THE
CATHOLIC CHURCH
COLONIAL DAYS.
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES— THE OTTAWA AND ILLINOIS
COUNTRY— LOUISIANA— FLORIDA— TEXAS— NEW
MEXICO AND ARIZONA.
1521-1763.
WITH PORTRAITS, VIEWS, MAPS, AND FAC-SIMILES,
JOHN GILMARY SHEA.
NEW YORK:
JOHN G. S H E A.
1886.
FEB 2 8 195?
COPYRIGHT, 1886, BY
JOHN G1LMAKY SHEA.
The illustrations in this work is copyrightid, and reproduction is forbidden.
KDWARD o. JENKINS' SON,
/'rinter, Stereotyper, and Etectrotyfler,
20 North William ?t., New York.
3
TO THE PATRONS
His EMINENCE, JOHN CARDINAL MCCLOSKEY ; His EMINENCE,
JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS; THEIR GRACES, THE MOST REV. M. A.
CORRIGAN, D.D. ; JOHN J. WILLIAMS, D.D. ; PATRICK J. RYAN,
D.D. ; WILLIAM H. ELDER, D.D. ; THE RT. REVS. JOHN LOUGH-
LIN, D.D. ; WlNAND M. WlGGER, D.D. ; B. J. McQUAID, D.D. ;
JOHN CONROY, D.D. ; JOHN IRELAND, D.D. ; JOHN L. SPALDING,
D.D. ; JAMES AUGUSTINE HEALY, D.D. ; P. T. O'REILLY, D.D. ;
RICHARD GILMOUR, D.D. ; STEPHEN V. RYAN, D.D. ; HENRY
COSGROVE, D.D. ; T. F. HENDRICKEN, D.D. ; M. J. O'FARRELL,
D.D. ; JOHN J. KEANE, D.D.; DENIS M. BRADLEY, D.D. ;
BONIFACE WIMMER, D.D. ; RT. REV. MGRS. WM. QUINN; T. S.
PRESTON ; JOHN M. FARLEY ; JAMES A. CORCORAN ; VERY REVS.
I. T. HECKER; MICHAEL D. LILLY, O.P. ; ROBERT FULTON, S.J.;
T. STEFANINL C. P. ; REVS. A. J . DONNELLY ; E. AND P. MCSWEENY,
D.D. ; R. L. BURTSELL, D.D. ; JOHN EDWARDS; C. MCCREADY;
JAMES H. McGEAN; J. J. DOUGHERTY; W. EVERETT; THOMAS
S. LEE; J. B. SALTER; J. F. KEARNEY; J. J. HUGHES; THOMAS
TAAFFE; CHARLES P. O'CONNOR, D.D. ; P. CORRIGAN; WILLIAM
MCDONALD; PATRICK HENNESSEY; LAURENCE MORRIS; JOHN
MCKENNA; M. J. BROPHY; ST. JOSEPH'S SEMINARY, TROY; ST.
JOHN'S COLLEGE, FORDHAM; THE CONGREGATION OF THE MOST
HOLY REDEEMER, NEW YORK; ST. Louis UNIVERSITY; ST.
XAVIER'S COLLEGE, CINCINNATI; MESSRS. PATRICK FARRELLY;
BRYAN LAURENCE ; DAVID LEDWITH ; JOSE F. NAVARRO ;
ANTHONY KELLY ; HENRY L. HOGUET ; EUGENE KELLY ;
EDWARD C. DONNELLY; JOHN JOHNSON; WILLIAM R. GRACE;
CHARLES DONAHOE; W. J. ONAHAN; PUSTET & Co.: BENZIGER
BROS. ; LAWRENCE KEHOE ; BURNS, OATES & Co. ; HARDY &
MAHONY,
BY WHOSE REQUEST AND AID THIS WORK HAS BEEN UNDERTAKEN,
THE PRESENT VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED.
PREFACE.
THE History of the Catholic Church in the United States
from the earliest period is a topic which was planned and
laid out by abler hands than his who, yielding to the wishes
of friends throughout the country, now presents the first of
a series of volumes.
The earliest project, that of the Rt. Rev. Simon Brute, the
great Bishop of Yincennes, " Catholic America," a work in
tended to consist of 400 pages octavo, was to give an outline
of the history of the Church in South America, Mexico,
Central America, and Canada, before taking up the annals of
religion in the Thirteen Colonies, and under the Republic.
The sketch would have been necessarily very brief, and from
the heads of chapters, as given by him, would have been
mainly contemporary. Unfortunately Bishop Brute seems
never to have begun the work.
The Rev. Dr. Charles I. White, author of the elegantly
written Life of Mrs. Eliza A. Seton, had also proposed to
write a History of the Church in this country, and with
Colonel Bernard U. Campbell collected much relating to the
early history of religion in Maryland, and drew a rich fund
of material from the archives of the Society of Jesus and of
the See of Baltimore. His library contained many volumes
to aid him in his work, especially for the French missions at
the North, but not for the Spanish territory at the South.
It would seem, however, that he never actually wrote any
(i)
ii PREFACE.
part of his projected work, nothing having been found
among his papers, except a sketch of his plan.
While the labors of the learned bishop and priest never
appeared for the instruction and encouragement of the Cath
olic body in this country, a contribution to the Ecclesiastical
History of the United States was made by a French gentle
man sojourning in our land. Henri de Courcy de ia
Roche Heron, one of the collaborators under Louis Yeuillot
in the Paris " Univers," an excellent Catholic, noble, talented,
and gifted with keen appreciation and judgment, became en
gaged in mercantile affairs in New York. He continued his
contributions to the "Univers," and finding that the ideas
he had imbibed in France as to the history of the Church in
this country were very incorrect, he set to work in his leisure
moments to obtain from the best sources accessible a clearer
and more accurate view. He was encouraged by many high
in position in the Church. Bishop Brute's papers were
opened to him ; he received important aid from Archbishop
Kenrick and from bishops and priests in all parts of the
country. T placed at his disposal the books and collections I
had made. In time he began a series of articles in the
" Univers." They attracted attention, and I translated them
for some of our Catholic papers. When his articles had
treated of the history of the Church in Maryland, Pennsyl
vania, and New York in part, declining health compelled
him to return to Europe, where he soon after died. His
articles were never collected in book form in French, but
the English translation was issued here, and has been for
some thirty years the most comprehensive account accessible
of the history of the Church in this country. He treated the
subject from his point of view as a French Legitimist, and
while I respected him, in many cases I could not share
his ideas ; I simply translated his words. It is a stigma on
PREFACE. iii
us that the memory of this gallant Christian gentleman has
been more than once cruelly assailed. He had not assumed
to instruct American Catholics in the history of their Church,
and did not write for them, or seek to press his work on their
notice. He wrote honestly, and in good faith, after greater
research than any of our own writers had given to the subject.
That his work, abruptly closed by death, has done service, is
evident from the constant references to it by all who have
since written on the history of the Church in this republic,
although it treated only of a very limited part of the subject.
No other general work has appeared on the history of the
Catholic Church in the United States, but local histories and
biographies have gathered and preserved much to interest
and edify. These works bear especially on New England,
New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky, Oregon, and
California, the members of the Hierarchy in general, and
especially Lives of Archbishop Carroll, Archbishops Hughes,
Spalding, Bishops Cheverus, Flaget, England, Neumann,
Prince Galitzin, Father Jogues, Rev. Mr. Nerinckx, Mother
Seton, etc. As a rule they treat of a period more recent
than that embraced in this volume.
In preparing the work I have used a collection of printed
books and unpublished manuscripts, made patiently and
laboriously by many years of search and enquiry ; and em
bracing much gathered by my deceased friends, Buckingham
Smith, Esq., Col. B. U. Campbell, Rev. Charles I. White,
D.D., Rev. J. A. Ferlaud, and by Father Felix Martin, S.J.
I have been aided in an especial manner by access to the
archives of the diocese of Baltimore, afforded me by His
Eminence Cardinal Gibbons ; to those of the diocese and
Seminary of Quebec by His Eminence Cardinal Taschereau,
who has enabled me also to profit by his own researches ; to
those of the Maryland and New York Province of the Soci-
iv PREFACE.
ety of Jesus, afforded by the Very Eev. Kobert Fulton, and
for documents obtained from Eome by the kindness of the
Most Rev. Michael A. Corrigan, D.D., Archbishop of Xew
York, and Very Eev. H. Van den Sanden ; from the Et. Eev.
Bishop of Havana through Bishop Moore, of St. Augustine,
and Mr. William C. Preston. Great assistance was afforded
by the early registers of St. Augustine, Mobile, Pensacola,
Detroit, Kaskaskia, Vincennes, San Antonio, and other Tex
an missions, for which I was indebted to Et. Eev. Bishops
Moore, O'Sullivan, Borgess, Chatard, Neraz, and the Very
Eev. Administrator of Alton. Besides the material thus
obtained, the colonial newspapers down to 1763 were ex
amined as far as possible, with very scanty result indeed,
to obtain what scattered notices of Catholic life might be
found in the columns of those early journals. I am also
indebted to the Eoyal Academy of History, Madrid, for im
portant papers, and to Mr. Sainsbury and Eev. J. H. Pollen,
S.J., for documents from the British archives. To Senor
Bachiller y Morales, the Lenox Library, the Xew York. Mary
land, and Wisconsin Historical Societies, I owe much.
The work which I have endeavored to do carefully and
conscientiously, has cost me more labor and anxiety than any
book I ever wrote ; it has caused me not seldom to regret that
I had undertaken a task of such magnitude. To my fellow-
students of American History, from whom I have for so many
long years received encouragement, sympathy, and aid, I sub
mit my work with some confidence, trusting to their past
courtesy and kindness. New light is to some extent thrown
on the voyages of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Captain Weymouth,
on Ayllon's voyage, and the general history of Virginia,
Georgia, and Florida, on the Capuchins in Maine, the jSTew
Mexico missions, and the development of the Catholic Church
in the Mississippi Valley and Texas.
PREFACE. v
From those of my own faith I ask forbearance, hoping
that the volume may prove of some service till a writer
with a clearer head for research, more patience in acquiring
the necessary books and documents, and greater knowledge
and skill in presenting the results affords the Catholics of the
United States a book adequate to the subject.
The worthies of the early American Church and its monu
ments are, as a rule, overlooked in the general and local his
tories of the country. For this reason no expense has been
spared to obtain and present fittingly portraits of the most
distinguished personages, views of the oldest chapels, institu
tions, and sites connected with the Church, relics of the last
centuries, fac-similes of Registers, and of the signatures of
bishops, priests, and religious, whose labors are recorded in
these pages.
At the solicitation of a venerated friend, I have given
the authorities in my notes,, although scholars generally have
been compelled to abandon the plan by the dishonesty of
those who copy the references and pretend to have consulted
books and documents they never saw, and frequently could
not read.
For aid in obtaining illustrations I am indebted to Rev.
Father Macias, of Zacatecas, the venerable Father Felix
Martin, the Jesuit Fathers in Maryland, George Alfred
Townsend, Esq., Professor Butler, Justin Winsor, Esq., and
others, to all of whom I express my sincere thanks, as I do
to Gen. John S. Clark for his invaluable topographical guid
ance, and the clear and accurate mission map of Xew York.
JOHN GILMARY SHEA.
ELIZABETH, N. J., October, 1886.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION. . 9
BOOK I.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE ENGLISH COLONIES.
CHAPTER I.
EARLY PROJECTS OP SETTLEMENT.
Position of Catholics in England— Sir George Peckham and Sir
Thomas Gerard plan a Catholic Settlement in Norumbega
under Sir Humphrey Gilbert — Queen Elizabeth sanctions it —
Winslade's Project — Lord Arundell of Wardour — Opposed by
Father Persons — Sir George Calvert proposes a Settlement in
Newfoundland — Visits Virginia — Repulsed— Obtains a Charter
for Maryland 17
CHAPTER II.
CATHOLICITY PLANTED IN MARYLAND, 1634-1646.
The Ark and Dove — The Society of Jesus undertakes the Mission —
Fathers Andrew White and Altham — First Mass on St. Cle
ment's Isle — City of St. Mary's founded — A Chapel — Indian
Missions begun — Lands taken up by Father Copley — Catholic
Preponderance — Questions raised by Missionaries — Conversion
of Indian Chief Chilomacon — Labors of Missionaries — Death
of Father Brock — Lord Baltimore solicits Secular Priests from
Rome — Is reconciled to the Jesuits — Puritans take possession
— Missionaries arrested and sent to England — Father Andrew
White — Fathers Rigbie and Cooper die in Virginia 37
viii CONTENTS.
CHAPTER III.
THE MARYLAND MISSION RESTORED, 1648-1668.
The Act of Toleration — The Puritans overthrow the Government
— Missionaries escape to Virginia — Lord Baltimore's Authority
restored — Father Fitzherbert's Case — Bretton's Chapel 68
CHAPTER IV.
THE JESUITS AND FRANCISCANS IN MARYLAND, 1669-1690.
Mgr. Agretti's Report to the Propaganda — A Franciscan Mission —
Father Massseus Massey — Catholic Classical School — First
Protestant Ministers — Sir Edmund Plowdcn and New Albion
— Catholics in New Jersey — Dongan, Catholic Governor of
New York — Jesuit Mission and School — Catholics in othei
Colonies — The Vicars-Apostolic in England— Fall of James II.
—State of Catholicity in 1690 7?
BOOK II.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE SPANISH COLONIES.
CHAPTER I.
THE CHURCH IN FLORIDA, 1513-1561.
Ponce de Leon discovers Florida — Attempted Settlement in 1521
with Priests and Religious — Ayllon's discovery — Settlement at
San Miguel de Guandape on James River, Virginia — The
Dominican Father Anthony de Montesinos at San Miguel —
Death of Ayllon — Expedition of Narvaez — The Franciscan
Father John Xuarez and other Priests — Soto's Expedition ac
companied by secular and regular Priests — The Franciscan
Father Mark of Nice penetrates to New Mexico — Coronado's
Expedition— In the Valley of the Mississippi— Death of the
Franciscan Father Padilla — Heroic attempt of the Dominican
Father Cancer— Tristan de Luna attempts a Settlement — Do
minicans with him — Peter Menendez undertakes to settle
Florida— St. Augustine founded— Place of the first Mass— The
Parish founded — Jesuit Missions — Father Segura and his Com
panions put to Death in Virginia— Franciscan Missions — In
dian Revolt — Fathers put to Death — Books in the Timuquan
Language — Florida visited by Bishop Cabezas — Religious con
dition—Bishop Calderon — Synod held by Bishop Palacios— Ex
tent of Missions— First attack from Carolina. . , ... 100
CONTENTS. ix
CHAPTER II.
THE CHURCH IN NEW MEXICO, 1580-1680.
Brother Augustine Rodriguez — Mission at Puaray — Missionaries
put to Death— Espejo's Expedition — Ofiate conquers New Mex
ico — Missions established — Their success— V. Mother Mary de
Agreda — Father Benavides — Indian Revolt — Missionaries put
to Death — Spaniards expelled 183
BOOK III.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
CHAPTER I.
FIRST WORK OP THE CHURCH IN MAINE, MICHIGAN, AND NEW YORK,
1611-1652.
First Church on De Monts or Neutral Island, Maine — Jesuit Mission
at Mount Desert — Its destruction by the Virginians— Canada
founded— Father Jogues plants the Cross at Sault St. Marie —
Taken Prisoner by the Mohawks — His escape — Father Bressani
a Captive — Father Jogues undertakes a Mohawk Mission — His
Death — His Canonization solicited — French Capuchins in Maine
— The Jesuit Father Druillettes founds an Abnaki Mission on
the Kennebec — Visits New England — Father Poncet's captiv
ity 216
.CHAPTER II.
THE ARCHBISHOPS OP ROUEN — ONONDAGA MISSION FOUNDED.
Our Lady of Ganentaa — Its close — Mgr. Francis de Laval, Bishop
of Petraea and Vicar- Apostolic of New France— Father Menard
founds a Mission on Lake Superior— His Death 246
CHAPTER III.
THE OTTAWA MISSION, 1662-1675.
Father Claude Allouez — Bishop Laval makes him Vicar-General —
Pastoral against attending Idolatrous Rites — Sault St. Marie —
Green Bay 267
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IV.
THE CHURCH AMONG THE IROQUOIS, 1660-1680.
Garaconthii': effects Peace — Missions restored — Father Fremin on
the Mohawk — Bruyas at Oneida — Carlieil at Cayuga — Lamber-
ville at Onondaga— The Great Mohawk and other Converts-
Catharine Tegakouita— Veneration for her — The Mission Vil
lage at La Prairie — Sault St. Louis 280
CHAPTER V.
THE CHURCH FROM THE PENOBSCOT TO THE MISSISSIPPI, 1680-1690.
Chapel at Pentagoet — Sulpitian Mission to the West — Father Mar-
quette with Joliet descends the Mississippi — Mission at Sault
St. Marie destroyed — Illinois Mission — Death of Marquette—
La Salle establishes house at Niagara — Recollect Chapel —
Chapel on the St. Joseph's — On the Illinois— Father Hennepin
on the Upper Mississippi — Recollect Missions in the West
cease — Death of Father de la Ribourde — Milet at Niagara —
Father Lamberville at Onondaga — Father Milet a Prisoner at
Oneida— Priests with La Salle in Texas — Resignation of Bishop
Laval.. 310
BOOK IV.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE ENGLISH COLONIES.
CHAPTER I.
CATHOLICITY IN MARYLAND, 1690-1708.
Calumnies against Catholics — A Royal Governor of Maryland —
Catholics excluded from the Assembly — Anglican Church es
tablished by Law — Tax for Ministers — Catholics disfranchised
— Zeal of Catholic Priests — Fathers Hunter and Brooke
arraigned — Governor Seymour's outrageous conduct — Chapel
at St. Mary's taken from Catholics— Penal Laws in New York
and Massachusetts— In Maryland— Queen Anne saves the Cath
olics — Mass permitted in private Houses — How Religion was
maintained 344
CONTENTS. xi
CHAPTER II.
CATHOLICITY IN PENNSYLVANIA AND MARYLAND, 1708-1741.
Catholicity in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania— Converts— Jesuits
at Bohemia Manor, Md. — Apostasy of Lord Baltimore — Ad
ditional Penal Laws — Catholics appeal to the King of England
—Chapel near Nicetown, Pa. — Sir John James— First Penn
sylvania Priest — St. Joseph's, Philadelphia— Fathers Wapeler
and Schneider— Mission Work in New Jersey — A Protestant
Clergyman in New York hanged • on suspicion of being a
Priest— Public Service of Father Molyneux 365
CHAPTER III.
THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES, 1745-1755.
Rev. Hugh Jones' Protest against Popery— Gov. Bladen's Procla
mation — Gov. Gooch's Proclamation — Virginia Penal Laws —
Attempts in Maryland to pass still more cruel Laws — St.
Joseph's Chapel, Deer Creek— Petition of Roman Catholics to
the King— Fathers Greaton and Harding in Philadelphia 403
CHAPTER IV.
THE ACADIAN CATHOLICS IN THE COLONIES, 1755-1763.
The Acadian Catholics— Deprived of Priest and Sacrament— Seven
thousand seized as Popish Recusants — A pretended Law —
Treatment in Massachusetts— In New York— In Pennsylvania
—In Maryland— First Chapel in Baltimore— In South Carolina
and Georgia— Many reach Louisiana—A few in Madawaska,
Maine 421
CHAPTER V.
CATHOLICITY IN THE BRITISH COLONIES, 1755-1763.
Constant attempts in Maryland against Catholics— Arrest of Father
Beadnall— Of another Jesuit— The Missions in Pennsylvania
and New Jersey 440
xii CONTENTS.
BOOK V.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE SPANISH COLONIES.
CHAPTER I.
THE CHUHCH IN FLORIDA, 1690-1763.
St. Augustine — The learned Florida Jesuit Father Florencia — Pen-
sacola and Father Siguenza — New Missions under Father
Lopez — Missions as portrayed by Dickenson — Catholic Mis
sions ravaged from Carolina— St. Augustine burnt by Gov.
Moore — Ayubale destroyed and Missionaries slain by Gov.
Moore — Bishop Conipostela — Auxiliary Bishops for Florida —
Bishop Rezino— Shrine of Nuestra Senora de la Leche pro
faned — St. Mark — Pensacola taken, retaken, and destroyed —
Church on Santa Rosa Island — Bishop Tejada — His labors in
Florida — Missions in Southern Florida — Siege of St. Augus
tine — Bishop Morell de Santa Cruz sent to Florida by the
English 454
CHAPTER II.
THE CHURCH IN TEXAS, 1690-1763.
Missions founded by Father Damian Mazauet — Missions near the
Rio Grande — The Ven. Father Anthony Margil and his Mis
sions—Friar Joseph Pita killed — City of San Fernando (San
Antonio) founded — Holidays of Obligation— Fathers Ganzabal
and Terreros and others killed — Visitation by Bishop Tejada
— Apache Missions —Father Garcia and his work 479
CHAPTER III.
THE CHURCH IN NEW MEXICO, 1692-1763.
Catholicity restored — Revolt at Santa Fe — Remains of Father
John of Jesus — Vargas doubts the Indian plot — Missionaries
massacred— Zuni — Alburquerque — Bishops Crespo and Eliza-
cochea. 510
CHAPTER IV.
THE CHURCH IN ARIZONA, 1690-1763.
Missions founded by Father Kuhn— San Xavier del Bac— Missions
revived by Bishop Crespo— Fathers Keler and Sedelmayr—
Jesuits carried off by order of the King of Spain 526
CONTENTS. xiii
BOOK VI.
THE CHUKCH IN FRENCH TEEEITOEY.
CHAPTER I.
THE CHURCH IN THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY, 1690-1763.
Bishop St. Vallier — Synods — Founds Mission of the Seminary of
Quebec in the Mississippi Valley — Jesuits at the Mouth of the
River — Questions raised — Rev. M. Foucault killed — Mobile, a
Parish — Rev. H. Roulleaux de la Vente^The Register — Rev.
Mr. Gervaise's Project — Indian Missions — Death of Rev. Mr.
de Saint Cosme — The Seminary Priests at Tamarois — Apala-
ches — Very Rev. Dominic M. Varlet, V.G. — Father Charle-
voix's visit — Fort Chartres — Bishop St. Vallier's Pastoral — The
Company of the West — The Capuchins in Louisiana — New
Orleans founded— A Carmelite— The Jesuits — The Ursulines —
Indian Mission — Priests massacred by Natchez and Yazoos —
Cahokia — Rev. Mr. Gaston killed — Ouiatenon — Vinceunes—
The Register — Bishop's right to appoint a Vicar-General con
tested—Irreligious spirit — The Jesuits suppressed in France —
Unchristian conduct of Superior Council of Louisiana — Jesuits
from Vincennes to New Orleans seized — Churches profaned
and destroyed— The Seminary Mission closed 533
CHAPTER II.
THE CHURCH IX MAINE, 1690-1763.
False Position of Missionaries — Jesuits and Quebec Seminary
Priests— Father Rale — Churches destroyed by New England-
ers— Father Rale's Dictionary— His Death— The Penobscots. . . 592
CHAPTER III.
THE FRENCH CLERGY IN NEW YORK, 1690-1763.
Father Milet at Oneida— Iroquois Martyrs — Missions restored —
Their close— Chaplains at French Forts — Rev. Francis Piquet
and the Mission of the Presentation — Visitation by Bishop de
Pontbriand— St. Regis. 606
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IV.
THE CHURCH IN MICHIGAN, INDIANA, WISCONSIN, AND MINNESOTA,
1690-1763.
Detroit— A Church erected— Recollect Father Delhalle— Michili
mackinac— Green Bay— St. Joseph's River— Ouiatenou— Fa
ther Delhalle killed— A Priest on Lake Pepin— Father Mesaiger
nears the Rocky Mountains— The Hurons at Detroit and San-
dusky— Bishop de Pontbriand at Detroit— Relics at Michili-
mackinac
CONCLUSION ................................... ...............
IKDEX.. ...................................... 648
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Map of the United States show
ing Episcopal Jurisdiction,
1521-1763 16
Ancient Pewter Chalice and
Altar Stone 36
View of St. Clement's Island. . 42
Site of St. Mary's, Md 44
Map of Maryland 45
Baptism of King Chilomacon. . 53
Signatures of Fathers Rigbie
and Cooper 66
Bretton's House, Newtown
Manor, Md 77
Signature of Father Penning -
ton 96
Fort at Xew York where Mass
was said 90
Portrait of Father Juan Xua-
rez ... 109
Seal of Father Mark of Nice. . 11G
Signature of Father Mark of
Xice 116
Signatures of Fathers Louis
Cancer and Gregory de Be-
teta 123
Signatures of Fathers Diego de
Tolosa and Juan Garcia 124
Signature of Father Pedro de
Feria 128
Signature of Rev. Francisco de
Mendoza, first Parish Priest
of St. Augustine 136
St. Augustine and its Environs. 137
Death of Father Peter Marti
nez, facing 141
Signature of Father John Ro-
gel 142
Death of Father Segura, fac
ing 145
Signatures of Fathers Segura
and Quiros 148
Signature of Father Francis
Pareja 156
Signature of Father Alonzo de
Penaranda 159
Signature of Bishop Calderon. 168
Fort and Church at St. Augus
tine 169
Signatures of Catholic Chiefs
of Apalache and Timuqua. . 180
Portrait of Vc-o. Maria de Jesus
de Agreda 196
Signature of Ven. Maria de
Agreda 197
Island of the Holy Cross, Me. . 217
Signatures of Fathers Isaac
Jogues and Charles Raym-
baut 228
Signature of Father Bressani. . 232
Portrait of Father Isaac Jogues,
to face 233
Chapel near Auriesville, N. Y.,
to commemorate Death of
Father Jogues 235
(xv)
XVI
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Copperplate from Chapel of
Our Lady of Holy Hope,
Peiitagoet 237
Signature of Father Druillettes. 239
Signature of Father Joseph
Poncet 244
Signatures of Fathers Le Moyne,
Ragueneau, le Mercier, and
Garreau 245
Father Chaumonot's Wampum
Belt 250
Ancient Missionary Belt 250
The Jesuit Well, Ganentaa 254
Portrait of Bishop Laval, fac
ing 257
Signature of Father Rene Me-
nard 262
Signature of Father Claude Al-
louez 269
Signature of Father Marquette. 271
Signature of Father Claude
Dablon 273
Signature of Father Ant. Silvy 279
Map of the Sites of the Jesuit
and Sulpitian Missions among
the Iroquois, facing 281
Signature of Father Fremin. . . 284
Signature of Father Julian
Gamier 292
Signature of Father Raffeix. . . 294
Signature of Father John de
Lamberville 297
Portrait of Catharine Tega-
kouita 301
Signature of Father Chaumo-
not 302
Site of Father Marquette's
Chapel and Grave 319
Signature of Father John En-
jalran 326
Signatures of Fathers Albanel,
Bailloquet. Gravier, and Ma-
rest .328
PAGE
Perrot's Monstrance and Base
showing Inscription 329
Inscription on Father Milet's
Cross at Niagara 334
Signature of Father James
Bigot 337
Signature of Bishop Laval. . . . 343
Signatures of Fathers Peter
Attwood and George Thor-
old 370
Portrait of Bishop Bonaventura
Giffard, facing 375
Signature of Father James Had
dock 377
Title of Father Schneider's
Register 393
Geiger's House, Salem Co.,
N. J 395
First entry in Father Schnei
der's Register 402
St. Joseph's Chapel House,
Deer Creek, Md 414
Fotteral's House, Baltimore,
where Mass was first said . . 435
Signature of Father John Ash-
ton 435
Signatures of Fathers George
Hunter and James Beadnall. 444
Signatures of Fathers Schnei
der and Ferdinand Farmer. . 446
Church at Goshenhopen 447
Map of Spanish Florida, facing. 455
Portrait of Bishop Tejada, to
face 465
View of Pensacola on Santa
Rosa Island in 1743. From
the Drawing by Dom. Serres. 467
Ancient Silver Crucifix in the
Church at Pensacola 468
Map of St Augustine in 1763. . 478
Signature of Father Francis
Hidalgo 481
Signature of Father Olivares. . 482
ILLUSTRATIONS.
xvn
Signature of the Ven. Anthony
Margil 484
Portrait of Ven. Anthony Mar-
gil, to face 489
Signature of Rev. Joseph de la
Garza . 498
Signature of Father Ganzabal . 501
Signature of Father Terreros . . 503
Signature of Bishop Tejada . . . 505
Signature of Father Diego
Ximenez 508
Signature of Father Garcia. . . . 509
Record of Bishop Elizacochea's
Visitation on Inscription
Rock 525
Signature of Bishop St. Val-
lier 533
Portrait of Bishop St. Vallier,
to face 537
Signature of Rev. Henry Roul-
leaux de la Vente 546 j
Fac-simile of the first entry
in the Parish Register of
Mobile 547
Signature of Rev. F. Le Maire. 549
Signature of Rev. Alexander
Huve 552
Portrait and Signature of Very
Rev. Dominic Mary Varlet,
Vicar - General, afterwards
Bishop of Babylon 555
Title of the Kaskaskia Register. 558
Portrait of Father P. F. X.
Charlevoix 561
Signature of Father John Mat
thew 564
Signature of Father Matthew
as Vicar- Apostolic 564
Signature of the Carmelite Fa
ther Charles 566
Signature of F. -de Beaubois . . 568
Signature of Mother de Tran-
chepain 569
Ursuline Convent, New Or
leans, begun in 1727, now
residence of the Archbishop. 571
Signatures of the Jesuit Father
Mathurin Le Petit, and the
Recollect Father Victoriu. . . 573
Signature of Rev. Mr. Forget
Duverger 577
First entry in the Parish Regis
ter of Vincennes 579
Signature of Father Vivier .... 579
Signature of Father John Fran
cis. ..'. 580
Signatures of Fathers Bau-
douin and Vitry 583
Signatures of Fathers le Boul-
lenger, Guymonneau, and
Tartarin 584
Signature of Father Vincent
Bigot 596
Fac-simile of opening words of
Father Rale's Dictionary and
of his Signature 602
Portrait and Signature of Rev.
Francis Piquet 615
Fort Presentation, Ogdensburg,
with Abbe Piquet's Chapel. . 616
Corner-Stone of Abbe Piquet's
Chapel 618
First entry in the Detroit Reg
ister 624
Signatures of Priests 626, 637
Signature of Father Simplicius
Bocquet 632
Portrait of Rt. Rev. Henry
Mary Du Breuil de Pont-
briand, 6th Bishop of Que
bec 633
Signature of Father Julian De-
vernai 635
Bread-Iron preserved at Mich-
ilimackinac 636
Signature of Father du Jaunay 637
INTRODUCTION.
THE Catholic Church is the oldest organization in the
United States, and the only one that has retained the same
life and polity and forms through each succeeding age. Her
history is interwoven in the whole fabric of the country's
annals. Guiding the explorers, she left her stamp in the
names given to the natural features of the land. She an
nounced Christ to almost every native tribe from one ocean-
washed shore to the other, and first to raise altars to worship
the living God, her ministry edified in a remarkable degree
by blameless lives and often by heroic deaths, alike the early
settlers, the converted Indians, and those who refused to
enter her fold. At this day she is the moral guide, the spirit
ual mother of ten millions of the inhabitants of the republic,
people of all races and kindreds, all tongues and all countries,
blended in one vast brotherhood of faith. In this she has no
parallel. No other institution in the land can trace back an
origin in all the nationalities that once controlled the portions
of North America now subject to the laws of the republic.
All others are recent, local, and variable. She alone can
everywhere claim to rank as the oldest.
The Church is a great fact and a great factor in the life of
the country. Every man of thought will concede that the
study of the history of that Church in its past growth and
vicissitudes, and of her present position, is absolutely neces
sary in order to solve the problems of the present and the
(9)
10 INTRODUCTION.
future in the republic, for the influence of an organization
fixed and unwavering in doctrine, polity, and worship, must
be a potent element, and cannot be ignored or slighted.
But while from the student and the statesman the history
of the Church claims serious consideration, to the Catholic
that history is a record full of the deepest interest and con
solation, a volume to which he can appeal with pride. The
pages teem with examples of the noblest and most heroic
devotedness in the priesthood, of the beneficent action of the
Church where she was free to do her work, of self-sacrifice
in the laity, in generous adherence to the faith by the flock
amid active persecution, insidious attacks, open violence, and
constant prejudice, wrhere Catholics were few amid a popu
lation trained in unreasoning animosity.
The Catholic Church in this country does not begin her
history after colonies were formed, and men had looked
to their temporal well being. Her priests were among the
explorers of the coast, were the pioneers of the vast interior ;
with Catholic settlers came the minister of God, and mass
was said to hallow the land and draw down the blessing of
heaven before the first step was taken to rear a human habi
tation. The altar was older than the hearth.
The entrance of the Catholic Church was not the erratic
work of a few. It was part of her work begun at the fiery
Pentecost, carried on from age to age with unswerving
course, while all human institutions were changing and mod
ifying around her. The command of our Lord to His apos
tles to go and teach all nations, rested as an injunction on
the bishops of the Church in whom the missionary spirit
became inherent. The Church was constantly pushing for
ward into new lands, priests commissioned by bishops bearing
the faith, ministering to those who accompanied them, re
maining to convert those whom they found.
INTRODUCTION. 11
Priests sent out from Ireland, and subsequently from
Scandinavia reached Iceland, and in time a clmrcli grew up
in that northern island with bishops, churches, convents. Ad
vancing still onward in the unknown seas the Northmen
o *
landed in Greenland, and Catholicity was planted on the
American continent by priests from Iceland, and in 1112 the
See of G-ardar was erected by Pope Paschal II., and Eric was
appointed the first bishop. Full of missionary zeal, this prel
ate accompanied the ships of his seafaring flock, and reached
the land known in the Sagas of the North by the name of
Yinland, as an Irish bishop, John of Skalholt in Iceland, had
already done. How far southward the navigators of the
north and their spiritual teachers carried the cross and the
worship of the Catholic Church, it is not our province to
decide.
When Columbus revealed to Europe the existence of rich
and fertile islands accessible from Spain, the ministers of the
Church came. Priests accompanied the vessels with faculties
from the bishop in whose diocese the port of departure lay,
and where they remained in the new land the bishop's juris
diction continued till a local ecclesiastical government was
formed. Thus the See of Seville acquired a jurisdiction in
the New World where the standard of Spain was planted,
and she became the mother of the earliest churches in America.
Not inaptly, the Cathedral of Seville preserves in her treasury
the chalice made of the first gold taken to Europe by Co
lumbus, for the first-fruits of the precious metals of the New
World were dedicated to the service of Almighty God in the
Catholic Church. The See of Santo Domingo was erected
by the Sovereign Pontiff in 1512, that of Santiago de Cuba
in 1522, that of Carolensis in Yucatan in 1519, and of Mexico
in 1530. These followed up the work of Seville, the bishops
of the new Sees sending priests commissioned by them to
1 -2 INTROD UCTION.
bear the faith northward till the territory over which our
flag now floats was reached and the cross planted.
The Church of Spain with her array of doctors and saints
from an Isidore and a Leander, a Hosius, a Thomas of Yilla-
nova, was thus extended to our soil, and her priests offered
the first worship of Almighty God on the shores of Florida,
of the Chesapeake, in the valleys of the Mississippi and the
Kio Grande. The work was followed up, and though the
soil was reddened with the blood of many a priest who won
the martyr's crown, there was no faltering, the work went on
till in time bishops came and every sacrament of the Church
was duly administered in that portion of our territory.1
Our alliance with the Catholic Church in Spain is not a
mere episode. The first bishops of Louisiana and Mobile
were suffragans of Santo Domingo and of Santiago de Cuba ;
the first bishop of California a suffragan of Mexico, while
Texas, !N"ew Mexico, and Arizona were in our time detached
from dioceses which trace their origin to the glorious Church
in Spain.
Soon after the vessels of Columbus bore back the startling
news of great discovery, a ship from Bristol, under Cabot, in
1497, bore to the northern shores of our continent the first
band of English-speaking Catholics, and within five years,
a priest, we know, crossed the Atlantic to administer the rites
of religion to his countrymen in America, offer the holy
sacrifice and announce the gospel in our tongue.2 Thus
Catholicity came from the land of a St. Anselrn, a St.
Thomas of Canterbury, a St. John of Beverly, whose Church
in the next century, while crushed like the primitive church
by the State power of unbelieving rulers, extended her limits
1 Gams, Series Episcoporum, Ratisbonne, 1873, pp. 334, 336 ; Torfaeus,
Historia Vinlandiae, p. 71.
2 Harrisse, " Jeanet Sebastian Cabot," Paris, 1882, p. 270.
INTROD UCTION. 1 3
to the shores of the Chesapeake, the Church of Catholic
England reviving the work of the earlier Spanish pioneers
of the faith.
Close on Cabot came French explorers. Carder sailed
with the blessing of the Bishop of St. Malo, and with priests
to whom he gave faculties, and in after years Champlain
founded Quebec, where altars were raised, and priests
began their ministry, acknowledging as their ecclesiastical
Superior the Archbishop of Rouen, who for years governed
Canada as part of his diocese, through Vicars-General ap
pointed by him, and even towards the close of the century
gave powers to priests under which they offered the sacrifice
of the mass and ministered to colonists in Texas.
The Church knew no limits to her conquests. Her juris
diction was extended as by a natural instinct over the whole
land. It was never bounded by the mere limits of white
settlements. Father Padilla, dying alone near the banks of
the Missouri, to which he had penetrated, was still in the
diocese of Mexico ; Hennepin at the Falls of St. Anthony,
Marquette at the Arkansas, Douay at the mouth of the Mis
sissippi, were in the diocese of Quebec. The first Catholic
settlers in Oregon were from Canada, and the priest sent to
minister to them went as Vicar-General of Quebec, to
become in time Bishop and Archbishop of the distant flock
he crossed the continent to serve.
The Church has thus a continuous existence in this coun
try, continuous in episcopal jurisdiction, in priestly work, in
the faithful who clung to her altars.
In the earlier period, where three great European nations
laid claim to different portions of our territory, the history
of the Church is to be trace^ in three different channels,
descending from England, France, and Spain. Xo greater
contrast could be found than that of the colonial spirit of
1 4 INTRO D UCTION.
the three nations. Spain, by her government under the vast
system inaugurated by Philip II., planned, directed, controlled
every department of colonial administration. Every new
colonization was settled in detail in Spain. The bulls of
the Sovereign Pontiffs made the King of Spain their Yicar
in America, the tithes were assigned to him, the nomination
of bishops was in his hands, the support of the ministry and
the missions was devolved upon him. Portions of the royal
revenue were then assigned by him to great religious works,
and churches, convents, universities and schools arose with
out direct contribution by the people.
France was Catholic, but the Church and the missions in
the territory she controlled in America were not supported
by any governmental plan. The zeal and piety of individu
als contributed far more than the monarch to maintain and
carry on the work, and the colonists shared the feeling of the
mother country and willingly paid their tithes, and aided
to support the religious bodies which had been active agents
in bringing in settlers and clearing the land for cultivation.
In the English colonies, except for two brief seasons, Cath
olics were oppressed by laws copied from the appalling
penal code of England. The Church was proscribed, her
worship forbidden, her adherents visited with every form of
degradation, insult, and extortion.
Thus strangely different were the circumstances under
which the Church grew in Florida, in Michigan, in Mary-
laud. Yet in the designs of God it was that which seem
ed least favored that was to develop most wonderfully,
till the episcopate starting from a threefold source and
blending into the hierarchy of the United States with the faith
ful sprung from those lands, and from Ireland, Germany,
Switzerland, Poland, Italy, Portugal, and from the native
tribes, presents at the close of the nineteenth century a
BOOK I.
THE CATHOLIC CHUECH IN THE ENGLISH
COLONIES.
CHAPTEE I.
EARLY PROJECTS OF SETTLEMENT.
THE revolt of Henry VIII. against the authority of the Holy
See and his suppression of the religious houses had greatly im
paired the spirit of faith in the people of England, but
still the new ideas, set up by Luther and Calvin on the Conti
nent, found few proselytes, even after his death ; the establish
ment of a Calvinistic church by those who assumed the regency
for Edward VI. failed to win the mass of the English people
from the faith of their forefathers. It was restored for a
brief term by Mary, but Elizabeth, on her accession, revived
the acts of the reigns of Henry and Edward. The mass was
abolished, an act of supremacy passed, the images of our
Lord and His Saints were ordered to be broken or burned.
The churches were filled with a new set of clergy who were
to perform a new religious service.
The Catholics could not join in this. The mass was and
is the only divine worship to be offered by a duly ordained
priest. With the churches built by their ancestors diverted
to unhallowed rites, they had no alternative but to hear mass
in secret said by some lawful priest. Protestantism is essen
tially intolerant. Nowhere, on obtaining power, did it permit
the Catholic portion of a nation to enjoy the exercise of
religion, even in private. Elizabeth began a series of laws
3 (17)
18 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
to crush the Catholics, to deprive them of all opportunity of
enjoying the services of religion and forcing them to enter
the Church her Parliament had set up. The penal laws of
this woman, one of the most savagely bloody in the annals
of history, though enforced during her long reign, failed to
secure even half the population of England to the Church
of which she was the head.
To defend the jurisdiction of the Pope was punished by a
heavy fine ; the universities, the professions, the public offices
were closed to all who would not take an oath of supremacy ;
a second offence or a refusal of the oath was punishable with
death.1 Priests who adhered faithfully to God were kept hid
den, for the consolation of the faithful, but as their ranks
thinned by death, some means was needed to maintain a succes
sion of clergymen. A seminary was established at Douay for
the education of priests. To prevent the success of this plau
Elizabeth, by a new series of laws, made it high treason to
declare her a heretic, to bring from Rome any instrument
whatever emanating from the Pope, to use any such docu
ment, to give or receive absolution. Perpetual imprisonment
was the penalty for possessing an Agnus Dei, a rosary, cross
or picture blessed by the Pope or any of his missionaries.
Any Catholic who fled from England to evade the laws was
required to return within six months, under penalty of con
fiscation of all property belonging to him." These laws
were soon enforced. In 15YY Roland Jenks, an Oxford
bookseller, for having Catholic books, was sentenced to be
nailed to the pillory, his sentence being attended by the sud
den death of many of the officials. Then the Rev. Cuthbert
Maine, the protomartyr of Douay College, was convicted of
high treason, in having a bull of the Pope granting a jubilee
1 5Eliz., c. 1. 2 13 Eliz., c. 1, 2, 3.
PROPOSED SETTLEMENT IN MAINE. 19
and in having brought an Agnus Dei into the kingdom.
For this he was hanged on the 29th of November, 1577.
Then the gallows was kept busy with its bloody work. Two
other priests were hanged the next year, four in 1581, eleven
in 1582.
While the government thus thought to keep priests from
ministering to the English Catholics by fear of death, the
laity were oppressed with fines and imprisonment for not
attending Protestant worship, for hearing mass, for keeping
Catholic books or objects of devotion.
Flight to the Continent had been made a crime, and was
always a pretext for a charge of treason. Under these cir
cumstances it occurred to leading men among the Catholic
body, who had still friends at court, to seek a refuge for
their oppressed countrymen out of England, but yet within
her Majesty's dominions.
The foremost in this project was Sir George Peckham, of
Dinand, in Buckinghamshire ; but, of course, care and pru
dence were required. The application made by Sir Humphrey
Gilbert to Queen Elizabeth for a patent to authorize him to
explore and colonize the northern parts of America would
seem to have been inspired by Sir George. As early as
March 22, 1574, we find them both with Mr. Carlile, Sir
Richard Green vdlle and others petitioning her to allow of an
enterprise for discovery of sundry rich and unknown lands,
" fatefully reserved for England and for the honor of your
Majestic." Although Sir George's name does not appear in
the patent actually issued June 11, 1578, it seems framed to
meet the case of the Catholics, and an interest under it
was very soon transferred to Sir George Peckham and a fellow
Catholic, Sir Thomas Gerard. By its terms Sir Humphrey
1 Domest. Corresp. Elizabeth, vol. 95, No. 65, Col. p. 475.
20 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Gilbert and his assigns are authorized from time to time to
go and remain, to do so freely, " the statutes or actes of par
liament made against fugitives, or against such as shall
depart, remaine or continue out of our realm of England
without license, or any other acte, statute, lawe or matter
whatsoever to the contrary in any wise notwithstanding."
He was authorized to take any of the Queen's subjects " as
shall willingly accompany him," " so that none of the same
persons, nor any of them be such as hereafter shall be spec
ially restrained by us, our heires and successors." The only
restriction on his power to make laws was that they should
not " be against the true Christian faith, or religion now
professed in the Church of England," or such as would
withdraw men from their allegiance to the crown.1
This would authorize Catholics to go and remain there
under the protection of the laws that might be established,
so long as no law was passed against the Church of England.
Haies, one of the historians of Gilbert's undertaking, men
tions the discouragement that befel him, and says : " In
furtherance of his determination, amongst others Sir George
Peckham, knight, showed himself very zealous to the action,
greatly aided him, both by his advice and in the charge.
Other gentlemen to their ability joined unto him, resolving
to adventure their substance and lives in the same cause."
Two years were spent in gathering artisans and supplies
for the projected settlement, but the Catholic projectors felt
the necessity of some definite sanction of their undertaking.
They applied openly and without disguise as the following
petition shows :
" Articles of peticion to the righte Hormorable Sr Fraun-
cis Wallsinghame Knighte Principall Secretairie unto the
1 Hakluyt, i., p. 677 ; iii., 174. Hazard's Collection, i., pp. 24-28.
PROPOSED SETTLEMENT IN MAINE. 21
Quens Matie by Sr Thomas Gerrarde and Sr George Pecke-
ham Kniglites as followeth viz
" Tliat where Sr Humferie Gylberte Knighte hath granted
and assigned to the saide Sr Thomas and Sr George authori-
tie by virtue of the Quens Matie Ires Patents to discover and
pocesse (fee certain heathen Lands &c
" Their humble peticion is —
" Firste that it wolde please her Matie that all souche par
sons whose names shall be sett downe in a booke Indented
made for that purpose th'one pte remayninge with some one
of her Matie pryvie Councell th'other wth the said Sr Thomas
and Sr George maye have lycens to travell into those coun-
teris at the nexte viaige for conqueste wlh all manner of
necessarie provission for themselves and their families their
to remaine or retorns backe to Englande at their will and
pleasure when and as often as nede shall require.
" Item the recusantes of abillitie that will travell as afore-
saide maie have libertie uppon discharge of the penallties
dewe to her Mat'e in that behallffe to prepare themselves for
the said voiage.
"Item that other recusantes not havinge to satisfie the
saide penaltie maie not wthstandinge have lyke libertie to
provide as aforesaide and to stand charged for the paiement
of the saide penallties untill suche tyme as God shall make
them able to paie the same.
" Item that none under color of the saide Lycence shall
departe owte of this realme unto any other foren Christian
Realme.
" Item that they nor anye of them shall doo anye acte tend
ing to the breache of the leage betwene her Matie and anye
other Prince in amytie wth her higlmes neither to the pre
judice of her Mat16 or this Realme.
" Item that the xth pson wch they shall carrie wth them
22 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
shalbe souche as have not any certainetie whereuppon to
lyve or maintaine themselves in Englande."
That Queen Elizabeth consented may be inferred from the
fact of Peckham's continued interest ; but her policy required
silence, and a government detective or spy discovered the
real nature of the voyage, and in a report made known the
connection of Sir George Peckham and Sir Thomas Gerard
with the intended expedition.
" I have heard it said among the Papists," writes this spy,
" that they hope it will prove the best journey for England
that was made this forty years." " I do not hear of any
further cause of the departure of Sir George Peckham and
Sir Thomas Gerard than that every Papist doth like very
well thereof, and do most earnestly pray their good suc
cess." a
The place of the intended settlement was Norumbega, a
district described in the then recently published Cosmog-
raphie of Thevet, a Franciscan priest who claims to have
visited it. This province is generally regarded as being the
present State of Maine.3
The fleet that finally sailed from England, June 11, 1583,
consisted of the Delight or George, of 120 tons ; the bark
Raleigh, of 200 tons ; the Golden Hind and Swallow, each
of 40 tons, and the Squirrel, of 10 tons, carrying in all 260
persons. Sighting land on the 30th of July, they entered
the harbor of St. John, Newfoundland, where Sir Hum-
1 Public Record Office Copy. State Papers. Domestic. Eliz. 1580,
(1583.) Vol. 146. No. 40.
" Letter from P. H. W. (There is reason to believe his real name
was Tichbourne alias Benjamin Beard) dated April 19, 1582. Vol. 153,
No. 14. I am indebted for the reference to J. II. Pollen, S. J.
3 Prof. Horsford in a recent tract claims Massachusetts as Xorum-
bega.
PROPOSED SETTLEMENT IN MAINE. 23
phrey took possession in the name of the queen. lie then
issued some laws. " The first for religion, which in publique
exercise should be according to the Church of England." '
This while ostensibly setting up the Established Church so
as to avoid all cavil, really allowed the Catholic service in
private. Gilbert wrote from this port to Sir George Peck-
ham,* from which it is evident that the Catholic knight
did not accompany the expedition, and we are left entirely
in the dark as to the Catholics who really came out.
Sailing thence to select a place for settlement in JS"orum-
bega, Gilbert passed Cape Race. Soon after, his best vessel,
loaded with all the supplies for his colonists, was lost, only
a few who clung to the wreck surviving, when it was driven
by the tides on the coast of Newfoundland.
Thoroughly discouraged, Gilbert abandoned the projected
settlement, and attempted to reach .Europe, sailing himself
in the frailest of his fleet. In a storm that wrould have
tried stauncher ships, his voice was heard, from time to
time, calling to the vessel near him : " We are as neere
heaven by sea as by land." Then the voice was silent ; the
wail of the waves alone was heard. Sir Humphrey Gilbert,
with his hopes and his projects, had disappeared, meeting
his fate with a courage the world has never ceased to
admire.3
The other vessels reached England, and the survivors of
the Delight, taken to Spain and saved by the kindly captain
who rescued them, also regained their native land.4
1 Haies, "A Report of the Voyage," etc. Hakluyt, iii., p. 151.
" First, that Religion publiquely exercised should be such and none
other, then is vsed in the Church of England." "A True Report," etc.,
Ib., p. 166.
2 See letter in Purchas, iii., p. 808 ; Hazard's Collection, i., p. 32.
3 Haies in Hakluyt, i., pp. 677-9 ; iii., p. 159.
4 A Relation of Richard Clarke. Hakluyt, iii. , p. 163.
24 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Sir George Peckham was not dismayed by this unfor
tunate result of the attempt. He is the first English Catho
lic whose writings call for our notice, so far as they regard
the exploration, colonization, and Christianizing of this con
tinent. His little work, " A true Keport of the late Dis
coveries and possession taken in the right of the Crowne of
England of the Newfound Lands by that valiant and worthy
gentleman, Sir Ilumfrey Gilbert, Knight," is preserved to
us in Hakluyt, and breathes a truly Christian spirit. That
he hoped to organize a new expedition is evident. " Now
where I doe understand that Sir Humfrey Gilbert, his
adherents, associates and friends, doe meane with a conue-
nient supply (with as much speed as may be) to maintaine,
pursue and follow this intended voyage, already in part per
formed, and (by the assistance of Almighty God) to plant
themselves and their people in the continent of the hither
part of America, between the degrees of 30 and 60 of sep-
tentrionall latitude," he writes ; then he proceeds to expatiate
on the benefit England would derive from colonies, and the
necessity of endeavoring to rescue the Indians from their
ignorance and idolatry.
But if Sir George Peckham was sanguine, the Catholics in
England were apparently in general opposed to any scheme
of colonization. Speaking of a later project the famous
Jesuit Father Persons wrote : " The Hereticks also would
laughe-and exprobrate the same unto them, as they did when
Sr. George Peckhame and Sr. Thomas Gerrarde about xx
years gone should have made the same viage to Nerembrage
by the Queen and Councells consente, with some evacuations
of Papists, as then they called them, which attempte became
presently then most odious to the Catholicke party."
1 Persons, " My Judgement about transfering Englishe Catholiques to
the northern partes of America." 1605.
PROPOSED SETTLEMENT IN MAINE. 25
For some years no further steps were taken in regard to a
Catholic colony, but in 1605 one Wiuslade, who had served
in the Spanish Armada, formed a project for gathering the
scattered English Catholic exiles on the continent, and with
them establishing a settlement in America. The scheme evi
dently found men to approve and men to condemn it.
The expedition sent out in the Archangel, Capt. "Wey-
mouth, March 5, 1605, by the gallant Sir Thomas Lord
Arundell of Wardour, and Henry TVriothesley, second Earl
of Southampton, his relative, who had conformed to the
State Church, was probably connected with this project.
An air of mystery was preserved with regard to this expedi
tion, and the only published account of it leaves everything
vague, yet the religious tone of the writer, James Eosier,
indicates a higher motive than trade or discovery. " We,"
he says, " supposing not a little present private profit, but a
publique good and true zeale of promulgating God's holy
church, by planting Christianity to be the sole intent of the
Honourable setters forth of this discovery."
1 "A True Relation of most prosperous voyage made this present yeere,
1605, By Captaine George Weymouth in the discovery of the land of Vir
ginia : Where he discouered 60 miles vp, a most excellent Riuer, to
gether with a most fertile land. Written by lames Rosier, a Gentleman
employed on the voyage." Londini, Impensis Geo. Bishop, 1605, p. 34.
The pious tone of Rosier's narrative would lead one to suppose him a
clergyman : policy would require adapting the tone of his remarks to
Protestant ears. If he were the Protestant minister sent by Southampton,
he would have no motive for concealing his character and not speaking
openly, and he would not ignore the Earl of Southampton and refer only
to Lord Arundell, as Rosier does : while if he were the priest sent by the
Catholic nobleman, it would be natural. He begins his Preface :
"Being employed in this voyage by the Right Honorable Thomas
Arundell, Baron of Warder, to take due notice and make true report of
the discovery therein performed." He collected an Indian vocabulary of
400 or 500 words, of which a part is given in Purchas' Pilgrims, iv, pp.
1659-1667. He concludes the Preface : "So with my prayers to God for
26 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
He notes that they sailed on Easter day, reached the coast
on Whitsunday, from which circumstance they named the
place Pentecost Harbour ; he tells us too that they set up
crosses at various points.1
The Archangel made the coast near Cape Cod in May,
and running northward reached Monhegan, to which
TVeymouth gave the name of St. George's, planting a
cross which remained there for years. He erected another
at Booth Bay, which he named Pentecost Harbour, and
ascended the Kennebec Kiver. Mgr. Urban Cerri, in a
report of the Propaganda to Pope Innocent XL, seems to
refer to this expedition where he writes : " Soon after Vir
ginia was discovered, the King of England sent thither a
Catholic Earl,3 and another nobleman who was a Heretick,
Those two Lords were attended by Protestants and Catholicks,
and two priests ; so that the Catholicks and Hereticks per
formed for a long time the exercise of religion under the
same roof." :
the conversion of so ingenious and well disposed people, I rest your
friend J. R."
1 pp. 13, 31, etc. Ballard, in his " George Weymouth and the Kenne
bec," maintains the Kennebec to be the river. Prince, in his reprint of
Rosier (Bath, 1860) the George's.
* Lord Arundell was a Count or Earl of the Holy Roman Empire
and of course was spoken of at Rome by that title.
3 " Instructions for our Holy Father Innocent XI. concerning the Pres
ent State of Religion in the Several Parts of the World, By Monsignor
Urbano Cerri, Secretary to the Congregation de Propaganda Fide," in
Steele, "An Account of the State of the Roman Catholick Religion
throughout the World." London, 1715. See page 168.
Lord Arundell of Wardour kindly informs me that owing to the
destruction of papers during the siege of Wardour Castle in 1643 noth
ing remains in the archives of that ancient Catholic house to give full
light on this early Catholic expedition to our shores. The Earl of South
ampton engaged with Lord Thomas Arundell was, he thinks, the second
Earl, brother-in-law to Lord Arundell and son of the patron of Shake
speare.
PROPOSED SETTLEMENT IN MAINE. 27
During "Weymouth's absence the plan of Winslade had
been submitted to the famous Jesuit Father Robert Persons,
one of the ablest men of his time. His decision, entitled " My
Judgement about transferring Englishe Catholiques to the
northern parts of America for inhabiting those partee and
converting those barbarous people to Christianitie," was so
adverse that it apparently led Lord Arundell to abandon the
project.
The reasons alleged by Father Persons were that the king
and his council would never favor the plan, as it made them
out persecutors, and without the consent of government
men could not sell estates, and leave the kingdom. The
wealthy Catholics would sooner risk losing part of their
property by fines in England than venture it all on such an
enterprise, and the poor could not go without the rich. In
the next place " it would be verie ill taken by the Catholicks
generally, as a matter sounding to their discredite and con-
tempte, to have as it were theire exportatione to Bar-
barouse people treated with Princes in theire name without
theire knowledge or consente." He also feared that the dimin
ishing of the number of Catholics in England might lead
to laws to prevent Catholics from leaving the country. In
the next place, the plan proposed assembling 1,000 in some
part of the continent from which they were to sail. Persons
objected that they could not be maintained while waiting the
assemblage of the whole, and no foreign state would permit
it. Spain, always jealous of European colonization, would
surely obstruct their project not only in Spain, but in Flan
ders and elsewhere.
"Finally what theire successe would be amongst those
wilde people, wilde beastes, unexperienced ayre, unprovided
lande God only knoweth, yet as I sayd, the intentione of con-
vertinge those people liketh me so well and in so high a de-
28 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
gree as for that onely I would desire myself to goe in the
iorney shutting my eyes to all other difficulties if it were pos
sible to obtayne it."
The plan embraced, therefore, not only a settlement as a
refuge for the oppressed Catholics of England, but a system
of missions for converting the Indians. How strange it is,
that a mission settlement for converting the Indians on that
very coast of Norumbega, founded by one of his fellow-mem
bers of the Society of Jesus, should be broken up by Per
sons' fellow-countrymen less than ten years after he wrote.1
Such was the second project of Catholic colonization in our
present territory. It failed, but strangely enough, the plan
proposed by Winslade was carried out by the English Sepa
ratists, who gathered in Holland, and with scanty resources, arid
apparently a want of all prudence sailed in winter to land on
the bleak New England coast, not to fail in their projected
settlement, but to open the way for others who filled the
land, and established enduring institutions.
The next to take up the project of Catholic colonization
was a convert, one who had held high and important offices
in the English government, was thoroughly conversant with
its spirit and ways, and who, as a member of the Virginia
Company, must have been fully conversant with all that had
been done to create colonies in America.
Sir George Calvert, descended from a noble Flemish fam
ily, was born at Kipling, in Yorkshire, in 1582. He took
his degrees at Oxford as bachelor and master of arts, and
showed ability as a poet. After making a tour of Europe,
he obtained an appointment in Ireland, and was promoted to
other offices, being often employed on public affairs at home
1 Father Biard's mission settlement of St. Sauveur on Mont Desert
Island.
CALVERT IN NEWFOUNDLAND. 09
and abroad, where a clear head, prompt action, and honest
purpose were required. Sir Robert Cecil, the trusted minister
of Elizabeth, made the young man his chief clerk, and when
he himself became lord high treasurer named Calvert clerk of
the Privy Council. Knighted in 1617, he became one of the
secretaries of state the next year. Favors flowed upon him,
among others a large grant of land in Ireland. At a very early
period he became interested in American colonization. In
1609 he was one of the Virginia Company of Planters, and
fifteen years later one of the provincial council in England
for the government of that province. In 1620, too, he pur
chased the southeast peninsula of Newfoundland, and sent
out Captain Edward Wynne with a small colony, who formed
a settlement at Ferryland.
Meanwhile, this public man, brought up amid the wily and
unprincipled statesmen of the courts of Elizabeth and James,
able but faithless, grasping and insincere, to whom religion
was but a tool for controlling the people, began to study re
ligious affairs seriously. The Puritans and Separatists and
Presbyterians were working among the lower and more ig
norant classes, building up a large body of dissenters ; the
Church of England was inert, many of the abler and purer
men seeking to recover what they had lost at the reforma
tion, rather than reject more.
Calvert had not been indifferent to the salvation of his own
soul, amid all the engrossing cares of office, and the allure
ments of the court. He felt the importance of religion and
gave it his serious thought and inquiry. In the Puritan
school he saw only a menace to all government civil and
ecclesiastical. In the Anglican Church only a feeble effort to
retrieve a wrong step. To his decisive mind the only course
for any man was to return to the ancient Church. This be
came clearer and clearer to his mind, and he prepared to ar-
30 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
range his affairs to meet the consequences attendant on a pro
fession of a faith proscribed by the laws of the state. In 1624
lie relinquished his seat in Parliament, and was received into
the Church. He then announced his change to the king
and tendered his resignation as secretary of state. King
James retained him as a member of the Privy Council ; he
also regranted to him the estates in Ireland, exempting him
from obligations which he now as a Catholic could not fulfil,
and to reward his long and faithful service, created him
Baron of Baltimore in the kingdom of Ireland.
Evidently in anticipation of the return to the Church of
his ancestors Calvert had on the 7th of April, 1623, obtained
a charter for the province of Avalon in Newfoundland, mak
ing him a lord proprietor where he was as yet only a land
holder.
His view was to lead out a colony and make it his resi
dence. That it was his design to make it a refuge for op
pressed Catholics cannot be doubted. He was already in in
timate relations with Sir Thomas Arundell, who had been
connected with a previous scheme of the kind, and the union
of the two families was soon cemented by a marriage.
The charter of Avalon made him " true and absolute Lord
and proprietary of the region " granted, which was erected
into a province, with full power to make necessary laws, ap.
point officers, enjoy the patronage and advowson of all
churches. Full authority was given to all the king's subjects
to proceed to the province and settle there, notwithstanding
any law to the contrary. The settlers were to be exempt
from all taxation imposed by the king or his successors.
It was provided that the laws should not be repugnant or
contrary to those of England, and a special clause " Provided
allways that no interpretation bee admitted thereof (of the
charter) whereby God's holy and truly Christian religion or
CAL VER T IN NE WFO UNDLAND. 31
allegiance due unto us, our heires and successors may in any
thing suffer any prejudice or diminution." To give a
charter directly favoring or protecting the Catholic religion
was what the king could not do. But the Avalon charter en
abled Catholics to emigrate to that province without hindrance,
and enabled Calvert to make such laws as he pleased, and re
served no power to require him to enforce the English penal
laws against Catholics. Thus under the charter Catholics
could hold lands, have their own churches and priests. It
was unnecessary for Lord Baltimore to pass any special law
permitting them to do so.
Embarking in an armed vessel of three hundred tons, in
o
1627, he reached Ferry land about the 23d of July, with
colonists and supplies. With him went two seminary priests,
the Rev. Messrs. Longvill and Anthony Smith. After a
short stay in his province he returned, the Rev. Mr. Long
vill accompanying him. A chapel had been set up, and
mass was regularly offered, the Rev. Mr. Smith being joined
next year by a priest named Hacket, when Lord Baltimore
came over with most of his family to make his home in
Newfoundland. The colonists were not all Catholics, how
ever ; and Lord Baltimore showed his sense of the equal
religious rights of all by giving the Protestant colonists a
place for worship and a clergyman. This minister, a Rev.
Mr. Stourton, was not content with full liberty ; he returned
to England, and filed an information against Lord Baltimore
for permitting mass to be said. His intolerance was that of
his time and country. Lord Baltimore, in practically placing
both religions on an equal footing, making both tacitly sanc
tioned, giving religious freedom to all, rose pre-eminently
1 The Charter is given at length in Scharf, " History of Maryland,"
i.,pp. 33-40.
32 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
above his time. lie nobly endeavored in Avalon to enable
each class of settlers to worship God according to the dic
tates of their conscience, and it was brought up against him
as a crime. Taught by this rude experience, we shall see
that in his next experiment, he left each class to provide
ministers of religion for themselves, or neglect to do so, as
they preferred.
Lord Baltimore found the climate very severe, and was
soon discouraged by the depredations of the French, with
whom he had some sharp fighting, gaining, however, the
victory.
Lady Baltimore, sailing down to Virginia to obtain sup
plies, was charmed with the beauty of Chesapeake Bay, and
apparently -urged her husband to cast his fortunes there rather
than on the bleak shore of Newfoundland. Lord Baltimore,
who was a member of the Council of Virginia, visited that
province in October, 1629, witli a view of removing his
settlement thither. The acting governor, John Pott, and
other officials, including Clayborne, at once demanded that
he should take the oath of supremacy.1 In this they
assumed powers not given to the officials in Virginia, such
powers having been limited to the treasurer and council in
England.2
This manifestation of hostility and bigotry was unexpected.
1 Sainsbury, " Calendar of State Papers," i., p. 104. In justifying their
course, Potts and his associates boasted "that no Papists have been
suffered to settle their abode amongst us." Neill, " Founders of Mary
land," p. 45. In fact, Virginia broke up a French Catholic settlement in
Maine, and at a later day had prevented Irish Catholics from landing.
2 No such power is given in the first charter, 4 James, i. The second,
7 James, i., empowers the treasurer, and any three of the council, to
tender the oath to those going to Virginia ; and the third gives a similar
power, but there is not a word empowering subordinate officials in the
colony to tender the oath to a member of the council.
LORD BALTIMORE IN VIRGINIA. 33
by Lord Baltimore. Before leaving Newfoundland, he had
written on the 19th of August, 1629, to King Charles I.,
soliciting the grant of a precinct of land in Virginia to which
he wished to remove with forty persons, and there enjoy the
same privileges that had been granted to him at Aval on.1
He evidently aimed at employing his means and ability to
build up Virginia in which he had so long been interested.
The conduct of the Virginia officials showed Lord Balti
more clearly, however, that Catholics could not live in peace
in that colony ; and that to secure them a refuge he must
obtain a charter for a new province. Leaving his family in
Virginia, he sailed to England to employ his influence in
obtaining a new grant. In February, 1630, Lord Baltimore,
with Sir Thomas Arundell of Wardour, applied for a grant
of land, south of the James River, "to be peopled and
planted by them," 2 the bravest Englishman of his time
again renewing his attempt at colonization within our limits.
Clayborne, who had been one of those who prevented
Lord Baltimore from settling in Virginia, prompted, as their
action shows, by hostility to his religion, was now secretary
of that province. When the king, at the petition of Lords
Baltimore and Arundell, signed a charter for territory south
of Virginia, in February, 1631, Clayborne and other repre
sentatives of that colony who were then in England, were
appalled at the result. To their prejudiced minds it was
dangerous for Virginia to have Catholic subjects, but that
danger was little compared to having a colony controlled by
Catholics at their very border. The charter just granted
was, on their vehement remonstrance, revoked. Baron Arun-
1 Colonial Papers, v. 27. Kirke, " Conquest of Canada," i., p. 158.
Scharf, "Maryland," i., p. 44.
2 Sainsbury, " Calendar of State Papers. " Johnson, " Foundation of
Maryland," p. 18.
3
34 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
dell died, but Lord Baltimore, persisting in his design, solic
ited, in lieu of the territory south of Virginia, a district
to the northward. Virginia had gained nothing, and further
opposition on her part was treated as vexatious.1
Charles I. ordered a patent to be issued to Lord Baltimore,
granting to him the territory north of the Potomac to the
fortieth degree, with the portion of the eastern shore of the
Chesapeake, lying opposite, and extending to the ocean. This
province the king named Terra Mariae, or Maryland, in
honor of his queen, Henriette Marie, daughter of Henri IV.,
and doubtless, too, in memory of the old Spanish name of
the Chesapeake, retained on many charts, " Baia de Santa
Maria."
The charter for Maryland, in which the long experience
and political wisdom of Lord Baltimore are manifest, has
generally been regarded as one of his best titles to the respect
of posterity. Sir George Calvert " was a man of sagacity and
an observing statesman. He had beheld the arbitrary admin
istration of the colonies, and against any danger of future
oppression, he provided the strongest defence which the
promise of a monarch could afford." " The charter secured
to the emigrants themselves an independent share in the
legislation of the province, of which the statutes were to be
established with the advice and approbation of the majority
of the freemen or their deputies. Representative govern
ment was indissolubly connected with the fundamental
charter." The king even renounced for himself and his
successors the right to lay any tax or impost on the people of
Maryland.
" Calvert deserves," says Bancroft, " to be ranked among
' Ayscough MSS. in British Museum, cited by Scharf, Hist. Mary
land, i., p. 50.
THE MARYLAND CHARTER. 35
the most wise and benevolent lawgivers of all ages. He
was the first in the history of the Christian world to seek for
religious security and peace by the practice of justice and
not by the exercise of power ; to plan the establishment of
popular institutions with the enjoyment of liberty of con
science ; to advance the career of civilization by recognizing
the rightful equality of all Christian sects. The asylum of
Catholics was the spot where, in a remote corner of the
world, on the banks of rivers, which, as yet, had hardly beer,
explored, the mild forbearance of a proprietary, adoptee1
religious freedom as the basis of the state."
Before the charter passed the Great Seal of England,
Lord Baltimore died ; but his son obtained the promised
grant under the same liberal conditions and proceeded at
once to carry out his father's plans, chief among which was
" to convert, not extirpate the natives, and to send the sober,
not the lewd, as settlers, looking not to present profit, but
future expectation." l
1 Some recent writers, notably S. F. Streeter and E. D. Neill, have
endeavored to detract from the first Lord Baltimore's claim to our respect
as an exponent of religious liberty. The older writers uniformly recog
nized it. Gen. B. T. Johnson, reviewing the whole question, says :
" Calvert adopted the principle of religious liberty as covered by, and
included in, the guarantees of the Great Charter, not that there could be
liberty of conscience without security of personal property, but that
there could be no security of personal property without liberty of con
science." " Foundation of Maryland," p. 12. Scharf, " History of Mary
land," i., p. 52, says : " Calumny has not shrunk from attacking his
honored name. Detraction has been busy, and as the facts could not be
denied, Calvert's motives have been assailed, but empty assertion, con
jecture, surmises, however ingeniously malevolent, have happily exer
cised very little influence over the minds of intelligent and candid men."
