Search For The Holiest Ground At Huronia's St. Ignace Near Ste. Marie Among The Hurons Part 3

PART THREE - SAINT IGNACE, CANADIAN ALTAR OF MARTYRDOM - THE JESUIT MISSIONARIES IN HURONIA

THE DEATH OF THE JESUITS, AND THE HOLY PLACE OF THEIR FINAL HOURS ON EARTH

     When you stand on the hillside where the Martyr's Shrine, is prominently situated, in Midland, Ontario, and look down on the hollow, of the River Wye, and the restored Jesuit Mission, Sainte Marie Among the Hurons, it's seems surreal in this country, because most of the history average Canadians appreciate, occurred in and around the time of Confederation, and the landmark events ever since. It is a profound sensation of awe, not all that common in this part of Canada, when appreciating, you are looking down on a heritage location, that was a beehive of activity as far back as the 1630's, with European missionaries and their assistants; building this large scale encampment, commencing an agricultural model that would have provided a good and sustaining harvest, if not for the calamity that was to end Ste Marie's short history early in the 1640's. There is a spiritual aura that, for me, characterizes the vast acreage of Ste. Marie and surrounding area, where the Jesuits once traversed by canoes, and hiked on narrow, rough trails made by the host Huron Nation.
     Even as a grade six student, at Bracebridge Public School, I developed a keen interest in the peoples of the First Nations, and their prehistory in our region of Ontario. The Algonquins had used Muskoka as a summer hunting ground, and following the war with the Iroquois Nation, both the Algonquins and the Hurons had to give up their territory. The war for territory, heightened at around the time of the Jesuit Missions in Huronia, in the 1600's. We studied this period of First Nations heritage, and then, the coming of the Jesuits, and the establishment of Sainte Marie Among The Hurons, on the River Wye in Midland, Ontario. We were treated to a school field trip to Sainte Marie in and around the early fall of 1966, and I still have the photographs taken there on my Brownie camera. In fact I've got a photograph of my childhood chum, Ross Smith, at the Huron Village, near the long house, taken that day. Ross is a talented Muskoka landscape artist today, although he's been laid up recently with some health issues.
     When I found the book, "Saint Ignace, Canadian Altar of Martyrdom," by William Sherwood Fox and Wilfrid Jury, (you can archive back two blogs to catch the first installment about the book Mr. Jury wrote at Sainte Marie), published by McClelland & Stewart of Toronto, in 1949, and dedicated to the memory of "Alphonse Arpin and Thomas George Connon, through whose keen powers of observation, and patient investigation, the site of St. Ignace was discovered." The interesting foreword was written by well known Canadian Poet, of the time, E.J."Ned" Pratt, of Victoria College in Toronto, written two years before the book's release. Pratt writes:
     "It is a pleasure and a privilege to write a few words by the way of a preface to this excellent book by Dr. W. Sherwood Fox, upon the discovery and excavation of St. Ignace II. In such a short statement it would be unnecessary to re-traverse the trails pursued by Connon, Arpin and Wintemberg, or to dilate upon the research conducted by Mr. Wilfrid Jury on behalf of the University of Western Ontario, and the Martyr's Shrine (Midland). From my point of view, the significant fact is that the public may now realize that a site of Christian martyrdom has been discovered and the history of Canada enriched by that discovery.
     "Protestants and Catholics alike are heirs of the riches of these explorations. As an historic monument, St. Ignace II, like Fort Sainte Marie, belongs to the dramatic architecture of Canadian history. It is a matter of national pride that such interest is being developed by our Ontario archaeologists in those really great remains of three centuries ago. That interest is also a sign of the strength and advance of our general culture. And woven into this historical and educational texture, are the religious strands. A chapter has been written here in the record of human faith. In respect to certain expressions of man's spirit, such as self effacement, endurance, sheer sublimity of courage that dogged holding on at solitary posts in the darkness of approaching catastrophe, which had all the ear-marks of material failure - those twenty years of the Huron Missions can stand with any of the blazing periods of history. It will always remain with its own message in every age."
