were not regulated by any law higher than that of self or tribal preservation. When a member committed murder, he was punished, not by the tribe, but by the rela- tions of the murdered man, who demanded "blood for blood" without trial or conviction. Ingratitude of a serious nature was sometimes punishable with death. When a prisoner of a tribe with whom the Montagnais was at war was captured in battle and adopted by a family of the village, he was treated as a member of the tribe. If he escaped and was recaptured, he was burned at the stake. At times they executed cowards, for coward- ice was a blot upon the scutcheon of the whole" tribe. The coward was put to death, pro- bably as an example to the boys ripening into warrior manhood. When, in 1643 the Bersiamites returned from a victorious campaign against the enemy, Btinechkwat, one of their number, acted. 78 THB MONTAGNAIS TRIBE while the fight was on, a coward's part. When the warriors returned to their own people they were greeted by old men, women, and maidens with great rejoicings. Etinech- kwat quietly withdrew from the ceremonies of the camp, and, in sullen silence, sat down on a fallen tree near the river. Then, and apparently without design, the young girls and children danced and romped towards the river and came to the place where the young man was seated. Then Pieskaret, chief of the Bersiamites, walked carelessly through the dancing group and, standing before Etinechkwat, said to him : "By your cowardice in front of our enemies, you have disgraced us. You must die." The festivities instantly stopped, and the warriors and boys of the camp gathered around victim and executioner. An ominous silence fell, like a shroud upon all. Etinech- kwat, without a word of explanation, or pro- test, rose to his feet, bared his breast, and the war chief struck. The body was carried outside the camp and buried. The cere- monies recommenced, and all but the dis- graced father and brother of the dead man passed the night in feasts and dances. Cowardice and treachery were regarded by all the Montagnais tribes and clans as damning and unforgivable capital offences. OROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 79 The Naskopees were for many years inter- mittently at war with the Esquimaux of Lake Mackimau. In their skirmishes with the enemy "surprises" frequently happened. To understand a surprise or Chestwak, a word of explanation is necessary. From childhood the Montagnais boy learned to imitate the calls and cries of birds and animals. A hostile band of Montagnais or Esquimaux would, with extraordinary courage and se- crecy, draw near to the camp or village of the enemy, when an expert caller of the party would imitate the gobbling of the wild turkey in the spring, the clucking of the wood-hen in the summer when her young are feeding, the howling of the wolf, the bark of the fox or, indeed, the call or try of any animal. Hear- ing the call or cry, the young men of the camp would snatch up their bows and arrows, rush into the woods, and be ambushed by the enemy. In the month of April, 1671, three youiig men of the Naskapees were lured into the woods by the gobbling of a turkey- cock. Two of theni were killed and their scalps lifted; the third fled without fir- ing an arrow or striking a blow. During the race for camp his shouts aroused the warriors, who rushed out in pursuit of the Esquimaux, following them for hours, but 80 THE MONTAGNAIS TRIBE failing to overtake them. On their way home, however, they encountered a number of Esquimaux hunters, whom they killed and scalped. That afternoon, when the returned warriors sat smoking with the elders of the village, Pentagouret, the one who ran away, came to join them under the spreading shade of a friendly elm. When he sat down, the others, without a word, rose and went off in a body. The young orphan girl whom he loved and who loved him tenderly in return, refused to speak to him. That night he left the camp and his tribe and disappeared forever. a. o CHAPTER X. Tent Life of the Montagnais. When Father Dequen, in 1647, came to the beach of Lake St. John and looked out upon its pleasant waters, a numerous band of the Porcupine tribe lived in a village on land opposite Peribonka Point. The habits, traits of character, customs, morals and manners of the Porcupines or Piougami with whom the Jesuit missionary came into im- mediate contact were those of all their Algonquin kinsmen in their primitive state from Tadousac sCnd Kenogami to Lake Mis- tassini. The Montagnais of that time cabin- ed in wretched huts and were grouped to- gether in scattered villages and temporary- camps. These miserable squattings were never permanent, for when conditions became unfavourable, or a contagious disease threat- ened the lives of the community, they burned their shacks and moved to another site. Their cabins, being merely shelters of bark in winter and cedar branches in summer, were raised in a few hours. SOCIAL LIFE. ■ In winter these bark huts were heated by a ground fire, the smoke of which escaped by 81 82 TENT LIFE OF THE MONTAGNAIS an opening in the roof. At times, when the air outside was piercingly cold and the winds unfavourable, the smoke in the lodge became so suffocating and dense that the women and children were compelled to lie low,. breathing as best they could with their faces to the earth. Within these wretched cabins there were no separate rooms or even skin divisions, no beds, no seats, no conveniences of any kind save filthy mats and the skins of animals captured in the chase. They knew nothing of bread, salt, pepper, condiments or relishes of any kind. Their half wild and mongrel dogs were tormented with fleas, and their own hair and bodies were infested with lice. Their vermin in- fested hair was parted in the middle and drooped long over their shoulders and backs. Summer and winter they were at war with fleas and lice. "Why do you eat the lice you pick from your bodies and heads?" asked Father Le Jeune of a grizzled old warrior. " I eat them because they eat me." he answered. WOMEN AND CHILDREN. The care of the lodge, the dressiiig of skins, the cutting and gathering of firewood in a Porcupine encampment was the woman's work. She and her children gathered nuts CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 83 and wild berries in season, grubbed for worms and field mice and cooked the food. She fleshed and cleaned the hides, cut and fibre- sewed the moccasins, and made garments for her children. Knowing nothing of metal pot, or oven, she either dug a hole in the ground which she plastered and fired, boiled water in a birch-bark vessel, called orougan, or found a hollow stump or log which served her for a stove or fire-place. With stones heated in the fire she boiled the water in the hole or hollow block, and threw into it scraps of rabbit flesh, fish, fragments of bear meat, or deer flesh, and on this stew fed her husband and children. She also contributed her share in the ihaking of canoes and snowshoes. Four trees yielded their wood to the making of a canoe. There was birch for the sheeting, spruce for fibre- thread to sew the bark, white cedar for ribs and lining, and pine for pitch to fill seams and cracks. After the man had stripped and fashioned the bark, shaved the ribs and mould- ed the form, the woman sewed the bark and pine-pitched the seams. And so with the snowshoe. The frame was cut and fashioned by the man from the young birch tree and the' babiche — the lacing — made of caribou hide, was cut, crossed and fastened by the woman. When the men were on a long hunt or took 84 TENT LIFE OF THE MONTAGNAIS the war-path for an enemy's country, the women and children remained in their camps and villages. The squaws passed the time in gossip, making moccasins, weaving fish nets and preparing furs for winter clothing. The boys and girls fished in the streams, trapped birds, chased squirrels and amused themselves with various games. THB WARRIOR. The husband posed as a hunter and warrior, ~ and his warrior's dignity scorned to stoop to menial work. His days in camp or village were given to slothful ease, to gambling and gossiping with his neighbours, to hunting and fishing, and to attending feasts when he danced all night and devoured everything set before him. When the weather was very cold and the winds whistled round the camp, he sat on a bearskin by the fire fashioning bows and arrows, rat and rabbit sticks, diipping flint arrow tips, and making traps and nets. He made his own canoes and paddles, his own snowshoes, his weapons, offensive and de- fensive, his spear and war club, his scalping knife of flint or bone, his stone pipes and his amulets. Though counted "poor fighters" by the CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 85 Senecas, the Montagnais had all the fighting instincts and courage of the Algonquin. If killed in battle and his companions were unable to carry away his body, his scalp was torn from his head by the enemy, and his carcass left in the woods to be eaten by wolves. When the tribe was at peace with those outside its hunting grounds, 'the warrior who did no injury to others, who lived at peace with his companions, who gave and attended feasts and took a leading part in the dancing festivals and the tribal orgies, was always popular and stood well with his neighbours. The tribal orgies were generally boisterous carousals, when at times, men and women, young men and maidens abandon'ed themselves to nude dances and shameful impudicities. c CHAPTER XI. Superstitions and Myths op ths montagnais. The superstitions of the Montagnais were the same as those which influenced the lives of all eastern Algonquins. They believed in ghosts, in spirits or manitous dwelhng in the air, in the forest, rivers and lakes. They had recourse to drums, breathings, songs, eat-all-feasts, divination by fire, sweats, pyr- rhic dances, lodges for consulting spirits and innumerable methods for obtaining good luck on the hunt, securing the cure of disease, gaining the good will of their okis and finding out if any enemies were lurking in the forests. Curious or exceptional natural formations were altogether avoided or became objects of fear and dread to which propitiatory offerings were made. Often they deposited at the openings of deep and gloomy caves, by the side_of rushing cataracts, or at the trunks of tall and isolated trees their offerings of pieces of deer skin, or the body of a beaver, to obtain the goodwill of the spirits dwelling in and guarding the caves, cataracts and trees. The Mistassini paddlers warned Father Albanel not to look too long upon a distant 87 88 SUPERSTITIONS AND MYTHS island in the lake, lest the spirits dwelling on it should be angry. The Montagnais of Lake Papinjimoucani, a delightful sheet of water north-east of Lake St. John, told Father Laure that under its waters lived many spirits and that, when the waters were unsafe for a canoe, the spirits were quarrelling among themselves., The caves, huge boulders and rough lands on the northern shore of "Grand Mistasins" were said by the Mouatchich tribe to be haunt- ed by ghosts and evil spirits, who on dark nights swarmed upon the lake in spirit canoes. The cataracts of the upper Saguenay were haunted by Windigoes or demented spirits of great stature to whom the .Poi:c-Epic Indians made offerings of bear flesh. Among the Mistassini the spirit of a drown- ed member of the tribe was an object of pity, for he could not enter the Happy Hunting- Grounds, but was condemned to haunt the water in which he was drowned. When his body floated ashore it was wrapped in a moose hide, carried by canoe to a small island and given a tree, or scaffold burial. Ever after- wards when a hunting or fishing Indian ap- proached the island he deposited near the tree supporting the body of the drdv\^ned hunter some food or a few arrows as tokens of sjonpathy. 