See the question of the credit to be given to the charter and to Lord
Baltimore discussed in " American Catholic Quarterly," x., p. 658. Cal
vert's giving equality to Catholic and Protestant worship in Avalon is
the practical proof of his motive. That no charters but his allowed
toleration or colonial legislation, shows that the ideas did not emanate
from the crown.
36 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
A Catholic nobleman, at a time when his faith was pro
scribed in England, and its ministers constantly butchered
by law,1 was thus made proprietary of a colony in America,
where the colonists were to make their own laws ; where no
religion was established, where the laws required no royal
assent. It was a colony where Catholicity might be planted
and flourish.
1 Within twenty years ten Catholic priests and several laymen had been
hanged, drawn, and quartered in England for their religion, one of them
as recently as 1628.
7
ANCIENT PEWTER CHALICE AND PATEN,
OF TILE EARLY DAYS OP MARYLAND,
WITH ALTAR STOT>E PRESERVED .A.T
WOODSTOCK COLLEGE.
CHAPTER II.
CATHOLICITY PLANTED IN MARYLAND. 1634-1646.
THE project of a home beyond the Atlantic for the perse
cuted Catholics of England was at laet on the point of being
successfully carried out. The attempts of Peckham and
Gerard, of "Winslade, of Lord Baltimore at Avalon, all show
the same object, and leave no room for doubt that Cal vert's
design in founding Maryland was to give his fellow-believers
a place of refuge. The object was, of course, not distinctly
avowed. The temper of the times required great care and
caution in all official documents, as well as in the manage
ment of the new province.
Cecil, Lord Baltimore, after receiving his charter for Mary
land, in June, 1632, prepared to carry out his father's plans.
Terms of settlement were issued to attract colonists, and a
body of emigrants was soon collected to begin the foundation
of the new province. The leading gentlemen who were
induced to take part in the project were Catholics ; those
whom they took out to till the soil, or ply various trades, were
not all or, indeed, mainly Catholics, but they could not have
been very strongly Protestant to embark in a venture so abso
lutely under Catholic control. At Avalon Sir George Cal-
vert, anxious for the religious life of his colonists, had taken
over both Catholic and Protestant clergymen, and was ill-
repaid for his liberal conduct. To avoid a similar ground of
reproach, Baron Cecil left each part of his colonists free to
take their own clergymen. It is a significant fact that the
(37)
38 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Protestant portion were so indifferent that they neither took
over any minister of religion, nor for several years after
Maryland settlements began, made any attempt to procure
one. On behalf of the Catholic settlers, Lord Baltimore
applied to Father Richard Blount, at that time provincial
of the Jesuits in England, and wrote to the General of the
Society, at Rome, to excite their zeal in behalf of the English
Catholics who were about to proceed to Maryland. He could
offer the clergy no support. " The Baron himself is unable to
find support for the Fathers, nor can they expect sustenance
from heretics hostile to the faith, nor from Catholics for the
most part poor, nor from the savages who live after the man
ner of wild beasts."
The prospect was not encouraging, and the proximity of
the colonies of Virginia and New England, both hostile in
feeling to Catholicity, made the position of a Catholic mis
sionary one of no little danger. The Jesuits did not shrink
from a mission field where they were to look for no support
from the proprietary or their flock, and were to live amid
dangers. It was decided that two Fathers were to go as gen
tlemen adventurers, taking artisans with them, and acquiring
lands like others, from which they were to draw their sup
port. This required means, and we are not told by whom
they were furnished, but circumstances strongly indicate that
Father Thomas Copley, of an old English family, but born
in Spain, supplied the means by which the first missionaries
were sent out and maintained.1 The Maryland pilgrims
under Leonard Calvert, brother of the lord proprietary.
1 Memorial of Father Henry. More, Vice-Provincial. Foley, " Records
of the English Province," iii., pp. 363-4. Thomas Copley, known on the
mission as Father Philip Fisher, took up lands, claiming that Fathers
White, Altham, and their companions had been sent over by him. Kilty,
Landholder's Assistant, pp. 66-8.
MARYLAND SETTLED. 39
consisted of his brother George, some twenty other gentle
men, and two hundred laboring men, well provided. To con
vey these to the land of Mary, Lord Baltimore had his own pin
nace, the Dove, of fifty tons, commanded by Robert "Winter,
and the Ark, a chartered vessel of 350 tons burthen, Richard
Lowe being captain. Leonard Calvert was appointed gover
nor, Jerome Hawley and Thomas Cornwaleys being joined in
the commission. Among the gentlemen who came forward to
take part in the good work was Richard Gerard, son of the
baronet Sir Thomas, one of the first, as we have seen, to pro
pose Catholic colonization in America, and active with Feck-
ham in Sir Humphrey Gilbert's expedition.
Lord Baltimore met with many vexations and delays. He ob
tained from the Lords of the Admiralty a warrant exempting
his men from impressment ; but as by his very charter the object
of his colony was religious, the proprietary being praised for
his pious zeal and desire to propagate the Christian faith,
every engine was employed to defeat the expedition. On
hostile representations, the attorney-general at last made an
information in the Star Chamber that Lord Baltimore's ships
had departed without proper papers from the custom-house,
and in contempt of all authority. It was, moreover, alleged
that the emigrants had abused the king's officers and refused
to take the oath of allegiance. On these malicious charges
ships were sent in pursuit of the Maryland vessels, and the
Ark and Dove were brought back to London. The charges
were soon disproved, but Lord Baltimore had been put to great
expense, and his expedition jeoparded. His enemies, how
ever, could not force him to abandon his undertaking.'
The Ark and Dove, when released, bore away again, and
putting in at Cowes, in the Isle of "Wight, took aboard other
1 Lord Baltimore to the Earl of Strafford. Stafford's Letters.
40 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
members of the expedition. From this period we have as
our guide the narrative of the voyage, written, in all proba
bility, by Father Andrew White. This learned man, who
after serving on the English mission as a seminary prieet, had
fallen into the hands of the enemies of the true faith and
spent years in prison, had been banished from England in
1606. On the Continent he entered the Society of Jesus
and filled professors' chairs in several colleges.1 He had
been selected by the provincial as chief missioner to Mary
land, and was accompanied by Father John Altham, or Grave-
nor, and by Thomas Gervase, a lay brother.2
They sailed from Cowes on the 22d of November, 1633,
the feast of Saint Cecilia. In the stormy weather which they
soon encountered, the Dove was driven from her consort, and
the two priests in the Ark expecting for their party the fate
which seemed to have overtaken her, united all the Catholics
in prayers and devotions to our Lord, to the Blessed Virgin,
Saint Ignatius, and the Angel Guardians of Maryland, con
secrating that province as a new votive offering to Our Lady
of the Immaculate Conception. Sweeping around by Barba-
does, by Montserrat, whence the fugitive Irish Catholics had
1 Challoner, "Missionary Priests " (Phil, edn.), ii., p. 14. Foley, " Rec
ords of the English Province," iii., pp. 334-9. The earliest printed ac
counts of Father White's Life are in More, " Historia Anglo Bavarica,"
and in Tanner, " Societas Jesu," p. 803. Prague, 1694.
- The " Relatio Itineris " mentions no other priest except F. Altham, and
White would, of course, not mention himself byname. Grants of lands
were taken up only for White and Altham. Kilty's Land-Holder's Assist
ant, p. 68. We must regard the mention of other priests at the time as
erroneous. To some it may require explanation why Altham and other
early missionaries had more than one name. This was a result of the penal
laws in England, to save their relatives and those who harbored them
from annoyance and danger. Mr. Henry Foley has, at infinite trouble,
collected the names which Fathers of the Society were compelled to
assume. After his patient research I make no mere conjecture in any
case.
THE JESUITS IN MARYLAND. 41
not yet been driven by English bate, by Nevis and other
West India Islands, the two vessels, which had again joined
company, glided peacefully at last between the capes into the
bay which Spanish navigators named in honor of the Mother
of God, but which was to bear its Indian name of Chesapeake.
The avowed hostility of Virginia made Leonard Calvort
anxious to learn what reception awaited him. He anchored
for a time at Point Comfort and forwarded to the governor
letters he bore from the king and the authorities in England.
Encouraged by a courteous welcome, Calvert then proceeded
up the bay to the territory embraced within the charter of
Maryland. The Catholic character of the colony is at once
apparent. For each natural landmark a title is drawn from
the calendar of the Church. The Potomac is consecrated to
St. Gregory ; Smith's Point and Point Lookout become Cape
St. Gregory and Cape St. Michael. When the Pilgrims of
Marvland reached the Heron Islands they named them after
St. Clement, St. Catharine, and St. Cecilia, whose festivals re
called the early days of their voyage. Near the island named
St. Clement they came to anchor. " On the day of the An
nunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the year 1634,"
writes the author of the " Kelatio Itineris," " we celebrated
the first mass on that island ; never before had it been offered
in that region. After the holy sacrifice, bearing on our
shoulders a huge cross, which we had hewn from a tree, we
moved in procession to a spot selected, the governor, com
missioners and other Catholics," putting their hands first unto
it, " and erected it as a trophy to Christ our Saviour ; then
humbly kneeling, we recited with deep emotion, the Litany
of the Holy Cross." '
1 " Relatio Itineris ad Marylandiam," Baltimore, 1874, p. 83. The
manuscript of the Relatio with an Indian catechism was found in 1832
in the Archives of the Professed House at Rome, by an American Jesuit,
42 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
ST. CLEMENT'S ISLAND, EASTERN END, WHERE THE FIRST MASS WAS
SAID IN MARYLAND, MARCH 25, 1634. FROM A DRAWING BY F. B.
MAYER.
Catholicity thus planted her cross and her altar in the
heart of the English colonies in America, March 25, 1634:.
The land was consecrated, and then preparations were made
to select a spot for the settlement. Leaving Father White at
St. Clement's, the governor, with Father Altham, ran up the
river in a pinnace, and at Potomac on the southern shore
met Archihau, regent of the powerful tribe that held sway
over that part of the land. The priest, through an interpre
ter, made known his desire to instruct the chief in the true
faith. Archihau gave every mark of friendly assent. The
emperor of Piscataway, who controlled a considerable extent
of territory on the Maryland side of the river, was also won
over by the Catholic pilgrims, although on their first ap
proach the Piscataways came flocking to the shore to oppose
them in arms. Having thus prepossessed the most powerful
native rulers of the neighboring Indians to regard the new
Father William McSherry. A translation by N. C. Brooks, LL.D., ap
peared soon after and was reprinted in Force's Tracts, Vol. IV. The Mary
land Historical Society printed the Latin with a translation edited by Rev.
E. A. Dalrymple in 1874. A corrected version is given in the Woodstock
Letters, I., pp. 12-24 ; 71-80 ; 145-155 ; II., pp. 1-13. It is evidently by
Father White. See also, " A Relation of the Successful Beginnings of the
Lord Baltimore's Plantation in Mary -land." London, 1634; New York,
1865, p. 9. In this which follows the Relatio closely but prudently " cel
ebrated the first mass" becomes "recited certain prayers."
FIRST CHAPEL AT ST. MARY'S. 43
settlers favorably, Leonard Calvert sailed back to Saint
Clement's. Then the pilgrims entered the Saint Mary's, a
bold broad stream, emptying into the Potomac about twelve
miles from its mouth. For the first settlement of the new
province, Leonard Calvert, who had landed, selected a spot a
short distance above, about a mile from the eastern shore of the
river. Here stood an Indian town, whose inhabitants, harassed
by the Susquehannas, had already begun to emigrate to the
westward. To observe strict justice with the Indian tribes
Calvert purchased from the werowance or king, Yaocomoco
thirty miles of territory. The Indians gradually gave up some
of their houses to the colonists, agreeing to leave the rest also
after they had gathered in their harvest. The colonists, who
had according to tradition tarried for a time on the ground
now known as St. Inigoes/ came up and the Governor took
the colors ashore, the gentlemen and the servants under arms,
receiving them with a salute of musketry, to which the can
non of the vessels replied. He took possession of the Indian
town and named it St. Mary's. One of the oblong oval In
dian bark houses or witchotts was assigned to the priests.
With the help of their good lay brother, the two Jesuit
Fathers soon transformed it into a chapel, the first shrine of
Catholicity in Maryland.
The native tribes were conciliated ; Sir John Harvey, Gov
ernor of Virginia, came as a welcome guest ; the new settle
ment began with Catholic and Protestant dwelling together
in harmony, neither attempting to interfere with the religious
rights of the other, " and religious liberty obtained a home,
its only home in the wide world, at the humble village which
bore the name of St. Mary's." "
1 Foley. "Records of the English Province," iii., p. 322. "Relatia
Itineris," p. 36. "A Relation of Maryland, 1635," p. 12.
3 Bancroft, " History of the United States," i., p. 247.
44 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Thus began the city of St. Mary's, March 27, 1634.
" St. Mary's was the home, the chosen home of the disciples
of the Roman Church. The fact has been generally received.
It is sustained by the traditions of two hundred years, and by
volumes of written testimony ; by the records of the courts ;
by the proceedings of the privy council ; by the trial of law
cases ; by the wills and inventories ; by the land records and
rent-rolls j and by the very names originally given to the towns
and hundreds to the creeks and rivulets, to the tracts and
manors of the county." '
SITE OP THE CITY OF ST. MARY'S, MD., WHERE THE FIRST CATHOLIC
CHAPEL WAS ERECTED. FROM A SKETCH BY GEORGE ALFRED
TOWNSEND.
The settlers were soon at work. Houses for their use were
erected, crops were planted, activity and industry prevailed.
St. Mary's chapel was dedicated to the worship of Almighty
God, and near it a fort stood, ready to protect the settlers.
It was required by the fact that Clayborne, the fanatical
enemy of Lord Baltimore and his Catholic projects, who had
already settled on Kent Island, was exciting the Indians
against the colonists of Maryland.
The little community gave the priests a field too limited
for their zeal. The daily mass, the instructions from the
1 Davis, " Day Star," p. 149.
MAP OF MARYLAND, FROM ONE PUBLISHED BETWEEN 1670 AND 1690.
46 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
altar, private conferences with any desiring clearer knowledge
of the faith ; all these were the ordinary work ; but the In
dian tribes were to be reached. The Yaocomocos near St.
Mary's hunted and fished for the colonists and were constantly
in the little town. The missionaries began to study their
language, collecting words and endeavoring to understand its
structure and forms. They found, however, that each little
tribe seemed to have a different dialect or a distinct lamruaere ;
O O "
but undeterred by this, they went steadily on, and the results
of their investigations are still preserved.1
Another priest, with a lay brother, came to share their
labors before the close of the year 1635 ; and the next year
four priests were reported as the number assigned to the
Maryland mission. Of their early labors no record is pre
served, and we learn only that they were laboring diligently to
overcome the difficulties presented by the Indian languages.'2
The two priests last assigned to the mission, and who ap
parently did not reach Maryland till 1637, were the Rev.
Thomas Copley, known on the records of the Society of Jesus
as Father Philip Fisher, with Father John Knolles. Father
Copley (Fisher) became superior of the mission, and at once
took steps to place the affairs of the community on a self-sup
porting basis. Under the Conditions of Plantation issued by
Lord Baltimore, August 8, 1636, every one of the gentlemen
adventurers of 1633 was entitled to two thousand acres for
every five men brought over, and the same quantity of land
for every ten men brought over in the two succeeding years.
1 The "Relatio Itineris," as printed, purports to be addressed to the
General of the Society, but this address seems to have been added to
Father McSherry's transcript by a later hand. See Latin notes, Mary
land Hist. Society's edition, p. 101.
2 Notes for 1635-1636; Ib., p. 54. There are allusions to a Father
Hayes, who may have come over in 1635, and returned soon after.
THE JESUITS IN MARYLAND. 47
Under these provisions Father Fisher, using his real name
of Thomas Copley, entered a claim for Mr. Andrew "White,
Mr. John Altham, and others to the number of thirty
brought over by him in the year 1633 ; as well as for him
self and Mr. John Knolles, and others to the number of nine
teen brought over in 1637. ' The position taken by Lord
Baltimore that the Catholic priests who went to Maryland
were not 10 look to him or to the settlers for support, left
them no alternative but to maintain themselves, as there was
no hope of any one establishing a fund, for their use. The
lands then taken up were cleared and put under cultivation
by the missionaries and for two centuries may be said to have
met all the cost of maintaining Catholic worship and its min
isters in those portions of Maryland.2
Sickness prevailed in the colony, and the missionaries did
not escape. Within two months after his arrival Father
Knolles, a talented young priest of much hope, sank a vic-
1 Kilty, " The Land-Holder's Assistant," Baltimore, 1808, pp. 30, 66,
67, 68. Other lands were claimed by Copley, as assignee of settlers who
had returned to England.
Mr. Henry Foley, Records of the English Province, vii. , 1146, etc.:
and Woodstock Letters, xi., pp. 18-24, xv., pp. 44-7, discussing the sub
ject ably, consider the identity of Thomas Copley and Father Philip Fisher
established, and this was the result of rny own studies. Both are repre
sented as born at Madrid at the close of the 16th century ; each came to
Maryland in 1637 (August 8) with Father Knolles ; each was carried off,
and each died in 1652. Neither recognizes the existence of the other.
Copley took up lands for all the Jesuit Fathers, but no lands for Fisher,
and Fisher as superior alludes in his account of the mission to no Father
Copley. A very interesting sketch of Father Copley by Mrs. K. C. Dor-
sey is in Woodstock Letters, xiii. p. 250, cf. xiv. p. 345 ; xv. p. 44.
• It has been charged that the Catholic missionaries in adopting the
course they did, became farmers and merchants ; but the taunt comes
with a very ill grace from ministers, whether Episcopalian or Calvinist,
whose predecessors in this country lived on money wrung by process of
law from many who did not belong to their flock and who rejected their
teaching.
48 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
tim to the climate, .and Brother Gervase, one of the original
band of settlers, also died.1
The hostility excited by Clayborne prevented the establish
ment of any mission among the Indian tribes, as the gov
ernor deemed it rash for any missionary to take up his resi
dence in an Indian village ; but among the settlers they
found employment for their zeal, several Protestants being
instructed and received into the Church. One of the Fath
ers visited a neighboring province, Virginia as we may -infer,
and found two Frenchmen long strangers to the sacraments
and their duties, who, struck down by sickness, availed them
selves of this providential presence of a priest to make their
peace with God. The Fathers found several Catholics in
Virginia held for service whose terms they purchased to enable
them to go to Maryland and live where they could practice
their religion.
We can picture to ourselves the little colony, the only
place under the flag of England where Catholicity enjoyed
even comparative freedom. A public chapel where mass
was regularly said, where sermons were preached on Sun
days and holidays, where the children each Sunday learned
their catechism, and adults were grounded in the faith by
instructions suited to their capacity — undoubtedly the first
Sunday-school in the country — where retreats were given to
those who wished to perform the spiritual exercises.
After a time Father White took up his residence with
Maquacomen, chief or king of Patuxent, a man of great
power and influence, who showed every inclination to em
brace the faith. His example led several of the tribe to lis
ten to the missionary and they were baptized after being
carefully instructed and their perseverance tested ; but Ma-
1 Annual Letter of 1638. " Relatio Itineris," pp. 54-5.
EQUALITY OF RELIGIOUS EIGHTS. 49
quacomen, though he followed the instructions and seemed
convinced, hesitated and procrastinated. He had shown his
good-will by bestowing on the mission a tract known as Meta-
pawnien, a spot so fertile that its produce was the main reli
ance of the Maryland missionaries. Yet with the unstable
ness so frequent among Indians he soon changed, all design
of embracing the faith vanished, and his hostility to the mis
sionaries and to the Maryland settlers became so marked that
Leonard Calvert recalled Father White to St. Mary's. The
first permanent Indian mission was thus defeated, great a£
the hopes wTere that had been based on the influence which
the Patuxent chief exercised over the surrounding tribes.1
The prevailing influence in Maryland was Catholic ; the
leading gentlemen who had given their means and personal
services to the project, like Captain Thomas Cornwaleys,
Cuthbert Fenwick, Thomas Green, were Catholics, but several
of those whom they brought over under the conditions of
plantation were Protestants. For many years these had no
clergymen, but a chapel was soon reared for their use. They
were protected in its exclusive use, and interference with
their religious views by taunts or opprobrious words was pun
ished.2
Care was taken by the lord proprietary to maintain this
equality of religious rights. The oath of office taken by the
governors from the outset evinces this. " And I do further
swear that I will not by myself or any other person, directly
or indirectly, trouble, molest, or discountenance any person
1 " Relatio Itineris," p. 63.
2 Lt. William Lewis was fined in 1638 for abusing Protestants who were
reading aloud a book that offended him. See proceedings analyzed in
Scharf, i. pp. 166-7. Dr. Thomas Gerrard was fined in 1642 for taking
away the keys and books of the Protestant chapel. Maryland Archives,
i,p. 119 ; Johnson, " Old Maryland Manors," p. 29 ; Bozman, "History
of Maryland," ii. pp. 199-200 ; Davis, " Day Star," p. 33.
4
50 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
whatsoever, professing to believe in Jesus Christ, and in par
ticular no Roman Catholic, for or in respect of religion, nor
his or her free exercise thereof within the said province, . . .
nor will I make any difference of persons in conferring of
fices, rewards or favors, for or in respect to their said religion,
but meerly as I shall find them, faithful and well deserving
of his said Lordship and to the best of my understanding
endowed with morall vertues and abilities . . . and if any
other officer or persons whatsoever shall . . . molest or dis
turb any person . . . professing to believe in Jesus Christ,
meerly for or in respect of his or her religion or the free
exercise hereof upon notice or complaint thereof made to
him, I will apply my power and authority to relieve any per
son so molested or troubled, whereby he may have right done
him."1
Lord Baltimore's scheme embraced not only religious but
legislative freedom, and his charter provided for a colonial
assembly. Maryland begins her history in March, 1634, and
in less than three years an assembly of the freemen of the
little colony was convened and opened its sessions on the
25-26th of January, 1637. All who had taken up lands were
summoned to attend in person. The Catholic priests, sum
moned like the rest, had no wish to take part as legislators.
Through Robert Clerke they asked to be excused from serv
ing." When the Assembly met, John Lewgar, secretary
: Chalmers, p. 235 ; McMahon, " Hist. Maryland," 226. Langford,
" Refutation of Babylon's Fall "; "Virginia and Maryland," pp. 22, 23, 26.
The terms of the oath are taken from the Parliament Navy Committee
31st Dec., 1652, where they are given in a general way, and not as those
of an oath introduced recently. Streeter, ' ' Maryland Two Hundred Years
Ago," p. 26, and some subsequent writers endeavored to show that this
oath did not date back to 1636 ; the whole qiiestion can be studied in
Scharf, i., p. 171.
8 "Maryland Archives," i., p. 5.
NEW QUESTIONS. 51
to Lord Baltimore, was the leading spirit. A recently con
verted Protestant minister, he was little versed in the canons
and rules of the Catholic Church. Some of the laws intro
duced by him excited grave doubts in the minds of Catholic
gentlemen in the Assembly, who submitted the matter to
the missionaries. To their minds the proposed acts so
conflicted with the laws of the Church that no Catholic
could conscientiously vote for them. Their opinion gave
great umbrage to Leonard Calvert, the governor, and still
greater to Lord Baltimore when the affair was reported to
him.1
The variance of opinion was most unfortunate in its results
to the colony, as impairing the harmony which had hitherto
prevailed, and threatened to prevent the growth of the
Church in its usefulness and the spreading of missions among
the Indians. A chapel had by this time been erected at St.
Mary's, and a cemetery was duly blessed to receive the remains
of those who died in the faith.2
Secretary Lewgar, though sincerely a Catholic, and subse
quently a priest,3 was at this time too unacquainted with
the canons of the Church to act dispassionately. His letters
to Lord Baltimore seem to have excited that nobleman
so much that he resolved to force the Jesuit Fathers to aban
don the mission. He declared the grant of land by the
Patuxent king null and void, and objected to a further
1 Laws were introduced regarding marriage and proving wills, then
regarded as within the province of ecclesiastical courts, establishing courts,
and one curious enactment deprived a woman of lands descending to her
unless she married before an age fixed by law. "Maryland Archives,"
L, p. 15.
2 " Ye ordinary burying place in St. Mary's Chapel yard " is alluded to
in John Lloyd's will, 1658. Davis, p. 33.
3 He died at London in 1655, while attending the plague-stricken. As to
his writings, see Dodd, iii., p. 264.
52 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
acquisition of land by the missionaries. At the same time
lie took measures to request the Congregation de Propa
ganda Fide at Rome to establish a mission in his province of
Maryland. In carrying out his plan he acted disingenuously,
evidently withholding all information as to the actual exist
ence of a mission in his colony, founded by the English
province of the Society of Jesus. A more direct and
straightforward course would have been to submit the case
O i
to the authorities in Rome and solicit such a modification of
ordinary rules as the exceptional state of affairs in Maryland
seemed to require.
It was apparently to support his application to Rome that
the Maryland Assembly, on the 19th of March, 1638 (O. S.),
passed an act entitled " An Act for Church Liberties," the
first section of which provided that " Holy Church within
this province shall have all her rights, liberties and immu
nities, safe, whole and inviolable in all things."
1 " Maryland Archives," i., pp. 35, 40, 82. It was to be in force till the
next Assembly and then be made perpetual. That a law of general relig
ious freedom was then passed has been asserted, but no such act can now
be found.
" After the Charter was thus granted to Lord Baltimore, who was then
a Roman Catholic, his Lordship emitted his proclamation to encourage
the settlement of his province, promising therein among other things,
liberty of conscience and an equal exercise of religion to every denom
ination of Christians who would transport themselves and reside in his
province, and that he would procure a law to be passed for that purpose
afterwards. The first or second Assembly that met after the colonists
arrived here, some time in the year 1688, a perpetual law was passed in
pursuance of his Lordship's promise, and indeed such a law was easily
obtained from those who were the first settlers. This act was confirmed
in 1649 and again in 1650." Reply of Upper to Lower House of Assem
bly in 1758, cited by Scharf, i., p. 154.
" The people who first settled in this province were for the most part
Roman Catholics, and that although every other sect was tolerated, a
majority of the inhabitants continued Papists till the Revolution." Gov.
Sharpe's letter of Dec. 15, 1758, in Maryland State Library.
PAndrai? [Vitas, £ JAnijn. -WJia et JWkrilau
BAPTIRM OP KING CHILOMACON. BY FATHER ANDREW WHITE
PROM TANNER, " SOCIETAS JESTJ," 1694
MARYLAND MISSIONS. 53
Meanwhile the missionaries were continuing their labors,
Father John Brock, who had become Superior of the Mis
sion, residing with a lay brother at the plantation, apparently
that known as St. Inigoes ; Father Altham, who had become
well acquainted with the country, being stationed at Kent
Island on the eastern shore, then a great centre of the Indian
trade, and Father Philip Fisher at the chapel in St. Mary's,
the capital of the colony.
Father White had penetrated to a new field, a hundred
and twenty miles from St. Mary's, having, in June, 1639,
planted his mission cross at Kittamaquindi, capital of Pisca-
taway, the realm of the Tayac or Chief, Chitomachen or
Chilomacon. This was probably at or near the present town
of that name, fifteen miles south of the city of Washington.
The chief, predisposed by dreams, on which Indians depend
so much, received the missionary warmly. He listened to
the instructions and, touched by grace, resolved not only to
encourage the missionary's labors among his people, but,
with his wife and children, to embrace the faith preached to
them. He put away his concubines, learned how to pray,
and observed the fasts and abstinences of the Church. He
openly avowed his renunciation of all his former supersti
tions and idolatry, and declared that religion was far more
to him than any other advantage he could derive from the
whites. Visiting St. Mary's, this catechumen was received
with every mark of friendship, and when lie was sufficiently
instructed, and his dispositions deemed certain, he was
solemnly baptized at Kittamaquindi, his capital, on the 5th
of July, 1640, receiving at the sacred font the name of
Charles. His wife, the devoted friend of the mission, re
ceived in baptism the name of Mary, and her infant child
that of Anne. The king's chief councillor, Mesorcoques,
with his son, enjoyed the same blessing. This interesting
54 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
ceremony, the administration of the holy sacrament of regen
eration to a chief of such influence and his family, took
place in a new bark chapel, erected for the occasion.
Leonard Calvert, the governor, came with Lewgar, the sec
retary of the colony, and Father Altham, to show by their
presence the importance of the event.
In the afternoon the king and queen were united in matri
mony according to Christian usage ; then a large holy cross
was erected, the Indian chief, the English governor and
secretary, with natives and settlers lending their shoulders
and hands to bear it to its destined place, the two Jesuit
Fathers chanting, as they went, the Litany of our Lady of
Loretto, the murmur of the 'river as it flowed down past the
site of the future capital of the country, and the voices of
the hoary forests echoing the response.1
The two missionaries were soon after prostrated by fever,
and they were conveyed to St. Mary's. Father Altham did
not rally from its effects ; he sank under the disease and died
on the 5th of November, 1640. Father White began to
mend, and in February, having regained some strength,
joined Father Brock, at Piscataway, in order to make the
mission a solid one ; but he again fell sick, exciting the alarm
of Father Srock, who feared that listening only to his zeal
he would sink under his age and increasing infirmities, the
result doubtless of the years spent in English prisons. Much
of the success of the society's labors in Maryland depended
upon Father White, inasmuch as he possessed the greatest
influence over the minds of the Indians, and spoke their
languages with greater fluency and accuracy than any of the
1 Annual Letter, 1639, in "Relatio Itineris," p. 65, etc.; Foley, " Rec
ords," iii., p. 372. Tanner, " Societas Jesu Apostolorum Imitatrix,"
Prague, 1694, pp. 803-4. The curious picture of the baptism of Chito-
machen is reproduced exactly from the now rare work of Tanner.
MARYLAND MISSIONS. 55
other missionaries. It was Father Brock, however, who was
to be the next victim to the climate. After announcing the
faith to the tribe of Anacostans or Snakes, and converting
their king, he died before the close of the year.
Father Brock, whose real name was Ferdinand Poulton,
belonged to a family which had given many members to the
Society of Jesus. He was born in Buckinghamshire about
the beginning of the century, and entering the Society in
1622, was sent out as Superior of the mission in 1638 or 1639,
being then a professed Father. He was accidentally shot
while crossing Saint Mary's River.
A letter written shortly before his death gives interesting
details of the labors of the Fathers on the Maryland mission,
which we have used in our account. Its closing sentences
show how completely he was absorbed in the work.1 " The
mere idea of our Superiors recalling us or not sending others
to help us in this glorious work of the conversion of souls, in
some sort impugns the Providence of God and his care of his
servants, as though he would now less than formerly provide
for the nourishment of his laborers. On which account our
courage is not diminished, but rather increased and strength
ened ; since now God will take us into his protection, and
will certainly provide for us himself, especially since it has
pleased the divine goodness already to receive some fruit of
our labors however small. In whatever manner it may seem
good to his divine Majesty to dispose of us, may his holy will
be done ! But as much as in me lies, I would rather, labor
ing in the conversion of the Indians, expire on the bare
ground deprived of all human succor and perishing with hun
ger, than once think of abandoning this holy work of God
1 Letter of Father John Brock, Stonyhurst MSS., iv., p. 109 ; U. 8.
Catholic Magazine, 1848, p. 534. Foley, "Records," iii., pp. 368, 382;
" Relatio Itineris," p. 73.
56 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
from the fear of want. May God grant me grace to render
him some service and all the rest I leave to divine Provi
dence. The King of Piscataway lately died most piously ;
but God will for his sake raise up seed for us in his neigh
bor, the King of Anacostan, who has invited us to come to
him, and has decided to become a Christian. Many likewise
in other localities desire the same. Hopes of a rich harvest
shine forth, unless frustrated by the want of laborers who
can speak the language and are in sound health."
This energetic Superior was cut off amid plans approved
by the Provincial for establishing new stations, and he had
proposed a scheme for commencing a seat of learning for the
province of Maryland.1
In 1642 Father Philip Fisher, again Superior, contin
ued his labors at Saint Mary's, among the settlers and
neighboring Indians. Here the young empress of Piscata
way was solemnly baptized, and remained to be educated in
Christian and civilized life. Father Andrew White attended
Piscataway and the scattered missions. He suffered greatly
from a Puritan captain on whose vessel he embarked to
shorten his voyages, and he even feared that he might be
carried off to New England ; but the vessel was frozen in the
ice of the Potomac opposite the Indian town of that name
to which Father White proceeded over the ice on foot, the
inhospitable craft soon after sinking crushed by the ice of the
river. The missionary was weather-bound at this point nearly
two months, but they were a season of grace to the Indians.
" The ruler of the little village with the principal men among
the inhabitants was during that time added to the Church,
1 " The hope of establishing a College which you hold forth, I embrace
with pleasure ; and shall not delay my sanction to the plan, when it shall
have reached maturity." Letter to Father Brock, U. S. Cath. Mag.,
vii., p. 580.
MARYLAND MISSIONS. 57
and received the faith of Christ through baptism. Besides
these persons, one was converted along with many of his
friends ; a third brought his wife, his son, and a friend ; and
a fourth in like manner came, together with another of no
ignoble standing among his people. Strengthened by their
example, the people are prepared to receive the faith when
ever we shall have leisure to instruct them." '
About this time the Fathers seem to have converted also
some Virginia settlers so as to arouse animosity, for the
acts of the colony show that the Catholics were deemed nu
merous and active enough to crush. In 1641 it was enacted
that no popish recusant should attempt to hold any office in
that colony under the penalty of a thousand pounds of to
bacco."
Father Roger Rigby was soon after stricken down with
illness amid his apostolic labors at Patuxent.
The efforts of the missionary at Port Tobacco resulted in
the conversion of almost all the tribe, so that Father White
resolved to make their town his residence, Piscataway hav
ing become exposed to the ravages of the Susquehannas,
who had already attacked a mission station and killed all the
whites who were there cultivating the soil. The report that
the missionary himself had been slain spread far and wide,
and reached the ears of the holy Jesuit Father Isaac Jogues,
1 "Annual Letter," 1642. Foley, " Records," iii., p. 381.
2 An unscrupulous enemy of the missionaries at this time attests the
constant conversions of Protestants as distinctly as the Jesuits and their
friends. " His country," writes the author of "Virginia and Maryland,"
" till he employed Captain Stone, never had but papist governors,
and counsellors, dedicated to St. Ignatius, as they call him, and his
Chappel and Holy day kept solemnly. The Protestants, for the most
part, miserably disturbed in the exercise of their Religion, by many
wayes plainly enforced, or by subtil practises, or hope of preferment to
turn Papists, of which a very sad account may from time to time be
given, even from their first arrivall to this very day." P. 13.
58 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
who, rescued by the Dutch from the inhuman cruelties of
the Mohawks, was then at Manhattan.2
The danger of the inroads of this fierce tribe compelled
the missionaries to confine themselves to visits to the Indian
towns instead of taking up their residence in them. " Where
fore," says Father Fisher, "we have to content ourselves
with excursions, many of which we have made this year
(1640), ascending the river called the Patuxen. Hence this
fruit has arisen, the conversion of young Queen of Pa
tuxen and her mother, also of the young Queen of Por-
tobacco, of the wife and two sons of Tayac the great, so-
called, that is the emperor, who died last year, and of one
hundred and thirty others. The following is our manner of
making an excursion : We are carried in a pinnace or gal
ley (the father, the interpreter, and a servant), two rowing
when the wind fails or is contrary, -the other steering. We
take with us a little chest of bread, butter, cheese, corn cut
and dried before ripening, beans and a little flour ; another
chest with a bottle of wrine for mass, a bottle of holy water
for baptism, an altar stone, chalice, vestments ; while a third
box contained trifles for presents to the Indians, bells, combs,
1 In this raid the Susquehannas sent a spear at an Anacostan In
dian, piercing him through the body below the arm-pits. He was car
ried in a dying state to Piscataway, where Father White prepared him
for death, and touched his wounds with a reliquary containing a particle
of the True Cross. As he was summoned to attend an aged dying Indian
at some distance, he directed the Anacostan's friends to take his body
when he died to the chapel for burial. The next day as the missionary
was returning in his canoe, he was met by this very man, perfectly re
stored to health, a red spot on each side showing where the wound had
been. He declared "that from the hour at which the Father had left
him he had not 'ceased to invoke the most holy name of Jesus, to whom
he ascribed his recovery. The missionary urged him in view of so great
a favor to thank God and persevere, treating with love and reverence that
holy name and the most holy cross." " Relatio Itineris," pp. 87-8.
MARYLAND MISSIONS. 59
fishhooks, needles, thread, &c.; a small mat to pitch as a tent
when they had to sleep in the open air, and a larger one for
rainy seasons. The servant is equipped for hunting and for
preparing food when taken. In our excursions we endeavor,
when possible, to reach some English dwelling or Indian
village at nightfall ; if not, we land, and the missionary se
cures the boat, gathers wood and builds a fire, while the
others go out to hunt. If they take any game it is prepared ;
if not we lie down by the fire and take our rest. If fear of
rain threatens we erect our hut and cover it with a larger
mat spread over, and, thank God, we enjoy this humble fare
and hard couch with as joyful a mind as we did more lux
urious provisions in Europe ; with this present comfort that
God imparts to us now a foretaste of what He will be
stow on those who labor faithfully in this life, and He miti
gates all hardships with a sense of pleasure, so that his divine
majesty appears to be present with us in an extraordinary
manner."
Meanwhile Lord Baltimore had applied to the Propaganda
to establish a mission in Maryland, and give faculties to a Pre
fect and secular priests ; the Sacred Congregation accordingly,
in August, 1641, issued faculties, which were transmitted to
Dom Rossetti, afterwards Archbishop of Tarsus. The Jes
uits remonstrated in an appeal to the Holy See, saying, " The
Fathers do not refuse to make way for other laborers, but
they humbly submit for consideration whether it is expedient
to remove those who first entered into that vineyard at their
own expense, who for seven years have endured want and
sufferings, who have lost four of their number, laboring
faithfully unto death, who have defended sound doctrine and
the liberty of the Church, incurring odium and temporal
1 "Relatio Itineris," Annual Letter, 1642, pp. 80-3.
60 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
loss to themselves, who have acquired the languages of the
Indians." '
This memorial arrived too late. The Propaganda had
already acted on the petition of Lord Baltimore, and in 1642
two secular priests arrived in Maryland to begin the mission
established by the Sacred Congregation. The names of these
pioneers of the secular clergy in this country are not re
corded, and we have no details of their labors. On finding
that they were expected to take a different theological view
of questions for which they had not been prepared, they
declined to condemn the course pursued by the missionaries
already in the country, leaving it to superior authority to
decide the question after due examination.2
Meanwhile attempts had been made in England, through
the intervention of Mrs. Peasley,3 to effect a reconciliation
between the lord proprietor and the missionaries. Lord
Baltimore long resisted all advances, but finally yielded, ex
acting severe conditions,4 which the provincial was to sign,
1 " Memorial" of F. Henry More. Foley, " Records," iii., p. 363.
- Through the kindness of His Eminence Cardinal Jacobini search
was made in the archives of the Propaganda for any record of the facul
ties granted, but, unfortunately, none could be traced. Neill, in his
"Founders of Maryland," p. 103, charges these priests with not keeping
faith with Lord Baltimore ; but this is most unjust, the Propaganda hav
ing sent them out to act as missionaries, not as judges on a point of canon
law, which could have been decided at Rome had Lord Baltimore sought a
decision.
•' Letters of W. Peasley, Oct. 1 and 7, 1642, of Ann Peasley, Oct. 5.
4 They resigned all claim to the lands ceded by the Indian king, and
agreed to take no others ; they accepted the English statutes against
pious uses, as in force in Maryland, and agreed to take up no lands except by
special permission of Lord Baltimore ; the missionaries were to claim no
exemptions or privileges in Maryland not legally allowed them in Eng
land, except that corporal punishment was not to be inflicted on any
missionary unless for a capital offense. No missionary was to be sent to
Maryland without special permission of Lord Baltimore ; any missionary
MARYLAND MISSIONS. 61
and every missionary sent out was to obtain direct permission
from the lord proprietor and take an oath of allegiance to
him.1
Under these stringent conditions two Jesuit Fathers were
proposed to Lord Baltimore, and, receiving his sanction, sailed
for Maryland in 1642.' But, though harmony was restored,
the missionaries must have felt discouraged and hampered,
and the new Conditions of Settlement issued by Lord Balti
more3 bear the impress of great jealousy of the Church,
reviving the English ideas' of mortmain, and inadvertently
paving the way to direct persecution of the whole Catholic
body.
The Puritan party in England, while the Anglican church
was dominant, sought the support of the Catholics who suf
fered like themselves from the rule of the State church,
although the scaffolds did not run red with Puritan as they
did with Catholic blood.
then in the colony, or subsequently sent, was to be recalled within a year
at the request of Lord Baltimore. No missionary was to be allowed in
the colony who did not take an oath of allegiance to him as lord pro
prietor.
1 The Conditions in 1648 excepted specially all corporations, etc. , as
well spiritual as temporal, and prohibited their acquiring or holding land
without special license, either in their own name or in the name of any
person to their use. Kilty, p. 41. Those in 1G49 forbade any ad
venturer or planter to transfer lands to any such corporation or in trust
for it, without license. Ib., p. 50.
2"Relatio Itineris," p. 89, is incorrectly translated " two others"; it
should read "two new Fathers." Who they were even the minute re
searches of Br. Foley and Father Treacy fail to enable us to say posi
tively. There are three letters extant of W. Peasley and his wife Ann,
addressed evidently to the provincial in September and October, 1642.
"I have prevailed for the present employment of two of yours." The}'
were to sail in Ingle's vessel, but may not have come.
3 "Puncta ab Illust. Dom. Barone Baltimore concepta quse subscribi
exigit a R. Prov. Soc. Jesu in Anglia," MSS. Stonyhurst, vol. iv., No.
108. " Omnibus has pra3sentes lecturis." Ib.
62 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
In Virginia, Puritan settlers from New England were
treated with great harshness by the authorities, zealous up
holders of the Anglican church ; Clayborne, who had tendered
the oath of supremacy to Lord Baltimore, being then an
adherent of the dominant party. To these harassed Puritans
Lord Baltimore offered an asylum, and many settled in Mary
land. When the civil war was enkindled in England these
men began to evince great hostility to Lord Baltimore and the
Catholics. After the royal power fell Clayborne joined the
Puritan side, and, taking as his lieutenant a reckless sea
captain named Ingle, once, as generally believed, a pirate,
but now a zealous Puritan, commanding a ship which he
called The Reformation, resolved once more to attempt an
overthrow of the authority of the Baltimores. Aided by the
ungrateful Puritans, who supported their old enemy against
their friend, Clayborne not only held Kent Island against
all the efforts of Governor Calvert to reduce it, but with
Ingle's aid invaded St. Mary's country, drove the governor
from his capital, compelling him to seek flight in Virginia,
and made himself master of the province.1 He let Ingle
loose on the Catholic settlers, and pretending the authority
of a letter of marque, this ruffian plundered the houses of the
chief Eoman Catholics, like Cornwaleys and Fen wick, and
especially the missionaries, and for two years maintained
a reign of terror in Maryland. Ingle had brought some of
the missionaries over to the province as captain of vessels
chartered or owned by Lord Baltimore, and was familiar
1 " The Maryland authorities had invited to the province the Puritans
persecuted in Virginia, and any who wished to come from New England,
where the rule was too strict for many. But these new comers proved
most ungrateful. ' Finding themselves in a capacity to oversway those
that had so received and relieved them, they began to pick quarrels,
first,' says an old writer, ' with the Papists.' " " Leah and Rachel," cited
by Hawks, "P. E. Church in Maryland," p. 39.
MISSIONARIES DEPORTED. 63
with their residences and their persons. The Catholic gentry
and the missionaries were the chief objects of his malice.
Invading their estates with a lawless band, he drove out or
seized the people, carried off and destroyed property, leaving
the houses mere wrecks. Captain Cornwaleys estimated the
damage done his place in February, 1645, at three thousand
pounds.
The houses of the Jesuit Fathers at Potopaco arid St.
Inigoes were similarly plundered and wrecked, but this tem
poral loss was little compared to the affliction of the hunted
and scattered Catholics when they beheld the venerable
Father Andrew White, the founder of the Maryland mission,
and Father Thomas Copley, fall into the hands of this man,
who, treating them as criminals, loaded them with heavy
irons. After being kept confined for some time, the two
missionaries were sent, by Ingle to England.
There the two Fathers were indicted under the penal laws
of 27 Elizabeth, for having been ordained priests abroad and
coming into and remaining in England as such, contrary to
the statute, a crime punishable with death. When brought
to trial, however, they pleaded that they had been brought
violently into England, and had not come of their own will,
but against it. The judges acknowledged the force of the
argument and directed an acquittal. They were not, it
would seem, liberated at once, but were detained in prison
and finally sent out of England under an order of perpetual
banishment.
Father White reached Belgium, whence he endeavored in
vain to regain the missions of his beloved Maryland ; but his
advanced age and his broken constitution would in them
selves have made him no longer fit for such a laborious life
as awaited the priests who attempted to revive religion
there.
64 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
As we can no longer record his labors on our soil, it is
well to sketch here the life of this founder of the Maryland
mission. Father Andrew "White was born in London in
1579, and was educated at Douay, where he was ordained
priest about the year 1605. Returning to England as a
seminary priest he fell into the hands of the authorities at
the very threshold of his missionary career, and after spend
ing some time in prison, was sentenced to perpetual banishment
with forty-five other priests in 1606. ' Seeking admission to
the Society of Jesus, he was one of the first to enter the
novitiate opened at St. John's, Louvain, where one of his
fellow novices was the celebrated Father Thomas Garnett,
who, returning to England, died on the scaffold in the fol
lowing year. Father White went through his period of
probation with great humility and piety, preparing for the
dangerous mission of his native land, to which at the close of
his noviceship he was at once sent. There he labored with
great zeal and fruit, attending by stealth the oppressed Cath
olics, encouraging them in trials, sustaining their faith, and
when an opportunity offered, instructing Protestants and
reconciling them to the faith of their fathers, the recollec
tion of which was still fresh in most English families. After
some years his superiors appointed him to a professor's chair
in one of the colleges maintained by the English province in
Spain.
His ability, learning, and piety found an ample field, and
he was prefect of studies, professor of sacred Scripture, dog
matic theology, and Hebrew, at Yalladolid and Seville, hold
ing also the position of superior or minister. It is an evidence
of his great merit and learning that he was admitted to the
four vows as a professed Father on the 15th of June, 1619.2
1 Challoner, " Missionary Priests. "
9 Foley, " Records of the English Province," iii., p. 334.
FATHER ANDREW WHITE. 65
After forming future martyrs and apostles in the colleges of
the society, he was sent to Belgium, where he taught theol
ogy at Louvain and Liege for several years, till, at his earnest
request, he was allowed to share the labors of those whom
he had trained for the post of peril.1 His career in the
Maryland mission among whites and Indians has been
already traced. After his second banishment he succeeded
in reaching England, and was assigned to the Hampshire
district, or residence of St. Thomas of Canterbury, spending
the last years of his life in the house of a Catholic nobleman.
As his weakness increased he was urged to prepare for death,
but he answered, " My hour is not yet come, nor is St. John
the Evangelist's day." When that festival arrived, in the
year 1656, he heard interiorly : " To-day thou shalt be with
me." He then directed a fellow-priest to be summoned,
and, receiving the last sacraments, closed his mortified life
December 27, 1656. Through life to its close, on his mis
sions and in prison, he fasted twice a week on bread and
water. When his jailer once told him that if he treated his
poor old body so badly he would not have strength to be
hanged at Tyburn, the apostle of Maryland replied : "It is
this very fasting which gives me strength enough to bear all
for the sake of Christ." *
When Fathers White and Copley fell into the hands of
Ingle, Father Bernard Hartwell, who had been sent out in
16-45 as Superior of the Maryland mission, seems to have
1 Tanner, " Societas Jesu Apostolorum Imitatrix," Prague, 1694, p. 803.
2 Annual Letter, 1656, cited by Foley, iii., p. 338. This author gives,
pp. 268-270, two letters of Father Andrew White. His Indian Catechism
is extant at Rome, but of his Maryland Grammar and Vocabulary noth
ing is definitely known. The recovery of Father White's Indian works
would be the more valuable, as he was beyond all doubt the first
Englishman who attempted to reduce an Indian language to grammat
ical forms. See, too, "Woodstock Letters," xiv., p. 384.
5
66 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
eluded the persecutors ; while Father Roger Rigbie and John
Cooper escaped to Virginia by the aid of Indian converts or
were taken there as prisoners. Both died in that province
in 1646, how or where no record remains to tell, but certainly
victims to the hatred of the Catholic faith, even though they
did not perish by the hand of violence. Both were young
and zealous; both were of the number of twenty-three
young Jesuits who in July and August, 1640, wrote to the
Provincial, Father Edward Knott, earnestly seeking to
be sent to the Maryland mission. These letters full of
zeal and devotion, are preserved as precious treasures in the
College of the Sacred Heart at Woodstock, Maryland, and
from them we reverently traced the fac-similes of their signa-
tures. Father Roger Rigbie arrived in Maryland in 1641,
and soon won universal esteem. Though prostrated by
serious disease at Patuxent, he persevered, mastered the
language of his flock, and composed a catechism in it.
Father John Cooper, a native of Hampshire, reached Mary
land in 1644, and the next year was torn from his flock.
Father Hartwell, the Superior of the mission, did not sur
vive these terrible blows. His death too is recorded in this
fatal year. Not a priest was left in the province of Mary
land.1
So closed the first period of the Maryland mission. Its rec
ord is a noble one. Imbued with Catholicity the province had
1 Foley, "Records of the English Province," iii., pp. 375-387; vii.,
pp. 163, 342, 650; B. U. Campbell in U. S. Cath. Mag., vii., pp. 529,
850 ; Rev. W. P. Treacy, " Catalogue of our Missionary Fathers, 1634-
1805," Woodstock Letters, xvi., pp. 89-90.
MARYLAND MISSIONS. 67
been conducted with a wisdom seen in no other colony. The
destitution, famine, and Indian wars that mark the early days
of other settlements were unknown in Maryland. Catholicity
was planted with the colony, and exercised its beneficent
influence ; the devoted priests instructed their people assid
uously, teaching the young, and reviving the faith of the
adults ; men led away by false doctrines in England, moved
by their example, sought light and guidance. Full of apos
tolic zeal these priests extended their care to the Indian tribes
along both shores of the Potomac to the Piscataway, and up
the Patuxent to Mattapany, so that nearly all the Indians on
those twro peninsulas were thoroughly instructed in the
fundamental doctrines of Christianity, and many received
into the church had learned to lead a Christian life. The
success had not been attained without sacrifice ; five of the
devoted priests in the short twelve years had laid down their
lives ; two were in chains to stand trial and perhaps face
death on the scaffold.1
1 The question has been mooted whether it is proper to say that Mary
land was a Catholic colony. It has been well replied: "The colony
whose only spiritual guides were Catholics, whose only public worship
was according to Catholic rites, was a Catholic colony" (Scharf, i., p.
166) ; and surely it was so when the Catholicity was active, zealous,
exemplary, and edifying. The " Objections Answered Concerning Mary
land," a document of the time of the settlement, discusses at length
whether the Catholic colony of Maryland would be dangerous to New
England and Virginia.
CHAPTEE III.
THE MARYLAND MISSION RESTORED. 1648-1668.
WITH the triumph of Clayborne and Ingle Catholicity
seemed so utterly overthrown in Maryland that Lord Balti
more lost heart, and thought of abandoning the province.
He gave orders to secure his personal property and send it
over to England. But his brother Leonard was made of
sterner stuff. Gathering a force in Virginia he suddenly
surprised the faction in Maryland and recovered possession
of the province, where the authority of the lord proprietary
was once more established.
The field was again open to the labors of the priests of the
Catholic Church. It would seem that Lord Baltimore again
applied to the Holy See for secular missionaries, but failed to
obtain them,1 and the Jesuit Fathers were permitted to re-
1 Foley, " Records," iii., p. 387.
Lord Baltimore complained to Agretti in 1669 that the Holy See for
four and twenty years had refused to send missionaries to Maryland,
which carries back his unsuccessful application to 1645. Mgr. Urban
Cerri, in his report to Pope Innocent XI., speaking of Maryland, says :
"A mission might easily be settled in that country, the said lord having
frequently desired it of the Congregation." Steele, "An Account of the
State of the Roman Catholick Religion," p. 169. It was apparently well
known that Lord Baltimore wished, about this time, to substitute other
missionaries. In "Virginia and Maryland; or the Lord Baltimore's
printed Case uncased and answered," London, 1655, we read : " The bet
ter to get friends, first made it a receptacle for Papists and Priests and
Jesuites, in some extraordinary and zealous manner, but hath since dis
contented them many times and many ways ; though Intelligence with
Bulls, Letters, &c. from the Pope and Rome, be ordinary for his own In-
tersts." (Force's edition, p. 12.)
(68)
MISSION RESTORED. 69
visit the land where their heroic little band had labored amid
suffering and death. Father Thomas Copley was sent over
as he had been eleven years before. Writing to the General
of the Society on the 1st of March, 1648, he reports his
arrival with his companion in Virginia in January. From
that province he penetrated to St. Mary's, where he found
his flock collected after having been scattered for three years.
Once more was the holy sacrifice offered in the land, confes
sions heard, baptism conferred ; but caution was still required,
and the priests performed their sacred duties almost secretly.
Leaving his companion, Father Lawrence Starkey, concealed
apparently in Virginia, Father Copley then proceeded to his
Indian neophytes from among whom he had been torn by
Ingle's men.
Though the authority of Lord Baltimore was restored, the
state of affairs, and especially of the Catholic Church in
Maryland, became very precarious. Puritans expelled from
Virginia had been allowed by Lord Baltimore to settle in
Anne Arundel County, but from the first they disavowed his
authority as supporting antichrist. As their numbers in
creased they made common cause with Clayborne, and began
to outnumber the Catholics, who, for a time, had formed the
majority, especially of the landholders, as the contemporane
ous records of wills show.
The illustrious governor, Leonard Calvert, did not long
survive his triumph. This devoted Catholic died amid his
family and friends on the 9th of June, 1647, leaving the gov
ernment of the colony to Thomas Greene. In the following
year Lord Baltimore appointed William Stone as governor,
and, in view of a future preponderance of Protestants,
endeavored to establish, as by a charter of liberty, that free
dom of conscience which his father and himself had so long
advocated and practiced.
70 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
In pursuance of his instructions Governor Stone convened
an assembly at St. Mary's, on the 2d day of April, 1649. This
body consisted of the lieutenant-governor, Stone represent
ing the Catholic proprietary ; the council, Thomas Greene and
Robert Clarke, Catholics ; John Price and Robert Vaughn,
Protestants ; and nine burgesses, Cuthbert Femvick, "William
Bretton, George Manners, John Maunsell, Thomas Thorn-
borough and Walter Peake, Catholics, and Philip Conner,
Richard Banks, and Richard Browne, Protestants. The as
sembly is a famous one in history, as it passed an " Act con
cerning religion," which, after inflicting penalties on any one
who should call another by a sectarian name of reproach,
proceeds in these noble words : " And whereas the enforc
ing of conscience in matters of religion hath frequently
fallen out to be of dangerous consequence in those common
wealths where it has been practiced, and for the more quiet
and peaceable government of this province, and the better
to preserve mutual love and unity amongst the inhabitants,
no person or persons whatsoever within this province or the
islands, ports, harbors, creeks, or havens thereunto belonging,
professiug to believe in Jesus Christ, shall from henceforth
be any ways troubled or molested, or discountenanced for or
in respect of his or her religion, nor in the free exercise
thereof within this province or the islands thereunto belong
ing, nor any way compelled to the belief or exercise of any
other religion, against his or her consent." '
" The passage of this act," says McSherry, " is one of the
proud boasts of Maryland, and its exact execution until the
1 The acts of 1649, 1650, eighteen in number, were drawn up by Lord
Baltimore and transmitted to the Assembly, which passed only a part in
1649 (April 21) and the rest April 25, 1650, in sessions held at St. Mary's.
They were confirmed together by Lord Baltimore's declaration, dated
August 26, 1650. " Maryland Archives," i., pp. 244-7 ; Sainsbury, " Cal
endar of State Papers, " 1, p. 329 ; "Colonial Entry Book, "vol. 53, pp. 4-20.
THE TOLERATION ACT. 71
government was overthrown by the Puritans, and from its
restoration till the Protestant revolution, forms one of her
greatest glories."
Efforts have been made to deprive Catholics of the credit
of this act. Gladstone's endorsement of the efforts gave rise
to a triumphant Catholic vindication.1 It was no novelty : it
was the last Catholic act confirming the policy which had
obtained from the founding of the colony, and which was
maintained so long as Catholic proprietors were in power,
ceasing only with Catholic influence. " The religious tolera
tion which historians have so much extolled in the Catholic
colonists and founders of Maryland did not originate with,
or derive its existence from that law of 1649, but, on the
contrary, it existed long anterior to and independent of it.
This great feature in the Catholic government of Maryland
had been established by the Catholic lord proprietary, his
lieutenant-governor, agents and colonists, and faithfully prac
ticed for fifteen years prior to the Toleration Act of 1649.
From 1634 to 1649 it had been enforced with unwavering
firmness, and protected with exalted benevolence."
The act of 1649, with its broad views of religious freedom,
is one of the grounds of pride in Catholic Maryland. Natu
rally those who are haunted by a perpetual jealousy of every
Catholic claim have sought, by specious arguments and
cunningly arrayed facts, to make it appear that the Catholic
body in Maryland could lay no claim to the honor.
The history of the act and of others closely connected with
it is now known. Lord Baltimore, who saw the necessity of
adopting some plan for the future government of the prov
ince that would save his own rights and the liberty of the
Catholic settlers from being overthrown, drew up a body of
1 R. H. Clarke, Catholic World, December, 1875.
72 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
sixteen laws during the summer of 1648, and transmitted
them from Bath, in England, to be passed and made per
petual by the Assembly, and with them the oaths to be taken
by the governor and the members of the council. These
acts were to be passed without any alteration, addition, or
diminution. The Assembly of 1649 passed nine of these
acts in April, and in the Assembly held in the following
year, the other seven were passed, Lord Baltimore having
complained of their neglect. In their action in April, 1650,
the whole sixteen laws were read and considered, and they
were assented to by the proprietary in one instrument, dated
August 20, 1650.
The first of these laws was the act concerning religion. It
emanated from the Catholic proprietary, and was passed by
a legislature in which the majority were Catholics.'
The next year the Assembly required an oath from mem
bers, which was in itself a harbinger to Catholics of coming
difficulties. One Catholic member, Thomas Matthews, of
1 Johnson, " Foundation of Maryland," pp. 111-123. Mr. Gladstone
pretended that this act was based on an order of the English House of Com
mons, giving freedom of conscience in the Summer Islands, and also on
a British ordinance of 1647. The assertion, coming from a British Prime
Minister, attracted attention. Examination shows that the order merely
gave freedom of worship to an independent congregation, under Rev.
Patrick Copland, in the Bermudas ; that it passed only one house, and
never took effect. The ordinance of 1647, referred to by Mr. Gladstone,
never passed, and so far as toleration was concerned, the House of Com
mons resolved that it was not to extend to Catholics, or take away any
penal laws against them. "Journals of the Commons," 1644-6. Rush-
worth, "Collection," vii., p. 849. Johnson, "Foundation of Maryland,"
pp. 126-129.
Father Hunter, in the last century, referred to the act as passed in
1640, but it is more likely that this is only an error in copying for 1649.
His statement that it was re-enacted in 1650 is easily understood. The
entries show that in 1650 the whole sixteen laws were read and consid
ered, and this was considered a re-enacting of the nine passed in 1649.
PURITAN RULE. 73
Saint Inigoes, on his refusing to take this oath, to which he
declared he had conscientious objections, was expelled ; and
his successor, Fenwick, also a Catholic, took it only with the
understanding that the craftly devised language was not
meant to infringe liberty of conscience or religion.
To preserve the Catholic missions among the native tribes
in which so much had been accomplished since the estab
lishment of the colony, Lord Baltimore, in 1651, set apart
ten thousand acres of laud at Calverton manor, on the Wico-
mico River, for the remnant of the Mattapany, Wicomicons,
Patuxent, Lamasconsons, Highahwixons, and Chapticon
Indians ; the Assembly had already recognized his constant
efforts to Christianize the native tribes, and thus the first
Indian reserve was formed by a Catholic, and under the
direction of the Catholic clergy.
The Catholics were at this time, as estimated by the labo
rious and accurate Mr. Davis, based on wills, conveyances,
tax lists, and official records, three-fourths of the popula
tion of Maryland. They enjoyed the services of zealous
priests who attended chapels at different points from Corn-
wallys' Neck to Point Lookout, and education secular and
religious was fostered.1
In 1652, Clayborne and Bennett, as commissioners of the
Commonwealth of England, overthrew the proprietary gov
ernment, and when Lord Baltimore prepared to restore it,
they convened an assembly, first prohibiting any Catholic
to vote for or to sit as a delegate. The body called, after
thus excluding the Catholic majority, passed an act con
cerning religion, which began, " It is hereby enacted and
declared that none who profess and exercise the Popish
1 There are some data showing the existence of a thriving school con
ducted by Ralph Crouch, under the direction of the Catholic clergy at
this time.
74 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
(commonly called the Roman Catholic) religion, can be pro
tected in this province by the laws of England, formerly
established and yet mirepealed ; nor by the government of
the Commonwealth of England, etc., but to be restrained
from the exercise thereof." It concluded thus : " Provided
such liberty be not extended to Popery or prelacy, nor to
such as under the profession of Christ, hold forth and prac
tice licentiousness." '
A reign of terror was thus established instead of the
tolerant and friendly policy of the Catholic rulers. Gov
ernor Stone endeavored to restore the proprietary's power.
He took the field, with the support of the Catholics and the
Protestants who adhered to Lord Baltimore, but was defeated
in a hard-fought engagement, after which the Puritans
evinced their ferocious cruelty by shooting four prisoners in
cold blood. As three of these were Catholics, it shows that
hatred of Catholicity guided them in this as in their legisla
tion.9
Then we find the anti-Catholic power gaining. Thus, in
1654, Luke Gardner was charged with enticing Eleanor
Hatton to his house, " to train her up in the Roman Catholic
religion." This was deemed " a great affront to the govern
ment, and of very dangerous and destructive consequences
in relation to the peace and welfare of the province."
1 Scharf, " History of Maryland," i., p. 215. " Maryland Archives,"
i., pp. 340-1. Hawks, "Maryland," pp. 42-3.
- The Puritan account, "Virginia and Baltimore," p. 16, suppresses all
mention of the execution in cold blood of Eltonhead, Lewis, Legate,
Pedro. The character of the tract must be borne in mind in weighing
its value elsewhere. For another account see Hammond, "Leah and
Rachel," p. 25. The petition of Edward Lloyd and seventy-seven inhab
itants of Severne alias Anne Arundel County, in 1653, against the oath
of allegiance to Lord Baltimore, because Catholicity was tolerated is
given in " Virginia and Baltimore," pp. 28-9. They certainly had no part
in passing the act of 1649.
MARYLAND WITHOUT PRIESTS. 75
"While Maryland was thus convulsed, and difficulties in
creased for Catholics, Father Thomas Copley died in 1653,
leaving Father Lawrence Starkey alone on the mission, but
he was joined the next year by Father Francis Fitzherbert,
who made St. Inigoes his residence, the veteran Starkey at
tending the scattered missions from Portobacco.
The Puritans, after their victory on the Severn, and their
savage triumph, hastened to St. Mary's County. There they
rushed into the houses of the priests, clamoring for the lives of
the hypocrites, as they styled them, and certainly intending for
any they might secure, the fate of the Catholics slaughtered
on the field. Such had been their course in England, and it
would find greater pretext here. But the two Fathers managed
to escape, ascribing it to the Providence of God that they
were carried away before the very eyes of their vindictive
pursuers ; but their books, furniture, and everything else in
the houses fell a prey to the spoilers. The missionaries were
carried into Virginia amid constant peril, and in the utmost
want of all things. There they lived in a mean hut, sunk
in the ground like a cistern or a tomb, so that they com
pared themselves to Saint Athanasius, who lay concealed for
several years in a similar refuge. Their supplies from Eng
land were intercepted ; they could obtain no wine to say
mass, and their ministry was reduced to stealthy visits, by
boats, to Catholics who could be reached from Virginia.1
The missionaries, unable to return to their congregations
in Maryland, remained in Virginia, where Father Starkey
died in the midst of his trials, February 19, 1657.2
Lord Baltimore, however, at last recovered his authority,
liberty of conscience was restored, and Father Fitzherbert
1 Foley, "Records," iii., p. 389.
2 His real name seems to have been Laurence Sankey. He was born in
Lancashire in 1606, and entered the Society in 1636. Foley, vii., p. 685.
76 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
returned to Maryland. The influx of Protestants after this
increased, and the Jesuit Fathers labored with zeal to win
over such as seemed well disposed. This led to a curious
case, in 1658., when Father Francis Fitzherbert was indicted
for treason and sedition, and giving out rebellious and mu
tinous speeches, and endeavoring to raise distractions and
disturbances. The grounds were that he had preached at
the general muster of the militia, at Patuxent and Newtown,
and had threatened to excommunicate Thomas Gerrard of
the council for not bringing his wife and children to church.
The arraigned priest demurred on the ground that by the
very first law of the country, Holy Church within this
province was to have and enjoy all her rights, liberties, and
franchises, wholly and without blemish, amongst which that
of preaching and teaching is not the least. " Neither imports
it what church is there meant, since by the true intent of
the act concerning religion, every church professing to
believe in God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, is accounted
Holy Church here." Moreover he claimed that by the act
entitled, " An Act concerning Religion," no one was to be
molested in the free exercise of his religion ; " and undoubt
edly preaching and teaching is the free exercise of every
churchman's religion." The court, all apparently Protestants
except one, sustained the demurrer.1
The early Maryland Catholics were liberal in contributing
to the support of the church, and frequent legacies and
bequests appear in their wills. On the 10th of November,
1661, as several of the good and zealous Roman Catholics of
Newtown and St. Clement's Bay had agreed to erect a
chapel, and had selected as most convenient for them all a
spot on land of William Bretton, Esq., one of the lawgivers
1 Davis, "Day Star," p. 55.
MANOR HOUSE AT NEWTOWN OR BRETTON'S NECK.
78 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
of 1649, that gentleman, with the hearty good liking of his
dearly beloved wife, Temperance Bretton, " to the greater
honor and glory of Almighty God, the ever Immaculate
Virgin Mary and all saints," granted to the said Roman
Catholic inhabitants, and their posterity, an acre and a half
of ground for a chapel and cemetery, and here rose the
modest chapel of Saint Ignatius, the first Catholic church of
Newtown.1
With the restoration of the Stuarts and the fall of the
Puritan rule, Lord Baltimore regained his authority, and
Catholic settlers began to arrive. Before 1668, John and
Joseph Hebron, Catholics, from Scotland, settled on the
eastern shore, in Kent County, and their descendants retained
the faith for some generations."
1 The deed for the land for the church and graveyard bears date Nov.
10, 1661. Davis, "Day Star," p. 227. It was a triangular piece at the head
of St. Nicholas' Creek, near Bowling's Cove. A few old bricks, with
mortar still adhering, are the last relics of St. Ignatius Chapel, and near
it is the graveyard used for more than two centuries. The church
on Sundays in the old time was reached in sailboats from miles around.
The manor at Newtown, or Bretton's Neck, passed from Bretton, and
was purchased by the Jesuit missionaries. In their hands the house and
chapel have been a centre of Catholicity, surrounded by lands and streams
that bear the name of St. Francis, St. Margaret, St. Lawrence, St. Peter,
St. John, St. Winifred, St. Michael, St. Gabriel, St. Anne. The house
erected by Bretton, of old English brick, is still standing, its original one
story having had another added, making it a stately mansion, beautifully
situated on the Neck. It contains relics of Fathers who labored in Mary
land in the last two centuries. "Historical points connected with New-
town manor and church, St. Mary's Co., Md." Woodstock Letters, xiii.,
pp. 69, 116, and xiv., p. 61, etc.
2 Hanson, " History of Old Kent," pp. 197-8. Virginia about this time
(1661) showed the old intolerance by passing an act imposing a fine of £20
on any one who neglected to attend the service of the Protestant church.
CHAPTEK IV.
THE JESUITS AND FRANCISCANS IN MARYLAND, 1669-1690.
FROM the difficulty in which the Society was involved in
England, and a great loss of means for maintaining the mission,
few of the Jesuit Fathers sent to Maryland during the admin
istration of Charles Calvert, who was governor of the prov
ince from 1661 to 1675, remained for any considerable
period.
"When the Abbate Claudius Agretti, a canon of Bruges,
was sent by the Holy See on a special mission to England in
1669, he visited Cecil, Lord Baltimore, at his villa, and that
aged nobleman complained that there were only two priests
in Maryland to minister to the two thousand Catholics in
that province, and that the Holy See, although solicited for
twenty-four years to send missionaries there, had taken no
action in the matter.1
Of the three priests of the Society on the mission in Mary
land in 1669, one, Father Peter Pelcon or Manners, a young
1 Brady, "Annals of the Catholic Hierarchy in England and Scotland,"
Rome, 1877, p. 116. So far as can be traced the Jesuit Fathers employed
on the Maryland mission from 1660 to 1674, were Fathers Henry Pel-
ham, Edward Tidder, John Fitzwilliam, Francis Fitzherbert, Peter Pel-
con, Peter Riddell, George Pole, William Warren, Michael Forster (Gu-
lick) ; but the only two actually there at the close of 1669 were William
Pelham and Michael Forster (Gulick). Father Treacy (Woodstock Let
ters, xv., p. 91), omits Fitzwilliam and Riddell, and places Forster later.