     Pratt continues, "Certainty in respect to the exact location of the martyrdom is, to say the least, of prime psychological importance. To stand on that ground, and know it, has the same effect on the heart of a pilgrim as to kneel before an altar in a hallowed sanctuary. Canadian people who love their country and its traditions are in debt to the efforts of the archaeologists and to the enthusiasm of scholars like Dr. Fox, who have been making us thus aware of our national inheritance."
     Mr. Fox, in the book's introduction writes, "Three centuries ago occurred one of the most dramatic and memorable events in Canadian history - the martyrdom of the noble missionaries of France to Huronia. Saint Jean de Brebeuf and Saint Gabriel Lalemant. It is accorded as signal, a rank in the secular annals of Canada, as it holds in those of the Church. About the name of Huronia it has a cast a glory, almost unique in North America, and comparable only to the glory that crowns the names of those revered places of the Old World where at sundry times men, through death, have triumphantly testified that a steadfast spiritual faith, is the source of the strength by which they have lived. The world has long known St. Ignace of Huronia, as the name of the humble Indian mission where Brebeuf and Lalement played their tragic parts. But where is St. Ignace? Until recently no one has been able to answer that question. But for somewhat more than a century a long succession of searchers have ardently striven to find the place, knowing that men cannot feel the real significance of the drama enacted there till they could see the holy ground with their own eyes and set their feet upon it."
     The author adds, "The chief purpose of this little book is to record the confident belief of a group of investigators that at last St. Ignace has been found and identified. The extended recital of the data on which this belief is based has been deliberately deferred, until all who have taken part in the enterprise are convinced that their arguments are sound, and their conclusion is the only one that could be drawn. Thus the conclusion has been reached without haste, and impatience, as every scholarly conclusion should be. Even the preliminary announcements of the result of the investigations have been carefully timed. The first announcement was made in Kingston, Ontario, after Mr. Wintemberg's exploration of the supposed site of St. Ignace in 1937 and 1938, through a paper presented before Section II of the Royal Society of Canada in May 1941. The second announcement was based on Wilfrid Jury's report of his campaign of 1946, and was presented in Quebec before the same Section of the Royal Society, in May 1947. It is in these two papers that one will find set forth, in the unavoidably severe manner of archaeological science, all the facts concerning St. Ignace that have been revealed by workers in the field, and by delvers in the library. This present book, while, of course, embodying the same facts, is the outcome of an effort to interpret them to the ordinary reader, in a way that may capture his interest and enable him to follow understandingly, from its quiet beginnings to its intensely tragic ending, the development of one of the most dramatic episodes in the history of the French regime in Canada."
     Sherwood Fox, in the poignantly written, concluding chapter of the book, beneath the heading, "Where is The Holier Spot of Ground," reports that, "If the Indian Village found by Arpin and Connon is in reality St. Ignace, the scene of a sublime martyrdom, then to Canadians of all faiths it is a sacred place. But just as God ordains that for each one of us, 'one spot' of earth, 'shall prove beloved over all,' so within the boundaries of this hallow'ed tract, will there be one spot of ground holier in men's eyes above all others. And what will this spot be? It will of course be those few square feet of soil where Brebeuf and Lalemant suffered and died. But do we, or does any one know where this tiny plot is? Can we place a hand or foot upon it? Before we can even guess the possibility of answering the question at all, we must briefly survey once more the accounts that tell of the Mission's last days and hours. It will be recalled that at the time the Iroquois attacked St. Ignace, Fathers Brebeuf and Lalemant were in St. Louis (Huronia). As soon as they learned of the calamity their first thought was of their spiritual responsibility to their afflicted flock. Blind to their own safety and deaf to the pleading of their friends, they set out at once for St. Ignace. Father Ragueneau tells us of the sources of the sad tale of what had taken place there. I have learned all this from persons worthy of credence, who have seen it, and reported it to me personally, and who were then captives with them, (the Iroquois) but who having been reserved to be put to death, at another time, found means to escape.
