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As the villages of Huronia fell one by one, their harried inhabitants evaluated their options. Famine, and the vulnerability to disease that malnutrition entailed, compounded the woes of war. While many Wendat men and women chose to “to throw themselves into the arms of the enemy” individually or in groups during the assault on their desolated homeland, others remained intent on avoiding incorporation among the Iroquois. Some scattered in small groups in the forests north of Lake Huron or west towards Lake Michigan and Lake Superior, while others sought refuge in vain among neighbouring Iroquoian groups, the Tionnontaté (Petuns), Neutrals, and Eries. A few even contemplated finding refuge among their distant Susquehannock allies to the south, in what is today Pennsylvania.49 It is in this diasporic context that many resolved to cast their lot with the French, relocating first within Huronia, and eventually to the Saint Lawrence valley and the vicinity of Quebec.
For a people to seek temporary or permanent refuge in the arms of a friendly nation, even a distant one, was not an uncommon occurrence in the Great Lakes region, or for that matter throughout Indigenous North America. This pattern represented an extension of the notions of hospitality and of the mutual obligations that undergirded alliance, friendship, and trade. Missionaries had witnessed the prevalence of this firsthand. In 1639, in a bid to avoid defeat at the hands of the Iroquois, six hundred Wenros from the south shore of Lake Ontario negotiated their move to Huronia. As Paul Ragueneau would explain:
It is customary among these peoples, even with the unbelievers, that, when a nation seeks refuge in any foreign country, those who receive them immediately distribute them over different households, where they not only give them lodging, but also the necessities of life […]. I have very often seen this hospitality practiced among the Hurons: as many times as we have seen nations devastated, or villages destroyed, or some fugitive people, seven or eight hundred persons would find, as soon as they arrived, benevolent hosts, who stretched out to them their arms, and assisted them with joy, who would even divide among them a share in lands already sown, in order that they might be able to live, although in a foreign country, as in their motherland.50
The idea of living in the Saint Lawrence valley was not entirely new either. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, the Wendats had absorbed some of the Saint Lawrence Iroquoians. As with the Algonquins of the Ottawa River discussed in the previous chapters, it is certain that some of them maintained intergenerational memories of village life along the Saint Lawrence River. Though the seventeenth-century sources make no suggestion that the refugees harboured a sense that they were returning to ancestral territories, statements recorded in later years hint that this may have been the case. In 1773, one of the leaders of the Wendats of Lorette, near Quebec, one of the several communities descended from the Wendat diaspora, declared to a British deputy superintendent of Indian Affairs that they were regarded by all other Indigenous nations as the “original proprietors of this country.” Three years later, a German visitor to the same community elicited from its members the explanation that their people had “by many and bloody wars with the neighboring Indian nations and with Europeans, lost all their land […] Formerly, their land extended from the Island of Orleans, on the St. Lawrence, to Montreal.” In the nineteenth century, the members of another community descended from this diaspora, the Wyandots of Anderdon, Ontario, held that their ancestors had in distant times inhabited “a country north-eastward from the mouth of the St. Lawrence, somewhere along the gulf coast,” and that subsequently they had villages in the vicinity of where Montreal and Quebec were later established. As a result of war, they had migrated westward, from “their ancient homes” to the Great Lakes.51
Through the early decades of the seventeenth century, Wendats paddled down the Saint Lawrence on a regular basis to trade with their Algonquian and French allies, and to take part in military operations alongside them. It was not uncommon for them to remain for several months at a time at Quebec, Trois Rivières, or Kamiskouaouangachit, particularly when the onset of winter or enemy blockades delayed their return journey.52 As early as 1637, the Jesuits dreamt that the handful of Wendats who were receiving religious instruction at Quebec would form the core of a permanent community there, and that within a few years “there would be here a village of Christian Hurons, who would help in no slight degree to bring their compatriots to the faith, through commerce with each other.” In these years it was hoped that their sedentary way of life would incite the nomadic Innu and Algonquins to settle down and adopt a more disciplined lifestyle.53 After the founding of Ville Marie on the Island of Montreal in 1642, some Wendats, like the Ottawa River Algonquins discussed in the previous chapters, showed an interest in resettling there as long as the French were willing and able to provide them with assistance against their Iroquois enemy.54 Nothing came of it until the Iroquois invasion of Huronia pressed the issue.