00 m CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 89 The Montagnais in order to placate the spirits celebrated feasts of the deer, moose, salmon, wild-goose, and an annual feast of the Great Bear. They also held at irregular intervals their war-dance, snake-dance, fire- dance, mask or false-face dance, bear-dance and dance for the dead. There is an interesting Montagnais myth woven around the false-face dance. After the world and its people and animals were made by Kitcheoub, he went away for a time. When he came back he walked through the great and small trees till he came to a place where there were no trees. While he was looking around he saw, coming from the east, an ugly long-haired fellow, wititi a red face and a big moutibi twisted to the left side. When he came near, Kitcheoub spoke and asked: "Where did you come from?" Now this man's name was Skaniiwak and his ugly face was like a mask, so he spoke and said : "I own this world and I was here before you." Then Kitcheoub said to him: "I made this place and all the world and I own everything." "May be you did make it, but I have been here always and I am stronger than you," said Skanjiwak. "I'd like you to show me that you're the stronger," said Kitcheoub. Then the man 90 SUPERSTITIONS AND MYTHS with the ugly face asked him to go with him to a place between two mountains. And when they came to the place the man with the false-face raised his voice and told one of mountains to rise up and come close to them, and it came. This astonished Kitcheoub, but not to be outdone by False-face he shouted to the other mountain to come on, and it came, and came so close that Kitcheoub and Skanjiwak could just squeeze out. Then Kitcheoub said to False-face, "If I were you I'd leave this country, for you are so ugly that when the children see you they'll run away and die of fear." The False-face said he would, on condition that from now on all the Montagnais would be his grand- children and that he was to be their grand- father. "I will do my best," he told Kit- cheoub, "to keep them from getting sick, and I will save them from great storms, for I'll command the winds that blow here to go high up in the sky and stay there." Now, Kitcheoub, looking him in the face, spoke to him : "I know you have power to help the Montagnais, so we, you and I, will make a bargain. The Montagnais will be your grand- children and you will be their grandfather. They will from this time make a dance in their villages forever. And they will call it the CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 91 False-face Dance.. So now and here, near the two mountains, we close this bargain, which will last as long as you and I and the Montagnais last." Skanjiwak then opened his mouth and said : "It is to be. Now you must know I will have some one to help me. My brother, who is all black and my cousin who is half black and half red, will help me to care for the Montagnais." Kitcheoub and Skanjiwak then separated. The one told the other : "I am going to the setting sun," and False-face said to him, "I go where the sun rises." Now, the place where they separated, one from the other, was where the trees grow tall and the winds never blow too strong, that is, near File Axe Lake. And this day among the pagan Montagnais it is the practice to paint one side of the face black and the other red and to twist the mouth to one side when asking Skanjiwak for some favour. LEGEND OF THE BEAR BOY. A long time, a very long time ago, a Mon- tagnais and his squaw went into a great forest to hunt bears and to trap foxes. They brought along with them their little boy, and when they came to where the big pines grew they made a wigwam of bark and branches. Now, when the squaw went to the river for 92 SUPERSTITIONS AND MYTHS water and her man was away hunting, a bear came and carried away their baby boy, and, when they shouted and searched they could not find their child. Six years later tJie man and his squaw were trapping and hunting in the same woods near title same place where their baby was lost. They had two dogs with them, one very fat and one very lean.^ The fat dog was fat, for the hunter was fond of it, and the lean dog was lean because the man half -starved him. But this half-starved dog had a good heart and the fat one had a bad heart. One morning the lean dog said to the fat dog : "If I were you I would tell Kon-went-ha, our master, where the cave of the bear is, for Kon-went-ha feeds you well, and he would like to find his little boy." Now the hunter in his wigwam heard the dogs talking outside and the next time he fed them the entrails of a deer he gave the lean dog two shares. This made the lean dog feel stronger and, to the surprise and anger of the fat dog, Kon-went-ha kept on feeding two shares to the lean dog. On the third day after he had heard the dogs talking to each other this man went away to hunt with the two dogs. When they came to a certain place the lean dog lay down and whined. And when Kon-went-ha called the lean dog away he would run back to the same spot and lie down and whine. CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 93 This made the man examine everything carefully. Soon he found a hole in the side of a hill and this hole was the entrance to a bear's den. Kon-went-ha poked a long pole into the hole and made a big noise. Then a she-bear came out and the man killed her, but the lean dog kept on whining for there were cubs in the cave. The man poked again and the cubs came out and they too were killed, but the dog still kept on whining. Kon-went-ha poked once more with the long stick. Then he heard someone in the cave saying, "Don't kill me, father, I'm your son." The man then called to him : " Put out your paw and show it to me." At once a little hand appeared all covered with hair. Kon- went-ha took hold of the little hand and pulled out a little boy who began to cry and to say, "Don't let the dogs bite me, don't let the dogs eat me." The child, who was hairy, walked on all four hands and feet and acted like a bear. Now before the she-bear left the cave she spoke to the little boy and said : "When your father sees that you are so hairy he will not like you, so teU him to gather berries, especially blackberries, and to pound them and soak titiem in water and then wash you in the water when all the hair will come oflf." This the father did and the hair came off, 94 SUPERSTITIONS AND MYTHS and the boy grew up to be a great warrior and hunter. Now because the bear was good to him and did not kill the boy his tribe pro- claimed a dance every year in honour of the bear. And this was the beginning of the bear dance, so long ago that our old men do not remember it. THE DANCE OE THE LiTTIvE MEN. Among the pagan tribes hunting in the forests of Labrador and the lands bordering it on the east, there is a superstitious fear of mysterious beings, which, like the lepre- chauns of Ireland, the goblins, gnomes and sprites of England, the jhinns of Asia and the jumbies of Africa, are occasionally seen and spoken to by hunters and travellers. They are strange-looking little creatures, some- times covered entirely with hair, and at other times and places dressed in fantastic raiments. These pigmies were called yag-odin-eny-oyaks by the Iroquois of the west, and yamas by the Quiche Indians of Yucatan. It would be interesting to trace the history of the origin of this mythical dwarf and the universality of the belief in him among all primitive peoples. These little men were called by the Montag- nais Owat-we-gats, and once a year the tribe gave a dance to retain their good will. It CROSS-BEARERS OE THE SAGUENAY 95 was the custom to kill the first bear of the season, and as the pigmies were fond of soup, pieces of bear meat were cut up, boiled with roots and vegetables and served at the feast which, was given before the dance. The dance of the Little Men consisted of a peculiar ceremony during the first part of which several songs were sung and dances entered into by the squaws. This dance of, the squaws took place in a darkened tent, and consisted of alternate shuffles forward and back to the sound of a drum. Meanwhile the men were indulging in their own songs and dances. Then at a given signal they rushed into the tent of the squaws and a carnival of lewd dances ensued. The dance lasted from an hour to two hours and was held in a large tent built for the purpose. ORIGIN OF the; toad. Told by Mistigoit, a Montagnais half-breed, from Carbonneau Lake Once there was an Indian and his wife and they had a baby, and there was also an old squaw who looked after the baby and stole it. Of course, in the olden times, the Indians used to put their babies on boards (Indian cradles) which were decorated with beads and nice cloth. The old people (the two old couples, the man's parents and the wife's parents) 96 SUPERSTITIONS AND MYTHS ' and the young married man went away and left this young woman all alone, and she lived there alone. 'Box a long time she waited, and one night when she was sitting by the fire feeling so sad and lonely, her son, whom the old squaw stole, came back. She told her son, "You were stolen from me when you were small." Of course her son did not know she was his mother. This baby had a little dog before he was stolen. She talked to her son and told him what to^ do. She said, "When you go back to the 'squaw who stole you, pretend that you are sick, and tell he:t; that you want the board that you were put on when you were small. She will give you one made of cedar, but you will say to her, " not that one, I want the one with the beads on." And the old squaw who stole him gives him the one with the beads on, and he said, "I am well now." He went back to his mother and she told him what to do again. "You will pretend you are sick again. She will ask you, 'Why are you sick ? ' and you will say, ' I want you to dance,' and she will. Tell her 'to lift her dress very high,' and you will see the spot where the dog bit her when she stole you away, and you will then believe she stole you and that I am your mother." The son did this. He went back to his mother again and she CROSS-BBARERS OF THE) SAGUKNAY 97 told him what to do again. "You go back again to the old woman who stole you, and you wiU go out hunting and kill one deer, and you will tie it very tightly to a tree so that she can't untie it. And while she is busy trying to untie the deer, you and I will ^o away and you will put an old strap beside the deer, which wiU answer her when she speaks to you. She will yell out, saying, 'Are you there yet, my son ? ' and the strap will answer, and you and I, before we leave, will kill two of her children, and we will put them at her door and will put their livers in their mouths, and when she returns to thfe camp she will be awful mad (enraged) when she sees her two children killed." This was so, and when the old witch returned she put a piece of buckskin on the fire and burnt it. The boy and his mother ran away and the old witch ran after them, and as she got very close to them, the boy had a bow and arrow, and the mother told him to put a mark on the ground, and the ground will split, and she (the witch) will lift up her dress to try and jump over, and she will fall in where the ground is o'pen. And it was so. The woman whose son was stolen said to the witch, "You will be called Toad forever. You are not allowed to live when you steal people. You will be called Toad forever." CHAPTER XII. The Montagnais Medicine-Man. The medicine-man was an important func- tionary among the Montagnais Indians, and aspired to the possession of extraordinary- power and knowledge. It is almost im- possible, however, from the information furnished us by the Jesuit missionaries, to draw a line separating the practice of medicine among them from their other superstitious practices and observances. Their priests were doctors, their doctors priests, and the two officials and offices were combined in the autmoin or medicine-man. Montagnais pathology was largely, if not wholly, mythical, and their therapeutics or methods of healing diseases consisted of natural remedies and incantations. They had a knowledge of some medicinal properties in certain plants, barks, and roots, and they understood the beneficial effects follow'ng emetics, purgatives, baths and poultices, but they did not apply their knowledge by any reasonable system of remedies. No rational system of medicine obtained among them, nor indeed, among any of the Algonquin or IJuron tribes. 99 100 THK MONTAGNAIS MEDICINE-MAN The Mohtagnais apparently recognized three kinds of disease. There was a sickness that came from the cravings of a spirit within the sick man for some special article, for an eat-aU-feast, for a war dance or a hunt. There was a disease following a spell cast upon a person by a sorcerer, or an enemy, or pro- duced by some small object, a lock of hair, an animal's claw, a human nail injected into the body of the patient while asleep and in which a wicked imp dwelt and tormented the sick man or woman. And there were diseases which were called natural and treated by natural remedies. When an individual of the tribe became ill, his relatives called in the medicine-man who determined the kind of sickness which afflicted him. If the medicine-man declared .the sick- ness to be natural he prescribed either poul- tices, eijietics, steam baths, applications of warm water, powdered roots or a particular herb. If no cure followed, the autmoin or medicine-man pronounced the sickness to be the result of an evil spirit dwelling in some small article which a sorcerer had hidden in the body, or part of the body of the sick man while he slept or was delirious. The autmoin now lays asjide his office as a doctor and assumes the character of a magi- cian, or priest. Dressed in fantastic trappings The Chi-Chi-Kooe Facing p. 100. CROSS-BEAHERS OF THE SAGUBNAY 101 or sometimes entirely naked, the autmoin enters the lodge of the sick man carrying with him his drum and his Chi-chi-kouS, or rattle, containing pebbles or knuckle-bones of the black bear. He begins by dancing and sing- ing. He boasts of his power to cure, of the strength and goodwill of his oki, or familiar spirit, he leaps in the air, twists his body, contorts his features and begins his incanta- tions, beating the drum and rattling his Chi- chi-kou6. He now bounds forward to the sick man, asks where he feels pain and, applying his mouth to the affected part, sucks out a feather, a bird's claw, a human nail or some small and weird thing which