    'On this memorable sixteenth day of March, 1649, the Iroquois came, to the number of about twelve hundred, took the village and Father Brebeuf and his companion, and set fire to all the houses. They proceeded to vent their rage on the two Fathers, seizing them, stripping them naked and binding each of them to a stake. They tied hands together and tore nails from their fingers. With cudgels they hailed their bodies with blows, on the shoulders, loins, belly, legs, face, leaving no part unscathed by this torment."
     Mr. Fox asks, "But where were the stakes to which the Fathers were Lashed? In DuCreux's version alone, can one find the faintest hint as to where they might be, and even that is almost as faint as zero. 'They (the Iroqouis) devoted themselves meanwhile, to torturing Brebeuf and Lalemant with awful cruelties before putting them to death."
     "Though thwarted by a lack of evidence in their search for the 'holier spot of ground,' within the limits of St. Ignace, the investigators have not wholly refrained from making cautious conjectures of their own. These are set forth here for just what they are and no more. Guided by DuCreux and Bonin we sought to find in in the most prominent place in front of the Chapel-Residence, the very forum of the community's life. The fact that the public well was situated in this area, seems to add to the probability that the Indians would choose such a spot in which to add to their cruelties, the special refinement of torture by boiling water. Frequently, Wintemberg uded to allude to the Indians laziness in carrying of water, not unless circumstance made it absolutely unavoidable would they carry it for a considerable distance. Aware of the racial weakness Wintemberg said as long ago as 1938, while he himself was searching for traces of the sacrificial fire, that these traces would be found, if found at all, close to the village's chief supply of water. If that supply was the Sturgeon River, then the scene of the tortures was the sloping bank of the river. If, on the other hand, it was a well or spring within the circuit of the stockade, then it was near that. And it is somewhere here that we believe it to be, though there is not a crumb of material evidence to support the view"
     The author continues his overview, writing, "Nor is there any real support for the assumption that the 'holier spot,' was situated outside the palisade and on the inclined banks of the Sturgeon. One who knows the contours of the immediate environs of St. Ignace recognizes at once that the banks are altogether too steep to serve as the scene of the horrible drama. Besides, the implications of the pertinent passage, in DuCreux's narrative, compel one to look for this scene inside rather than outside the village. This passage plainly declares that the search part from St. Marie, found the bodies of the martyred Fathers and Huron Christians lying at least fairly close together, even if not exactly in a 'heap,' as the text says. That the natives had been burned to death within the lodges which had been deliberately fired by the panic-stricken Iroquois, is expressly stated in DuCreux's story. If that is true and also that the remains of Brebeuf and Lalemant were found among those of the faithful Hurons, then the martyrdom must have taken place somewhere amid the long houses within the area of the village itself. Beyond that very general conclusion the evidences of the documents and those recovered by the spade will not permit anybody to go. If any still seek the spot that is holier above all others, we reverently suggest that the spot, is the whole village itself - the palisaded Huron village on the Hamilton farm in Tay Township, which we confidently believe to be St. Ignace."
     He concludes the text, "In these days of confused faith in the things that are unseen, we Canadians need more than ever before, to be sharply reminded that what we cherish most in our civilization, was won long ago by our forerunners in church, education, and government, through the sacrificial surrender of the very breath of life. We need also to learn that the only way in which we can preserve the treasured gain is to follow the glorious example which our history sets before us. In brief, we need right now, more than anything else, the spirit of martyrdom. It is not too much to hope, we trust, that a new reading of the sacrifice of Brebeuf and Lalemant, on the very ground on which it was written in letters of blood and suffering, may help imprint this lesson indelibly on our hearts and souls, and enable us to say truthfully with (poet) Pratt, 'The years as they turned have ripened the martyrs' seed, And the ashes of St. Ignace are glowing afresh'."
     If you get a chance, this summer season, take a visit to the Martyr's Shrine, and Ste. Marie Among The Hurons, in the Town of Midland, and as a pleasant contrast, take a walk through the incredible nature hike through the Wye Marsh.