Foley, " Records," vii., gives the number on the Maryland mission in 1660
as 1 ; 1661, 2 ; 1663-7, 3 ; 1672-4, 2, vol. vii., xc-xcvi. The Annual Let
ters, 1671-4 ("Rel. Itin.," pp. 98-99), gives two as the number for those
years.
(79)
80 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
and zealous missioner full of the apostolic spirit, met death in
the discharge of his duty. He had bound himself by a
special vow to consecrate his whole life and labors to the
Maryland mission, if his superiors permitted it. A saintly
man who had vowed to love no creature except in God and
for God, his influence was extraordinary. Catholics were
brought by him to a loving and exact discharge of all Chris
tian duties, and to firmness of faith amid trials and seductions ;
even Protestants, won by his pure and devoted character,
sought guidance and instruction from him, so that nearly a
hundred conversions were ascribed to his influence, although
he did not live to receive them all into the Church. On
Wednesday, in Easter week, April 24, 1669, he was sum
moned to a distant call, and at once set out. The spring rains
had swollen the streams into torrents, and in attempting to
cross one, the missionary and his horse were swept down the
current and engulfed in the waters.1
The report of the Abbate Agretti was considered in a Par
ticular Congregation of the Propaganda, held September 9,
1670, and the last decree then passed directed " that letters
should be written to the Internuncio regarding the mission to
the island of Maryland in America, in order that at the in
stance of the temporal lord of the aforesaid island, he should
depute missionaries of approved merit, and send in their
names to the Cardinal Protector for the issue of the necessary
faculties.*
1 He had been twelve years in the Society and died at the age of 38.
Notice of him by Very Rev. F. Simeon, provincial of England, Foley,
iii., p. 390 ; Annual Letter, in " Relatio Itineris," p. 93 ; his real name was
apparently Pelcon, Foley, vii., p. 679. The Annual Letters report 54
conversions in 1671 ; 70 in 1672 ; 28 in 1673. The baptisms for three
years were 100, 70, 75.
2 Brady, "Annals of the Catholic Hierarchy," pp. 118-9. The Inter-
nuncio was the Abbate Airoldi at Brussels.
THE FRANCISCANS IN MARYLAND. 81
A mission founded about this time in Maryland by the
Franciscan Fathers of the English province was evidently a
result of this decree of the Propaganda. The Jesuits had an
illustrious founder of their mission in the person of Father
Andrew White ; the Franciscan mission claims as its founder
a truly apostolic man, Father Massseus Massey a Sancta Bar
bara. In a congregation of the province held October 12,
1672, in Somerset House, one of the royal palaces in London,
then apparently the residence of the Portuguese ambassador,
the establishment of a mission of the order in Maryland -was
decided upon, and Father Massey was appointed to found
it, with another Father to be selected by the provincial.1
Father Massey with his associate reached Maryland apparently
in 1673, and entered into a portion of the labors and harvest
of the missionaries already there ; perfect harmony being
maintained between them for the common prosperity of the
Catholic cause.3
In 1674, the French Jesuit Father John Pierron, who had
been employed on the Mohawk mission, and had thus become
familiar with the English colonial ways, was transferred for a
time to the Acadian mission. While attached to this station,
he made a tour through the English colonies as far as Virginia.
On the way he was shocked to see baptism so generally neg
lected, and endeavored to do what good he could, but he
found few to benefit by his ministry. He had interviews
with some of the ministers at Boston, and the Labbadists a
few years after found his visit there still a topic of conversa
tion. He was at last cited before the General Court, but he
proceeded on his journey. " He found," says the Relation of
1674, "in Maryland two of our English Fathers and one
1 " Ex-Registro, FF.M., Prov. Angliae," p. 85— Oliver, 'Collections,"
p. 541.
s Annual Letter of 1673, in " Relatio Itineris," pp. 98-9.
6
82 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
brother ; the Fathers dressed like gentlemen, and the brother
like a fanner ; in fact, he has charge of the farm which gives
the two missionaries their support. They labor with success in
converting the Protestants of the country, where there are in
fact many Catholics, among others, the governor. As these
two Fathers are not enough alone, Father Pierron offers vol
untarily to go and help them, and at the same time found a
mission among the neighboring Indians, whose language he
understands. But this scheme presents many difficulties and
seems to me impossible." '
The want of all records of this period makes it impossible
to tell in what field each of the Jesuit and Franciscan mis
sionaries labored at this time. Kew York, in which New
Jersey was then included, was open to Catholics and some may
have settled there, to whom these Fathers occasionally made
visits. There seems to have been a wider field than that of
the two thousand Catholics in Maryland, who were nearly all
in the same district, for in 1674 the Franciscans in a congrega
tion held in May, appointed Fathers Polycarp Wicksted and
Basil Hobart to the Maryland mission, and the next year the
Jesuit Father Nicholas Gulick came to America with
Father Francis Pennington and two lay brothers.2 In the
following year the Franciscan Father Henry a Sancto Fran
cisco appears in Maryland, and in October, Father Edward
Golding was sent out; Father Massey remaining superior
till 1677, when Father Henry Carew replaced him, his
predecessor becoming guardian of the convent in London.
The same year the Jesuit Superior Thomas Gawen arrived.8
1 " Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1674, in "Relations Inedites," ii.,
pp. 8, 10; Bankers and Sluyter, "Journal," p. 388.
2 Ex Registro, FF.M., Prov. Anglise, p. 88. Jesuit Annual Letter,
1675, in "Rel. Itineris," p. 99.
3 Ex Registro, pp. 97, 104, 108 ; Annual Letter, 1677. "Rel. Itin. ," p. 100
CATHOLIC EDUCATION. 83
Two Labbadists who visited Maryland about this time
(1679-80) write : " Those persons who profess the Roman
Catholic religion have great, indeed all freedom in Maryland,
because the governor makes profession of that faith, and con
sequently there are priests and other ecclesiastics who travel
and disperse themselves everywhere, and neglect nothing
which serves for their profit and purpose." '
One result of this increase of the clergy was the opening
in 1677 of a Catholic school in Maryland, with a course of
study which included the humanities. It was directed by
Father Forster and Mr. Thomas Hothersall, an approved
scholastic of the Society, prevented by constant headaches
from being ordained. The sons of the planters won applause
by their application and progress. In 1681 two scholars who
had passed through the course at this academy crossed the
Atlantic to complete their university studies at St. Omer's,
and with true American energy, at once made a bold effort
to be the leaders in the various classes.
This system was kept up by the Jesuit Fathers in Maryland
till the American Revolution, their school being occasionally
suspended by the hostility of the provincial government.
Trained in preparatory schools, the sons and even the
daughters of the more wealthy Maryland Catholics were sent
abroad ; some returned to America to mix in the world ; not
a few young Marylanders became religious laboring in the
vineyard in England or America, or leading holy lives in
convent cloisters.*
1 Bankers and Sluyter, " Journal of a Voyage to New York," Brooklyn,
1867, p. 221. Of the Protestant ministers of Maryland and Virginia, they
say, p. 218 : " You hear often that these ministers are worse than anybody
else, yea, are an abomination."
8 Foley, "Records of the English Province," vii., p. 275; Woodstock
Letters, xiii., p. 269.
84 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Among the early pupils of this academy, we should prob
ably find on the roll the name of Robert Brooke, a member
of a pious Catholic family, who was born in Maryland in 1603,
and entering the Society of Jesus at Watten in 168-i, was ap
parently the first priest of the order ordained from Lord
Baltimore's province, and he is the first of five priests his
family gave to the Society of Jesus.1
The Protestants in Maryland, whether of the Established
Church or the Puritan bodies, had been free to establish their
own churches, but they were to all appearance profoundly in
different. This was perhaps but the general rule, the French
Calvinists in Florida, the Dutch in New York, the Swedish
Lutherans on the Delaware, the Pilgrims of Plymouth, all
coming over and remaining for some time without a minister
of religion. It was not till 1650 that a Protestant clergyman,
Rev. Mr. Wilkinson, appeared in the province, and he re
flected no credit on his profession. The historians of the
Episcopal Church in Maryland admit and deplore the un
worthy character of the early ministers of their faith. In
stead of building up Protestant congregations they induced
many to seek the guidance of the Catholic priests, whose zeal
and edifying life spoke louder than words. There could,
under such circumstances, be little life in the Protestant body,
and in 1676 we find the Rev. Mr. Yeo, one of the three Episco
pal clergymen in Maryland, appealing to the Archbishop of
Canterbury, drawing a sad picture of Protestantism in the col
ony, and urging him to solicit from Lord Baltimore some sup-
' Foley, " Records," vii., p. 91. Matthew Brooke, born in Maryland in
1672, is the first secular priest of the province. He subsequently entered
the Society. Ib., p. 90. There is at Woodstock College, a very touch
ing account by Father Peter Pelcom (Manners), of the death of Robert
Brooke, Esq., "Narratio Mortis Admodum Piae Doni Roberti Brooke in
Marylandia, Anno Doni 1667, Octobris 2."
MARYLAND MISSIONS. 85
port for a Protestant ministry. The lord proprietary replied
that he supported no clergy, that all denominations were free in
Maryland, and that each had maintained its own ministers
and churches voluntarily.1
During the period of Catholic influence in Maryland, the
Indian converts in many cases lived side by side with the
white settlers. The chiefs adopted the usages of civilized
life ; their daughters were educated and frequently married
into families of the colonists. Descendants of the aborigi
nal rulers of the soil exist in the neighborhood of the Pisea-
taway and on the eastern shore. It is constantly asserted by
Maryland writers that the blood of the native chiefs is now
represented by the Brents, Fen wicks, Goldsboroughs, and other
distinguished families of the State.
The original chapel at St. Mary's, although the first city
of Maryland remained a kind of scattered village, had by
this time grown too small or otherwise uusuited to the wants
of the Catholics of white and Indian origin who attended it.
In 1683 steps were taken in the council of the colony to lay
out a site for a new church, and cemetery. Unfortunately
no plan of St. Mary's exists and apparently no data by which
to form one now to show the site of the original chapel and
the ground where the early settlers and Governor Leonard
Calvert were laid.2
1 Chalmers, "Annals," p. 375; Scharf, i., p. 282-3. Yet the Privy
Council thought some provision should be made, and in a few years this
was most iniqxiitously carried out.
- Kilty, "Land-Holders' Assistant," p. 123. Lord Baltimore in council
ordered land to be laid out there for " the chappel, state house, and bury
ing place." The Annual Letter, 1696, says of St. Mary's, that " with the
residence of the illustrious Lord Baltimore surrounded by six other
houses, it bore some semblance to a village." Foley, " Records, "vii., p. clix.
" But it can hardly be called a town, it being in length by the water
about five miles, and in breadth upwards, toward the land, not above a
86 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
The grant by Charles II. of territory in America under
which his brother James, Duke of York, put an end to the
Dutch rule in New Netherland, brought the whole coast
from the borders of Connecticut to the Potomac, under the
control of Catholic proprietors, who would naturally favor
the immigration and freedom of their fellow-believers. The
district acquired by James was one, however, in which Catho
lics had always been few and rarely permanent residents.
Two Portuguese soldiers at Fort Orange in 1626 ; a Portu
guese woman, and a transient Irishman met by Father Isaac
Jogues, in 1643, are the earliest on record.1
Yet soon after Lord Baltimore applied for his Maryland
charter, another Catholic gentleman, Sir Edmund Plowden, a
descendant of the famous lawyer of that name, solicited for
himself and some associates a patent for lands on the Hudson
and Delaware, including what is now known as New Jersey
and Long Island. A charter was granted by writ of Privy
Seal, witnessed by the Deputy General of Ireland, at Dublin,
June 21, 1634, by which a county palatine was erected under
the name of New Albion. Captain Thomas Yong, a corre
spondent of the famous priest Sir Toby Mathews, under this
erected a fort or trading house at Eriwomeck on the Jersey
side of the Delaware about 1634 and resided there some years.
Plowden himself came over in 1642 and nearly lost his life by
a mutiny of his crew, who set him ashore on a desert island
two years afterwards. Some of the English settlers recog
nized his authority, but the Swedes stubbornly refused to al-
mile, in all which space, excepting only my own home and buildings
wherein the said courts and public offices are kept, there are not above
thirty houses, and those at considerable distance from each other, and
the buildings .... very mean and little." Lord Baltimore, in Scharf, i.,
p. 294.
1 Brodhead, " History of New York," i., p. 169 ; Martin, " Life of
Father Isaac Jogues," p. 154.
FIRST SERVICE IN NEW YORK. 87
low him even to trade on the Delaware. His plans of
settlement proposed a recognition of Christianity and beyond
that the most complete toleration for all. That his object may
have been to secure a refuge for oppressed Catholics is very
probable, but nothing that can be deemed a Catholic settle
ment was founded by him, nor is there any trace of any visit
to New Albion by any Catholic priest, or the erection of a
chapel.1
The grant to James, Duke of York, was followed by the
establishment of English authority and ,the opening of the
country to English colonization. James subsequently ceded
part of his territory under the name of New Jersey to a num
ber of persons, prominent among whom was James, the Cath
olic Earl of Perth. There was no attempt to form any largely
Catholic settlement at any point, though Catholics obtained
positions under the new colonial governments and some came
over to better their fortunes, and make homes for themselves
in the New World.
In 1674, James sent out as second in authority to Governor
Andros, and his successor in case of death, Lieutenant An
thony Brockholls. This gentleman was of a Catholic family
in Lancashire, England, and would have been excluded from
holding office in England by the Test Act recently passed in
that country. " But as that statute did not extend to the
British American Plantations, the Duke of York himself,"
says a New York historian, " a victim of Protestant intoler
ance, was able to illustrate his own idea of ' Freedom to
worship God,' by appointing a member of the Church of
Rome to be his second colonial officer in New York."
1 In regard to New Albion and Plowden, see Rev. Dr. R. L. Burtsell,
"A Missing Page of Catholic History," Catholic World, xxxii., p. 204 ;
GregoryB. Keen, "Note on New Albion" in Winsor's "Narrative and
Critical History of America," iii., p. 457.
88 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Brockliolls took an active part in the affairs of the colony,
as commander-in-chief (1677-8, 1680-3) and member of the
council till the power of William III. was established. He
married in the colony and many of his descendants exist to
this day.
Lieutenant Jervis Baxter, another Catholic, was a promi
nent, active, and able officer of the colony, in administrative
posts and in the council chamber.
There is some ground for believing that there were several
Catholics from the Netherlands at Albany in 1677, for whose
spiritual consolation the Franciscan Father Hennepin was
invited to settle at that place.1 There were Catholics also in
other parts, and there are indications that priests reached New
York, either secular priests from England or Franciscans from
Maryland.2 Two Labbadists who visited New York and the
neighboring provinces in 1679 with the view of selecting a
spot for a colony of their sect, state that the Catholics believed
them to be really priests, and were so persistent that they
could not get rid of them or disabuse them. The poor
Catholics, long deprived of mass and the sacraments, and evi
dently looking for promised priests, took these French sec
taries to be really ministers of their faith, and wished them to
say mass, hear their confessions, and baptize their children.
Bankers and Sluyter mention expressly a family of French
1 Hennepin, " Nouvelle Decouverte," Utrecht, 1697, p. 29 ; Brodhead,
" History of New York," ii., p. 307.
2 Rev. Peter Smith, a Catholic priest, who is said to have been chaplain
to Dongan, stated in an affidavit made in London in 1675, that he was in
New York in 1665. Letter of Edward Antill to James Alexander, April
18, 1752. A baptism apparently by him is noted in 1685. Brodhead
supposes one of the Jesuit Fathers to have been known as John Smith,
but this is mere conjecture. "Father Smith," Dongan's chaplain, is al
luded to in N. Y. Col. Doc., Hi., pp. 613, 747; iv., p. 398; the name
John Smith appears, ii., p. 17.
CATHOLICS IN NEW JERSEY. 89
Catholics who kept a tavern at Elizabethtown, New Jersey,
and who treated them with every courtesy, convinced to the
last that their guests were priests, afraid to avow their real
character.1
There was one Catholic of note in New Jersey at this time
who was active in all public affairs. This was William
Douglas, who in 1680 was elected member of Assembly from
Bergen. When that body convened in Elizabethtown in
June, they promptly expelled Douglas, "the aforesaid mem
ber upon examination owning himself to be a Roman Cath-
olick,'' and a warrant was issued to the town of Bergen for a
new choice.3
Richard Towneley was apparently of the staunch Catholic
family which endured such memorable sufferings for the
faith, but there is no evidence of his fidelity.
In 1GS2, the Duke of York appointed as Governor of New
York, Colonel Thomas Dongan, the younger son of an Irish
Catholic baronet of great wealth and influence, who subse
quently became Earl of Limerick. Colonel Dongaii was a
Catholic, a man of enlarged views and great energy ; he had
seen service in the French armies, and had been English Gov
ernor of Tangier.
One great object of James was to detach the Five Nations
from the French, and keep that rival nation north of the
great lakes. The influence of the French over the Indians
had been acquired and retained in no small degree by the
zealous labors of the missionaries, who at this time were
drawing many converts from the Five Nations in New York
to La Prairie in Canada, where a Catholic Indian village had
1 Bankers and Sluyter, " Journal of a Voyage to New York," Brook
lyn, 1867, p. 147.
" " Documents Relating to the Colonial History of New Jersey," New
ark, 1880, p. 312.
90 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
been formed. To counteract this it was evidently arranged
at this time to establish a Jesuit mission in New York, the
Fathers to form a Catholic village of Iroquois Indians under
English influence. This plan was subsequently avowed and
Saratoga mentioned as the site.1
One of the English Fathers selected for the New York
mission, Father Thomas Harvey, embarked with Gov
ernor Dongan in the Constant Warwick, an old Parlia
mentarian frigate, and arriving at Nantasket in August, 1683,
proceeded overland with the governor, and reached New
York before the close of that month.9
There is very good ground for believing that Father Forster
(Gulick), Superior of the Maryland Jesuits, was already in or
near New York to receive the new member of his mission
and arrange for future action. A baptism at "Woodbridge.
New Jersey, in June, 1683, seems evidently to have been
performed by him, and his presence near New York would,
under the circumstances, be perfectly natural.3
Father Warner, the English provincial, writing to the
general of the society, February 26, 1683, says: "Father
Thomas Hervey, the missioner, passes to New York by con
sent of the governor of the colony. In that colony is a
respectable city, fit for the foundation of a college, if faculties
are given, to which college those who are now scattered
throughout Maryland may betake themselves and make ex
cursions from thence into Maryland. The Duke of York,
1 See Dongan's Report, N. Y. Colonial Doc., iii., p. 394.
* Brodhead, "History of New York," New York, 1871, pp. 374-5.
3 Dollier de Casson, historian of Montreal, records, Aug. 20, 1700, the
baptism in June, 1G83, of Robert du Poitiers, born on Staten Island, " at
Hotbridge, 3 leagues from Menate, by a Jesuit come from Mary-Land
and named Master Juillet." The only name at all among the Fathers at
the time approaching this is Gulick, also written Guilick. Foley, vii.,
p. 275.
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN NEW YORK. 91
the lord of that colony, greatly encourages the undertaking of
a new mission. He did not consent to Father Thomas Her-
vey's sailing until he had advised with the provincial, the
consultors and other grave fathers." '
Father Henry Harrison and Father Charles Gage, with
two lay brothers, soon joined Father Harvey in New York.
Though of English family, Father Henry Harrison was
born in the Netherlands, and was probably selected on that
account, as being more likely to effect good among the
Dutch.2
The Catholics had a small chapel in Fort James, which stood
south of the Bowling Green, and this spot may be deemed
the first where mass was regularly said in New York. Sixty
pounds a year was paid, we are told, to " two Eomish priests
that attended on Governor Dongan." The establishment of
a Latin school was one of the early good works of the Jesuit
Fathers. It was held apparently on the king's farm, subse
quently leased by Governor Fletcher to Trinity Church,3 and
was attended by the sons of Judges Palmer and Graham,
Captain Tudor, and others,4 the bell of the Dutch church in
the fort being rung to summon the pupils.6
One of the first acts of the administration of the Catholic
governor, Dongan, was the convening of the first legislative
assembly in New York, which met on the 17th of October,
1683. In the Bill of Eights, passed on the 30th, the broad
principle of religious freedom is recognized, as it was wher
ever Catholics had any influence. It declared that " no per
son or persons which profess faith in God by Jesus Christ
1 Foley, "Records of the English Province," vii., p. 343.
2 Harrison seems to come in 1685 and Gage in 1686. Ib., pp. 335, 342.
3 N. Y. Col. Doc. iv., p. 490.
4 Leisler's correspondence in "Doc. History of N. Y.," ii., pp. 14, 147.
• Brodhead, ii., p. 487.
92 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
shall at any time be anyways molested, punished, disquieted,
or called in question for any difference of opinion or matter
of religious concernment, who do not actually disturb the
civil peace of the province ; but that all and every such per
son or persons may, from time to time and at all times,
freely have and fully enjoy his or their judgments or con
sciences in matters of religion throughout all the province ;
they behaving themselves peaceably and quietly, and not
using this liberty to licentiousness nor to the civil injury or
outward disturbance of others." The Christian churches in
the province, and the Catholic was actually one, were to be
" held and reputed as privileged churches, and enjoy all their
former freedoms of their religion in divine worship and
church discipline."
The ]S"ew York Legislature thus carried out the liberal spirit
of James' instructions to Andros in 1674, and subsequently to
Dongan, who were to " permit all persons, of what religion
soever, quietly to inhabit within their government, without
giving them any disturbance or disquiet whatsoever for or by
reason of their differing opinions in matters of religion, pro
vided they give noe disturbance to the public peace, nor doe
molest or disquiet others in the free exercise of their relig
ion.
It was doubtless the freedom thus guaranteed that led the
Jesuit Fathers to build hopes of founding a permanent mis
sion in New York, with an increasing flock of Catholics.
The arrival of Fathers Harrison and Gage enabled them to
visit scattered Catholics and prepare for the promising future.
While Catholicity was thus endeavoring to gain a foothold
on the banks of the Hudson, a new field was opened to it.
Charles II., to cancel a debt of the Crown to Admiral Penn,'
1 Brodhead, " History of New York." ii., p. 454 : 3 Tb., p. 487.
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN PENNSYLVANIA. 93
granted to the Admiral's son, on the 4th of March, 1681, a
territory in America, extending five degrees westward from
the Delaware Kiver, with a breadth of three degrees. This
became the Province of Pennsylvania. Penn, from a fop
pish young courtier had become a zealous member of the
Society of Friends, and though he had written a most impas
sioned book against the Catholic religion, enjoyed the friend
ship of the Duke of York, and was fully in accord with the
principles of religious liberty which James had so much at
heart. These views Penn carried out in the province granted
to him. Dutch Calvinists and Swedish Lutherans were al
ready there, and Catholics had made an attempt at coloniza
tion. Now it was to receive a large body of emigrants,
chiefly followers, like Penn, of George Fox. In the thirty-
fifth clause of the laws agreed upon in England by William
Penn, it was provided : " That all persons living in the
province who confess and acknowledge the one Almighty
and Eternal God to be the Creator, Upholder and Kuler of
the World, and that hold themselves obliged in conscience to
live peaceably and justly in civil society, shall in no way be
molested or prejudiced for their religious persuasion or prac
tise in matters of faith and worship, nor shall they be com
pelled at any time to frequent or maintain any religious
worship, place or ministry whatever." '
Penn exerted himself to obtain emigrants from Germany,
and among the settlers who came out there may have been
Catholics who sought homes in this and other colonies now
thrown open to them. As there was constant intercourse
between New York and Maryland, official and personal, the
Maryland missionaries might easily visit the rising city of
Philadelphia. The northern visit of Father Gulick was not,
1 " The Frame of Government," 1682.
94 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
apparently, the only one ; and there are indications that
Pennsylvania was visited at an early day by some of the
Franciscan Fathers.
After sending out Markham as his deputy, who bore let
ters from King Charles and from Penn to Lord Baltimore,
the proprietor of Pennsylvania himself landed at Newcastle
in the latter part of October, 1682. That some Jesuit
Father or other priest called upon him soon after is not un
likely, as such a visit would explain the report of his death,
which was soon carried to England, with the assertion that
he had died a Jesuit.1
In Virginia and the New England colonies there were at
this time few, if any, resident Catholics, occasional transient
cases comprising nearly all,8 Dr. Le Baron, a shipwrecked
physician, being, perhaps, one of the few who professed the
true faith amid that spiritual darkness.
Such was the position of the Catholic Church in the Eng
lish colonies when the weak Charles II. died, reconciled to
1 "I find some persons have had so little wisdom and so much malice
as to report my death, and to mend the matter, dead a Jesuit too
I am still alive and no Jesuit." — Letter, Philadelphia, August 1683, p. 3-
Ford, " A Vindication of William Penn, Proprietary of Pennsilvania,"
1683, Penn. Mag. of Hist., vi., pp. 176-7, denies his being a Papist and
keeping a Jesuit to write his books. A visit of a reputed priest to Penn
when ill would easily give rise to such stories. Penn also justified him
self against the charge of ill-treating a monk, Proud, " History of Penn
sylvania," i., p. 317. Watson cited the allusion of Penn to an old priest,
as showing the presence of a Catholic priest in the colony ; but Westcott,
in his "History of Philadelphia," showed that the reference was to the
Swedish Lutheran minister. Catholic writers in Pennsylvania have failed
to throw any new light on this early period. They copy Westcott now
as they formerly copied Watson. I called the attention of Rev. A. A.
Lambing's publishers to Mr. Westcott's work, and enabled him to avoid
repeating Watson.
2 See "Report of a French Protestant Refugee in Boston," 1687;
Brooklyn, 1868, pp. 16, 30.
VICARS-APOSTOLIC IN ENGLAND. 95
the Church, and his brother James, an avowed Catholic, as
cended the throne in 1685.
One of the first beneficial results was the appointment of a
Vicar-Apostolic for England. Dr. John Leyburn, a divine
of great zeal and learning, President of Douay College and
Vicar-General of Bishop Smith, was appointed by Pope In
nocent XI. Bishop of Adrumetuni and Vicar- Apostolic of all
England. He was consecrated in Rome on September 9, 1685,
and on reaching England was provided with apartments in
Saint James' Palace. Three years subsequently his jurisdic
tion was restricted to the London district, three other bishops
being appointed as Vicars- Apostolic of the Western, Mid
land, and Northern districts.1 From the date of his appoint
ment to the close of the American Revolution, the Catholics
in the British colonies in America and their clergy were
subject to Doctor Leyburn and his successors, Bishops Gif-
fard, Petre, and the illustrious Doctor Challoner, with his co
adjutor, Talbot. It was nearly sixty years since a Catholic
bishop had appeared in England, and Bishop Leyburn was
the first who for a hundred and thirty years had traveled un
molested through the island in the discharge of his episcopal
functions. The Holy See in the time of Innocent XII.
made the secular clergy, and all regulars, even Jesuits and
Benedictines, subject to the Vicar-Apostolic in whose dis
trict they were", for approbation with regard to hearing con
fessions, for the cure of souls, and for all parochial offices.
During the closing years of the reign of Charles II., Father
Michael Foster, the Jesuit Superior in Maryland, continued
the old mission work. Yet he had only two, or at most three,
Fathers with him, one being Father Francis Pennington, who
1 Brady, "Annals of the Catholic Hierarchy in England and Scotland,"
Rome, 1877, p. 140, etc.
96 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
became superior on the death of Father Forster, and con
tinued so for a considerable period, being for nearly five
years the only priest of his or-
der in Maryland. '
Father Henry Carew was ap-
FAC-SI5IILE OF SIGNATURE OF FA- . , n ^ . ,
Pomted President of the Fran-
THEK FRANCIS
ciscan Mission in 1677, and
served in Maryland for six years, dying at sea on the voyage
back to England.
From 1680 to 1684 Father Massey was again superior, and
then disappears from Maryland, filling the position of Guard
ian at Gronow, and Douay, then of Vicar, Minister, and
Commissary-General of the Province.
As Father Hobart died subsequently in Maryland, he ap
parently remained in the colony during this period, but some
of the others may have returned. There were not more than
six Franciscans at any time on the mission, and apparently
generally only three or four priests of that order.1
It is not easy to comprehend why the Church did not at
this time show more vitality in the old Catholic province ;
but the clergy were few in number, and the Society of Jesus
thought of making New York the centre.
That religion was not more prosperous under a Catholic
king and with a Catholic lord proprietor, residing for a time
in the province of Maryland, seems strange indeed.
Among the interesting points connected with the history
of Catholicity in this country during the reign of James, was
1 Father Francis Pennington expired at the house of Mr. Hill, New-
town, Md., February 22, 1699. F. Treacy's List, Woodstock Letters, xv.,
p. 92.
* "Ex-Registro FF.M., Prov. Angliae," pp. 85, 88, 97, 108, 115, 134;
Oliver, "Collections," p. 541. Father Hobart's death was reported at
the Chapter held July 10, 1698.
CLOSE OF THE NEW YORK MISSION. 97
the attempt of Captain George Brent to establish a Catholic
settlement in Virginia. With Richard Foote, Robert Bar-
stow, and Nicholas Hayward, of London, he purchased of
Thomas Lord Culpeper thirty thousand acres of land between
the Potomac and Rappahannock, and prepared to bring over
settlers. They applied to the king for a guarantee of relig
ious freedom, and James, by patent, dated February 10, 1687,
granted " unto the petitioners, and all and every the inhabitants
which now are or hereafter shall be settled in the said towne
and the tract of land belonging to them, the free exercise of
their religion, without being prosecuted or molested upon
any penall laws or other account of the same."
The reign of James II. was too brief to produce any other
permanent result for the Church in whose cause he had
labored and suffered. The scheme of a grand union of all
the American colonies into one government, with the broad
charter of equal religious rights for all, which emanated from
the able mind of James, was not to be carried out for a cen
tury, when the united colonies shook off the yoke of the Prot
estant sovereigns of England.
Plots were formed to overthrow James and call over the
Prince of Orange. All was ready in the colonies to forward
the movement. JSro sooner did tidings arrive of the landing
o O
of William tvhan a rising took place in New England. In
New York, the fanatical Leisler, full of declamation against
Popery, seized the government. In Maryland, Coode, a min
ister, associated men as infamous as himself for the defence
of the Protestant religion, and overthrew the proprietary
government.
In New York, Colonel Thomas Dongan had recently
ceased to be governor, but a Catholic priest still resided in the
fort, under Nicholson, and probably fled with that officer.
Dongan was hunted like a wolf. The Jesuits Harvey
7
98 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
and Harrison narrowly escaped Leisler's hands. The latter
managed to secure a passage to Europe, was captured and
robbed by Dutch pirates, but finally reached Ireland by way
of France. Father Harvey, though forced to abandon his
New York mission for a season, did not renounce all hope of
continuing his labors there. He made his way on foot to
Maryland, but succeeded in reaching New York again the
next year in company with another Father, who did not,
however, remain long to share his labors and perils. Father
Harvey continued on the New York mission for some years,
till health and strength gave way, when he sought Maryland,
to die among his brethren.1
The fall of James, planned long before in a scheme for the
establishment of the Church of England on a firmer basis
than ever, was effected by inflaming the fanaticism of the old
dissenting element which had overthrown Charles I., as it was
now exerted to expel James. It was by no fortuitous acci
dent that men like Leisler in New York, and Coode in
Maryland, were allowed to rave like maniacs against Popery
and seize the government of those provinces. Seeing nothing
but visions of Papists around him, Leisler stimulated the In
dians against the French, and congratulated them openly on
the fearful scenes of massacre they perpetrated at Lachine.
Coode urged William III. to redeem the people of Maryland
" from the arbitrary will and pleasure of a tyrannical Popish
government, under which they had so long groaned." Will
iam made both royal provinces, profiting by disorders that
were doubtless planned in England. Lord Baltimore was
deprived of all his rights as proprietary without any form of
law, or even a formal accusation that he had forfeited his
charter.
1 Annual Letters, Foley, Hi., pp. 394-5 ; vii., p. clix, p. 355, p. 343.
CLOSE OF THE NEW YORK MISSION.
99
In both colonies steps were taken to establish the Church
of England formally. In New York the bill of rights was
abolished, all toleration or religious freedom was scouted, and
Catholics were excluded from office and franchise and the
career of penal laws began,
Penu, shrewd and cautious, avoided any outward show of
his kindly feelings in the affairs of his province, although he
boldly, in a tract published in England, urged the repeal of
all penal laws against Catholics.
The year 1690 was an era when all hopes of the true faith
on this coast seemed blasted, and the prospects of the Church
in the English colonies gloomy beyond description.
FORT AT NEW YORK WHERE A CATHOLIC CHAPEL, EXISTED UNDER
JAMES II. FROM THE VIEW BY ALLAHD, 1673.
BOOK II.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE SPANISH
COLONIES.
CHAPTEK I.
THE CHtJKCH IN FLORIDA, 1513-1690.
ALTHOUGH Columbus himself in his first landfall had nearly
reached the coast of the northern continent, he turned south
ward, and it was not till some years after his death that any
European landed on our shores. Cabot, accompanied by a
priest from Bristol, probably reached Newfoundland and
Labrador, but it was not till 1513 that John Ponce de Leon,
one of the early companions of Columbus, led by the Indian
reports of a greater island of Biiuini, sought of the Spanish
monarch a patent authorizing him to discover and settle it.
The document bore date February 23, 1512, but though
countersigned by the Bishop of Palencia, no clause in the
state paper required the establishment of churches for the
settlers, or missions for the conversion of the Indians. Re
turning to Porto Eico, where he had been employed in the
royal service, Ponce de Leon obtained a vessel to make the
discoveries authorized by his patent within the year prescribed
by its tenor. The authorities in Porto Rico, however, seized
his vessel under the pretext that it was needed in the royal
service, and it was not till March, 1513, that he bore away
from the port of San German with three caravels, the expe
rienced Anton de Alaminos, of Palos, being his pilot. After
(100)
DISCOVERY OF FLORIDA. 101
threading the Bahamas he steered northwest, and on Easter
Sunday, called in Spanish Pascua Florida, came in sight of
the continent. Then running north till the 2d of April
he landed, and prompted alike by its beauty, and by the re
membrance of the day of its discovery, bestowed on the coun
try the name Florida, which it retains to this day. Hav
ing taken possession in the name of the King of Spain, he
followed the coast southerly till he reached the Martyrs and
Tortugas, and, doubling the cape, entered a fine bay that
long bore his name. Satisfied with his discovery he returned
to Porto Rico, leaving to one of his vessels the search for
Bimini.
For the land which he had thus discovered for Spain, he
solicited a new patent, which was issued on the 27th of Sep
tember, 1514. The former asiento for an island, whose
existence was not ascertained, had authorized the usual en
slavement of Indians. This unjust and cruel system had
been introduced by Christopher Columbus, and was followed
by all. In a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella the discoverer
of the new world proposed sending slaves and Brazilwood to
Spain. He actually dispatched five shiploads of unfortunate
Indians to be sold there, but Isabella, shocked and indig
nant, caused the natives of America to be set free,' Las
Casas declares that between 1494 and 1496 one third of the
population of Hispaniola was swept off by this system.
The Benedictine, Buil, delegate of the Holy See, the Fran
ciscan. Francis Ruiz, afterward Bishop of Avila, and his
companions, in vain endeavored to arrest the iniquity.
But in the month of September, 1510, three Dominican
1 Letter of Columbus to the sovereigns in Duro, " Colony la Historia
Postuma," pp. 49-51. Columbus even ordered the ears and noses of In
dian slaves to be cut off for slight faults. Navarrete, ii., p. 110; Las
Casas, " Historia de Indias," Lib. 1, cap xciii., cvi.
102 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Fathers, from the convent of San Estevan, in Salamanca,
landed in Hispaniola. With the superior, Father Peter de
Cordoba, came Father Anthony de Montesinos, a great lover
of strict observance, a great religious and great preacher.
When they had taken time to study the condition of affairs,
Father Montesinos, in 1511, ascended the pulpit of the
Cathedral of Santo Domingo, and in a sermon full of elo
quence, denounced the enslavement and cruel treatment of
the Indians as sinful and wicked, sure to draw down God's
anger on them all. The bold denunciation of the great
Dominican fell like a thunder-clap on the Admiral, Diego
Columbus, on the officials and the Spaniards at large. They
called upon his superior to censure him, but Father Peter de
Cordoba replied that Father Anthony's sermon was sound,
and was sustained by his brethren. Then the Dominicans
were denounced to the king and his council for condemning
what the Spanish monarchs had approved. Censured on the
facts as presented, Father Montesinos and his superior were
cited to Spain in 1512, but there they pleaded the cause of
the Indian so eloquently and so ably that they returned the
next year, having won a great triumph in inducing the king
to take some steps to save the natives.1
The influence of the action of Father Montesinos, the first
to denounce human slavery in America, can be seen in the
second patent to John Ponce de Leon. This requires that
the natives must be summoned to submit to the Catholic
faith and the authority of the King of Spain, and they were
not to be attacked or captured if they submitted.8 Years
1 Juan Melendez, " Tesoros Verdaderos de las Yndias," Rome, 1681, pp.
10-14, citing Las Casas, " Historia Apologetica," Lib. 1, cap. ccxlv. Her-
rera, Dec. 1, Lib. viii., cxi., xii. See Helps, " Spanish Conquest in Amer
ica," Bk. iv., ch. ii., which is devoted entirely to this affair; also book
viii., ch. i., Cardinal Hefele, "Life of Cardinal Ximenes," pp. 503-4.
- " Coleccion de Documentos Ineditos," xxii , pp. 33-8.
THE CHURCH IN FLORIDA. 103
rolled by, however, before Ponce de Leon, employed by the
king in the wars with the Caribs, could sail to settle in Florida.
At last, in 1521, he completed his preparations, and his pro
ject shows the influence of the religious thought that was to
control the settlement of Florida. Writing on the 10th of
February to Charles V., Ponce says : "I return to that
island, if it please God's will to settle it, being enabled to
carry a number of people with whom I shall be able to do
so, that the name of Christ may be praised there, and your
Majesty served with the fruit that land produces." And a
letter to the Cardinal of Tortosa, afterwards Pope Adrian
VI., breathes the same spirit. Ponce de Leon sailed with
two vessels carrying settlers with live stock and all requisites
for a permanent establishment, and bore with him priests to
minister to his people, and friars, in all probability, of the
order of St. Dominic, to convert the Indians. He reached
land, and began to erect dwellings for his people, though,
unfortunately, we cannot fix the time or place, but facts lead
to the inference that it was on the bay which he discovered
on his first voyage. If this conjecture can be received, the
altar reared by the priests and friars of this expedition
must have been on the western shore of Florida, near Char
lotte Harbor. The Spanish settlers while rearing house and
chapel were, however, constantly attacked by the Indians,
and at last Ponce de Leon, while bravely leading a charge
to repulse them, received a severe and dangerous wound, the
stone head of the arrow defying all the skill of a surgeon
to extract it. Then the projected settlement was abandoned ;
priests and people re-embarked ; the temporary homes and
chapel were abandoned. One vessel, with the stricken com
mander, reached the neighboring island of Cuba ; the other
was driven to the coast of Mexico, where Cortes, in his need,
104 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
appropriated the stores.1 The first offering of the Holy
Sacrifice in this country, the initial point in the history of
the Church, is thus unfortunately very vague, for we know
not yet the time or place and have no clue to the name of
any of the secular or regular priests.
Before this disastrous effort at colonization by John Ponce,
another point on the coast north of the limits of his explora
tion had been reached by two vessels from Santo Domingo.
Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon, one of the judges of that island,
though in the enjoyment of an honorable office, great wealth,
and a happy home, aspired to the glory of discovering and
colonizing some land hitherto unknown. Having solicited
the necessary permission, he despatched a caravel com
manded by Francisco Gordillo, in 1520, to explore north
of the limits of Ponce de Leon. While this vessel was run
ning amid the Bahamas it came in sight of another caravel,
which proved to have been sent out by Matienzo, also a
judge in Santo Domingo. Its object was not exploration,
but to carry back a cargo of Indian slaves. The captains of
the two vessels agreed to sail in company, and holding on
their course, in eight or nine days reached the coast near the
mouth of a great river, on the 25th of June, 1521, and,
adopting a custom constantly followed by the Catholic navi
gators of those days, named river and land St. John the
Baptist, the day being the feast of the precursor of our Lord.
Ayllon had instructed the captain of his caravel to culti
vate a friendly intercourse with the natives, and to avoid all
hostilities ; but Gordillo, influenced by Quexos, commander
of Matienzo's vessel, joined him in seizing a number of In
dians, and sailed off with them. Ayllon, on the arrival of
1 Oviedo, "Historia General y Natural de las Indias," iii., p. 622. Her-
rera, "Decade," iii.; Lib. ii., f. 43. Valadares, "Historia de Puerto
Rico," Madrid, p. 97. Torquemada, "Monarquia Indiana," i., p. 561.
SAN MIGUEL DE GU AND APE. 105
the vessels, condemned Gordillo ; he brought the matter
before the Admiral Diego Columbus ; the Indians were de
clared free ; but, though Ayllon released those brought on
his vessel, Matienzo evaded the decision of the council and
subsequent orders of the king. It is a strange fact that the
history of this country, as written hitherto, represents the
upright Ayllon, whose whole Indian policy was Christian
and humane, as a man guilty of the greatest cruelty to the
natives, while Matienzo, the real culprit, is ignored.
Taking one of these Indians from our shores, whom he
had placed under instruction, and who received in baptism
the name of Francisco, Ayllon sailed to Spain to present to
the king a report of the discovered territory, and obtain a
cedula or patent for its occupation and settlement. Fran
cisco gave wonderful accounts of the land, and Ayllon,
on the 12th of June, 1523, received a patent, requiring him
to explore the coast for eight hundred leagues, and form a
settlement within three years.
The patent shows the Christian obligation imposed on the
adelantado. He was "to attract the natives to receive
preachers who would inform and instruct them in the affairs
of our holy Catholic faith, that they might become Chris
tians." The document also says : " And whereas our prin
cipal intent in the discovery of new lands is that the inhabit
ants and natives thereof, who are without the light or
knowledge of faith, may be brought to understand the truths
of our holy Catholic faith, that they may come to a knowl
edge thereof and become Christians and be saved, and this
is the chief motive that you are to bear and hold in this
affair, and to this end it is proper that religious persons
should accompany you, by these presents I empower you to
carry to the said land the religious whom you may judge
necessary, and the vestments and other things needful for
106 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
the observance of divine worship ; and I command that
whatever you shall thus expend in transporting the said
religious, as well as in maintaining them and giving them
what is needful, and in their support, and for the vestments
and other articles required for the divine worship, shall be
paid entirely from the rents and profits which in any manner
shall belong to us in the said land."
Thus, in 1523, did the King of Spain assume the charge
of maintaining divine worship on our coast.
Various circumstances, and especially a vexatious lawsuit
instituted by Matienzo, prevented Ay lion from attempting
the colonization of the land of Saint John the Baptist, but
in 1525 he sent Pedro de Quexos with two caravels to
explore. That navigator ran along the coast for seven hun
dred miles, setting up stone crosses with the name of Charles
V. and the date of taking possession.
Early in June of the following year Ayllon completed
the preparations for colonizing his grant, and sailed from
Puerto de la Plata with three large vessels, carrying six
hundred persons of both sexes, with abundant supplies and
horses. The Dominican Fathers Anthony de Montesinos
and Anthony de Cervantes, with Brother Peter de Estrada,
accompanied the colonists. The vessels reached the coast
north of the river Saint John, probably near the mouth of
the Wateree, but one vessel was soon lost. Ayllon at once
set to work to replace it, and finding the coast unsuited for
settlement, sailed northward till he reached the Chesapeake.
Entering the capes he ascended a river, and began the estab
lishment of his colony at Guandape, giving it the name of
St. Michael, the spot being, by the testimony of Ecija, the
1 " Real Cedula que contiene el asiento capitulado con Lucas Vasquez
de Ayllon" in Navarrete, " Coleccion de Viages y Descubrimientos,"
Madrid, 1829, ii., pp. 153, 156.
SAN MIGUEL DE GU AND APE. 107
pilot-in-chief of Florida, that where the English subse
quently founded Jamestown. Houses were erected, and the
holy sacrifice was offered in a temporary chapel by the zeal
ous priests. Sickness soon showed itself, and Ayllon, sinking
under a pestilential fever, died in the arms of the Dominican
priests on St. Luke's day, October 18, 1526. Winter set in
early, and the cold was intense. Francis Gomez, who suc
ceeded to the command, could not control the people. His
authority was usurped by mutineers, who provoked the negro
slaves to revolt and the Indians to hostility. It was at last
resolved to abandon the country, and in the spring Gomez,
taking the body of Ayllon, set sail for Santo Domingo, but
the vessel containing the remains foundered, and only one
hundred and fifty of the whole party reached Hispaniola.1
1 For Ayllon the authentic documents are the Cedula of 1523 and the
proceedings in the lawsuit brought by Matienzo, where the testimony of
Quexos, Aldana, and others who were on the first voyage, is given, and
the Act of taking possession. Father Cervantes survived Father Mou-
tesinos, and in 1561 gave testimony in regard to the settlement on the
James. Many facts relating to Father Montesinos are given in Fer
nandez, " Historia Eclesiastica de Nuestros Tiempos," Toledo, 1611,
p. 24; Melendez, " Tesoros Verdaderos de las Yndias en la Historia de
la gran provincia de San Ivan Bavtista del Perv," Rome, 1681, pp. 10-
15; Charlevoix, "Histoire de Saint Domingue," i., p. 233 ; Touron.
"Histoire de 1'Amerique," i., pp. 213, 240-8, 253-5, 321; Valladares,
"Historia de Puerto Rico," Madrid, 1788, p. 102. According to Helps,
"Spanish Conquest of America," he went subsequently to Venezuela,
and opposite his name on the list preserved in his convent at Salamanca
are the words " Obiit martyr." Navarrete, iii., pp. 72-3, correctly states
that Ayllon sailed north ; and the Relacion of Ecija, Piloto mayor of
Florida, who was sent, in 1609, to discover what the English were doing,
gives places and distances along the coast with great accuracy, and states
that the English had settled at Guandape, the distance to which he gives.
Writing only eighty-three years after Ayllon's voyage, and by his office
being in possession of Spanish charts and derroteros of the coast, his
statement is conclusive. The Father General of the Order of St. Dom
inic, Very Rev. F. Larroca, had search made for documents as to the
great priest Montesinos, but none were traced. The stone found at Pom-
pey, N. Y., may be a relic of Ayllon. See H. A. Homes' paper on it.
108 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
The second altar of Catholic worship on our soil was thus
abandoned like the first ; but its memory is linked with that
of the illustrious missionary Montesinos, whose evangelical
labors in Puerto Rico had won him the title of apostle of
that island.
Meanwhile the gulf shore had been visited and explored
by expeditious sent out from Jamaica by Francis de Garay,
governor of that island. By one of these the Mississippi was
discovered, and received the name of Espiritu Santo ; but the
only settlements attempted by Garay were south of the Eio
Grande. In 1527, Panfilo de Narvaez, wishing to rival
Cortes, obtained a patent for the territory explored by Garay,
and projected a settlement at Rio de Palmas. He sailed
from Spain on the lYth of June with five vessels, carrying
six hundred persons, to settle and reduce the country. Sev
eral secular priests ' accompanied the expedition, and five
Franciscan friars, the superior or commissary being Father
John Xuarez, who, with one of his companions, Brother
John de Palos, belonged to the original band of twelve who
founded the mission of their order in Mexico. "While en
deavoring to enter the harbor of Havana, Narvaez's fleet was
driven on the coast of Florida, near Apalache Bay. Sup
posing that he was near his destination, Rio de Palmas, he
landed most of his people, directing the ships to keep along
the coast ; but so unwise were all his arrangements that his
ships and his people never were able to find each other again.
After undergoing many sufferings and finding the country
sterile and destitute of wealth or resources, Narvaez returned
to the gulf, and built five large boats, in which he hoped to
coast along till he found some Spanish settlement. Each
boat carried nearly fifty men, and in one of them the com-
1 El Asturiano is the only one named.
FC3AY
110 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
missary, Father Xuarez, and his companions embarked in Sep
tember, 1528. The whole party followed the shore, in great
suffering for food and water, rarely able to obtain either from
the Indians. About the first of November they reached a
point where the Mississippi sent out its strong current, fresh
ening the sea-water so that they could drink it ; but their
clumsy boats, managed by unskilful men, could not cross the
mouth of the great river safely. The boat with Narvaez
perished ; that in which the missionaries were was found
afterwards on the shore, bottom upward. No trace of the
Fathers was ever discovered. Some of the boats were driven
on the land, and a number of Spaniards reached land safely,
among them the priest Asturiano. But he must have died
before these wretched survivors endeavored, by rafts and
otherwise, to work their way along the coast. Of the whole
array of Panfilo de Narvaez, only four persons, Cabeza de
Vaca, Dorantes, Castillo, and Stephen, a negro, after years
of suffering and wandering, reached Petatlan, in Sinaloa,
April 1, 1536.'
This expedition aimed at a point beyond the limits of our
Republic, and was only by accident on our shores. In the
vague narrative of Cabeza de Yaca, there is no mention of
the celebration of the holy sacrifice by the priests after they
landed, nor of any labors such as we may infer they undertook
to solace their comrades in life and death. It is rather from
their sufferings that this little band of clergymen find a place
in the history of the Church in this country, while the merit
of Father Xuarez and his humble companion, Brother John
de Palos, have entitled them to an honorable place in the
annals of their order.
'For this expedition the leading authority is "La relacion que dio
Aluar nunez cabeca de vaca," Zamora, 1542 ; reprinted, 1550 ; translated
by Buckingham Smith, Washington, 1851 ; New York, 1871.
FATHER JUAN XUAREZ. HI
Father John Xuarez was the fourth of the band of twelve
Franciscans sent to Mexico. He belonged to the province
of St. Gabriel, and came to America, in 1523, with Father
Martin de Valencia, and was immediately made guardian of
the convent established at Huexotzinco, where he was long
remembered by the Indians as a holy religious. Brother
John de Palos came from the convent of St. Francis, in
Seville, and showed great zeal in acquiring the Mexican lan
guage, so that he was able to instruct the Indians in their
own tongue.1
The expedition of Panfilo de Narvaez would scarcely have
found a place in the civil or ecclesiastical history of America
had it not inspired expeditions from the Atlantic and from
the Pacific coast, which reached the very heart of the conti
nent, and one of which led to subsequent settlement and to
mission work.
Impelled by the accounts which Cabeza de Yaca spread
through Spain, and apparently by the air of mystery assumed
by that officer as to realms of which he heard, Hernando de
Soto, a gentleman of Xerez, who, even in days of cruelty,
was esteemed cruel in his career at Nicaragua, Darien, and
Peru, obtained a grant of the lands previously embraced in
1 Torqueinada, " Monarquia Indiana," iii., pp. 437, 447. Their por
traits were engraved by Mr. Smith from the originals preserved in the
convent of Tlatelalco, and we give that of Father Xuarez.
"Relacion of Alvar Nunez Cabe£a de vaca," New York, 1871, pp. 99,
100. Barcia, in his " Ensayo Cronologico," speaks of Father Xuarez as
Bishop, but neither Cabeza de Vaca nor Torquemada evidently knew
anything of his elevation to the episcopate, and the portrait is absolutely
without anything indicative of his being a bishop. There is no trace of
the erection of any see or diocese of Rio de Palmas ; his name occurs in
no work giving the list of bishops in Spanish America, when even his
nomination by the king would have entitled him to wear outward marks
of the episcopal character. Aleman, "Hist, de Mexico," i., p. 37. We
must therefore regard this statement of Barcia as utterly unfounded.
112 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
the concessions to Narvaez and Ayllon. His project created
the greatest enthusiasm in Spain ; men sold their estates and
offices to join the expedition of Soto, elated at being ad
mitted to share its dangers.
The king made it one of the conditions of his grant to
Soto that he should carry and have with him " the religious
and priests who shall be appointed by us, for the instruction
of the natives of that province in our holy Catholic faith, to
whom you are to give and pay the passage, stores, and the
other necessary subsistence for them according to their con
dition, all at your cost, receiving nothing from them during
the said entire voyage, with which matter we gravely charge
you that you do and comply, as a thing for the service of
God and our own, and anything otherwise we shall deem
contrary to our service."
The expedition set sail from Spain April 6, 1538, exceed
ing in numbers and equipment anything yet seen for the
conquest of the Indies. It was made up of men of high
rank and blood, full of ambition, and attired in all the gay
trappings of fashion, as though it were a party of pleasure
rather than a dangerous expedition into an unknown land.
The religious influence manifested throughout seems to
have been very slight. Twelve priests, eight ecclesiastics and
four religious, are said to have accompanied the expedition,
consisting of nearly a thousand men ; but the names of none
of thorn are given in the narratives of Soto's wanderings, ex
cept that of Father John de Gallegos.
No mention is made of the celebration of any Sunday or
holiday by any special service, but the holy sacrifice was ap
parently offered when they encamped, until in the terrible
battle of Mauila, vestments, church plate, wheat, flour, and
bread irons were consumed in the general conflagration. Oc
tober, 1540. After that, according to Garcilaso de la Vega,
PRIESTS WITH SO TO. 113
mass prayers were said before a temporary altar by a priest in
vestments of dressed skins.
Most of the priests and religious perished in the long and
straggling march of the force from Tampa Bay to Pensacola,
then to the Savannah and the land of the Cherokees, thence
to Mobile, whence Soto struck to the northwest, crossing the
Mississippi at the lower Chickasaw Bluffs, and penetrating to
the bison range south of the Missouri ; then pushing down
the western valley of the Mississippi, till death ended all his
projects and disappointments, May 21, 1542. "When his suc
cessor, Muscoso, reached the settled parts of Mexico with the
few survivors of the brilliant array that had left Spain so full
of delusive hopes, three friars and one French priest alone
survived of the clergymen. Once only in the narratives do
the clergy appear in any scene of interest. This was in the
town of Casqui, on the western bank of the Mississippi, soon
after Soto crossed it. The Indians came to the Spaniards as
superior beings, worshipping a more powerful God, and be
sought their mediation to avert the long drought and cure
their blind. The Spanish commander said they were but
sinful men, yet they would pray to the Almighty for them,
and he ordered a huge pine tree to be felled and a cross made
and reared. Then the whole force, except a small band left
as a guard, formed a procession, and, led by the priests and
religious, moved on toward the cross, chanting litanies, to
which the soldiers responded. On reaching the cross all
knelt, prayers were recited, and each kissed the symbol of
man's redemption. Many of the Indians joined in the pro
cession, and imitated the actions of the Spaniards. "When
the devotions at the cross were concluded, the procession re
turned to the camp in the same order, chanting the Te Deum.1
1 No religious chronicle gives details as to any of the priests or friars
who accompanied Soto, and the pages of the "Gentleman of Elvas,"
114 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Less brilliant in its inception, more fortunate in its close,
was another expedition, also inspired by the accounts of
Cabeza de Yaca. Its course was not marked by wanton cru
elty or by retributive suffering. It was judiciously managed ;
the troops were well handled ; it lai-d open provinces where set
tlements in time were formed. Above all, it claims our notice
in tins work because there was a religious influence through
out. Zeal for the salvation of the native tribes was manifest,
and it resulted in a noble effort of Franciscan Fathers to
plant a mission in the very heart of the American continent,
a thousand miles from either ocean, the Mexican Gulf or
Hudson Bay. This was the expedition directed by the wise
and upright viceroy, Don Antonio de Mendoza. Purchasing
the negro slave Stephen from Dorantes, a companion of Cabeza
de Yaca, and setting free all Indians who had followed the
four survivors, he sent Yasquez de Coronado as governor to
Sinaloa, directing Father Mark, an illustrious Franciscan from
Kice, in Italy, to penetrate into the interior, with Stephen as
his guide, assuring all the native tribes he encountered that
the viceroy had put an effectual stop to the enslavement of
the Indians and sought only their good. " If God our Lord
is pleased," says the viceroy in his instructions to Father
Mark, " that you find any large town where it seems to you
that there is a good opportunity for establishing a convent
and sending religious to be employed in the conversion, you
are to advise me by Indians or return in person to Culuacan.
With all secrecy, you are to give notice, that provision be
made without delay, because the service of our Lord and the
Biedma, and Garcilaso de la Vega are barren of information as to any
thing ecclesiastical. The two former may be followed in Smith's
" Narratives of the Career of Hernando de Soto in the Conquest of
Florida," New York, 1866, the latter in Irviug's "Conquest of Florida
by Heruando de Soto," New York, 1851.
FATHER MARK OF NICE, 115
good of the people of the Land is the aim of the pacification
of whatever is discovered."
The instructions were handed to the Franciscan Father in
November, 1538, by Governor Coronado, and after an inef
fectual attempt by way of the province of Topiza, as directed
by the viceroy, he set out, March 7, 1539, from San Miguel
de Culuacan with Father Honoratus,1 Stephen and liberated
Indians ; but on reaching Petatlan his religious companion
fell sick and was left to recruit. Then Father Mark jour
neyed on, keeping near the coast, meeting friendly tribes,
who hailed him as a " Sayota," man from heaven. He heard
of California and its people on the west, and of tribes at the
north, dwelling in many large towns, who were clothed in
cotton dresses and had vessels of gold. He spent Holy AV eek
at Yacapa a and sent Stephen northward, with instructions
that if he found any important place he was to send back a
cross by the Indians, its size to be in proportion to the great
ness of the town he might discover. In a few days messen
gers came from Stephen, announcing that thirty days' march
beyond the point he had reached was a province, called Ci-
bola, in which were seven great cities under one lord. The
houses were of stone, three and four stories in height ; that
the people were well clothed and rich in turquoises. After
waiting for the return of his Indian messengers and receiving
confirmation of the story of the seven cities, he left Vacapa
on Easter Tuesday, urged by fresh messengers from Stephen
to come on with all speed. On the way he met Indians who
had visited Cibola, the first of the seven cities, and had ob-
1 Castaueda de Najera, whoever he was, writing twenty years after
Coronado's expedition, gives Father Mark two other friars, in direct con
tradiction of F. Mark's contemporaneous account. Ternaux Corupaus'
edition, p. 10.
2 Now San Luis de Bacapa, in Sonora,
110
THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
tamed buffalo hides and turquoises there. These turquoises
were greatly prized in Mexico, where the Aztecs, who called
them chalchihuitl, used them both as jewelry and as money.
As Father Mark proceeded, he re
ceived confirmation of the intelligence
from the Indians, who assured him
that in Totonteac, a province near
Cibola, the men wore woollen goods
like his habit. He told them that
they must mean cotton, but they as
sured him that they knew the differ
ence; that it wras woven from the
wool of an animal. They explained
to him, also, how the people in the
towns reached the top of their houses
by means of ladders. Passing another
SEAL OP FATHER MARK Desert, he traversed a delightful val
ley,' still encouraged by tidings from
Stephen, and came to a desert which was fifteen days'
march from Cibola. Accompanied by many Indians, he
FAC-SIMTLE OF THE SIGNATURE OF FATHER MARK OF NICE.
began to cross this desert on the 9th of May and travelled
on till the 21st, when a messenger came, in terror and spent
1 Whipple regards it as the valley of the Gila.
A PRIEST EXPLORER. 117
with fatigue, bearing a tale of disaster. Stephen, when
within a day's march of Cibola, had sent the chief some
tokens of his coming, but the Indians refused to receive
them, and threatened to kill him if he came. Stephen per
sisted and reached Cibola. He was not allowed to enter, but
was placed in a house without the town and stripped of all
the goods he carried. The next day he and his companions
were attacked by the natives, and the messenger alone escaped
to carry back the sad tidings. Though his life was in peril
from his Indian attendants, who held him responsible for the
death of their countrymen in Stephen's party, Father Mark
resolved to push on, at least to see the town, hoping to rescue
any survivors. He declared that he came in sight of Cibola
and planted a cross, to take possession of the country. He
then returned and made a report of the expedition to the
viceroy, who transmitted it to the king.1
1 We follow Father Mark's "Relation." Castaneda de Najera is not
an eye-witness, and wrote more than twenty years afterwards. He must
have written from vague recollections of what he had heard ; and in re
gard to what he saw on Coronado's expedition, he shows great hostility
to the commander, throwing doubts on his impartiality. Father Mark
was a native of Nice, then a city of Savoy, now of France. He arrived
in St. Domingo in 1531, and after visiting Peru went to Mexico, where
he became the third Provincial of his order. He set out with Coronado
after his return from his first expedition, but returned, having contracted
a disease from which he never recovered. He died in the convent of his
order in the City of Mexico. Torquemada, iii., pp. 358, 373, 499, 610.
It has been usual to" assail this Franciscan in terms of coarse vituperation,
but the early translations of his narrative contained exaggerations and in
terpolations not found in his Spanish text. This is admitted. Hayues,
in " Winsor's Narrative and Critical History," ii., p. 499 ; Coronado, Let
ter to Emperor, Aug. 3, 1540 ; Ramuzio, iii., p. 360 ; Oct. 20, 1541, Ter-
naux, "Castaneda," p. 362. Castaneda, " Relation," p. 48, originated the
charges against him. Haynes follows his real narrative and does not note
a single statement as false or bring any evidence to show any assertion
untrue. That the Navajoes wove woollen goods and other tribes cotton ;
that turquoises were mined in New Mexico ; that the Pueblo Indians en-
118 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Father Mark thus stands in history as the earliest of the
priestly explorers who, unarmed and afoot, penetrated into
the heart of the country, in advance of all Europeans— a
barefooted friar effecting more, as Yiceroy Mendoza wrote,
than well-armed parties of Spaniards had been able to ac
complish. The point reached by Father Mark was certainly
one of the towns of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and
Arizona, wThose remarkable dwellings and progress in civil
ization he was the first to make known.
Encouraged by the report of the Franciscan explorer, the
viceroy ordered Francis Vasquez de Coronado to advance
into the country with a considerable force. The army of oc
cupation formed at Culiacan, and Coronado, on the 22d of
April, 1540, took the advance with a detachment, accom
panied by the missionaries, Fathers Mark of Nice, John de
Padilla, Daniel and Louis, with the lay brothers Luis de Es-
calona and John of the Cross.1 Father Anthony Yictoria,
another missionary, broke his leg a few days afterwards, and
was sent back to the main army. Taking the route by way
of Chichilticale, known later as the Casas Grandes, in Arizona,
Coronado, crossing a desert and the Gila, reached Cibola,
twenty miles from its banks. It was a town, with houses
three or four stories high, built on a rock, and contained two
hundred warriors, some of whom sallied forth to check the
invaders. Coronado sent forward Garci Lopez, with Fathers
Daniel and Louis, to explain his friendly intent, but the In
dians replied with a shower of arrows, one piercing the habit
of Father Daniel. Though they fled from a charge, the In
dians defended the town bravely, but it was taken by storm,
and the rest of the seven towns submitted.
tered their houses by a door in the roof, reached by ladders, might appear
at the time false statements, but are all now admitted to be true.
1 Some make these the secular and religious names of one brother.
FATHER PADILLA AT QUIVIRA. 119
Coronado dispatched an officer to Mexico to give an ac
count of his operations, and Father Mark returned with him,
Coronado and many of his followers holding him responsible
for the exaggerations of the Indian accounts.
While one detachment, attended by the fearless Father
Padilla, visited Tusayan,1 a district of seven towns like
Cibola, and another subsequently reached the wonderful
canon of the Colorado, the main body of the expedition came
up from Sonora and the whole force united at Cibola. Co
ronado then, in person or by his officers, reduced Acuco or
Acoma, Tiguex, Cicuye or Old Pecos, the central town of the
district, Yuquayunque and Jemez. None of these towns
gave indication of any rich mines, and the country did not
encourage the Spaniards to attempt a permanent settlement.
The troops were scattered and lived on the natives, whom
their oppression forced into hostilities. ~No record remains
of the services of the Franciscan Fathers during this period,
but when, in April, 1541, Coronado set out for the Province
of Quivira, of whose wealth a treacherous Indian guide told
the greatest marvels, we find Father John de Padilla in the
detachment. The missionary thus crossed the bison plains,
meeting only Querecho Indians, who lived in tents of bison
skins and moved from place to place, with their trains of
dogs. Marching to the northeast, Coronado, sending back
part of his force, at the end of sixty-seven days arrived on
the banks of a great river, to which he gave the name of St.
Peter and St. Paul, as they reached it on the feast of the Holy
Apostles. Quivira, as he found it, yielded nothing to repay
his long march. JSro gold was to be seen, and the people
were less advanced than those of New Mexico, though they
cultivated Indian corn. He could not have been far from
1 Bandelier regards this as the district of the Moqui towns.
120 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
the Missouri River, for an Indian woman, held as a slave,
escaping from Coronado's party, fell into the hands of the
survivors of DeSoto's expedition and was taken to Mexico.1
After erecting a cross bearing the inscription, " Francis Yas-
quez de Coronado, general of an expedition, reached this
spot," the Spanish commander returned to Tiguex. Another
winter spent in New Mexico without any further discoveries
brought him to the resolution to abandon the country.
Spaniards had thus occupied New Mexico for two years,
but there is not the slightest hint that they anywhere erected
the most perishable form of chapel ; yet we can scarcely con
ceive it possible that Coronado's camp was planted so long
without some action to erect a place for divine worship.
The expedition was judiciously conducted, their live stock
was abundant, and the men did not suffer from want or
hardship. A settlement might easily have been formed, but
no steps were taken to establish one, and when Coronado
evacuated New Mexico, the little missionary party who so
bravely remained were the only representatives of civiliza
tion and Christianity.
The temporary chapel at Tiguex, probably not far from
the modern Bernalillo, was the first chapel of New Mexico,
where during the two years' occupation mass was regularly
offered, and the gospel preached with zeal and fervor by the
sons of St. Francis, Father Padilla effecting great good
among the soldiers by his ministry, as Torquemada declares.2
Father Padilla and the lay brother, Luis de Escalona, re
solved to remain, for the purpose of establishing a mission,
the former having been impressed especially with the disposi
tions manifested by the people of Quivira. Coronado, when
1 Castaneda, "Relation du Voyage de Cibola," p. 135.
2 " Monarquia Indiana," iii., p. 610. Bandelier, " Historical Introduc
tion," p. 182.
DEATH OF PADILLA. 121
about to leave New Mexico in April, 1542, gave the mission
ary as guides the Quivira Indians, who had accompanied him
from their country ; Andrew del Campo, a Portuguese, a
negro, and two Zapoteca Indians of Michoacan, Luke and
Sebastian, also joined him. The little missionary party, for
the negro and the last named Indians had received the habit
of the order,1 had a horse, some mules, and a little flock of
sheep. The missionary took his vestments and chapel outfit
and some trifles to give the Indians.8 He set forth his design
in a Lenten sermon preached to the Spanish force at Tiguex,
and departed soon after for the scene of his projected
mission. Brother Luis, who is represented by writers on the
expedition as a very holy man, determined to take up his
residence at Cicuye, hoping to set up the cross in all the
neighboring villages, instruct the people in the faith, and
baptize dying children.
Father Padilla seems to have reached Quivira, but wishing
to visit a neighboring tribe he set out for them, and was
attacked by the wild savages of the plains. Seeing that
escape was all but impossible, he thought only of his com
panions. He bid del Campo, who was mounted, gallop for
life, and the young Indians to fly, as escape was possible for
them. Then he knelt down, and in prayer awaited the will
of the Indians, commending his soul to God. A shower of
arrows pierced him through, and the first martyr that the
Church can claim on our soil fell in the very heart of the
northern continent. Campo did not wait to see what fate
1 Apparently as members of the Third Order, for Torquemada states ex
pressly that they were not lay brothers, but men who devoted themselves
to the mission. (Donados ; in French, donnes.) " Monarquia Tnd.," iii.,
p. 611.
-Jaramillo, "Relacion," in Smith's Coleccion, p. 154; in Ternaux
Compans, pp. 380-1, 214, 194.
122 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
befel the missionary ; urging his horse to its utmost he dis
tanced his pursuers, and in time was safe among the Spanish
residents of Panuco. Not so Luke and Sebastian ; lurking
amid the tall grass they waited till the murderous Indians
had departed ; then they retraced their steps, and raising the
mangled remains committed them to the earth, amid their
tears and prayers. Only then did they in earnest endeavor
to reach the Spanish settlements. Traversing New Mexico
they bore to Culuacan the tidings of the glorious death of
Father John de Pad ilia.
Nothing definite was ever learned of the fate of Brother
John of the Cross (Luis de Escalona). "When Coronado was
setting out he sent the pious Brother a little flock of sheep.
The messengers found him near Cicuye, starting for some
villages fifteen or twenty leagues distant. He was full of
hope, but avowed that the old Indians regarded him with no
favor, and would ultimately kill him.
Father Padilla is properly the protomartyr of the mis
sions in this country. Other priests had died by disease,
hardship, or savage cruelty, but they were attached to Spanish
expeditions, and had not begun any special labors for the
conversion of the native tribes, as this worthy Father and his
companions had done.1
The ministers of the Catholic faith had thus, before the
'Castaneda de Xajera (Ternaux), pp. 214-5; "Relaciondel Suceso"
(Smith's Coleccion, p. 154); Jaramillo, "Relation" (Ib., p. 162); Tor-
quemada, "Monarquia Indiana,"i., p. 609 ; iii., pp. 610-1 ; Rapine, " His-
toire Generate de 1'Origine et Progrez des Recolets," Paris, 1631. pp.
