by John Farrow
“You’ve chosen well, Father,” Jeanne Mance attested quietly. “Many men are dying here.”
The priest laughed, expressing the full joy of a man at peace with himself. “Then I have come to the right place! Paul, what did I hear you call this hamlet of mud and sticks?”
“The fort is named Perilous. Within the fort, we call this place Ville-Marie.”
“‘City of Mary’? City! I have visited cathedrals that had more priests than you have people, and you call this a city?”
“We know it will rise here, Father. One day.”
They talked that evening, the three of them, and it was good for the hosts to speak of what they had accomplished to an outsider, for they could see in his eyes and hear in his words a wonder expressed for their triumphs. Through the visitor’s perspective, they understood that they had progressed. Together, by candlelight, the three imagined a new political shape for their community. Father Lalemant believed, as he took to his pallet upon Maisonneuve’s floor, that he had been guided here by the hand of God. Maisonneuve required an adept political advisor, which happened to be his particular bailiwick, and why his uncle had, rather than encouraged, commanded him to travel here.
In the waning summer months, Pilote became the new heroine of the community, leaping high above the grass in a barking rage at her first sniff of Iroquois, then dashing back at the call of her youthful master as the men prepared their harquebusiers and the women retreated to the fort. Next, they’d hear the clatter in the woods as Iroquois struck the settlers’ trip lines, and as the warriors emerged from the trees, whooping and in a fury, they were met by sustained volleys of gunfire. Repeatedly, the small raiding parties were chased off, as occurred the very day that Father Gabriel Lalemant and Maisonneuve were travelling down the river to negotiate for their economic and military salvation with Montmagny, the governor of Quebec.
He dreamed of his uncle’s bees. They flitted among a selvage of wildflowers at the edge of the clearing as his Lord stepped down to greet him, extending a comforting hand and the radiant touch of ecstasy.
Father Gabriel Lalemant proved to be exceptionally adept as a political emissary, a busy bee himself. Not all actions were accomplished smoothly, nor did they gain a desired effect. In the creation of a new society, no one could lay claim to the expertise that anticipated every problem. Yet Lalemant carried influence among the Huron, who thought well of him because they thought well of his uncle before him, who had cared for their fathers and mothers in times of need. The younger priest earned their respect and learned to speak their language well. Whenever the governor frustrated the aspirations of Ville-Marie, Father Gabriel murmured in an offhand manner that the fur trade might suffer as a consequence, that the Company of One Hundred Associates who held a monopoly over furs might soon be driven to bankruptcy.
Thinking out loud in this way, he pondered the result if the Huron should decide to dispatch their furs south to the Dutch at Fort Orange, and enter into a treaty with the Iroquois. Given that their association with the French did little for them except to get them killed, the development could readily be imagined. Lalemant did not issue threats. He did not suggest that he might himself cause these dire predictions to come true. He merely postulated various scenarios and allowed Montmagny to infer the consequences. He was fortunate. He was unaware that the company was teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, and so did not grasp the fullness of the fear his words caused Montmagny and the businessmen of Quebec. Those in power understood that any prolonged disruption to the flow of beaver pelts would conclude the French experience in the New World.
Father Gabriel Lalemant gazed across the meadow where his uncle had been tortured before him and where so many Indians had gathered. Fires flared in the distance. The beating of the drums had commenced behind him, and in his fatigue he looked to the skies and felt the warmth of the sun upon his brow. In gazing across time, he had many triumphs to consider, and many difficulties also, some of which had proven insurmountable.
The Jesuit influence among the Indians became an advantage the priest pressed to alter political and economic conventions. New France would come to be ruled by a Superior Council of three men: Maisonneuve, who would be given the title of governor of Montreal; Father Lalemant himself; and the governor of Quebec, Montmagny. The Community of Habitants was formed, a commercial enterprise charged with rescuing the fur trade. The new company would pay a levy to the senior firm for each fur sold, fund the garrison at Ville-Marie and undertake the maintenance of the Jesuit priests there. In exchange, the enterprise received a trading monopoly extending west from the St. Lawrence River. At the same time, in France, Dauversière forged an agreement with the Community of Habitants so that Ville-Marie would be allowed a trading store, a move that promised to make the nascent city a commercial centre. The future of the besieged band seemed bright.