he has already hidden in his mouth. Rising, he shouts aloud, throws the thing into the fire, and commands the evil spirit never again to enter the patient. Father Dequen remarks that very often the sick person was cured by suggestion, or by the belief that the oki, the cause of his illness, had left him. At times the autmoin removed with a sharp- pointed bone or piece of flint something already hidden in his own hand. But, apart from his supersititions, his belief in the effects of enchantments and incantations and his con- fidence in his dreams and manitous or okis in producing disease or restoring him to health, the Montagnais Indian, like all other Algon- 102 THK MONTAGNAIS MEDICINE-MAN quins, was well acquainted with the anatomy of the human body. The practice of their hunters cutting up animals killed in the chase made them familiar with the viscera and internal organs of beasts of prey. They had, in their vocabulary, appropriate and distinct names for the heart, lungs, liver, gaU, spleen, windpipe and other functiona organs. Experience, derived from examining the vital organs of animals killed in the hunt, taught them that the heart was the centre of life and the distributing reservoir of the blood. Besides their knowledge of the names of the important organs of the human body, they knew their positions, had definite ideas of their use, and, partially, of the manner by which they performed their functions. The Montagnais when first visited by Europeans was a primitive man, a man of nature, and was by his occupation and environment a healthy man. He generally lived to an ad- vanced, age unless he was drowned, killed by accident or fatally wounded in a battle with his enemies. Much of his splendid health was owing to his stamina as a child, for a child born of healthy parents has the strength to resist disease . The treatment of children of the Montagnais tended to perpetuate hereditary firmness of constitution. Their first food was their mother's milk, with which they were CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 103 nourished for two years and sometimes longer. To harden them against the influence of great heat and cold— the natural enemies of health and life among the Algonquins — they were dip- ped every morning in cold water. To preserve his shape and for convenience of moving from place to place on land and water the child was strapped to a board or laid in a frame of rods covered with buckskin and carried on the back of its mother until it was a year or two old. From this treatment and from simple and wholesome nourishment much vigour was imparted to the body of the child. The diet of the Montagnais varied with the seasons of the year. In summer they lived on fish, roots and berries, and in winter oh the flesh of wild animals, trapped or captured on the hunt. They had no special hours for eating, but ate only when they were hungry. They knew nothing of salt, pepper or condi- ments. When Fattier Dablon met the Mon- tagnais and the Mistassini tribes in the forests east of Lake Nemiskau, they were suffering from a disease brought on by want of nutritious food. The prevailing diseases among them were anemia, and lung and bowel complaints, due to lack of nourishing food, to exposure to extremes of wet and cold, and to breathing, in winter, spring and fall, the smoke and foul air of their wigwams. 104 THE MONTAGNAIS MKDICINE-MAN NATURAL RKMBDIKS AND MATl^RIA MEjDICA OF THE ALGONQUINS. As previously stated, primitive man, or the man of nature, was by his occupation and envir- onment, a healthy man. Deformed children, or idiots, were almost unknown among the tribes. Their women never perished in child- birth, and suffered very little in parturition. Eight hours after the birth of her child the mother was ready for her ordinary duties. The men were hardened by exposure to all kinds of weather, and by hunting and fishing, which protected them against disease and gave them remarkable recuperative powers when attacked by any malady. Their active life in the open air saved them from heart and kidney diseases, and from appendicitis and many other maladies to which civilized man is and will always be a victim. Moreover, aboriginal man of Canada knew nothing of alcohol, of condiments, spices, or opiates. He was not a salt user. The Mexican and Central American tribes were able to distil alcohol from the maguey and from other plants, but the Canadian Indian had not the material from which he could manufacture intoxicating liquor, and as a beneficent result, he was necessarily a sober man and protected from alcoholic poison. CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 105 But he was not altogether immune to disease, to plagues and epidemics. John Josselyn, in his "Account of Two Voyages to New England," writing (1674) of the maladies to which the Indians of New England were subject, says : "In New England the Indians are afflicted with pestilent fever, plagues, consumption of the lungs, falling sickness. King's evil, and a disease in the back with us known as empye- ma." Fevers and dysentery were also com- mon complaints among the tribes, but until the entry of the white man upon their lands, smallpox, scurvy and venereal diseases were unknown. His life as a hunter, canoeman and warrior was at times a life of accidents, or wounds and broken limbs. In his sickness and under the pain of his wounds he or his friends sought the help of nature and of the skilful men of his tribe. Knowing nothing of medical science, and hav- ing no literature to perpetuate the discoveries of his ancestors, primitive man acquired most of his knowledge in treating disease and wounds from his own experience, from tradi- tion, or from the experience of his tribal com- panions. When his malady baffled his skill and failed to yield to ordinary remedies, he, quite naturally, invoked the aid of familiar spirits, of devils and shamans. But to these he appealed only in dire straits. For his 106 THE MONTAGNAIS MEDICINE-MAN ordinary maladies and for reducible fractures he had his own remedies, taken, from the woods around him. For example, he cured acidity of the stomach by eating grains of corn steeped in lye or by swallowing small doses of an absorbent earth which he found on the banks of rivers. In inflammation or inflam- matory troubles he drew blood, though he knew nothing of chemistry or the principles of physiology. The remedies of the Canadian Indians were entirely the results of their experiences. When an unknown disease made its appearance among them they experimented with drugs, emetics, laxatives and emollients, and when these failed they built their hopes on charms, on supernatural powers, and on the incanta- tions of the shamans. When their ordinary medicines failed to effect a cure in any disease they called in the autmoin or shaman, who, failing to cure by his skill and experience, invoked his oki, or familiar spirit, to help him to drive out of the body of the sick man the little devil that tormented him. The Indians knew nothing of the circula- tion of the blood, but they did know that blood' and respiration were necessary for life. They believed the brain gave birth to thought, and directed their daily acts. They were, by necessity, great hunters, and were famihar CROSS-BEARERS OE THE SAGUENAY 107 with the situation of the vital organs in man and animal. When hard on the trail of a deer or when pursued by his enemy over poorly watered lands, the Indian suffered severely from blood-spitting. When this hap- pened, to stop the hemorrhage he chewed and swallowed, while on the run, the Hon-kos-kao- garsha, an astringent root which he carried with him when leaving his tent. They suffered at times from severe hemorrhages, the result, of wounds, accidents, or other causes. To stop the bleeding they bandaged the parts affected with a cataplasm of scrapings ob- tained from the skins of animals mixed with swamp moss. In tumefactions, fevers, and inflammations they had recourse to blood-letting, and used sharp flint knives or pointed bones, having, if drawing blood from the arm or leg, previously applied a ligature in the same manner as do our own surgeons. After the operation they bound over the wound a piece of the soft skin of a fawn or a mink. Into wounds where pus had collected they squirted water with the mouth and sucked out the poison deposited by the bite of a rattlesnake or any poisonous reptile. They then made an incision with a sharp flint and cauterized the wound with a very hot stone. They were not often troubled with old sores, the fungus parts of which they 108 THE MONTAGNAIS MEDICINE-MAN treated by cautery or by the application of fire, contending that a burn would get well of itself, while old sores were exceedingly difficult to cure. They were acquainted with the benefits of muscular relaxation in dislocations of the limbs, and knew how to replace a displaced joint. When suffering from frost bites they applied to the parts affected a resinous plaster made from the sappine. They knew how to make and apply splints to a broken arm or leg and to inject astringents into wounds, and how to keep up suppuration. As they had no favourite theories of medical practice to defend, and no schools of medicine, they de- pended largely upon experience in the appli- cation of their remedies, and, as a last resort, on the power of the shaman and his familiar oki. With the diseases of his body, for which the sick man could account, te had recourse to restoratives and natural remedies, such as fasting, dieting, medicinal plants and copious sweating, but if he became satisfied that he was the victim of some exceptional malady, the origin of which he was unable to explain, lie sent for the shaman to learn the cause of his sickness and to avert its evil effects. NATURAi, R:eME;Di:es. The earliest mention of the application of CROSS-BEARERS OE THE SAGUENAY 109 Indian remedies to severe illness occurs in the "BrefRecit" of Jacques Cartier, the discoverer of Canada. The Recit gives a detailed report of a mysterious epidemic which carried off many of Cartier's men when he wintered near Quebec in 1535. Perceiving that his own surgeons could do nothing, Cartier asked help from the Indian chief, Donnacona. The chief gave to Cartier branches of a tree (supposed to be the white spruce or Canadian Epinette blanche), told him to boil the leaves and bark and to give to the sufferers frequent and copious drinks of the decoction, and to poultice the stomachs of the sick with the residue of the wet leaves and bark. "After five or six days, writes Cartier, "the medicine produced an effect that all the doctors of Lou vain and Montpellier could not have brought about in a year if they had had all the drug-shops of Alexandria at their dis- posal." The Indians understood the importance of drawing blood in fevers, local pains and inflammations, employing in the operation flint knives, or pointed bones. They began the cure of most of their acute maladies by bleeding, purging and sweating. In their treatment of fevers they first administered a strong emetic and then gave the patient liberal doses of sweating teas and warm 110 THE MONTAGNAIS MEDICINE-MAN drinks. When the fever was broken they administered bitters and other tonic medicines to prevent its recurrence.