Sainte Marie Among The Hurons, Circa. 1954 Publication Signed First Edition Part 2

PART TWO
SAINTE MARIE AMONG THE HURONS, A BOOK ABOUT DISCOVERY - I AM IN AWE OF THE WORK BY ITS AUTHORS TO SHOWCASE CANADIAN HERITAGE

WRITTEN BY WILFRID AND ELSIE JURY, AND MY SIGNED COPY OF THE 1954 FIRST EDITION, WHAT A FIND!

     I have been working as a regional historian from the day I planned the inaugural meeting, of what would soon become the Bracebridge Historical Society, in the spring of 1978, and I felt pretty juiced, let me tell you, when Woodchester Villa and Museum, opened, in the early 1980's, becoming our first success of what we expected to be many, in terms of local heritage conservation. I've written volumes of heritage-themed editorial copy, over forty years, but when I handled the signed copy of "Sainte Marie," I felt as if I had only ever achieved minor status in the field of heritage preservation. I wanted, from this position of awe, to highlight a few pages of the text, for the benefit of those who didn't know the book existed, or just how important Ste. Marie Among The Hurons, in Midland, is today, as a reflective, well attended historic site in Canada.
     It isn't what you would describe as an elegantly appointed book. It is modestly decorated, with a woodcut of a canoe in transit, a Huron paddling with a Jesuit missionary sitting in the centre, presumably traversing the River Wye, in Midland, arriving or departing from Ste. Marie Among The Hurons. There are corn stalks and sunflowers in the forefront, showing the modest agriculture of the 1600's Mission. The wood engraving was created to highlight the book, by artist Julius Griffith. It is a powerful text, to an historian with high expectations, of one day, being as accomplished as the authors of this landmark text of Canadian history, which when it was released, in 1954, was well received, especially so in the Midland area, that would benefit greatly down the road, as the site was restored, and turned into one of the best known and celebrated heritage sites in the country.
     If you missed yesterday's introduction to the book, you can archive back, so that today's article will read more sensibly.
     In the words of Wilfrid and Elsie Jury, in the early part of their revelations about the archaeological ground work, to document the ruins, and initiate recovery of artifacts, and of course, to map the dimensions of Ste. Marie's long buried foundation; they carry on the story with the following descriptions:
     "Before the excavations began, our knowledge of Sainte-Marie was confined to the writings of the Jesuits during the years they lived there. Within the walls of Sainte-Marie, the missionaries wrote of the world that surrounded them. They described the trees, they shrubs and the flowers; the animals, fish, and birds. They told of lakes and rivers; of falls and rapids. They wrote of the extremes of climate and of the torment of flies and mosquitoes. But chiefly they wrote of the people. Indians of the Algonquin and Huron nations. They described their physical features, their mode of life, their language, and their religious beliefs. America was an unknown land, lately discovered. By hearsay, fantastic stories were told originating with sailors and the hundreds of fishermen who frequented the coast of the new continent. French, Portuguese, and Dutch ports seethed with tales of red men, and many sorry captives of this race were shown ignominously, throughout the old lands. The writings of the Jesuit fathers, however, bore the stamp of reality. By them imaginations were stirred and religious emotions were set aflame. Relations or accounts of events in New France were written at Quebec, at Three Rivers, and at Sainte Marie Among The Hurons. These were sent annual to France where they were carefully edited and printed, for a public that eager awaited their appearance. The Relations, together with a few letters that have been miraculously preserved, and a portion of the Jesuits' Journal, have been translated and reprinted for modern readers."
    The authors continue, 'Sainte Marie-aux Hurons,' Sainte-Marie Among The Hurons, they inscribed their writings, but little of the Sainte Marie around them did they tell. 'We have been compelled to establish a hospital there for the sick, a cemetery for the dead, Church for public devotions, a retreat for pilgrims and, finally, a place apart from the others, where the infidels - who are only admitted by day when passing that way - can always hear some good words respecting their salvation.' In these few words Jerome Lalemant, in 1643, told virtually all that had been known for three hundred years of Sainte Marie Among The Hurons. There was, of course, a chapel and four crosses stood 'at the four corners of our territory.' So much, or indeed so little did we know of Sainte Marie from the writings of the Jesuits, until now (1954), three centuries later, the soil has revealed the story so long hidden - as Sainte Marie, extensive and strong, built by master craftsmen - a story that could not be realized without the evidence that has been bared by the spade. It is a story of men who challenged fate, for we have found that here, in the face of repeated enemy success and the imminent downfall of Huron allies, a remarkable effort was made to establish a settlement where massive buildings were erected, agriculture and animal husbandry practised, and spectacular engineering introduced. Sainte Marie was built at the end of the western trail; it was also built at the end of an era."