Within a year of the new alliance taking effect, Ville-Marie’s future appeared grim again. The new company was interested only in drawing money out as quickly as possible, neglecting the communities it pretended to serve, and everywhere the Iroquois had intensified their raids. The Huron began to buckle under relentless attacks. The number of furs they delivered in 1646 was sharply depleted from previous seasons, and in 1647 that supply dried up entirely. Profits for the Community of Habitants vanished. Lalemant and Maisonneuve took action again, and this time their petitions reached the table of the Royal Council in France. Three commissioners were named to straighten out the affairs in New France, and Lalemant and Maisonneuve, upon hearing the news, grinned like children at Christmas. That night, they drank French brandy, for each of the three commissioners selected turned out to be, secretly, members of the Society of Our Lady of Montreal, their very own group, and with that stroke of a quill, power in the region shifted away from Quebec and Montmagny to Ville-Marie and Maisonneuve.
In the clear air, a small rogue cloud blotted the sun. Father Lalemant was grateful for the respite. He felt cooler, and closed his eyes, and prayed. He considered many things.
Perhaps his most crucial advice came later. Maisonneuve used his new power and the influence of friends in France to retire Montmagny. He was then asked to be governor of all New France himself, which seemed to be a great blessing, an advantage, yet his friend and advisor Lalemant shook his head no. The priest’s position was reinforced by Jeanne Mance, who adamantly said no. The offer was a ploy. Should he accept, his energies would be diverted elsewhere, his responsibilities would become more widespread, and eventually his power, seemingly enhanced, would be depleted as he sought to satisfy diverse demands. Maisonneuve accepted his friends’ counsel and turned down the position, but managed to have the builder and architect of Fort Perilous and Ville-Marie, his friend Louis d’Ailleboust, made governor instead. At the same time, he had the commissioners address the shortcomings of the Community of Habitants, which led to yet another division of powers. Under the new regime, he was removed from the Superior Council, which was not a concern, given that he had already installed his man in the top post.
Father Lalemant made one more critical suggestion that altered the future of the colony. He developed a network of volunteers, men for whom he revived the name coureurs de bois, runners of the woods. These wild men of the forest would continue to develop the skills necessary to live and fight in the wilderness, and they would become close to the Indians, following in the footsteps of Étienne Brulé. Such men would give the French an advantage over the Dutch, and the English, too, whose communities were growing dramatically around Boston and Manhattan. The Dutch stayed in their forts, and the English were not active in the fur trade, except as merchants. As well, these bold, young men would be attached to particular villages—and Lalemant would ensure that many made Ville-Marie their home—bringing back furs to be sold through the merchants in their home communities. As well, he envisioned these coureurs de bois travelling farther into the continent, to the west, north and south, to claim ever-greater expanses for the king.
The wise and experienced priest, now thirty-eight years old, reflected upon these matters in the long minutes he had before his captors returned their attentions to him and sliced out his tongue and clawed his nipples off his chest. His testicles were torn away after that and force-fed to Huron captives, men he had converted. In his agony, he may have screamed, but he believed only that he called out to his God and Lord for mercy and forgiveness as blood filled his mouth, throat and lungs. From the hillock where he stood lashed to a stake, he could see the fires where whole villages lay pillaged and burning, and his heart swelled with the anguish of their demise. He moaned for all the Huron people. Voiceless now, he called to God to forgive the Iroquois even as they stoked the fire that scorched his feet and ankles.
Slowly, the flames scaled his legs. His loss of blood helped him fall into a stupor. He would awaken to his own body raging against him, and he cried out, yet made no sound. Angels descended from a cloud, and he was dreaming of bees, flitting among the trim flowers outside his uncle’s home in France and also amid the wildflowers of the Huron lands. His heart burst with a new passion, with love and a deep longing as Father Gabriel Lalemant was stripped clean of his body.
