The Ultimate Romance
PART 1
Through the gray mist of July morning a young man saw his paradise.
The use of the personal pronoun is not intended to psychologize Heaven, but to note that each of the elect must approach beatitude along a particular path designated by Providence. And that path can be rough or smooth, straight or tortuous, long or short, level or steep; and it can take us through strange lands or familiar precincts.
Isaac Jogues was not yet 30 years old when his ship slipped along the St. Charles River in the summer of 1636 and the cannon from the small fortress of Quebec boomed its welcome. His excitement was intense. As he neared the great rock over which the French flag fluttered more as a token of hope than a sign of conquest, he fixed his eyes on the shore and saw for the first time the people among whom he was to live and at whose hands he was to die: the natives of New France.
In a letter to his mother he began to compose shortly after arriving, he wrote: “I do not know what it is to enter Paradise, but this I know, it would be difficult to experience in this world a joy more excessive and more overflowing than that I felt when I set my foot in New France and celebrated my first Mass here at Quebec on the Feast of the Visitation.”
Paradise, for Isaac Jogues, would not appear very appealing to us, nor did it to his contemporaries. Rather than a communion of saints, it presented a confederacy of savages.
Had Jean-Jacques Rousseau been Isaac’s companion in his travels, he may never have given literary shape to his imaginary “man in the state of nature.” Such a man, Rousseau claimed, as though he had a crystal ball through which he could gaze into the prehistory of our race, possessed a sense of compassion as yet uncorrupted by the pride that private property and social position engender in his civilized counterpart; and such a man, he divined, was also more receptive to the ennobling instinct of family love.
How many horrors, starting with the French Revolution, have been engendered by the desire to create a world that might resurrect these supposedly lost virtues?
But a century before Rousseau wrote, man in the state of nature roamed the desolate woodlands of America, yet he expressed his compassion in odd ways, as young Father Jogues was to discover.
One of the early scenes he witnessed in New France was the arrival of a trading party of Algonquins in Three Rivers. He noticed first the poles decorated with human scalps fixed upright in their canoes. Then, he heard the wild whoops and the pounding of paddles against birch bark that signified a triumph in battle, and a fierce-looking figure standing in one of the hulls shouting defiance in the strange, guttural tongue of the Iroquois.
When the party stepped onto the shore, the Algonquins fell upon their Iroquois prisoner, beating him with clubs, cutting him with knives, chewing his fingers, searing his flesh with flaming torches, one of which was jammed down his throat. Men, women and children gleefully joined in the mutilation and torture until Father LeJeune, the Blackrobe, stepped into their midst and commanded them to stop.
His appeal was not to compassion, but to self-interest: he threatened to bar the Algonquins from trading at Three Rivers if they did not desist. Sullenly, they complied. They would have time later to “caress” their captive, as they put it.
Contra Rousseau, the only compassion evident on this occasion was that of the ultra-civilized man: the educated and refined Jesuit scholar turned missionary. And such was his compassion that he was willing to plunge headlong into a mortally dangerous situation from which most men would retreat in terror.
What dominated Isaac’s emotions upon first witnessing this extreme brutality was not disgust and revulsion, but pity. He conceived an intense and lasting desire to bring these cruel and debased people to God. He felt for them the most profound of all forms of family love: that they were his brothers for whom he would lay down his life. And so it was to be.
When Isaac Jogues presented himself at the age of 17 for entrance into the novitiate of the Society of Jesus in Rouen, Father Louis Lallemant asked the formula question: “What do you seek?” Isaac replied: “Ethiopia and martyrdom.” The priest shook his head: “Not so, my child. You will die in Canada.”
The Jesuits had just assumed responsibility for the mission begun by the Franciscan Recollet Fathers, who were the first to evangelize the Indians in the vast territory of New France. The Jesuits took up the task with their characteristic zeal and determination. What an incomparable band were these sons of St. Ignatius. When were there men more on fire with the love of Christ yet more prudent in their deliberations? They were wise as serpents yet gentle as doves, and perhaps the gentlest among them was the favorite child of a large and affluent family in Orleans, Isaac Jogues.
We possess many facts about his remarkable life among the savages, both as missionary and, later, as captive slave. We know a great deal about his dramatic escape and his no less dramatic return to the people who tortured and would eventually kill him. We can follow the events of his final embassies to the Iroquois, first as a representative of the governor and, finally, as a priest of Christ. We have abundant material from his own writings to his superiors and from the carefully detailed accounts of the Relations the Jesuit missionaries sent to their communities in France.
But the great heart of Isaac Jogues cannot be transcribed; only wondered at by lesser men.
So what can be accomplished within the scope of an article such as this? Nothing can be added to the historical material, nor can the meticulous scholarship and elegant style of Jesuit biographers Francis Talbot and John O’Brien be equalled or given due honor.
In approaching the soul of Isaac Jogues, I feel in some way as I imagine the early missionaries felt when they arrived in America: as though I were gazing on something wondrous; a vastness dimly understood and largely unexplored. For the faith of Isaac Jogues seems to belong to a time when giants roamed the earth: men so pure of heart and set in purpose that they must stand above us, looking down on our diminutive status, perhaps with a prayer that we might grow to the full height God has intended for us.