331-4. Father John de Padilla was a native of Andalusia, and, after
serving in the army, entered the Franciscan order in the Province of the
Holy Gospel in Mexico. He was the first guardian of the convent of
Tulantzinco, but yearning to devote himself to the Indian missions was
sent as guardian to Tzopatlan, in Michoacan. He had accompanied
Father Mark of Nice on some of his earlier explorations.
FATHER CANCER'S FLORIDA MISSION. 123
middle of the sixteenth century, carried the cross and an
nounced Christianity from the banks of the Chesapeake to
the canons of the Colorado. Had the priests with Soto
been able to say mass, the march of the Blessed Sacrament
and of the Precious Blood across the continent would have
been complete.
Soon afterwards a memorable and heroic attempt was
made to plant Christianity among the natives of Florida.
The Dominican Father, Louis Cancer, full of the spirit of
Montesinos arid Las Casas, had alone and unsupported concil
iated the fierce
tribes of a pro
vince of Central
America, before
whose conquest
by force of arms Span
ish prowess had re
coiled. Armed only
with his cross, Father
Cancer so completely
won the district that it
bears to this day the
name of Vera Paz, or
True Peace, in token
of his victory. In
1546 this courageous
missionary conceived the project of endeavoring a similar
peaceful and Christian conquest of the natives of Florida.
His plans were ably seconded by Father Gregory de Beteta,
and other prominent men of his order, and were in time laid
before the Spanish king, who gave them his hearty approval.
On this remarkable man the emperor Charles V. now cast
his eyes. Four tyrants, he said, had entered Florida, effect-
ATTTOGRAPHS OF FATHERS LOUIS CANCER
AND GREGORY DE BETETA.
124 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
ing no good, but causing much mischief, and now he would
try religious. Father Cancer was formally appointed by the
king and council to begin this pious conquest of Florida.
Without deluding himself as to the dangers that awaited
him, the devoted son of Saint Dominic accepted the perilous
commission. By a royal decree, which proved, however, in
effectual, all natives of Florida, especially those brought away
by Muscoso, were to be set free and sent back to their native
country with Father Cancer. So many difficulties arose that
most persons would have abandoned the project, but the
earnest Dominican regarded the royal instructions as per-
LJ
AUTOGKAPHS OF FATHERS DIEGO DE TOLOSA AND JUAN GARCIA.
emptory, and persevered to the end. In 1549 he sailed from
Yera Cruz in an unarmed vessel called the Santa Maria de
la Enema. Fathers Gregory de Beteta, Diego de Tolosa,
John Garcia, and some others accompanied him, all prepared
to land in Florida, and attempt founding missions among the
Indians without the attendance of Spanish soldiers to protect
them from the bloodthirsty impulses of those whom they
sought to serve. After touching at Havana, where they ob
tained as interpreter a converted Florida woman named
Magdalena, the missionaries with their vessel ran across to
DEATH OF FATHER CANCER. 125
the peninsula, and on Ascension-day anchored on the west
ern shore, near Tampa Bay. The scheme of the Domini
can Fathers was one that required an examination of the
coast to find a tribe whose friendly attitude would justify
remaining among them. But this the captain of the Santa
Maria, John de Arana, who seems to have been utterly re
gardless of the intentions or fate of the missionaries, reso
lutely opposed. He ran a short distance up the coast, then
returned to his anchorage, and insisted that the Dominican
Fathers must land there or sail back with him. The mission
aries held a consultation ; to most of them it seemed rash to
attempt any mission under such circumstances, when they
were not at liberty to select a favorable spot or a friendly
tribe ; but Father Cancer felt bound by his instructions, and
did not regard himself at liberty to abandon an attempt, pro
posed by himself to the king, without making some endeavor
to carry it out. A few Indians who were fishing near the
vessel, and whose cabins were in sight, seemed well disposed,
and the missionaries landed to open intercourse with them.
Father Diego de Tolosa disembarked with Fuentes, a pious
man who had given his services to the mission, a sailor,
and Magdalena. They proceeded to the Indian cabins ; but
while those on board were awaiting their return, a Spaniard
reached the vessel who had been for many years a prisoner
in the hands of the Indians. He assured the missionaries
that Father Diego and Fuentes had been already murdered ;
but as Magdalena was seen on the shore, and declared that
they were alive and well, Father Cancer and his surviving
companions were divided in opinion. Father Louis finally re
solved to land,1 notwithstanding the remonstrances of Beteta
1 " Digo que un neg° de tanta imp ft que ha tres anos que se ordena, no
es bien se deshaga asi, i mas qndo depues de m« trabajos estamos bien
juntos al punto del Esp. S. do vamos." F. Cancer, MS.
126 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
and Munoz, the escaped prisoner. The sailors were afraid to
row their boat to the shore, and Father Louis jumped into
the water and Waded ashore. From the ship he was seen to
ascend the sloping bank, till Indians surrounded him ; his
hat was torn from his head, and as the good Father knelt in
prayer, the Indians butchered him. Thus perished, in obe
dience to a sense of duty, Father Louis Cancer de Barbastro,
one of the most remarkable missionaries of his order, whose
wonderful sway over the Indians of Central America justi
fied a confidence that the same means would influence the
Mobilian tribes. The boat was driven oil by showers of ar
rows, and the Santa Maria, with his dejected brethren, sailed
back to Yera Cruz.1
For several years the northern shore of the Gulf of Mex
ico, and the ocean-swept coast of Florida, were avoided by all
who sought to colonize or conquer ; and the mariners of
Spain knew them as a dangerous and inhospitable land, where
many a rich galleon had been wrecked, where man escaped
the danger of the sea only to meet a more cruel death at the
hands of the savages.
In 1553 a rich fleet, dispatched from Yera Cruz to Spain
by the viceroy, Don Louis de Yelasco, was driven on the coast
of Texas. Nearly all were wrecked. One vessel returned
to the port with the disastrous news, three others reached
Seville, all the rest perished ; and of the thousand persons
on them, only three hundred reached the shore on spars,
planks, and cases of merchandise, and made their wav to the
1 " Relacion de la Florida " in Smith's Coleccion, pp. 190-202 ; " Requi-
rimentos y respuestas "; opinions taken on the vessel, MS. Barcia, " En-
sayo Cronologico," pp. 25-6. Davila Padilla, "Historia de la Provincia
de Santiago de Mexico," ch. liv.-lvii. ; Touron, " Histoire de 1'Amerique,"
vi., p. 81. Fernandez, "Historia Eclesiastica de Nuestros Tiempos," 1611,
ch. 43, p. 150.
DE LUNA'S ATTEMPTED SETTLEMENT. 127
Eio Grande, but nearly all perished before reaching Panuco,
including several religious of the order of St. Dominic.1
It had become vitally important to Spain either to con
vert and conciliate the natives on the northern shores of the
Gulf of Mexico and the southern Atlantic, or to plant settle
ments on the coast. The storms that sweep those seas had
wrecked so many treasure ships that the French were begin
ning to trade with the natives for the silver that they secured,
and the Indians seldom spared the shipwrecked Spaniards
who fell into their hands.
In 1555 the Archbishop of Mexico, and in the following
year, on the accession of Philip II., the Viceroy of Mexico,
John de Urango, Bishop of Santiago de Cuba, whose diocese
embraced Florida, and others, urged upon the king the ne
cessity of planting colonies in Florida.3 Philip approved the
project, and confided its execution to the viceroy Yelasco ;
the Provincial of the Dominicans in Mexico, Father Domi
nic of St. Mary, being commanded to send religious of his
order with the colonizing expedition.
A fleet of thirteen vessels was fitted out at Yera Cruz and
placed under the command of Don Tristan de Luna y Are
llano, son of the Marshal Carlos de Luna, Governor of Yucatan.
It comprised a force of 1,500 soldiers, many of whom had
1 Davila Padilla, "Historia de la f'undacion de la Provincia de San
tiago de Mexico," Madrid, 1596, pp. 231-268. Barcia, "Ensayo Crono-
logico," pp. 28-31.
2 "Porque a nuestro oficio pastoral y al oflcio apostolico que tenemos
pertenece procurar por todas las vias y modos que pudieremos como la Fee
de Christo Nuestro Redentor sea ampliada, y todas las gentes vengan en
conocimiento de Dios y salvar sus animas,- suplicamos a V. M. sea
servido proveer y mandar por las vias que mas justas parecieren que la
Florida y gente della vengan en conoscimiento de su Criador, pues la
tenemos tan cerca y sabemos la innumerable gente que en ella se condena
por no haber quien les predique el Santo Evangelic." Archbishop of
Mexico to the emperor, Nov. 1, 1555. " Col. de Doc. Ined.," 3, p. 526.
128
THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
already been in Florida, with a number of settlers, and all
necessary implements for tilling the earth, clearing the for
ests, and building houses
and defences. At the head
of the spiritual direction of
the intended colony was the
Dominican Father Peter de
Feria, afterwards Bishop of
Chiapa.
AUTOGRAPH OF FATHER PEDRO DE TllG Plal1 WaS tO form
FERIA. one settlement on the Gulf
coast, one at Coosa, inland,
and a third on the Atlantic at Santa Elena; not reducing
the Indians by conquest, but as Father Feria states in a letter
announcing his departure, "by good example, with good
works, and with presents, to bring the Indians to a knowledge
of our holy Faith and Catholic truth."
The viceroy acted writh great prudence and forecast. Be
fore sending out the expedition he dispatched Guido de La-
bazares, an experienced pilot, to examine the coast and select
a port for the vessels to enter. The pilot selected Pensacola
Bay, which he named Fernandina, a safe and good harbor,
with a well-wooded country abounding in game and fish, and
a soil that richly repaid the rude Indian cultivation. Then
the expedition prepared to sail, the viceroy coming in person
to Vera Cruz to address and encourage Tristan de Luna and
those placed under his command. Father Peter de Feria went
as vice-provincial of Florida, accompanied by Father Dominic
of the Annunciation, Father Dominic de Salazar, Father John
Mazuelas, Father Dominic of St. Dominic, and a lay brother.
They sailed June 11, 1559, but though they entered Pensa
cola Bay, Tristan de Luna, instead of settling there as was
intended, yielded to the advice of his pilots, and lost time in
DOMINICANS IN FLORIDA. 129
looking for Iclmse or Santa Rosa Bay. Here the disembark
ation began, but was carried on with little energy, the vessels
riding at anchor for weeks, while an exploring party, accom
panied by one of the missionaries, penetrated inland. On
the 19th day of September a terrible hurricane came upon
them ; five ships, a galleon, and a bark perished ; many of the
people, and nearly all the year's provision, were destroyed.
After this terrible blow, Tristan de Luna obtained relief
from Mexico ; and another exploring party, attended by
Fathers Dominic of the Annunciation and Father Salazar,
reached Nanipacna on the Escambia, an Indian town, which
seemed so attractive that Tristan de Luna, leaving a detach
ment on the coast, proceeded to it, and naming it Santa Cruz,
resolved to settle there. The commander showed in every
thing dilatoriness and inefficiency. At Santa Cruz he prob
ably erected some dwellings, and perhaps a chapel ; though
he wintered there, he cleared and planted no land in the
spring; but Jaramillo was sent on an expedition to Cosa,
on the Coosa, attended by the same missionaries, to obtain
provisions from the Indians. Forming a friendly alliance
with the Cosa tribe, the Spaniards accompanied their war
parties against the Napochies, a tributary tribe on the Missis
sippi, who sought to throw off their yoke. Father Dominic
of the Annunciation, and Father Salazar, shared all the hard
ships and dangers of the party, saying mass in rustic chapels
made of boughs, as the camp moved from place to place. On
one of these occasions, as Father Dominic was saying mass,
he saw a huge caterpillar on the very rim of the chalice, just
after the consecration. He was afraid to attempt to remove it
for fear it should fall into the chalice ; he uttered a fervent
prayer, and to his relief saw it fall from the chalice dead on
the altar.
Regarded as a divine interposition this incident filled the
9
130 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
party with new confidence. Before the return of this party,
Tristan de Luna abandoned Santa Cruz and retired to Pensa-
cola, where finally the whole force was gathered. He wished
to proceed to Cosa and form a settlement there, but his men
refused. Three vessels sent to examine St. Helena Sound
were scattered by a storm. The fine expedition fitted out
from Mexico, and maintained at enormous expense, after
nearly two years' occupation of Florida had effected abso
lutely nothing ; not a sign of settlement, no houses, chapels,
or anything but mere temporary structures existed. Father
Feria, finding that there was no hope of a successful coloni
zation, embarked for Havana with Father John and Father
Dominic, when Tristan de Luna returned to the coast ; he
believed his fellow missionaries dead, but left some wheat
flour to enable them to say mass.1 The other Fathers labored
among the Spaniards, but among the Indians found their
ministry so fruitless that only one conversion is attributed to
their zeal. The dissension that arose between Tristan de
Luna, whose mind was unsettled by delirious fevers, and the
next in command, George Ceron, gave the missionaries a
field for their Christian charity, as it divided the camp into
two hostile factions. Tristan issued an order menacing any
deserter with death. Two soldiers attempted to escape from
the camp, and were sentenced to die. In vain did Father
Dominic of the Annunciation implore their pardon ; but as
the commander sternly refused, he hastened to prepare the
unfortunate men for death, urging them to recite the rosary
and commend themselves to Our Lady. One hearkened to
him, and spent the night performing the devotion with the
zealous Dominican ; the other sullenly refused. In the morn-
1 This little provision is reported to have lasted till the settlement
broke up, and its inexhaustible nature recalled the miracle of the widow's
cruse.
THEIR INFLUENCE, 131
ing Tristan de Luna remitted the punishment of the client
of Mary, and the other paid the penalty of the law.
As the dissension increased, the governor finally con
demned Ceron and his adherents to death as rebels. After
Father Salazar had in vain endeavored to appease the com
mander, Father Dominic of the Annunciation resolved to
make a solemn and public appeal to his Christian feelings.
As Holy Week approached the missionaries commended the
affair to God, and on Palm Sunday Father Dominic offered
earnest prayers for peace. The general, Ceron, and the
officers and soldiers gathered in the chapel for mass,
which Father Dominic was to offer. The holy sacrifice went
on till the moment of communion approached, when he
suddenly called Tristan de Luna by name. The general,
amazed, rose and approached the altar. Turning towards
him with the sacred host in his hands, Father Dominic said :
"You believe that it is the true Body of our Lord Jesus
Christ, Son of the living God, who came from heaven to
earth to redeem us from the power of sin and the devil, this
Sacred Host, which I hold in my unworthy hands?" " Yes,
I believe it," replied the governor, not knowing what all this
meant. " Do you believe that this same Lord is to come to
judge the living and the dead, to reward the good and pun
ish the wicked ? " " Yes, I believe," again replied Tristan ;
and Father Dominic, believing that he had touched his heart,
proceeded : " If then you believe, as a true and faithful
Christian, in the real presence of the Supreme Judge of all,
in this Holy Host, how, without fear of Him who is to judge
us, can you permit so many evils, so many sins against Him,
as for the last five months we have deplored and wept over ?
It behooves you, as superior, to remedy it ; and to read in
your own heart whether hatred, cloaked with zeal for justice,
has room in your heart, when to distinguish them the least
132 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
ray of the Divine Light, which you have before you, suffices.
You beheld the innocent suffer as well as those you judge
guilty, and you would confound the punishment of some
with the unjustice you wreak on others. What account
can you give of yourself on the tremendous day of judg
ment, if against yourself you hate peace, and deprive us all
of it, when God became man to give peace to men I Do
you wish to deprive us of this happiness, fanning the llames
of Satan, the father of discord ? "
He continued for a time in this strain, and when he turned
to the altar, the governor returned to his place deeply
moved. No sooner \vas the mass ended than Tristan arose,
declaring that he had never intended to wrong any man. If
led by a sense of duty he had done so, he asked pardon.
They did not allow him to proceed ; Ceron and his officers
were kneeling around him, asking pardon at his hands. A
general reconciliation followed, and all prepared to remedy
the distress caused by the unfortunate discord. But in a few
days vessels arrived under Angel de Yillafaile, bearing
Father John de Contreras, with Father Gregory de Beteta,
who had renounced a bishopric, to spend his remaining days
in Florida. But when a general council was held, it was de
termined to abandon the country ; all except a small party of
soldiers, left as a garrison, embarked, and Yillafane sailed
with them to Saint Helena on the Atlantic coast, but deem
ing it unsuited for settlement, returned to Mexico in 1561.'
The only fruit of the voyage to the Atlantic coast \vas a
young Indian, brother of the Cacique of Axacan, on the
1 The story of Tristan de Luna's colony is given in Davila Padilla,
"Relacion de la Fundacion de la Provinciade Santiago," 1567, pp. 247-
277; "Coleccion de Documentos ineditos," v., p. 447; " Relacion " and
Letters of Velasco (Smith's Coleccion, p. 10); "Memorial of Tristan de
Luna," Doc. ined., xii., pp. 280-3 ; testimony taken in regard to the col
ony; and Barcia, "Ensayo Cronologico," pp. 32-41.
MENENDEZ SENT TO FLORIDA. 133
Chesapeake, who was taken at this time by the Dominicans
to Mexico.
Florida seemed so utterly unsuited to colonization, so de
void of wealth to be drawn from mines or soil, that all fur
ther attempts were regarded as visionary ; and a board ap
pointed by the Spanish monarch decided that no project of
the kind was to be entertained, since no other European na
tion would attempt or could hope to form a prosperous set
tlement there to the detriment of Spain.
But the elements still strewed the shores with the wrecks of
vessels, and the waves bore to the beach the bodies of white
men or wretched survivors with fragments of the rich car
goes. Heart-broken at the loss of a son, wrecked on Florida,
Peter Menendez, a famous naval commander, arrived in Spain
possessed with only one thought, that of asking the royal
permission to sail to the rescue of the last scion of his ancient
house. Enemies created by the brave but arbitrary com
mander, caused his arrest on charges of misconduct, and he
lingered for months in prison. On obtaining his release he
sousrht the presence of Philip II., to obtain the gratification
of his earnest desire. Notwithstanding the recent decision of
his officials, the Spanish monarch proposed to Menendez the
occupation and settlement of Florida. Menendez did not re
fuse the unsought honor, attended, as it was, with toil and
little prospect of success. He formed his plans, summoning
around him kinsmen and vassals. While he was collecting
ships, men, arms, and provisions of every kind, there came
the startling intelligence that the Calvinists of France, whose
corsairs were the unsparing foes of Spain on the ocean, had
actually sent out an expedition and occupied Saint Helena
Sound in less than a year after Yillafane had pronounced it
entirely unfit for settlement.
The expedition of Menendez, from being the affair of an
134 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
individual proprietor, assumed a national importance. Philip
gave him royal vessels and royal aid, to root out utterly a
settlement which would be a constant menace to the com
merce of Spain, and which from the days of Cartier's voyage
to the St. Lawrence, it had been the resolution of the Spanish
government to prevent.
Charlesfort, established by Eibault on Port Koyal Sound in
1562, did not subsist long. After indolence, mutiny, and
starvation, a few survivors rescued by an English vessel,
landed at last in England. Admiral Coligny, undismayed by
this failure, sent out another expedition in 1564 under Rene
de Laudonniere. In June that commander entered the St.
John's River, which the French had named the River of May.
Gaining the good-will of Saturiova and other chiefs, the
French commander threw up Fort Caroline on the main
river of Florida. This new settlement was no better man
aged than the former. Mutiny ensued there also, and the
rebellious party extorting a license from Laudonniere, took
the vessels and proceeded on a piratical cruise against the
Spanish ships and seaside settlements. Those who remained
would have perished but for aid furnished by Sir John
Hawkins, who, himself cruising against the Spaniards, hap
pened to enter the river on the 3d of August. Even after
this aid Laudonniere was on the point of abandoning Florida
when Ribault arrived with a large force in seven vessels.
The activity of Meuendez's preparations for the occupation
of Florida had become known in France, and Admiral Co
ligny determined to maintain his settlement and resist the
Spaniards. For this purpose he had equipped the expedition
under Ribault, who sailed from Dieppe, in France, on the 26th
of May, as Menendez did from Spain on the 29th of June,
1565.
Each commander used all the resources of seamanship to
PRIESTS WITH MENENDEZ. 135
outstrip his antagonist, Menendez to strike a decisive blow
before Hibault could arrive, the French captain to reinforce
Caroline so as to meet any Spanish attack.
Menendez sailed from Cadiz with the San Pelayo, a
royal vessel, and nineteen others carrying more than fifteen
hundred persons, including mechanics of all kinds. Four
secular priests with proper faculties sailed on the San Pe
layo. Other vessels followed, one from Cadiz, and three
from Aviles and Gijon under Stephen de las Alas, who sailed
May 25th with 257 more persons, including eleven Francis
can Fathers, and one lay brother, a Father of the Merceda-
rian order, one cleric, and eight Jesuit Fathers.1 Including
smaller vessels with supplies, the whole number that em
barked for Florida was 2,646, Menendez having expended a
million ducats in fourteen months. This great armament
was scattered by storms, and Menendez reached Porto Rico
with less than one-third his force in men and vessels. Learning
there that Ribault had outsailed him, and captured a Spanish
vessel in the AVest Indies, thus opening hostilities, Menen
dez held a council of war, in which it was decided to proceed
and attack the French at once. He reached the coast of
Florida on the 28th of August, the feast of St. Augustine, and
the Te Deum was chanted with great solemnity. Giving the
name of the Bishop of Hippo to a harbor which he discovered,
Menendez sailed on to discover the French fort. Coming
upon Ribault's vessels at the mouth of the St. John's, he an
nounced his determination to put them all to death. Ko
quarter at that time was shown to the Spaniards on sea or
laud by the French and English cruisers ; the Spanish sol
diers in the army of the league in France ; those who es
caped from the wreck of the Armada on the coast of Ireland,
1 Barcia, p. 691.
136 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
all were put to death without mercy by the English, unless
they were rich enough to ransom their lives. Only a few
years before Jacques Sorie, a French commander, had burned
Havana and hung his prisoners amid the smoking ruins.
The terms announced by Menendez to the French were pre
cisely those given to the Spaniards by French and English.1
After an ineffectual pursuit of the French vessels, Me
nendez sailed down the coast to the harbor of Saint Augus
tine, where he had determined to plant his settlement. His
resolution was to fortify his position there and hold out till
the rest of his fleet arrived.
Entering the harbor on the 6th of September, he sent three
companies of soldiers ashore under two captains, who were
to select a site and begin a fort. A cacique gave the new
comers a large cabin near the seashore, and around it the
Spanish officers traced the outline of a fort ; the soldiers, with
their hands and anything they could fashion into an imple
ment, digging the ditches and throwing up the ramparts.
The next day, September 8, 1565, Menendez landed amid the
thunder of artillery
and the blast of
trumpets, the ban
ners of Castile and
Arragon unfurled.
The priest, Men-
doza Graiales, who
AUTOGRAPH OF REV. MARTIN FRANCISCO DE
MENDOZA GRAJALES, FIRST PARISH PRIEST ^^ landed tllG prC-
OF ST. AUGUSTINE.
f -s r
\c> r
• {^^
""""*"*••'
voug
cross and pro
ceeded to meet him, followed by the soldiers, chanting the Te
1 No Spaniard was found among Ribault's men, so that we must infer
that those taken on the vessel he captured in the West Indies were put
to death.
FIRST MASS AT ST. AUGUSTINE.
137
8AINT AUGUSTINE AND ITS ENVIRONS. FROM A SPANISH PLAN, BY
JOHN JOSEPH ELIXIO DE LA PUENTE, FEBRUARY 16, 1771.
(12) "Spot called Nombre de Dios, and is the same where the first mass
was said, September 8, 1565, when the Spaniards went with the Adelau-
tado Pedro Menendez de Aviles to conquer these provinces, and since
then an Indian town has been formed there, with a chapel, in which was
placed the statue of Nuestra Senora de la Leche. The town and chapel
subsisted till March 20, 1728, when, in consequence of the British forces
theu obtaining possession of it (they were then endeavoring to take the
said fortress by surprise), the Spanish governor ordered it to be demol
ished."
(15) " The chapel of Nuestra Senora de la Leche, and lands occupied
by the Indians, who subsequently established their town there."
(19) " Chapel of Our Lady of Guadalupe, with the territory occupied
by the Indians of their town called Tolomato."
(34) " Spot where there was a fort and Indian town, which was called
' Nombre de Dios Chiquito,' from the second mass having been said there,
at the time of the conquest by the said Pedro Menendez de Aviles."
(36) " Spot called Casapullas, where there was another Indian town."
(17) Fort.
(22) City Wall.
(23) City of St. Augustine.
(24) Indian Church of La Punta.
(26) San Sebastian River.
(27) Potolaca. Fort and Indian Church.
(28) Palica. Fort and Indian Church.
138 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Deum. Menendez advanced to the cross, which he kissed on
bended knee, as did all who followed him.' The solemn mass
of Our Lady was then offered at a spot, the memory of which
has been preserved on Spanish maps. It received the name of
Nombre de Dios, as there the name of God was first invoked
by the awful sacrifice of the New Law. There in time the
piety of the faithful erected the primitive hermitage or
shrine of Nuestra Senora de la Leche.2 Thus began the city
of St. Augustine, and thus began the permanent service of
the Catholic Church in that oldest city of the United States,
maintained now with but brief interruption for more than
three hundred years. The name of the celebrant is not stated,
and we know that besides Grajales there was present Doctor
Solis de Meras, brother-in-law of Menendez.
The work of landing the supplies for the settlers, and arms
and munitions for the soldiers went steadily on, directed by
Menendez himself. His vessels could not cross the bar to
enter the harbor, and were exposed to attack. In fact his
boats while landing the supplies were nearly captured by the
French, who suddenly appeared. The Spaniards ascribed
their escape to Our Lady of Consolation at Utrera, whom
they invoked in their sore strait. As soon as all needed by
his settlement was disembarked, Menendez sent off his ves
sels and prepared to act on the defensive. His force con
sisted of six hundred men at arms ; the French were superior
in numbers, and had their ships. But while the French
vessels hovered around the entrance to the harbor of St.
Augustine, wasting their opportunity to strike a decisive
'Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales, "Memoria," Sept. 29, 1565,
MS.
5 It was north of the present Fort Marion, and further from it than the
second shrine of N. 8. de la Leche. The offering of the mass is not men
tioned by Mendoza, but is given by Barcia, p. 76.
CHAPEL AT SAN MATHEO. 139
blow, the practiced eye of Menendez, trained by long experi
ence to know the changes of tropical weather5 discerned a
coming norther. The French fleet must be driven south
ward before it, far from their fort. In an instant he resolved
to assume the offensive, to march on Fort Caroline, which he
believed to be but fifteen miles distant, capture it, and leave
the French without a foothold on the coast. A mass of the
Holy Ghost was offered, and a council convened. Most of
the officers opposed his plan as rash ; the two priests begged
him not to leave his fort with helpless women and children
exposed to the French or Indian foes.
Selecting nearly all his soldiers able to march, Menendez
set out on the 16th after hearing mass with his troops, leav
ing the settlers and the feeble garrison of the fort in deep
anxiety and fear. Gathering around their altar as days went
on, they sought the protection of heaven against dangers that
menaced them from the sea and from the land. Faint-hearted
deserters from the expedition came back announcing that
Menendez was marching to certain destruction. Every hour
increased the possibility of a return of the French ships, con
scious, perhaps, of their defenceless state.
Meanwhile Menendez had pushed on amid the storm,
through swamps and flooded lands, his march impeded by the
tropic vegetation. At daybreak on the 21st he dashed into
Fort Caroline, putting all to the sword, sparing only the
women, and boys under fifteen. It was not a battle ; it was
a mere slaughter ; for Laudonniere seems to have made no
preparation for defence.
The next day mass was celebrated in the captured fort,
which received the name of San Matheo — its capture having
taken place on the feast of the apostle St. Matthew. Then
two crosses were set up on eminences, and a site marked out
140 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
for a chapel to be built of wood prepared by the French for
a vessel.1
The anxiety at St. Augustine was relieved on the 24th by
the approach of a soldier announcing the victory. Mendoza,
arrayed in his best cassock and surplice, went to meet the
general with four ecclesiastics chanting the Te Deum, in
which Menendez and the soldiers who accompanied him
joined after kneeling to kiss the cross.
When some days afterwards the shipwrecked Frenchmen
of Ribault's force approached St. Augustine, Mendoza ac
companied Menendez by his command. The Spanish general
resolved to put all the unfortunate men to death ; but Men
doza writes : "As I was a priest, and had the bowels of a
man, I asked him to grant me a favor, and it was that those
who should prove to be Christian should not die, and so he
granted. Examination made, we found ten or twelve, and
these we brought with us." 2
Menendez, thus left in full possession of Florida, planned
the occupation of Port Royal, the Chesapeake, and Tampa
Bay. Besides strengthening St. Augustine and San Matheo,
he visited Port Royal in April, 1566, and erected a stockade
fort, which he named San Felipe, and assigned the command
to Stephen de las Alas.3 Menendez, in his asiento with the
1 Barcia, who followed the manuscript of Don Solis de Meras, mentions
the mass and projected chapel, so that probably that priest accompanied
Menendez on his march.
- The terrible slaughter of shipwrecked men by Menendez aroused
great indignation in France, and appeals were made to the king to avenge
it. Only by perverting historical truth, however, can it be made a soli
tary or unusual case. The French never gave quarter to the Spaniards,
and only a few years before, Menendez had seen the burning ruins of
Havana strewn with the corpses of its butchered inhabitants, and there is
every reason to believe that the cruisers from Caroline and Ribault put
to death the Spaniards whom they captured.
3 Barcia, " Ensayo Cronologico," p. 108.
facretdclcl,
iJ£i Christiana ocnswf A-
cld. Jti>tf$ff& 8 JStvtcm \jvis,
DEATH OP FATHER PETER MARTINEZ, S.J
FROM TANNER, " SOCIETAS MILITANS," 1675.
FIRST VICAR AT ST. AUGUSTINE. 141
king, March 20, 1565, bound himself to bring out ten or
twelve religious of some order, men of exemplary life, and
four Jesuits. He was himself zealous, and alive to the ne
cessity of converting the Indians to Christianity, and at vari
ous points erected crosses, and left Spaniards, men of probity,
who were daily at the foot of the cross, to recite a short
abridgment of Christian doctrine, to familiarize the natives
O 7
with the devotions of Catholics. He earnestly appealed to
the Society of Jesus for missionaries to labor for their con
version.
Of the first church at St. Augustine and the chapels at San
Matheo and San Felipe we have no distinct accounts ; but in
the mutinies and troubles incident to a new settlement, we
find the Vicar Lopez de Mendoza interceding for mutineers
and saving their lives. He was an active and zealous priest
and seems to have labored from Cannaveral to the St. John's
River. He was a native of Xerez de la Frontera, and was
named by Menendez, with the consent of the Bishop of San
tiago de Cuba, under the Royal Patronage, granted to the
Spanish monarchs by Pope Julius II.,1 Vicar and Superior at
St. Augustine and San Matheo, having four clergymen under
him, one of whom soon proved to be most unworthy.11
In the vessels that arrived in 1566 there came some Do
minican Fathers, and Menendez sent two of them with Don
Luis Velasco, the brother of the chieftain of Axacan, to the
Chesapeake, with a captain and thirty soldiers for their pro
tection. Menendez deemed it necessary to occupy the bay
1 Barcia, " Ensayo Cronologico," p. 173. See Bull, " Universalis Ec-
clesise Regimini," July 28, 1538, in Ribadaneyra, " Manual, 6 Compendio
del Regio Patronato," pp. 408-15. Hernaez, " Coleccion de Bulas," Brus
sels, 1879, L, pp. 24-25.
2 Barcia, " Ensayo Cronologico," p. 116 ; Letter of Vicar Mendoza,
December 19, 1569.
142 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
as the northern bulwark of the' Spanish power. His inten
tion was, however, baffled, for the captain, pretending to
have been prevented by storms, made his way to Seville.1
The Spanish commander, as we have seen, had labored to
give the Indians some ideas of Christianity. Philip II. had
already requested St. Francis Borgia, General of the Society
of Jesus, to send twenty-four of his religious to found a mis
sion in Florida. Unable to assign so many at once, the Saint
selected for the purpose Father Peter Martinez, a native of
Celda, in the diocese of Saragosa ; Father John Eogel, of
Pamplona, and Brother Francis de Yillareal. These pioneers
sailed from San Lucar in a Flemish vessel, but near the Flor
ida coast it separated from the fleet to which it belonged.
FAC-SIMTLE OF SIGNATTJKE OF FATHEK JOHN KOGEL.
Ignorant of his position the captain sent a boat ashore, in
which Father Martinez embarked to reassure the sailors.
While they were on land a storm drove the vessel off, and it
eventually put in at Havana ; meanwhile the missionary and
his party, endeavoring to reach the Spanish port, were as
sailed by Indians, who dragged Father Martinez from the
boat and put him to death on the island of Tacatacuru, now
Cumberland, not far from the mouth of St. John's Eivcr.2
1 Barcia, " Ensayo Cronologico," pp. 119, 123; Letter of Menendez
to the king. The first chapel was apparently at Nombre de Dios Chi-
quite, where the city was first begun. It was removed before 1570 to
its present position. " Discurso sobre la poblacion de la Costa de la
Florida," MS. See plan of De la Puente, No. 34.
- Tanner, " Societas Jesu usque ad Sanguinis et Vitae Prof usionem Mili-
tans," Prague, 1675, pp. 443-5; Barcia, "Ensayo Cronologico," p. 120.
JESUIT MISSIONS. 143
With this good missionary were lost Bulls and Faculties of
St. Pius Y. regarding the mission.1 Father Eogel and his
companion, at the request of Menendez, remained in Havana
to study the language of the Indians of Southern Florida.
In March, 156V, they proceeded with Menendez to the prov
ince of Carlos, where the Spaniards had erected a block
house. The governor ordered another house to be put up
for Dona Antonia, the converted sister of the chief, and a
chapel in which Father Kogel might offer the holy sacrifice.
This third Catholic chapel in Florida was, on Charlotte Har
bor, on the western shore of the peninsula. Father Rogel
immediately began a series of instructions to the soldiers,
who had long been deprived of the sacraments. He re
mained as chaplain of the post and missionary to the Indians
til'l Menendez arrived from Spain in 1568, bringing ten mis
sionaries chosen by St. Francis Borgia. They were Father
John Baptist Segura, a native of Toledo, who had been ap
pointed Vice-Provincial of Florida ; Fathers Gonzalo del
Alamo, Antonio Sedeno, and Juan de la Carrera, with several
brothers, Dominic Augustine Baez, John Baptist Mendez,
Gabriel Solis, Peter Euiz, John Salcedo, Christopher Re-
dondo, and Peter de Linares. An Indian school was estab-
1 Barcia, p. 121 ; Letter of Don Pedro Menendez, October 16, 1566, in
Alcazar, " Chrono-IIistoria de la Provincia de Toledo"; translated by
D. G. Brinton, in Historical Magazine, October, 1861, pp. 292-4. The
place where Father Martinez died was on the island of Tacatacuru.
This was an island six leagues long, near the mouth of the St. John,
evidently to the north, as the French occupied it in operating against
Fort Sail Mateo. The Spaniards erected Fort Saa Pedro on it, and the
island took that name, which Oglethorpe changed to Cumberland. "Col.
deDoc. Ined.,"13,pp. 307-8; Stevens, " Georgia, "i., 135. The holy Pope,
Saint Pius V., was deeply interested in the conversion and kind treat
ment of the Indians, which he constantly urged. See letters in Hernaez,
i., pp. 104-108 ; letter to Menendez, Barcia, an. 1569.
144 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
lislied in Havana under Father Kogel and Brother Villareal,
to receive boys sent from the province of Carlos.
Father Segura and the others, after proclaiming the Jubilee
in St. Augustine, proceeded to Carlos, and also began missions
in the provinces of Tocobaga and Tequesta, besides attending
the Spanish posts ; Father Sedefio with Brother Baez finally
taking up his abode in Guale, now Amelia Island, and he
may be regarded as the pioneer priest of Georgia. Brother
Baez applied himself so zealously to the language of the In
dians that in time he drew up a grammar and prepared a
catechism for the instruction of the neophytes.1
The next year (1569) Father Kogel went with some of his
fellow religious to the post of Santa Helena, on Port Royal
harbor, thus becoming the first resident priest in the present
territory of South Carolina. After ministering to the Spanish
soldiers and settlers, he entered the Indian town of Orista,
twelve leagues from the post, which excited great hopes, as
the natives seemed more civilized and docile than those of
Carlos. Here a church was erected, and a house for him and
three young men whom he took as assistants. At the end of
six months, by diligent study, he acquired the language suffi
ciently to instruct the Indians in the fundamental doctrines
of the Unity and Omnipotence of God, the immortality of
the soul, a state of rewards and punishment. But though
they listened at first, his flock soon scattered. Father
Sedefio retained his auditors only while the store of Indian
corn lasted, which the Bishop of Santiago de Cuba, Don Juan
del Castillo, had given him to win the good-will of the peo
ple. Brother Baez died of malarial fever amid his labors, and
Father Sedefio returned to Santa Helena ; but at the close of
a year the labors of Fathers Segura, Sedefio, and Alamo, and
1 Barcia, p. 138 ; Tanner, " Societas Militans," p. 447.
a * .
^Si*^^
DEATH OF FATHER JOHN BAPTIST DE SEGURA, S.J.. AND HIS COMPANIONS
FROM TANNER, " SOCIKTAS MILITANS," 1675.
LETTER OF ST. PIUS V. 145
Brother Villareal, bad resulted in the baptism of seven, four
children and three adults, at the point of death.
Father Kogel foimd as little to console him at Orista, for
though he induced the Indians to build houses and plant the
Indian corn which he distributed among them, their fickle
nature soon wearied of the restraint, and nearly all abandoned
the rising village. The few who remained rose against him
when he warned them to avoid the snares and deceits of the
devil, for they declared him to be the best thing in the
world, as he made men brave. Other tribes which the mis
sionary visited gave him no encouragement; and in July,
1570, he demolished his house and chapel, and promising the
Indians to return as soon as they were willing to hear him,
made his way, sad and dispirited, to Santa Helena, where
Father Alamo had remained. There he labored among the
Spaniards for a time, witnessing the sufferings for want of
food, men reduced by hunger till unfit to labor.1 To obtain
relief he proceeded to Havana with Father Sedeno, taking
Indian boys from various tribes to the seminary.
Menendez, in Spain, had received the following letter from
Saint Pius Y., then Pope :
UTO OUE BELOVED SON AND NOBLE LORD PEDEO MENENDEZ
DE AVILES, VICEROY IN THE PROVINCE OF FLORIDA IN TUB
PARTS OF INDIA:
" Beloved Son and noble Sir —
" Health, grace, and the blessing of our Lord be with you.
Amen.
" We rejoice greatly to hear that our dear and beloved son
in Christ, Philip, Catholic King, has named and appointed
1 Letter of Father Kogel to Juan de Hinystrosa, Dec. 2, 1569, MS. Let
ter of same to Menendez, Dec. 9, 1570, in Alcazar, " Chrono-Historia
de la Compania de Jesus en la Provincia de Toledo," Dec. iii.: Afio viii.;
translated by D. G. Brinton in Histor. Magazine, 1861 p. 327
10
146 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
you Governor of Florida, creating you adelantado thereof ;
for we hear such an account of your person, and so full and
satisfactory a report of your virtue and nobility, that we be
lieve, without hesitation, that you will not only faithfully,
diligently, and carefully perform the orders and instructions
given you by so Catholic a king, but trust also that you, by
your discretion and habit, will do all to effect the increase
of our holy Catholic faith, and gain more souls to God. I
am well aware, as you know, that it is necessary to govern
these Indians with good sense and discretion ; that those who
are weak in the faith, from being newly converted, be con
firmed and strengthened ; and idolaters be converted, and re
ceive the faith of Christ, that the former may praise God,
knowing the benefit of his divine mercy, and the latter, still
infidels, may, by the example and model of those now out of
blindness, be brought to a knowledge of the truth : but noth
ing is more important, in the conversion of these Indians and
idolaters, than to endeavor by all means to prevent scandal
being given by the vices and immoralities of such as go to
those western parts. This is the key of this holy work, in
which is included the whole essence of your charge.
" You see, noble sir, without my alluding to it, how great
an opportunity is offered you, in furthering and aiding this
cause, from which result — 1st, Serving the Almighty ; 2d,
Increasing the name of your king, who will be esteemed by
men, loved and rewarded by God.
" Giving you, then, our paternal and apostolical blessing,
we beg and charge you to give full faith and credit to our
brother, the Archbishop of Rossano, who, in our name, will
explain our desire more at length.
" Given at Rome, with the fisherman's ring, on the 18th
day of August, in the year of our Redemption, 1569, the
third of our pontificate."
THE MISSION IN VIRGINIA. 147
Letters from St. Francis Borgia urged the missionaries to
persevere in the barren fields, and Sedeno embarked with a
party of soldiers going to Santa Helena. Sickness broke out,
and the missionary with his comrade, Brother Yillareal, were
both stricken down. The disease proved so obstinate that
they were put on a vessel for Havana, but it was wrecked on
the coast, and only after great privations and suffering did
the invalids reach St. Augustine.
C5
Menendez still clung to the idea of occupying the Chesa
peake, and coming from Spain brought the Indian Don Luis
de Yelasco, and some additional Jesuit missionaries, Father
Louis de Quiros and Brothers Gabriel Gomez and Sancho de
Zevallos. After he reached Santa Helena in November,
15TO, Father Segura, the Yice-Provincial, resolved to go in
person to found the new mission, relying on the promise of
protection of the Indian Yelasco. He selected as his com
panion Father Louis de Quiros, and Brothers Solis, Mendez,
Kedondo, Linares, Gabriel Gomez, and Sancho Zevallos.1
Every preparation was made for a permanent mission ; the
priests carried vestments, books, and chapel furniture, neces
sary implements, provisions for the winter. Four Indian
boys, who had for some time been under instruction, accom
panied the missionaries. Don Luis Yelasco gave every as
surance as to the personal safety of the missioners, declaring
that they should want nothing, as he would aid them in
everything. They sailed from Santa Helena, August 5, 1570,
and crept slowly up the coast to the entrance of St. Mary's
Bay. Passing through the capes they ascended the Potomac,
and on the 10th of September reached their destination.
1 There is a little obscurity as to these. F. Rogel's letter from Havana,
December 9, 1570, says they were " nine in number, five of the Society
and four youths who have been instructed"; but the names in Barcia
and Tanner give two priests and seven brothers.
148 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Father Quiros, in a letter written from this spot two days
after, says : " We found the country of Don Louis in a very
different condition from what we anticipated, not because he
misrepresented in his account of it, but because our Lord has
chastised it with six years sterility and death, which has left it
very thinly inhabited compared to what it used to be, many
of the people having died and others removed to other lands
to appease their hunger." The Indians had no corn ; the
berries and roots they usually gathered had failed, and the
winters had been severe. They manifested, however, great
joy at the return of Don Louis, and earnestly besought the
missionaries to stay ; the chief, who lived seven or eight
leagues off, begging them to go to his child who was at the
point of death. Father Segura sent one of the party to
baptize it. and
then held coun-
cil as to their
course. The
Potomac was
FAC-8IMILE OF SIGNATURES OF FATHERS QUIROS AND SUppoSec] to
SEGURA. FROM THEIR LETTER WRITTEN IN
VIRGINIA SEPT. 12, 1570. rlSG . m mOUI1-
tains beyond
which lay the Pacific, and it was important to learn the real
topography of the country. The field for preaching the
gospel seemed a favorable one, and they resolved to face all
hardships, depending on prompt relief from their country
men. Yet so poorly had the vessel been fitted with stores
that on the voyage the crew used two of four barrels of
ship's biscuit intended for the winter supply of the mission
aries.
Father Segura joined Father Quiros in his letter, urging in
the strongest terms the importance and necessity of sending
them further supplies with all possible expedition. For the
MISSIONARIES PUT TO DEATH. 149
spring too they asked seed corn to induce the Indians to
plant crops for the year.
The vessel left them on the 12th, the captain having
agreed to come on his return to the mouth of a river they
had passed on the way, which ran near the one they ascended,
and on which really the tribe of Don Luis lived. This was
evidently the Eappahannock. At the mouth a fire by night
or smoke by day was to be answered by a letter from the
vessel.
After the departure of the vessel the Jesuit mission party
set out for their place of settlement, they and the Indians
carrying their baggage a distance of two leagues to the other
river, where they embarked in wretched canoes.1 Don Louis
does not seem to have guided them to his brothers village,
but to have advised them to fix their residence at some dis
tance. They erected a hut of logs and branches, and pre
pared to winter there, making it their chapel and home.
Louis remained with them for a time as their interpreter and
teacher, but as weeks wore on the hope of relief from Santa
Helena faded. Their countrymen had abandoned them, and
as their provisions failed they sought to sustain life by roots
and herbs. Louis left them and retired to the village of his
brother, a league and a half distant. In February the supe
rior sent Father Quiros with Solis and Mendez to urge Ve-
lasco to return, but he put them off with frivolous excuses,
and finally, on the 14th, treacherously attacked them with a
party of Indians, slaying them by a shower of arrows. Four
days after the chief with Louis and the warriors invested the
mission chapel, and demanded all the axes and knives of the
party. Father Segura saw the cassock of Father Quiros and
1 Letter of Father Quiros, September 12, 1570, with addition by Father
Segura, and supplement by Quiros.
150 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
knew that the end had come. He prepared his companions
for death, and all soon fell beneath the blows of the Indians
dealt with the implements they had surrendered.
One only of the party, Alonso, an Indian boy, escaped,
having been concealed by a friendly native.1
When late in the spring Brother Vincent Gonzalez induced
a Spanish pilot to sail to Axacan, no tidings of the Fathers
could be obtained, but the conduct of the Indians inspired the
worst fears. Menendez, who had gone to Spain after hear
ing of Segura's landing in Axacan, received on his return the
report of Gonzalez. He sailed to the Chesapeake, and seized
several of the Indians, demanding the surrender of Don
Luis. Alonso succeeded in reaching the Spaniards, and gave
a full account of the death of the missionaries. Louis escaped,
but eight of those who were proved to have been active in
murdering the missionaries were hung by Menendez. They
were, however, prepared for death and baptized by Father
Rogel, who had come on the vessel, and who bore away as a
relic of his martyred brethren a crucifix to which a miracle
was ascribed."
Father Segura had directed Fathers Eogel and Sedeno to
remain at the Spanish posts, but they were in such distress
and the Indians so hostile that they retired to Havana.
St. Francis Borgia, on learning the death of Father Segura
and the apparent hopelessness of any permanent Spanish set
tlement in Florida, recalled the members of the Society, who
thereupon proceeded to Mexico and founded a flourishing
province. In fact the Spanish settlements, in spite of all
Menendez's exertions and outlay, were on the brink of ruin.
1 Barcia, " Ensayo Cronologico," pp. 142-146 ; Tanner, " Societas
Military," pp. 447^51.
2 Rogel, Letter of December 9, 1570.
ST. AUGUSTINE DESTROYED. 151
A report on their condition soon after says the few people
there were losing their faith and piety, as for a considerable
time there was no priest or friar at St. Augustine to say mass
and administer the sacraments, and although friars had arrived,
some were going and others had gone elsewhere.1
The friars referred to were apparently those sent over by
Menendez in 1573, and whom the Governor of Florida found
on his return to Santa Helena, after a voyage of exploration
to the Chesapeake.
Wretched as the condition of Florida was, it declined after
the death of Don Pedro Menendez in 1574, till the Spanish
Government, recognizing the importance to the kingdom and
its commerce of retaining Florida, provided for its mainte
nance.2 In 1586 St. Augustine had made some progress.
The city had its public buildings, a parish church, and well-
cultivated gardens, when Francis Drake, in one of his pirat
ical cruises, attacked it, and in revenge for the death of one
of his men set fire to the place and destroyed it, the garrison
and its inhabitants having retired to San Matlieo.
The Indian missions, which the sons of St. Dominic and
St. Ignatius had failed to render successful, devolved at last
on the sons of John Bernardon, St. Francis of Assisi. Father
Alonzo de Keynoso arrived with a number of Fathers toward
the close of the year 157Y. They began their labors among the
Indians atNombre de Dios and San Sebastian, and with such
success that Indian converts were soon regular attendants at
the Sunday mass in the parish church.3
1 " Discurso sobre la poblacion de la costa de la Florida," MS.
2 Barcia, p. 149.
3 Ibid., p. 162. Testimony of Juan Menendez Marquez, 1588, MS.
F. Alonzo Reynoso's arrival is given in this document as 37, but as he is
mentioned as bearer of a letter from Florida in 1583, we infer that 1577
is meant.
152 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
The Franciscan mission about 1592 consisted of Father
Francis Marron, the Gustos, the zealous Fathers Balthazar
Lopez and Peter de Corpa, with another priest and two lay
brothers. As they were especially designed for the Indian
missions, they took up- their residence in the towns of the
natives from the island of St. Peter, now called Cumberland,
to San Sebastian.'
The only secular priest whose name appears in Florida in
1593, was the Kev. Eodrigo Garcia de Truxillo, parish priest v
of St. Augustine, then very old, broken by his twenty-eight
years' labor there and his previous service as navy chaplain.2
In this state of spiritual destitution an appeal was made to
Father Bernardino de San Cebrian, Commissary General of
the Indies, to increase the number of his Franciscan Fathers
in Florida. The Council of the Indies gave free passage to
twelve, who were sent with Father John de Silva as superior,
a missionary who had already labored fruitfully in Mexico.
These missionaries, who reached Havana in 1593, were Fa
thers Michael de Aunon, Peter de Aufion, Peter Fernandez
de Chozas, preachers ; Fathers Bias de Montes, Francis Pa-
reja, Peter de San Gregorio, Francis de Velascola, Francis de
Avila, Francis Bonilla, and Peter Ruiz, priests and confess
ors, and Brother Peter Viniegra, a lay brother.
The next year these religious began their labors in Florida,
Father Marron sending Fathers Peter de Corpa, Michael de
Aunon, Francis de Velascola, and Bias Rodriguez with Bro
ther Anthony Badajoz to the island of Guale, the present
Amelia Island, where the Indians had become so bold and
violent that the Spanish soldiers durst not venture outside
1 Stevens, " History of Georgia," i., p. 135.
2 Barcia, pp. 166-7. Relacion hecha a S. M. afio de 1593, MS. This
priest must have been there from the time of the settlement.
FRANCISCAN MISSIONS. 153
their palisades.1 The missionaries by their instructions and
kind ways soon changed the face of the province. For two
years they labored with apparent success, baptizing many,
especially in the older missions, as at Xombre de Dios, where
Father Balthazar Lopez baptized eighty in 1595. Father
Pedro de Chozas had meanwhile, fearless of danger, pene
trated to Ocute, 150 miles from the coast.3
The city of St. Augustine had by this time received a par
ish priest, Don Diego Scobar de Sambrana, whose register
is still extant in Havana. It extends from January to July,
1594, from which date Father Francis Marron discharged
the parochial functions till the feast of the Annunciation in
1597, when Don Kicardo Artur appears on the register as
parish priest.3
In September, 1597, the son of the Cacique of the Island
of Guale, wearying of the restraints on his passions required
by the Christian law, fell into great excesses, and at last went
off to a pagan band. Finding kindred spirits there he re
solved to silence the priest who had reproved him, and re
turned by night to Father Corpa's village of Tolemato.
Taking up his post near the church he waited for the dawn
of day. When Father Corpa opened the door of his little
cabin to proceed to the church, the conspirators tomahawked
him, and cutting off his head set it on a pole. Having
1 Barcia, an. 1594, p. 167 ; Torquemada, " Monarquia Indiana," iii.,
p. 350.
2 Testimony of Alonso de las Alas, 1602.
3 " Xoticias relativas a la Parroquial mayor de la ciudad de San Agus-
tin de la Florida," kindly extracted for me from the Registers in his
archives, by the Right Rev. Bishop of St. Christopher of Havana. The
Registers of the Church of St. Augustine from Jannary 1, 1594, are ex
tant in Havana and St. Augustine, and form the oldest and most com
plete set of records in the country, antedating every English, Dutch, or
Swedish settlement.
154 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
brought his comrades to imbrue their hands in blood, the
young chief easily persuaded them that they must kill all the
religious and Spaniards.1
Proceeding then to the town of Topoqui, they burst into
the house of Father Bias Rodriguez. The missionary en
deavored to show them the wickedness and folly of their
conduct, which would entail punishment here and hereafter,
but finding his words of no avail, he asked the Indians to
allow him to say mass. They granted his request, moved by
a respect which they could not understand ; and the good
priest, with his expectant murderers for his congregation,
offered the holy sacrifice for the last time, and then knelt
down before his altar to receive the death-blow which enabled
him to make his thanksgiving in heaven. His body was
piously interred by an old Christian Indian after the mur
derers had departed.
Learning of the approach of a band bent on massacre,
Father Michael Aunon, at Asopo,2 said mass and gave com
munion to Brother Anthony Badajoz, his companion. They
knelt in prayer till the apostate came, who first dispatching the
brother, then with two blows of one of their war-clubs crowned
1 The site of the present cemetery of St. Augustine was called Tole-
rnato, but it cannot be the scene of Father Aunon's death, as he was on
Amelia Island, and the murderer was the son of the chief of that same
island. Contemporary writers, like Gov. Mendes de Canco, April 24,
1601, § 14, speak of the missionaries as being put -to death in the prov
ince of Guale, which in the same report he declares to be forty leagues
from St. Augustine. Stevens, "Hist. Georgia," i., p. 135, recognizes
the identity of Santa Maria de Guale and Amelia Island.
'2 Asopo was nine and a half leagues from Asao. ' ' Examination of Alonso
de los Alas," 1602 ; Ecija in his " Derrotero," 1609, makes it ten and a half.
It was north of 31° 30', and is evidently Ossibaw Island. The bodies of
F. Aunon and Br. Badajoz were taken up in 1605 and interred, appar
ently, at St. Augustine. Barcia, an. 1605.
FATHERS IN GEORGIA SLAIN. 105
Father Michael with martyrdom. The weeping Christians
interred the bodies at the foot of the tall mission cross.
On reaching Asao1 the insurgents found that Father Fran
cis de Velascola had gone to St. Augustine, but they lurked
amid the vegetation on the shore till they saw his canoe ap-
proaching. "When the Franciscan landed they accosted him
as friends, and fearing his great strength, seized him suddenly
and slew him. Father Francis Davila, at Ospo,2 endeavored
to escape at night ; but the moon revealed him, and he fell
into their hands pierced by two arrows. An old Indian
prevented their finishing the cruel work, and the mission
ary, stripped and suffering, was sent as a slave to a pagan
village.
The revolted Indians, then in forty canoes, invested Saint
Peter's (now Cumberland) Island,3 but a small Spanish vessel
lay at anchor there. This gave courage to the chief of the
island, who, with a flotilla of canoes, met the invaders and
completely routed them. Few escaped in their canoes ; many
driven ashore were killed, perished of hunger or by their
own hands. After this fearful outburst of pagan hatred of
Christianity, none of the Guale missionaries survived except
Father Avila ; and his owners, tiring of his presence, were
about to burn him at the stake, when a woman, whose son
was held prisoner in Saint Augustine, obtained him to effect
an exchange, which the Spaniards readily made.
1 Asao was eleven or eleven and a half leagues from San Pedro. Las
Alas and Ecija. This makes it, in all probability, St. Simon's Island.
2 Ospo I do not find in the "Derroteros," but it must have been be
tween St. Simon and Cumberland.
3 San Pedro was seven or eight leagues from San Mateo (Las Alas,
Ecija), and must be Cumberland Island ; Stevens' "Georgia," i., p. 135.
"A Relation of the Martyrs of Florida," by F. Luis Geronimo de Ore,
a native of Peru, appeared in 1604, in quarto, but I have never been able
to trace a copy of it. I follow Torquemada, "Monarquia Indiana," iii.,
pp. 350-2 ; Barcia, pp. 170-172.
156 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
On the 14th of March, 1599, the Convent of San Fran
cisco, at Saint Augustine, was destroyed by fire, and till the
building could be restored the Fathers occupied the Hermit
age of ISTuestra Sefiora de la Soledad, which had previously
been used as an hospital. The soldiers, Indians, and negroes
soon felt the want of a place where they could be treated in
sickness ; and Governor Mendez de Canco, at his own ex
pense, put up the Hospital of Santa Barbara, with six good
beds. A curious question then arose ; the king had granted
the Hospital of Soledad five hundred ducats from the treas
ury, but the officials refused to pay it to the new hospital, and
the governor was forced to appeal to the king.1
The earliest missions mentioned near Saint Augustine were
those of Nombre de Dios, San Juan, and San Pedro, where
missionaries were permanently stationed. The Indians were
poor, but they cultivated corn, beans, and pumpkins ; they
depended less on hunting, and were instructed in religion,
not only hearing mass and approaching the sacraments, but
having confraternities, and
zealous in seeking to have
masses said for their de
ceased kindred.2
The missionary at San
Juan was the learned Fa
ther Francis Pareja, whose
labors were supported by
FAC-SIMILE OF SIGNATURE OP FATHER J
FRANCIS PAREJA. Dona Maria, the woman
chief of the province, and
the chiefs of the towns.' This great missionary was born
1 Governor Mendez de Canpo to the king, April 24, 1601.
2 Testimony of Bartolome de Arguelles, 1602, and of Juan Menendez
Marques.
3 Letter of Governor Ibarra, 1G04.
FATHER PAREJA'S WORKS. 157
at Aunon, in the diocese of Toledo in Spain, and spent six
teen years in the study of the language of the Timuquan
Indians. He was Guardian of the Convent of the Immacu
late Conception of Our Lady in St. Augustine, in 1612, when
two Catechisms by him, in the Timuquan language, were
printed at Mexico. A Confesonario was printed the same year
and the next ; a Grammar in 1614, and another Catechism
in 1627. Besides these works he is said to have written
treatises on Purgatory, Hell, and Heaven, one on the Kosary,
and a book of Prayers. Three of these rare works are pre
served in the New York Historical Society. He died in
Mexico, January 25, 1628.1
In 1602 Governor Canco estimated the Christian Indians
at about twelve hundred, the venerable Father Balthazar
Lopez being stationed at the town of San Pedro, Father
Francis Pareja in San Juan, and Father Peter Bermejo in
Nombre de Dios, and Brother Yiniegra at San Antonio, each
of these places being resorted to by numbers of Indians in
the neighborhood ; Tocoy, Antonico, and Mayaca, with con
siderable Indian population, were regularly visited by the
missionaries to say mass and enable the Indians to approach
the sacraments, and by instructions keep up a knowledge of
their religion.
In St. Augustine the church and convent of St. Francis
had not been rebuilt, and the house used as a chapel was unfit
for the purpose. The King of Spain had contributed eight
hundred ducats towards rebuilding the church and convent ;
but beyond the collection of some material, nothing had been
done to meet the wants of the people and the wishes of the
1 Titles of his works are given in Pilling, "Xorth American Linguis
tics," pp. 560-8. His birthplace is given in the Cathecismo of 1627,
much better authority than the index to Torquernada, which says Castro
Urdiales ; or Barcia, p. 195, who says Mexico.
158 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
king.1 The Spanish monarch had also ordered the tithes to
be devoted to the parish church.
Everything was in a state of neglect ; and the settlers, as
well as the soldiers in the garrison, would at this time have
been deprived of the consolations of religion but for the
Franciscan Fathers ; so that Governor Canco proposed that
the Guardian of the Convent, on whom and his community
the whole spiritual care of the place had devolved, should be
made parish priest and chaplain of the fort.2
The vacancy in the parish church was filled, however, on
the 20th of October, 1602, when Don Manuel Godino ap
pears as incumbent, remaining till 1607, assisted for a time
by Don Vicente Freire Dandrade.
Meanwhile the Franciscans were joined by new mission
aries of their order, and in the General Congregation held at
Toledo, in 1603, the eleven convents in Florida, Havana, and
Bayamo were erected into a custodia by Father Bernard de
Salva, Commissary General of the Indies by patent of No
vember 18, 1609 ; confirmed by royal order, June 5, 1610.3
Father Peter Ruiz was the first custos.
The Franciscans re-entered Guale, and in November,
1606, established missions in the province of Potano,
where, besides infants, more than a thousand adults re
ceived the sacrament of regeneration before the end of
October, 1607, the missionaries travelling for days through
swamps, often waist-high in water. The province of
Apalache also called for missionaries, and a great field
^ ' O
1 Letter of Mendez de Canco to the king, September 22, 1602. There
had been no chaplain in the fort for a year and a half.
2 Letter of Governor Ybarra, January 8, 1604.
3 Senate Report, March 21, 1848. The convents hi Florida were St.
Catharine, in the province of Guale ; that on St. Peter's Island, San Juan
del Puerto ; St. Bonaventure, of Guadalquini ; St. Dominic, of Asao ; St.
Anthony, of Guadulce ; St. Ann, of Potano.
THE BISHOP OF SANTIAGO DE CUBA. 159
was opening there, and hopes were entertained of Tama and
Ocute, to which Fathers Chozas and Berascula had pene
trated.
The reports from Florida had, however, been so discour
aging that King
Philip III. pro
posed to aban
don all idea of
settling the
c o n n t r y, in
tending merely
to maintain a
fort and to re
move the Chris
tian Indians to
the island of '
St. Domingo.
Against this
step Father Pareja, who had become custos of Florida, and
Father Alonso de Penaranda, Guardian of the Convent at
St. Augustine, most earnestly protested in a letter to the
king.1
The Bishops of Santiago de Cuba had lamented the condi
tion of Florida, and a visitation of that province was earn
estly recommended, but many difficulties and dangers inter
vened. "When Don Frai Juan Cabezas de Altamirano was
appointed to the See, a visitation was one of the first duties
to which he resolved to devote himself. In those days a
bishop, whether in his cathedral or on a visitation, was sur
rounded by peril.
On arriving in Cuba this zealous bishop found his episcopal
1 Letter from the Convent of the Immaculate Conception, St. Augus
tine, November 20, 1607.
FAC-SIMILE OF SIGNATURE OF FATHEK ALONSO
DE PEKAKANDA.
160 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
city with its cathedral destroyed by French pirates, and while
making a visitation of his diocese the next year, 1604, he was
surprised by one of these marauders, Gilbert Giron, who held
him as a prisoner aud gave him liberty only when he had
advanced an enormous ransom. The Spaniards, after thus
obtaining the release of their bishop, rallied, attacked the
corsairs, and utterly defeated them, killing their leader and
most of his party. There is extant a curious contemporary
poem on this whole episode. According to a document of
1607, the bishop embarked in that year from Bayamo u for
the provinces of Florida as annexed to his diocese ; he visited
them and consoled that new Christianity, whicli owes its
planting to the Franciscan religious, some of whom have had
the incomparable happiness of witnessing in their blood to
the truth of the gospel, which they preached with truly apos
tolical zeal. In fact the bishop fulfilled exactly his pastoral
office, and was the first who discharged this obligation, and
he came near being the only one, because, with the exception
of Don Gabriel Diaz Yara Calderon, no other prelate has had
the courage to undertake it." '
Fortunately we have some definite details of his visitation.
On Holy Saturday, March 25, 1606, Bishop Cabezas de Alta-
mirano administered the sacrament of confirmation to several
candidates for holy orders. On subsequent days he confirmed
many Spaniards and Indians. So far as any documents attest,
1 This zealous bishop, who was perhaps the first to exercise episcopal
functions within the present limits of the United States, was the son of
the licentiate Juan Cabezas and of Dona Ana de Calzada. After a
course in the University of Salamanca he took the habit of St. Dominic
in 1583, and came to America nine years afterwards. He was professor
of theology in Santo Domingo, and then delegate of the province to Rome.
He was made Bishop of Cuba in 1603 and transferred to Guatemala in
1610. He died there of apoplexy in December, 1615. " Historia de la
ysla y Catedral de Cuba," by Bishop Pedro Agustin Morel, MS.
TIMUQ UAN CONVER TS. 161
this was the first administration of the sacrament of Confirm
ation in any part of this country. The good bishop visited
several provinces of Florida with great hardship and peril of
life, the condition of the natives exciting his deepest compas
sion and zeal.1
In the Lent of 1609 the great Cacique of Timucua, who
had been instructed by the Franciscans, came to St. Augus
tine to solicit baptism for himself, his heir and ten of his
chiefs, as well as to beg for missionaries to reside among his
people and bring them all to the faith. They were all bap
tized on Palm Sunday, Governor Ybarra being sponsor for
the cacique and his son, Spanish officers assuming the same
charge for the chiefs. The whole ceremony was attended
with all the solemnity the little town could impart to it.
The Tinraquans were entertained till after Easter, when they
returned with a guard of honor.8
Poor as the country was the missionaries continued to
come, thirty-one setting out from Spain for the Florida mis
sion in 1612 and the following year. The custodia was then
erected into the province of Santa Helena, the convent of
Havana being the chief one, and Father John Capillas was
elected the first provincial of this organization of regular
clergy, mainly within our actual territory.3
For a time Saint Augustine also enjoyed the services of
1 " Noticias relativas a la Yglesia Parroquial de San Agustin de la Flor
ida, trabajo hecho por disposition del Excmo e Illmo Sr. D. Ramon Fer
nandez de Pierola y Lopez de Luzuriaga, Obispo de San Cristobal de la
Habana." Barcia says that Don Frai Antonio Diaz de Salcedo, Bishop of
Santiago de Cuba, made a visitation of Florida in 1595 ; but no writer on
the Bishops of Cuba mentions the fact, and the Register of St. Augus
tine is evidence against its probability.
2 Letter of Governor Ybarra, April, 1609.
3 Barcia, " Ensayo Cronologico," pp. 175, 181; Torquemada, " Mo-
narquia Indiana," iii., pp. 350, 354.
11
162 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
several secular priests at the parish church and fort, Simon
de Ayllon being parish priest, assisted by Don Pedro de la
Camarda, chaplain of the fort, followed by Don Luis Perez
as parish priest, and Alonso Ortiz, whose names appear till
1623.
Frai Alonso Henriquez Almendarez de Toledo of the
Mercedarian Order for the Kedemption of Captives had been
appointed to the See of Santiago de Cuba in 1610. He was
an active and energetic bishop, and found so much to engage
his attention in the island of Cuba, where he was involved in
disputes with the civil authorities, that he found it impossible
to make a visitation of Florida, as he desired. He accord
ingly deputed in his stead Father Louis Jerome de Ore, lec
turer in theology and commissary of the Franciscan Order,
to make a visitation of Florida. This religious was a native
of Peru and highly esteemed. He visited Saint Augustine
November 13, 1616. He found the parish church well sup
plied with church plate, silver chalices, patens, cross, censer,
boat and spoon of silver, and with suitable vestments, which,
with the stocks for the holy oils, were well kept. The mis
sals, manuals, bells, and choir books are also attested as being
suitable, and the registers well kept by the actual parish
priest, Juan de Lerdo.
In 1621, during the administration of Bishop Almendarez,
the first provincial Council of St. Domingo was held, and its
decrees extended to Florida.1
In 1630 the king, by a decree of December 4th, made es
pecial provision for the maintenance of the Franciscan mis
sions in Florida, ordering money to be drawn annually from
1 " Historia de la isla y Catedral de Cuba par el Ilmo Pedro Agustin
Morel de Santa Cruz"; " Noticias relativas a la Iglesia parroquial de San
Agustin para el Ilm" Sr D. Ramon Fernandez de Pierola y Lopez de Luzu-
riaga, Obispo de la Ilabana."
MISSION LIFE. 163
Mexico to purchase clothing and supplies.1 More mission
aries had been petitioned for by Father Francisco Alonzo of
Jesus, Provincial of Florida, but he obtained only twelve ;
and of these one died on the voyage from Spain, and two
were left sick at Havana. The missionaries sank rapidly
under their labors, five of them dying in Florida in the next
five years. The Franciscans in 1634 numbered thirty-five,
maintaining forty-four doctrinas or missions, in which they
reckoned thirty thousand converted Indians.
The Ke'v. Alonso de Vargas and Eev. Toribio de Pozada kept
up the succession of parish priests till 1631, with Bartolome
Garcia as chaplain, but much parochial work was done by
the Guardians of the Franciscan Convent, Melchor Ferraz
and Juan Gomez de Palma ; a teniente de cura, or temporary
substitute, acting in 1632 and 1633, and Don Antonio Calvo,
chaplain of the fort, supplying the place of Eev. Mr. de
Pozada till April, 1640.'
The missionaries were far apart, unable to relieve each
other ; and when any one wished himself to approach the
sacred tribunal he had a weary journey afoot, through ever
glade and streams, to reach a brother priest. Several broke
down under the severe labors, so that the Apalaches, who
earnestly sought clergy to instruct them, were deferred
till the Guardian of the Convent at Saint Augustine set out
in person, in 1633, with a single assistant. The custos of
Florida, writing in February, 1635, states that the zealous
missionary was still there, and had baptized five thousand of
the tribe. In the south of Florida the Indians of Carlos and
Matacumbe were again soliciting missionaries with every
mark of sincerity.3 The king, in reply to the appeal for more
1 Barcia, p. 197. " "Noticias."
3 Letter of F. Francisco Alonso de Jesus to the king.
164 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
evangelical laborers, ordered eight to be sent.1 The Apa-
laches, harassed by the Choctaws, Apalachicolas, and other
tribes, looked for protection to the Spaniards and their allies.