In the fall of 1650, one Father Paul Ragueneau and a handful of Huron survivors passed through Ville-Marie by canoe, paddling downriver to the greater security of Quebec. Maisonneuve brought Ragueneau into his hut, where he fed him beans and pork and bread, and they sat together, with Jeanne Mance also in attendance, listening. He told them of Father Brébeuf’s martyrdom, and Father Lalemant’s, then detailed the more devastating news. He counselled, “In this place, you are about sixty Frenchmen, twenty Huron, a few Algonquin and two of our Fathers.”
Maisonneuve nodded. The correct number of French was fifty-nine.
“Thirty thousand Huron have been massacred, or captured and brought into slavery, or routed,” he reported. “Corpses darken fields as far as an eagle’s eye can see. Villages have been razed, the fires without end. Huron children were cooked on spits, their parents delivered to hideous deaths. Paul, our Fathers were subjected to unspeakable cruelties. How will you, a band of sixty, hold out when thirty thousand Huron could not? Thirty … thousand. For the love of God, save yourselves. For the time of your martyrdom will be ordained according to the pleasure of the Iroquois.”
They fell to a silence, grieving over the news. Only when the stove fire dimmed and the evening cooled did Jeanne Mance speak, wrapping her shawl around her. “Forgive me, Father,” she said, her voice grave, “but the hour of our deaths will be chosen by God, not by Iroquois.”
The guest did not argue against her point of view, but he wondered if he had not fully transcribed the horror he had witnessed. Some moments later, though, her voice resumed in the candlelight.
“What have we done?” she inquired, a question Father Ragueneau felt was not asked of him, but rather was directed inwardly, to herself. “We came here to convert the Indians, and now the Huron have been massacred and we are at war with the Iroquois.”
The weight of her words fell upon the shoulders of Maisonneuve.
That night, Jeanne Mance gathered the people of Ville-Marie together before the communal altar and asked that they pray the whole night through. Thousands of souls had flown to heaven, and they were to ask the Heavenly Father to receive His Huron children. They would also light candles for the souls of Father Brébeuf and Father Lalemant, trusted friends of their community who had been martyred.
The men and women of Ville-Marie looked to one another, and held one another, and wept, for the lives of those who had been lost and for the tribulation of that hour. Never had a time been so perilous. “We shall carry on,” Jeanne Mance declared simply, and she knelt before the altar. Maisonneuve knelt beside her, and in his hands upraised the Cartier Dagger as a symbol of their perseverance, their resilience and their good hope.
The men and women of Fort Perilous prayed, their fervour ignited all the more by the prospect of annihilation.
The restoration of the mountain cross remained on a list of projects for the community at Ville-Marie, but practical matters had a habit of taking precedence. Devotees still made the trek up the mountainside to pray where the cross had been erected before the Iroquois had committed their desecration, toppling it and gouging it with their axes and partially burning it before the fire was doused by a downpour. Maisonneuve had not arranged to meet Jeanne Mance there—nevertheless they chanced upon one another at the sacred spot. Each had come with an escort of three armed men in case of attack.
“I’ve been thinking,” Maisonneuve admitted.
“Have you?”
“Of the matter we’ve discussed.”
“It bears hard thought. And prayer.”
Winter, as seen in the leaden sky, was imminent. The leaves were down, the breeze cool and brisk. The waterfowl had departed. Following the first fall of snow, this pilgrimage would become more difficult.
“I’ve decided,” Maisonneuve said.
“Yes?” Jeanne Mance knew the import of this decision. If he chose to execute their plan, he would be gone awhile, and the survival of the colony would rest in her hands. If he decided to stay, she’d be spared that considerable burden, yet they would be obliged to persevere on hope alone, without any real expectations.
“I’m returning to France,” Maisonneuve revealed.
Although the idea had begun with her, moving it towards reality was difficult to bear. Already strained, in her frailty, from the hike up the mountain, Jeanne Mance partially seated herself upon a boulder, absorbing the news. “It must be done,” she said. “We cannot go it alone.”