* Consumption among the Northern Ontario Algonquin tribes was a lingering and common disease. They invariably experimented with warm drinks of Indian-physic, large draughts of hot water and herbal teas. They also had ire- course to the steam-bath to induce sweating, and abstained from flesh-food, subsisting principally on the gruels prepared from parched cornmeal. For ordinary colds and in all high fevers they believed that a moderate fast and abstinence from the flesh of animals was best for the patient, saying that "to give food to a fever is to keep it alive." The cough-root or Indian balsam was included among their most valuable remedies for colds and incipient consumption and swellings. They stripped from the tree the outer bark, using only the inner. The juice was deemed by tiiem to be helpful in bowel complaints. The inner bark when chewed and swallowed helped to support life when periods of famine visited the tribe. *The practice of anointing the body with fat and oil was common to the savages of all lands. In warm climates it was said to promote health and longevity by checking excessive per- spiration. The Mqntagnais. generally used bear's grease mixed with alluvial clay, a mixture which resembled the colour of their skins. The application, they* contended, helped to lessen the sensibility of their nerves and to keep open the pores of the skin. ft CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 111 When a child was attacked by whooping- cough they gave hberal doses of the infusion of spikenard, which was also administered for asthma and pains in the breast. The roots and leaves of the sumach were administered as a decoction fpr many complaints, but especially for dropsy which, before European traders visited them, was an uncommon disease among the Indians. Our Algonquin and Huron Indians were not often or grie- vously afflicted with swellings, tumors, or boils. When they appeared they were generally allowed to reach a crisis and disappeared without the aid of applications of any kind. In pleurisy the patient was freely bled and sweated, and bags of hot ashes applied to his body. From the hardships of their lives when on the hunt, and exposure on the water in all kinds of weather, the Indians suffered more perhaps from rheumatism and consutnption than from any other disease known to civilized man. Rheumatism, from its pain and fre- quent visitations, drove the Indians to seek amelioration and help in any remedies, but chiefly in hot unctions of bear's oil, warm infusions, rubbing with skins taken from beavers, just trapped, and in steam-sweats. THE STEAM-SWEAT. Among all the Indian tribes of America, 112 THE MONTAGNAIS MEDICINE-MAN sweating and fasting, were believed to be most efficacious remedies and to be endowed with great curative properties. They resorted to many methods to produce a sweat, such as heavy blanketing, warm infusions, etc., but the common and most highly prized was the steam sweat. To pi"oduce a steam-sweat, they built around eight or ten collected stones as large as ordinary pails a small lodge of skins or bark and as nearly air tight as they could make it. This tent was, when possible, thrown up near a lake or river, preferably on a sloping hillside. Before closing the entrance to the tent they made an excavation in the ground, in which they built a strong fire of cedar, spruce or balsam, and into this fire they cast the stones. Meanwhile a friend of the patient brought in pots of water and retired, closing tightly the entrance after him. When the fire had heated the stones to a "white heat," the patient, entirely nude, slowly emptied pots of water on the stones till the tent was filled with steam. Within this inferno the Indian sat and sweated while the steam retained its heat. Calling to his friend for his blanket he now walks or is assisted to his house and goes to sleep after swallowing copious draughts of tea made from dittany or other herbs. When the steam-bath was taken for an ordinary cold or as a luxury, the bather CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 113 when leaving the hot-house often plunged into the lake or river, and suffered no ill-effects from the plunge. Asthma, owing to their frequent colds, the severity of a northern climate and the hard- ships of their lives, was not an uncommon disease. In securing relief from this annoying complaint the Indians were very successful. They began with the vapour-bath, then re- sorted to blisterings, fomentations and sleep- ing draughts. At times the sufferer got relief by applying to the breast, or the back, small bags of hot ashes or by inhaling the vapour arising from hot water in which certain herbs had been steeped. They had great faith in, and used freely for asthma, a small plant known to them as the Wesh-ke-hah. An in- fusion of its roots and shoots, in doses of a half pint at intervals of twenty minutes, gave almost instant relief. It produced a gentle moisture on the skin, easier respiration and relief from all difficulty of breathing. In twenty or thirty niinutes a profuse sweating followed, attended with an expectoration of phlegm and an entire relief from pain. For ulcers and tumors the Montagnais applied to the affected parts poultices made from the bark of the hazel-nut tree. From the roots of the sassafras the Indians made a cooling drink which they used when attacked 114 THE MONTAGNAIS MEDICINE-MAN by fevers or colds. When afflicted with snow, or smoke blindness, they steeped the pith of the sassafras sprouts or roots in water and with it bathed their eyes. The Seneca snake-root was considered a valuable remedy by the Hurons and cognate tribes. It was prepared and used sometimes as a powder, at other times as an infusion and given warm to induce sweating or to help in the discharge of mucous from throat and lungs. It was given to children when suffering from difficulty of breathing, and drunk generously by consumptives. Its Indian name was Agga-shu, Prickly Ash. ■ (Han-to-la) , was one of the most valuable remedies known to the Algon- quins, for the cture of rheumatism. They freely chewed the inner bark, and the roots of the tree they boiled, and drank liberal draughts of the water during the day. The inner bark steeped for hours in bear's oil, they applied as poultices and as embrocations. Combined with snake-root and the bark of the wild cherry tree the Chippewas and other Algon- quin tribes made use of the Indian turnip for coughs and fevers. The turnip was called by them E-haw-sho-ga (bite the mouth). In ivy and sumach poisoning they used the fire-weed. The poisphed parts were rubbed with leaves of the plant, bruised and crushed so that the sap moistened the skin freely. CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 115 In diseases of children the Angelica root, boiled and strained, was frequently used. Anise (Tut4e-see-hau) was eaten to expel gases from the stomach. For colds, asthma, and pleurisy, they drank bear's oil, and Seneca snake root steeped for hours in an extract of mild liquorice. The Buck-eye nut (Tar-ton-ga-on-ba) , and its leaves boiled, were taken as a remedy for diarrhoea. The inner bark of the black locust tree (E-hau-wah), they chewed and swallowed, which acted as an emetic. In cases of colic they chewed the rinds or hulls of black walnut (He-ne-ska). JPor swellings and inflammations they bruised and applied the leaves of the black snake root, which in almost all cases gave immediate relief. In fevers of a low type they gave the bark of the dogwood tree {Shen-don-shu-gah) , in com- bination with bitters of various kinds. In cases of debility when accompanied with stomach trouble, in palpitations of the heart and dropsy, they administered decoctions of gentian root (Ton-ga-shin-ga) in combination with dogwood and wild cherry bark. In bowel complaints the Indians adminis- tered an infusion of, the dewberry roots (O-ga-she-ga) . The dittany (Mas-tin-jay) was freely used by the Attiwandarons or Neutrals, and highly esteemed by them as a sudorific in 116 THE MONTAGNAIS MEDICINE-MAN coughs, colds and fevers. Indian physic {Sku- ten-na-jay) known to us as Bowman's root, was highly valued for its emetic and sudorific virtues and as a cure for low fevers and bowel complaints. TOBACCO. Probably the first mention of the use of tobacco by an Indian tribe is recorded in the "Bref RScit" of Jacques Cartier. "One of their, herbs," he tells us, "they value very highly. The squaws gather it in great quantities for winter consumption. It is dried in the sun and carried in a small fur bag around the neck. They are constantly reduc- ing it to powder and putting it into a bowl of stone or wood in which they place a live coal and draw in the smoke through a tube: We tried to imitate them and afterwards tasted the powder, but we found it as hot as pepper." When questioned by Cartier, the Indians said smoking was good for them and kept them warm. Among all the tribes tobacco was supposed to possess many wonderful properties, was helpful in diseases and for the cure of wounds. In hunger and thirst and great fatigue it was smoked or chewed freely and always, they claimed, with beneficial effect. The Indians boiled it with the chips of swamp- CROSS-BEA'RERS OF THK SAGUENAY 117 oak and applied it as a discutient n abscesses and in local inflammations. The leaves were warmed, placed upon the parts affected, and moistened by an infusion from time to time. They also applied thkm. as embrocations to swellings, eruptive and cutaneous diseases. It was frequently used in dropsy, and, as a ver- mifuge, was applied to the abdomens of children. The Canadian tribes, as a body, understood the use and the benefit derived from emetics, cathartics and the steam-bath. Fasting was practised by them as a cure, or an alleviation, in certain diseases, and as a necessity, when peculiar favours were to be asked from their manitous, or familiar spirits. However, in the application of their remedies and in the value attached to these remedies and agencies, there were differences of opinion among them and even among the healers of the same tribe, as among our own physicians . ' ' Sorcery, prayer, songs, exhortations, suggestions, ceremonies and certain specifics and mechanical pro- cesses," writes Mr. A. Hrdlicka, of the U.S. National Museum, " are employed only by the medicine-men or medicine-women ; other specific remedies are proprietary generally among a few old men and women in the tribe ; while many vegetal remedies and simple manipulations are of common know- 118 THE MONTAGNAIS MEDICINE-MAN ledge." It may be added that the medicinal properties of many of the herbs, roots and plants familiar to the Indians before the dis- covery of Canada, were known, for the first time, to our own sixteenth century doctors, and, for the first time also, were then trans- mitted across the sea and now hold an honour- able place in European pharmacopoeias. SURGBRY AND TREATMENT OP WOUNDS. The Montagnais were well acquainted with the anatomy of the human body, and were very successful in the treatment of wounds. Their skill in treating wounds was chiefly exercised by close attention to the injured part, and the frequent application of washes and cataplasms which kept the wounded parts clean. When a warrior was severely wounded in a battle or on the hunt his companions carried him off the field on sleds in winter and in sum- mer by canoe or litter. These stretchers or litters were made by lashing together two poles with cross-pieces. If the warrior suffered great pain a bed of moss or of tender branches was made in the litter. Wounds were always kept clean, and when necessary were sutured witii threads from the inner bark of basswood, or a fibre from the long tendon of a deer's leg. The wash or CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 119 lotion used for cleansing wounds was a muci- laginous extract of the slippery elm. Arrow-heads or any foreign substance when deeply embedded were extracted by a forceps made from split willow. For fractures they made splints out of bark. The bark was padded with moss and so adjusted to the broken limb that there was no friction from the ends of broken bones. To burns they applied a poultice made of boiled spruce. Amputations were never practised by the tribes. They never used extension or counter- extension, and yet deformity or shortening was rare. CHAPTER XIII. Reugion and MoRAIvS. The Montagnais knew nothing of morals or of a moral law. The Montagnais boy or girl, before arriving at the age of reason, had lost even the adumbration and all consciousness of morality. The unpartitioned tent, the filthy stories, the indecent conversations, the promiscuous familiarity of brothers and sisters, of husband and wife or wives, the nakedness and libertinage of the young men in tent and camp, destroyed all sense of modesty and instinct of shame in the child.* If an innate feeling of reserve or an exceptional instinct of modesty induced a young girl to absent her- self from the shameless feast, or lascivious dance, she became the target for the jibes and taunts of her companions, and was forced by jeering laughter and ridicule to conform to the tribal customs. For a girl to confess to a feeling of shame was to expose herself to the contempt of her companions. Modesty in mother, wife or daughter was exceptional and opposed to the *"They become addicted to a most shameful habit of life even before they are of an age to know the shame attached to it."— Father G. Marest, Lettres Edif. 121 122 RElvIGION AND MORALS traditions and practices of her people ; and so strong was the tradition and firm the fixity of tribal opinion that a maiden who aspired to purity of body or chastity of thought was regarded by her companions as eccentric, or as one deranged. The Jesuit missionaries complained that their nomadic life, their habitual impurities, their hardness of heart and plurality of wives, niade it extremely difiicult to Christianize them.* The religion of the Montagnais, if. we may employ the word to include a tissue of ridicu- lous practices and absurd ceremonies, was a conglomerate of superstitions intimatly asso- ciated with spiritism and with their fears and dreams. They worshipped and made suppli- cation to the sun, moon, and stars, accom- panied by speeches, appeals and addresses. Among their divinities were included the "Great Hare" — primitive father of aU Algon- quins — and countless spirits or demons called Manitous. They peopled the entire universe with spirits and believed that great storms, thun- der, lightning, eclipses and all meteoric phenomena were caused by their Manitous. They regarded the beaver, the bear and the rattlesnake as superior divinities among the animals, by reason of their exceptional intelli- *I,ettre de Paule le Jetine au Pere Provincial. CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 123 gence. At times they offered to these ani- mals, to the sun, the moon and their famiUar spirits gifts of fur and berries to obtain their protection and to soUcit their goodwill. They believed the soul lived forever after leaving its body; that in the spirit world a body would be given to the soul so that it might enjoy all tile pleasures of eating, dreaming, hunting, sleeping and companionship with its friends. The Jesuit Missionary Fathers, who were men of high intelligence and of experienced observation, record in their letters so many examples of communication with demons among the Algonquin tribes that to doubt them would imperil the credibility of all history. And as if to confirm the instances given in the Relations, that magician of the pen, J. C. Tache, records in his delightful book, Forestiers et Voyageurs, many examples supporting the contention of the missionaries. However much these examples of spirit inter- ference may do violence to our sense of pro- bability, or incredulity, as well authenticated manifestations of preternatural powers they cannot be ignored; nor can they be disregarded as a malign influence acting on the Montagnais mind since they prejudiced it so powerfully against the creed and morality inculcated by the Jesuits.