In 1639 the Apalache Chief of Cupayca came to Saint Angus-
tine to be instructed and baptized. At the sacred font he
received the name of Balthazar, Governor Damian de Vega
Castro being his godfather. "When he left the town he took
with him a Franciscan Father, who was to found a mission
in his tribe.2 To open intercourse with these new stations
the Spaniards, for the first time, sent vessels to coast around
the peninsula from St. Augustine. Yet there were occasional
difficulties between whites and Indians, and we find soon
after a Governor of Florida compelling the Indians near the
town to work on the fortifications, in punishment for some
outbreak.3
In 1646 St. Augustine had about three hundred people,
and a flourishing community of fifty Franciscan religious
scattered through Florida, who not only labored among the
Indians, but did much to maintain piety among the Span
iards. Besides them there were in St. Augustine the Cura
Vicario, or parish priest, Don Pedro Verdugo de la Silveyra
(April, 1 640-4 T),4 the Sacristan Mayor, and Antonio Calvo,
the chaplain of the fort, who in 1647 became temporary par
ish priest. There were not enough secular clergy to attend
to all the whites. The parish church was still of wood, both
walls and roof, and Bishop de la Torre was unable to replace
it by a better one — his whole income from Florida being
v O
$400, more than which he expended on the province. There
was, also, the Hospital of Xuestra Sefiora de la Soledad, and
1 Memorandum on letter just cited. Letter of Salinas and Sanchez ;
Barcia, p. 203.
2 Letter of Governor Castro, August 22, 1639. 3 Barcia, p. 204.
4 " Noticias" kindly furnished by the Bishop of Havana.
A BISHOP ASKED FOR FLORIDA. 165
one for the poor, and the Hermitage or Chapel of Santa Bar
bara. Piety was kept alive among the people by the confra
ternity of the Blessed Sacrament, and one for the Faithful
Departed. The people naturally gathered around the chapel
of the Franciscans, finding encouragement there for their
devotion.
In that year Father Francis Perez, the custos, obtained
several additional Fathers for the Indian missions.1
All felt the want of a bishop — the visits of the one who
occupied the See of Santiago de Cuba being rare, owing to
the danger of the passage on account of storms, and of the
pirates who infested the coast. Don Diego de Kebolledo,
Governor of Florida in 1655, strongly urged the King of
Spain to ask the Sovereign Pontiff to erect Saint Augustine
into an Episcopal See, or at least to make Florida a Yicariate
Apostolic (Abadia), so that there might be a local Superior,
and that the faithful there might receive the sacrament of
confirmation, of which many died deprived. The King and
the Council of the Indies asked the opinion of the Arch
bishop of Santo Domingo, the Bishop of Cuba, the Governor
of Havana, and others, but there the matter ended.
Of the Indian missions and their extent at that time we
can glean some idea. The centre was the Convent of the
Immaculate Conception in Saint Augustine, where the guar
dian resided with two lay brothers. This was the refuge of
missionaries overcome by sickness at their posts. The nearest
missionary was at Xombre de Dios, about a mile from the
city. Our Lady of Guadalupe was about ten miles distant,
and San Juan del Puerto was on the sea. Thence along the
coast northward were San Pedro del Mocarno, San Buenaven
tura de Goadalquibi, Santo Domingo de Talege, San Jose de
- Juan Diaz de la Calle, "Noticias Sacras y Reales"; Barcia, "Ensayo
Cronologico," p. 212.
166 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Zapala, Santa Catalina de Guale, and San Felipe, the last
fifty-four leagues from St. Augustine. The most northerly
on the coast was Chatuache, six leagues further.1
In another direction were Santiago de Ocone, Santa Cruz
de Tarica, San Agustin de Urica, Santa Maria de los An
geles de Arapaja, Santa Cruz de Cachipile, San Yldefonso
de Chamini, San Francisco de Chuaquu, San Pedro y San
Pablo de Potuturiba, Santa Elena de Machaba, San Miguel de
Asile, ranging from thirty to sixty leagues from the capital.
In the Apalache country were the missions of San Lo
renzo, Concepcion, San Jose, San Juan, San Pedro y San
Pablo, San Cosine y San Damian, San Luis, San Martin ; and
between Apalache and Saint Augustine were San Martin de
Ayaocuto, Santa Fe de Toloco, San Francisco oe Potano.
Southward lay Santa Lueia de Acuera, San Antonio de
Nacape, San Salvador de Mayaca, San Diego de Laca. At each
one of these there was a missionary stationed, and the Chris
tian Indians of Florida were then reckoned at 26,000.2
But the missions were to receive the first blow from the
civil authorities. The Governor of Florida sent orders to
the Cacique of Tarigica, an Apalache, that the chiefs of that
1 Of the missions on the coast here mentioned, several were visited by
Dickenson and his party after their shipwreck. Santa Cruz was two or
three leagues from St. Augustine. It had a friar and a large chapel with
five bells, and the Indians were as regiilar and attentive at their devotions as
the Spaniards. There was besides a large council-house. San Juan, thirteen
leagues further, on an island, wTas a large, populous town, with friar and
chapel, the people industrious, with abundance of hogs, poultry, and
corn. St. Mary's had a friar, church, and the Indian boys were kept at
school. Santa Catalina was ruined ; but he mentions it October 10, 1699,
"where had been a great settlement of Indians, for the land was cleared
for planting some miles distant."
-"Memoria de las Poblaciones Principales, Yglesias y Dotrinas que
ay en las Combersiones de las Provincias de la Florida a cargo de los
Religiosos de San Francisco," MS.
APALACHE MISSION BROKEN UP. 167
tribe should repair to Saint Augustine, and that each one
must carry in person a certain load of corn. The chiefs re
fused, saying that there were vassals whom the governor
might order. They were not slaves because they obeyed the
Holy Gospel and Law of God ; they had become Christians
of their own accord ; they had been conquered only by the
Word of God and what the missionaries had taught them.
When the Spaniards attempted to force the chiefs to submit to
the degradation, an insurrection broke out, in which some
Spaniards were slain. The governor took the field against
the great chief of Apalache, and several engagements were
fought. The governor finally captured and hung six or seven
chiefs. This war, provoked by Spanish oppression, com
pletely broke up the missions among the Indians of that
nation. The Franciscan Fathers, unable to exercise any ben
eficial influence over the Apalaches, whose minds were bitter
ly excited, embarked for Havana to await better times ; but
they were all drowned on the passage, completing their own
sacrifice, but depriving Florida of all religious teachers skilled
in the Apalache tongue.1
The parish of Saint Augustine, about this time, was placed
on another footing. After Don Lorenzo de Solis, who, be
sides styling himself Cura and Vicario, adds the title of Eccle
siastical Judge, the Church was made a benefice to be ac
quired as property, according to a custom unfortunately
prevailing. Tn 1650 Don Pedro Juan de la Oliva began as
beneficed proprietor and vicar, and held the position till
1661, replaced during an apparent absence in 1653, and the
year following, by Don Pedro Bernaldez as vicar. He was
succeeded, for five years, by Christopher Boniface de Rivera,
not as proprietor, but as beneficed parish priest.
1 Letter of Father John Gomez de Engraba, who had been forty -six
years on the Florida mission, dated March 13 and April 4, 1657.
168 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
When Don Gabriel Diaz Yara Calderon became Bishop of
Santiago de Cuba on the 1-ith of December, 1671, lie wished
to examine the affairs of the Church in Florida, and deputed
Don Francisco de Sotolongo1 as visitor ; but as the Francis
cans raised objections to his authority, the bishop commis
sioned Father Juan Moreno Pizarro, and Father Joseph Yar-
redo as secretary, to make a visitation in his name." The re
sult seems to have convinced Bishop Calderon of the neces
sity of a personal visitation. Having made his arrangements
in the early part of the year to leave Cuba, he embarked at
FAOSIMILE OP SIGNATURE OP BP. GABRIEL DIAZ VARA CALDERON.
Havana on the 18th of August, 1674, convoyed by a fleet,
and on the 23d entered the harbor of Saint Augustine. The
next day he began the visitation. Unfortunately we have
but a part of the record of his episcopal labors, yet enough
to show that the visitation was not a mere form. He cel-
1 Sotolongo was cura propietario of San Agustin, 1666-1674, his duties
being discharged from 1671-4 by Antonio Lorenzo de Padilla, the chaplain
of the fort. " Noticias." We reproduce part of a view of St. Augustine,
published at Amsterdam in 1671, "DeNieuwe en Onbekende Weereld of
Beschryving van America," by Arnold Montanus. If it is based on any
authentic sketch, the church shown is apparently the parish church, not
the chapel of Nuestra Senora de la Leche, north of the fort.
5 " Memorial en Derecho " of Don Juan Ferro Machado.
170 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
ebrated a pontificial high mass on the 24th of August in the
ancient city, which had already celebrated its first centenary ;
gave minor orders to seven young men, sons of respected
citizens — and this is the first recorded instance of the con
ferring of the sacrament of Holy Orders within the present
limits of the United States ; gave a thousand dollars in alms
to poor widows, who were reluctant to make known their
necessities, created or increased by a hurricane that inundated
most of the city on the lYth.
After making a formal visitation of the parish church on
the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, where he was
received by the parish priest, Bachelor Sebastian Perez de la
Cerda, the bishop visited on the 39th the parish church,
" Doctrine " of the Native Indians in the city and suburbs,
which was attached to the Convent of Saint Francis. Here
he was received by Father Antonio de Urchia, Commissary
Visitor ; Father Francis Perete, Provincial ; Father Alonso
del Moral, Gustos and ex-Provincial.
He then issued an edict requiring all who had Indians in
their employ to send them within twenty-four hours to be
examined as to their knowledge of Christian doctrine. The
zealous bishop found such ignorance prevailing that on the
7th of October he promulgated at the high mass an edict re
quiring, under the penalty of excommunication, the Francis
can Fathers versed in the Timuquan, Apalache, and Guale
languages, to hold a catechism class for Indians every Sunday
and holiday, to which all masters were to send their Indian
servants, under penalty of excommunication and a fine of
twenty ducats. The masters were forbidden to force their
Indian servants to work on Sundays and holidays, and this
edict was to be read every Sunday in the parish church at
high mass.1
1 Entry of visitation in Registers of St. Augustine.
BISHOP CALDERON'S VISITATION. 171
All the coasting vessels in the port of St. Augustine had
been destroyed or shattered by the great hurricane, so that
the bishop was unable at first to visit the missions in the
province of Guale, but he confirmed the Indians of Guale
and Mocana whom he could reach.
There were nine confraternities in the city — those of the
Blessed Sacrament, True Cross, Our Lady of the Eosary,
Our Lady of Soledad, San Telmo, the Faithful Departed,
St. Patrick, the Conception, and Our Lady of the Milk at
Kombre de Dios, a suburb of the city. These he visited, as
well as the hospital, the resources and expenditures of which
he examined carefully.
About the middle of October, undeterred by the rains,
crossing rivers in canoes lashed together, the bishop reached
Santa Fe, the chief mission and centre of the Timuquan na
tion, and gave confirmation to all who had been prepared for
that sacrament. Thence we can trace his visitation as far as
Taragica, in the Apalache country.1
The zealous bishop spent eight months in his laborious and
thorough visitation, correcting many abuses and suppressing
irregularities that had grown up. His desire to restore the
discipline of the church excited opposition, for an attempt
was made to take his life by poison. He founded churches
in Florida, providing for their maintenance, supplied others
with vestments, and gave liberal alms to the Indian chiefs
1 " Relacion de viage por Don Pedro Palacios, secretario de visita." Se
bastian Perez de la Cerda, proprietary parish priest from 1674 to his death
at the end of 1682, received Bishop Calderon. He was replaced by Mark
Gonzales as pastor ad interim and vicar in 1681-2. He was succeeded as
parish priest and vicar ad interim by Joseph de la Mota, the chaplain of
the troops, who was also Commissary of the Crusade, and Minister of
the Holy Office, 1684-5.
172 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
and their people. He expended no less than eleven thousand
dollars among the faithful of this part of his diocese.1
As a fruit of this visit, we find the missions of St. Nicholas
of Tolentino, and another among the Choctaws, that of the
Assumption among the Caparaz, Amacanos, and Chines,
founded in 1674, and those of Candelaria among the Tamas,
and the Nativity of Our Lady in the following year. Father
Pedro de Luna was then at Guadalquini on the Georgia
coast ; Pedro de la Lastra at San Felipe : Diego Bravo at San
Juan del Puerto ; Bernabe de los Angeles at Santa Cathalina,
now St. Catharine's ; John Baptist Campana at St. Joseph
de Sapala, now Sapelo ; Juan de Useda at Asao," from which
it is evident that the missions were still maintained nearly to
the new English settlements in Carolina ; and that the good
bishop must have actually reached South Carolina in his
visitation. The number confirmed by him, which, of course,
included many adults, is stated by the Bishop to have been
13,152. This agrees with the Catholic population given by
the missionaries about that time.3 The next year Father
Alonso Moral, in spite of great opposition, reached Florida
with twenty-four Franciscans for the Indian missions." One
missionary went to the province of Carlos, but the governor,
Don Pablo de Hita, was so earnest to have greater effort
made there, that the Licentiate Sebastian Perez de la Cerda,
then parish priest and Yicar of Saint Augustine, induced
some secular priests in Havana to offer their services.6 The
1 Letter of Bishop Calderon to Don Juan de Mendoza Escalante, June
8, 1675. He confirmed 630 whites, 1,510 Indians.
- Apparently St. Simon's Island. See ante, p. 155.
a The bishop's entry of his visitation at St. Augustine is September 8
1674.
4 Distances of the Missions, MS., 1675. Letter of Bishop Calderon,
June 8, 1675.
5 Barcia, 1676, p. 231.
INDIAN COMPLAINTS. 173
king gave directions for the selection of worthy priests, mak
ing appropriation for their expenses to Florida, and a yearly
salary of one hundred and fifteen ducats, but the officials in
Cuba raised so many difficulties that the whole project failed,1
though the learned Doctor Don Juan de Cisneros, the oldest
canon of the Cathedral, a learned, virtuous, and charitable
priest, offered to go.2
In 1680 the Indians of the mission of Mascarasi, just under
the walls of St. Augustine, complained to the newly-arrived
governor, Don Juan Marquez Cabrera, of their treatment by
their missionary. The affair, trifling in itself, led to conten
tions which for years troubled the peace of the Church in
Florida. The Provincial making no reply to the Governor's
request to examine into the matter, the case was carried to
the Commissary of the Indies and to the King. A royal
decree of September 27, 1681, required the Commissary to
enjoin on his subjects to correct the Indians with gentle and
mild means, without exasperating them, the better to win
souls to the service of God, and to perseverance in their in
structions. It moreover declared that the Indians must be
paid for all work ; and all must obey the ordinances of the
Commissary-General of the Indies.3
The King of Spain, finding that no Synod had been held
in the diocese of Cuba from the time of its erection, although
one had been convoked by Bishop Almendarez, had, by a
decree of March 13, 1673, directed Bishop Calderon to con-
1 Barcia, 1679, p. 234.
* Barcia, 1680, pp. 239, 240, 245.
3 Barcia— 1681, p. 243 ; 1682, p. 245,— speaks of the death of a Bishop of
Santiago de Cuba in 1681-2, and Gams, " Series Pontificorum," p. 146,
makes Bishop Juan Garcia de Palacios die June 1, 1682 ; but this is im
possible, for the Diocesan Synod in June, 1684, was held by Bishop
Palacios, who signs the statutes. " Synodo Diocesano" (Ed. 1844), p.
186.
174 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
voke one ; but that zealous bishop, who wished first to know
his diocese by a thorough visitation, and who completed the
cathedral, apparently with a view to such an ecclesiastical
assembly, died March 16, 1676. His successor, Don Juan
Garcia de Palacios, convoked a diocesan synod, which was
opened in Havana on Whitsunday, 1684. The Constitutions
signed June 16th have continued in force in Cuba to this
day, and obtained in Florida as long as that province re
mained under the Spanish flag.
The Synod recognized and put in force in the diocese the
decrees of the Council of Santo Domingo, passed September
21, 1622, Florida belonging to that ecclesiastical province,
and so remaining till the erection of Santiago de Cuba into a
metropolitan see in 1803.
The Constitutions provide for the instruction of the young
in Christian doctrine, one constitution inculcating the duty
on heads of families, as others do on pastors and teachers.
Confraternities were regulated and many suppressed. Im
proper dances and amusements were prohibited, and care
taken to prevent religious holidays from being transformed
into wild and lawless merrymakings. Provision was made
for the erection of a diocesan seminary in Havana, to which
the See was then about to be transferred. The conferring of
the Sacraments of Holy Orders and Extreme Unction were
next regulated. Elaborate rules were adopted for ecclesias
tical courts. The duties of parish priests and head sacristans,
of collectors of offerings in churches, and of visitors appointed
by the bishop or chapter, were prescribed.
The inalienability of church property is distinctly laid
down. " The goods and property held by churches are dedi
cated to the divine worship, and to rob them is sacrilege ;
and that no occasion may be given to commit it, and at the
same time to attest the goods held by churches, and which
DIOCESAN SYNOD. 175
caimot be usurped or alienated," the dean and chapter of the
cathedral and all parish priests were required to have an au
thentic book, in which all houses, farms, and other property
belonging to churches should be recorded, and also a record
of all vestments, plate, and other articles, and in the divine
service or the adornment of the altar (Title iv., Const, i.-iv.).
The right of sanctuary enjoyed by churches was also main
tained (Title xiv., Const, i.-vii.). Other constitutions related
to wills, funerals, the sacraments of penance and matrimony.
The holidays of obligation established were the Circum
cision, Epiphany, Purification, St. Mathias, St. Joseph, the
Annunciation, St. Philip and St. James, the Finding of the
Holy Cross, St. Ferdinand, St. John the Baptist, St. Peter
and St. Paul, St. James, St. Christopher, St. Ann, St. Lau
rence, the Assumption, St. Bartholomew, St. Augustine, St.
Rose, the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, St. Matthew, St.
Michael, St. Simon and St. Jude, All Saints, St. Andrew, the
Conception of the Blessed Yirgin, St. Thomas, Christmas,
St. Stephen, St. John, Holy Innocents and St. Sylvester,
Easter Monday and Tuesday, Ascension, Whitmonday and
Tuesday, Corpus Christi. Those who lived more than three
miles from a church or chapel, and not more than three
leao-ues, were to hear mass once a fortnight ; those within
ten leagues, every month, and so on ; those who lived sixty
or seventy leagues distant being required to hear mass at
least once a year (Lib. ii., Tit. i., Const, i.-vi.).
After Easter Sunday the parish priest was required to visit
every house, and see all who lived there to be sure that they
had approached the sacraments. A certificate was given to
each communicant, and a list had to be taken to the bishop
within a specified time. The parish priests in Florida were
to come by the first vessel sailing to Cuba (Lib. i., Tit. vii..
Const, iv.).
176 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
The fasting days were the Ember days, all days of Lent
except Sundays, the vigils of Whitsunday, St. Mathias, St.
John the Baptist, St. Peter and St. Paul, St. James, St. Lau
rence, the Assumption, St. Bartholomew, St. Matthew, St.
Simon and St. Jude, All Saints, St. Andrew, St. Thomas,
and Christmas (Lib. iii., Tit. xiii., Const, i.). Fridays and
Saturdays were days of abstinence.
A special title was devoted to Florida, the provinces of
which the Synod declared had been intrusted to the bishop
by the Apostolic See -and by the Spanish monarch, and which
belonged to that bishopric. The game of ball among the
Indians as connected with superstitious usages was forbidden ;
married Indian men were not to be kept in St. Augustine
away from their wives ; it appearing that many were in the
habit of living there as hunters, carpenters, etc., the parish
priest and his vicar were to see that they returned to their
own villages ; Indians employed in or near the city were to
have every opportunity to hear mass on Sundays and holi
days, and were to be sent to the Franciscan Convent to hear
mass and receive instruction in Christian doctrine.
The Indian Catholics were not obliged to observe the same
holidays as the whites, the obligation extending only to the
Sundays, Circumcision, Epiphany, Purification, Annuncia
tion, Ascension, Corpus Christi, St. Peter and St. Paul, As
sumption, All Saints, and Christmas, as they were relieved
from the others by Bulls of the Sovereign Pontiffs.1 They
were obliged to fast only on Fridays in Lent, Holy Saturday,
and Christmas Eve. Religious were not to hear confessions
or administer the sacraments till they received faculties from
the bishop, and were not to leave their missions for more
1 Bull "Altitude Divini Consilii"of Pope Paul III., June 1, 1537.
Hernaez, " Coleccion," i., pp. 65-7; "Bullarium de Propaganda Fide,"
App. i., p. 25. This does not include All Saints.
REGULATIONS FOR FLORIDA. 177
than two months at a time ; were to be assiduous in cate
chising, teaching the boys every day, and, where possible, in
Spanish. Indian converts instructed in the Christian doc
trine were to receive communion at Easter and other con
venient seasons, and certificates of having fulfilled their
Paschal duty were to be given to them. Eegisters were to
be kept of Indian baptisms, marriages, and funerals, and the
Franciscan Fathers were not to serve the whites except in
special cases. Nor were whites to endeavor to collect money
due from Indians who came to church. This and other
abuses were prohibited by royal orders of June 1, 1672, and
August 2, 1678. The Florida title ends thus : " And obeying
another royal order of May 21, 1678, in which his majesty,
with his Catholic piety, charges us that we should, on our
part, watch with all attention and vigilance for the relief and
good treatment of the Indians, we most affectionately ad
monish the said missionaries to treat them well and charita
bly, and not to consent that any person, ecclesiastical or secu
lar, should maltreat them in word or deed, using due effort
in all cases, in a matter so important to the service of God
and his majesty, wherewith we charge them in conscience "
(Lib. iv., Tit. v.).1
Spain, although she found that Florida could not be self-
subsisting, not being fitted for raising wheat or cattle, neg
lected to plant settlements on the Chesapeake, where shell
fish and wild-fowl would have proved a resource. She
allowed the English to plant that district and at last extend
their settlements to the country immediately north of Saint
Helena Sound. As the new English colony of Carolina
1 " Synodo Diocesana, que de orden de 8. M. celebro el ilustrisimo
Senor Doctor Don Juan Garcia de Palacios, Obispo de Cuba, en Junio
de mil seiscientos ochenta y cuatro." There are three editions, the first
about 1688 ; the second at Havana, 1816 ; the third, Havana, 1844.
12
178 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
grew, it became a menace to Florida, and the result was not
long delayed.
The Bishop of Cuba used every exertion to have the royal
orders in regard to the mission of secular priests in Florida
carried out ; but all efforts failed. The Governor Juan Mar-
quez Cabrera was by no means fitted for the difficult crisis
in the affairs of the peninsula.
On the Atlantic coast, seeing the missions menaced, the
governor endeavored to persuade the converted Indians of
the towns of San Felipe, San Simon, Santa Catalina, Sapala,
Tupichi, Asao, Obaldaquini, and other missions, to remove to
the islands of Santa Maria, San Juan, and Santa Cruz. His
plan may have been wise, but it was not carried out with
judgment. The Indians refused to go, and revolting, aban
doned their missions. Some fled to the woods, others to Eng
lish territory. The missionaries in 1684 used every means
of persuasion and promises to induce the Jama^os, or Yam-
assees, of the Guale province to remain ; but they went over
to the English, followed by other tribes. Aided by their
new friends with arms, and doubtless at their instigation,
these Indians the next year suddenly and unexpectedly in
vaded the Spanish territory of Timuqua, sacked the mis
sion of Santa Catalina, carried off all the vestments, plate,
and other articles from the church and Franciscan convent,
killed many of the Catholic Indians, burned the town, and
retired loaded with plunder, and Indians to sell as slaves to
the settlers of Carolina.1
1 Barcia, 1687, p. 287 ; Ayeta, "La Verdad Dcfendida," fol. 213. Obal
daquini is apparently Gualaquini or Jykill island. San Felipe was six
leagues, and Mocama island, occupied by the Yamassees, was three
leagues from it. MS. Statement of Missions in 1675. Chatuache or
Satuache was sixty leagues from St. Augustine, and was the most north
erly town attended by the missionaries. " Meruoria de las Poblaciones,
1655," MS.
DESTRUCTION OF SANTA CATALINA. 179
This mission of St. Catharine, the most important one in
the province of Guale, was evidently on the island that still
bears that name, on the coast of Georgia. In 1675, with the
dependent town of Satuache, it was attended by Father Ber-
nabe de los Angeles ; St. Joseph's mission being at Sapala,
now Sapelo island, and St. Dominic's at Asao, or St. Simon's
island.
The aggressive fanaticism of English colonists was thus ar
rayed against Catholicity in Florida. The destruction of St.
Catharine's church and convent opens a new era.
Don Juan Marques Cabrera when governor treated the
Apalaches witli great severity, and his adjutant, Antonio
Matheo, burnt several of their towns, the Indians flying to
the woods or seeking refuge with other nations.
When Don Diego de Quiroga y Lossada was appointed he
adopted a more conciliatory policy. The great Cacique of
the Carlos Keys sent his son, the heathen Indians of Vasisa
Uiver asked for missionaries, and Franciscans were sent to
several of the Christian towns. A better feeling soon pre
vailed throughout the penmsula, and there are extant let
ters to the King of Spain, one written by the Apalache
chiefs,1 and the other by those of the Timuquan nation,2
expressing their satisfaction with the missionaries and the
governor.
The documents are curious as evidence that the chiefs in
Spanish Florida, at that time, were able to write their names.
1 Don Matheo Clmba ; Chief Juan Mendoza ; Don Bentura, Chief of
Ibitachuco ; Don Alonso Pastrana, Chief of Pattali ; Don Patricio, Chief
of Santa Cruz ; Don Ignacio, Chief of Tulpatqui.
2 Don Francisco, Chief of San Matheo ; Don Pedro, Chief of San Pe
dro ; Don Bentura, Chief of Asile ; Don Diego, Chief of Machaua ;
Gregorio, Chief of San Juan de Guacara ; Francisco Martinez.
Fac-similes of the signatures are given at page 180. The -word
" holahta" means " Chief."
VISITATION BY DON JUAN FERRO MACHADO. 181
Reports of Indian discontent, and appeals for better eccle
siastical government in Florida, induced the King of Spain,
in 1687, to direct the newly appointed Bishop of Cuba, Don
Diego Evelino de Compostela, to dispatch all urgent business
as soon as possible after reaching his diocese, and then pro
ceed to the provinces of Florida and make a complete visi
tation. Finding, however, that the affairs of Cuba would re
quire his attention for a considerable time, the bishop (Jan
uary 7, 1688) appointed a learned Cuban priest, the Bachelor
Don Juan Ferro Machado, his visitor-general of the provinces
of Florida. Br. Ferro Machado proceeded to Florida at his
own expense, with his secretary, Bachelor Joseph Manuel
Aleman y Hurtado, and was received at St. Augustine, as the
bishop's representative, by Rev. Joseph Perez de la Mota, the
parish priest and vicar; but the Franciscan Fathers would
not permit him to make a visitation of their houses and mis
sions, as he was not the bishop or a religious of their order
empowered for the purpose, citing in justification a royal
order of December 21, 1595. The parish church in St. Au
gustine was visited by him February 20, 1688. It was still
only a wooden structure, poorly fitted up, and the clergy with
but scanty means to give dignity to the worship of God.1
The report of Don Juan Ferro Machado drew forth a work
by Father Francis Ayeta in wThich he denied that Florida
was part of the diocese of Cuba, and questioned the bishop's
authority to send a delegate to make a visitation of their
houses. He reviewed the whole question at great length,
with a vast array of authorities, and controverted some state
ments of the visitor-general, especially in relation to the mis-
1 Machado, "Memorial en derecho al Rei," 22 leaves, fol. 1688. Bar-
cia, pp. 294, 300. Entry in the Register of St. Augustine. The chapel in
the fort at Saint Augustine, begun about this time, is one of the oldest
Catholic chapels in the country.
182 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
sion of San Salvador de Mayaca, which had been removed
by the Franciscans. Father Ayeta asserted that its location
was so unhealthy that the people and their missionary, Father
Bartholomew de Quiiiones, were constantly sick ; that the
provincial, in consequence, sent his secretary, Father Salvador
Bueno, who selected a healthy site, which pleased the Indi
ans, so that he attracted others and made many converts.1
1 F. Francisco Ayeta, "La Verdad Defendida," a folio of 227 leaves.
Ayeta was a prolific writer, whose pen was employed by his Order in
several similar controversies. He wrote also the " Crisol de la Verdad,"
1693, against Bishop Palafox of Puebla in Mexico ; " Ultimo Recurso"
(1694) on questions raised in Yucatan; "Defensa de la Verdad" (1689)
against the Bishop of Guadalajara ; " Discurso Legal " against the Bishop
of Quito, 1699. See as to him F. Marcellino da Civezza, "Bibliografia
Francescana," pp. 29-30.
CHAPTEK II.
THE CHURCH IN NEW MEXICO, 1581-1680.
WE have traced the history of the Church in the English
colonies to 1690, and seen what she had accomplished in
Florida till the same time. In another part of our present
domain the Church had also labored, and not in vain. The
year 1690 beheld there, indeed, naught but ruined churches
and slaughtered priests ; but there is a century of evangelical
labor to chronicle, and the check sustained by the Church in
her holy work was but a temporary one.
After the martyrdom of Father Padilla and his compan
ion, no further effort was made in the direction of New Mex
ico till the year 1581. A fervent Franciscan lay brother,
Augustine Eodriguez, full of mortification, prayer, and zeal,
had been sent at his own request to Zacatecas. From that
point he penetrated northward, and found tribes who received
him with every mark of good-will. He returned, expecting
to induce his superiors to found a mission there. But the
laborers were few, and the good lay brother retired to a con
vent in the valley of San Bartolome, where he prayed, mor
tified himself, and waited for the Lord. Three Indians came
to tell him of civilized tribes to the north who lived in
houses. He journeyed far enough to be convinced of the
fact, and then made his way to Mexico to implore his supe
riors to do something for these starving souls. His pleading
was not in vain ; two young priests of the order — Father
Francis Lopez, who had come from the Franciscan province
(183)
184 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
of Andalusia, and Father John of St. Mary, a Catalan — were
assigned to the work. They set out from the mines of Santa
Barbara, June 6, 1581, escorted by eight soldiers, who with
their leader, Francisco Sanchez Chamuscado, volunteered to
protect the missionaries. Passing through wild tribes the
brave religious came to the country of the Pueblo Indians.
They gave the province the name of New Mexico, which it
has borne for three centuries. The Tiguas, first to receive
these Christian teachers, showed a disposition to listen to their
words, so that Brother Augustine and his companions re
solved to begin their mission there. Chamuscado and his
men, after making some exploration, left the missionaries in
apparent security in December, and journeyed back. For a
time the mission prospered, and the field seemed so wide that
Father John set out for Mexico to obtain other religious,
with requisites for a permanent mission. Skilled in astron
omy, and trusting to the guidance of the stars, he took a new
route, crossing the Salinas and bearing straight for the Rio
Grande. While sleeping one day by the wayside he was dis
covered by some Tigua Indians, of a town subsequently called
San Pablo, who crushed his head with a huge stone, and then
burned his body. Father Lopez and Brother Augustine had
remained at a Pueblo town, with three Indian boys and a
half-breed, earnestly endeavoring to acquire the language, so
as to be able to instruct the people in the doctrines of the
gospel. One day a band from an unfriendly tribe entered
the town and began quarreling with the people. Father
Lopez reproved them, but they became furious at his cen
sure, and turning upon him made his body a target for their
arrows. The second of the priests thus laid down his life.
Brother Augustine buried the body of Father Lopez in the
town, and courageously resumed his labors ; but his Indian
comrades took alarm and fled. One was slain, but the other
THE FIRST MARTYRS. 185
reached a Spanish post to tell of the death of Father Lopez,
and his fears that the good Brother had perished also, because
lie heard shouts and yells behind him when he escaped. It
is said that some of the chiefs endeavored to save Brother
Augustine, but others wished to rid themselves of an impor
tunate monitor, and he was ere long dispatched. Father
Zarate Salmeron, writing in 1626, says that he was killed
by two blows of a macana or wooden war-club, as his skull
showed, and as the Indians of the town of Poala confessed;
for there were many still alive who witnessed his death, and
revealed where his body was buried beside the grave he had
dug for Father Lopez.'
The report of the soldiers filled the Franciscan Fathers on
the frontier with alarm. Father Bernardine Beltran in vain
sought men brave enough to accompany him in search of his
valiant brethren, till at last a rich, brave, and pious gentle
man, Don Antonio Espejo, resolved to go, and gathered a
party of fourteen stout men for the purpose. He set out
from the valley of Sari Bartolonie, November 10, 1582, with
1 Brother Augustine Rodriguez was a native of the county of Niebla, in
Spain, and entered the Franciscan Order in Mexico. The place where
Father John Mary perished cannot be identified ; but Poala, or Puaray,
where Brother Rodriguez and Father Lopez were killed, must have been
near, if not between, the present pueblos of Sandia and Isleta, as is evi
dent from the itinerary of Espejo. The earliest account of these mis
sionaries is in an " Itinerario del Nuevo Mundo," appended to the " His-
toria de las Cosas mas Notables, Ritos y Costumbres del gran Reyno de
la China," by Juan Gonzalez de Mendoza, published at Madrid in 1586.
See also Zarate Salmeron, " Relacion de las Cosas que en el Nuevo Mex
ico," Mexico, 1856, pp. 9-10 ; Villagra, " Historia de la Nueva Mexico,"
pp. 35, 126, 137; Torquemada, " Monarquia Indiana," iii., pp. 359,
626-8 ; Arlegui, " Cronica de la Provincia de Zacatecas," Mexico, 1737-
1851, pp. 212-217 ; Fernandez, " Historia Ecclesiastica de Nuestros Ti-
empos," 1611, pp. 57-8 : " Testimonio dado in Mejico sobre el descubri-
miento de doscientos leguas adelante de las minas de Sa Barbara";
" Colec. de Doc. Ineditos," xv., p. 80 ; " Testimony of Pedro Busta-
mente," p. 81.
186 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Father Beltran. Passing through the Indian tribes of the
Conchos, Passaguates, Tobosos, Jumanas, or Patarabueyes,
he finally reached Poala only to be assured of the assassina
tion of the missionaries. The guilty Indians fled at his
approach.
Finding himself baffled in the pious object of his expedi
tion, Espejo resolved to explore the country before he re
turned. He visited the Maguas, where Father John de
Santa Maria was killed, the Queres, the Curiames, whose
chief town was Zia, and the Arnejes, Acoma, and Zuni. At
the last-named town he found three Christian Indians who
had been left by Coronado. Father Beltran set out from
Zuni for Mexico, but Espejo visited Moqui before his re
turn.
Permission to occupy New Mexico was solicited by Espejo,
but he lacked influence to support his well-earned claim.
More fortunate than he, Captain Castanon obtained the con
sent of the Yiceroy. Following the attempt of Lomas, he
entered 'New Mexico with a small force, some families to
settle, and droves of cattle, sheep, and goats, but when after
advancing a considerable distance into the country he sent
back for reinforcements, the Yiceroy recalled him and confided
the conquest of the country to Juan de Oilate.1 An attempt
was made, however, in defiance of the Yiceroy, by Captain
Leiva Bonilla.
Though Onate, who was allied to the families of Cortes
and Montezuma, had obtained a royal patent as early as 1588,
it was not till August 24, 1595, that the Yiceroy of Xew
Spain issued the official authority for his expedition. The
Franciscans had purchased the right to evangelize the terri-
1 " Ytinerario del Nuevo Mundo," fol. 287.2-301.2 ; Montoya, " Rela-
cion del Dcscobrimiento del Nvovo Mexico," pp. 4, 9 ; Espejo in " Co-
leccion de Documentos Ineditos," xv., pp. 101, etc.
FRANCISCANS WITH ON ATE. 187
tory by the life-blood of five of their order. Father Roderic
Duran was sent as commissary or superior with Fathers Diego
Marquez, Balthazar, Christopher de Salazar, and others, and
these priests were promptly at the emigrant camp formed at
Nombre de Dios ; but intrigues at the capital prepossessed
the government against Ofiate. He was at last forbidden to
advance, and Father Duran, with some of the Franciscans,
returned to Mexico, leaving Father Diego Marquez as the
only priest with Onate's company. This religious had been
captured at sea and taken before Queen Elizabeth, who or
dered him to be tortured to extort information regarding the
Spanish provinces in America. That he yielded probably
made him at this time unpopular, and the feeling was so
strong that when the expedition at last set out, he was com
pelled to return to Mexico soon after they reached the Eio
Conchas.1
Another body of Franciscans were, however, already on
their way to take charge of the settlers in New Mexico and
of the Indian missions. At their head was Father Alonso
Martinez, " a religious of singular virtue and noble gifts,"
says the poet of the expedition. His companions were Father
Francis de Zamora, Fathers Rozas, San Miguel, Claros, Lugo,
Andres Corchado, and two lay brothers.
The expedition with heavy wagons, droves of cattle and
sheep, and settlers to the number of four hundred, including
one hundred and thirty married men with families, moved
slowly, escorted by Spanish soldiers, and the flower of the
Chichimeca Indian auxiliaries. The Eio del Norte was
finally reached at the close of April, and on Ascension Day,
1598, after a solemn mass and sermon, possession was for-
1 Villagra, " Historia de la Nueva Mexico," 1610, pp. 68, 86 ; Andres
Cavo, " Tres Siglos de Mexico," i., p. 228 ; Barcia, " Ensayo Cronolog-
ico," p. 164.
188 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
mally taken of New Mexico, in the name of the Spanish King.1
The religious services were followed by a representation in
the style of the old mysteries, a " Comedia," composed by
Captain Farfan, m which New Mexico welcomed the Church,
beseeching her, on bended knee, to wash away its sins in
the waters of baptism.
Captain Yillagra, in his poetical account of the conquest
of New Mexico, inserts this prayer, pronounced aloud at this
time by Onate :
" O holy Cross, who art the divine gate of heaven, altar of
the only and essential sacrifice of the Body and Blood of the
Son of God, path of the Saints, and possession of His glory,
open the gate of heaven to these unbelievers, found the
Church and Altars on which the Body and Blood of the Son
of God may be offered ; open to us the way of security and
peace, for their conversion and our own conversion, and give
cur king and me, in his royal name, peaceful possession of
these kingdoms and provinces for His holy glory. Amen." 2
This is a gratifying monument of the religious and peace
ful character of Onate's entrance into New Mexico. As
they went on, mass was said by some of the Fathers before
each day's march Jbegan. Onate, finally, with Fathers Mar
tinez and Christopher de Salazar, accompanied by sixty men,
pushed on, and entering New Mexico took possession in the
usual form, justifying the conquest by the murder of the
missionaries.3
On the 27th of June they entered Puaray. Here they
1 Villagra, p. 118 ; Zarate Salmeron, p. 23.
2 Villagra, p. 130, gives this in prose.
3 " Treslado de la posesion que en nombre de su Magestad tomo Don
Joan de Onate de los reynos y provincias de la Nueva Mexico, ano de
1598." " Coleccion de Documentos," xvi., p. 88; xviii., pp. 108-127;
Villagr'i, pp. 119-132 ; Duro, " Penalosa," p. 155.
CHURCH OF SAN JUAN BA UTISTA. 189
found a house, with the walls within so carefully whitened
as to excite their suspicion. On removing this coat the
Spaniards found beneath a painting, representing with some
skill the martyrdom of Fathers Santa Maria and Lopez and
Brother Ruiz, depicting the scene where they perished be
neath the weapons of the Indians.1
By the 25th of July Onate reached the Indian pueblo of
Pecos, but retracing his course to the valley of Santo Do
mingo, he began on the llth of August to lay out the city of
San Francisco. This first seat of Spanish occupation in New
Mexico was about two miles west of the former pueblo of
Ojke, to which the Spaniards gave the name of San Juan de
los Caballeros, and the proposed city, instead of its intended
name of San Francisco, is referred to as the Real de San
Juan. Here, on the 23d of August, the erection of the first
church in New Mexico was begun, and on the 7th of Sep
tember a building large enough to accommodate the settlers
and garrison was completed. The next day, feast of the
Nativity of our Lady, this church was dedicated under the
name of Saint John the Baptist, the Father Commissary,
Alonso Martinez, blessing it and consecrating the altars and
chalices. Father Christopher de Salazar preached the sermon,
and the day wound up with a general rejoicing and a mock
battle between mounted Moors with lance and shield and
Christians on foot with firearms. Thus was the first Cath
olic settlement in New Mexico begun, just thirty-three years
after the settlement of Saint Augustine.2
1 Villagra, p. 137 ; " Coleccion de Documentos," xvi., p. 256.
* " Discurso de las Jornadas," Coleccion de Documentos, xvi., pp. 247-
264. Onate, in his letter of March 2, 1599, says that the first church
was founded in the beginning of October. Montoya, " Relation," p. 16.
" Y como el real Alferez Penalosa Llego con todo el campo sin disgusto
Al pueblo de San Juan, los Religiosos Hizieron luego Yglesia, y la ben-
dijo El Padre Comis;irio " Villagra, pp. 144-2, 171. While endeavoring
190 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
The sacristy of this first church was soon enriched with a
relic which filled the missionaries with pious consolation. It
was the paten used by Father Lopez, who had been put to
death at Puaray, and which they had recovered from a chief
at Jemez, whom they found wearing it as a gorget.1
Having thus established a religious centre, the Commissary
Apostolic assigned his priests to fields of labor in the great
vineyard opened before him. Father Francis de San Miguel
was sent to Pecos ; Father Francisco de Zamora to Picuries
and Taos ; Father John de Bozas to Cheres ; Father Alphon-
sus de Lugo to Jemez ; Father Andrew Corchado to Zia ;
Father John Claros to the Tiguas; Father Christopher de
Salazar was not yet ordained, but he took up his abode at
the newly erected church of St. John with Brother John de
San Buenaventura, and here the Commissary remained when
not visiting the mission stations. Each missionary had a dis
trict, with several pueblos, dependent on him.
All through the summer the chiefs of the pueblos made
their submission and acknowledged the Spanish authority, so
that Onate and his officers thought the country completely
reduced. Each pueblo received the name of the saint or
mystery to which the church or convent was to be dedicated.
Thus Puaray was placed under the patronage of St. Anthony
of Padua ; the rising convent of Santo Domingo was dedi
cated to our Lady of the Assumption ; Picuries to Saint Bon-
to fix the location of this first church, the experienced antiquary, Adolph
F. Bandelier, wrote me, "The first church was not built at San Juan
Baptista, as the ' Discurso de las Jornadas' of Onate would seem to imply,
but about two miles west of the former pueblo of Ojke, then called by
the Spaniards San Juan. The site of Ojke is partly covered by the
actual pueblo of San Juan." The pueblo of San Juan is on the banks
of the Rio Grande, just above the junction of the Rio Charna, the new
pueblo being somewhat west of the former one.
1 " Discurso de las Jornadas," p. 259.
SPANIARDS AT SAN GABRIEL. 191
aventure ; Galisteo to Saint Anne. But in December the
Spaniards were startled in their fancied security by tidings
from Acoma that the men of that pueblo, under Zutacapan,
had suddenly attacked and killed Onate's lieutenant and
several of his men. Oflate sent a detachment which stormed
the height, captured the town after a stubborn resistance,
and gave it to the flames ; soon after the commander suc
cessfully repelled an Indian attack on his camp at San
Juan.'
When spring opened, Onate sent to Mexico Captain Yilla-
gra, with Fathers Martinez and Salazar, to give an account
of his conquest. Father Salazar died on the way ; and though
the Commissary reached the City of Mexico, his health was
greatly enfeebled by all that he had undergone ; he fell sick,
and being unable to return, a venerable priest of great sanc
tity, Father John de Escalona, was sent as Commissary, with
six or eight additional Fathers, escorted by about two hun
dred soldiers."
Meanwhile Ofiate had abandoned the site 'selected east of
the Rio Grande, and crossing that river founded San Gabriel,
on the Chama, six leagues north of the junction, and near
the Ojo Caliente.3
In October, 1599, the new Commissary, Father Escalona,
reached San Gabriel, where the Spaniards were living peace
fully, surrounded by Indians, many of whom had already re
ceived the grace of baptism. Ofiate then set out, with eighty
1 "Documentos Ineditos," 16, p. 39.
'2 Ofiate, Letter March 2, 1599, from San Juan. Montoya, p. 24 ; " Co-
lecciou de Doc. Ineditos," xvi., p. 97, etc.; xviii., p. 265; Zarate Salme-
ron, p. 23 ; Villagra, pp. 195-277.
3 "Coleccion de Documentos," xvi., p. 39 ; Zarate Salmeron, 1626, p.
24 ; "Documentos para la Historia de Mexico," iii., 1, p. 158. The post
of San Gabriel was maintained certainly till 1604 (Zarate Salmeron, p. 30)
and probably till 1607.
192 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
soldiers, to make discoveries in the direction followed by
Coronado, and reach Quivira. Father Francisco Velasco and
Brother Yergara accompanied the force to tread the path
which led Padilla to martyrdom. His course lay first to the
east-northeast, and then turned directly to the east. After a
march of two hundred leagues Oiiate reached the town of
Quivira, whose occupants were attacked, as the Spaniards
were, by a roving prairie tribe, called by the Spaniards the
Escanjaques.1
The settlers and soldiers left at San Gabriel, without any
one to direct the necessary works to fit it for defence as a
place of refuge, oppressed the Indians, and soon fell into
such want that they were all perishing. The natives, whom
the Spaniards had robbed of their stores of corn, fled from
their towns. The crops planted by the settlers seemed to
have failed, and there was a general feeling that their com
mander might never return.' It was the almost unanimous
wish of the settlers to abandon the country and make their
way to Santa Barbara, thence to report to the viceroy and
await his answer. Even the missionaries favored the step.
Fathers Francis de San Miguel and Francis de Zamora, with
two lay Brothers, asked also to go and act as chaplains to the
discouraged emigrants. Father Escalona remained at San Ga
briel, with the King's Ensign and a few Spaniards, awaiting
instructions either from Onate or from the viceroy.3 When
Ofiate returned to San Gabriel he was roused to fury on
finding his settlement abandoned ; he proceeded against those
who had left in form, proclaimed them traitors, and sen-
" Memorial de Vicente de Zaldivar," Doc. Ined., xviii., p. 188 ; Tor-
quemada, "Monarquia Indiana," i., pp. 672, 678.
2 Zarate Salmeron, p. 26.
3 Letter dated San Gabriel, October 1, 1601 ; Torquemada, i., p. 673.
FATHER JOHN DE ESCALONA. 193
tenced them to death.1 His highest officer, with the san
guinary warrants, reached Santa Barbara twelve days after
the slow-going caravan of disheartened settlers entered it."
The missionaries justified the action of the people, and Ofiate
was evidently compelled to conciliate his colonists, and seems
to have induced them to return. Six Franciscan Fathers —
Francis de Escobar, one of them, being appointed Commis
sary3 — were sent to maintain the missions ; but the religious
complained of Ofiate's arbitrary conduct in causing the Com
missary to remove them from place to place, and forcing
them to act as chaplains to the whites — a duty rather for
secular priests, when their object was the conversion of the
Indians.
Father John de Escalona, retiring from his office as Com
missary, remained in the province, laboring as a missionary
among the Indians, edifying all by his zeal, as he had done
for years by his holy life. He had seen the first effort made
for the conversion of New Mexico, and is said to have be
held in ecstasy the death of Brother Kodriguez and his com
panions. His own mission work began among the Queres,
in the pueblo of Santo Domingo on 'the banks of the Rio
Grande, and there he piously ended his days.4
In October, 1604, Ofiate, having restored his town of San
Gabriel, set out from it to extend his explorations to the
shores of the Pacific. Accompanied by Father Escobar he
visited Zufii and the Moqui towns, then reached the Col
orado and Gila, and followed the former to its mouth, taking
1 Torquemada, i., p. 675.
2 Letter of F. Francis de San Miguel, Santa Barbara, February 26, 1602 ;
Torquemada, i., pp. 676-7.
a Torquemada, i., p. 678.
4 " Many are the prodigious things which befel this holy man among
those Indians," writes F. Zarate Salmeron, p. 53.
13
194 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
possession in the name of the king on the 25th of January,
1605, assigning, as far as he could, the whole extent of the
province he had explored to the Franciscans, who, in mem
ory of the day, made the Conversion of Saint Paul the pa-
tronal feast of the mission of New Mexico.1
Soon after this Santa Fe was founded and became the seat
of the Spanish power ; but as the religious devoted their ener
gies more especially to the Indian pueblos, and there was
perhaps a feeling that the new settlement might not be per
manent, no church was erected, the services being conducted
in a wretched hut.2 -
For twelve years the labors of the Sons of St. Francis in
New Mexico bore little fruit to encourage them,3 but they
were at last able to begin more systematic labors in the In
dian pueblos, and with such success that, by the year 1608,
they reported eight thousand baptisms. The Teoas nation
was the first to embrace the faith, their church at San Ilde-
fouso being apparently the first erected for the Indians in
New Mexico.4 Father Escobar having resigned his office.
Father Alonso Peinado was sent to New Mexico as Commis
sary, with eight or nine additional priests to carry on the
good work.5
Father Jerome de Zarate Salmeron became missionary to
the Jemes about the year 1618, and during his eight years'
labor in their pueblo composed in their language a catechism
and other works that would be needed by any priest who
succeeded him. He baptized 6,566 in the Jeme nation, and
many others at the Queres towns of Cia and Santa Ana.
1 Zurate Salmeron, pp. 30-37.
'• Benavides, p 27. A. F. Bandolier, who has written on the date of
the foundation of Santa Fe, fixes it at 1607.
:t Benavides, " Memorial," p. 2. 4 Ibid., p. 28.
6 Torquemada, i., p. 678.
TRANSLATION OF BROTHER RODRIGUEZ. 195
Acoma, which on its embattled height had defied the Span
iards, yielded to his zeal. In all these missions he erected
churches and residences.1
When Father Stephen de Perea was Commissary a most
consoling ceremony took place. Thirty-three years after the
death of Father John Lopez, an Indian of Puaray, who had
witnessed his death and burial, guided Father Perea to the
spot where Brother Rodriguez had interred him. The grave
was opened, and the bones reverently encased were borne by
the religious in procession, followed by their converts to the
Church of Sandia, undeterred by the inclement weather of
February. Miracles were ascribed to his intercession, for
which Father Zarate Salmeron refers to the work of another
missionary, apparently Father Perea himself.9 The ancient
chapel of the pueblo of Sandia in all probability holds to this
day the remains of this protomartyr of the New Mexico
mission.
About the year 1622, in the Provincial Chapter of the
Franciscan Order held in Mexico, the missions which had
hitherto been under the care of a Commissary were formed
into a Custodia, of which Father Alonzo de Beriavides was
appointed the first custos. The Viceroy of Xew Spain there
upon authorized him to take twenty-six missionaries to Xew
Mexico, their expenses on the way and their maintenance
being paid by the king. But though the new custos entered
his district with that number, death, sickness, and hardship
soon thinned their ranks, and at the close of the year 1027
the king ordered the viceroy to send thirty Franciscan Fa
thers to New Mexico.3
On the 4th of September, 1628, nineteen priests and two
1 Torquemada, " Dedication." 2 Zarate Salmeron, p. 11.
3 Cedula of November 15, 1627.
196
THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
lay brothers of the Order of Saint Francis left the City of
Mexico with the newly appointed Gustos, Father Stephen de
Perea ; these were maintained by the king and nine others,
VEN. MARIA JESUS DE AGREDA, ABBESS OP THE IMMACULATE CONCEP
TION, AGREDA. BORN APRIL 2, 1602. DIED 1665.
at the expense of the province of the Holy Gospel, all ready
to meet toil and danger in the missions of New Mexico.1
In 1630 Father Benavides was dispatched to Spain to lay
1 Perea, " Verdadera Relation de la Grandiosa Conversion que ha avido
en el Nuevo Mexico," Seville, 1632.
VEN. MARIA DE JESUS DE AGREDA. 197
before the sovereign the consoling results of the missions
which his zeal had established.
At Chilili, the chief pueblo of the Tompiras, Father John
de Salas founded a mission, which soon had six churches and
residences. His zeal extended beyond the limits of that na
tion. Hearing of the Xumanas, a tribe similar in mode of
life to the tribes already known, whose pueblo lay east of the
mesa still bearing their name, and not far from the Salt
lakes, this missionary about 1623 endeavored to bear the
light of the gospel to them. To his surprise he found the
Xumanas familiar with the Christian doctrines, and they de
clared that they had been instructed in the faith of Christ by
a woman. Her attire, as they described it, was that of a nun,
and the missionary showed them a picture of Sister Louisa
Carrion, a religious in Spain highly esteemed for her sanc
tity. The Indians declared that the dress was the same, but
the lady who visited them was younger and more handsome.
In 1629 Father Benavides resolved to found a mission among
this interesting people, and he sent Fathers Perea and Lopez
to take up their residence at the great pueblo of the Xumana
nation, which he dedicated to St. Isidore, archbishop. When
he subsequently re-
turned to Spain,
Father Benavides
heard of Sister Maria
de Agreda, and at
her convent learned PAC.SIMILE OF THE SIGNATURE OP THE VEX.
that she had in MARIA DE AGREDA.
ecstasy visited New
Mexico and instructed Indians there. The Franciscan writers
all from this time speak of this marvellous conversion of the
Xumanas by her instrumentality, as a settled fact. The
ruins recently called Gran Quivira are, in all probability, the
198 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
site of a Xumana town, the nation having been wasted away
by wars and absorbed in some one of the New Mexican tribes.1
In 1632 Father John de Salas again visited the tribe, accom
panied by F. Diego de Ortego, and finding the people friendly
and disposed to receive the faith, he left Father Ortego there
for six months.2 The Tompiras by 1629 had six convents and
1 This conversion of the Xumanas is detailed by Father Benavides in
his " Memorial," pp. 23, 86, etc. ; and a separate tract, " Tail to que se
saco," etc. ; is treated of by Father Joseph Xiiuenez Samaniego in his
Life of Maria de Agreda prefixed to her " Mistica Ciudad," Lisbon,
1681, vol. i., sig. M. 3 ; is referred to by Bishop Manzo y Zuiiiga of
Mexico in 1682, and is constantly mentioned by later writers as an ac
knowledged fact. During her life she underwent a rigorous examina
tion before the Inquisition, of which her long and clear answers are pre
served. The Sorboune condemned the " Mistica Ciudad," and the Holy
See for a time permitted its circulation only in Spain and Portugal. Her
correspondence with Philip IV. ("Cartas de la Ven. M. Sor Maria de
Agreda y del Senor Rey Don Felipe IV.," Madrid, 1885) show a clear
political judgment, a firmness and decision that the king and his coun
sellors seemed to lack.
The Ven. Maria de Agreda, daughter of Francis Coronel and Cathe
rine de Arana, was born at Agreda, April 2, 1602, and after a childhood
of great piety and reserve, at the age of sixteen took the veil in the Order
of Poor Clares with her mother and sister, their house becoming a con
vent, her father with her two brothers making their profession in the
Convent of San Antonio the same day. Her austerities were extraordi
nary, but they were supported by a solid and constant piety and virtue.
Having become abbess at the age of twenty -five, she erected a new con
vent near the city, which is still standing. Through life she petitioned
the Holy See to define clearly two points made de fide in our time — the
Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin and the Infallibility of the
Sovereign Pontiff. She died on Whitsunday, 1665, and the process of
her canonization, begun soon after her death, has been revived in our
day.
Since writing the above I find that A. F. Bandelier, in a series of arti
cles on " Cibola and Quivira," identifies " Gran Quivira" as a Xumana
town. It has one large clmrch in tolerable condition and one in ruins.
The Xumanas, harassed by the Apaches, retired, he thinks, in 1679 to
Socorro and other towns ; but, as we shall see, they kept up their sepa
rate tribal existence, and were friendly after the revolt of the Pueblos.
2 F. Alonso de Posadas, in Duro, " Penalosa," p. 57.
FIRST CHURCH AT SANTA FE. 199
as many good churches. The Teoas, the first tribe to receive
the faith, had three convents and churches, with five chapels
in the smaller pueblos. The Tioas had convents and costly
churches dedicated to St. Francis and St. Anthony at Sandia
and Isleta, with chapels in the rest of the fifteen or sixteen
pueblos. The Queres had three costly and elaborate churches,,
one at San Felipe, with chapels on four other pueblos.1 The
Tanos had a convent and very good church in their chief
pueblo, and chapels in the four others. The Pecos, a branch
of the Jemes, had a church of remarkable beauty in design
and execution, reared by the talented and skilful missionary
in that tribe.2
One of the first cares of Father Benavides on reaching
Santa Fe as ctistos was to undertake the erection of a suita
ble convent and church in that city, then peopled by about
two hundred and fifty Spaniards, and seven hundred half-
breeds brought in as servants and laborers, with some Indians
from the neighboring tribes in the territory. In his wrork in.
1630 this Father speaks of the church he had erected, as
being one that would be creditable anywhere.3 A carved
group of the Death of the Blessed Virgin which he brought
from Mexico attracted Indians from all parts, even the Apa
ches of the bison ranges coming to admire it.4
Before he presented his memorial to the king, Father Ben
avides as custos had founded ten convents or missions.
One was apparently that at Picuries, among a branch of
the Tioas nation, who at first showed great hostility to the
1 Benavides, "Memorial," pp. 23, 28, 21, 22.
'• Benavides, pp. 24, 25.
3 It is positive, therefore, that the first church in Santa Fe was erected
between 1622 and 1630 ; and that prior to 1622 there was no church in
Santa Fe. Benavides, p. 27.
1 Ibid., p. 81.
200 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
faith, ill-treating the missionary, and several times attempting
to take his life ; but his zeal and patience triumphed, so that
they became docile and peaceful. The mission of San Ge-
ronimo at Taos, a pueblo of the same nation, had its convent
and church and was attended by two missionaries. The
Queres on the rocky height at Acoma submitted in 1629 and
received a missionary. Among the Zunis, who had then
eleven or twelve pueblos, the religious met great difficulties,
and underwent great hardships, being strenuously opposed
by the medicine men ; ' one of the apostolic missionaries,
Father Francis Letrado, after laboring among this tribe, was
killed by the Cipias, to whom he attempted to unfold the
truths of the gospel.*
Father Francis de Porras, leaving Father Koque at Zufii,
proceeded with Father Andrew Gutierrez and the lay brother,
Christopher of the Conception, with their crosses on their
necks and staves in their hands, to announce the gospel in
the towns of the Moquis. Beaching the first town on St.
Bernard's day they gave his name to the town and mission.3
Among the fourteen pueblos of the Piras, Father Bena-
vides founded a mission in 1626, dedicating Pilabo, the prin
cipal pueblo, to Our Lady of Help (Nuestra Seflora del
Socorro), that at Senecu to St. Anthony of Padua, and that
at Sevilleta to San Luis Obispo." Besides these labors among
the Xew Mexican tribes, and the attempt made to instruct
the Moquis, Father Benavides, while laboring at Senecu,
1 Benavides, pp. 31-5.
2Barcia, " Ensayo Cronologico" (1632), p. 199. Vetancurt, " Teatro
Mexicano," List of Authorities. Bandelier makes him a missionary to
the Xumanas.
3 Perea, " Segunda Relacion de la Grandiosa Conversion," Seville,
1633.
4 Benavides, p. 14.
THE PUEBLO INDIANS. 201
converted Sanaba, an Apache chief of the Gila, and opened
the way for missions in that wild race. On the 17th of Sep
tember, 1629, he founded a convent and church in Santa
Clara de Capoo, a pueblo of the Teoas nation on the Apache
frontier, as a centre for instructing and converting the pow
erful and warlike Apaches of JS'avajo.1
In these missions Father Benavides assures us 80,000 had
been baptized as the registers would show. In the territory
of Xew Mexico there were forty-three churches. For these
the missionaries had been architects and directors of the
work, which was accomplished by the women, boys, and
girls. These Pueblo Indians all lived in houses several
stories high, built of sun-dried bricks or adobes, or occasionally
of stone, where it was a more convenient material. These
houses were set compactly together fronting on a square,
with a dead-wall outside, the upper stories receding slightly,
leaving a ledge which could be reached by a ladder, and
from which by drawing the same ladder up the next story
could be reached and finally the roof, in which the door was.
This system of towns made them fortresses defying the
efforts of the wilder tribes who surrounded ISTew Mexico on
all sides. Ingenious as these buildings were, they were ex
clusively the work of the women and children. The men
would go to war, hunt, fish, spin, and weave, but disdained to
till the soil or build a house — that was woman's work. The
New Mexican Adam did not delve or the Eve spin — they
reversed it. When the Franciscan missionaries wished to
erect a church, they found the women and the children ready
to make and lay the adobes, but could not induce the men to
take part in the work. In vain did they endeavor to induce
the men to undertake it and allow the women to withdraw.
1 Benavides, pp. 35, 55, 59.
202 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Occasionally a man would take a hand, but ere long, unable to
stand the ridicule of his comrades, he threw down the
feminine implements. The missionaries found that there
was no alternative ; the material as well as the spiritual church
must depend mainly on the devout female sex. These old
ruined churches are monuments of the faith and zeal of the
early women converts.
The missionaries did not attain the consoling results they
reported without severe hardships, great suffering from cold,
and journeying on foot over rocks and heights, as well as
from the indifference and hostility of the Indians ; but they
triumphed ultimately, and wherever they succeeded in
establishing a house or convent in a pueblo, they began to
develop the industry of the Indians, using the mechanical
progress the Indians had made as the basis of improvement
—a much wiser course than that of the English, who induced
the Indians to abandon altogether their former industries.
The Spanish missionaries in New Mexico introduced horses
cattle, and sheep, and induced the Indians to keep domestic
animals ; they improved their machinery for spinning and
weaving, established schools where they taught the young to
read, write, chant, play on musical instruments, and after a
time to handle tools as carpenters, masons, carvers, stone
cutters. The missionaries aided cultivation by introducing
acequias or irrigating trenches.
The results obtained were effected in the last eight years ;
but so general was the conversion that the Fathers went
through the towns freely, welcomed on all sides, and greeted
with the pious salutations: "Praised be Jesus Christ," or
" Praised be the Most Holy Sacrament." '
Meanwhile Spanish settlements increased in New Mexico,
1 F. Peter de Miranda was killed at Taos, Dec. 28, 1631.
THE CLERGY IN NEW MEXICO. 203
new towns were founded, mines were opened and worked.
When a town was founded a certain number of families were
transferred from some part of Mexico or one of the settle
ments already formed in New Mexico. In this way a num
ber of Tlascalans were brought in to form part of the first
population of Santa Fe, and the church erected in their quar
ter of the town and destined for their especial use, was known
as San Miguel de los Tlascaltecas.1 These Mexican Indians
brought in their legends of the riches, power, and glory of
Montezuma, till his name became in all the pueblos the hero
of a great myth, easily engrafted on their old traditions, and
remaining to this day.
The Indian converts clung to their " estufas"; the rites of
Sabseanism practiced in the lowest story of their houses,
originally built for vapor baths, the favorite remedy of the
Indians, but which became also under the medicine men the
centre of their religious rites. From time to time the Spanish
authorities and the clergy endeavored to effect the suppression
of these superstitions, but in a few years when search re
laxed the estufas would be reopened to the known adherents
of the old idolatry.
The Bishop of Guadalajara, whose jurisdiction extended
over New Mexico, found it impossible to send secular priests
to attend to the Spanish settlers, and maintain any super
vision over them ; the Conchos and other nomadic and hostile
tribes who lay between his See and New Mexico, making the
journey dangerous, except with a considerable military force.
Hence he committed not only the Indian missions, but all the
parish churches and chapels of the Spaniards, to the Fathers
of the Order of St. Francis, who were the only priests of New
Mexico down to the present century, the Bishop of Dnrango,
1 This church was erected after the parish church built by Father
Benavides.
£04 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
to whose diocese on its erection the province was assigned,
adopting the same course. The habit of the Seraphic Order
was there for more than two centuries, to the eyes of people,
the only recognized garb of the Catholic priesthood.1
In 1645 there were in New Mexico churches in the Spanish
settlements attended by the Franciscans and twenty-five
Indian missions, the whole employing sixty members of the
order.
New Mexico suffered constantly from the inroads of the
Apaches, and toward the close of the century from the Yutes.
One Zuili town and six in the valley of the Salinas, east of
the Sandia range, were destroyed by the Apaches.8 The
Church continued its work in New Mexico in peace for
several years, though in 1640 and 1650 revolts incited by the
medicine men took place. About the middle of the seven
teenth century, the civil power seems to have fallen into
variance with the ecclesiastical. Governor Penalosa in 1664
arrested and imprisoned the Superior of the mission, ap
parently Father Alonso de Posadas, and his conduct was re
garded as so illegal that on his return to Mexico he was
brought before the court of the Inquisition and compelled to
make reparation by a public penance.3 This unfortunate
conflict between the civil and religious authorities could not
fail to lessen the respect of the Indians for the missionaries,
and as a natural consequence made them regard with hostility
the Spanish officials and settlers whom no sanctity of pro
fession had ever exalted in their eyes.
The sullen spirit of revolt was nurtured for years in the
1 Pino, " Exposicion del Nuevo Mexico," Cadiz, 1812, p. 26 ; " Mexico,"
1849, p. 32.
2 Letter of F. Sylvester Velez Escalante, April 2, 1778.
3 Shea, "Penalosa," p. 11 ; Margry, iii., p. 39 ; Duro, "Pefialosa," pp.
82, 53.
THE GREAT REBELLION. 205
minds of the Indians, and in 1680 the whole country was
permeated by a network of conspiracy, awaiting the signal to
rise against the Spaniards. At this time Kew Mexico con
tained forty-six pueblos or towns of converted Indians, and
the Spanish city of Sante Fe, with a number of smaller
Spanish stations, chiefly on or near the banks of the Rio
Grande.1
The plot was conceived and carried out by a Tejua Indian
named El Pope, who had been pursued for committing mur
ders, and instigating the Indians to revive their old heathen
rites. Flying from pueblo to pueblo this man labored for
fourteen years to effect a general insurrection against the
Spaniards. He claimed power to injure any one he chose by
his alliance with the Evil One, and was so implicitly believed
that all the pueblos except those of the Piros and Pecos en
tered into the plot. The 13th of August, 1680, was fixed
upon for the general massacre of the Spaniards, but John
Ye, Governor of the Pecos, warned the authorities of the
danger, and finding his advice unheeded, as the fatal day
drew near, told the missionary in his pueblo, Father Ferdi
nand de Yelasco : " Father, the people are going to rise and
kill all the Spaniards and missionaries. Decide then whither
you wish to go, and I will send warriors with you to protect
you." The Tanos of San Cristobal and San Lazaro also
warned the Gustos of the Mission, Father John Bernal, who
wrote to Governor Otermin. On the 9th that officer was at
last convinced of the danger, and Pope seeing his plot dis
covered, gave the order to the confederates to rise at once.
At daybreak on the 10th the Taos, Picuries, and Tejuas at
tacked the convents of the missionaries and the houses of the
Spaniards, slaughtering and destroying. Then the other
1 Letter of F. Sylvester Velez de Escalante, April 2, 1778.
206 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
tribes rose and the massacre and destruction became general.
The Spaniards at Isleta and San Felipe on the south fled to
El Paso ; those in La Canada retreated to the strong house
of the Alcalde and kept the Indians at bay till Otermin ena
bled them to reach Santa Fe. In a few days not a Spaniard,
except a few women held as slaves, was to be found in all
New Mexico outside the walls of the capital. On the 19th
that city was invested by nine hundred Tanos, Queres, and
Pecos. They captured the Analco quarter occupied by the
Tlascalans and set fire to their chapel of San Miguel. The
Spaniards charged them, and after a desperate fight were
gaming the advantage, when another Indian force, including
more of the Taos, with the Pi curies and Tejuas, attacked
the city on the north. For five days the fight raged in the
city night and day, till the Indians, capturing house after
house and firing it, gave the parish church and convent to
the flames, and held the Spaniards and Tlascalans in the royal
buildings and the plaza. There one hundred and fifty sur
vivors beheld themselves surrounded by three thousand furi
ous Indians, under Pope and Alonso Catitis, who had gone
so far that they panted to complete their work. Encouraged
by the three religious, Father Francis Gomez de la Cadina,
Father Andrew Duran, and F. Francis Farfan, one hundred
Spaniards, drawn up by the governor, invoked the name of
Mary, and charged the insurgents with such fury that they
killed 300 and captured 43, putting the rest to flight. Gov
ernor Otermin, wounded in the breast and forehead, profited
at once by the confusion of the enemy, and marched towards
El Paso. After meeting another band of refugees with seven
religious at Fray Cristoval, the scanty remnant of the popu
lation of New Mexico took up a fortified position at La Sali-
neta and San Lorenzo, where Father Francis Ayeta, procura-
THE MARTYRED MISSIONARIES. 207
tor of the kingdom, soon arrived with sorely needed supplies
sent in the name of the king.1
All signs of Christianity and civilization were thus swept
from New Mexico. Twenty-two priests of the Franciscan
Order, including the custos, who made no attempt to fly
though he warned others, and three lay brothers, perished
witli three hundred and eighty men, women, and children.8
The churches were profaned, the sacred elements trampled
under foot, the vestments and plate destroyed, and, finally,
the churches and houses of the clergy razed to the ground.
The Indians even vented their rage on the cattle, orchards,
and fields of European grain, as if seeking to destroy all trace
of the hated whites.3 To root out all Christian ideas, Pope
bade the women and children wear no crosses or rosaries,
but break them up and burn them ; Christ and Mary and
the Saints were not to be named or invoked ; married men
were required to put away their wives and take others.4
Of the twenty-one Franciscan missionaries whose lives were
thus offered, Father John Talaban, ex-custos, Father Francis
Anthony de Lorenzana, and Father Joseph de Monies de
Oca were killed at Santo Domingo. Father John Baptist
Pio from Victoria, province of Cantabria, was slain at Te-
zuque ; Father Thomas Torres, a native of Tepozotlan, was
killed at Nam be ; Father Louis de Morales, Father Sanchez
1 Letter of F. Sylvester Velez de Escalante to F. Morfi, April 2, 1778.
Sigueuza y Gongora, "-Mercuric Volante con las noticias de la recupera
tion de las provincias del Nuevo Mexico," 1693-4. Remonstrance of F,
Salvador de San Antonio to Gov. Vargas, December 18, 1693.