Over time, he had come to agree with her. Although the idea of crossing the Atlantic at this difficult time in the colony’s life filled him with foreboding, they desperately needed new and skilled recruits, men who could use a gun but also an axe or a hoe, women who could plant corn one day and weave garments the next. A few of their people had died or been killed, and others had fled home. In any case, they needed to do much more than merely recoup their losses. The time had come to either dramatically expand or perish.
“There’s a problem about costs. Right now, I don’t have the money to travel to France and recruit new settlers. It’ll take time and persuasion.”
Clearly, he was broaching the issue to see if she could propose a solution. In her usual efficient manner, she had long anticipated the question and had devised a financial scheme.
“The hospital fund has money. Madame de Bullion set aside the original donation when we first arrived, for our expansion. I have corresponded with her. She is in complete agreement. We have no need to enlarge the hospital at this time, so the money can be put to another use. In order to secure it, I have proposed that we offer land to the hospital to hold the loan, until such time as the funds can be reimbursed.”
“How much?”
“Twenty thousand livres.”
That would be sufficient, and Maisonneuve took heart. “Let’s do that, then. We’ll let the citizens know the plan.”
“The financing remains our compact,” Jeanne Mance corrected him. “Madame de Bullion insists that her generosity remain a secret.”
Maisonneuve often chose to work this way. “Agreed,” he declared.
“When do you go?” she asked.
“A ship is at Quebec right now. If my paddlers are in good form, I can make it before departure.”
“I see.” She lowered her head. This was sounding quite real. “Well, then.”
Maisonneuve took a deep breath. He looked over the countryside from the mountain’s aerie. The St. Lawrence, never bothered, plodded on. In the distance, south, the lumbering hills from which the Iroquois faithfully emerged were smudged by cloud. “Jeanne. Something else requires our agreement. I am leaving with the expectation of finding one hundred new settlers. Should I fail, I shall not return. I will only send word. You must promise me, on your honour under God, on your oath, that if I cannot find one hundred new men and
women, you will dissolve Ville-Marie and return everyone, including yourself, to France.”
There it was.
While they had often debated the colony’s survival, never had matters come down to a simple premise: we cross this line, or we accept our failure. The next few years would be arduous, the risk of being annihilated ever-present. With the Huron nation decimated, the prospects for the fur trade were abysmal, and with the Iroquois likely to be on the warpath, the risks in gathering a harvest were extreme. Life would be strenuous, and, with their commander gone, precarious. Two prospects were nagging her. Maisonneuve might fail. He might not be able to persuade enough daring souls to travel across the ocean to a land of hardship and harrowing terror. Or he might succeed, and return, only to find his beloved village razed to the ground, each of its citizens charred on a stake or, God willing, buried.
“If you hear that we have been destroyed,” she told him, “then you, too, must abandon the mission. At least I will know, as I turn into flames, that my death will have spared those who have not yet arrived a similar fate.”
“You will vow to come home, should I fail?” he pressed her again.
“Home?” she asked. “This is home. But I shall do as you say. If you are unable to provide us with a minimum of one hundred new citizens, then I shall abolish the community here and return us all to France.”
For that one moment, they stepped away from their solitary lives. Jeanne Mance stretched her hand forward, and Maisonneuve clasped it, not to shake it in any formal way, but to hold her palm and entwine their fingers, a momentous act of intimacy neither would forget. Then he signalled to their guards, and cautiously the group made its way down the rocky mountainside.
The years proved unbearably hard while Maisonneuve tramped through France, trying to recruit immigrants. The Iroquois, having vanquished the Huron, travelled the St. Lawrence River, marauding at will. Excursions beyond the walls of Fort Perilous became rare for the residents there. Confined, they danced to fiddlers’ tunes and sang the music they’d learned in France. And they began to sing new songs, too. They prayed and worked hard and maintained their weapons in fighting trim. Young boys were taught to shoot before they could handle a gardening implement, and young girls, if allowed beyond the gates at all, carried extra gunpowder upon their backs in case a prolonged fight ensued before they made it back.