If I can accomplish anything in this brief space, it will be to show something of the beauty of a soul given wholly to Christ.
For “mon cher Isaac,” as his mother used to call him, there was but one reality: Christ. It was Christ he loved and served; it was to Christ he longed to bring the lost children of the new world. It was to Christ he offered his immense suffering, as though he were offering something so small and inadequate that he must make his oblation with apology for its paltriness.
After his thumb had been sawed off with a clamshell, he picked it up and offered it to Our Lord as reparation for all the times he had held the body and blood of Christ at the altar with insufficient love and reverence. We tend to read such accounts in passing, noting with admiration the stoical endurance displayed, but without pausing to appreciate the depth and constancy of feeling from which such a prayer arose.
I find it difficult to pray when I am in pain, for I tend wholeheartedly to wish that the pain will go away, and I avail myself of any remedies at hand to effect its cessation. To imagine my thumb being sawed off and my first thought at seeing my severed flesh to be that of my failure to respond as fully as I might have to God’s love rather staggers me.
But there appears never to have been a time when the heart and mind of Isaac Jogues was not fixed on his Lord. And so it was for his fellow Blackrobes.
Isaac’s first assignment was to join Father Jean de Brebeuf at the Jesuit mission in Ihonotiria, the principal village of the Hurons. He left Three Rivers with a trading party and traveled 900 miles over 19 days of paddling and portage, sometimes carrying canoes and supplies as many as ten miles through thick forests, and feeding only once a day on the corn mush that was the staple of the Indian diet.
Such journeys were a usual part of the life of the Blackrobes, whose mission territory encompassed all the land from the Hudson Bay to the Carolinas and from the Mississippi to the Atlantic Ocean. But such travels took their toll, physically if not mentally. The rigors of the wilderness seemed to have the effect of enervating their bodies while strengthening their minds. It was as though each seemingly insurmountable physical obstacle only increased their evangelical zeal and resolution.
Almost immediately after arriving in Ihonotiria, Jogues became deathly ill. An influenza epidemic was raging in the Huron villages. The medicine men blamed it on the arrival of the Blackrobes, whom they always portrayed as evil sorcerers intent upon the destruction of the Indians. They had powerful corroborating evidence for their claim.
Epidemics were common occurrences, and all natural phenomena were believed to be the work of spirits. The Jesuits would not baptize an adult Indian until the catechumen had been properly instructed and had proved the sincerity of his intention. The Indians were very fickle, espousing one day what they might denounce the next. So the missionaries performed the majority of their baptisms on the dying: mostly infants and children.
The medicine men told the people that it was the water and incantations of the Blackrobes that brought death. If the crops withered or the hunt failed, it was because the demon gods of the Hurons were displeased by the presence of the French sorcerers and withheld their favor; or because the Blackrobes had let loose an evil spirit upon the village to starve and kill the people. Every misfortune could be laid at their feet and their lives were always in peril.
Jogues recovered, and a council that had decreed death to the Blackrobes for bringing the plague failed to carry out the sentence. De Brebeuf, a tall and imposing figure whom the Indians called “Echon,” had walked boldly into their council in Ossosane and argued against the notion that he and his brothers wished the Indians harm. Perhaps his pleas had some effect. The behavior of the Indians was often inscrutable and highly unpredictable.
The Hurons dubbed Isaac “Ondessonk,” which was their word for a bird of prey. The reason for choosing the epithet is uncertain: either it was the closest they could come to pronouncing his name or perhaps his aquiline profile suggested it.
Language was the first challenge to the new missionaries. The Hurons spoke the generic tongue of the Iroquois, for whom they bore an implacable hatred, despite their sharing a common ancestry. To the French, the native tongue sounded crude: a string of guttural grunts. The language had only eight consonants. The Indians also possessed no script and so produced no written specimen of their language that could be studied.
De Brebeuf instructed Isaac and the other newcomers to Ihonotiria that they must be prepared to be silent among the Indians for a long time. He told them that though they were educated men, theologians and scholars in their own country, here they were humble elementary students. And their masters were to be the barbarians, even the women and children, of the Huron villages. Before they could preach, they must spend a long time listening and learning.
And although the language sounded crude, the missionaries discovered that it was quite complex, with a grammar as elaborate as ancient Greek and classical Latin.
De Brebeuf also told Isaac and the other neophytes that they must be prepared to die at every moment. There were many among their prospective converts who hated them, and this malice might be acted on at any time. Whenever they stepped out of a cabin or entered a village, it was entirely possible that someone would split their heads with a tomahawk. Then, he spoke these words of calm assurance: “Fear no difficulties; there will be none for you, since it is your whole consolation to see yourself crucified with the Son of God.”