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The journey to the Saint Lawrence valley was by all accounts a Wendat initiative. In early 1649, the Wendats displaced by war assembled at the fortified but increasingly vulnerable mission of Sainte Marie and dispatched one of their captains – the Christianized Arendarhonon chief Jean-Baptiste Atironta, it is almost certain – to Quebec to see if the French might give their assent to their resettlement there and to ask for material assistance to undertake the move.55 As they awaited a response, most of the community fell back with its missionaries to the nearby island of Gahoendoe or Saint Joseph (today Christian Island, in Georgian Bay), where other Wendats had already taken refuge and where more soon flocked. The hastily fortified mission at Gahoendoe, dubbed Sainte Marie (II), was crowded; Ragueneau, overestimating by perhaps a few thousands, claimed that its population reached a hundred cabins, each of which contained sixty to eighty persons, or between six and eight thousand in all. After enduring a winter of great famine and unrelenting enemy depredations during which many perished, the majority intended to disperse in small groups through the forest, among distant nations, or, with resignation, cross over to the enemy. Some leaders, however, fearing that “the greater number will meet their death where they hope to find life,” and wishing to maintain a measure of social cohesion among their people, were intent on preventing this dispersion.56
In May or June 1650, before Atironta had even returned from Quebec with an answer as to the French stance on his people’s migration, the refugees of Gahoendoe convened a major council to discuss the situation. As a result, two of the eldest captains, said to represent about six hundred persons, approached Father Ragueneau. “My brother, take courage,” the unnamed men pleaded. “You alone can bestow upon us life, if you will strike a daring blow. Choose a place where you may be able to reassemble us, and prevent this dispersion. Cast your eyes toward Quebec, and transport thither the remnants of this ruined nation. Do not wait until famine and war have slain the last of us. […] If you listen to our wishes, we will build a Church under shelter of the fort at Quebec. There, our faith will not die out; and the examples of the Algonquins and of the French will hold us to our duty. Their charity will alleviate, in part, our miseries.”57
Whether or not this speech was an accurate reflection of the speakers’ religious conviction, the request was couched in terms that were bound to appeal to the Jesuit missionaries at Gahoendoe. After much consultation and prayer for divine guidance, the latter concluded that “God had spoken to us by the lips of these captains,” and that the time had come to undertake a speedy retreat towards the Saint Lawrence valley. Approximately three hundred Wendats, described as “almost all […] Christians,” left in the company of their missionaries on 10 June 1650. Betraying some doubt that this hasty eastward journey was the wisest course of action, the other three hundred who had also expressed an interest promised to follow after the harvest.58
The route up Lake Huron to the French River, up to Lake Nipissing, down the Mattawa and Ottawa Rivers, to the Saint Lawrence and then on to Quebec, took roughly fifty days. Passing alo
ng the Island of Montreal and contemplating the area’s advantages, this first group of refugees gave some thought to establishing themselves there but decided against it owing to its exposure to the enemy. They reached Quebec on 28 July.59
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Having reached Quebec, most of the Wendat refugees erected their longhouses in the Upper Town between the Ursulines’ monastery and the Augustinians’ hospital, a short distance from the Jesuits’ residence and the governor’s seat at Château Saint Louis. About a third of the refugees was taken in by the Augustinians, the Ursulines, and their secular foundress and benefactress Marie-Madeleine de la Peltrie, who had a house nearby, as well as three or four other prominent townspeople. The others established encampments close to the Hôtel Dieu or on the Jesuit estates of Notre Dame des Anges, east of Quebec, and Sillery, at or near the mission of Kamiskouaouangachit.60 It was with mixed feelings that the French must have welcomed them, for the colony was in the midst of a financial crisis. In addition to years of mismanagement by the Company of New France, that held exclusive rights to the fur trade and ultimate responsibility for the settlement, the Iroquois offensive now shattered the commercial network that until then stretched into the continent’s interior. Still, French and Algonquians alike welcomed the refugees. Most certainly the people of Kamiskouaouangachit held a council to welcome the newcomers, whom they recognized as “their Ancestors’ allies” and who had become brothers in the Christian faith. “Since I was baptized,” explained one of the mission’s leaders on another occasion, “it seems to me that I have gained a great many relatives. When I enter the Frenchmen’s Church, I am told that the French are my relatives. When I see a baptized Huron, I look upon him as my relative.”61
Unable to see to their own subsistence for the first several months after their arrival, the Wendats relied heavily on the daily distributions of corn and pea soup by the missionaries and nuns.62 On 30 December 1650, the refugees who had found some relief at Quebec endured a new and unexpected ordeal when fire broke out at the Ursuline monastery. Spreading from the bakery a few hours after midnight, by morning it left little of the building standing. The nuns and their boarders escaped in their nightclothes, managing to save but a few things. The Wendats shared in the Ursulines’ suffering. Over the past year, the nuns had shouldered part of the task of providing for the refugees. Since their arrival a little over a decade ago, they had developed intimate connections with some Wendat families whose girls spent time in their school. Several Wendats had been in the building when the fire started. The father of one girl, who was at first thought to have perished in the flames before being located alive, found solace in religion and in the strength of his relationship to the French.“God sends us a severe trial,” he declared, “but it is enough for us that he has had mercy on us and has called us to the faith. My daughter is now in Heaven, since she has been baptized; and we will follow her, because we wish to die good Christians.”63