- Letter of F. Sylvester de Velez Escalante ; Ayeta, " Crisol de la Ver-
dad." pp. 32, 2.
3 Siguenza y Gongora, " Mercuric Volante."
1 Letter of F. Sylvester Velez de Escalante.
208 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
de Pro, and Father Louis de Baeza at San Ildefonso ;
Father Mathias de Rendon at Picuries ; Father Anthony
Mora and Father John de Pedrosa at Taos ; Father Luke
Maldonado at Acoma ; Father John de Bal at Alona ; Father
Joseph de Figueras at the Moqui town Ahuatobi ; Father
Joseph Trujillo at Xongopabi ; Father Joseph de Espeleta
and Father Augustine de Santa Maria at Oraybe ; Father
John Bernal, the Gustos of the Mission, and Father Do
minic de Vera at Galisteo ; Father Francis de Yelasco at
Pecos ; Father Manuel Tinoco at San Marcos.1
Father John of Jesus, a venerable old priest at the pueblo
of San Diego de los Jemes, was seized by the Indians, whom
he had instructed with patience and love for nine years.
They burst into his room, stripped and tied him upon a hog.
In this state he was driven around the church and through
the pueblo amid the curses and blows of the rabble. When
weary of this mode of torture, they got upon him and made
him carry them around on all-fours, till he sank lifeless, when
he was evidently dispatched by an arrow or javelin which
pierced his spine, as was seen when his venerated remains
were recovered.
1 Vetancurt, " Cronica de la Provincia del Santo Evangelic de Mex
ico," Mexico, 1871, pp. 306-828 ; " Menologio Franciscano," Mexico,
1871, pp. 273-276 ; Espinosa, " Cronica Apostolica y Serafica," i., p. 35 ;
" Documentos para la Historia de Mexico," III., i., pp. 159-161. Father
John of Jesus was a native of Granada, in Spain, and joined the prov
ince of Michoacan, where he was eminent for his holy life. He was
elected, in 1655, first guardian of the convent at Queretaro. He died on
the feast of St. Lawrence. Espinosa, i., p. 35, who refers to Vetancurt,
to the Cronica de San Diego de Mexico, and to the Sermon preached at
his Requiem by Don Isidro Sarinano, afterwards Bishop of Antequera.
Father Joseph Trujillo was an eminent man. who after acquiring
great renown at Mexico for learning and eloquence, went to the Philip
pine islands. He was a native of Cadiz.
FATHER SIMON OF JESUS. 209
These twenty-one missionaries belonged to the province of
the Holy Gospel in Mexico. Xever before in the annals of
the missions within our limits had so many heralds of the
faith been immolated at once, or such desolation been effected.
All the missions were in ruins. Zandia, where lay the en
ergetic founder, Father Perea, and where the skull of Bro
ther Augustine Eodriguez was venerated ; Santo Domingo,
which held the remains of Father Escalona ; Taos and Aguico,
which held the relics of the earlier martyrs, Father Peter de
Miranda de Avila, and Father Francis Letrado. Besides these
Fathers of the Province of the Holy Gospel, one laid down
his life who belonged to the Apostolic College of Queretaro.1
The fate of Father Simon of Jesus, the missionary among
the Tan os, is strangely connected with the history of these
tribes, who after living for fourscore years under the mild
law of the gospel, rejected Christ to follow the wildest hea
thenism of their medicine men. This missionary seeing the
talent, intelligence, and apparent piety of an Indian boy
whose name comes down to us as Frasquillo, devoted his time
to the education of the youth. The apt scholar learned to
read and write Spanish fluently and well ; he became a good
Latinist, and the chants and service of the Church were fa
miliar to him. The good missionary looked forward to the
day when his pupil, ordained as a priest, would minister at
God's altar. Yet when the conspiracy was formed and the
day for the massacre was fixed, this precocious boy entered
ardently into it. At the appointed time he began the mas
sacre in his pueblo by slaying with his own hands the good
priest who had done so much to elevate him.2 The Tanos
hailed the young monster as their king. Pope, the projector
of the whole conspiracy, set himself up as absolute ruler, but
1 Yetancurt, "Cronica de la Provincia," p. 314, etc.
- " Doc. Hist. Mex." III., i., pp. 103, etc. ; Espinosa, "Cronica Aposto-
lica," i., p. 284.
14
210 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
his cruelty and extortions soon drove the Queres, Taos, and
Pecos to revolt against his authority. The other tribes then
deposed Pope, despising his pretended powers from the evil
spirits. Pope and the medicine men persuaded the people
that their old pueblos had been cursed with misfortune by the
Christian rites, and incited the people to erect new pueblos
elsewhere. .The old towns and cultivated fields were gener
ally abandoned, and in the new selection tribal lines were
broken up. While the New Mexican Indians were thus en
deavoring to create new homes, the Apaches and Utes were
exterminating the exposed bands, a volcanic upheaval dried
up the streams and covered the land with showers of ashes,
crops failed, and to complete the misery, the Queres, Taos,
and Pecos began a bitter war against the Tanos and Tehuas,
the smaller tribes joining one side or the other. At this
juncture the crafty boy Frasquillo proposed to the Tanos to
divide into two parts by lot, one part to remain, while the
other set out to seek a more fertile and quiet land. His
project pleased them, and leaving a similar number he set
out at the head of 4,000 men, women, and children, with their
half of the plunder of the churches, the arms, implements,
horses, cattle, sheep, and goats taken from the Spaniards.
He marched to Zuni, but finding no welcome, kept on till he
reached the gentle, industrious Moquis. Representing to
this less warlike tribe the increasing danger from the Apaches
and Utes, he offered to divide his fifteen hundred warriors
among their different pueblos as a garrison able to defeat any
foe, while the rest of his people formed new pueblos in the
pasture lands, ready always to come to their aid. Before
long Frasquillo proclaimed himself king of Moqui, and as the
Tano boys grew up found himself able to master the Moquis,
whom he disarmed and subjected to his tribe as a kind of
helots.
MISSIONARIES NOT DISHEARTENED. 211
Frasquillo reigned here absolutely for thirty years, at times
showing a wish to return to Christianity, but to the end hold
ing the Spaniards at bay, for though some of his towns de
luded the authorities by mock submission, they never in his
day entered his capital, Oraybi.1
Meanwhile those who remained in New Mexico, under the
scourge of wild Indians on the frontiers, war and famine
within, and the Spaniards soon attacking from the south,
diminished rapidly. The Piro and Tompira nations disap
peared ; few of the Tiguas and Jemes survived ; of the
Teguas, Taos, and Pecos there were indeed more. The Queres
suffered least, for in the general shifting of homes, they
erected their adobe pueblo within the walls of Santa Fe, on
the ruins of the Spanish town, securing thus a double line of
defence.
Father Francis Ayeta, the procurator-general of the Fran
ciscans of the province of the Holy Gospel, on hearing of the
destitute condition of the Spaniards and their faithful con
verts at El Paso, hastened thither with supplies ; but seeing
how difficult it would be for them to establish new settle
ments there, he returned to Mexico in order to urge the Vice
roy to send an expedition to recover New Mexico and restore
the fugitives to their homes. A small force was sent to the
Presidio of El Paso, and in November, 1681, Otermin ad
vanced, accompanied by Father Ayeta and other relig
ious. The Tiguas of Isleta submitted, but as the winter
was too far advanced, Otermin returned and formed into
pueblos near El Paso some Indians who followed him.
The missionaries then renewed their labors, but it was with
constant peril of their lives. In 1683 the Piros, Tanos, and
Jemes of Socorro endeavored to kill their missionary,
1 "Doc. Hist. Mex." III., i., pp. 103-106.
212 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Father Autonio Guerra. Gradually most of the New Mexi
cans abandoned these new pueblos for their old homes.
But the zeal of the missionaries was unabated, and when in
December, 1683, a Xumana Indian came to solicit mission
aries,1 Father Nicholas Lopez had been appointed Procurator
and Gustos of the missions of New Mexico, which the Francis
cans were too devoted to abandon. The next year he set out
from Mexico with some means supplied by the zeal of the
charitable, to restore religion. At the convent of El Paso
he found thirty-three Xumana chiefs come to seek instruction
and baptism. He set out with Fathers John de Zaboleta and
Anthony de Acevedo, accompanied by the Indians. They
made their way barefoot to La Junta de los Bios, the con
fluence of the Rio Grande and Conchos. Here the Indians
had erected a house and two rustic chapels for the mis
sionaries. Leaving Father Acevedo to minister to these
well-disposed natives, Fathers Lopez and Zaboleta kept on,2
and following the Puerco River, reached the Xumanas and
began a mission. Father Lopez drew up an extensive vocabu
lary of the Xumana language, and acquired such a knowledge
of it that he was able to preach to the natives in their own
tongue, extending his influence to the Texas Indians on
the Nueces. Soon after his return to La Junta, the Indians,
excited by some rumor, rose against the missionaries, drove
them out naked and without any provisions, profaning every
thing connected with the service of God. The Franciscan
Fathers, with great suffering, reached El Paso after long and
painful wandering. Still more cruelly Father Manuel Bel-
tran was slain, at a mission of the Yumas and Tanos. his
1 Letter of F. Velez de Escalante.
-'" Memorial de F. Nicolas Lopez" in Duro's "Penalosa," pp. 68-9,-
Barcia, " Ensayo Cronologico," p. 266; F. Sylvester Velez de Escalante.
POWERS OF THE CUSTOS. 213
church destroyed, and the sacred plate and vestments pro
faned.1
Several expeditions were made into New Mexico, but no
decisive advantage was gained.
In the year 1690 the once flourishing church of New Mex
ico had for the time disappeared ; a few fugitive Spaniards
and Indians on the frontier alone represented the people who
a few years before had thronged the comely churches in the
upper valley of the Rio Grande.2
During the whole period that we have 'traced, New Mexi
co, though subject to the Bishops of Guadalajara, had never
enjoyed the presence of any one invested with episcopal
dignity ; the ecclesiastical administration for whites and In
dians had devolved on the Gustos of the Franciscans, who gov
erned as Superior of the religious of his order, Vicar-General
of the Bishop, commissary for the Tribunal of the Holy
Office, and Ecclesiastical Judge. Moreover, under the privilege
of Leo X. and Adrian VI., he conferred the sacrament of con
firmation.3 Questions had arisen in various parts of the Span
ish dominions in America whether religious in charge of
mission stations or white settlements where a Bishop was as
yet unable to establish secular priests belonging to his diocese,
were really " parochi," within the meaning of the Council of
Trent. St. Pius V., in 1567, at the request of the King of
Spain, by his Bull "Exponi Nobis," declared them to possess
all the powers of parish priests for the Indians and for whites
in their district not subject to a parish priest.4
1 Letter of Sylvester Velez de Escalante.
8 Ayeta, " Crisol de la Verdad," p. 32, 2 ; Hernaez, " Coleccion de Bu-
las," Brussels, 1879, i., p. 377.
3 " Bullarium de Propaganda Fide," Appendix i., p. 42 ; Ayeta, "De-
fensa de la Verdad," 77.
4 Hernaez, " Coleccion de Bulas," Brussels, 1879, i., p. 397.
214 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
The missionaries of Kew Mexico had, as we have seen,
opened intercourse with the Asinais or Cenis, whom the
Spaniards called Texas because they met the whites crying
" Texas ! Texas ! " which meant in their language, " We are
friends ! " but which the Castilians mistook for their tribal
name, and it not only remained the usual appellation for the
nation, but is now that of one of the States of this Republic.
When the authorities in Mexico heard of 'La Salle's landing
in Texas and apparently obtained some clue to his designs,
an expedition was sent to that province in January, 1689,
under Don Aloiiso de Leon. It was accompanied by several
missionaries, the Superior being Father Damian Mazanet of
the Order of St. Francis.1 Alonso de Leon proceeded to the
territory of the Asinais to ransom French prisoners still in
their hands. Here evidence was found that missionaries had
held intercourse with the tribe, or received some ideas from
their prisoners, for the Spaniards found a little chapel of
boughs with an altar on which a crucifix and a rosary were
honorably kept." The object of the expedition was simply
to explore, but so friendly a disposition was manifested by
the Indians that after the return of the expedition to Coahuila
in May, the Spanish authorities determined to occupy the
country and established Indian missions. Catholicity had
already reared an altar in this province, and several priests
who accompanied La Salle had offered the holy sacrifice, and
administered the sacraments, three remaining to perish after
some years' stay at Espiritu Santo Bay, being massacred by
the Indians.
The Spaniards visited the scene of desolation, and the
1 Morfi, " Memorias para la historia de la provincia de Texas," p. 54 ;
Espinosa, " Crouica Apostolica," i., p. 408; Barcia, "Ensayo Crono-
logica," p. 294 ; Carta in B. Smith, " Coleccion," p. 25.
5 Smith, "Coleccion," p. 26.
CLOSE OF THE FIRST MISSION IN TEXAS. 215
priests on the expedition performed the last rites for the un
happy victims.
Though the opening of the year 1690 saw no Catholic
church or priest in Texas, it marks the active preparations
for the spiritual conquest of that province.
The Church in Spain had already, too, prepared the way
for the spiritual conquest of California.
Sebastian Vizcaino, after visiting Lower California with
Father Perdomo and other Franciscans in 1596, ran up, in a
second voyage, as far as Santa Barbara, Monterey, and the
Bay of San Francisco. He was accompanied on this expe
dition by three discalced Carmelites, Fathers Andrew of the
Assumption, Anthony of the Ascension, and Thomas of
Aquin, the two former of whom offered the holy sacrifice of
the mass beneath a spreading oak tree at Monterey, in De
cember, 1601. '
1 Torquemada, "Monarquia Indiana," ii., p. 682; Venegas, "Historia
de la California," i., p. 169.
BOOK III.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
CHAPTER I.
FIRST WOEK OF THE CHURCH IN MAINE, MICHIGAN, AND NEW
YORK. 1611-1652.
THE Church was planted in Maryland amid a hostile
Protestant population growing up and strengthening around
it, so that it held its own with difficulty in that province and
expanded but feebly in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New
York. It was planted under the protecting power of Spain,
beginning at the Chesapeake, then in Florida and the Georgia
coast, in Texas, New Mexico, and setting up a pioneer cross
on the coast of California.
It had also been planted at the north and west under the
protecting banner of France.
Where the cross was first reared by Frenchmen on our
soil is not certain. If we are to credit the famous Franciscan
Father, Andrew Thevet, cosmographer to the King of France,
who claims to have visited the coast known as Norumbega,
and which was certainly some part of New England, the
French had, previous to 1575, erected a little fort ten or
twelve miles up the Norumbega River, on a spot surrounded
by fresh water.1 But history is silent as to the colonists who
settled here. The earliest English settlers on the New Eng-
1 Thevet, "La Cosmographie Universelle," Paris, 1575, p. 1008. The
river is most probably the Kennebec.
(216)
CHAPEL AT SAINTE CROIX ISLAND. 217
land coast found traces of Frenchmen who had made efforts
to check the vices of the natives and instruct them in the
truths of religion. These are supposed to have been French
men who had recently escaped the wreck of their vessel, but
their visits may date further back.1
Leaving, however, the period of the voyages prompted by
Cartier's exploration of the St. Lawrence, few of which are
definitely recorded, we coine to the commencement of the
seventeenth century, when Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts,
obtained of the French king a commission to colonize the
American coast and to conduct the trade to the exclusion of
all others. He sailed from Havre de Grace in France on the
7th of March, 160-i, and after reaching what is now called IS^ova
Scotia, coasted along to an island in Scoodic Biver to which
he gave the name of Sainte Croix, or Holy Cross. On this
island, now called De Monts 'or Xeutral Island, just on the bor
ders of New Brunswick and within the jurisdiction of Maine,
de Monts began a settlement. Of the little fort which he
erected, Champlain, who was one of the party, has left us a
sketch, in which appears " The house of our Cure " and a map
showing a chapel and cemetery. Lescarbot speaks of the
chapel as built Indian fashion, but he was not there at the
time, and we possess no further description of the first
Catholic chapel erected in 'New England, that on Ste. Croix
Island in July, 1604. The position of the chapel where the
first known mass was said in New England can be seen on the
map of the island.8 The priest referred to by Champlain
was the Rev. Nicholas Aubry, a young ecclesiastic of a good
1 Hildreth, "History of the United States," i., p. 222.
- On the map E is the cemetery with its cross, and F the chapel, A
being the fort. Scholars agree that the settlement was on Dochet's or
Neutral Island, now called De Monts. Slafter's " Champlain," ii., p. 32
Lescarbot, (1611), p. 470.
THE SETTLEMENT AT PORT ROYAL. 219
family at Paris. He was accompanied by another priest,
whose name has not come down to us.1 They ministered to
the little colony till the spot was abandoned in the following
year and the settlers transferred to Port Royal, near the pres
ent Annapolis, Nova Scotia.
The little chapel shown in Champlain's map is, therefore,
the earliest structure of which we have any definite notice
raised in our northern parts for the celebration of the
mysteries of religion.
No further details are given as to labors of the priests at
Holy Cross Island, save an adventure of Rev. Mr. Aubry,
who, landing on the coast before they reached the island, was
lost in the woods, and had nearly perished of hunger when
he was finally rescued.2
The settlement at Port Royal did not thrive and was re
signed by de Monts to John de Biencour, Sieur de Poutrin-
court, who applied to the King of France for a confirmation of
his grant. This was given, but Henry IV. expressed a wish
that some Jesuit Fathers should be sent over to labor for the
conversion of the Indians. Father Peter Biard was sum
moned in 1608 from a professor's chair in Lyons to found the
mission. It was evident, at once, that this was by no means
pleasing to Poutrincourt, who made no provision for the
passage of the missionary. When in 1610 Father Biard and
his companion, Father Enemond Masse, made an attempt to
go by the only vessel then fitting out for Acadia, a fund hav
ing been raised to maintain the mission with all requisites,
other difficulties arose. Two Huguenots who had an interest
1 Champlain, "Voyages," 1613, p. 16 (Quebec ed.); Slafter's "Cham-
plain," ii., p. 35 ; Lescarbot, Lib. iv., c. 3, 4 (Edition 1611), pp. 453, 462.
2 When the island was visited in 1798 by the English and American
boundary commissioners, the remains of an ancient fortification could be
traced though overgrown with large trees. Holmes' "Annals," i., p.
149, note; Williamson's "Maine," i., pp. 190-1, note.
220 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY
in the vessel refused to allow Jesuits to embark. Antoinette
de Pons, Marchioness de Guercheville, who had been an
active friend of the proposed mission, at once raised means to
purchase the rights of these men, and made the share in the
vessel and trade thus acquired a fund for the support of the
mission and the colony. Although there was no other means
by which the missionaries could reach their destination, the
cry was immediately raised that the Jesuits had become trad
ers, and bad faith has repeated the charge to our day.
The vessel sailed in January, 1611, and at sea encountered
Champlain on his way to Quebec. It was not till Whitsun
day, May 22d, that the missionaries were able to land at Port
Royal ; Father Masse remained in a cabin reared for him at
that place, but Father Biard accompanied Poutrincourt and
subsequently his son on several excursions along the coast to
the St. John's River, Ste. Croix Island, where he spent some
time, and even as far west as the Kennebec. While the French
were trading with the Indians at the mouth of the Kennebec
late in October, Father Biard went to a neighboring island
to offer the holy sacrifice, attended by a boy to serve the
mass. Here the Indians overran the little vessel and assumed
so dangerous and rapacious an attitude, that Biencourt would
have fired on them had he not feared that the missionary
would at once be butchered. This island is the second spot
on that northeastern coast of our territory where mass is cer
tainly known to have been said.
Poutrincourt, in France, had induced Madame de Guerche
ville to advance a thousand crowns to fit out a vessel ; this
was confided to a lay brother, who gave part of it to Poutrin
court. In the sequel the missionaries could obtain no part
of the supplies purchased for them with the means furnished
by Madame de Guercheville, on account of the joint prop
erty. On the contrary, young Biencourt, disregarding their
SETTLEMENT AT SAINT SAUVEUR. 221
rights under the compact, and their character, treated the
Fathers with every indignity, and when they attempted to
leave the colony Biencourt prevented them.1 In fact their
position at Port Royal was rendered so insupportable that
Madame Guercheville resolved to abandon all relations with
Poutrincourt and establish a distinct missionary colony.
She obtained from de Monts a cession of all his rights,
and King Louis XIII. made her a grant of all the territory
of Xorth America from the St. Lawrence to Florida. Pou
trincourt became her vassal as he had been of du Guast.
His seignory was subject to her.
To take possession of her new domain, and to establish a
mission for the conversion of the Indians where Catholic
priests could begin the good work unhampered by any
claims or interference of proprietors or merchants, she fitted
out a vessel at Honfleur under the command of the Sieur de
la Saussaye. It carried Father Quentin and Brother Gilbert
du Thet, with thirty persons who were to winter in the
country. The vessel sailed from France, March 12, 1613,
and putting in at Port Royal in May, took Fathers Biard and
Masse on board, and ran along the coast. De la Saussaye in
tended to plant the colony at Kadesquit on the Penobscot,
but after encountering storms and fogs he found himself near
Mount Desert Island. His pilot ran into a fine large harbor
on the eastern shore of the island. Here the missionaries
landed, and planting a cross, offered the holy sacrifice of the
mass, calling the port Saint Sauveur — Holy Saviour. The
Indians persuaded the French to abandon the project of going
up to Kadesquit, and to adopt a site recommended by them.
It was on a beautiful hillside sloping to the sea ; its harbor
1 A well-known writer calls the Jesuit Fathers mutineers. They were
the equals of Poutrincourt under the compact, and the deputy of one
partner could not treat another partner as a mutineer.
THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
covered by Mount Desert and several smaller islands. Two
streams of water flowed from the hill, and the ground was
rich and productive.1 Here the settlement was laid out
about the middle of June, but de la Saussaye, instead of
fortifying a position, employed the men in planting grain,
beans, and other garden vegetables. In September the
vessel was still there, and the missionaries and settlers in the
tents and temporary houses raised on the shore, when during
a temporary absence of the commander, an English vessel
from Virginia under Samuel Argal appeared and opened fire
on de Saussaye's vessel, which soon surrendered, Brother du
Thet being mortally wounded by a musket-ball. Argal then
landed, carried off the French commander's commission and
plundered the little settlement, treating the party as intruders
on English territory.
An unprovoked attack by men pretending to be Christians
on a mission station established for the conversion of the
heathen, followed by bloodshed and indiscriminate plunder,
has no parallel in history. Virginia shares the infamy by
endorsing Argal's action, as England does by refusing repa
ration.
Argal put Father Masse and fourteen Frenchmen in a
small craft and turned them adrift ; Fathers Biard and Quen-
tin were carried to Virginia, then ruled by a code of blood,
where Sir Thomas Dale threatened to hang all the prisoners.
Finally, resolving to extirpate the French settlements, he sent
Argal back with a considerable force. The English vessels
carried the missionaries and many of the French prisoners,
who were glad to escape from the soil of Virginia. Argal
completed the destruction at St. Saviour, then demolished the
post on Ste. Croix Island and that at Port Royal, where Bien-
1 Parkman following E. L. Hamlin, of Bangor, thinks the position was
on Mount Desert Island, on the western side of Soames Sound.
THE FOUNDING OF QUEBEC, CANADA. 223
court showed his hatred of the missionaries. On the voyage
back, the vessel containing the two Jesuits was driven to the
Azores, but finally reached England, whence in time the
survivors of a missionary settlement thus broken up by men
boasting of Christianity, were allowed to reach their native
land.
It never could have entered into the mind of the mission
aries or their protectors, that war would be made on a mission
station, or they never would have attempted to plant one so
near the Kennebec, already more than once visited by the
English.1
Samuel Champlain had been connected with de Monts in
the attempt to colonize Port Royal. In 1608 he and Font-
grave were sent out with two vessels to establish a post on
the Saint Lawrence. Above Isle Orleans, on a height which
formed a natural fortification, Champlain founded a city re
taining the name Quebec, given to the narrows by the neigh
boring Montagnais Indians. Some temporary buildings
reared July 3, 1608, were the commencement of Canada.
De Monts thought only of trading-posts, but Champlain's
projects were nobler and more patriotic ; he wished to build
up a colony, and make the conversion of the natives an ob
ject. Gaining the friendship of the Algonquin tribes on the
St. Lawrence and Ottawa, he opened trade with the Hurons,
Indians of a different race, dwelling near the lake that now
bears their name. To retain the friendship of these tribes, it
became necessary to aid them in their wars with a confederacy
1 The story of this mission is told in Biard, " Relation de la Nouvelle
France," Lyons, 1616; Champlain, "Voyages," Paris, 1613; " Annuae
Littene Societatis lesv," Dilingae, 1611 ; Lyons, 1618 ; Juvencius, "Hist.
Societatis Jesu"; Carayon, "Premiere Mission des Jesuites au Canada,"
Paris, 1864, pp. 1-116; Charlevoix, "History of New France^" i., pp.
260-284. Lescarbot, "Histoire de la Nouvelle France," (Ed. 1618), pp.
681-86, is extremely hostile to the missionaries.
224 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
of five nations, kindred in origin to the Hurons, who lay
south of Lake Ontario.
The little French settlement prospered, and in 161 -i Cham-
plain obtained from France four Franciscan Fathers of the
Recollect reform to minister to the French settlers and to
convert the natives. With Father Denis Jamay, the Com
missary or Superior, came Fathers John d'Olbeau and Joseph
le Caron, with the lay brother, Pacificus du Plessis. The
religious reached Tadoussac on the feast of the Annunciation,
March 25, 1615. They soon began their labors at the trad
ing-posts established by the French, and among the Mon-
tagnais Indians on the St. Lawrence, while Father Joseph le
Caron embarking with some canoes of the Hurons penetrated
to the villages of that nation. The Recollects soon learned
the two great languages of Canada, the Algonquin and Hu
ron, and preached the gospel far and wide ; but though others
of their order came to share their labors, they saw that the
field was too vast for them to occupy profitably. Thereupon
they invited the Fathers of the Society of Jesus to join them,
and in 1625 Fathers Charles Lalemant, Enemond Masse,
and John de Brebeuf arrived, to be welcomed by the Recol
lects, but to be eyed with distrust by many of the French
who were full of the prejudices inspired by the Huguenots.
The missions were then more zealously extended, and in the
autumn of 1626 Father Joseph de la Roche Daillon, a Recol
lect of noble family, set out from the Huron country for the
towns of the Neuter nation, who occupied both banks of the
Niagara, and reached their frontier nearest to the Senecas,
but barely escaped with life.
This zealous religious was, so far as can now be ascer
tained, the first Catholic priest from Canada who penetrated
into the present territory of the United States. He carried
back a knowledge of the people, and of the country, noting
among the products the mineral oil.
SECOND JESUIT MISSION. 225
The new colony of Canada had, however, but a feeble life.
Neglected by the government at home, it was soon at the
lowest extremity, and in July, 1629. Champlain surrendered
to Captain David Kirk, an English commander, who appeared
with a fleet before the starving post of Quebec. The Recol
lects and Jesuits were all carried off by the English, and
Catholicity had no altar or worship till the restoration of the
country.1
When England, by the treaty of Saint Germain des Pres
in 1632, finally restored Canada to France, after dishonorably
retaining a province, captured wThen peace had been de
clared between the two powers, Cardinal Richelieu offered
the Canada mission to the Capuchins, but the religious of
that reform seeing by the voyages of Champlain and the
works of the Recollect Brother Sagard, how vast a field
awaited evangelical laborers, even in the territory that French
energy had laid open in twenty years, in itself a mere portal
to immense unexplored regions, declined to undertake the
task. The great Cardinal then summoned to the task the
Society of Jesus, excluding the Recollects entirely. The
passport of the first Jesuit missionaries was signed by the
hand of his Eminence himself.3
The second Jesuit mission in Canada began with the land
ing at Quebec July 15, 1632, of Fathers Paul le Jeune and
Anne de Noue, with a lay brother. It was a small beginning
where all was to be accomplished, a home and chapel to be
reared amid the embers of Champlain's first town, and then
1 For this earlier period see Sagard, " Grand Voyage du Pais des Hu-
rons," Paris, 1632 ; " Histoire du Canada," Paris, 1636 ; Le Clercq,
" Etablissement de la Foi," 2 vols., Paris, 1690 — in English, New York,
1881 ; Champlain, "Voyages," 1603, 1613, 1619, 1632.
• I saw it some years ago in the Bureau des Terres, Montreal, but it
has since disappeared.
226 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
a continent to be occupied. Other missionaries soon came ;
and throughout France in the gay circles of the Court, in
the chateaus of the provincial nobles, in college and con
vent, among merchants and artisans, an interest was excited
in the missions of ^ew France. Annually for forty years a
little volume appeared in cheap form, giving letters of the
missionaries, so that their hopes and struggles, their suffer
ings and triumphs, were familiar to the pious of every rank
in France. Quebec was controlled by great commercial com
panies, Acadia by corporations formed for fishery ; the zeal
excited in France inspired the Venerable John Olier, founder
of the Seminary of Saint Sulpice, to project the establish
ment of a settlement in Canada, to be entirely .guided by
religious motives. From this great thought arose the city of
Montreal, of which the Jesuits were the first pastors.
The Catholic life of Canada grew, developing from these
two centres, Quebec and Montreal, controlled by the Arch
bishops of Roueri through local vicars-general, each city es
tablishing houses of education for both sexes, convents, hos
pitals, and confraternities among the faithful.
The Jesuits resumed the missions begun by the Recollects
on the Saint Lawrence and on the banks of Lake Huron, in
which members of their own order had already labored.
The Sulpitians, guiding in the paths of Christian virtue the
settlers in and around the city of Montreal, never extended
their Indian missions far after an attempt to explore the
West. A temporary effort in Quinte Bay and a great mis
sion at Oswegatchie, now Ogdensburg, mark their limit.
The Jesuits, except in the district attended by the Sulpi
tians, had for many years sole charge of all the French settle
ments and the religious communities that grew up there, to
gether with the Indian missions in Canada.
The French settlements were chiefly at Tadoussac, a great
THE HURON MISSION. 227
trading post ; Quebec, Isle Orleans, Three Rivers, Montreal,
to which the Huron s and their allies further west came down
on flotillas of canoes by the way of the Ottawa River. The
trading establishment at the Rapids above Montreal was the
frontier post of the French.
Under the zealous labors of Father Brebeuf and his asso
ciates, men like Fathers Charles Gamier, Anthony Daniel,
Leonard Garreau, Chatelain, Jogues, Raymbaut, many were
converted in the great Wyandot or Huron nation, and in
the kindred Tionontates. The long route to and from their
stations near Lake Huron became annually more difficult
and dangerous, as the Iroquois or Five Nations supplied with
firearms by the Dutch at Manhattan waylaid the Indian
flotillas descending to trade or returning from Quebec, at a
hundred points along the tedious and difficult course. Yet
it was only by these flotillas of bark canoes that the mission
aries could reach the mission field, or return to the French
colony when the necessities of the Huron church required
it. With a few lay brothers, and some devoted men who
gave their services to the mission, the Jesuits could raise
wheat and make wine for the celebration of mass ; but cloth
ing, books, paper, medicines, implements of various kinds,
could be had only in the colony ; and sometimes the inter
ruption of navigation was so prolonged that the missionaries
suffered greatly.
Yet so far were they from any idea of abandoning the
field which Providence had placed under their care, that
they planned the extension of their missions further west.
In the summer of 1642, a peculiar institution of the cluster
of tribes to which the Hurous belonged, known as the Feast
of the Dead, gathered in the Huron country delegates from all
tribes with whom they held friendly relations. Then, amid
solemn rites and games, the bones of those buried temporarily
228 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
during the last ten years were committed to a common grave,
richly lined with furs, and with them articles regarded as
of highest value. The Chippewa envoys to this ceremony,
who came from the outlet of Lake Superior, invited the
black gowns to
visit their coun-
try; and when
the Feast of the
Dead was ended
and the Chip.
pewas launch-
ed their cailoes
on Lake Huron,
FAC-SIMILE OF THE HANDWRITING OF FATHER Father CliaiieS
ISAAC JOGTJE8.
Kaymbaut and
Father Isaac Jogues were selected to accompany them. Set
ting out from the mission-house of St. Mary's, a sail of
seventeen days over the lake brought the two priestly pio
neers to the rapid outlet, which received from them the name
it still bears, Sault St. Mary's.
Here, in October, 1641, the Church of Canada, starting
from Quebec as a centre, again reached the present territory
of the United States. Here
the two Jesuits planted the ^^.<^&y vLd^vrt^K*/*
Cross of Christianity, looking /^s
still further west, and form- FAC-SHQLE OF THE SIGNATURE OF
FATHER CHARLES KAYMBAUT.
mg plans lor the conversion
of the Dakotas, of whom they heard by their Algonquin
name, Kadouessis.1
Father Isaac Jogues, who thus stands as one of the two
pioneer priests of Michigan, was destined soon to be the
1 " Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1642, pp. 97-8.
FATHER JOGUES A CAPTIVE. 229
pioneer priest of another State. On the 2d of June, 1642,
he and Father Raymbant embarked in the Huron canoes,
descending the great water highways ; Father Raymbaut,
whose health was shattered, was to remain in the French
colony ; Father Jogues was to return with the Indians after
the trade, bringing with him supplies the Huron mission
sorely needed. The journey descending and returning was
fraught with danger from lurking parties of the Mohawks.
They reached Quebec safely, and Father Jogues enjoyed for
a season the pleasure of mingling among his brethren and
his countrymen. On the 1st of August the missionary, with
two Frenchmen, Rene Goupil, a candidate for entrance into
the Society, and William Couture, embarked with the Hurons
from Three Rivers, the great Chief Ahasistari being in com
mand. Over-confident in their numbers and bravery, the
Hurons, when suddenly attacked by the Mohawks, landed in
confusion and were soon routed. A few only with the two
Frenchmen made any stand. Father Jogues might have es
caped, but he would not desert his flock ; Ahasistari and the
few brave Hurons who remained with the Frenchmen were
soon overpowered. The prisoners then underwent the usual
Indian cruelties ; they were beaten to insensibility, mangled,
and hacked. Father Jogues had his nails torn out, and his
forefingers crunched till the last bone was completely crushed.
Then the Mohawks compelled their prisoners to begin a ter
rible march to the Mohawk. On their way they encoun
tered on an island in Lake Champlain a war party just setting
out. This, to ensure courage and success, wreaked its savage
cruelty on the prisoners.1 Father Jogues finally, on the 14th
of August, reached Ossernenon, the first Mohawk town, near
1 Smith's Island, near Westport, is traditionally believed to be the spot
hallowed by the sufferings of these illustrious missionaries and their dis
ciples. A cross keeps the memory alive.
230 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
the present station of Auriesville, in Montgomery County.
Here, after crossing the river, the prisoners were forced to
run the gauntlet, and were placed on a platform for further
cruelties. All the prisoners were cut and mutilated. Father
Jogues had his left thumb sawed off at the root, an Algonquin
woman being forced to execute the savage cruelty. Then
followed days of torture in each of the towns of the nation,
the missionary forgetting his own sufferings to instruct and
baptize those of his own party not yet received into the
Church, or others brought in by other war parties. When
the council of the tribe finally decided the fate of the
prisoners, several Hurons were burned at the stake, in
cluding the brave Ahasistari ; but the lives of the French
men were spared. No care was taken of their terrible
wounds, and though the Dutch endeavored to ransom the
European captives, the Indians refused to part with them.
The next month Rene Goupil was killed while returning to
Ossernenon with the missionary and reciting the rosary. The
Indians regarded his prayers, and especially the Sign of the
Cross, as magical acts for their injury, the making the sign
on a child being the immediate cause of his death. Father
Jogues endeavored to secure and bury the body of his com
panion, but it was maliciously carried away. The good priest,
who has left us an account of his young comrade, attests his
deep and earnest piety, his zeal, and his services as a med
ical assistant to the missionaries, whom he had voluntarily
joined from religious motives, and served with no hope of
reward.1 Then began for Father Jogues a long and terrible
captivity, in which his chief consolation was that of attend
ing prisoners at the stake, and the instruction of a few
1 Rene Goupil had been a novice of the Society of Jesus in France, but
his health failed, and he came to America, hoping to enter in time. Fa
ther Jogues received him before his death.
HIS ESCAPE. 231
Mohawks in sickness, whom he taught to look to God for
forgiveness and grace. As the slave of savages he attended
hunting and fishing parties, till at last when at Fort Orange,
now Albany, he heard that he was to be put to death on his
return. The Dutch urged him to escape, promising him pro
tection. During the night he reached a vessel lying in the
North River, near the Fort, but the Indians, on discovering
their loss, became so menacing, that he was taken ashore, to
be given up, if necessary, to save the lives of the Dutch.
The Mohawks were, however, finally appeased, and the mis
sionary, who had been confined with great discomfort, was
taken down to the fort on Manhattan Island, around which
had clustered a few cabins, the commencement of the great
city of New York. In New Amsterdam, as the place was
then called, Father Jogues found but two Catholics, the Por
tuguese wife of a soldier, and an Irishman, recently from
Maryland. His sufferings evoked the sympathy of all the
Dutch, from their director, William Kieft, and the minister,
Dominie Megapolensis, to the poorest. The Director of the
Colony gave him passage in a small vessel he was dispatching
to Holland, but the missionary had opportunity for addi
tional suffering, and after being driven upon the English
coast, reached his native land, just in time to celebrate the
feast of Christmas.
The future State of New York had thus been traversed
from north to south by a great and heroic priest. Another
soon followed him in the same path of suffering.
At the close of April, 1644, Father Joseph Bressani, a
native of Rome, who had been two years on the Canada mis
sion, soon after leaving Three Rivers with a Huron party,
also fell into the hands of the Mohawks. This priest was
not severely maltreated till his captors met a war party, when
he was cruelly beaten with clubs, but on arriving at a large
232 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
fishing village, the prisoners were compelled to run the
gauntlet. Father Bressani's hand was cloven open ; he was
stabbed and burned all over his body, indeed his hands were
burned no less than eighteen times ; a stake was driven through
his foot, his hair and beard
Htorn out by the roots. On
H/ ^7*ifl/ dt)fK~4\Qj*4 reaching Ossernenon his
WCTe ren6Wed 5 ^
FAC-SIMILE OF SIGNATURE OF FATHER
FRANCIS j. BRESSANI. left thumb and two fingers
of the right hand were cut
off ; but the council of the tribe spared his life, and gave him
to an old woman. His terrible wounds and ulcers brought
him nearly to the grave ; but he rallied and was taken to the
Dutch, who, effecting his ransom, sent him also to Europe.
He arrived in Kochelle November 15, 1644. '
Father Jogues, honored in France as a martyr of Christ,
had but one desire, and it was to return to his mission. He
solicited from the Sovereign Pontiff permission to say mass
with his mutilated hands, and it was given in words that
have become historic : " Indignum esse Christi martyrem
Christi non bibere sanguinem." He sailed from Rochelle in
the spring of 1644, and was stationed at Montreal. Sum
moned thence in July, he attended negotiations with the
Mohawks at Three Rivers, where peace waj concluded, but
its ratification was delayed. In May, 1646, Father Jogues
and John Bourdon were sent to the Mohawk country to rat
ify it firmly. Passing through Lake George, to which he
gave the name of " Lac St. Sacrement," as he reached it
on the feast of Corpus Christi, Father Jogues, with his
companion, arrived at the Mohawk castles, and peace was
1 Father Bressani relates his own sufferings in his " Breve Relazione,"
Macerata, 1653; in French, Montreal, 1852; see also "Relation de la
Nouvelle France," 1644, ch. 9.
FATHER ISAAC JOGUES.S.J
K. AURIESVILLE, N.Y. OCT. I 8 TH
234 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
His intercession was invoked in Canada and France, and
miraculous favors were ascribed to him. The narrative of
his sufferings and death was drawn up under the authority
of the Archbishop of Rouen, and attested by oath to serve
in any process for his canonization. In the Catholic body
that now permeates the great population of the Republic,
devotion to this early priest has become general ; and the
third Plenary Council in Baltimore, in November, 1884, for
mally petitioned the Yicar of Christ that the cause of his
canonization might be introduced.1
Contemporaneous with this effort from Canada to establish
the Church on the Mohawk, more consoling results were
seen in Maine. The Recollects of the province of Aquitaine,
in France, came over in 1619 to attend the establishments
begun in Acadia by sedentary fishery and fur companies
1 "Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1642 ; 1643, ch. 12, 14 ; 1647, ch.
4-7; Creuxius, " Historia Canadensis," pp. 338-500; Tanner, " Societas
Militans," Prague, 1675, p. 510 ; " Concilium Plenarium Baltiniorense
III," Baltimore, 1886, p. Ixiv. This servant of God was born at Orleans,
France, of a family still honored there, January 10, 1607. Entering a
Jesuit college at the age of ten, he solicited entrance into the Society of
Jesus and began his novitiate October 24, 1624. As novice and as scholas
tic, student and teacher, he was regarded as a model. Considering himself
as one of little ability for learning, he solicited a foreign mission, and
having been assigned to Canada, was ordained in 1636 to be sent to that
severe field. He evinced skill in acquiring a knowledge of the Huron
character and language, and was a patient, successful, uncomplaining
missioner, ready for any peril. In the hour of trial he showed the heroic
degree to which he had ascended by his life of prayer and union with
God. His life has been written by Father Felix Martin, S.J. Paris,
1873 ; New York, 1885. His writings, including a narrative of his cap
tivity, a notice of Rene Goupil, and an account of New Netherland in
1642, have been published in a volume of the " Collections of the Xew
York Historical Society." The site of Ossernenon has been identified
by the exhaustive topographical studies of General John S. Clark, of
Auburn, and it has been acquired by the Society of Jesus. A pilgrim
age to the spot took place in August, 1884, when the little chapel was
opened.
a
Is
is
»
s 3
3 ^
3 ?
S f
> a
?
d •
I .*
5?
§ i
§ I
S i.
236 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
founded at Bordeaux. Their chief station and chapel were
on St. John's River, and several Fathers labored in that dis
trict till 1624, one dying of hardship in the woods. They
then retired to Quebec, probably crossing part of Maine on
the way.1 Though they resumed their missions, they were
driven out by the English in 1628 ; but even before the res
toration of Canada to France, Recollect Fathers from the
province of Aquitaine were again sent out in 1630." Three
years afterward, however, Cardinal Richelieu gave orders for
their recall, and committed the Acadian mission to the Fa
thers of the Capuchin Order.3
Of the extent of their labors there is no doubt. The Capu
chins of the province of Paris, accepting the field assigned
to them, sent missionaries who attended the French along the
coast from Chaleurs Bay to the Kennebec. Their country
men constituted a floating population — of small proportion
in winter, but swelling in summer to thousands — as is the
case to this day at Saint Pierre and Miquelon.4
The conversion of the Indians was one of the main objects
of the mission, and the establishment of a seminary for the
instruction of the young natives was especially provided for.
Cardinal Richelieu had in 1635 become a partner in a com
pany for settling Acadia, and in 1640 he transferred all his
1 Le Clercq, "Establishment of the Faith," i., pp. 199, 227.
2 Champlain, "Voyages" (Prince edn.), i., p. 298.
3 Faillon, " Histoire de la Colonie FranQaise," i., p. 280 ; Letter of Bou-
thillier, secretary of state, March 16, 1633, cited by Moreau, "Histoire
de 1'Acadie Franpoise," Paris, 1873, p. 131 ; Faillon, " Histoire de la
Colonie Francaise," i., p. 280. D'Aulnay received the Capuchins, but
La Tour retained Recollect Fathers till his open mockery of the Cath
olic religion compelled them to withdraw in January, 1645 ; Moreau,
pp. 131, 211.
4 " Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1651, pp. 14-15; Charlevoix,
" History of New France," ii., p. 202, says Druillettes found the Capu-
chins on the Kennebec, but the " Relation" of 1647 makes this doubtful.
THE CAPUCHINS IN MAINE.
237
rights to the Capuchin Fathers as a fund for the foundation
and maintenance of this Indian school, so that the great Car
dinal of France was actively interested in the Christian edu
cation of K"ew England Indians long before Plymouth or
Massachusetts Bay or the British rulers had paid any atten
tion to it.1
The centre of the mission was at Port Royal, but there
were stations attended by the Capuchins as far east as
I- •*-! ~w .,' :**•: »...?:• T •• iTT7. ••- - •"-- .:
FAC-SIMILE OF COPPER-PLATE FROM FOUNDATION OF CHAPEL OF OUR
LADY OF HOLT HOPE, FOUND IN 1863.
the Kennebec' and Penobscot. Among those who were sta
tioned at the French post of Pentagoet on the Penobscot
1 F. Pacificus de Proving, " Relazione," March 9, 1644, MS.
2 Moreau, " Histoire de 1'Acadie Francaise," pp. 137, 164, 167. D'Aul-
nay was eventually selected to administer the revenues of the portion
belonging to the Capuchins. Father Leonard of Chartres for baptizing
a chifd which, with its mother, was in danger of death, was mortally
wounded by an Indian. Before they could reach the hospice with the
dying Capuchin, the post was captured by the English, and he was taken
to a neighboring island, where he expired. See " Bullarium Capuccino-
238 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
may be named Father Leo of Paris, Father Cosmas de Mante,
Father Bernardine de Crespy, and the Lay Brother Elzear
de St. Florentin. Their chapel, which bore the title of Our
Lady of Holy Hope, was evidently reared not far from the
lower fort at the present town of Castine, for in the autumn
of 1863 a copper-plate was found but little below the surface
of the soil, which bore an inscription proving that it had
once been in the corner-stone of the Catholic chapel. It ran
thus :— " 1648 : 8 Jun : F. LEO PARISIN CAPVC : Miss POSVI
HOC FVNDTM IN HNKEM ~NltM DiLE SANCT.E SPEI." " On the
8th of June, 1648, I, Friar Leo of Paris, Capuchin mission
ary, laid this corner-stone in honor of Our Lady of Holy
Hope." It was apparently one of the last acts of this mis
sionary, for in October of the same year his post was filled
by Father Cosmas de Mante.
While the Capuchin Fathers were thus engaged at Penta-
goet, the Abnaki Indians on the Kennebec, who had through
kindred Algonquin tribes visited the French at Quebec, asked
for missionaries. As they at a later period told the people
of New England, when they went to Canada they were not
asked whether they had any furs, but whether they had been
taught to worship the true God.
The Superior of the Jesuit Mission took the matter into
consideration, and on the same day, August 21, 1646, that it
was decided to send Father Isaac Jogues to the Mohawk, it
was also unanimously agreed that Father Gabriel Druillettes
should proceed with the Abnakis to found on the Kennebec
the Mission of the Assumption. He left Sillery August
rum," v., p. 28; F. Ignatius of Paris, "Brevis . . . descriptio," MS.;
"Eloges des Illustres Capucins de la Ville de Paris," MS. This last
gives his death as in 1649, but it was more probably in 1655. The " An-
nales des Peres Capucins," in the Mazarin library, unfortunately has no
portion devoted to the Acadian mission.
F. DRUILLETTES IN MAINE. 239
29th, accompanied by Claude, a good Christian Indian, to
winter with the Abnakis, and with his Indian guides, by
canoe and portage, he in time reached their village on the
Kennebec. Here he set to work to learn the language by
means of the Algon-
quin, which he had ^^^ ^^O^es Soc-??"
already acquired. The
. FAC-SEVIILE OF THE SIGNATURE OF FATHER
sick ne instructed as GABRIEL DRUILLETTES.
well as he could, and
children in danger of death were baptized. He visited an
English post on the river, and subsequently with his Indian
guides descended to the sea and coasted along to Pentagoet.
The Superior of the Capuchins, Father Ignatius of Paris, and
his associates received the Jesuit Father at their hospice with
every mark of affection, and Druillettes, after a short stay,
returned to his mission, with a letter from the French com
mandant at Pentagoet to the English authorities.
A league above the English post on the Kennebec the
Abnakis gathered in a little village, consisting of fifteen
communal houses. Here they erected a little plank chapel
in their style for the missionary. As he could by this time
speak the language with some fluency, he taught them the
necessity of believing in God, the Creator of mankind, the
rewarder of the good, and the punisher of the wicked. He
impressed on them above all to renounce the use of liquors
offered them by traders, to avoid quarrels, and to throw aside
the manitous in which each one confided. Following them
in their winter hunt he continued his instructions in the
fundamental truths of Christianity, and taught them the or
dinary prayers which he had translated into their language.
After revisiting the English post he returned to Quebec
in June.1 He fully expected to continue his mission ; but
1 " Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1647, ch. x. (Quebec ed., pp. 51-
240 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
he was soon followed by another Indian party who bore a
letter from the Capuchins, deprecating the establishment of
a mission in territory specially assigned to them. The Su
perior of the Jesuit Missions in Canada at once relinquished
a field that seemed full of promise.1
But the revolt of La Tour against orders from France and
the consequent struggle between him and the Sieur Aulnay
de Charnisay, in whose district the Capuchins were, menaced
all the French establishments, for La Tour obtained aid from
the English at Boston, though d' Aulnay sent an envoy there,
a Mr. Marie, whom the people of Massachusetts supposed to
be one of ihjd Capuchin Fathers.2
Foreboding apparently the close of their mission amid
these distracting scenes, Fathers Cosmas de Mante and Ga
briel de Joinville visited Canada, and were in 1648 at the
Indian mission at Sillery.3 The former, evidently con
vinced by the results he witnessed, addressed the Jesuit Su
perior, begging him, in most touching terms, to renew the
Abnaki mission and give the poor Indians and others all the
assistance his courageous and untiring charity could afford.4
But it was not till two years later that the Society of Jesus
could take steps to continue the Mission of the Assumption.
56) ; " Journal des Jesuites," pp. 44, 63, 88 ; Creuxius, " Historia Gana-
densis," p. 483.
1 "Journal des Jesuites," 1647, July 3-4, p. 91.
"Murdoch, "Nova Scotia," Halifax, 1865, i., pp. 105, 107. Indians
of St. John's River, incited by La Tour, attacked one of d'Aulnay's
sloops, carrying off a soldier and one of the Capuchin Fathers, killing
the soldier. Moreau, p. 155. The Letters Patent of the King to d' Aulnay
de Charnisay, February, 1647, in the " Collection de Manuscrits," Que
bec, 1883, pp. 120-24, speak highly of his establishment of the Capuchin
missions and schools.
3 "Registre de Sillery," cited by Taiuguay, "Repertoire General," pp.
41-2.
4 " Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1651, p. 14.
A JESUIT IN BOSTON. 241
In 1650 Father Gabriel Druillettes was again granted to
the prayers of the Abnakis, who had year after year solic
ited his return. On the last day of August, though spent
with a laborious winter mission on the shores of the gulf, he
took up his staff to accompany the Indians to their lodges on
the Kennebec. The patient, self-denying Jesuit, went also
in a new character. He bore letters accrediting him to the
governing powers in New England, with whom the Canadian
authorities proposed a free intercolonial trade, and to whose
humanity they appealed for aid or volunteers, to check the
Iroquois who menaced all that was Christian. Four-and-
twenty days of hardship and suffering brought the mission
ary to Norridgewalk, where he was received with rapture.
The chief cried out as he embraced the missionary : " I see
well that the Great Spirit who rules in the heavens, vouch
safes to look on us with favor, since He sends our patriarch
back to us."
"With souls thus prepared his mission labors were full of
consolation. Visiting the English post to forward letters
announcing the nature of the commission confided to him,
he continued his priestly work till November, when he set
out for Boston with Noel Negabamat, the Chief of Sillery,
embarking at Merry Meeting Bay, with John "Winslow, whom
the missionary calls his Pereira, alluding to the friend of St.
Francis Xavier.
At Boston Major-General Gibbons received him courte
ously. Father Druillettes says : " He gave me the key of a
room in his house, where I could in all liberty say my prayers
and perform the exercises of my religion." As he would
naturally carry his missionary chapel service with him, we
may infer that Father Druillettes offered tlje holy sacrifice in
Boston in December, 1650. He delivered his credentials,
urging the cause of his countrymen and the claims of his
242 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
neophytes, which he pleaded also at Plymouth. At Roxbury
he visited Eliot, who pressed him to remain under his roof
till spring, but winter had no terrors for him. After receiv
ing a reply from the governor and presenting his case to the
leading men, he sailed early in January for the Kennebec,
and in the following month resumed his missionary labors.
He returned to Canada in June, but was again accred
ited in a more formal manner as envoy with Mr. Godefroy
to the Commissioners of the New England Colonies, who
were to meet at New Haven. Thither the missionary and
his associate proceeded, and in September, 1651, the Cath
olic priest pleaded in vain for a brotherhood of nations,
and for a combined action against a destroying heathen
power. The visit of a priest to New England, whose Chris
tian civilization, three years before, had embodied its claims
to the respect of posterity in a law expelling every Jesuit
and dooming him to the gallows if he returned, is, in itself,
a most curious episode.1
After concluding his diplomatic functions in Boston and
New Haven, he returned to his little flock on the Kennebec,
and spent the winter instructing and grounding them in the
doctrines of Christianity. After many hardships he reached
Quebec in March, 1652.2
For some years after these missions of Father Druillettes
on the Kennebec, no further attempt was made to establish
the church at Norridgewalk, but the Abnakis kept the faith
alive by visits to Sillery and other missions in Canada.
1 Druillettes, " Narre du Voyage," 1650-1, Albany, 1855 ; " Recueil de
Pieces sur la Negotiation entre la Nouv. France et la Nouv. Angleterre,"
New York, 1866 ; Charlevoix, " History of New France," ii., pp. 201-18 ;
Hazard, "Collections," ii., pp. 183-4; Hutchinson, "Collection," i., p.
269.
2 " Journal des Jesuites," 30 Mars, 1652.
JESUIT MARTYRS. 243
Nor were the Capuchin missions to be much longer con
tinued.
Brother Elzear de St. Florentin spent ten years in St. Pe
ter's fort at Pentagoet, becoming thoroughly versed in the
Indian language, and gaining many by his instructions, which
his exemplary life corroborated. In 1655 the Very Rev.
Father Bernardine de Crespy, the missionary at Pentagoet,
was carried off to England by an expedition sent out by
Cromwell,1 and the Catholic French on the coast, as well as
the Indian converts, were deprived of the services of their
religion.
The war declared by the Iroquois on the French and their
allies, when the Mohawks so treacherously made Father
Jogues a prisoner and put him to death, was carried on with
the greatest vigor ; the Montagnais of the St. Lawrence, the
Algonquins of the Ottawa, the Attikamegues, were nearly
annihilated, and the great Huron, Tionontate, and Neuter
Nations, though living in palisaded castles, saw town after
town captured by their daring enemy. The upper country
became a desert ; the surviving Hurons and Tionontates fled
to Lake Superior or descended to Quebec to seek a refuge
under the canons of the French. The little colony of Canada
suffered fearfully. The Huron missions were destroyed,
Fathers Anthony Daniel, John de Brebeuf, Gabriel Lalemant,
Charles Garnier, and Noel Chabanel perishing amid their
flocks, Brebeuf and Lalemant undergoing at the stake the
utmost fury of the savages. Father James Buteux was slain
among his faithful Attikamegues ; the secular priests, Rev.
1 F. Ignatius of Paris, "Breuis ac dilucida Missionis Accadiae Descrip-
tio," MS. ; Moreau, " Histoire de 1'Acadie," p. 263. In the struggle of
d'Auluay, who endeavored to carry out the orders and decisions of tri
bunals in France, and of the Court, against La Tour, the Capuchins
labored in the interest of peace, on one occasion obtaining liberty for La
Tour and his \vife. Moreau, p. 160.
244 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
Messrs. Lemaitre and Yignal, were killed in the neighbor
hood of Montreal ; Father Joseph Poncet, while engaged in
a work of charity, was captured in August, 1653, by a band
of Mohawks, was hurried through the forest trails to their
village, undergoing
privation, hardship,
and great torture,
F AC-SIMILE OF SIGNATURE OF FATHER JOSEPH , .
PONCET. hl8 halld8 bemS
frightfully lacerated
and burned. At the Hudson he and his companion were
stripped, and forced to run the gauntlet of a party whom they
encountered. At the Mohawk village the missionary was ex
posed on a scaffold, and the Indians made a boy, not more
than five years old, hack off the second finger of his left hand,
and then staunch the blood with a hot coal. Taken the next
day to another town, this missionary was burned by day with
pipes and firebrands at any one's fancy, and hung up at night
in ropes. The council called to decide on his fate spared his
life, and gave him to an old woman. The Dutch of Fort
Orange, to whom he was taken, dressed his wounds. Here he
met Radisson, afterwards famous in Canadian annals, who had
been taken prisoner also, and a Belgian from Brussels, both of
whom approached the sacrament of penance. Meanwhile it
had been decided by the Mohawk sachems to restore the
missionary to the French and propose peace. In October
he set out with a party, and after a laborious march reached
Montreal.1
Thus, at a moment when the prospect of the Church in
Canada seemed beset on all sides by danger and difficulty,
when any extension toward the Atlantic or the great un
known West seemed impossible, peace came not only with
1 "Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1653, ch. 4 (Quebec ed., pp. 9-17).
FATHER PONCET. 245
startling suddenness, but in such a form that the way for the
gospel was opened into the very heart of the Confederacy
which had hitherto been the great obstacle. The blood of
the martyred missionaries had pleaded, and not in vain, for
the conversion of the Iroquois.
c.
FAC-SIMILES OP THE SIGNATURES OF FATHERS LE MOYNE, RAGUENEAU.
LE MERCIER, AND GARREAU.
CHAPTER II.
THE JURISDICTION OF THE ARCHBISHOPS OF ROUEN THE FIRST
ONONDAGA MISSION — MGR. LATAL, VICAR-APOSTOLIC — THE
MISSION ON THE UPPER LAKES. 1653-1661.
THE extension of the Catholic Church of Canada to our
present territory in a permanent manner, is coeval with the
establishment and recognition of the jurisdiction of the
Archbishops of Rouen over the portion of North America
which the adventurous sons of France were exploring and
claiming for their monarch. The earlier missionaries came
in most cases with faculties from the diocese of Rouen. As
settlements grew up, they were vaguely regarded as part of
that bishopric, but no jurisdictional act recognized the trans
atlantic authority of the French prelate. As religious com
munities of women arose, however, the question of episcopal
authority required a distinct settlement.
Accordingly the Jesuit missionaries in Canada sent Father
Yimont to France, and application was made to the Most
Rev. Francis de Harlay, Archbishop of Rouen, who, in 1647,
appointed Father Jerome Lalemant, the Superior of the
Missions in Canada, his Vicar-General. These powers were
renewed by his successor, Francis de Harlay Champallon, in
1653, and in that year a Bull of Jubilee from the Pope was
publicly proclaimed in Canada by the authority of the Arch
bishop of Rouen, and accompanied by his pastoral. As the
Church spread in Maine, New York, Michigan, Wisconsin,
to use the names now borne by these districts, the authority
(246)
LE MOYNE AT ONONDAGA. 247
of the See of Rouen was recognized till the Holy See formed
the French colony into a vicariate.1
There was a general movement among the Iroquois can
tons in favor of peace with the French. Though war parties
were in the field, the Onondagas proposed negotiations, and
when their advances were favorably received, they induced
the Orieidas and Cayugas to adopt the same course : the
Mohawks, who had suffered heavily by war, sent back Father
Poncet, so that all but the Senecas on the extreme west were
in accord.2
Human policy, the wish to gain time to crush other
enemies, discontent with their Dutch neighbors, may have
had their influence, but they do not altogether explain the
general desire of the Iroquois for peace.
The treaty was actually concluded, and it became necessary
to send some person to ratify it in the Iroquois cantons. The
envoy was to undertake the task which cost Father Isaac
Jogues his life. Yet there was no trouble in finding a Jesuit
to assume a peril-fraught position. Father Simon le Moyne
had succeeded to the Indian name of Isaac Jogues, and was
ready to follow his footsteps as envoy of peace to an Iroquois
canton. Putting his life into the hands of the Almighty, he
set out in July, 1654, with his Onondaga guides, ascending
the Saint Lawrence by paddling and portage to the great
lake, Ontario. Skirting its southern shore, he arrived at a
fishing village, where he found some of his old Huron
1 Faillon, " Histoire de la Colonie Francaise," i., p. 280, says that the
Jesuit Fathers who came over in 1633 applied to the Archbishop of
Rouen.
2 "Journal des Jesuites," August, 1653, pp. 185-7. The first attempt
to have a bishop's see established in Canada, emanated from the Rec
ollects. Faillon, i., p. 282 ; Le Clercq, " Establishment of the Faith," i.,
p. 339 ; Margry, "Documents," i., p. 15 ; the next was that of the Ven.
Mr. Olier, in 1656. Faillon, "Vie de M. Olier," Paris, 1853, ii., p. 504.
248 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
Christians, and heard the confession of his old Tiontate host.
Confessing, baptizing, the missionary envoy came at last in
sight of the Onoudaga castle, to be greeted with an unusual
welcome. In the solemn council he opened with a prayer in
Huron, easily followed by the Iroquois, in which he anathe
matized the evil spirits who should venture to disturb the
peace, then he prayed the angel guardians of the land to
speak to the hearts of the Five Nations, to the clans, the
families, the individuals he named ; then he delivered the
nineteen presents symbolizing as many words or propositions.
In reply the Onondaga sachems urged him to select a spot on
the banks of the lake for a French settlement, and confirmed
the peace. Everything encouraged the envoy priest. The
Onondagas seemed full of good-will ; their Christian captives
full of fervor. Father le Moyne returned with two precious
relics, a New Testament that had belonged to Father Brebeuf ,
and a prayer-book of Father Charles Gamier, both put to
death by the Iroquois. His favorable report filled the French
colony with exultation.1
To plant Christianity and civilization at Onondaga, was
the next step. Fathers Joseph Chaumonot and Claude
Dablon were selected, and leaving Quebec in September,
were received in pomp by the sachems, about a mile from the
Onondaga castles, on the 5th of November. A banquet was
spread for the priests, who were welcomed by an orator in an
eloquent address, to which Father Chaumonot replied in their
own language and style. Then they were conducted, between
a welcoming line on either side, to the great cabin prepared
for them. As it was Friday, they had to decline the juicy
bear-meat cooked for their repast, but it was at once replaced
by beaver and fish. That very night a council was held, and
1 " Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1654, ch. vi., (Quebec edition, p.
11.)
FATHER CHAUMONOT. 249
the essential presents were exchanged. The erection of a
chapel for Catholic worship was to be one of the first steps.
The sachems told Chaumonot that as they had ascertained
that the most gratifying intelligence they could send that fall
to Onontio, that is, the Governor of Canada, would be that
Onondaga had a chapel for the believers, they would, to
please him, provide for it as soon as possible. The missionary
replied that they had discovered the secret of winning the
governor's heart, and gaining him over completely.
For some days there were interviews, discussions, and in
terchange of presents, the missionaries availing themselves
of the opportunity to visit the sick. They visited the Salt
Spring near Lake Ganentaa, which had been selected as the
site of the proposed French settlement. On the same hill
was another spring of pure water. The site was a delightful
one, easy of access from all directions.
On Sunday, November 14th, they consecrated their work
by offering the holy sacrifice of the mass at a temporary
altar in the cabin of Teotouharason, an influential woman
who had visited Quebec and now openly declared herself in
favor of Christianity.
The next day the Sachems convened the nation in a public
place that all might see and hear. Then Father Chaumonot
prepared to deliver the wampum belts of which he was the
bearer.
Father Chaumonot, who had adapted his natural eloquence
to the Indian mind, gave belt after belt, each with a symboli
cal meaning which he explained. " The applause was general
and every mind was on the alert to see and hear what came
next. This was the finest wampum belt of all which Father
Chaumonot displayed. He declared all that he had thus far
said was but to assuage and soothe their evils ; that he could
not prevent their falling sick and dying ; yet he had a
250 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
sovereign remedy for all kinds of
evils ; and that it was this properly
which brought him to their coun
try ; and that they had displayed
their intelligence in coming to
Quebec to seek him ; that this
great remedy was the Faith, which
he came to announce to them,
which they would undoubtedly re
ceive as favorably as they had done
wisely in soliciting it." Then walk
ing up and down he eloquently
portrayed the truth and beauty of
Christianity, and called upon them
to accept it. His address, the first
eloquent presentation of the Chris
tian faith to the Five Kations at
their great council fire, was heard
with deep attention, interrupted
only by the applauding cries of the
sachems and chiefs.1
How deeply the words of the
missionary impressed the sachems,
may be seen by the fact that the
very wampum belt held up that
day by Father Chaumonot, is still
preserved among the treasures of
the Iroquois League, at Onondaga,
1 "Relation de la Nouvelle France,"
1656 (Quebec edition, p. 16).
CHAUMONOT 8 BELT.
MISSIONARY BELT.
HIS WAMPUM BELT. 251
showing in its work of wampum beads, man, the onkwe ouwe
led to the Cross of Christ.1
The Mohawks meanwhile had made proposals of peace, and
Father le Moyne had been promised to them. Wearied by
his past labors, a stout missionary might have pleaded for
rest, but he shrank from no work of duty. He accepted the
new charge with alacrity. Leaving Montreal on the 17th of
August, 1656, with twelve Mohawks and two Frenchmen,
they journeyed on foot a month before the missionary entered
the Mohawks' castles, where he was cordially welcomed. He
delivered the presents of the French governor, and in Mo
hawk invoked God to punish any one who violated the
solemn pledges of the treaty. His presents were repaid by
those of the canton, and peace was thus firmly established.
Then, as missionary, he conferred baptism on the children of
some captive Christians ; he visited the Dutch settlements,
where he was courteously received, though the minister
listened with doubt to the accounts of salt springs and other
peculiarities of the country the missionary had visited.*
1 This belt is perfect, although evidently ancient. It is seven beads
wide and three hundred and fifty long. The figures are white on a dark
ground. We give an accurate drawing of it from a photograph kindly
furnished by Gen. John S. Clark, of Auburn, who is convinced that it is
that used by Chaumonot. In Dr. Hawley's " Early Chapters of Cayuga
History," p. 19, he says: "The legend of this belt as explained at this
day, is as follows : A great many years ago, a company from Canada
presented this belt, desiring that missionaries from the Roman Catholic
Church might be settled among the Five Nations, and erect a chapel at
Onondaga, and that the road (represented by the white stripe) should be
continually kept open and free between them." We show also another
belt evidently of missionary origin, preserved by the Onondagas, ancient,
but inferior in workmanship. See Powell, " Second Annual Report of
the Bureau of Ethnology," Washington, 1883, p. 252.
- "Relation de la Xouvelle France," 1656, ch. i. (Quebec edition, pp.
2-4) ; O'Callaghan, " History of New Netherland," ii., p. 303 ; Marie de
rincarnatiou, "Lettres Historiques," Lettre, October 12, 1655.
252 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
Meanwhile the missionaries went about freely among the
people, meeting many old Huron converts, now slaves or
adopted into the Onondaga nation. There was abundant
work for their zeal in reviving or encouraging the faith in
these poor exiles. When the Catholic world was celebrating
the dedication of the grandest temple to the Most High, St.
Peter's church at Eome, a bark chapel was reared at Onon
daga. " It is true," writes Father Dablon, " that for all mar
ble and all precious metals we employed only bark. As soon
as it was erected it was sanctified by the baptism of three
children, to whom the way to heaven was opened as wide
beneath those vaults of bark, as to those held over font be
neath vaults fretted with gold and silver." St. John the
Baptist had been adopted as the patron of the mission, and it
was doubtless under his invocation that this first chapel on
the soil of New York was dedicated.
But the chapel was soon too small for those who gathered
to listen to the doctrines of Christianity proclaimed in their
own tongue by the eloquent Chaumonot.1
But the sachems of Onondaga wished a French settlement,
and expressed dissatisfaction because no colonists arrived.
To obtain them and so dispel all doubts, Father Dablon re
turned to Canada.
There a serious consultation was held. It was generally
believed that the -Onondagas were endeavoring to draw the
French into their country only to massacre them : but un
less some went, the cantons would declare war. Accordingly
fifty Frenchmen under Mr. Dupuis, commandant of the fort
at Quebec, left that city with all necessaries for a settlement,
accompanied by Father Dablon, the Superior of the mission,
1 "Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1656, ch. vii. xiii., (Quebec ed.,
pp. 20, 35).
OUR LADY OF GANENTAA. 253
F. Francis le Mercier, two other priests of the Society, Rene
Menard and James Fremin, with two lay brothers.1
They set out aniid the anxious fears of their countrymen,
their white banner with the name of Jesus betokening the ob
ject of their emigration. After a tedious journey, during which
they suffered from hunger, the colonists on the llth of July
reached the spot on Lake Onondaga which Fathers Chaumonot
and Dablon had selected, and where the sachems of the tribe
awaited them. The French canoes moved over the waters of
the lake amid a salvo from their five cannon. A grand
reception and banquet followed. The next day a solemn Te
Deum was chanted for their safe arrival, and possession was
taken of the country in the name of Jesus Christ, dedicating
it to Him by the holy sacrifice of the mass. On Sunday all
received holy communion, to fulfil a vow made amid the dan
gers of their route. After the usual round of receptions and
banquets to conform to the Indian custom, the French set to
work in earnest to erect the blockhouse of Saint Mary of Ga-
nentaa, as the headquarters of the settlers and of the mission
aries. It stood on a hill from which flowed a stream of salt
water, and one limpid, fresh, and pure. Before the close of
August the house was well advanced, and the missionaries
had reared in the Indian village of Onondaga a regular
chapel, apparently a larger and more solid structure than that
raised the year before.*
Fields were prepared and planted by the French with
wheat, Indian corn, and vegetables, and places arranged for
the swine and poultry which they had brought.3
'"Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1657, ch. 4, (Quebec ed., pp.