And so our dear Isaac began his apprenticeship. After the plague in Ihonotiria abated, the Hurons abandoned it. It was their practice to leave a village after ten years or so, for by that time they would have depleted the soil, hunted most of the game and used up the nearby firewood. And when an epidemic struck, it often left the population decimated and the survivors merged with another village.
The villages were not large, ranging form a few hundred to a few thousand inhabitants. Most lived in houses about 35 feet in length and breadth, made of saplings covered with birch bark. There was an opening in the roof to let out the smoke of the constantly burning fire, but there was no proper draft and most of the smoke was trapped inside, where it irritated the eyes of the householders, often causing blindness in old age.
There were also long houses, about 200 feet in length. Several families gathered in these dwellings, each with its own fire along a central pit above which the roof was open. The Indians had no sense of privacy, nor any concept of hygiene. The stench in their dwellings was overpowering, and their dissolute behavior without self-conscious restraint.
It was in these circumstances that Isaac, reared in the refinements of an affluent family in Orleans, had to live and work. But he received every privation as though it were a precious gift. For he valued everything by only one currency: the salvation of souls. He wrote to his mother: “We have baptized about 240 of them this year....All the labors of a million persons, would they not be worthwhile if they gained one single soul for Christ?”
And so Isaac continued his labor of love. The Jesuits, after the Hurons had abandoned Ihonotiria, had decided to build a central outpost to serve as their headquarters in the Huron missions. Isaac was in charge of superintending the building of Sainte Marie, for he was as reliable in practical matters as he was devoted to his spiritual work. Sainte Marie became a refuge for the Hurons, too. Many would come there for temporary shelter or in time of want. It was also the place where adult converts came to be baptized.
In 1641, the great decennial Feast of the Dead was held among the Hurons. Distant tribes also traveled many weeks to attend, among which were the Chippewas from the shores of Lake Superior. The Jesuits, ever alert for opportunities to win souls for Christ, spoke to the Chippewas, who received their suggestion of a visitation to their lands favorably.
Isaac, by then a veteran, and Father Charles Raymbault were chosen to make the formidable journey. For weeks, they followed the Indians, paddling their canoe along seemingly endless stretches. Finally, they alighted at a place the Jesuits named Sault Ste. Marie. Isaac Jogues and Charles Raymbault were the first white men ever to set foot on the shores of Lake Superior.
They fashioned and planted a huge cross in the village, facing westward toward a land they were told was home to the Sioux nations. Isaac then addressed an assembly of 2,000 Chippewas, preaching to them in their own tongue the glories of the Faith and promising that a priest would return to teach and baptize them in the name of Christ.
And perhaps it would not be out of place to remark here upon a human aspect of the missionary work of Isaac and his brother Blackrobes: it was a great adventure. And with the exception of de Brebeuf, the missionaries were comparatively young men, or at least they had not reached that vestibule to middle age that leads a man into the room of his familiar comforts, where he prefers to stay. They exulted in new vistas, new challenges; they met hardships headlong. They had the explorer’s hunger for pushing ever deeper into the unknown. And if evangelical zeal was their principal motive force, I think it likely that they also experienced the sense of excitement that comes with discovery.
After leaving the Chippewas, the two Jesuits retraced the arduous path back to Sainte Marie. There, to his dismay, Isaac learned that the Iroquois were on the warpath, terrorizing the Algonquins and Hurons and sending their war parties north along the St. Lawrence River. But there was also good news: the mission among the Hurons was flourishing and an event of great significance was about to occur.
The most respected war chief, Ahatsistari, was being instructed in the Faith. On Easter Saturday 1642, he was baptized Eustace at Sainte Marie. The Huron church, the Jesuits felt, was now firmly established.
In June of that year, a trading party of Hurons was heading to Three Rivers. They would need to be accompanied by a priest. Father Jerome Lallemant, now superior, knew that whoever he chose might very well be captured, tortured and killed. He asked Isaac if he would undertake the mission. He readily agreed, and in June he, and the ailing Father Raymbault, then dying of tuberculosis, set out on a perilous journey accompanied by several canoes of Huron braves led by Eustace Ahatsistari.
Ahatsistari was feared and hated by the Iroquois. He had beaten them in battle many times, and his very name reminded them of their humiliations. The Iroquois also hated the French, as Governor Montmangy of Quebec had once assisted the Algonquins in a campaign that ended in defeat for the Iroquois, who had sworn revenge on the ally of their bitter enemy. But Ahatsistari had no fear, insisting that the Hurons could well defend themselves against an Iroquois war party.
The flotilla made it to Three Rivers and then to Quebec without incident. There, Isaac pleaded for missionaries to be sent to the Chippewas, but there were no new priests sent from France that year and no one to replace Raymbault, who had to be left in Quebec to be cared for.
On the return journey, every eye was alert for movement in the woods or for canoes in the distance. In a narrow stretch of waterway, when their canoes were moving close to the land, the sound of musket fire erupted. Out of the marsh reeds in front of them came the Iroquois. The rear canoes of the Hurons turned back, leaving the lead party to defend themselves. Then, from the rear, came another 40 Iroquois, cutting off the possibility of retreat.
(To be continued.)
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