* ♦Relations, Pere le Jeune, 1639. Dequen, 1665. 124 RKI.IGION AND MORAI.S Unless we assume a wonderful familiarity with natural magic, it is difficult to explain, witliout ultra mundane interference, many of their feats ani prodigies. We can unde.^ stand how they could, with wonderful accuracy and with astonishing foresight, predict changes of the weather; how from solitary meditation and long prac- tise they could become adepts in sleight-of- hand tricks. "With what we have seen done by our own travelling magicians and presti- ditators, we may understand how they could spit fire and swallow burning coals; walk nak ;d through burning brush; plunge their arms to the shoulders in kettles of boiling water; stand barefooted on hot coals; allow themselves to be bound with ropes, and shake themselves loose as if the knotted ropes were twines of spool thread. Assuming that these savages of the forest, having had no communication for ages with other races, were of themselves able to invent and perform these feats or tricks, how may we interpret the prodigies seen and recorded by Carver, de Brasseur, John Tanner and missionary priests. By what sleight-of-hand or jugglery were they able to plunge knives into vital parts of their bodies, vomit quarts of blood, drive a stake or a flint knife into a man and to all CROSS-BEARKRS OF THE SAGUENAY 125 appearance kill him and then restore him to life again? How were they able by wiU power to set fire to bark lodges and to men's furs, and by a wave of their hands and a call of their voice put out the fire which left no marks of burning? Nor will trickery, ventriloquism, animal magnetism and expert , knavery serve to explain their lodge communication with de- mons as recorded by Paul Le Jeune, and other Jesuit missionaries. Before consulting his familiar spirit, the Shaman built a conical lodge which he covered with deer or bear skins. When he entered this hut the Shaman closed every opening and began his incanta- tions or appeals to his Manitou. The spirit appears, the lodge poles shake and bend with a force impossible to one man. Then are heard strange noises. At one time they come from the tent, at another from down in the earth, and then sounds and voices are heard by the spectators as if in their very midst. Some one in the crowd asks for information on some topic. He hears a voice from the tent answering his questions and the answers are either uniformly correct, or like the replies given at our modern spirit seances, of an ambiguous nature. The Shamans who embraced Christianity, positively insisted after ' their conversion that they neitiier shook the 126 RBLIGION AND MORALS lodges, bent the poles nor answered the questions. Intimately associated with the superstitious practices of the Algonquins was the medicine man. The word medicine was in universal use among the tribes of Canada, and, in all their dialects and languages, represented preternatural power. "Medicine-man" is a derivative, or a corruption, of mide-wiwin, an order of shamans, or priest-doctors among the Algonquins, who claimed to have had power to foretell the future, to cure diseases and to expel evil okis. The medicine-man was a sorcerer, an expert conjurer and a consulter of spirits, and professed to heal diseases by incantations. As nearly all diseases were the result of the action of an evil spirit that had entered the body or part of the body of the sick man or woman, a cure could not be effected until this malevolent imp was expelled by the shaman or medicine-man. The sha- man's methods of healing, when acting as a priest, had no direct affinity with the adminis- tration of any kind of drugs, or with the per- formance of even the slightest surgical opera- tion. His treatment had no connection with therapeutics, he felt no pulse and administered no remedies. If at times he used a drug internally or externally, it was some secret preparation of his own and was possibly an CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 127 aid to the incantations or superstitious cere- monies by which he exorcised the possessed. His methods of effecting a cure partook of singing, howHng, beating the drum, and dancing around the sick person. He com- manded the evil oki to depart from the patient and appealed to his own oki or manitou to help him in driving away the evil one. Some- times he applied his mouth to the affected part of the sick person, either directly or by means of a tube, and, rising, took from his mouth a pebble of peculiar shape or a piece of bark which he claimed to have sucked from the body of the sick person. But it was chiefly as an augur or oracle that his services were in demand. When consulted as an oracle he resorted to his medicine-bag. This little bag or purse con- tained either a snake's skin, a deer's tail, the feather of an eagle, human hair, or some bright metallic substance, an oddly-shaped pebble or anything, in fact, which might suggest itself to him as an acceptable fetich. The shaman was a clever conjurer and an expert sleight-of-hand performer. By his extraordinary feats of legerdemain he mysti- fied his audience and strengthened his influence with the members of his clan. He contended that the feats he accomplished were due to the power of his oki, his protecting spirit. 128 REUGION AND MORAIvS and in some instances he made good his claim. If we wave aside entirely the preternatural or spirit influence, how may we explain away the extraordinary feats witnessed by John McLean, the Hudson Bay runner, who, towards the close of the last century, wintered with the Algonquins of the Nipigon Bay region ? McLean records that he was present at a great medicine-feast — ^fete de Medecine — when two shamans of different clans openly contested for the supremacy of their respec- tive gods, "the Great Hare," and "the Great Turtle." It may be well to explain here the Algonquin tradition forming the foundation of their belief in these two divinities. The Algonquins contend that the earth and all living things' were made by Kitcheoub — the Great Hare. In time there appeared in the forests the great tiger Kitchi-mijibi, who devoured animals, and the great buffalo Midjibichiki, who ate up all the grass and plants. Now Kitcheoub, fearing that the tiger and buffalo would devour everything on the earth, sent great rains and floods which destroyed all living things, including the great tiger and the great buffalo. Then came Midj-ikine, the Great Turtle, who, after searching the lakes and deep rivers CROSS-BKARBRS OF THK SAGUENAY 129 found the Great Beaver and got him to assist him in reconstructing and restocking the earth. When everything was finished the Great Hare came down and was pleased to see that the earth was again covered with trees and plants and the forests filled with animals. He pronounced everything to be good and well done. But to show tiiat all things belonged to him he took a branch from the Mascoubina tree and a branch from the pinhine tree and stuck one branch in his right ear and the other in his left ear. For this reason the Great Hare is always represented to the Algonquins with the two branches for ears. From that" time there began to exist a mutual dislike between Kitcheoub and Midji- kine. The Great Hare paid no attention to the appeals made to him by the shamans of the Great Turtle, and the Great Turtle would not in any way assist the shamans of the Great Hare. Such was the state of affairs when at a niedicine feast, Ouahouss, the Hare sorcerer, challenged Miskouades, shaman of the Turtle, to a trial of magic strength. Late in the afternoon, when the sun was slowly sinking to the western horizon and the wild beasts of the darkling forest were resting, an Algonquin crier summoned the warriors to witness the contest. The hunters and 130 REI/IGION AND MORALS fighters, bronzed to the hue of Ktruscan statues, formed a Hving circle in the middle of which sat on bear skins Ouahouss and Miskouades. Then advanced Lone Wolf, chief of the Ojihwas, who proclaimed aloud the conditions governing the magic contest. Then Bounding .Blk, master of ceremonies, chanted the medicine-song, and rattled his Chichigoue, while the spectators shouted in unison: Hi! Ho!— Ha! Hi! Ho! When Bounding Elk had ended his song, the warriors squatted in a circle, and in silence, waited for the trial of magic strength to begin. Then arose Ouabouss and, looking into the eyes of Miskouades, said in low gutturals: "A rope made of elm- wood is strong and cannot be broken ! " " The hide of the buffalo is tough and thick," answered Miskouades, "and cannot be torn." Then the old men, the warriors, and hunters, bowed their heads in assent and said one to the other: "They both tell the truth," and turning to the young men, a grizzled old warrior ordered them to bring pine branches and deer skins and make tents for the two shamans. When the tents were built the young men securely bound, hand, and foot, the two sha- mans with elm cords, and strong thongs of biiffalo hide. They carried the bound men, each to his own tent, closed every opening CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 131 and joining the circle sat with the warriors who awaited amid intense silence for the reappearance of, the tightly roped shamans. Suddenly, there came from the lodges weird and mysterious voices and strange noises; then the lodges began to sway from side to side, to move ominously and to shake as if agitated by a strong wind. Presently ap- peared, from out the lodges, the shamans, dripping sweat, and visibly tired out. The branches and deer skins forming the lodges were removed, the ropes binding the men examined and, on the identical places where the bodies of the shamans were deposited, were the ropes intact with all their knots exactly as they were when the young men bound the shamans. Then the circle of warriors was re-formed each man occupying his own place. Up rose the chief of tiie Ojibwas and said aloud: "Kitcheouh made the world but Midjikine re-made it. Those to whom they speak are powerful." And to this statement all the Algonquins agreed, saying: "It is true." Then spoke up the shaman of the Great Hare : "The rattle-snake bites to kill, when he bites death follows." "The Little Beaver also kills when he is swallowed," responded Mis- kouades. "You speak the truth," chorused the Ojibwas. 132 RELIGION AND MORALS Then a young warrior entered the circle carrying a cedar box covered with a piece of the hide of a caribou, and a birch-bark bowl half filled with water on which floated four " little beavers."* The shaman of the Great Hare lifted the cover from the cedar box, plunged his hand in, and drew out a rattle-snake. Holding the writhing and wriggling snake by the neck he turned to the seated Algonquins and asked: "Is not this snake a rattle-snake?" "Yes, it's a rattle-snake," said they all. Ouabouss now violently shook the snake and, holding his bare arm to its mouth the snake fastened to it. With the serpent suspended from his arm he three times made the circuit within the ring formed by the Ojibwas, then tore the snake from his arm and sat down. The shaman of the Great Turtle rose to his feet and, holding in his hand the birch-bark bowl, passed before the seated warriors, inviting each one to examine it carefully. Returning to the centre of the ring he asked *The Algonquins of the Nipigon forests gave the name Little- heavers to the half-winged water insects called skaters. They belong to the Hydroceras family and live on the surface of pools and stagnant waters. They zig-zag on the water with lightning rapidity and when, by accident, two or three of them are swal- lowed by a drinker they destroy life. The Indians are very care- ful when drinking from a pool to strain, or, with a sharp eye, examine the water. CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 133 "Are not these which you see little heavers?" "They are surely little beavers," they an- swered back. The shaman raised the bowl, and when he had swallowed its contents handed the empty vessel to an aged hunter, who cried aloud: "Miskouades of the Great Turtle has swallowed the little beavers!" For an hour they all remained seated. No sound save the wash of the waters or the bark of the lone wolf broke the silence of the forest. Then, Sotriosken, chief of the clan of the Great Hare, rose up, and addressing the warriors said: "Kitcheouh and Midjkine are all-powerful, let us not do anything to make them angry with us. The poison of the little-beaver and the bite of the snake do not. bring death all at once, let us wait till to-morrow." When dawn came, the Algon- quins broke camp and left for their hunting- grounds near Loon Lake. With them went Ouabouss, shaman of the Great Hare and Miskouades, Medicine-man of the Great Turtle, hale and hearty and seasoned for the hunt. The great missionary and scholar, Father Le Jeune, after a brief experience with the Montagnais medicine-man, says: "Most of them are deceivers and charlatans ; however, L am inclined to think that some among them really have communication with the devil." 