7-9). Marie de 1'Incarnation, "Lettres Historiques," p. 531, Lettre Oct.
4, 1658.
2 " Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1657, ch. 5 (Quebec ed., p. 18).
3Radisson, "Voyages," p. 118. St. Mary's of Ganentaawas just north
THE JESUIT WELL, GANENTAA. FROM A DRAWING BY A. L. RAWSON.
CAYUGA AND SENECA MISSION. 255
As soon as the commencement of the mission had been
laid at Onondaga, the missionaries prepared to extend their
sphere of action. Father Chaumonot towards the close of
August, 1656, set out for Cayuga, and leaving Father Rene
Menard there, pushed on to the Seneca country. The mis
sionary of the Cayugas was not warmly received at Goio-
goiien, Huron apostates having created prejudice against the
messengers of the faith, but four days after his arrival a
bark chapel was erected, draped with finely wrought mats
and pictures of our Lord and His Blessed Mother.1 Then his
work began ; instructions were given daily, the sick and dy
ing visited, calumnies refuted, difficulties explained. Some
listened ; one a warrior, who had given wampum belts to
rescue Fathers Bre'beuf and Lalemant, but which the war
chiefs subsequently returned.
Father Chaumonot at Gandagan, a Seneca town, disposed
the sachems to favor the cause of Christianity and. to main
tain the peace ; another town, Saint Michael's, made up al
most entirely of Hurons, welcomed the priest, many of the
exiles having adhered to the faith though long deprived of
a pastor.2
The two missionaries also visited Oneida, although warned
of the railroad bridge on lot 106, on the north side of Lake Onondaga,
about midway between the two extremities. "The Jesuit's Well," of
which an illustration is given from a drawing by A. L. Rawson, with its
accompanying salt spring, marks the spot. The Onondaga village where
the chapel was erected, was twelve miles distant, two miles south of the
present village of Manlius. Gen. John S. Clark in Hawley's "Early
Chapters," p. 33.
1 Gen. John S. Clark, who has so carefully studied the sites of Indian
towns, places Goiogouen three and a half miles south of Union Springs,
near Great Gully Brook. Rev. Dr. Hawley's " Early Chapters of Ca
yuga History," p. 21.
• " Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1657, ch. 15-16 (Quebec ed., pp.
42-6).
256 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
that a plot was forming against their lives ; but they went
on and boldly announced the gospel.
Onondaga was, however, the central mission and that which
afforded most consoling hope. Here they found more per
sons ready to listen to their teaching, more who in sickness
placed all their hope in Our Lord when He was made known
to them. The old Christians and converts were so numerous
that three Sodalities of the Blessed Virgin were established,
one Onondaga, one Huron, and one of the Xeuter Xation.
They all assembled in the chapel on Palm Sunday, 1657, be
fore daybreak, and prepared for mass by reciting the rosary.1
Yet the lives of the missionaries hung by a thread. "While
Father Ragueneau was on his way from Canada to Onon
daga with a party from that canton accompanied by some
Hurons, who had agreed to settle there, an Onondaga chief
tomahawked a Huron woman, and his companions massacred
the men of the tribe, treating the women and children as
slaves, stripping them of all their goods.2 The missionary
and a lay brother reached Onondaga alive, but felt that they
were prisoners. If this nation had ever really been sin
cere in their advances to the French, the jealousy of the Mo
hawks and Oneidas, who wished all trade to pass through
their country, soon by specious reasoning incited the Onon-
clagas to join them in renewing hostilities against the French.
While Father le Moyne was on the Mohawk, and the mis
sionaries and French at Onondaga, the Oneidas slew and
scalped three colonists near Montreal. Governor d' A.illeboust
acted with a decision that saved the lives of the missionaries.
He seized all the Iroquois to be found in the colony and put
them in irons. They saw that they were to deal with a man
1 " Relation de la Nouvelle France," ch. 19, p. 47.
2Ib., ch. 22, pp. 54-6. Radisson, "Voyages," p. 119.
CLOSE OF THE MISSION. 257
with whom they could not trifle. One was allowed to re
turn and assure the Mohawks and Oneidas that the lives of
their tribesmen depended on the safe return of Father le
Moyne.
The position of the party at Onondaga was more serious,
but the arrival of some Indians from that tribe gave the gov
ernor the hostages he desired ; but he could not send an ex
pedition to save the French. The winter wore away, the mis
sionaries fait] if ally discharging their duties, the French
settlers looking forward to the opening of navigation for an
effort to escape. Flat-boats and canoes were secretly con
structed, and at last one of the French gave a grand banquet
which gathered all the men of the Onondaga tribe. It was
one that required the guests to eat everything set before
them, and the French lavished their provisions to glut the
guests, while music was kept up to drown all noise. At last
far in the night the Onondagas returned to their village, and
soon sleep held the whole tribe. Then the French embarked
in haste, breaking a way through the ice, down the Oswego
to the lake, and coasting along they finally reached Quebec.1
So ended the first French settlement and the first Catholic
mission in New York, which had lasted from November 5,
1655, to March 20, 1658, and which had erected chapels in
the Onondaga towns, and among the Cayugas.
No sooner had peace with the Iroquois allowed the Catho
lic Church to extend its influence into the territory of the
fierce Indians who had slaughtered priest and neophyte and
catechumen, than it sought also to penetrate to the utmost
limit then known to the French, the country of the Ottawas
on Lake Superior, of the very existence of which few Euro-
1 "Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1658. Letter of F. Ragueneau,
pp. 2-6; Radisson, "Voyages," pp. 123-134.
17
258 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
peans, few even of the English settlers on the Atlantic coast,
had the remotest idea.
At the first gleam of peace with the Iroquois, flotillas of
canoes from Lake Superior made their way by the devious
route of Lake Huron and the Ottawa to Montreal and Que
bec. The Jesuit missionaries heard from these Indians of
other tribes, the Winnebagoes, Illinois, Sioux, Crees. They
resolved to plant the cross among them. The Ottawas asked
for missionaries, and when their flotilla was ready, Father
Leonard Garreau and Father Gabriel Druillettes were ap
pointed to accompany them on their long and difiicult voyage,
with Brother Louis le Boesme, destined to become the earli
est metal-worker in the West. As the flotilla was passing
the upper end of the island of Montreal it was attacked by a
Mohawk war-party. At the first volley Father Garreau fell,
his spine traversed by a ball. In this state he fell into the
hands of the Mohawks, who dragged him into a little stock
ade they had made, there to be stripped and left for three
days weltering in his blood. The Ottawas abandoned the
other missionary and hastened onward. The intended apostle
of the West was at last carried to Montreal, to expire the
same day, praying for his murderers, fortified with the sacra
ments, and edifying all by his patient heroism.1
The Church acting through the heroic regular clergy of
France, had made its almost superhuman efforts to gain a foot
hold in Maine, in New York, in Michigan, but in the summer
of 1658 the first signs of hope seemed blasted ; no permanent
advantage had been gained ; nowhere south of the St. Law
rence and the great lakes was the holy sacrifice offered, not a
single French priest resided at any point.
But the Church in Canada was at this time to receive new
"'Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1656, ch. xv.-xvi., pp. 38-43
(Quebec edition).
A BISHOP APPOINTED. 259
life and vigor by the formation of the colony into a Vicariate-
Apostolic confided to a bishop of eminent personal qualities
and of illustrious name. The Holy See requested by the
King of France to erect a bishopric in Canada, deemed best
after some consideration to establish a Vicariate- Apostolic.
Francis de Laval de Montigny, recommended by the king for
the Canadian bishopric, was preconised bishop inpartibus in-
jidellum in May, 1658, and on the 3d of June a bull was is
sued creating him bishop of Petrsea in the ecclesiastical
province of Heliopolis. There was at once an opposition in
France. The Archbishop of Eouen protested ; the parlement
at that city went so far as to defy the authority of the Holy
See, and forbid Mgr. Laval to exercise the functions of Vicar-
Apostolic in New France ; the bishop who was to consecrate
him declined to proceed. This conduct excited astonishment
at Rome, and after examining the question, the Pope decided
against the pretensions of the Archbishop of Rouen. A bull
was issued declaring Bishop Laval Vicar- Apostolic, but indi
rectly confirming all acts done in Canada under the authority
of the Archbishop of Rouen. Mgr. Laval was then conse
crated by the Pope's nuncio at Paris on the 8th of December,
1658, in the chapel of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Germain
des Pres, which was then not within the diocese of any
bishop. But the letters patent of the king showed a desire
to incorporate the future diocese in Canada with the French
hierarchy, and make Bishop Laval merely a vicar-general of
the Archbishop of Rouen, while the Holy See desired to
make him free from all control, and dependent directly on
Rome.
Gathering a few priests to aid in the work before him
in Canada, Bishop Laval disregarding the orders of the
French parlement, sailed from Rochelle, and reached Quebec
on the 16th of June, 1659. Although his coming had not
260 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
been announced, lie was received with all possible pomp,'
" as a comforting angel sent from heaven."
The Jesuit Fathers, who were still acting as parochial
clergy in all the settlements except Montreal, at once re
signed that portion of their work into the hands of the bishop,
devoting themselves henceforward to their college, sodalities,
and chapels in the colony, and to the Indian missions.2 Bishop
Laval's authority was universally recognized by the clergy
except one priest, who receiving a new appointment as Vicar-
General from the Archbishop of Rouen, attempted to ques
tion the jurisdiction of the Yicar- Apostolic. At a later date
Bishop Laval, in his endeavors to prevent the sale of liquor
to the Indians, drew on himself the hostility of the governors ;
but he always had the hearty support of the great mass of the
people settled in the country and of his clergy.
" Monseigneur de Laval," says the judicious Ferland,
" exercised a great influence over the destiny of Canada, both
directly by himself, and indirectly by the institutions which
he founded, as well as by the spirit he was able to infuse into
the clergy of his immense diocese. All who have spoken of
him agree in acknowledging that he possessed an elevated
piety and the finest qualities of mind and heart. Based on
profound conviction, and often required to crush evil at its
outset, to prompt and develop some noble project, his firm
ness yielded neither to the suggestions of friendship nor the
threats of hatred. Some reproach him with a firmness car
ried to stubbornness. On this earth no virtue is perfect ; he
may have been mistaken at times ; but it is better for the
1 Faillon, " Histoire de la Colonie Canadienne," ii, pp. 313-339 ; " Re
lation de la Nouvelle France," 1659, p. 1 ; Langevin, "Notice Biogra-
phique," Montreal, 1874, p. 9.
2 At a later period Frontenac complained of the Jesuits because they
would not do parochial duty among the French.
BISHOP LAVAL AND HIS WORK. 261
founder of society to err through excessive firmness than
from weakness. A vigorous hand was needed to guide in
the straight way the little nation just born 011 the banks of
the Saint Lawrence. If at the outset it had befallen him to
take a wrong direction, he would have swerved more and
more from the path of honor and duty as he advanced in his
career ; he could have been recalled to the true path only by
one of those severe chastisements which Providence employs
to purify nations." ! He entered at once on the exercise of
his episcopal functions, Confirmation and Holy Orders were
soon conferred for the first time in Canada, and the settlers
and their dusky allies bowed in reverence before the repre
sentative of the Episcopate, with whose blessing to animate
them they went forth fearlessly to face all dangers.
When a Catholic bishop thus reached Canada, he found
the colony on the brink of ruin, ravaged by armies of Tro-
quois against whom the most heroic bravery of the French
settlers seemed ineffectual ; but while he joined with the
civil authorities in appealing to the home government for
troops to protect the colony, he courageously undertook to
visit his vicariate from Gaspe to La Prairie. With the Su
perior of the Jesuit Fathers he projected new missions in the
distant West,
In the summer of 1660 a great flotilla reached Montreal
from the upper lakes, composed of Ottawas guided by two
Frenchmen, Groseillier and Radisson,2 and bearing several
years' accumulation of furs. Undismayed by the fate of
Father Garreau, the missionaries were ready to accompany
the Ottawas on their return. Bishop Laval, who saw the
1 " Cours d'Histoire du Canada," i., p. 449.
2 "Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1660, ch. 6, Quebec ed., p. 29;
"Journal des Jesuites," p. 287 ; See Radisson, "Voyages," pp. 134-172,
for his explorations and voyage down.
262 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
flotilla at Montreal, would gladly have gone in person.
Father Rene Menard, to whom the Cayugas had just sent
belts to urge him to revisit them, was selected for the Otta-
was with Father Charles Albanel, John Guerin, a devoted
servant of the mission, and six other Frenchmen ; hut the
canoe assigned to Father Albanel would not receive him, and
he was compelled to return.' Father Menard. fully conscious
of the hardships before him, writing a parting letter to a fel
low religious, said : " In three or four months you may put
me in the Memento of the Dead, considering the life these
people lead, my age and feeble health. Yet I felt so power
fully impelled, and I saw in this affair so little of nature's
prompting that I could not doubt that I should feel an
eternal remorse if I allowed the opportunity to pass." : Be
tween Three Rivers and Montreal, Father Menard, who had
set out in such
#*nWv^ ^YJroW^ Joc,;^^ tTc^ix haste that lie
FAC-SIMILE OF THE SIGNATURE OF RENE MENARD.
a proper supply
of clothing and other necessaries, met Bishop Laval, whose en
couraging words filled him with consolation. " Father," he
said, " every consideration seems to bid you remain here, but
God, who is stronger than all, wishes you in those parts." The
missionary was an old traveller, and had made many a jour
ney with Huron and Iroquois ; but the treatment he then
experienced was nothing compared to what he had to suffer
from the brutal Ottawas. They snatched his breviary from
his hand and flung it into the rapid stream. On another oc
casion they set him ashore, leaving him to clamber over
1 The " Relation" states that Groseillier and Radisson baptized many In
dian children in danger of death. " Relation," 1660, p. 12, and Radisson's
account, p. 160, seem to confirm it.
2 Letter of Aug. 27, 1660. " Rel.," 1660, p. 30.
MISSION OF ST. TERESA. 263
frightful rocks to overtake them. Half his day was spent
wading, his nights stretched on a rock without shelter or cov
ering, hunger at last was relieved only by " tripe de roche,"
or bits of deer-skin. After they entered Lake Superior, their
canoe was crushed by a falling tree, and the missionary and
three Indians were left to starve. At last some less brutal
Ottawas took them up, and on Saint Teresa's day, October
15th, Father Menard reached a large bay on the south shore
of Lake Superior ; and " here," he says, " I had the consola
tion of saying mass, which repaid me with usury for all my
past hardships. Here also I opened a mission." The spot of
this first mass and first mission on Lake Superior was at Old
Village Point, or Bikwakwenan on Keweenaw Bay, about
seven miles north of the present village of L'Anse.1
The nearest altar of the living God to that reared by this
aged and intrepid priest was that of the Sulpitians at Mon
treal, yet the altars at Santa Fe and St. Inigoes were but lit
tle more remote.
The aged priest stood alone in the heart of the continent,
with no fellow-priest and scarcely a fellow-man of European
race within a thousand miles of him.
He began his instructions, but few besides the aged and
infirm seemed inclined to listen. A good, industrious widow,
laboring to maintain her five children ; a noble young brave,
whose natural purity revolted against the debaucheries of his
nation, were the first fruits of those in the prime of life.
Testing his neophytes long and strictly, Father Menard ad
mitted few to baptism. " I would not," he wrote, " admit a
greater number, being contented with those whom I deemed
certain to persevere firmly in the faith during my absence ;
1 This is the result of V. Rev. Edward Jacket's careful study of the life
of Father Menard. The tribe, though classed under the general name
Ottawas by the French, were Chippewas.
264 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
for I do not know yet what will become of me, or whither I
shall betake myself." His care was attested by the fact
that Fathers Marquette, Allouez, and Nouvel subsequently
found converts of Father Menard adhering to the Christian
faith and life.
Keinouche, the chief to whose care the missionary had
been especially confided, proved to be a brutal, sensual man,
who finally drove Father Menard from his cabin, so that he
was compelled to rear a rude shelter for himself, and to seek
food as he might from the Indians or the rocks. Yet there
was no thought of abandoning his mission. " I should do
myself great violence were I to wish to descend from the
cross which God has prepared for me in my old days, in this
remote part of the world. There is not any desire in my
heart to revisit Three Kivers. I do not know what sort of
nails these are that fasten me to the adorable wood, but the
mere thought of any one approaching to take me down from
it makes me shudder." . ..." I can sincerely say that, in
spite of hunger, cold, and other discomforts, — almost unbe
coming detail, — I feel more content here in one day than I
experienced all my lifetime in whatever part of the world I
sojourned."
Amid all the hardships of a winter in a hovel of branches
on Lake Superior, Father Menard was acquiring all possible
information of the country and the tribes inhabiting it. He
heard of distant nations and proposed setting out to an
nounce the gospel to them. " It is my hope to die on the
way." But a call came from a tribe to whom the Jesuits
had already preached. A band of Tionontate-Hurons, fly
ing from the Iroquois, had reached the land of the Dakotas,
but acted so insolently as to provoke that warlike race. The
Tionontates. thoroughly worsted, retreated up a branch of the
Mississippi, called the Black Eiver, to its headwaters, where
DEATH OF F. MENARD. 26o
they were at this time in an almost starving condition.
Hearing that a Jesuit Father was on the shore of Lake Su
perior, they sent imploring him to visit them, the pagan por
tion promising to listen to his instructions. Father Menard
sent three Frenchmen to ascertain the real state of affairs.
They found the road so difficult and dangerous, the condition
of the Hurons so wretched, that on returning they begged
the missionary not to attempt to go, but his answer was a
decided one : " God calls me thither ; I must go, should it
cost me my life." " This is the finest opportunity of show
ing to angels and men that I love my Creator more than the
life I hold from him, and you wish me to let it slip ? "
Some Hurons came to trade, and with these as guides, and
taking a little stock of smoked fish and meat, he set out with
one Frenchman July 13, 1661. He said to his converts and
countrymen : " Farewell, my dear children ; I bid you the
long farewell for this world ; for you shall never see me
again. But I pray that the divine mercy may unite us all in
heaven." '
The party reached, as Eev. Edward Jacker thinks, Lake
Yieux Desert, the source of the Wisconsin. Here the Huron
guides left him, promising to push on to the village and
bring relief. After waiting two weeks, Father Menard and
his companion, finding an old canoe, attempted to descend
the river, broken by a succession of rapids. It was a terrible
undertaking for an aged man whose frame was shattered by
years of exposure and toil. At one dangerous rapid Father
Menard, to lighten the canoe, landed, and with some of the
packages made his way over the rocks. When the French
man had guided his canoe safely down the dangerous pass,
he looked for the venerable priest. In vain he called him ;
1 ' Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1663, Quebec ed., pp. 20-1.
266 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
he fired his gun that the sound might guide the missionary
if he had lost his way. A diligent search proved ineffectual.
Then he set out in haste for the Hurons, meeting one of the
Sac tribe able to guide him. There he endeavored to induce
the Hurons to send out a party to search for him, but a scout
who went out discovered a hostile trail. The fate of Father
"Rene Menard is uncertain. That he died by the hand of prowl
ing Indians seems most probable ; his altar furniture, his cas
sock, and breviary were subsequently, at different times, found
in the hands of Dakotas and other western tribes. " Pater
Frugifer " he was called by his fellow-laborers, who had seen
the result of his mission work in Upper Canada and New
York.
Father Menard perished about August 10th, and Y. Rev.
Mr. Jacker, after a very careful local study, decides that he
was lost near the rapid on the Wisconsin, known as Grand
father Bull, or Beaulieu rapids.1
1 It is so set down on an ancient unpublished map in Mr. S. L. M.
Barlow's collection, as may be seen in Winsor, " Narrative and Critical
History," iv., p. 206. For the last missions of this great priest, see
" Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1663, Quebec ed., 17-25 ; 1664, pp.
2-6; 1665, p. 9. Perrot, " Mcaurs et Coutumes des Sauvages," edited
by F. Tailhan, p. 92.
CHAPTEK III.
THE OTTAWA MISSION, 1662-1675.
THE tidings of Menard's death were slow in reaching his
brethren on the St. Lawrence ; but when they came, no idea
of abandoning the mission was entertained. Danger from
hostile Iroquois, the hardships of the long journey, the bru
tality of the Indians whose conversion they were to seek, did
not appall them. Father Claude Allouez was selected to con
tinue the work of Menard. He reached Montreal in 1664
only to find that the Ottawa flotilla had departed. The next
year he embarked in one of their canoes, and on the 1st of
September, 1665, reached Sault St. Mary's, and after a brief
stay at St. Teresa's Bay landed, on the 1st of October, at
Chegoimegon. Here he erected his bark chapel, dedicating
it to the Holy Ghost, the spot taking the name of "La
Pointe du Saint Esprit." The Church to this day exerts her
influence there, and the present church, identified with the
venerable Bishop Baraga, claims to be the oldest one in the
State of Wisconsin.
The population at Chegoimegon was a motley gathering of
Indians belonging to eight different tribes. Father Allouez
found them all preparing to take the field against the Sioux,
and his first triumph was to cause them to abandon the pro
ject. His chapel, adorned with striking pictures, such as hell
and the last judgment, attracted Indians from all parts ; some
asked to be instructed, others came to mock and jeer ; some
(267)
268 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
brought children to be baptized ; a few Hurons sought to re
vive the faith, now almost extinct, in their hearts. The
Lord's Prayer and the Angelical Salutation in the Chippewa
language were chanted after every instruction, and were soon
generally known. The medicine-men were the great enemies
of the missionary, and early in 1666 they incited profligate,
ill-disposed men at a larger Indian town, where the mission
ary had erected a second chapel, to break in the walls and to
try and rob him of everything. He was forced to return to
Chegoimegon, where the Hurons gave him more consolation.
They had been deprived of a missionary since the death of
Father Garnier, and Allouez baptized some whose instruc
tion had been begun by that holy missionary. The Potta-
watomies, of whom a large band visited La Pointe, showed
better dispositions for the faith than the Ottawas ; but the
priest could not say the same of the haughty and cruel Sacs
and Foxes. The Illinois coming from their great river, which
he believed to empty somewhere near Virginia, danced the
calumet and listened to his instructions, carrying to their
distant home the first tidings of the gospel.
Bishop Laval, in the act by which he created Father Al
louez his Vicar-General in the West, bears testimony to the
work of the missionaries of the Society of Jesus. " We can
not sufficiently praise God on beholding the zeal and charity
with which all the Fathers of your Society continue to em
ploy their lives in this new church to advance the glory of
God and the kingdom of Jesus Christ, and to secure the sal
vation of the souls whom He has confided to our care, but
especially at the happy success which He gives to the labors
which you have undergone for several years past, with equal
fortitude and courage, to establish the faith in all the countries
that lie on the North and West. We cannot but testify to
you and all your companions the most signal joy and conso-
F. ALLOUEZ CREATED VICAR-GENERAL. 269
lation that we derive from them, and in order to contribute
with all our power by marks of our regard in the progress
and advancement of these glorious designs, and confiding in
your piety, purity of life, and ability, it is our will to appoint
you our Yicar-General in all the said countries, as we do by
these presents," etc.1
By this appointment Father Claude Mlouez, or the 'Su
perior of the Mission in the West for the time being, was
created Yicar-General, and all missionaries to whom the
Bishop had given, or might subsequently give, faculties for
that district were made subject to him. This act, dated July
21, 1663, is therefore the first ecclesiastical organization of
the Church in the West. The Bishop of Quebec soon after
announced that the holidays of obligation in his diocese, and
of course in the district assigned to the Yicar-General, were
those which were established by Pope Urban YIII. in 1642,
to which he added the feasts of Saint Francis Xavier, and of
the Invention of the Holy Cross.2
Father Allouez went to the western extremity of Lake
Superior, where he met a band of Sioux, and endeavored
through an interpreter
to tell them of the
faith. He learned
that beyond their FAC-SIMILE OF SIGNATURE OP FATHEK
country lay the Kar- CLAUDE ALLOUEZ.
ezi, after which the
land was cut off. He met too Kilistinons, whose language
resembled that of the Montagnais, of the lower Saint Law
rence. In 1667, he penetrated to Lake Aliniibegong, where
he revived the faith in the hearts of the Nipissings, who
1 "Archives of Archbishopric of Quebec," A., p. 166.
2 " Ordonnance au sujet du retranchement et institution de quelques
festes," 3 Dec., 1667 ; "Archives of Quebec," A., p. 58.
270 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
had formerly been under the care of the Fathers of the
Huron mission. He celebrated Pentecost among them in a
chapel made of branches, but with a devout and attentive
flock, whose piety was the great consolation of his laborious
ministry.
The Catholic Church had begun her work on Lake
Superior with energy ; and Father Allouez, who, by this
time, had acquired a thorough knowledge of the whole field
open to missionary labor, descended with the trading flotilla
in the summer of 1667, to lay his plans before his superiors.
Two days only did he spend in Quebec, returning to the
Ottawas, with Father Louis Nicolas, to pass through the hard
ships of the long and dangerous route.1 He bore with him
a pastoral of the Yenerable Bishop Laval, whose authority he
had invoked to aid him in checking the unchristian lives of
some of the early French pioneers.
The labors of the missionaries in the West found other
obstacles than the pagan ideas and practices of the Indian
tribes. The bad example of some fur traders, who, throwing
off the restraints of civilization, plunged into every vice, pro
duced a most unfavorable impression on the Indians, who
contrasted it with the high morality preached by the mission
aries. To remove the scandal as far as possible, Father Al
louez appealed to Bishop Laval. The following is probably
the first official ecclesiastical act, applying directly and ex
clusively to the Church in the West :
" Francis, by the Grace of God and of the Holy See,
Bishop of Petreea, Yicar- Apostolic in New France, and
nominated by the King first Bishop of said country :
To our well-beloved Father Claude Allouez, Superior of
1 " Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1667, ch. ii.-xvi. Quebec edition,
pp. 4-26. Lettre du pere Marquette, Aug. 4, 1667.
DISORDERS OF FRENCH TRADERS. 271
the Mission of the Society of Jesus among the Ottawas,
Health.
" On the report which we have received of the disorder
prevailing in your missions in regard to the French who go
thither to trade, and who do not hesitate to take part in all
the profane feasts held there by the pagans, sometimes with
great scandal to their souls, and to the edification which they
ought to give to the Christian converts, we enjoin you to
take in hand that they shall never be present when these
feasts are manifestly idolatrous, and in case they do the con
trary of what you decide ought to be done or not done on
this point, to threaten them with censures if they do not re
turn to their duty, and in case of contumacy, to proceed
according to your prudence and discretion, as also towards
those who are given in an extraordinary degree to scandalous
impurity, to act in the same manner. Given at Quebec this
6th of August, one thousand six hundred and sixty-seven.
" FKANCIS, Bishop of Petrcea" '
The next year these two priests were reinforced by the
arrival of Father James Mar-
quette and Brother Louis le JdC&wt. 'mj&YVfKA&e
T?
FAC-SIMILE OF THE SIGNATURE OF
The mission stations were FATHER MARQUETTE.
Sault Sainte Marie, and La
Pointe du Saint Esprit, at Chagoimegon, each provided with
a chapel. At the last mission, about this time, bands of a
very great number of tribes had gathered, flying from the
war parties of the Iroquois, which had carried desolation
around the shores of Lake Michigan, as of old, amid the
nations seated on Lake Huron. This gave Father Allouez
1 "Archives of Quebec," A., pp. 53-4.
272 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
an opportunity to announce the faith to many tribes, to obtain
a knowledge of their language, and the routes leading to their
country. The Iroquois were the great obstacle, and peace
with them was essential. The Ottawas (Queues Coupees) at
La Pointe, among whom he had labored two or three years,
showed little sign of conversion. They had been obdurate in
the Huron country, and when Father Menard instructed
them. Father Allouez at last announced his determination
to leave them and go to the Sault, where the people showed
docility. Finding him in earnest, the chiefs called a council,
in the autumn of 1665. There they decided to put an end
to polygamy, to abolish all offering to Manitous, and not to
take part in the heathen rites of the tribes that had gathered
around them. The change was sudden but sincere. They
came during the winter regularly to the chapel with their
wives and children to receive instruction, and to pray in com
mon in the morning and at night. The whole tribe became
Christians, and by its numbers and love of peace, gave great
hopes.
Father Marquette, at the Sault, found many correspond to
his teaching, but was prudently waiting to test the strength
of their good resolutions, before admitting them to baptism.1
Hoping to obtain more missionaries, and means to establish
stations at Green Bay and other points, Father Allouez, in
1669, went down to Quebec, taking several Iroquois whom
he had rescued, and through whom he hoped to effect a peace
between the Five Nations and the Western tribes. This
happy result followed. The Ottawa mission was organized,
and Father Dablon went up as Superior.2
Father James Marquette then went to Chagoimegon in
September, 1669, to take charge of the motley gathering
1 " Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1668, p. 21.
* Ibid., 1669, pp. 19-20.
MISSION AT GREEN BAY. 273
there, the newly converted Kiskakons; the Tionontate
Hurons who had finally settled there, most of whom had
been baptized, but in their wandering life, had lost nearly all
traces of Christianity ; the Ottawa Sinagos and Keinouches,
who, with few exceptions, derided the Christian teachers.
He found the Kiskakons docile and attentive to all the in
structions and exercises in the chapel, and could see in the
modest behavior of the young women, that they were making
real progress in virtue, and avoiding the old vices. He was,
however, already selected by Father Dablon to found a
FAC-SIMILE OF THE SIGNATURE OP FATHER CLAUDE DABLON.
mission among the Illinois, and in 16YO, wrote, that during
the winter, he had acquired some elementary knowledge of
their language from a young man of the Illinois nation, who
had come to Chagoimegoii. He found it to differ widely
from other Algonquin dialects, but he adds, " I hope never
theless, by the help of God's grace, to understand and be
understood, if God in his goodness leads me to that land."
" If it pleases God to send some Father, he will take my place,
while I, to fulfil Father Superior's orders, will proceed to
found the mission of the Illinois." ] Father Allouez had
paved the way for this mission, by announcing the Gospel to
some who came to La Pointe.8
In November, that pioneer of the Faith on the Upper
Lakes, set out in the canoes of the Pottawatomies, accom-
1 "Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1670, pp. 89-90.
2 A took is still preserved in Canada, containing prayers in Illinois and
French, which contains an ancient note stating that it was prepared by
Father Allouez for the use of Father Marquette.
18
274 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
panied by two other Frenchmen, and, amid storms and snow,
toiled on till they reached Lake Michigan, and skirted its
shores till they entered Green Bay, on the feast of Saint
Francis Xavier. The next day, Father Allouez celebrated
the first mass in that part, which was attended by eight
Frenchmen. A motley village of six hundred Indians, Sacs
and Foxes, Pottawatomies and Winnebagoes, had gathered
here to winter, and similar groups were scattered at intervals
around the Bay. The missionary spent the winter announc
ing the Gospel, first to the Sacs, instructing them and teaching
them to pray, having soon adapted the Algonquin Our
Father and Hail Mary to their dialect. In February, he
visited the Pottawatomies, convening the chiefs, and then
visiting each cabin. In both villages, all sick children were
baptized, and adults in danger were instructed and prepared.
The winter wore away before he had made a thorough visita
tion of all these villages, and to his regret, he saw them begin
to scatter. Living on Indian corn and acorns, he had toiled
and suffered, but could feel that something had been ac
complished. In April, he ascended Fox Kiver, passing a
Sac village with its fish weir, passing Kakalin Rapids,
threading Winnebago Lake, and keeping on till he reached
the crowded town of the Foxes, where he was greeted as a
Manitou. The chiefs came to the council he convened, and
there he explained the fundamental doctrines of Christianity,
the Commandments of God, the rewards and punishments of
eternity. He consoled them for their recent losses at the
hands of the merciless Iroquois. They responded at a later
council, and urged him to remain to instruct them. Thus
be<nm the Mission of Saint Mark, so named from the day of
c5
its first work.
Then he took his canoe again, and returning to Lake
Winnebago, ascended Wolf River to the Mascoutin fort.
SAULT ST. MARY'S. 275
Here lie found a tribe ready to welcome a missionary. Ke-
turning from this excursion, in which he found that, by a
short portage, he could easily reach the great river Messi-sipi,
he visited the Menomonees, with their corrupt Algonquin,
and the Winnebagoes, whose language of the Dakota stock
was utterly unlike any language he had yet heard. He set
to work to study it, and to translate the Lord's Prayer and
the Angelical Salutation, with a brief Catechism into it.
Such was the first announcement of Christianity in the
heart of Wisconsin. The teaching of the Church had begun.
There were a few converts, but instructions and prayers were
maintained regularly by the missionary in his chapel. Late
in May he returned to Sault St. Mary's.
The new field thus opened with the missions of the Illinois
and Dakotas in prospect called for more evangelical laborers.
Fathers Gabriel Druillettes and Louis Andre went up in the
autumn of 1670.' In May, 1671, the Cross was formally
planted at Sault St. Mary's amid a vast gathering of tribes.
Here the chapel was a constant attraction. Indians came and
listened ; children were baptized, and a class gathered for
daily instruction. Amid great hopes their little chapel took
fire on the 27th of January, 1671, and the missionaries were
able to save little except the Blessed Sacrament.
Meanwhile Father Andre visited the Missisagas, Manitou-
line, Mackinac, and Lake Xipissing, encouraged by the
docility of the Indians, but always constantly on the verge of
starvation, living on pieces of deerskin, tripe de roche, or
acorns. In the spring of 1671, Father Marquette, who had
been at La Pointe, saw his flock of Hurons and Ottawas
tremble before the wrath of the Sioux, whom they had pro
voked. They fled, the Ottawas to Manitouline, the Hurons
1 " Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1670, ch. xii.
276 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
to Michilimakinac, where Father Marquette took up his
abode to continue the mission of Saint Ignatius.
Father Allouez continued his labors around Green Bay,
greatly encouraged by his reception among bands of Miamis
and of Illinois, near the Maskouten fort. Here he was re
ceived with respect by the great chief of the Illinois, whom
his people regarded with the deepest reverence. The gentle
and sweet disposition of this chief won the heart of the mis
sionary, who built great hopes on the favor of one who could
unite these traits with great valor in war. So deeply was
the chief moved by our Lord's passion when the mis
sionary described it, that all wondered ; grace seemed to be
working in his heart. He escorted the missionary to his
canoe when he left, urged him to visit them in their own
country, and gave every hope that, in time, this most inter
esting nation yet discovered by the missionaries would afford
a field for consoling and fruitful labors.1
Father Henry Nouvel was sent up in the autumn of 1671
as Superior of all the Ottawa missions, as those on the Upper
Lakes were called. He took for his share the laborious mis
sions on Lakes Huron and Nipissing. Father Gabriel Dmil-
lettes continued his labors at Sanlt St. Mary's, encouraged by
cures that seemed so miraculous that the Indians redoubled
their faith and zeal. He rebuilt his chapel, which greatly
surpassed the first one." At Michilimakinac Father Mar
quette was assiduous in his work, endeavoring to revive in
the minds and hearts of the Hurons the knowledge and love
of God which had become nearly effaced in their long wan
derings and struggles.
1 " Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1671, part iii., ch. 1-5.
- "Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1671, p. 31. Le Clercq, "Establish
ment of the Faith" (Shea's translation), ii., p. 105, implies that it was a
magnificent church, with the richest vestments, but this is a mere exag
geration.
THE OTTAWA MISSION. 277
Father Allouez and Father Andre planted their little house
and chapel at the Eapide des Peres, from which the latter
attended the tribes on Green Bay, the former those on the
rivers beyond their mission station.1
Meanwhile the Church at Sault Ste. Marie had been re
built, and fine vestments sent by charitable friends in more
civilized parts filled the Indians with wonder, as they camped
around the chapel — a safer place, in their eyes, than their
own fort against any attack of hostile braves, old Iskouakite,
a Chippewa chief, seamed with wounds from Dakota or
Iroquois, being the catechist.
This new church stimulated a kind of jealousy. At Green
Bay the Indians murmured, and to satisfy them a suitable
site was selected on Fox River, which had taken the name of
Saint Francis Xavier. Here, before the close of 1673, a
large church was erected, to which the neighboring tribes
might repair when not away on their distant hunting-
grounds.
From the Sault Father Druillettes directed the Chippewas
and Kiskakons, and visited the Missisagas. There was much
faith to encourage the missionaries, but the medicine-men
labored to prevent the progress of Christianity and to seduce
those who had embraced it. As in other parts, they endeav
ored to persuade the people that the missionaries caused the
death of the children of unbelievers. Father Henry Xouvel
was three times attacked with uplifted hatchet by one of
these medicine-men.
In the summer of 1672 the Ottawa Sinagos and the Tio-
nontate Hurons began to arrive at Michilimakinac, Father
Andre having produced some fruit among the former on Lake
Superior. A Huron stockade fort rose near the church. Some
1 " Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1672, part ii., ch. 2-5.
278 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
Hurons from near Quebec, who came up to trade, aided the
missionary by their exhortations and the influence of their
example. But Father Marquette was preparing to resign
his mission to other hands and set out on a dangerous expe
dition.1
Father Louis Andre, sent to Green Bay, began his labors
at Saint Francis Xavier among the Sacs at Chouskouabika,
endeavoring to dispel their superstitions, and, above all, their
belief in Missipissi — a deity on whom they relied for success
in fishing. He found polygamy a great obstacle, and would
not admit to his instructions any one who did not renounce
it. Visiting every cabin, he instructed the inmates amid the
nets and drying fish. Just three days before Christmas,
1672, his little cabin was burned down, and he lost his desk
and papers, with many valuable articles. A new house and
chapel was reared for him by piling up a wall of straw to the
height of a man and roofing it with mats. Such was the
winter home of a Western priest two centuries ago. Among
the Pottawatomies at Oussouamigoung his experience was
more cheering, the chapel being constantly visited by the
women to receive instructions or to offer their devotions.
Attached to this mission were, too, the Winnebagoes and
Menomonees.2
In the fields near the Maskouten village, Father Allouez
had reared a chapel of reed mats, which he opened on the
feast of the Assumption. Miamis came and camped around,
so that he was compelled to go out and instruct them in the
open air, using his chapel for mass, which he said behind a
rood-screen of mats, leaving only a small space for the cate-
1 " Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1673 ; Manate, 1861, pp. 146-157 ;
" Relations Inedites," Paris, 1861, pp. 69-102.
-' "Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1673, pp. 157-186; "Relations
Inedites," pp. 103-122, 223-233.
THE MASKOUTENS. 279
chumens ; and for them he established two rules — that there
was to be no smoking or talking in the chapel. Then a cross
was planted in the Maskouten village, and its meaning ex
plained, with the veneration in which Christians held it.
Besides this charge he also
labored among the Foxes at t/^t^- ^fL^± </ 'v7 </?
Saint Mark and the Indians "
FAC-SIMILE OF THE SIGNATURE OF
at Green Bay, to which the FATHER ANT. SILVY.
next year came Kaskaskias
and Peorias. In 1675 Father Silvy was sent to Green Bay to
aid Father Allouez in his labors.1
1 " Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1673, pp. 123-147, 211-223, ii., p.
20.
CHAPTER IV.
THE CHUECH AMONG THE IKOQUOIS, 1660-1680.
THE services of the Catholic Church were thus begun on
the shores of Lake Superior, near the fugitive Hurons, who
still yearned for a priest. There were Catholics on the Ken-
nebec and Penobscot, by the shore of Lake Onondaga and in
the castles of the Senecas. Providence was paving the way
for their consolation. The Catholics at Onondaga, French
prisoners in hourly dread of a fearful death at the stake,
Hurons and Algonquins groaning under a hopeless captivity,
found a potent protector in the eloquent and wise Garaconthie,
whose hospitality the missionaries had often enjoyed, and
who now, by liberal presents, saved from a fearful death the
French prisoners brought into the territory of the Five Na
tions. An admirer of the Christian law, though he had
never placed himself in the ranks of the catechumens, this
remarkable man gathered the French and Indian Christians
by the sound of a bell for morning and evening prayer at
Onondaga, and on Sundays, by giving feasts, enabled the
Catholics to spend the day in suitable devotions.
Meanwhile he labored steadily to incline the minds of his
countrymen to peace with the French. His wise policy at
last prevailed. In July, 1661, two Iroquois canoes, bearing
a white flag, were run up on the shore at Montreal, and a
band of warriors advanced, accompanied by four Frenchmen.
The Cayuga Saonchiogwa delivered his presents, proposing
peace in the name of the Onondagas and Cayugas, and asking
(280)
LE MOYNE AT ONONDAGA. 281
the French to return to Ganentaa, but raising his last belt of
wampum, he said : "A black gown must come with me or
there can be no peace ; on his coming hang the lives of the
twenty Frenchmen now at Onondaga."1 The decision was
referred to Viscount d'Argenson, the Governor of Canada.
The colony had suffered terribly, the Seneschal Lauson and
a Sulpitian at Montreal had been slain, every Iroquois
town had witnessed the torture and death of French prison
ers. Peace was worth a risk and a sacrifice. A Jesuit was
ready. Father Simon le Moyne was selected for the danger
ous embassy. He went up to Montreal with Father Chau-
monot, and after consulting Iroquois delegates he stepped
into one of their canoes on the 21st of July, uncertain as to
the fate before him. Mohawk war parties threatened his
life on the way, but he at last approached the Onondaga cas
tle, to be welcomed before entering by Garaconthie and the
sachems. With tact Garaconthie took the priest first to the
cabins of influential men to win their favor. Then his own
cabin became the chapel of Catholicity at Onondaga. A
council, convoked by the sound of the old mission-bell, de
cided to send Garaconthie to Montreal with nine of the French
prisoners, and he went, meeting on his way an Onondaga,
who had butchered the Eev. Mr. Maitre, a Sulpitian.2
1 "Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1661, ch. ii., vii., pp. 7-32.
2 Ibid., "Journal des Jesuites," p. 300. Father Peter Josepb Mary
Cbaumonot ceases from tbis time to appear as an evangelical laborer in
tbis country. He was one of the most notable of tbe Jesuit missionaries
in Canada. Tbe son of a poor vine-grower, be ran away while a student
and made his way to Italy, where, after a series of adventures, he became
tutor in a Jesuit college, and finally entered the order, to offer his ser
vices for the missions of New France. After being associated with Father
Brebeuf in the Huron and Neuter missions, he took an active part in es
tablishing Catholicity at Onondaga. Then he took charge of the fugitive
Hurons at Quebec, founding the mission, which, from his devotion to
tbe Santa Casa, he called " Lorette." The same devotion led him to
282 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
During the winter Father le Moyne remained at Onon-
daga offering mass daily in his chapel for the French and In
dian Catholics, whom he gathered again at evening to recite
the rosary. Sickness prevailed, and he visited the sick assid
uously, giving them all the bodily relief in his power, and
instructing for baptism all who showed good-will. His bap
tisms of dying infants and of adults reached two hundred.
Wine for mass failed him at last, and he wrote to the Dutch
post, from which he received a small supply. During his
stay he visited Cayuga also, and his influence as a missionary
extended even to the Seneca country. In the summer of
1,662 he was sent back with the remaining French prisoners.
Father Simon le Moyne, the first to open missions among
the Mohawks and Onondagas, was born in 1604, and entered
the Society of Jesus at the age of nineteen. He came to
Canada in 1638, laboring from that time zealously among the
Hurons. His intrepidity and ability were hallowed by his
zeal and piety. Broken by years of labor, not long after this
perilous stay at Onondaga, he died a holy death at Cap de la
Magdeleine, Nov. 24, 1665.'
After Father Allouez set out to plant Catholicity on Lake
take an active part in establishing the Confraternity of the Holy Family,
which still exists in Canada, and which in the Indian missions in our
present limits did incalculable good. Father Chaumonot was famous
for his eloquence, preaching in the Italian style, not confined in a pulpit,
but moving about. He became a perfect master of the Huron language,
his grammar being the key to all the Iroquois dialects. In Onondaga he
was equally at home. No one ever adapted himself more thoroughly to
the Indian lines of thought and expression. He died in the odor of
sanctity at Quebec, February 21, 1693, aged 82. Through obedience he
wrote an account of his life, which has been printed, New York, 1858 ;
Paris, 1869, and recently with the introduction of matter merely referred
to in the text, by the venerable Father Felix Martin, Paris, 1885.
1 " Journal des Jesuites," pp. 339-340 ; " Bannissement des Jesuites de
la Louisiane," pp. 113, 132.
FORT ST. ANNE. 283
Superior, the French government was roused, when too late,
to send out a force sufficient to bring the Iroquois cantons to
terms, if not to subjection. But it had allowed the oppor
tunity to slip of acquiring New Netherland from the Dutch.
In 1665 Alexander de Prouville, Marquis de Tracy, was
sent over as Lieutenant- General of the King, Daniel Remy
de Courcelles as Governor of Canada, and the regiment of
Carignan-Salieres to opsrajte against the Iroquois, and a num
ber of settlers, nearly doubling the French population of
Canada.
The Marquis de Tracy established a line of forts along the
River Richelieu, the last, Fort Saint Anne, erected in 1665,
being on Isle la Mothe, in Lake Champlain, the first white
structure in our present State of Vermont, as its chapel was
the first edifice dedicated to Almighty God in that State. In
January, 1666, de Courcelles, with a small force on snowshoes,
traversed the country to attack the Mohawks ; a slight skir
mish was the only result, but he returned to Canada with the
startling intelligence that the English were in possession of
New Nether] and, and that thenceforward the Iroquois would
be backed not by the easy-going Hollander, but by the grasp
ing English, who held with a firm hand the whole coast from
the Kennebec to the Roanoke. The boldness of de Cour
celles' march had its effect. The Mohawks and Oneidas
sought peace as the Onondagas had already done. It was
granted, and the Jesuit missionary Beschefer was sent to rat
ify it. Before he could reach Lake Champlain tidings came
that the Mohawks had broken the peace, killed some French
officers and captured others.
The French force was soon in movement, new embassies
from the cantons, and messages from the English, creating
but little delay. It was accompanied by four chaplains, the
Rev. Mr. DuBois, chaplain of the Carignan regiment, Rev.
284 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
Dollier de Casson, a Sulpitian, and the Jesuit Fathers,
Albanel and Raffeix. The Mohawks, on hearing of the ap
proach of a large force, abandoned three towns and took
refuge in the fourth, which was strongly palisaded. Here
they resolved to make a stand, but as Tracy advanced they
fled. The French took solemn possession of the Mohawk
country, a Te Deum was chanted and mass said in the great
town. Then the country was ravaged, the stores of pro
visions laid up by the Mohawks were destroyed, and their
towns given to the flames. The humbled Indians, their old
renown lost, returned to starve amid the ruins of their castles.
They sought peace, they asked for missionaries.
The Jesuits did not hesitate to trust their lives again to a
nation which had caused the death of so many of their order.
After kneeling to receive the blessing of the Bishop of
Petraea, Father James Fremin and Father John Pierron
. set out in July, 1607, for the
J-7. Mohawk5 and Father Jame8
FAC-SIMILE OF THE SIGNATURE OP -^ ,, ,-. ^ . , -,
FATHER JAMES FREMZN. ^^^ f°r til° OneidaS» ^
at Fort Saint Anne, on Isle
La Mothe, they found their way beset by Mohegans who
hoped to ambuscade and slay the Mohawk envoys. They re
mained at the fort for a month, giving a mission to the
garrison, the first undoubtedly in the history of the Church
in Vermont, then committing themselves to Divine Provi
dence, went on.1 They were taken by their guides to Ganda-
ouague, " the town," says Father Fremin, " which the late
Father Jogues bedewed with his blood, and where he was so
horribly treated during his eighteen months' captivity." A
congregation of Huron and Algonquin captives was already
there anxious for their ministry, and Father Fremin gathered
1 "Relation de la Xouvelle France," 1666-7, ch. 18 (Quebec ed., pp.
28-9).
THE MOHAWK MISSION. 285
them in an isolated cabin to instruct them, prepare them for
the sacraments, and baptize their children. A Mohawk woman
too came forward, and following his instructions, sought
baptism. The missionaries then visited the other two towns
of the Mohawk nation, and three smaller hamlets, so that they
soon had an organized Christian flock. On the feast of the
Exaltation of the Holy Cross, they addressed the sachems,
and delivered the wampum belts which they bore from the
French governor.
A site was selected at Tionnontoguen for their chapel ; it was
erected by the Mohawks, and similar chapels were reared in
the other towns. Such was the beginning of the Mission of St.
Mary of the Mohawks. Here the missionaries labored, mak
ing at first little impression on the Iroquois, and exposed to
insult and even danger from the braves when infuriated by
the liquor which traders freely sold them.. After visiting
Albany, Father Pierron returned to Quebec, but was soon
again on the Mohawk, Fremin leaving the field of his year's
labor to found a mission among the Senecas.1
Keaching the Oneida castle in September, 1667, Father
James Bruyas soon had his chapel dedicated to St. Francis
Xavier, in which he said mass for the first time on St.
Michael's day. He too found Christians to form a congrega
tion, needing instruction, encouragement, and consolation.
They were the nucleus around which some well-disposed
Oneidas soon gathered.2 During the year, he was joined by
Father Julian Garnier, who soon after proceeded to Onoii-
daga. Garaconthie welcomed him cordially, and erected a
chapel for his use, which was dedicated to St. John the
Baptist. To place the Church on a solid basis, this chief pro-
1 "Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1668, ch. i.-ii., Quebec edition, 3,
pp. 2-13. Havrley, " Early Chapters of Mohawk History."
4 " Relation," 1668, ch. 3, Quebec edition, 3, p. 14.
286 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
posed to the heads of the great families, an embassy to
Quebec, with which he set out.
Then Father Stephen Carheil and Father Peter Milet
began at Cayuga to revive the work begun by Father
Menard,1 in this mission of St. Joseph.
One thing was evident to the missionaries in all the can
tons, that unless some check was given to the traders who
sold liquor to the Indians, there was no hope for their civiliz
ation and conversion. Father Pierron, with the Mohawk
sachems, appealed to Governor Lovelace, of New York, that
his influence might arrest the traffic. His reply acknowl
edged the devoted kbors of the Jesuit missionaries, and
sympathy with their work.
Father Fremin reached the first Seneca village November
1, 1668, and was received with all the honors paid to am
bassadors. A chapel was then reared for him, and captive
Christians incorporated into the nation, came eagerly to obtain
the benefits of religion.' Catholicity had thus her chapels in
each of the five Iroquois cantons, with zealous priests labor
ing earnestly to convert the Iroquois. The worship of
Tharonhiawagon, the superstitious observance of dreams,
the open debaucheries, formed a great obstacle, and the
thirst for spirituous liquors inflamed all their bad passions.
Besides this, prejudice against the Catholic priests was im
parted to the Iroquois by the Dutch and English of Albany,3
and by Hurons, who, in their own country, had resisted all
the teachings of the missionaries. Father Carheil tried to
instruct and baptize a dying girl, but her Huron father pre
vented him, and told him that he was like Father Brebeuf,
1 "Relation," 1668, ch. 4, 5, Quebec edition, 3, pp. 16-20.
2 "Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1669, ch. 1-5, Quebec edition, pp.
1-17.
3 See "Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1670, p. 32.
DANIEL GARACONTHIE. 287
and wished only to kill her. The missionary, driven from
the cabin, could only weep and pray for the poor girl, who
expired amid the wild rites of the medicine-men. The
Huron then roused the people to slay the missionary, whom
he accused of killing his child.
The prisoners brought in and burned at the stake, were al
ways attended by the missionaries, who sought to instruct
them and prepare them for death by baptism, and there is no
page more thrilling than that in which a missionary records
his presence near the sufferer, amid the horrible tortures in
flicted on him.
The faith seemed to make but little progress in the hearts
of the Iroquois themselves, yet many of the better and abler
leaders had been careful observers, and in their own hearts
recognized the superiority of the gospel law, though their
immovable faces betrayed nothing of the inward conviction.
The open avowal of Garaconthie, the able Onondaga chief,
at a council convoked at Quebec, in consequence of a re
newal of hostilities between the Senecas and Ottawas, was a
startling surprise, as consoling as it was unexpected. " As to
the faith which Onnontio (the French Governor) wishes to
see everywhere diffused, I publicly profess it among my
countrymen ; I no longer adhere to any superstition, I re
nounce polygamy, the vanity of dreams, and every kind of
sin." For sixteen years he had been a constant friend of the
French, he had attended instructions, had even solicited bap
tism, yet the Fathers had hesitated, though his pure life
seemed to attest his sincerity. His avowal on this occasion,
won Bishop Laval, who, finding him sufficiently instructed,
resolved to baptize and confirm him. The ceremony took
place in the Cathedral of Quebec, the Governor being his
godfather, and Mile. Bouteroue, daughter of the Intendant,
his godmother. In the church, crowded with Indians of
288 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
almost every tribe in the valley of the St. Lawrence, he
received at the font the name of Daniel, that of Governor de
Courcelles, and was then entertained with honor at the
Castle of Quebec.1 The effect of this conversion was incal
culable, not only at Onondaga, but in all the other cantons.
Reaching the Mohawk towns at a critical moment, when
Father Pierron, in attempting to expose the absurdity of the
Indian traditional tales, had been commanded to be silent, but
by treating their conduct as an insult, had made it an affair of
state, to be discussed by the great council of the tribe, Gara-
conthie threw his whole influence adroitly on the side of the
missionary, and the result was a public renunciation of
Agreskouu or Tharonhiawagon as their divinity, the act
being ratified by an exchange of belts between the mission
ary and the nation.2 At Oneida, Garaconthie spoke in favor
of the faith, and gave a wampum belt to attest the sincerity
of his words.3 At Onondaga, he urged Father Milet not to
confine his instructions to- the children, but to explain the
Christian law to adults. The missionary gave a feast, and
erected a pulpit covered with red, with a Bible and crucifix
above, and all the symbols of the superstitions and vices of
the country below. A wampum belt hung up conspicuously
betokened the unity of God. His discourse, carefully pre
pared, produced an immense influence, and thenceforward he
had among his auditors the best men of the nation.
The triumph of Father Pierron on the Mohawk was not
a mere transitory one. The old gods of the Ilotinonsionni
fell and forever, not only in that canton, but in the others.
Dieu, the God preached by the missionaries which soon on
Iroquois lip became as it now is, "Niio," has since been
1 "Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1670, ch. 2, Quebec edition, pp.
5-6.
2 Ibid., c. 5. 3Ibid.,c. 6.
AGRESKOUE RENOUNCED. 289
worshipped by the Five Nations, whether they profess
Christianity or not. By a providential law, the Iroquois
term to express the Lord, or rather He is the Lord, is
Hawenniio, which seems to embody the term for God.
The open honor to their old gods was gone, but to eradicate
superstitions, especially the idea that dreams must be carried
out, no matter how absurd or wicked, was not easy ; and to
build up in these hearts, ignorant of all control, the self-denying
system of the law of grace, was a task of no ordinary magnitude.
The missionaries resorted to all devices suited to the ignorant,
to whom a book was a mystery. The symbolical paintings
devised by Rev. Mr. Le Nobletz, in France, were of great ser
vice, and Father Pierron invented a game which the Mohawks
took up very readily, and in which some dull minds learned
truths of faith as to which instructions seemed never clear
enough to reach their comprehension. When they saw, in
this way, that mortal sin led to hell, unless one could, by the
path of penance, return to grace, the whole came vividly be
fore their minds while the missionary instructed them.1
Yet the profession of Christianity was not regarded with
out aversion. A woman of rank, an Oyander, having be
come a Christian, was in a council of the tribe, convoked for
the purpose, degraded from her rank, although she held it by
descent. Another was installed in her place, and, stripped of
her property, she went to Canada to enjoy in peace the exer
cise of her religion.2
It was not easy again for the missionaries to inculcate self-
control, temperance, and chastity, when the English and
French governments alike, permitted unlimited sale of liquor
to the Indians, by which the doctrines of the missionaries
were contradicted and vice encouraged.
1 " Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1670, p. 38. * Ibid., p. 6.
19
THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
Father Bruyas, at Oneida, saw his efforts thwarted by the
prevalent drunkenness of the men, who were deaf to all ex
hortations, their hearts being like the rock from which the
tribe derives its name, and they so influenced the women
that it' was only when the braves were absent on the war
path or the hunts that they ventured to attend the instruc
tions in the chapel.1
We see an example of this in the Huron, Francis Tonsa-
hoten, who, though a Christian, did not avow or practice hisi
religion openly, but when going off to a hunt, told his Erie
wife to attend the instructions of the missionary during his
absence. She became the earnest and pious Catholic, Catharine
Ganneaktena, the foundress of the mission of La Prairie,
after having been the tutor of Father Bruyas in the Oneida
dialect.* At a later period, the missionary, at these seasons,
assembled the old men, and expounded the mysteries of faith to
them, refuting their superstitious fables. These conferences
showed-by their fruit that they had touched many a heart,3
Unable to celebrate the holidays of the Church at Oneida,
Father Bruyas frequently went on those occasions to Onon-
daga, where the children sang the truths of Christianity
through the town ; and where Father Milet, addressing the
sachems, attacked the Dream superstition, the last stronghold
of Iroquois paganism. They yielded to his arguments and
formally renounced it, reminding him that Agreskoue was
no longer named at their feasts, which indeed, on all great
occasions, were opened by the blessing asked by the priest.4
The failure of some dream prophecies of the medicine-men
1 " Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1670, p. 53.
' Chauchetiere, " Vie de la B. Catherine Tegakouita."
3 " Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1672, p. 19.
4 Ib ., 1670, p. 53 ; Chauchetiere, " Vie de la B. Catherine Tegakouita,"
ch. 12. Catharine emigrated to Montreal in 1667.
THE IROQUOIS MISSION. 291
about this time, aided the missionary cause by discrediting
those impostors.
Still the Catholic Church at Onondaga was made up mainly
of old Huron and other Christian Indians, whom the misfor
tunes of war had consigned to that place, with a few converts
made during the existence of Saint Mary's, at Ganeutaa.1
Father Carheil, at Cayuga, struggled with the same difficul
ties, converting a few, chiefly in sickness, which ravaged
many of the cantons, but with his auxiliary Rene he built a
neat chapel of wood, resembling Indian cabins in nothing
but the bark roof. Father Fremin, at the Seneca town of
Saint Michael, erected his chapel for the large and distinct
body of Huron Christians, many of whom were eminent for
piety and fervor. Among these, James Atondo is recorded
as one given to prayer, and constant in exhorting others to
observe the commandments of God, and lead a pious life.
Francis Tehoronhiongo, baptized by Father Brebeuf, the
host of Father le Moyne, who, after edifying his own land,
and that of his exile, died at the Mountain of Montreal, knew
all the leading events of Scripture history as well as the
Catechism, and not only trained his own family to a Christian
life, but was so constantly instructing all around him, that
Father Garnier says : " If the Gospel had never been pub
lished in this country by missionaries, this man alone would
have announced it sufficiently to justify at the Day of Judg
ment the conduct of God for the salvation of all men."*
That missionary had come to Onondaga to aid Fremin, and
had reared a chapel at Gandachioragou, as Fremin did in
September, 1669, at St. Michael's.3
1 "Relation, "1670, p. 61.
2Ib., p. 71; "History of the Catholic Missions among the Indian
Tribes," p. 328.
3 St. Michael's (Gandougarae) was probably about five miles southeast
292 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
The 26th of August, 1670, saw a little synod of the clergy
of New York, held at Onoudaga. Fathers Fremin from Sen
eca, and Carheil from Cayuga, had joined Father Milet, and
on that day Fathers Bruyas from Oneida, and Pierron from the
Mohawk, arrived. They spent six days in concerting the steps
to be taken to ensure success in their missions, and the means
of overcoming the obstacles which impeded the establishment
of the faith.1 Yet their lives were in peril when tidings came
that several of the tribe had been murdered by the French.
The influence of this untoward tidings was soon perceived.
Returning to his Seneca mission, Father Julian Gamier reach
ed Gandachioragou safely,
but while passing through
FAC-SIMILE OF THE SIGNATURE OF Gandagarae, was assaulted
FATHER JULIAN GARNIER.
by an Indian maddened with
drink, who twice endeavored to plunge a knife into his body ;
but as Father Fremin wonderingly attests, the brave Jesuit
never paled in the hour of danger, such was his firmness and
resolution. He took up his abode at Gandachioragou, where
there were only three or four avowed Christians. Then he
founded the Mission of the Immaculate Conception, and
began to study the Seneca language, drawing up the outlines
of a Grammar and a Dictionary which is still extant.2
Father Fremin, though still retaining charge of Saint
Michael, St. James, and the other Seneca towns, was pre
vented by illness from resuming his labors there.8 But the
of the present town of Victor ; Gandachioragou was probably at the site
of Lima ; Gandagaro (St. James) south of the village of Victor, and Son-
nontuan, or The Conception, a mile and a half N.N.W. of Honeoye
Falls. This is the result of the careful and patient study of Gen. John
S. Clark. Hawley, "Early Chapters of Seneca History," Auburn, 1884,
pp. 25-6.
1 "Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1670, p. 77.
2 It is preserved at the mission of Sault St. Louis.
1 " Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1671, p. 21.
SAONCHIOGWAS BAPTISM. 293
next spring, the town of St. Michael's with his chapel, was
utterly destroyed by fire, and it was regarded as a judgment
for its resistance to the faith. The tribe promised to erect a
new and finer chapel within the palisades that enclosed the
new town.
Saonchiogwa, the great Cayuga chief, undertook an embassy
to Quebec in the year -1671, to make terms on behalf of the
Senecas who had violated the peace ; after terminating that
affair satisfactorily, he sought Father Chaumonot, whose
words in the great address at Onondaga years before, had
never left his mind. He had made his ca-bin the home of
Fathers Menard and de Carheil, had carefully followed their
instructions and studied their lives. Yet he was such a type
of the wily, diplomatic Indian, that the missionaries were not
convinced of his sincerity. Now, however, his conduct, his
language, all convinced the missionary. He was baptized by
Bishop Laval, Talon, the Intendant, acting as his godfather,
and Huron, Algonquin, and Iroquois, sat down together at
the bounteous feast spread after the ceremony.1 The acces
sion to the Christian cause of a man of the ability of Saon
chiogwa, who now took his stand beside Daniel Garaconthie,
was incalculable. Both were men of unblemished reputation,
who had acquired the highest rank in the councils of the
Five Nations, by their wisdom, ability, and eloquence.
Garaconthie, after his conversion, gave a banquet, and an
nounced that his actions were now to be guided by the Chris
tian law, that his life should be pure, and what duties he had
hitherto discharged, would now be still more exactly fulfilled
from a higher motive. In regard to dreams, he announced
that he would in no case do a single act to fulfil one, or take
part in any of the superstitious customs of their forefathers.
1 "Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1671, pp. 3-4.
294 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
These follies were the ruin, not the mainstay of their coun
try. Many who had hesitated before, took courage and now
came forward to embrace and to practice a faith professed by
such superior men. At Albany, Garaconthiu reproached the
authorities for having sought the furs of his countrymen,
corrupting them with liquor, but never seeking to deliver
them from their spiritual blindness, or teach them the way
to God. " You ask me why I wear this crucifix and these
beads around my neck ? you ridicule me, you tell me that it
is good for nothing ; you blame me, and show contempt for
the true and saving doctrine taught us by the black-gowns.
What blessing after that can you expect from God, in your
treaties of peace, when you blaspheme against His most ador
able mysteries and constantly offend Him ? " '
Almost at once by a single eloquent address, he prevented
the annual saturnalia known as Onnonhouaroia.
After four or five years' toil at Oneida, Father Bruyas was
assigned to the Mohawk and became Superior of the Iroquois
missions, Father Milet succeeding him. At Cayuga, Father
Carheil was so affected by a nervous disorder that he was
forced to resign his mission for a time
*° Bather Raffeix. Returning to Canada
and finding medical skill unequal to the
FAC-SEVTTLE OP THE .
SIGNATURE OF cure °* ™ maiady, he turned to a mgh-
FATHER RAFFEIX. BY physician and sought his cure from
God in prayer, before the shrines of Our
Lady of Foye and St. Anne at Beaupre. He recovered
and returned to his mission. Medals of Saint Anne, dug up
to this day in the old land of the Cayugas, are doubtless due
to the pious gratitude of this missionary, who diffused devo
tion to the Mother of Our Lady. On his return, Father
1 "Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1671, p. 17.
*
**'
THE IROQUOIS MISSIONS. 295
Raffeix hastened to the Seneca towns to aid Father Gamier,
and Father de Lamberville was in charge at Onondaga.
Among the Senecas there was great instability ; now the
sachems of a town would hold a council and decide that all
must pray to God, in other words, place themselves under in
struction for baptism ; then on the prompting of some apos
tate Huron, or some fire-brand from another Iroquois tribe,
they would decide that the missionary was a spy and a sor
cerer, and propose his death.1
Meanwhile the faith was gaining, especially among the
Mohawks ; but the converts were assailed by temptations
from within and without. The heathen party used every
effort to lead the Christians into drunkenness, debauchery, and
superstitious observances ; many after the first fervor had sub
sided, yielded to these insidious advances, and the mission
aries groaned to see that it was almost impossible for any one
to persevere where all around breathed vice and corruption,
and where there was no strong body of Christians to give
moral support by a pious example.
The war waged by the Mohegans on the Mohawks had
kept the latter constantly on the alert, and prevented easy
access to Albany. "With peace in 1673 came such a universal
debauchery that a fatal epidemic ensued. Father Bruyas and
his associate, Father Boniface, labored incessantly, attending
the sick and preparing for a Christian death all who showed
any disposition to embrace the faith, and recalling those who,
having once professed Christianity, had yielded to tempta
tion. Father Boniface at Gandaouague and Gannagaro,
forming St. Peter's mission, had what were regarded as the
first and principal Iroquois churches, the faith being more
constantly embraced and more bravely professed. The towns
1 "Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1672, p. 25.
296 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
were small, but they contained more practical Catholics than
all the rest of the Iroquois castles. The result was attributed
to the intercession of Father Jogues and Rene Goupil. The'
services of the Church were performed openly and with no
little pomp, even the Blessed Bread being given as in French
churches. The Catholic women wore their beads and medals
openly, even when visiting the English settlements.1 One
of these faithful women was the wife of Kryn, the principal
chief, and called by the French, " The Great Mohawk." So
incensed was this haughty Indian that he abandoned her and
went away from the village and the cabin. Moodily hunting
he came at last to La Prairie. The order and regularity pre
vailing in that little Catholic settlement so impressed his nat
urally upright mind that he remained there. In a short time
the bravest warrior and leader of the Mohawks wras kneeling
in all humility to receive instruction in the doctrine of Christ.
When his rallying-cry resounded again through the valley of
the Mohawk, Kryn entered the castle as a fervent disciple, to
the astonishment of the heathens and to the joy of his for
saken wife. With her and many others he soon set out for
the banks of the Saint Lawrence, accompanied, among the
rest, by a young warrior, who, as Martin Skandegonrhaksen,
became the model of the mission.2
The Mohawks of Tionnotoguen did not show this inclina
tion for the true faith, and they reproached Father Bruyas
with trying to depopulate the country ; and he gave a wam
pum belt to attest that neither he nor his associate had insti
gated the Great Mohawk.3
1 "Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1673, pp. 33; "Relations Ine-
dites," i., pp. 1-19 ;
2 " Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1673, p. 45, etc. ; " Relations Ine-
dites," pp. 18-20; ii , pp. 50-4; Chauchetiere, "Vie de Catherine Te-
gakouita."
3 " Relation," 1673, p. 54 ; " Relations Inedites," i., pp. 20-21.
SACHEM ASSENDASE. 297
Among the Onondagas Father John de Lamberville was
consoled and supported by the zeal and fervor of Garaconthie.
His open profession of
Christianity drew on
that remarkable man the
FAC-SIMILE OF THE SIGNATURE OP FA-
hatred of some of the THER JOHN DE LAMBEKVILLE.
sachems, who endeavor
ed to break down his influence, declaring that he was no longer
a man, that the black-robes had disordered his mind. They
said that as he had given up the customs of the Onoudaga
nation, he evidently cared nothing for it ; but when any em
bassy was to be sent or an eloquent speaker was desired for
any occasion, all turned to Garaconthie. When he was once
prostrated by disease, the whole canton was in alarm. To
the Christians he was an example and a constant monitor.
Father Carheil continued his labors among the Cayugas, Fa
ther Julian Garnier at the Seneca mission of St. Michael,
and Father Kaffeix at that of the Conception, gaining a few
adults in health, baptizing more who turned to them when
the hand of sickness prostrated them.'
The next year Father Bruyas won the aged but able
sachem, Assendase, one of the pillars of the old Mohawk
faith, who, crafty and astute, upheld his influence by his re
nown as a medicine-man. He had listened to the instructions
of the missionary, but had for two years resisted God's grace,
when the earnest words of Count Frontenac at Montreal gave
him courage to avow his conviction, renounce his errors, and
seek baptism.' Assendase's family followed his example,
although sickness and misfortune came to test their con
stancy. His conversion roused the heathen party, and one
1 " Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1673, pp. 55-114 ; " Relations Ine-
dites," i., pp. 57-68.
2 Ibid., pp. 235-278.
298 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
of his own kindred, maddened by drink, tore the rosary and
crucifix from the neck of the aged chief and threatened to
kill him. " Kill me," said Asseudase ; " I shall be happy to
die in so good a cause ; I shall not regret my life if I give it in
testimony of my faith." His example exerted a great influ
ence. The fervor of those already Christians was revived by
the reception of a statue of the Blessed Virgin, received from
the shrine of Notre Dame de Foye, which was exposed to the
faithful on the feast of the Immaculate Conception with all
possible pomp. Catholicity had an open and authorized ex
istence, and scarcely a Sunday passed without the baptism of
some child or adult.