     They continue their story, "At no time in the succeeding three hundred years, however was the location of Sainte Marie lost. Always there stood the stonework, relatively unscathed by the flames that consumed the establishment. The Ottawa River and Georgian Bay continued to be the route most travelled by fur-traders and 'Coureurs de bois' until early in the nineteenth century when a road was opened north from Lake Ontario, to the military garrison at Penetanguishene, and new waterways were put into use, bringing into the district an influx of traders, lumbermen, and settlers. When the first Lieutenants-Governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe, journeyed to Georgian Bay in 1703, a prosperous trading post stood about twenty miles distant. The Governor did not visit the old mission site, but it appears on a map made by one of his party, as 'French Ruins" supposed to be the Church of Ste Mary's.'
     "At various points along the bay traders' posts flourished, and at the Narrows (Orillia). Quetton de St. George, an exiled French royalist, traded extensively with the Indians throughout the territory. Many an eighteenth-century traveller in this remote territory must have sought out these ruins, for the endeavours of the missionaries and their heroic deaths were told and retold to every succeeding generation of Canadians. The Township of Tay was surveyed in 1820, but already in 1819 the land where Ste. Marie had stood was granted to Samuel Richardson, a land surveyor from Wales, who apparently neglected his clearance duties; and a few years later, French Canadians again occupied the site and its environs. Pierre Rondeau, a fur trader and a private with the Michigan Fencibles, in the War of 1812, became the first settler on the site, in 1830, and at the same time came his neighbors, all former voyageurs, who with their families, descended in bateaux from the British military garrison on Drummond Island to the new garrison at Penetanguishene, five miles distant, after the former post became American territory. From one of these, Baptiste Bruneau, the neighbourhood was, for a time, known as Bruneauville. Rondeau himself died after eating 'la carotte a moureau,' or wild parsnip, and was buried at Penetanguishene, the only white settlement in the district. Whoever were the visitors and residents during these years, however, our earliest description of the site comes, fittingly enough, from the pen of a Jesuit priest, the Rev. Peter Chazelle, who in 1844, returned to the scene of the 'great Christian village of Sainte-Marie,' considered the metropolis of Huronia. He was surprised that there 'were no remnants of all these monuments' but recalled that the fathers had removed all portable goods by raft. Also, he explained, 'a man who was having a house built on the shores of Matchedash Bay, came here to remove all the good stones he could find. Then, finally, not long ago, a Canadian bought over a hundred acres of this land. He wanted to clear a field for some reason, I do not know, he scattered them (trees he had cut) and probably threw part of them in the river. This last fact explains why we do not see any big trees here. He was afterwards troubled and unhappy, and could not live here very long. Finally the house became quite inhabitable for everybody; strange noises at night, they said. I think the house is destroyed now, and no-one is surprised. They all say 'that man removed the mission stones.' But the ruins of Ste Marie, he found, had not disappeared. There were mounds and piles of stone. He recognized the spot where the Jesuits' residence had stood by a description he had heard from 'an old chap who used to travel among the Indians and who had said that 'nearly fifty years ago, he saw the remnants of a missionary dwelling and near the ground work, he noticed a stairway leading down to the river where, he tells me, they used to carry water.' More specific information on the site of Sainte Marie a century ago, is found among the papers of Rev. George Hallen, the Rector of St. James Garrison Church at Penetanguishene. Mr. Hallen, became interested in the old ruins, which he passed many times as he travelled by horseback - the pioneer Anglican clergyman in the Southern Georgian Bay district. He recorded his observations on maps and charts with an accuracy that has been proved many times over, as the excavations proceeded."