134 REUGION AND MORAI^ He then relates some extraordinary feats accomplished by them, resembling the oc- currences at the tomb of the Jansenist, Paris, at the cemetery of St. Medard. * *Belation, 1633. CHAPTER XIV. Other Charactkristics the happy hunting grounds. When a warrior died, all his hunting, war and fishing gear, his tobacco pouch and pipe were buried with him, for the Montagnais believed all material things to be possessed of souls. If the warrior was a popular chief, a great fighter or hunter, his obsequies were celebrated with savage pomp and splendour. They clothed the body in costly furs and lavished ornaments, such as bracelets of copper and pendants for nose and ears, upon it. They painted the face of the dead man in brilliant colours to conceal the pallid hue of death and to impart to the countenance an air of life. A gorget hung from his neck and rested on his breast, his bow and quiver were by his left arm ; his stone tomahawk was in his belt, and his pipe was in his mouth. A kettle filled with food, a box of vermillion paint and gifts from his friends lay near the grave to be buried with the warrior. Thus outfitted, the brave was sent on his long journey to the spirit-world to meet the great chiefs of his nation who had preceded him to the "Happy Hunting Grounds." 135 136 OTHER CHARACTERISTICS When, in the summer of 1647, Father Dequen was present at the burial of a Mon- tagnais, he asked a grizzled old warrior why they interred with the dead man his weapons and other articles. "Why?" answered the old man, "because he will want them in the spirit world. It is true the bodies of the pots, skins, knives and weapons remain in the grave with the dead man, but their spirits follow him, and, wherever he may be he makes use of them." In the "Happy Hunting Grounds of the world of Shades were wild animals— spirit animals — ^which the departed Montagnais," if he were a good hunter, a brave and neighbour- ly man when on earth, hunted with his spirit bow, arrows and knife. Kxistence in the spirit land was, for the Montagnais, life in this world idealized and made better. It was their life on ea,rth raised to a higher and happier plane. It consisted of an abundance of food and game, additional health of body and fieetness of limb, with no frosts or ice and no worry or fear of attack from an enemy. These were the supreme consolations of the Montagnais' heaven. The pleasures of the spirit life were those of earth intensified, and were but a continuation of the carnal gratifications of human appetites and human passions. CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 137 The Heaven of the Montagnais was like unto the pagan Elysium, where "life is easiest to man, and no snow is, nor storm, nor any rain," or to the "Paradise of Mahomet," with temporal conditions improved and the pleasures of earth intensified and prolonged forever. This heaven lay far beyond the southern horizon where the climate was mild and balmy, the breezes refreshing and game abundant. This was the land to which the kindly neighbour, the good hunter, and the brave warrior went after death. The coward- ly, the selfish and the bad man was interned iii a land of perpetual snow, ice and wet winds, where he shivered from cold and was always thirsty and half starved. When the soul of a man or a woman — but not that of a child — left its body it lingered for a time around the camp or village, haunt- ing the woods and waiting for another soul to accompany it on its long journey to the spirit land. For some nights after a death in the camp a Montagnais never went alone into the forest if any one were dangerously sick, for he was afraid of meeting a ghost waiting for the ,soul of the dying man or woman. Many of the men claimed to have met and spoken with the ghosts of the dead whom they unwillingly encountered when compelled to be abroad on dark nights. 138 OTHER CHARACTERISTICS Nothing, not even the hope of good luck in battle or the hunt, could tempt a Montagnais to pass near a grave or enter a graveyard on a dark night. The members of the Montagnais tribe were strongly attached to one another; they helped each other with generous liberality. The children of a family were affectionate and obedient to their parents, and, among the units of the tribe there was an admirable solidarity. Their intercourse with each other was always marked by respect and civility, and in times of stress and famine, the hunters divided with all others whatever chance or the fortunes of the hunt cast in their way. "Among them there is an affability and a courtesy almost incredible."* TREATMENT OF PRISONERS To their enemies they were ruthless in the ir savagery. Affrighted man recoils with horror from the torture of their prisoners, as recorded by the eloquent Le Jeune. It is impossible for the perverted ingenuity of man to devise more terrible methods of inflicting suffering on human beings than those to which centuries of experience and familiarity with torture had * Relation, 1636. CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 139 trained the Algonquins to mutilate the living bodies of their victims. The demons of Dante inflicted on lost souls no greater suffering than the torture of blood and horror applied by the Montagnais to his brother man. If the great poet were present at the mutilation of an Iroquois prisoner by the Algonquins, and saw women with long streaming hair, hanging breasts and distorted faces encouraging their husbands, sons and brothers to torture, cut to pieces and slowly burn to death a helpless victim, he would not be constrained to appeal to his imagination for the examples in his Inferno. His description of the horrors of Hell pale before the reality of Indian torture. The great priest and missionary Father Le Jeune, in his Relation, 1632, gives a vivid word painting of what he saw and heard of an Iroquois prisoner done to death by Algon- quin malignity. While title mutilated victim was broiling upright in a slow fire, the spectators and torturers flung into his face ribald laughter, jeers, insults and mockeries, and the women and girls bribed the young men with gifts "to be permitted to torment the poor victim to their heart's content."* * Relation, 1632. 140 OTHER CHARACTERISTICS Father Le Jeune, transfixed with horror, averted his eyes from the devihsh cruelty, and unable or unwilling to endure the awful spectacle he returned to his cabin. The Frenchman who remained to see the death of the Iroquois and to witness the end under accumulating horrors, told Le Jeune that the fiendishness of the women and girls in the application of torture to the expiring man surpassed belief. After the Iroquois had expired, the Mon- tagnais tore out his heart and, giving it to the little children to eat, reserved the diarred and mutilated body for themselves, their sisters, wives and daughters. When all was over the dismembered bones of the Iroquois lay scattered around the place of torture. Dogs lapped the blood and de- voured the pieces of flesh left here and there upon the ground. , When the body was not eaten by the human wolves, the men and women, whipped into a frenzy of ferocity, trampled it into a bloody compost and fed it to the dogs. By a strange and insoluble perversion of nature, life, social intercourse, the hunt itself could offer to the Algonquin, the Huron or the Iroquois no pleasure, no joy, to be compared with the fiendish pleasure tiie torture of his enemy furnished him. CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 141 In this wonderful Relation of 1632, Le Jeune relates that he saw an Iroquois warrior, writhing in his agonies, break away from his torturers and rush for the river to drown himself. He was seized before reaching the water and brought back to the stake where the skin was stripped from him in ribbons. Once again he broke his bonds and again he ran for the river. Retaken, his scalp was torn from his head and coals of fire heaped upon the naked skull. The retaliation of the Iroquois on their Montagnais prisoners was equally appalling. For how many centuries these sanguinary deeds were perpetrated in the forests of Amer- ica, we do not know. We only know that for unnumbered years men and women, "made into the image and likeness of God," endured tortures surpassing belief — tortures inflicted on man by man, on woman by woman. The Jesuit priest who entered the forest of these wild beasts and cried aloud : " Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you," was wise to carry with him into the wilderness a divine promise of an eternal reward or an assurance of supernatural protection. Withal, it is impossible for the meditative man not to experien,ce a feeling of pity and of deep sorrow for them in the foulness of their lives, in their filth and squalor and, above all, 142 OTHER CHARACTERISTICS in their unspeakable cruelty. Victims of inheritance, heirs to superstitions of the gross- est kind, bound by centuries of tradition "They trod the winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of God the Almighty" for unnum- bered years. There is here a great mystery, the mystery of the immutability of the laws of God. When we add that the Montagnais were compelled by their wandering lives, by the intense cold, and by the menace of starvation to leave at times in their frozen camps, their sick, their old and feeble to perish by hunger and frost, you will have a fairly accurate history of the manners, customs and traits of char- acter of all the Montagnais tribes. This was the land, this was the climate, and such the people the Jesuit missionaries attempted to restore to decency, to manhood, to Christianize and lift to a plane of partial civilization. That their courage, zeal, and heroism did not in the beginning meet with the success commensurate with their hopes was due not so much to the dense ignorance and roving habits of the tribe, as to the op- position of the Medicine-men, their inveterate attachment to their superstitions, and to a plurality of wives. Moreover, among other trials which confronted the missionary fathers were the difficulties of the tribal dialects; CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY l43 the proud and shiftless character of the wandering f amiUes ; their instinctive horror of all restraint; their idleness and weakness for gambling; but above all and over all their attachment to self-government the personal independence that resented all outside inter- ference and their inveterate opposition to anything or anyone insisting upon a change in their beliefs, their habits and their practices. OPPOSITION TO change; This is not to be wondered at since it is a permanent and universal phenomenon of human nature that it abhors a change from that to which it is accustomed and with which it is satisfied, to the new and the un- tried. The most remarkable fact in the history of the human race is the relatively small number who will agree to change their institutions, laws and usages. Even to-day there are many civilized and partially civilized races which refuse to accept our Christianity or our civilization. The entire Mohammedan world detests our Christianity, and the negroes of equatorial Africa are opposed to our civilization. Our creed and our ways of living are disliked by all those who are, ac- cording to our thinking, barbarous or savage. The uncounted populations of China, Persia, 144 OTHER CHARACTERISTICS Thibet, and Egypt, loathe and despise our civilization. There are few phenomena more remarkable than the stubborn incredulity and disdain with which a man belonging to cultivated Chinese society listens to the boast- ed superiority of our European civilization. His confidence in his state and superiority is established against his experience of our military triumphs, and against our acknow- ledged scientific inventions and discoveries, which overcame the exclusiveness and national pride of the wily Japanese, but who refuse to accept our religion and our social code. There is to-day in India a potential minor- ity, trained in the councils of British profess- ors and statesmen, many of them educated in English universities and familiar with the literature of Europe, who will not permit a finger to touch the very subjects with which European civilization and legislation is now concerned — social and religious customs and usage. There can be no controversy over the fact that the enormous mass of the Mo- hammedan and East Indian population