The Wendat refugee community as a whole echoed these sentiments, meeting with the Ursulines at the Augustinian convent where they had found shelter after the fire. On behalf of his people, a captain by the name of Louis Taiaeronk addressed the “Holy Virgins.” He described their sorry state, their destruction by war and famine: “These carcasses are able to stand only because you support them.” “Alas!” he went on, “this sad accident that has happened to you increases our woes and renews our tears.” The sight of a house of prayer and charity reduced to ashes in an instant, explained Taiaeronk, had been a bitter reminder of the desolation of their ancestral homeland. It had “brought back to our minds the universal destruction by fire of all our houses, of all our villages, and of the whole of our country. Must fire follow us everywhere? Let us weep, let us weep, my beloved countrymen; yes, let us weep for our misfortunes which were solely ours before, but which we now share in common with these innocent maids.” The Ursulines had now been “reduced to the same state of misery as your poor Hurons […] You are now without a country, without a house, without provisions, and without succor except from Heaven, of which you never lose sight.”64
It was an opportunity for the Wendat refugees to express their collective grief and gratitude to the Ursulines, and to reciprocate the compassion and charity that they had received from them. They presented the nuns with two large wampum belts, of twelve hundred beads each, which were believed to amount to all of the wampum they had taken with them from their homeland. This gift, even as it was meant to express condolences, was also calculated to prevent the loss of a precious ally. “We fear but one thing which would be a misfortune for us,” declared Taiaeronk. “We fear that, when the news of the accident that has happened to you reaches France, it will affect your relatives more than it does yourselves. We fear that they will recall you and that you will be moved by their tears.” The reflexes of Iroquoian matrilineality shine through these words. Thinking of the grief that the news would cause the mothers of the nuns back in France, the refugees worried that, “the first thought that nature will inspire in those disconsolate mothers will be to recall you to them, and to procure for themselves the greatest consolation that they can have in the world, thereby procuring also your good. A brother would do the same for his sister, an uncle and an aunt for their niece. And afterward we would be in danger of losing you, and of losing in your persons the assistance for which we had hoped.” Taiaeronk and his people urged the nuns to be steadfast: “Do not allow yourselves to be persuaded by love of kindred; and show now that the charity that you have for us is stronger than the ties of nature.” Taiaeronk offered the first wampum belt, to “root your feet so deeply in the soil of this country that no love for your kindred or for your own country can withdraw them from it.” With the second belt, he asked the nuns to lay the foundation of a new building, a house of prayer, where schooling could resume – as well as the dispensation of both spiritual and material assistance. The echo of the Wendats’ own experience is palpable. They had faced this very predicament, not only the destruction of their homes, but also the pressures of kin. In relocating to Quebec, they had resisted the calls, from enemies and kin alike, to withdraw in other directions or to relocate to Iroquoia.“Such are our desires,” concluded Taiaeronk, “they are likewise yours, for doubtless you could not die happy if, when dying, this reproach could be cast at you that, through too tender a love for your relatives, you had not contributed to the salvation of so many souls which you have loved for the sake of God, and which will be your crown in Heaven.”65
The encounter of the Wendats and the Ursulines points to the importance of reciprocity in this story, but also to the underlying significance of women. Although men appear to dominate the discussions and decisions that led a large number of Wendats to the Saint Lawrence valley, this gendered bias is above all a result of the malegenerated nature of the colonial record. As stressed earlier in this chapter, women exerted considerable influence in matters of policy and collective decision making, particularly so in matters of dispersal and resettlement, which were intimately linked to their gender’s traditional areas of responsibility. The decision to abandon a village site – households, fields, lands – in favour of another one was a central concern for women.66 It is most certain that behind the actions of such male figures as Jean-Baptiste Atironta or Louis Taiaeronk lay the will of a key number of senior women who believed or at least hoped that their clans would find a safer haven near the French in the Saint Lawrence valley than anywhere else. Though the French chroniclers of this upheaval are singularly inattentive to this fact in their writings, it is fair to suspect that this resettlement involved specific matrilineages and clan segments rather than a mere collection of individuals and nuclear families.67
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Wendat and Jesuit plans in the medium and long term are unclear. The idea of integrating the refugee community with the Algonquians at Kamiskouaouangachit may have been entertained briefly, but in light of the differences between the two neophyte communities this was never attempted. In the sprin
g of 1650, the missionaries considered installing the Wendats on their domain at Notre Dame des Anges, about five kilometers downriver from Quebec. But the governor, the missionaries, and the Wendats themselves instead set their sights on the western tip of the still wooded and thinly populated Island of Orleans in the Saint Lawrence River. Amidst rocky outcrops they selected a sandy cove which, in addition to offering a convenient embarkation point, was well supplied with fresh water by means of a small creek. In later years, the site would take on the name of “Anse du Fort” (Fort Cove) in memory of this establishment. In the final week of March 1651, the Wendats, who had been scattered throughout the region, gathered there. A few months later they were joined by the approximately three hundred individuals who initially had remained behind at Gahoendoe, but who after fleeing north to Manitoulin Island now resolved to join their countrymen near Quebec.68
Figure 3.2 France, in the guise of its regent Queen Anne, brings the Christian faith to the Wendats. While the representation of intercultural relationships, material culture, and Saint Lawrence valley landscape are fanciful, this allegorical painting is indicative of how the French conceptualized their missionary project. (Attributed to Frère Luc, La France apportant la foi aux Hurons de Nouvelle France, ca. 1666. Musée des Ursulines de Québec)
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