# Myths and Legends Beyond Our Borders/The Missions

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THE MISSIONS
ALTHOUGH we concede the benefits given to new lands by commercial enterprise and their conquest by enlightened peoples, in the case of Canada it must be confessed that religious enthusiasm accomplished more, both for the explorers and for the natives, than any other cause. The first men to force a way to the inland lakes, to map the plains, rivers, and mountains, to effect a peace with the savages, were the missionaries, and but for ​their eagerness for the conversion of the Indians the safety and material development of the country might have been long deferred. The Jesuits were especially courageous. Their enthusiasm defied all threats and survived all torture. One missionary. Father Jogues, was shockingly maltreated, and his hand was chopped off, yet he regarded these things only as passing pains, and kept on with his work. Another, who had been hunted off to the woods, was found there frozen to death, in the attitude of prayer. A missionary on the upper Ottawa was roasted over a slow fire, hot axes were placed about his neck and head, and in mockery he was baptized with boiling water. Yet to his last breath he implored divine protection for his tormentors. After the capture of Fort Ignace, on Lake Simcoe, the missionaries Lalemant and De Brébeuf were cruelly used. The former was covered with bark, roasted, and partly eaten before his voice ceased in prayer. His companion enraged the savages by his indifference, for he seemed careless of suffering, though they kept him alive for three hours to endure it, and at the last they ate his heart, in order that his courage and fortitude might pass into their bodies.
It was such heroism that subdued the savagery of the red men and turned them into poor, dull, ambitionless people, to the comfort of the palefaces, who are now able to cheat them in trade without the risk of so much as a prod in the solar plexus. The contrast between the conduct of the ​French explorers and that of the soldiers and dealers who arrived later is a contrast between religious France of the seventeenth century and Brummagem of the nineteenth. Even the Hudson Bay and Northwest companies have not escaped censure, for it has been alleged that when a gun paid for as many beaver-skins as would reach to the muzzle of it, the skins packed flat and the gun held upright, the barrel of the weapon grew and grew with each successive year until the Indian, after he had bought it with the peltry, had to borrow a file and cut off a foot of useless metal. And it is a fact that when certain red men received pay in five-dollar bills they readily exchanged one of those pieces of paper for two silver dollars, for they could not read the number on the bill.
Missionaries encouraged the building of shrines and churches, and people who had visions or heard voices were invited to commemorate the circumstance. Our Lady of the Snows, for instance, appeared to a Breton cavalier who had lost his way while hunting on Trois Rivières, and lighted him to a forge, where he found shelter. In return for this mercy he was induced by the priests to rear a shrine to her at Ville Marie, "the city of the mount," and so it came about that the Church of Our Lady of the Snows was erected on "the priests' farm" in Montreal.
There is a faint and melancholy fear that the missionaries did a little cheating, from purely ​religious motives. It has been set forth that the giant devil who infested Les Islets Machins, in the St. Lawrence, was not an entirely disingenuous creation. The Jesuits are charged with telling the Indians that he used a pine-tree as a club, that he sprang upon people who were fishing in his neighborhood or innocently paddling up and down the river, and, discovering by an instinct that never erred, which of them had not been baptized, he brained them forthwith, sparing only the Christians. This tale led to so many conversions that the giant fled in disgust, for lack of occupation. So, too, the report that Cap de la Madelaine, on the St. Lawrence, was haunted by a Magdalen who cried all night for Christian burial, may have had its deterrent effect on the thoughtless or immoral among the women of the settlements. The braillard de la Madelaine has been otherwise ascribed to the soul of a murderous wrecker, to a priest who allowed a babe to die without baptism, and to a little boy that alone survived a wreck, though only for a few hours.
Was Christianity taught before the time of the Jesuits? Did the Norsemen teach it? When Cartier landed at Gaspé Basin on the St. Lawrence, and planted a cross on shore with great solemnity, he saw with surprise that the natives made obeisance to this object, as one with which they were familiar, although this was in 1536, and Cartier was supposed to be the first white man in that region. The narrative ​of the Indians was to the effect that long before, when they had been troubled by a pestilence, their old men had a medicine dream, in which there appeared before them "a man exceedingly beautiful, with a cross in his hand, who bade them return home, make crosses like his, and present them to the heads of families, assuring them that they would find therein a remedy for all their ills." This was done; it worked a cure, and the cross became a talisman from that time forth. Was the "beautiful man" a remembered description of Christ, or was it one of the "white men clothed in wool," of northern tradition, who were undoubtedly Norse explorers? Respecting these latter, the Milicites, or Meliseets, tell of a visit of tall, pale strangers who drove away the red men, built houses of stone, swigged mighty draughts from horns, shouting as they drank, and were overwhelmed by an earthquake that changed the course of the St. John River. The Micmacs—by some alleged to be the lost Beothuks of Newfoundland—tell of a woman's dream, long before Cartier's landing, in which she saw an island floating toward the land with trees upon it, and creatures dressed in skins. Next day the island appeared in fact, but it was a ship; the trees were masts, and the creatures were men who spoke in a strange tongue, making signs of friendship. One man, dressed in white, lived among them for a time, and tried to teach a new religion, but, although he found some listeners, the wise men refused to heed ​him, because the dream had been granted to a woman and not to a medicine-man.
Unqualified praise can be given to the missionaries of all sects and of no sect that have sought for the elevation of the red man, but they have sometimes discovered that he was less of a savage than he looked. The conduct of Chief Joseph, of the Nez Percés, in the war so cruelly and unjustly waged against him, was admirable in its forbearance. Instances of generosity and self-sacrifice are many. A Canadian clergyman, relating to a company of Blackfeet the measures common in civilized states for the care of orphaned children, explained that if his own children were left fatherless his property would be sold, or managed by an executor for their benefit, so that they might continue to secure board, clothing, and education. The Indians were both amused and astonished. "The white people are savages," said one. When any people die in our camps and leave little children, we take them into our lodges. The best piece of buffalo meat we give to them. We clothe and train them. They are our bone and flesh. They have no father or mother, so we are all fathers and mothers. White people do not love their children. They have to be paid for loving orphans." The respect in which the aborigines hold their ancestors, at least when the latter are dead, is in contrast with the lack of honor that the dead sometimes have from the civilized. There is a cave at Mistassini ​that the Indians never approach closely, lest they should seem to spy on the ghosts of their fathers, who were buried there in other ages, and who still sit there, holding councils.
And seldom do the Indians hear from the missionaries an eloquence equal to their own. Listen to this prayer of a Piegan to a mountain manitou: "Hear, now, you Chief Mountain, you who stand foremost; listen, I say, to the mourning of the people. Now the days are truly become evil, and are not as they used to be in ancient times. But you know you have seen the days. Under your fallen garments the years lie buried. Then the days were full of joy. The buffalo covered the prairie, and the people were glad. Then they had warm dwellings, soft robes for covering, and the feasting was without end. Hear, now, you Mountain Chief. Listen, I say, to the mourning of the people. Their lodges and their clothing now are made of strange, thin stuff, and the long days come and go without the feast, for our buffalo are gone. The drum now is useless, for who would sing and dance while hunger gnawed him? Hear, now, you who stand among the clouds. Pity, I say, your starving people. Give us back those happy days. Once more cover the prairie with real food, so that your children may live again. Hear, I say, the prayer of your unhappy people. Bring back those ancient days. Then will our prayers again be strong. You will be happy, and the aged will die content."