hates and dreads any change which would infringe upon its social life and religion. By a universal law, man's evolution, while progressive, is very slow, and the religion, superstitions, and habits of a race change not with years, but with centuries. An CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 145 absolute intolerance of religious and political change characterizes the largest part of the human race, and has marked the whole of it for the longest portion of its history. Even in regard to habits, mankind is very slow to change. The complete civilization of a race is always slow and insensible in its progress. BOOK III. TRAIL-BREAKERS AND PATH-FINDERS CHAPTER XV. Th^ Missionaries When, by the Treaty of St. Germain-en- Laye, signed March 29th, 1632, Canada was returned to France, the land was once more opened to missionary enterprise. In obedi- ence to a promise made to the Franciscans, the great Jesuit Order commissioned its sons to leave France and advance to the spiritual conquest of Canada. Early in April, 1632, Fathers Paul Le Jeune and Anne de Noue sailed from the Port of Honfleur for Quebec. The following winter Father de Noue ac- companied a party of Attikamegue moose hunters and almost perished from cold and exposure. He came of a distinguished family whose influence obtained for .him the office of page at the court of the King. After he was promoted an officer of the Royal House- hold, he resigned his position with its honours and possibilities and, at the age of twenty-five, entered a Jesuit novitiate. Though gifted with talents of a high order, he could never learn to speak the Montagnais tongue, and when brought back to Quebec by the hunters, seriously sick, half starved, and almost fam- ished from exposure, he was not again per- 149 150 THE MISSIONARIES mitted by his Superior to enter upon the field of the Algonquin missions. PAUL IvE JEJUNI A greater name than that of Paul Le Jeune is not written across the pages of Canadian history. His face, as it has come down to us in engravings and paintings, carries on it the evidence of goodness and an expression of strength and benignity. . Born and baptised a Calvinist, be became a convert to the Catholic Church, and, under the influence of grace and in answer to what he deemed to be a supernatural call, he entered the Jesuit novitiate at Rouen in 1613. After complet- ing his studies he was called to the priesthood in 1631 and, soon after his ordination, he was notified of his appointment on the Canadian Mission. Writing to the Provincial of the Jesuits, Paris, in acknowledgment of the letter of appointment he had received, he says: "The joy and happiness I felt in my soul was so great that I believe I have experienced nothing like it for twenty years, nor has any letter been so welcome to me.* The distinguished author of Les Jesuites et La Nouvelle-France writes of this wonderful *Eelation, 1632. CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 151 priest: "By a strange contrast this apostle of large and generous nature was gifted with a will of steel and a heart of fire. He was endowed with an accurate spirit of method and precision and a gift of observation truly remarkable. Nothing escaped his keen sense of penetration, which embraced the minutest details."* " He was," writes Benjamin Suite in his History of the French Canadians, " a man of very great merit, a facile writer, a close observer and a priest full of zeal and piety, f Soon after landing in Quebec he began the study of the Montagnais language — "a lan- guage of poverty and riches; poor in so far as the savages have no words to give ex- pression to a thousand things known to the people of Europe, but it is a language well suited for the savage and for the things and ideas with which he is familiar. " , In this same Relation of 1633 he adds: "If I am ever to know the Montagnais language I must live with the savages, for he who thoroughly understands and speaks their language will have great influence over them." So the brave and zealous priest left Quebec in October, 1633, with twenty Montagnais, men, women, and children, on their way for Tadousac. Here they were joined by eight t Vol. II„ P. 44. ■*Vol. I., p. 191. 152 THE MISSIONARI^vS or nine Chicoutimi hunters and, late in No- vember, they all departed for the moose regions of Lake St. John. And now for the first time Paul Le Jeune, "the Father of the Canadian Missions," as an eminent student of Colonial times calls him, began to ex- perience the horrors of life in winter with savage hunters. The year before he was present with Father Dequen at the torture, mutilation and burning of an Iroquois prisoner whom they failed to purchase and against whose horrible mutilation the priests protested in vain. All the Relations of the Jesuits dealing with the persons and events of these early days are full of fascination, deep interest and informa- tion, but, without exception, Father Le Jeune's letters or Relations, written in 1632 and 1634, are the most complete, pathetic and informa- tive on savage customs, superstitions and habits of any found in the Burrows' com- pilation. How he was able, unless providen- tially protected, to survive the severity of the terrible winters, the long and trying marches of the roving horde, the horrors of the starved and frozen camp, the vermin and filth, foul language,* smoke, and the shocking indecen- cies of a Montagnais lodge staggers belief. *"I did not think," he writes, "that the mouth of the savage was so foul." CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 153 "It was impossible" he writes, "to stand erect in this improvised hut. One had always to sit down or lie prostrate on the ground with pne's head resting on a bank of snow. The winds blew in upon us through a hundred openings. The famished and flea-infested dogs ran in and out. The smoke was so thick that I lay for hours stretched on my breast breathing with my mouth to the eartii. The heat and stench were at times insupportable." In this pathetic letter he says that at times he almost died of hunger — "la faim m'a pense tue" — and adds that of a hundred priests not ten could live through a like winter or survive a similar experience. Through the woods, zig-zagging here and there, they carried on their backs or dragged on toboggans their scanty and wretched belongings, bundles of tent-bark, skins of the beaver and bear and pans alid hatchets ob- tained in trade with the French. Father Le Jeune, almost worn out with exhaustion, carrying on his shoulders his own bundle, followed the band on snowshoes. Before the darkness of night fell upon the forests they built shelters and around blazing log fires men, women and children huddled to- gether. ^ Then, if the day's hunt was favor- able, they ate, if not they starved till the following day. The famished dogs rushed in 154 THE MISSIONARIES and out searching for food. Smoke filled the lodge and at times the heat and stench were so oppressive that Le Jeune, fearing suffoca- tion, passed out into the darkness of the woods in search of relief. He tells us that the immorality of the language, the indecency of the postures of the men and women, and the rudeness and vul- garity of aU was shocking. This martyrdom lasted for him the entire winter and when the wonderful priest, sick and worn to attenuation, was brought in a canoe to Quebec, his Mon- tagnais companion, Mestigoit, carried him ashore in his arms. But he mastered the Montagnais language while with the hunters, and became familiar with their savage cus- toms, their tribal laws and superstitions, "a knowledge," he writes, "which will be of great service to us all in bringing the savages into the- fold of Jesus Christ." Reading over this extraordinary Relation one is constrained to ask : What result did he hope to achieve by voluntarily surrendering himself to these unspeakable indignities and such sustained physical suffering.? The ex- istence of the Montagnais horde with whom he wintered was a hell of foul licentiousness, of nameless lusts, of hunger, disease and physical sufferings, and there was no hope for betterment, save in annihilation, or re- construction, or rather, in resurrection. CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 155 This highly educated and devout priest, Paul Le Jeune, who entered this barren desolation of savagery and devoted himself to the training and uplifting of these brutal- ized men and women, was either a fool or a saint. But this wonderful man who came to live and companion with these savages was a Jesuit priest, and though terrible things have been said and written about the Jesuits, their bitterest enemies have never pilloried them as fools. "When we have delivered our attacks," writes the deist Marcellac " we must, as honorable foes, acknowledge that they are, as a body, the greatest scholars and most fearless missionaries known to the world." Of \.the great names which illumine the pages of Canadian history there is not one entitled to more honour and distinction than that of the heroic and saintly Paul Le Jeune. When he died humanity and the church lost a com- manding personality. CHAPTER XVI. Setting Out for Lake; St. John When in 1877, the Jesuit College which had been built in Quebec city two hundred and fourteen years before, was torn down to furnish a site for the new City Hall, the wreckers found, buried under the sanctuary, the remains of the body of Father Jean Dequen, who died on the eighth of October, 1659, a victim of charity, from a fever con- tracted while administering the last Sacra- ments to an Algonquin convert. Jean Dequen was bom at Amiens, France, in 1603. After his ordination to the priesthood in 1632 he heard the Macedonian call of the Canadian savages and hurried across the 3,000 miles of water to their assistance. He arrived in Quebec in 1635 and, in order that he might have leisure to study the language of the Algonquin tribes, he began teaching in the Jesuit College, Quebec. Following his career we hear of him among the Indians at Sillery and Three Rivers. From these centres he made intermittent visits to the forest tribes. In May, 1641, nineteen years before his death, this wonderful priest founded the first permanent mission at Tadousac for the Mon- 157 158 SETTING OUT FOR I,AKE ST. JOHN tagnais and Bersiamites. Though welcomed cordially by the savages then camping among the hoary rocks of Tadousac some of whom were converts to the Faith, he was not fav- ourably impressed by the appearance of the place. "A land so barren," he writes, "that there is hardly soil enough to bury the dead, but the mission of Tadousac will be a fine field for the work and will yield fruit in season : sooner or later the word of God wUl have its effect." The morning after his coming among them, the Montagnais peeled the bark from birch trees and raised a humble chapel where for months he slept, instructed the adults, bap- tized the infants and daily offered the Holy Sacrifice. Early in July, 1647, he learned from an Indian, who had come down from Chicoutimi, that two of his Tadousac converts were lying sick in a camp on the shores of Lake Pioua- gami. The camp was one hundred and twenty-five miles from Tadousac and in a region where he was more likely to encounter a pack of wolves than the society of men. From the day he came to Tadousac this intrepid priest entertained the lofty hope of sometime penetrating the unexplored and unknown wilderness north of the Saguenay, and vi§itmg the hunting grounds of the CR0S3-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 159 northern tribes. Possibly, the expectation of obtaining some valuable information about the lands and tribes north and east of the inland lakes where the sick men lay, may have fortified the resolve he now made to visit them at Lake Piuagami. For "the work of the Jesuits," writes Edmund Roy in his in- formative and delightfully impressive book. Voyages au Pays de Tadousac, was not entirely confined to the conversion of the Indians. Apostles and soldiers of the Cross, they ven- tured everywhere seeking the most obscure tribes and places, and exposing their lives for the salvation of souls, for God and France." When Father Dequen made known his wish to visit the sick men at Piougami, the Mon- tagnais hunters at Tadousac told him he was about to undertake a voyage beset with great hardships and difficulties. They pictured the length of time it would take, the long portages from river to river, the falls and rapids he would encounter and the suffering he must endure from swarms of mosquitoes and black flies. Unmoved by their appeals and unterrified by the hardships of the voyage, the Jesuit remained firm in his resolve to answer the call of the sick. Two of his Tadousac converts volunteered to accompany him. Freighting a canoe with provisions for five days they 160 SETTING OUT FOR LAKB ST. JOHN embarked early on the morning of July 11th and began the ascent of the Saguenay River, near where it opens its gloomy portals opposite Pointe-Noire. '^-^^f ¥^.M B o Ph > CHAPTER XVII. On thb Way to Piougami The air was cold and bracing, with a touch of mountain purity in it, when, in the dawning morning, the canoe swung into midwater and began the ascent