     The authors of this 1954 copy of "Sainte Marie Among The Hurons" continues, that in "1855 the first student to devote his life to early Jesuit history in America, the Rev. Felix Martin, S.J. visited the site accompanied by Mr. Hallen. He made a careful examination of the ruins and a description of what he found is in the library of St. Mary's College, Montreal. Several pleasing water colour sketches made at the same time are now in the Public Archives of Canada in Ottawa. 'The Fort is a creditable structure of stone and mortar,' Father Martin wrote, 'and the walls still show from two to four feet above ground. The masonry, executed in a workmanlike manner, gives evidence of having been done by skilled masons. 'The shape of the Fort is an oblong rectangle with flanking bastions at the angles. Despite certain peculiarities of detail in its construction, the reason of which are not easy to guess today, it is not hard to discern, in the carrying out of the plan, a careful application of the rules of military art.' Finally, at the turn of the century came the indefatigable student of the Huron country, the Rev. A.E. Jones, SJ Genial and impressive, he travelled the roads of Simcoe County, a familiar sight with horse and buggy sagging under his great weight, inspecting every field and hillside where Huron culture was said to have been indicated. In his work on Old Huronia he has printed Martin's original drawing of the site, made in 1855, adding his own measurements and later developments on the scene, notably the Grand Trunk Railway. Despite the fact that changes occurred as the walls crumbled and as relic-hunters searched the area, the scene by the River Wye has presented essentially the same appearance for over a century - mounds of earth and depressions; three crumbling walls and a shallow trench outlining a rectangle with four square bastion-like corners; a second trench traversed the centre of the rectangle, length-wise. Immediately to the south was a deeper, wider trench that extended to the river. On early maps, bays appear on each side of this depression and by tradition it was called 'the moat,' supposedly the southern boundary of Sainte Marie. A lush growth of bushes and weeds covered the stone work, and in such a state of dilapidation was it, that at the turn of the century it was said to be 'only the ruin of a ruin.'
     "It was not until 1940 that the land once more became the property of the Jesuits. Immediately after the purchase, steps were taken to have the area examined scientifically for further information concerning its size and functions in the past. The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, was invited to carry on this investigation and for three seasons was engaged in a study, chiefly of the area enclosed within the stonework, the result of which has been published by the archaeologist in charge. Mr. Kenneth E. Kidd. After the termination of his work in 1943, the site returned to its former overgrown appearance, although now a wire fence enclosed the area of the stone rectangle. When we (the Jurys) arrived at the site in the fall of 1947, workmen from the Martyrs Shrine were reconstructing stone walls around the original foundations of four square bastions. Some of these men had been employed on former excavations and were experienced in recognizing certain features in the sandy soil. They reported that when they were preparing to erect the new walls, a stone wall had been discovered below sod level, and, what was more significant, a charred line of blackened timber mould, the remains of a former structure, continued from the stonework into territory which to this time had been considered outside the boundaries of Sainte-Marie. It was this discovery that brought us to the site at the request of the Director of the Martyr's Shrine."
     They authors conclude, "It was slight evidence, but it was the key to the wealth of historical data that has since come to light and that had been until then, locked in the soil since that day in the summer of 1649 when, in the face of the Huron dispersal, and the approach of the Iroquois. Father Ragueneau, Superior of the Mission, had written, 'On each of us lay the necessity of bidding farewell to that old home of Sainte Marie, to its structures, which, through plain, seemed, to the eyes of our poor savages, master works of art, and to is cultivated lands, which were promising us an abundant harvest. Moreover, for fear that our enemies, only 100 wicked, should profane the sacred place, and derive from it an advantage, we ourselves set fire to it, and beheld burn before our eyes, in less than one hour, our work of nine or ten years.' The scene in 1947 could only be described as 'only the ruin of a ruin.' Tall elm trees overhung the rectangle and a row of maples lined it to the west. Weeds, grass, and poison ivy covered the crumbling walls and mounds, and all but concealed the trenches. Stones from fallen masonry lay haphazard in every direction. Tall grass grew in the 120 foot stretch of land to the river, and in the deep trench, called 'the moat,' trees, shrubs, rank weeds, and a variety of wildflowers grew in profusion. To the south of the moat was a white stucco house, with barns, the home of the gamekeeper of the Wye River Hunting Reserve, and a gravel road had been made through the field by the river, to allow entrance to this property. A broad, attractive lawn, bordered with maples, surrounded the house; then, stretching in an elongated triangle into the marshes of Mud Lake, was a windswept area, free of all growth except short, wild grass, traversed only by the casual fisherman who sought out the vantage point of the old dam that cut them off Mud Lake from the River Wye, at the apex of the triangle. For as long as the fall weather permitted, we remained at Sainte Marie tracing the line of timber mould discovered by the workmen and testing the land beside the river. Finally, biting winds off Georgian Bay forced our departure, but not before we had established the fact that Sainte Marie was at least twice as large as had been believed to that time, and an entirely new conceptions of the mission-fort was beginning to take shape in our minds."
     In tomorrow's blog, I would like to introduce readers to the older of the two books, I acquired recently, regarding the early history of Huronia, and the work of the Jesuits amongst the Hurons. The book is entitled "Saint Ignace Canadian Alter of Martyrdom," by William Sherwood Fox, with the collaboration of Wilfrid Jury, published by McClelland & Stewart, an equally fascinating overview about the discovery of the location where the Jesuit missionaries were tortured and eventually put to death. Please join me for this look back at early Canadian history, and as well, to, by the same measure, stress the relevance of old and dear books as a future resource; for all of us who quest to know.