of the river. The bronzed and long haired paddlers were long, lank and wiry men, agile and strong as panthers, broad of shoulders, and had muscles tough as whip cords. The forest was yet asleep when they swept by Cap La Boule. When the sun arose above the mountains they were passing Anse ^ David. Amid a silence, broken only by th^ swivelling whistle of a flock of wild ducks and the swish and dip of the paddles, they rounded Grande Pointe as the sun was crossing the meridiai;i. Peace was everywhere in the bays, on the mountains and on the river which waveless, if not tidel^ss, flowed beneath them. .As the day waned and the river grew mys- teriously gloomy, they paddled into a hospi- table bay, built their fire, and made camp for the night. A pillar of Ught reflected on the water from a fire on the eastern side of the river apprised them that a Montagnais hunter and his squaw were bivouacking there 161 162 ON THE WAY TO PIOUGAMI till morning. When the priest and his guides had eaten their frugal supper they knelt down, adored God, said aloud their evening prayers and laid them down to welcome rest. Launching their canoe at break of day, they sailed, that afternoon, through the shadows of Capes Eternity and Trinity and late in the evening of the second day swept by Le Tableau and camped for the night in the friendly harbour of Anse Rouge. Arriving at the outlet of the Chicoutimi, they portaged the rapids and following the river entered Lake Kenogami. The Jesuit was the first white man to gaze upon its pleasant waters. Crossing the lake, which is practically an extension of Kenogamiche, they came to La Belle-Riviere, down which they floated into the little inland sea of Piougami, which, twelve years after Dequen's discovery. Father De Cr^pieul called Lake St. John. The valiant priest and his Montagnais guides had canoed and portaged west and north-west from Tadousac one hundred and twenty-five miles, covering the distance in five days and four nights. I age of thirty-two, entefed upon his mis- sionary labours in the Saguenay regions. For the rest of his life he companioned with the Montagnais. It is an exception in human experience to find united in one personality an enthusiastic love for wayward souls and a passion for holy enterprises united with great tact and pru- dence. But the missionary journals of Father de Cr^pieul testify to an extraordinary com- bination of all the qualities which constitute greatness of mind and soul with a power of sustained endurance to physical fatigue and suffering almost beyond belief. Yet, the name of this saintly priest and heroic mis- sionary is rarely ever pronounced, and is even unknown to the educated men of his own faith. "The missionaries who laboured in CROSS-BEARBRS OF THE SAGUENAY 195 the West," writes Samuel Edward Dawson in his book The Saint Lawrence, "suffered in their lifetime, and their names are honoured by milHons, even of people who are strangers to their faith. But the names of Dequen, Albanel, Laure, and de Crdpieul are almost entirely unknown." The missionary experiences of I^^ather de Crdpieul surpass in interest the thrilling exploits of the heroes of Homer's Odyssey. This great priest, waving from him the brilliant prospects of a career in France, buried himself alive in the revolting com- panionship of wandering hordes who haunted like ghosts the solitudes of Eastern Canada. To win their souls to Christ, to civilization and decency, he went with them to their gloomy forests, followed them on snow-shoes over frozen river and ice-bound lake, canoed through regions hardly explored to-day, en- dured the filth and smoke of their wretched huts, and all this he did with a resignation saintly and heroic. From where the Saguenay enters the St. Lawrence, along the tributaries of the great river, from Tadousac to the Nekouba River, and far down towards the Labrador of the Esquimaux, he consorted with Montagnais and Algonquin tribes, in- structing, converting, civilizing them, bap- tizing their children and burying their dead. 196 THE LONE PRIEST Bnteritig on his missionary career in the morning of his priesthood and the noon of his manhood, he left Tadousac in the autumn of 1671 with a large band of moose hunters and for six months stayed with them in the forest of the Lake St. John country. For days he tramped on snow-shoes through almost impenetrable woods and held the pace of his bronzed companions whose every fibre and muscle were toughened by training from childhood. He slept with them, sometimes on the snow, in the open and in their sxiffocat- ing cabins ; he ascended high mountains, crossed on snow-shoes frozen lakes and rivers, confronted often with the spectre of famine. With the heroism and resignation of a martyr of the early church he submitted to fatigue, hunger, cold and privation to save and console men and women redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ. Everywhere and every day he instructed, exhorted and prayed with his Indian com- panions and, in the silence of the night, when the Montagnais stopped their singing and talking and the little children were sleeping, this man of God passed out into the cold and solitude of the forest to commune alone with God in prayer.* Late in the Lenten season of 1672 the priest *Belation, 1672. CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 197 and the moose hunters camped on the shore of the Lake of the Cross. Here they built a temporary oratory of brush and bark, where instructions were given and the Holy Sacrifice daily offered to God for the living and the dead of the tribe. On the night of Good Friday they assembled for the Adoration of the Cross. Pine torches lighted the forest oratory ; a crucifix rested on the humble altar between two burning candles. The floor of the chapel was covered with fresh pine and cedar branches on which the Montagnais, clothed in costly beaver and otter skins, knelt. Presently their priest rose from his knees and delivered a brief instruction on the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ and the Adoration of the Cross. And wheh he presented the Crucifix for their veneration, the moose-hunte;'s and the squaws, carrying on their backs their infants, approached the altar, and one after the other kissed the Crucifix and silently retired. When they were all once more in their places the dark-robed missionary, holding in his left hand the crucifix, addressed them : "My beloved children in Jesus Christ, I exhort you to walk worthily of God in all things pleasing ; being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. Giving thanks to God, the Father, who hath 198 THE I.ONE PRIEST made us worthy to be partakers of the lot of the saints in hght. Who hath, delivered us from Satan and the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of His Son, Jesus Christ, by Whose blood we have redemption and the remission of sin." In all his letters we find no word of repining or complaint, except when he refers to the sufferings he endured when he was compelled by cold and snow-storms to remain days and nights with the Indians in the stifling atmos- phere of their lodges. "Though the cold was very severe," he writes, " and our beds nothing but snow covered with fir branches, I could endure it, but the smoke is the great cross of those who winter with the savages. It is especially trying when one is shut up, as we were , in a little bark cabin where the wet and half-decayed wood used for fuel, the damp air, the snow and the occasional winds, render the smoke so stinging that, although we may avoid a little by constantly maintaining a reclining posture as low as possible, yet we often lose our eye-sight from weeping ; for tears flow incessantly all day long — tears so burning and stinging that at night the same pain is felt as if the eyes, were charged with salt." After a winter of great suffering and hard- ships he returned with the Montagnais hunters CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 199 to Tadousac. It was early morning when the canoe of Father de Crdpieul was sighted coming down the river followed by the canoes of the hunters. A runner hastened to an- nounce to the village the welcome news that the canoe of the father was near the bend. At once the chapel bell was rung, guns were fired, and out from every cabin men, -women, and children appeared and hurried to the landing-cove. Every one shook hands with him when he alighted and greeted him with a friendly "Chtee ! chtee !" — "welcome! wel- come !" De Crdpieul passed among them, shaking hands with every one, saying to each, "Koille ! Koille !"—" Good morning ! Good- morning !" The missionary, followed by his spiritual children, hastened to the chapel, where he celebrated Mass, surrounded by his Algonquin converts. That afternoon he baptized the infants bom during his absence and gave the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. The canticles and hymns were sung in Algonquin by the Montagnais ; the men, filling one side of the little diapel, sang a verse, then the women from their side responded by another verse. That evening all repaired to the cemetery where the priest blessed the graves of those buried since his departure for the moose lands. There, in the waning evening, 200 THE I.ONE; PRIEST amid the silence of great solitudes unbroken by the peaceful flow of the River of Death, these dark-eyed and dark-haired sons and daughters of the men and women redeemed by the priest from savagery, sang aloud the libera and the de profundis for the repose of the souls of all those whose bodies, buried in this con- secrated ground, were returning to the earth from which they came. Towards the end of May, 1672, this exem- plary priest left Tadousac to visit a Montag- nais tribe, known as Papinachois, whose vil- lages lay ninety or a hundred miles to the east. He went on a visit to them, he informs us, because "it was the season for the mission to the Papinachois, for which our Lord had left me sufficient strength I reached it safely just when the savages were returning from their winter hunts." After visiting the the Bersiamites and tl;ie river tribes hundreds of miles below Quebec, he again returned to Tadousac, and late in the autumn of 1673 started anew to visit the Montagnais of the Lake St. John region. While camping, in January, with a band of hunters near the mouth of the Peribonka — a name made fami- liar to us by the brilliant and lamented Louis Hemon in his fascinating book, Maria Chapde- laine — a runner on snow-shoes entered the camp and announced that Father Albanel — CROSS-BEARERS OF THE SAGUENAY 201 then on his second expedition to Hudson Bay — ^had met with an accident and was confined to his tent twenty-five miles to the north. The next morning after Mass this heroic priest, accompanied by two French-Canadian hunters and a Montagnais convert, started to the help of his brother. The Indian on snow-shoes broke the way, the priest and his companions following. When they had pene- trated the dark woodg, tan,gled underbrush, windfalls and branches heavy with snow crossed their path and rendered fast travelling impossible. In the afternoon as they reached a frozen lake they ran into a blinding storm of snow. The winds, cold and bitter, seemed as if they would blow for ever, and, in their anxiety to make time, they did not see the dodging, hurrying wolves which stole from tree to tree to gaze upon them. They pushed on for some miles, when, utterly exhausted, De Crdpieul called a halt. The priest, believing that they would all die, had the men fall upon their knees and join him in prayer. Then the Montagnais returned to the land and brought back branches of balsam fir, on which they rested, and fell into a sleep which would have been their last on earth if two voyageurs sent out by Father Albanel had not come upon and roused them. "Then," writes De Crd- 202 THE I.ONE PRIEST pieiil, "we resumed our journey, and in spite of the wind and snow we reached the place where the father was." When the wild geese and ducks were return- ing from the south he came back to Tadousac, from where he wrote to the Superior of the Missions, saying : "The life of a Montagnais missionary is a long, slow martyrdom, de- manding the exercise of almost continual patience and mortification ; a life truly peni- tent and humiliating, especially in the cabins, and on the route with the savages, suffering and misery are one's companions on these sorrowful and painful missions." At last, when wearied with hardship, when human endurance had reached its limit, the brave priest was brought to Quebec. He was for a long time unable to endure confine- ment to a room or rest in the bed of a civilized man. Accustomed for thirty years to a life in the open, the narrow boundaries of Quebec, the stuffiness of the air of his room, the closed house and the altered conditions of life were distasteful to him and almost unbearable. Worn out with exposure and austerities, the saintly missionary died in the city of Quebec in the year 1702. He was laid to rest with those other splendid and holy Jesuit mis- sionaries "whose bodies are buried in peace and whose names live from generation to generation." PRINTED BY THE ONTARIO PRESS WMITED TORONTO, CANADA