Father Boniface, prostrated by illness, was compelled to
leave the mission, and was succeeded at Gandaouague by Fa
ther James de Lamberville.1 But the Mohawk mission sus
tained a terrible loss by the death in August, 1675, of Peter
Assendase, the Christian chief, who expired after a long and
painful illness, which he bore with piety and patience, refus
ing all the superstitious remedies proposed, and declaring :
" I wish to die a Christian and keep the word I have pledged
to God at my baptism. I do not ascribe my illness to it, as
my kindred falsely imagine. We must all die ; the heathens
will die as well as I. There is one God who sets a limit to
my life ; He will do with me as He will ; I accept willingly
all that comes from His hand, be it life or death." "
This was a severe blow to Father Bruyas at Agnie, but
1 "Relations Inedites," ii., pp. 35-45; "Relation," 1673-9, p. 178.
Father Boniface wasted away in a delirious state. His religious brethren
began devotions to invoke the intercession of Father Brebeuf, and re
garded as a miracle Father Boniface's recovery of his senses, soon after
which he expired in great piety December 17, 1674. MS. Attestation of
the Miracle.
2 " Relations Inedites," ii., p. 102 ; " Relation de la Nouvelle France,"
1673-9, pp. 147-151 ; " Relation," 1676-7, pp. 7, etc.
CATHARINE TEGAKOUITA. 299
Father James de Lamberville had his consolations at Ganda-
ouague. Going one day through the town -when most of the
people were absent in the fields, he was impelled to enter the
cabin of a great enemy of the faith. There he found the
niece of that chief, Tegakouita, daughter of a Christian
Algonquin mother, prevented by an injury to her foot from
being at work with the rest. She was a lily of purity whom
God had preserved unscathed amid all the dangers surround
ing her. It had been the great longing of her heart to be a
Christian, but her shy modesty prevented her addressing the
missionary. Father Lamberville saw at once that she was a
soul endowed with higher gifts, and he invited her to the in
structions given at the chapel. These she attended with the
strictest fidelity, learning the prayers and the abridgment of
Christian doctrine readily in her desire to be united by bap
tism to our Lord. She edified all by her fervor, and was
solemnly baptized in the chapel on Easter Sunday, 16T5,
receiving the name of Catharine.
Her uncle had at first done nothing to prevent her attend
ing the chapel or performing her devotions in the cabin ; but
persecution soon came when she declared that she would not
go to the field to work on Sunday. They endeavored in vain to
starve her into subjection by taking all food away with them,
leaving her to fast all day unless she came to them, when
they intended to compel her to work. She cheerfully bore
the mortification rather than offend God by neglecting to
sanctify the Lord's day.
Father Lamberville soon found that the usual regulations
adopted for the women converts did not apply to Catharine.
What they were urged to avoid she had always shunned.
Higher and more spiritual was the life she was to lead.
" The Holy Ghost," says her biographer, Father Chauche-
tiere, "' who wrought more in her than man, directed her in-
300 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
teriorly in all, so that she pleased God and men, for the most
wicked admired her, and the good found matter for imitation
in her."
Though her example and services were of the utmost ben
efit to him, and the crosses she underwent increased her
merit, the missionary was in constant fear, and urged her to
go to La Prairie, and meanwhile to be incessant in prayer.
Her uncle, who, in the system of Iroquois relationship, stands
in the stead of a father, would, she knew, never consent to
her departure. She feared that the attempt might lead to
trouble, and perhaps result in the death of some one at the
hands of her furious guardian, who once sent a brave into
the cabin to kill the " Christian woman," as she had grown
to be commonly called. She did not quail, and feared not
her own death, but that of any one who attempted to aid her.
At last, however, the resolute chief, Hot Cinders, came to
Gaudaouague. Catharine felt that in him she had a tower of
strength, and told Father Lamberville that she was ready
to start for La Prairie with her brother-in-law, who had come
with Hot Cinders. During her uncle's absence, she and her
companions started by a circuitous route, and though pursued
by her uncle with bloodthirsty design, reached La Prairie,
which she was to edify in life and make glorious by her
death and the favors ascribed to her intercession after the
close of her virginal life.1
The year of Catharine's baptism Father de Lamberville
had in vain endeavored to reach a Mohawk who had for
eight months been lingering on a pallet of pain, but the
doors of the cabin were closed against him. " In this'ex-
tremity," he writes, " I had recourse to the venerable Father
Jogues, to whom I commended this man, and at once the
1 Chauchetiere, " Vie de Catherine Tegakouita," New York, 1886.
Jro quotas e/ du- J*auc
Tftonfre^iL en Canada* jru^rC^
PORTRAIT OF CATHARINE TEGAKOTJITA, FROM THE PICTURE IN
DE LA POTHERIE.
302 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
cabin doors opened and gave me access to instruct and bap
tize him. The conversion is a special work of divine grace,
and a special favor obtained by the merits of Father Isaac
Jogues, who shed his blood here in God's quarrel, having
been massacred by these savages in hatred of the faith."
At Oneida Father Milet made less progress, and it was
.only the higher and abler minds that were impressed. One
chief was converted in 1672 ; a few years after another, who
withdrew from the village and cabined apart to keep aloof
from the superstitions and debaucheries of his tribe. In
1675 Milet converted the great chief, Soenrese. The mis
sionary was consoled by the fervor of his flock and the decay
of the worship of Agreskoue.
In the several cantons the missionaries derived great con-
eolation from the Confraternity of the Holy Family, a pious
association founded at Montreal
//n/7 by Father Chaumonot, Rev.
7^fc*t*fn*nrf Mr Souel? and the Yen> Mar.
FAC-SIMILE OF SIGNATURE OF FA- garet Bourgeoys. It ^ was at-
THER JOSEPH M. CHAUMONOT. tached to every Catholic chapel
in the Iroquois country and
sustained the faith and Christian life of all.1 But the mis
sions were entering on a period of trial ; the death of some
Christian chiefs, the removal of others to La Prairie had em
boldened the heathens, who began to menace the lives of the
missionaries and treat the Christians with oppression and in
sult. Garaconthie was far advanced in years, and in 1676,
feeling that his life was uncertain, he gave three solemn ban
quets. One was to declare that they were not given in ac
cordance with any dream, and that he renounced all super-
1 " Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1673 ; 1675 ; 1676 ; 1673-9, p.
182; " Relations Inedites," ii., pp. 38, 106, 99-111.
DEATH OF GARACONTHIE. 303
stitious rites ; in another he denounced the banquets where
all must be devoured by the guests. In the third he sang
his Death Song, as he was now so old. He saluted the
Master of Life, whom he acknowledged as sovereign of our
fortunes ; on whom, and not on dreams, our life and death
depended. He also saluted the bishop in Canada, and other
dignitaries there, telling them, as though they were present,
that he wished to die a Christian, and hoped that they would
pray to God for him. He concluded by making a public
profession of his faith, and by disavowing all the errors in
which he had lived before his baptism.
He attended the midnight mass at Christmas with his
whole family, coming a long distance through the snow.
Attacked by a pulmonary disease, he repaired to the chapel,
and after kneeling there in prayer, told Father Lamberville,
" I am a dead man," and made his confession with great
compunction. During his illness his prayer was constant ;
then giving the farewell banquet, in which two young war
riors announced his wishes, the Rosary was recited, and after
the Commendation of a Departing Soul, he peacefully yielded
up his soul. The great Catholic chief of Onondaga, Daniel
Garaconthie, stands in history as one of the most extraordi
nary men of the Iroquois league.1
Father Carheil at Cayuga, aided for a time by Father
Pierron, and Fathers Garnier and Raffeix in the Seneca
towns, had not met the encouragement found in the Eastern
cantons. The old Huron element was the nucleus of the
Catholic body, with more converts from the subjugated Keu-
ters and Onnontiogas and captive Susquehannas thim from
the Cayugas and Senecas.
1 "Relations Inedites," ii., pp. 112-114, 197-205; "Relation «^e la
Nouvelle France," 1673-9, pp 185-192 ; "Relation," 1676-7, pp. 24-29.
304 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
About the year 1678 Father Francis Yaillant succeeded
Father Bruyas at Tionnontoguen, and that master of the
Mohawk language proceeded to Onondaga to continue the
work of Father John de Lamberville, and Father John Pier-
ron, leaving the Mohawks, joined the missionaries in the
Seneca nation, after being at Cayuga in 1676. Bruyas' labors
on the Mohawk had been most fruitful and his influence
great. The language of the nation he spoke with fluency
and correctness, and he drew up a vocabulary and a work
called " Racines Agnieres," or " Mohawk Radicals," in
which the primitive words were given and the derivatives
from them explained. He also wrote a catechism and prayer-
book.'1
During the period of the Iroquois missions of which we
have more ample details, the missionaries, in constant peril
and hardship, had earnestly labored among the Five Nations ;
their great success was with the sick and dying, and the bap
tisms of adults and infants, which, from 1668 to 1678,
amounted to 2,221, did not in consequence greatly increase
the church militant on earth, though it did the church tri
umphant in heaven. The emigration of Christians to Can
ada, which the missionaries urged to prevent apostasy, also
prevented great increase of numbers in the cantons. The
missionaries maintained their chapels and instructions mainly
for the little body of Christians who were not able to with
draw.
The attitude of the English in New York and their claims
over the territory of the Five Nations showed the mission
aries that in a few years the land of the Iroquois would be
closed to them.
1 " Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1673-9, p. 140 ; Bruyas' " Racines
Agnieres" was published in Shea's " American Linguistics " in 1863-3.
It had been used by Father Hennepin, " Nouvelle Decouverte," p. 37.
MISSION VILLAGE AT LA PRAIRIE. 305
The Catholic Indian emigrants from New York settled,
some at La Prairie, some at Lorette with the Hurons, and
others again at the Mountain at Montreal, where the Sulpi-
tians of the Seminary had established an Iroquois mission,
the fruit of their labors among the portion of the Cayuga
tribe which settled on Quinte Bay.1
The Jesuits had, too, in 1669, erected a little house at La
Prairie de la Magdeleine, as a place where missionaries com
ing from the Iroquois or Ottawa missions might recruit;
but Indians began to stop there, and some desired to remain
for instruction, so that it soon required the constant service
of two experienced priests to minister to people of many
different languages. Indians from the cantons of the Five
Nations, who lacked courage to avow their desire to become
Christians, or who had embraced the faith, but feared to lose it,
proposed to Father Fremin that they should settle at La
Prairie. The missionary, fully aware of the difficulty of a
convert's preserving the faith amid the prejudice and seduc
tions of the Iroquois castles, beheld in this, a providential
design. Catharine Ganneaktena, an Erie convert, was the
foundress of the new village. Others soon followed her ex
ample, and when the report spread that a new Iroquois town
had been formed at La Prairie, so many came that a govern
ment was organized, and chiefs to govern the town were
elected with the usual Iroquois forms and ceremonies. By
the first laws promulgated, no one was permitted to take up
his residence unless he renounced three things, Belief in
Dreams, Changing wives, and Drunkenness : and any one
admitted who offended on these points was to be expelled.
The village thus formed, showed the importance of the
course. No longer opposed or persecuted, no longer allured
1 Shea, " History of the Catholic Missions," pp. 298-311.
20
306 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
to resist or abandon the faith, catechumens came assiduously
to instructions, and those already Christians, practiced their
religion, praying and approaching the sacraments with fer
vor. The better instructed became dogiques or catechists of
others, and one of these attended every band that went out
from the village for the winter hunt. A catechumen and his
wife while out on a hunting expedition, fell in with two
leading Mohawks, one of them Kryn, the Great Mohawk.
These listened with interest to what they heard of the new
village and its moral code. They felt that it was a rightful
course ; they joined the catechumens in their devotions, and
going back to their tribe for their wives, came to La Prairie
with forty-two companions.1 Every hunting party that went
out, acted as apostles, and the men of their tribe whom they met,
were so impressed by their probity, their devotions, and their
instructions, that a party seldom returned to La Prairie without
bringing some candidate to the missionary.11 In this way a
famous Oneida chief, called by the French, "Hot Cinders,"
from his fiery disposition, who had left his own canton in
disgust at some affront, was led to visit La Prairie, where he
remained and became one of the most fervent Christians, his
ability soon causing his election as one of the chiefs. He
was installed with all the formalities used in the Iroquois
cantons, the same harangues and symbolical acts : but through
inadvertence, the presentation of a mat was omitted. He
complained to the missionary that he had been made a fool
of, that he was no chief, as he had no mat to sit upon, and
the whole ceremonial was repeated to make his induction
strictly legal.3 This mission lost in 1673 its foundress,
' "Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1673; New York, 1861, p. 30;
" Relations Inedites," Paris, 1861, i., pp. 179-189.
* Ibid., i., pp. 279-283.
* Chauchetiere, " Vie de Catharine Tegakouito."
V. CATHARINE TEGAKOUITA. 307
Catharine Ganneaktena, who died full of piety, having pre
served her baptismal innocence unsullied, and regarded as a
saint by the little Christian community which had grown up
around her and revered her as a mother.1
On Whitmonday, May 26, 1675, Bishop Laval extended
the visitation of his diocese to this mission, where he was
received with great pomp and joy, and the next day he con
ferred the sacrament of confirmation in an Iroquois chapel.
The bishop was greatly touched and edified by the Christian
deportment of the Indians, and the pe,ace and happiness that
prevailed in the village. He remained some days to visit
the whole mission, giving free access to all.*
The mission had remarkable men in the Great Mohawk,
and in the Oneida Chief, Louis Garonhiague. It received
its most illustrious and holy member in the autumn of 1677,
when Catharine Tegakouita arrived from the town of
Gandawague. There she began the life of toil, recollection,
and prayer, seeking in all things to do what was most agree
able to God. The little bark chapel was the home where
she spent the hours not required by the assiduous toil of an
Indian woman, for having renounced for God all idea of mar
riage, she lived with her brother-in-law, and not to be a bur
then labored constantly. The work of an Iroquois woman
included felling and cutting up trees for firewood. Once
a tree she had felled as it descended hurled her to the ground,
a branch striking her. As soon as she recovered her senses
she exclaimed : " My Jesus ! I thank Thee for having pre
served me from that accident," and took up her hatchet to
continue her work : her companions compelled her to go
1 Chauchetiere, " Vie de Catharine Tegakouita." " Relations Inedites,"
i., pp. 284-298. " Relation de la Nouvelle France," 1673-9, pp. 162-174.
* " Relations Inedites," ii., pp. 58, etc., 168, etc.
308 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
and rest, but she said that God lent her a little more life to
do penance, and that she must employ her time well.
A new church was rising under the hands of the carpen
ters, something grand in the eyes of the Indians. To her in
her humility it seemed that she was not worthy to enter,
and was fit only to be driven from it. She enrolled herself
in the Confraternity of the Holy Family, and adopted a rale
of life which she followed exactly. When the family went
off to hunt, and she could not hear masses daily, she made a
little oratory to which she retired to pray. All soon re
garded her as a holy virgin dedicated to God ; but this did not
affect her humility or spirit of penance except to increase it,
and augment the austerity of her life. The winter spent
with the hunting-party was to her one of such spiritual pri
vation that she ever after preferred bodily privation in the
village so long as she could attend the adorable sacrifice,
spend hours before the Blessed Sacrament and often re
ceive it.
Her health, never sound, failed gradually. She could only
drag herself to the chapel, and leaning on a bench commune
with God. In the spring of 1680 she was unable to leave
her mat, and prepared for her death. She had renounced
the world in which she had lived, with its pleasures and its-
vanities ; she had practiced the evangelical counsels of chas
tity, poverty, and obedience. When Father Fremin gave
her the last sacraments he asked her to address those around
her, for the cabin was filled. She had in life unconsciously
to herself filled the mission with new fervor, and he wished
her influence to be lasting. Assisted by all the consolations
of religion she expired on Wednesday in Holy Week, and
the Indians came to kiss her hands, and to spend the day and
night in prayer beside her lifeless remains. The missionary
pronounced her eulogium there, holding her up to all as a
CANONIZATION SOLICITED. 309
model for imitation. She was buried at a spot selected by
herself three years before.
The reputation of her virtue spread through Canada. The
missionaries and all who had known her attested her exalted
virtues and sanctity, and her grave became a pilgrimage.
Bishop Laval came to the Sault with the Marquis de Denon-
ville, and prayed at the tomb of " the Genevieve of Canada,"
as he styled her. The priests of neighboring parishes, who
at first checked devotion to the " Good Catharine," came to
pray, as did Rev. Mr. Colombiere from Quebec, and sturdy
old soldiers like Du Lhut.
The miracles ascribed to her intercession, of which a host are
recorded, have kept devotion to her alive in Canada. Her rel
ics, and all belonging to her, were eagerly sought ; little objects
she had made, pieces of wood, even, that she had chopped.
Father Chauchetiere painted her portrait, and this was copied
and circulated. De la Potherie, in his " Histoire de PAme-
rique Septentrionale," gives an engraving based evidently on
one of these pictures by the missionary, and we give an exact
reproduction of it.
The introduction of cause of her canonization with those
of Father Jogues and Rene Goupil was solicited from the
Holy See by the Fathers of the Third Plenary Council of
Baltimore.1
1 The fullest account of Catharine is her Life by Father Claude Chau
chetiere, New York, 1886 ; a shorter life by F. Cholonek is in the
" Lettres Edifiantes," Vol. XII. (Paris, 1727). Kip's "Jesuit Missions,"
New York, 1847, pp. 82-113 ; and in Charlevoix, " Histoire de la Nou-
velle France" (Shea's Translation, iv., p. 283) ; Mgr. St. Valier, second
Bishop of Quebec, records her holy life in his " Estat Present," pp. 48-9.
CHAPTER V.
THE CHUECH FEOM THE PENOBSCOT TO THE MISSISSIPPI, 1680-
1690.
SUCH was the position of the Church in the part of North
America claimed by France. Devoted priests had established
missions among the five Iroquois nations and among the
Algonquin tribes around Lakes Huron, Michigan, and Supe
rior. In all these parts France had not a single settlement,
not a trading post or fort ; a few adventurous fur trappers
alone threaded the Indian trails in those regions where the
Catholic missionaries were patiently laboring.
France seemed utterly indifferent to the vast realm in her
grasp. No attempt was made to restore the settlement at
Ganentaa, or the fort on Isle La Motte, in Lake Champlain ;
no vessel was built to extend the trade on the lakes. In all
our present territory there was not a post that France could
claim till the treaty of Breda, in July, 1667, restored Penta-
goet to the Most Christian king.1 But the French Govern
ment was at last aroused to the importance of the vast coun
try in North America to which she could lay claim, and to
consider it as something more than a territory from which
heartless trading companies could draw furs. The Catholic
missionaries on the Lakes had for some years been reporting
1 " Memoires des Commissaires du Roi," Paris, 1755, ii., pp. 40, 295, 320.
The "Estat du Fort," etc., "Collection de Manuscrits," Quebec, 1884,
i., p. 200, makes the chapel there a frame building, 8 paces by 6.
(310)
LA SALLE AND THE SULPITIANS. 311
more and more definite intelligence of the great river in the
West, which the Algonquin tribes called Missi sipi, great
river ; and which the five Iroquois nations styled Ohio, great
and beautiful river. Though the French Government took
no steps, individuals did. Robert Cavelier, who had assumed
the style of de la Salle, brother of a Sulpitian priest at Mon
treal, had heard of this river through the Iroquois ; the Sul-
pitians moved by missionary instinct resolved to seek it and
win the tribes on its banks to Christianity. On the 6th of
July, 1669, a little expedition set out from Montreal, La
Salle with five canoes and the Sulpitians, Rev. Francis Dol-
lier de Casson, priest, and Rene de Brehaut de Galinee, still
in deacon's orders, with three canoes, guided by some Sene-
cas who had wintered in Canada. Plodding along slowly
they reached the chief Seneca town on the 12th of August,
and there with Father Fremin's attendant as interpreter,
they solicited from the Seneca Council an Illinois slave to
guide them to his country. The sachems deferred a reply,
but meanwhile the French were told on all sides that the
route by land was long and dangerous, while the great river
could easily be reached by way of Lake Erie. Abandoning
the hope of reaching the river through the Seneca country
they crossed the Niagara below the falls, and at a little vil
lage near the head of Lake Ontario obtained two western
Indians for guides. Soon afterward they met Louis Jolliet
descending from the copper district on Lake Superior, who
on learning their object recommended the route by way of
Green Bay and the Wisconsin. La Salle left the Sulpitians
on the plea of illness and started for Montreal. Rev. Dol-
lier de Casson and his companion proceeding westward, win
tered on the northern shore of Lake Erie. Setting out in
the spring they lost all their chapel equipment, so that Dol-
lier de Casson was deprived of the consolation of saying
312 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
mass. On the 25th of May, they descried the palisade around
the house and chapel of the Jesuit Fathers at Sault Ste.
Marie with the cultivated fields near by. After enjoying
the hospitality of Fathers Dablon and Marquette for a time
at this mission the two Sulpitians returned to Montreal.1
La Salle, at some subsequent period, by way of Lake Erie
reached the Illinois or some other affluent of the Mississippi,
but made no report and made no claim, having failed to
reach the main river.
The Jesuit missionaries, however, had not abandoned the
subject. Talon, Intendant of Canada, recommended Louis
Jolliet to Count Frontenac as one who was capable of under
taking an exploration which he deemed important for the
interest of France. The French Government in Canada, at
last resolved to send out an expedition of discovery. In
November, 1672, Frontenac wrote to Colbert, the great prime
minister of France : " I have deemed it expedient for the
service to send the Sieur Jolliet to the country of the Mas-
koutens, to discover the South Sea (Pacific Ocean), and the
great river called Mississippi, which is believed to empty
into the gulf of California." One single man with a bark
canoe was all the Provincial Government could afford ; but
Jolliet had evidently planned his course. Like the Sulpitians
he proceeded to a Jesuit mission, to that of Father James Mar
quette, who had so long been planning a visit to the country
of the Illinois, and who speaking no fewer than six Indian
languages was admirably fitted for such an exploration.
That missionary received permission or direction from his
superiors to join Jolliet on his proposed expedition, and there
are indications that the venerable Bishop Laval, to accredit
1 " Voyage de MM. Dollier de Casson et de Galinee, 1669-70," Mou
treal, 1875.
MARQUETTE AND JOLLIET 313
him to the Spanish authorities whom he might encounter,
made him his Vicar-General for the lands into which they
were to penetrate.1 Jolliet reached Michilimackinac on the
8th of December, 1672, the Feast of the Immaculate Con
ception, and the pious missionary with whom he was to
make the exploration, thenceforward made the Immaculate
Conception the title of his discovery and mission. They
spent the winter studying their projected route by way of
Green Bay, acquiring from intelligent Indians all possible
knowledge of the rivers they should meet, and the tribes they
would encounter.
All this information they embodied on a sketch-map, both
possessing no little topographical skill. On the 17th of
May, 1673, Father Marquette and Jolliet with five men in
two canoes set out, taking no provision but some Indian corn
and some dried meat. Following the western shore of Lake
Michigan, they entered Green Bay, and ascended Fox River,
undeterred by the stories of the Indians who warned them of
the peril of their undertaking. Guided by two Miamis
whom they obtained at the Maskoutens' town, they made the
portage to the Wisconsin, and then reciting a new devotion
to the Blessed Virgin, they paddled down amid awful soli
tudes, shores untenanted by any human dwellers. Just one
month from their setting out their canoes glided into the
Mississippi, and the hearts of all swelled with exultant joy.
1 Father Marquette, though never Superior of the Ottawa missions, was
Vicar-General of the Bishop of Quebec, and apparently in his quality as
missionary to the Illinois, as his successors there, Allouez and Gravier
also held this office, then the priests of the seminary of Quebec, and last
of all, Rev. Peter Gibault. (Letter of Father Gravier to Bishop Laval.)
The appointment may have been given when he set out to found his
Illinois mission in 1674, but there is no apparent reason for conferring
such a dignity on him then, and there was when he set out on his
voyage.
314 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
The dream of Father Marquette's life was accomplished ; lie
was on the great river of the West, to which he gave the
name of the Immaculate Conception. On and on their
canoes kept while they admired the game and birds, the fish
in the river, the changing character of the shores. More
than a week passed before they met the least indication of
the presence of man. On the 25th they saw foot-prints on
the western shore, and an Indian trail leading inland. The
missionary and his fellow-explorer leaving the canoes followed
it in silence. Three villages at last came in sight. Their
hail brought out a motley group, and two old men advanced
with calumets. When near enough to be heard Father Mar-
quette asked who they were. The answer was : " We are
Illinois." The missionary was at the towns of the nation
he had for years yearned to visit. The friendly natives es
corted them to a cabin, where another aged Indian welcomed
them : u How beautiful is the sun, O Frenchman, when
thou comest to visit us ! All our town awaits thee and thou
shalt enter all our cabins in peace."
These Illinois urged the missionary to stay and instruct
them, warning him against the danger of descending the
river, but they gave him a calumet and an Indian boy. He
promised these Illinois of the Peoria and Moingona bands
to return the next year and abide with them. Having an
nounced the first gospel tidings to the tribe, the missionary
with his associate was escorted to their canoes by the war
riors. Past the Piesa, the painted rock which Indian super
stition invested with terror and awe ; past the turbid Mis
souri, pouring its vast tide into the Mississippi ; past the
unrecognized mouth of the Ohio, coming down from the
land of the Senecas, the explorers glided along, impelled by
the current and their paddles. At last the character of the
country changed, canebrakes replaced the forest and prairie,
THE MISSISSIPPI EXPLORED. 315
and swarms of mosquitoes hovered over laud and water.
After leaving the Illinois, they had encountered only one
single Indian band, apparently stragglers from the East, who
recognized the dress of the Catholic priest. To them he
spoke of God and eternity. But as the canoes neared the
Arkansas River, the Metchigameas on the western bank came
out in battle array, a band of the Quappa confederation of
Dakotas. Hemming in the French above and below, they
filled the air with yells. The missionary held out his calu
met of peace, and addressed them in every Indian language
he knew. At last an old man answered him in Illinois.
Then Father Marquette told of their desire to reach the sea
and of his mission to teach the red man the ways of God.
All hostile demonstrations ceased. The French were regaled
and referred to the Arkansas, the next tribe below. This
more friendly nation, then OR the eastern shore, was soon
reached. The explorers had solved the great question, and
made it certain that the Mississippi emptied into the Gulf of
Mexico. The Jesuit Father had published the gospel as well
as he could to the nations he had met, and opened the way
to future missions. On the 17th of July they turned the
bows of their canoes northward, and paddling sturdily against
the current at last descried the mouth of the Illinois. On
the way they met the Peorias, and Father Marquette spent
three days with him, explaining in each cabin the funda
mental truths of religion. That he made some impression
we can see by the fact that as he was about to embark they
brought him a dying child which he baptized, the first re
corded administration of the sacrament on the banks of the
great river.
The voyage of the priest has become historic. The Gov
ernment, which sent his companion, Jolliet, seems to have
comprehended less the value of the discovery to France than
316 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
the Church did the great field of labor wliich Providence
had laid open to the zeal of her ministers.1
Ascending the Illinois River the missionary reached the
town of the Kaskaskias, who extorted from him a promise to
return and instruct them. A chief, with a band of warriors,
escorted the party to Lake Michigan, and following its west
ern bank they reached Green Bay in the closing days of
September. While Father Marquette was thus exploring the
territory stretching far away to the south, there had been
strange scenes in the Ottawa missions. The Dakotas, who
had so long been at war with the Algonquin tribes around
Lake Superior, sent an embassy of ten leading men to Sault
Sainte Marie to arrange a peace. The Chippewas, or Indians
of the Sault, received them with hearty welcome, but some
Crees and Missisakis resolved to kill them, and when the
council was held a Cree contrived to slip in armed in spite
of the precautions adopted. He struck a Dakota a deadly
wound, and then the surviving Dakotas, believing themselves
betrayed, turned upon the Indians nearest them, killing
all they met. Many escaped, and the Dakotas barricaded
the house, and with arms they found kept up a h're on those
without till the building was set on fire. All were at last
slain, with two of their women, while forty Algonquins were
killed or wounded. The trading-house in which they met
was burned to the ground, and the flames spread to the
chapel and residence of the missionary, which was also de
stroyed. As their ambassadors were killed at the village of
the Chippewas, that tribe, though not the assailants, were by
Indian law responsible to the Dakotas. Dreading the resent-
1 Marquette's Narrative is in French and in English in Shea, ' ' Discov
ery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley," New York, 1852, pp. 3-
52; his Life, pp. xli.-lxxx. "'Relations Inedites," i., pp. 193-204; ii.,
pp. 239-329.
HIS LAST ILLNESS. 31?
merit of that powerful nation they fled, and of the mission
conducted by Father Druillettes naught remained but a de
serted town and smoldering ashes. But the aged missionary
clung to his flock, and after a time began to restore his
chapel, aided by the Superior, Father Henry Nouvel, and a
lay brother.1
After his return from his great voyage, Father Marquette
was assigned to Green Bay, but having in 1674 obtained per
mission to undertake to establish a mission among the Kas-
kaskias, he set out in November with two companions,
although he had been sick all the summer. The disease
O
returned before he had reached the head of Lake Michigan,
and he cabined for the winter at the portage of a river lead
ing to the Illinois, generally regarded as the Chicago.2 In
the spring he made a novena in honor of the Immaculate
Conception of the Blessed Virgin, and feeling new strength
set out in March 29, 1675, and in eleven days reached the
town of the Kaskaskias, who received him as an angel. A
chapel was soon reared, adorned with mats and furs ; at the
upper end the missionary draped it with hangings and pic
tures of Our Lady. After delivering his words and presents
to the chiefs of the tribe, he preached to them, and then
founded his mission by the celebration of the first mass in
Illinois on Holy Thursday, 1675. After beginning his reg
ular mission labors he found that his disease was assuming a
more dangerous form, and washing to die assisted by his
brethren, he set out for Michilimackinac. His two good
canoe-men took the missionary with all care to Lake Michi
gan, and embarking there plied their paddles, urging their
canoe along the eastern shore. Convinced that he would
1 " Relations Inedites," i., pp. 205-210 ; ii., pp. 3-8.
- Ibid., ii., pp. 23, 318.
3L8 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
not reach his old mission, Marquette instructed his compan
ions how to assist him in his dying moments, and to bury
him. One evening as they landed for the night, he told
them he would die the next day ; they put up a bark cabin
as well as they could and placed the dying missionary in this
wretched shelter. He heard the confessions of his men, and
with great difficulty recited his breviary — an obligation which
he always scrupulously performed. Then he sent them to
rest. Some hours later he summoned them to his side, and
taking off his crucifix asked them to hold it before his eyes.
Rallying his strength to make a profession of faith, and
thanking God for permitting him to die in the Society, a
missionary, destitute of all things, he continued in prayer till
his strength failed. Seeing him about to depart, his faithful
attendants pronounced the names of Jesus and Mary, which
he repeated several times, then sweetly expired, not far from
midnight, May 19, 1 675. His body was interred in the place
he had selected, and the river which skirts it bears his name
to this day ; but some Ottawas in 1677 took up his remains,
and placing the bones in a box of bark, carried them to the
mission chapel at Michilimackinac. The remains were re
ceived with solemnity by Father Henry Nouvel and Father
Pierson, and after a funeral service, the box was placed in a
little vault in the middle of the church, " where," wrote Fa
ther Dablon, " he reposes as the guardian angel of our Ottawa
missions." His piety, zeal, and virtues had in life caused
him to be regarded as a saint, and the repute increased after
his holy death. Indian and white came to pray over the re
mains of one whom all believed to be enjoying the beatific
vision, and pleading for those whose salvation had been
dearer to him than life. His devotion to the Immaculate
Conception of the Blessed Virgin was remarkable. On his
great voyage he recited with his companions a chaplet he
HIS TOMB.
319
had composed to honor that mystery ; he gave the name of
the Immaculate Conception to the Mississippi, and to the
mission among the Kaskaskias, which has never lost it.
Providence has maintained his honor, for a city has been
named after him, and has been made by the Pope a bishop's
see.' He died at the early age of 38, having borne the robe
of Saint Ignatius for twenty-one years.
The church in which he was laid away was burned in
1700, when the
mission was aban
doned. For years
the very site was
unknown, but was
finally discovered
in 1877, by Hev.
Edward Jacker,
then missionary at
Pointe Saint Ig-
nace. Excavations
inside the founda
tion-walls, about
the centre in front
of the altar reveal
ed a decaying bark
box containing
pieces of human bones. To his mind and to those of
students generally, there was little doubt that remains thus
peculiarly committed to the earth were those of Father
James Marquette, of Laon, interred there in precisely that
form in 1677. The learned priest, thoroughly versed in
1 "Relations Inedites," ii., pp. 21-33, 290-330; "Relation," 1673-9,
pp. 100-120 : Shea, " Discovery of the Mississippi Valley," pp. 53-66,
258-264.
SITE OF FATHER MARQUETTE'S CHAPEL AND
GRAVU. AT POINTE SAINT IGNACE, MICH.,
IDENTIFIED AND ENCLOSED BY V. REV. E.
JACKER.
320 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
all the early history of the missions, was not a man to be
hasty in conclusions. He surrounded the spot once con
secrated to religion with a fence to preserve it from neglect.1
The last work of Father Marquette, the mission he founded
at Kaskaskia, was zealously taken up by Father Allouez,
who set out from Green Bay, in October, 1676, but win
ter set in so suddenly that he could not proceed till February.
"When he reached Kaskaskia, at the close of April, he found
not only that band, but several others of the Illinois nation.
Here he planted a cross and began his labors, which he re
newed the following year.8
The great discovery made by Jolliet and Father Marquette
did not at first prompt the French Government to any
scheme for planting colonies to cultivate the rich lands of
the Mississippi Valley, or develop its mineral wealth. A
plan of settlement proposed by Jolliet was rejected. The
attitude of the English in New York began, however, to ex
cite alarm, but their action was regarded as a menace to the
French fur trade rather than a step toward the destruction
of French power in America. The Count de Frontenac,
governor of Canada, went up to Lake Ontario, and at a spot
near the present Kingston, called by the Iroquois Cataro-
couy, laid in July, 1673, the foundation of a fort to bear his
name. The engineers traced the fort, and the soldiers soon
threw up earthworks and stockades. France had planted
her first fort on the lakes. The command of this outpost
was soon given to La Salle. He was full of projects for
building up his fortunes in the West, not by colonization
and agriculture, but by controlling the fur trade. Many
1 " Catholic World," xxvi., p. 267. Our illustration shows the site of
the old chapel and the Rev. Mr. Jacker near it.
2 "Relations Inedites," pp. 306-317; "Relation," 1673-9, p. 121;
Shea, "Discovery of the Mississippi," pp. 67-77.
THE RECOLLECTS. 321
members of his family and others in France entered into his
schemes, and he obtained a grant of Fort Frontenac, and a
patent to explore the West with a monopoly of trade. Fron
tenac suggested that a fort should be established at Niagara,
and a vessel built on Lake Erie.1
All this La Salle undertook to accomplish. After rebuild
ing Fort Frontenac with stone, he prepared to conduct an
expedition to the West. The grandiloquence with which
he announced his projects led to the wildest hopes of results.
A- sycophant of Frontenac, he was in full harmony with that
governor's hostility to the Bishop, secular clergy, and the
Jesuits. He solicited Recollect Fathers as chaplains of his
posts and expeditions. There were at the moment in Can
ada several Flemish Recollects whom Louis XIV. had torn
from their convents in territory he had wrested from Spain,
and forced to annex themselves to a French province. The
Superiors there gladly sent their unsolicited recruits to Can
ada, and the Superior of their order at Quebec having no
field to employ them in the colony, gladly assigned a large
number of them to La Salle. Of these sons of St. Francis
the Superior was the aged Father Gabriel de la Ribourde,
last scion of an old Btirgundian house, and under him were
Fathers Zenobius Membre, Louis Hennepin, Luke Buisson,
and Melithon Watteaux.
The Sieur de la Motte in a brigantine accompanied by
Father Hennepin reached the outlet of Niagara River, De
cember 6, 1673, and- the Recollect father chanted the Te
Deum in thanksgiving. Leaving their vessel there they
1 Frontenac to Colbert, November 14, 1674, "New York Col. Doc.,"
ix., p. 121. In this very dispatch he announced that a Dutch frigate,
" The Flying Horse," had captured Fort Pentagoet. The only spot within
ou" present limits where there was a chapel for French Catholics, had
thus been temporarily lost.
21 '
322 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
went in canoes to the Mountain Ridge, where a rock still
bears Hennepin's name. Climbing the heights of Lewiston,
they came in sight of the mighty cataract, where the massed
waters of the upper lakes rushing through the narrow channel,
plunge down what seemed to their astounded eyes as many
hundreds of feet. Father Hennepin gave the first published
description of this wonder of the Western world.
Looking for suitable land to settle on, they reached Chip-
pewa Creek, where they slept, and returning the next morn
ing, Father Hennepin offered the first mass on the Niagara,
where La Motte and his men were gathered to build a fort
at the mouth of the river.1 The Indians showed such hos
tility to the fort that it was abandoned, and La Motte be
gan a house and stockade at the Great Rock on the east side,
which he called Fort de Conty. Here Father Hennepin at
once began to erect a bark house and chapel.2
Returning to Fort Frontenac after blessing the " Griffin,"
the first vessel on Lake Erie, which La Salle had built above
the falls, Father Hennepin came up again with the Superior
of the mission. Father Gabriel de la Ribourde, and Father
Zenobius Membre, and Melithon Watteaux. La Salle made a
grant of land at Niagara to the Recollect Fathers for a resi
dence and cemetery, May 27, 1679, and this was the first
Catholic Church property in the present State of New York.
When the " Griffin " sailed, Father Melithon Watteaux remain1
ed in the palisaded house at Niagara as chaplain, and he ranks
as the first Catholic priest appointed to minister to whites in
New York.3
1 Hennepin, " Relation of Louisiana," p. 68.
2 Ibid., p. 74. " Tonty in Margry," i., p. 576. The projected fort was
soon destroyed by fire. Ibid., ii., p. 12.
a Le Clercq, "Establishment of the Faith," ii., p. 112; Hennepiu.
" Nouvelle Decouverte," p. 108.
RECOLLECT CHAPELS. 323
La Salle's party on his barque, the " Griffin," reached Michi-
limakinac, where at Pointe Saint Ignace, the Jesuit Fathers
had their mission church, and minor chapels for the Hurons
and Ottawas. After some stay here the expedition entered
Green Bay, whence La Salle sent the vessel back to Niagara
with a load of furs, but it never reached its port, and the
fate of the first vessel which plowed the waters of the
upper lakes is involved in mystery. La Salle then kept on
in canoes along the shore of Lake Michigan, his party con
sisting of himself, the three Franciscan Fathers, and ten other
persons.
Reaching the mouth of St. Joseph's River, La Salle, dur
ing the month of November, threw up a rude fort, and in it
the Recollect Fathers built a bark cabin, the first Catholic
church in the lower peninsula of Michigan. It was appar
ently dedicated to Saint Anthony of Padua, as the com
mander on the voyage had promised to dedicate the first
chapel to that saint.1 Here the three priests officiated for
the party, swelled by Tonty's detachment, preaching on Sun
days and holidays.
Setting out from this post in December by toilsome travel
and portage, La Salle reached the country of the Illinois In
dians, and throwing up a little fort, began to build a vessel
in which to descend the Mississippi. Fort Crevecoeur was a
little below the present episcopal city of Peoria. Upon the
arrival of the party there, Father Gabriel de la Ribourde,
with his fellow-priests, Fathers Zenobius Membre and Louis
Ilennepin, raised a cabin as a chapel for the French and for
the Illinois Indians. This little chapel was of boards, but
they were unable to say mass, their little stock of wine, made
1 Heunepin, "Description of Louisiana," pp. 96, 133, 177 ; Le Clercq,
" Establishment of the Faith," ii., pp. 114, 117, 130.
324 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
from wild grapes gathered on the shores of Lake Michigan,
having failed them. The services in the chapel consisted
only of singing vespers and occasional sermons after morning
prayers.
La Salle hearing no tidings of his barque, which was to have
brought his supplies, set out for Forts ^Niagara and Fronte-
nac, having first dispatched Father Hennepin, with two of
his men, in a canoe to ascend the Mississippi River. Leav-
ine- his two fellow-religious at Fort Crevecoeur, this Francis-
o " '
can descended the Illinois River to its mouth, and after being
a month on the Mississippi, fell in April into the hand? of a
large war party of Sioux, who carried him and his compan
ions up to their country, where he saw and named the Falls
of Saint Anthony. Held captive for some months, Father
Hennepin and his companions were rescued by Daniel Grey-
soloii du Lhut, who, after wintering in the Sioux country,
returned for further exploration. With this protection Fa
ther Hennepin reached Green Bay by way of the Wisconsin
River,1 having been the first to announce the gospel in the
land of the Dakotas.
The party left at Fort Crevecoeur had meanwhile had
a dangerous and tragic experience. Devoting himself as
aid to his Superior in instructing the Illinois, Father Membre
took up his residence in the cabin of the chief, Ouma-
houha, to whom La Salle had made presents to insure his
good treatment of the missionary ; but the slow progress
he made in the language and the brutal habits of the Indians
effectually discouraged him. Gradually, however, he ac
quired some knowledge of the language and began to instruct
the people, finding it difficult to make any impression on the
minds of these Indians. Tonty, who was left in command
Hennepin, " Description of Louisiana," pp. 192-259.
DEATH OF FATHER RIBOURDE. 325
of the fort, was soon deserted by most of his men, and the
aged Father de la Eibourde was adopted by Asapista, an Illi
nois chief. When the clusters of grapes, carefully watched
by the missionaries, began to ripen in the summer sun, they
pressed them, and enjoyed the consolation of offering the
holy sacrifice in their chapel, the second Catholic shrine in
Illinois. They followed the Indians in their summer hunts
and Father Membre visited the Miamis, but the fruit of their
labors was not encouraging ; they baptized some dying chil
dren and adults, but conferred the sacrament of regeneration
on only two adults in health, in whom they found, as they
supposed, solidity and a spirit of perseverance, yet were dis
tressed to see one of these die in the hands of the medicine
men. In September the Illinois were attacked by an Iroquois
army and fled. Tonty and the missionaries escaped narrowly,
and seeing no alternative, set out to reach Green Bay in a
wretched bark canoe, without any provisions. The next day
an accident to the canoe compelled them to land ; while
Tonty and Father Membre were busy repairing the damage,
Father Gabriel de la Kibourde retired to the shade of a
neighboring grove to recite the office of the day in his
Breviary. When toward evening they sought the venerable
priest, no trace of him could be found. Three Kickapoos
had come upon him, and although they recognized him as a
Frenchman and a missionary, they killed him and threw his
body into a hole, carrying off all he had, even his breviary
and diurnal. These subsequently fell into the hands of a
Jesuit missioner.
Father Gabriel de la Bibourde was the last of a noble fam
ily in Burgundy who gave up all to enter the Order of Saint
Francis. After being master of novices at Bethune, he came
to Canada in 1670, and was the first Superior of the restored
Kecollect mission in Canada. He was in his seventieth year
326 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
when he fell by the hands of the prowling savages Septem
ber 9, 1GS0.1
After enduring great hardships, want, and illness, Father
Membre reached the Jesuit mission at Green Bay, and he
says that he could not sufficiently acknowledge the charity
which the Fathers there displayed to him and his compan
ions. Father Enjalran
/tnriJU fiuJkar^Jot' fa* then accompanied him
^ to Michilimakinac,
FAC-SIMI^E OF THE SIGNATUKE OF FATHEK wWther Father Hen.
JOHN EXJALRAN.
nepin had preceded
them. He had recovered some of their vestments at Green
Bay, where he, too. was able to say mass, after which he win
tered at Michilimakinac with Father Pierson.
When La Salle set out in November, 1681, to descend the
Mississippi, Father Zenobius Membre bore him company, and
his account of the canoe voyage is preserved. He planted
the cross at the Quappa town and at the mouth of the Missis
sippi, endeavoring to announce, as well as he could, the great
truths of religion to the tribes he met on the way. It was
his privilege to intone the Yexilla Regis and the Te Deum
when they reached the Gulf of Mexico. This amiable relig
ious returned with La Salle to Europe by the way of Canada,
and the Recollect mission in the Mississippi Valley came to
a close. " All we have done," says Father Membre, " has
been to see the state of these nations, and to open the way to
the gospel and to missionaries, having baptized only two in-
1 Le Clercq, " Establishment of the Faith," ii., pp. 128-157 ; Letter of La
Salle in Margry, " Decouvertes et Etablissements des Fran^ais," Paris,
1877, ii., p. 124. " Relation de Henri de Tonty," ibid., i., p. 588 ; Hen-
nepiu, " Description de la Louisiane," Paris, 1683 ; New York, 1880, pp.
266-9.
VICARIATES-APOSTOLIC ERECTED. 327
fants, whom I saw at the point of death, and who, in fact,
died in our presence." '
There is reason to believe, however, that the Recollects
regarded the Mississippi Yalley as a field assigned to them,
and the whole influence of Count de Frontenac, the Governor
of Canada, supported by the French Government, wras given
to the Recollects and directed against the bishop and his sec
ular clergy, and against the Jesuits who shared the views of
the bishop. La Salle was in ardent sympathy with Frontenac,
and his papers and those of his friends show the most viru
lent hatred of the Jesuits. The venerable Father Allouez,
who had labored so long and fruitfully in the northwest, was
a special object of La Salle's detestation, and he was ready to
lay any crime to the missionary's charge.
In this position of affairs the French Government was in
duced to ask the Holy See to erect one or more Vicariates-
Apostolic in the Mississippi Valley, and the hopes of a success
ful mission appeared to the Propaganda so well founded that
Vicariates were actually established. But when information
of this step reached Bishop Saint Vallier at Quebec, he for
warded to Paris and Rome a strong protest against the dis
memberment of his diocese, without his knowledge or con
sent. He claimed the valley of the Mississippi as having been
discovered by Father Marquette, a priest of his diocese, and
Louis Jolliet, a pupil of his Seminary. He claimed that Fa
ther Marquette had preached to the nations on that river and
baptized Indians there more than twelve years before. Louis
XIY. referred the matter to three commissioners, the Arch
bishop of Paris, the King's Coufessor, and the Marquis de
Seignelay, and on their report he solicited from the Holy See
a revocation of the Yicariates which had been established.2
1 Le Clercq, " Establishment of the Faith," ii., p. 194.
9 " Memoire pour faire connaitre au Roy que tous les missionnaires de
328 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
The Recollect Fathers had, however, withdrawn from the
West, and the whole care of the missions and of the only
French post, Fort Saint Louis, established by La Sulle at
Starved Rock, on the Illinois River, near the Big Yermillion,
devolved on the Jes
uits. The missiona
ries of that order were
the veteran Allouez,
wno labored among
the JViiamis, visiting
Fort Saint Louis from
time to time; Henry
Nouvel and Enjalran
at Green Bay ; Alba-
nel?Bailloquetijames
PAC-SIMILE8 OP THE SIGNATURES OF FATHERS Gravier, Claude Av-
ALBANEL, BAILLOQUET, GRAVIER, AND ^ ^ ^
MAREST. r
Carheil and Kicolas
Potier ; while John Joseph Marest, of a family to be long
connected with the West, was assigned to a projected mission
among the Sioux.1
Nicholas Perrot, one of the most capable and honest of
the French pioneers of the West, a man whose solid services
contrast nobly with the great vaporings and petty results of
La Salle, was a steady friend of the Catholic development of
la Nouvellc France y doivcnt travailler sons la dependance de 1'Evgque
de Quebec," by Bishop St. Vallier. . The date must be about 1685. See,
too, Letter of the Bishop, August 20, 1688. Margry, iii., p. 579. It
would be interesting to ascertain the names and limits of these Vicariates,
the first distinct organization in this country, but these details cannot yet
be traced in the archives of the Propaganda.
1 " New York Co'. Documents," ix., p. 418 ; Charlevoix, " History of
New France," Catalogue S. J., 1688 ; Baugy, " Journal d'une Expedition
contre les Iroquois en 1687," Paris, 1883, p. 166 ; F. Henri Nouvel to De
la Barre, April 23, 1684, in Margry, ii., p. 344.
PERRONS MONSTRANCE.
329
the West, and that he was especially a benefactor of the
Church at Green Bay is attested by one of the most interest
ing relics preserved in the country. This is a silver mon
strance, now in the possession of the Bishop of Green Bay,
which bears an inscription telling when and by whom it was
given. Though buried for generations on the site of the old
chapel at the Kapide des Peres, it is so well preserved that
PEBROT'S MONSTRANCE AND BASE, SHOWING INSCRIPTION.
its original beauty can be seen. On the base is the inscrip
tion : " * Ce soleil a ete donne par M. Mcolas Perrot a la
mission de St. Frangois Xavier en la Baye des Puants. %t
1686." " This ostensorium was given to the mission of St.
Francis Xavier at Green Bay by Nicolas Perrot, 1686."
i A writer, who imbibed from La Salle and Margry a rooted prej
udice against the Jesuits, we regret to say, has thrown on this noble
330 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
The missionaries were in early times the only representa
tives of civilized authority on the frontier, and alone exer
cised control over the bushlopers and independent fur-trad
ers. Under the ban of the law, as most of them were, for
the French authorities in Canada favored only trading com
panies and monopolists, these irregular traders, many of them
born in the country and known from boyhood to the mission
priests, found in them monitors in their waywardness, con
solers in sickness and affliction, encouragers in all that tended
to keep them within the laws of moral and civilized life.
Frequently aided by them in their long journeys, and re
lieved by their aid, the missionaries naturally sympathized
with these young men of Canadian birth, and as naturally
were, at times, reproached by those who grasped at the mo
nopoly of the fur trade on the lakes.1
De la Barre, when Governor of Canada, was as favorable
to the missionaries as Frontenac and his sycophant La Salle
had been hostile. In his instructions to La Durantaye, an
officer sent West in 1683, he says : " As the Kev. Jesuit Fa
thers are the best informed as to the manner of treating1 with
explorer the odium of attempting to poison La Salle. But Xicolas
Perrot, who was Captain of the Cote de Becancour in 1670, and who
had acted as the representative of the French Government in the West,
could not be the man who was valet to La Salle. Another person of the
name was a hired servant to the Sulpitians in 1667 (Faillon, iii.. p. 220),
and a workman at Fort Frontenac (Margry). He is, in all probability,
the valet of La Salle.
1 In the constant flings at them in the dispatches of Frontenac and the
writings of La Salle, this should be borne in mind. Any missionary,
Catholic or Protestant, isolated on the frontier would be similarly influ
enced. Father Marquette's unfinished journal gives us a kind of photo
graph of life on the lakes in those days, and the punning words that
close it are a kind of apology for the coureurs de bois. " Si les Francois
out des robbes de ce pays icy, ils ne les desrobbent pas, tant les fatigues
sent grands pour les en tirer."
DEATH OF FATHER ALLOUEZ. 331
the Indians, and the most zealous for Christianity, he will
place confidence in them, will afford them all satisfaction in
his power, and treat them as persons for whom I entertain a
profound respect and a great esteem."
Tout}7, while faithful to La Salle, did not share the preju
dices of his commander, and not only availed himself of the
services of the Jesuit Fathers at Fort St. Louis, but sought
to have them in the territory on the Arkansas granted him
by La Salle, where he gave them land for a chapel and a
mission.
The enterprises of La Salle, involving a monopoly of trade,
had excited great discontent in Canada and the West, and his
overbearing manner and violence had created him many ene
mies. The Iroquois saw with no favorable eye his forts at
Catarocouy, Niagara, and on the Illinois. They were a con
stant menace to the existence and trade of the Five Nations.
In 1683 a Seneca force was sent against Fort Saint Louis in
Illinois, plundering French traders on the way. They ex
pected to take the post by surprise, but the Chevalier Baugv
and Tonty had been warned, and repulsed the Iroquois with
loss.1 The brave Breton, de la Durantaye, hearing of the
danger of the fort, had set out for its relief, accompanied by
an Indian force, and the veteran Father Allouez, who, rising
above all personal motives, was ready to endure toil and
danger to save the lives and property of La Salle's colony on
the Illinois.11
Father Claude Allouez, the founder of Catholicity in the
West, closed his long labors by a happy death on the 27th or
28th of August, 1689, in the seventy-sixth year of his age,
1 Margry, ii., pp. 338, 344 ; Charlevoix, " History of New France," iii.,
p. 244; "N. Y. Col. Doc.," ix., p. 239; " Mercure Galant," August,
1685, pp. 340-350.
2 Tonty in Margry, p. 22.
332 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
t
having been nearly thirty years on the missions around Lake
Superior and Lake Michigan, which he had created.1
The Iroquois had thus openly made war on the French,
and de la Barre prepared to invade their territory with a
force sufficient to punish their perfidy. The other cantons
renewed their treaties with the French, so that de la Barre
was able to throw his whole army on the Senecas.
The missionaries in that nation were no longer safe ; Fa
thers Fremin and Pierron returned to Canada, followed in
1683 by Father Garnier ; the Cayuga chiefs plundered Fa
ther de Carheil, and in 1684 drove him from the canton.
The missionaries on the Mohawk withdrew, and Father
Milet, leaving Oneida, proceeded to the camp of de la Barre
at Hungry Bay. The Catholic missions among the Five
Nations were suspended, except at Onondaga, where the two
brothers in blood and religion, Fathers John and James de
Lamberville, still maintained their chapel.
De la Barre was induced by the other cantons to accept
vague promises made on behalf of the Senecas, with whom
he made peace and returned to Canada. The Senecas, how
ever, neglected to carry out the treaty on their side, and after
a general council at Albany, a force was sent by the Five
Nations against the Ottawas in Michigan.
The Marquis de Denonville, who had arrived as Governor
of Canada, made all preparations for a vigorous campaign.
Father John de Lamberville went down to Canada to confer
with him, leaving his brother alone at Onondaga. Colonel
*
1 Pie was born at Saint Didier en Forest, and studied at the College of
Puy en Velay, where he was under the direction of Saint Francis Regis.
Entering the Society of Jesus with one of his brothers, he was sent to
Canada in 1658. His first labors were near Quebec, but August 8, 1665,
he left Three Rivers for his great Western mission. To his merit there
is uniform testimony, and the only dissonant voice is that of La Salle.
Margry, " Decouvertes et Etablissements des Francais," i., pp. 59-64.
FATHER LAMBERVILLE' S PERIL. 333
Dongan, Governor of New York, was inciting the Iroquois
against the French and endeavored to obtain possession of
Father James de Lamberville ; but he remained, and soon
joined by his brother, they continued their mission amid
a thousand dangers. In 1686 the younger Father was
recalled, and when Denonvjlle was ready to take the field,
Father John de Lamberville was sent to Onondaga, mainly
to cover his designs. To prevent knowledge of his move
ments reaching the Indians, the governor arrested all the
Iroquois in the colony, entrapping those living near Fort
Catarocouy, and even treating as prisoners some who assumed
to be ambassadors from the cantons. These prisoners were
sent to France to be treated as galley-slaves.
The missionary stood alone at Onondaga. In the eyes of
the Indians he was responsible for the apparently treacherous
acts of the governor, whose envoy he had been. But Teior-
hensere was respected for his virtues. The sachems of Onon
daga addressed him in noble words. They knew the honesty
of his heart too well to believe him capable of duplicity, but
the young braves would hold him responsible. " It is not
safe for thee to remain here. All, perhaps, will not render
thee the justice that we do, and when once our young men
have sung the war song .... they will hearken only to
their fury, from which it would be no longer in our power
to rescue thee." They gave him guides and a guard, insist
ing that he should depart at once, and led by devious paths
the missionary, after closing the last Catholic chapel in the
land of the Five Nations, reached his countrymen in safety.
The missions of the Society of Jesus among the five Iro
quois nations begun with the tortures of the saintly Isaac
Jogues, and maintained amid all disheartening opposition for
forty years, closed virtually with the noble retirement of
Father John de Lamberville. After this the Catholics in
334 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
the cantons could depend only on occasional visits of a priest,
and many gradually joined the village at Sault Saint Louis,
or that under the Sulpitians on the island of Montreal.
Denouville in his expedition against the Senecas, had a
force of western Indians, who came attended by Father
Enjalran. In the action with the Senecas at Gannagaro
(Boughton's Hill), this missionary laboring among his In
dians received a severe and dangerous wound.
After ravaging the Seneca towns, Denonville erected a
fort at Niagara and garrisoned it. The chapel here was the
next shrine of Catholicity. La Salle's block-house and Fa
ther Melithon's chapel within it had been burned by the
Senecas twelve years before. Now within the stockade were
some eight cabins, one set apart for the priest, and another
with double door and three small windows was evidently the
chapel. Here the Chevalier de la Motthe was left with a
garrison of a hundred men, but the provisions furnished
were so unfit, that they bred disease that swept off most of
the French, including the commander.1 Father John de
Lamberville, who had gone there to minister to the garrison,
was stricken down with the disease, and in 1687 the surviv-
INSCRIPTION ON FATHER MTLET'S CROSS AT NIAGARA.
ors were discovered and rescued by some Miamis." Father
Milet accompanied the next party sent, and on Good Friday,
1688, he erected and blessed a large wooden cross in the cen-
1 " New York Doc. Hist.," i., p. 168.
2 Charlevoix, "History of New France," iii., pp. 290-1, 303, and au
thorities cited.
FATHER MILET, A CAPTIVE. 335
tre of the square with the inscription, " Christ reigneth, con-
quereth, commandeth."
But on the 15th of September, the palisades were demol
ished, and the French withdrew. The last altar reared by
the Catholic priests of France on the soil of New York was
thus for a time abandoned. The labors of pioneers and mis
sionaries from the days of Champlain, thrilling with their
heroic effort had failed to plant a permanent settlement or
chapel on the soiK The souls won from heathenism were
numbered with the anointed dead, or in Catholic villages on
the banks of the Saint Lawrence attested the thoroughness of
the Christian teaching given.
In 1690 only one Catholic missionary was in the land of
the Iroquois. He was there as the first had been, a prisoner.
Father Milet after the evacuation of Niagara was stationed
at Catarokouy, where his knowledge of the Iroquois charac
ter and language was reckoned upon as a means of drawing
the cantons to peace. In June, 1689, a few Onondagas
approached the fort, and declaring that peace had been made
at Montreal, asked for a surgeon and priest to attend some
of their sick. Father Milet with St. Amand, a physician,
went out, but found themselves prisoners. The missionary
was pinioned, deprived of his breviary, and all he had on
him. Manchot, an Oneida chief, however, told him that he
and his old Oneida converts would save his life. Yet he
was soon stripped and subjected to ill usage, until he was
given up to the Oneidas, who took him bound, but uninjured,
to their canton. There his old Christian converts prevented
any injury being done to him, but he was held as a prisoner.1
In the eastern portions of the country there seemed a
more favorable prospect. But even after the restoration of
1 " Lettre du p£re Pierre Milet a quelques Missionnaires clu Canada,"
Onneiout, 1691.
336 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
Pentagoet by treaty, difficulties raised by Colonel Temple
delayed its execution. Xot till the 5th of August, 1670,
was Pentagoet actually surrendered to the Chevalier de
Grande- Fontaine. The French sent to garrison the post,
and the few settlers who had remained during English rule,
were the only Catholics of European origin under the
French flag in the land now embraced in the United States.
The chapel once served by the Capuchin Fathers was re
stored to the Catholic worship. It is described as u a chapel
of about six paces long and four paces broad, covered with
shingles, and built upon a terrace ; it was surmounted by a
belfry containing a small bell weighing about eighteen
pounds." ; This was the only church in the only French
post on our soil at that time. When France recovered Aca-
dia we trace the existence of only one priest in the province,
the Franciscan, Laurence Molin, who seems to have visited
all tho stations, and drawn up a census, so that he probably
officiated in this chapel for the little garrison and the hand
ful of French settlers. But the lone settlement did not
grow, though the Baron de Saint Castin, ensign of Grande-
Fontaine, Governor of Acadia, or his successor, Chambly,
labored earnestly for years to develop the resources of the
post and district soon known as the parish of the Holy
Family.2
The people of Xew England, after King Philip's war,
looked with suspicion and hostility on all Indians, even those
who had been gathered in villages for instruction by men
1 Moreau, " Histoire de 1'Acadie Framboise," Paris, 1873, p. 275. Some
Recollects followed, and then four Penitents of Xazareth were sent.
" Collection de Manuscrits," Quebec, 1883, i., p. 395. " Centennial Cel
ebration at Bangor," p. 24.
' Pentagoet was taken by a Dutch frigate in 1674. In 1688 the plun
dering English discovered a chapel in St. Castin's house.
MISSIONS IN MAINE. 337
like Eliot. Many bands, in consequence, struck into the
forests, and sought safer and more congenial homes with
kindred tribes near the Saint Lawrence.1 Thus in 1676 the
Sokokis, Indians of Saco, settled near Three Rivers, where
the Catholic missionaries immediately undertook their in
struction in religion, and so many of the Abnakis from the
Kennebec clustered around the old Algonquin mission
chapel at Sillery, that it became an Abnaki mission.
About the same time Father Morain was laboring among a
band of Gaspesians and Etchemins who had wandered inland
to the Riviere du Loup on the borders of Maine.3 To re
vive religion in Acadia, Bishop Laval, in 1684, sent to that
part of his diocese a zealous secular priest, Louis P. Thury,
who labored there to the close of his useful life.3 Three
years later he had taken up his residence at Pentagoet, and
the holy sacrifice was again offered in the
chapel of the French frontier.4 Father ^^ (j^^j^ & \
James Bigot, who after consolidating the
. . . OM FAC-SIMTLE OF THE
Abnaki mission at billery, had transferred SIGNATURE OF
it to Saint Francois de Sales on the FATHER JACQTTEB
Chaudiere in 1685, visited the country BIGOT-
near Pentagoet in 1687, to lay the foundation of a church
among the Indians."
The English in that part of the country were already, by
plundering the French and insulting missionaries who fell
1 "New York Doc. Hist.," i., p. 169.
2 "Relation," 1676-7, p. 107; "Relations Inedites," ii., pp. 138-159.
s Bishop St. Valier, " Estat Present del'Eglise," Quebec, 1857, p. 12.
4 Cardinal Taschereau, " Memoire sur les Missions de 1'Acadie."
6 Bigot, " Journal de ce qui s'est passe dans la Mission Abnaquisede-
puis la feste de Noel, 1683, jusqu' au 6 Octobre, 1684," New York,
1857 ; " Lettre du pere Jacques Bigot, ecrite au mois de Juillet, 1685,"
New York, 1858; Bishop St. Valier, "Estat Present," p. 68; Denon-
ville in Charlevoix, " History of New France," iii., p. 308.
22
338 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
into their hands, provoking hostilities. When the war began
the Catholic Indians were ready to meet their old enemies
on the field. The Indians of Rev. Mr. Thury's mission, he
tells us, numbering nearly a hundred warriors, almost all
went to confession before setting out against Fort Pemaquid ;
and while the force was absent their wives and children ap
proached the holy tribunal to lift up clean hands to God, and
the women kept up a perpetual recitation of the Eosary from
early morn to night to ask God, through the intercession of
the Blessed Virgin, to show them His favor and protection
during this war.1
For a brief term of two years regular and secular priests
of France established a chapel and exercised the ministry in
a far distant portion of the country, with independent sanc
tion from the Congregation " de Propagande Fide" at Rome
and the Archbishop of Rouen, who still clung to his old
jurisdiction beyond the Atlantic.
When La Salle had continued the exploration of the Mis
sissippi, begun by Jolliet and Marquette, and established the
fact that no impediment to navigation existed, but that a
vessel might sail from the mouth of the Illinois to Dieppe or
Rochelle, he formed vague plans of trade in buffalo robes,
but seems to have entertained no definite project of coloniz
ing the valley of the great river. When he went to France
his mind was filled with projects for collecting a vast Indian
force with which to cross the country from the Mississippi
to the Mexican frontier and capture the rich mining districts
in Mexico, of which Santa Barbara was popularly supposed
to be the real centre. In Paris he met Pefialosa, once Gov
ernor of New Mexico, who had taken refuge in France,
1 Lettres de M. Thury, " Collection de Manuscrits," Quebec, 1883, pp.
464-5, 477.
FRENCH CHAPEL IN TEXAS. 339
where to curry favor with the Government he prepared a
narrative of an expedition to the Mississippi, which he "pre
tended to have made from Santa Fe. He put La Salle's
schemes into practical form, and proposed that an expedition
should be sent to Texas, whence the mines could be easily
reached.1
The Government was deceived. La Salle was taken into
favor, and was sent out to prepare the way for a large expe
dition under Penalosa. The real object of the expedition
was of course kept secret, and La Salle's object was ostensi
bly the mouth of the Mississippi, which he had discovered,
and where he was to begin a settlement. A vessel was given
to him, with authority to enlist soldiers among the rabble of
Paris, and the " Joli," a vessel of the French Navy, com
manded by Captain Beaujeu, was placed at his disposal, and
subject to his orders till his expedition reached its destina
tion. The expedition left France in July, 1684.
After taking in some freebooters in the West Indies, La
Salle entered the Gulf of Mexico, and passing the mouth of
the Mississippi coasted along the Texan shore for a suitable
port. He finally fixed on Passo Cavallo, to which he re
turned. One vessel entered the bay, the other was run
ashore by accident or design. Here the object of the expe
dition was made known, and the plan of an attack on the
Spanish settlements was revealed."
Several priests had accompanied the expedition. The
Recollect Father, Zenobius Membre, who had accompanied
La Salle to Illinois, and subsequently down the Mississippi,
'Shea, "Penalosa," New York, 1882 ; Duro, "Penalosa," Madrid,
1882.
2 Joutel, "Journal Historique," Paris, 1713; Cavelier, "Relation," New
York, 1858 ; Margry, " Etablissements et Decouvertes," ii., pp. 485-606 ;
Le Clercq, " Establishment of the Faith," New York, 1881, pp. 199-283.
340 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
was one. He was accompanied by Fathers Anastasius Douay
and Maximus Le Clercq of the same order. These Fathers
had obtained from the Propaganda special powers establish
ing a mission of their order. There were besides the Rev.
John Cavelier, brother of La Salle, a Sulpitian, Rev. Messrs.
Chefdeville and D'esmanville of the same community. They
had obtained faculties from the Archbishop of Rouen, who,
in granting them, alleged as a ground for his action that
Quebec was too remote from their destination to justify ap
plication to the bishop of that see.1
When Rev. Mr. D'esmanville learned the real object of the
expedition he declared his intention to return to France.
" He had come," he said, " to war against demons, not
against Christians," and he sailed back with Beaujeu, who,
having fulfilled the task imposed upon him, hoisted his sail
for Europe."
La Salle, entering Espiritu Santo Bay in January, 1085,
threw up a fort on the spot subsequently occupied by the
Bahia mission. From this point he made excursions to sound
the native tribes, and formed an alliance with the Cenis or
Asinais, evidently awaiting all the while the arrival of the
great expedition under Pefialosa, which never came. Fear
of capture by the Spaniards must have prevented his ventur
ing into the gulf with his remaining vessel, and at last, ap
parently convinced that his government had abandoned him,
he set out from his fort, which he had named St. Louis, with a
party, intending to reach the Mississippi overland and return
with such force as he could gather. In the fort he left about
twenty persons under Barbier, with Fathers Membre and
Maximus Le Clercq, and the Sulpitian, Rev. Mr. Chefdeville.
• See " Faculties," in Le Clercq, ii., p. 196 ; Margry, ii., p. 475.
2 D'esmanville, in Margry, ii., pp. 510-517.
FRENCH CHAPEL IN TEXAS. 341
He was accompanied on his march by his brother, Rev. Mr.
Cavelier, and Father Anastasius Douay. For two years these
five priests had offered the holy sacrifice in a chapel con
structed in the fort, and administered the sacraments. There
were marriages and baptisms, the sick to console with relig
ious rites, and the dead for whom to offer the mass of requiem.
Rev. Mr. Cavelier and Father Anastasius, after the murder
of La Salle by his own men, reached a French post on the
Arkansas, and by way of Illinois returned to Canada and
France.1
How long the party at the fort remained unmolested is
not definitely known, but they were nearly all finally cut off
by the Indians. That this was the fate of the Eecollect Fa
thers and Rev. Mr. Chefdeville was positively asserted by
two young Frenchmen named Talon, who were rescued by
the Spaniards and by Francisco Martinez, afterward Sergeant
Major at Pensacola, who in Texas obtained the chalices and
breviaries of the murdered priests from the Indians.2
A Spanish expedition, sent to break up the French settle
ment, found only charred ruins and the unburied bones of
the unfortunate remnant of La Salle' s great force.3
Sainte Croix Island, the Falls of Saint Anthony, and Fort
Saint Louis in Texas are the three extreme points in our
land marking the limits of the territory through which the
clergy of France, under the Bishops of Rouen and Quebec,
had, in less than fourscore years and ten, carried the ministry
of the Catholic Church, offering its solemn sacrifice, an
nouncing the word of God to civilized and unreclaimed men,
spending strength and health and life's blood in the cause of
1 Joutel, "Journal Historique," p. 329.
" Letter of d'Iberville, Rochelle, May 3, 1704.
•• Barcia, " Ensayo Cronologico," pp. 294-6 ; Smith, " Coleccion," p. 25.
342 THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
religion, from the fierce ocean tide of Fundy, the thunderous
roar of Niagara, the copper-lined shores of Superior, and the
bison plains of the Mississippi Valley to the gulf shore of
Texas, while Protestantism had not yet ventured to proclaim
its views or call men to prayer at the foot of the Alleghanies.
Meanwhile the Bishopric of Quebec had seen its changes.
The venerable Laval had, soon after the erection of the See,
exerted himself to give existence to the chapter instituted by
the bulls, but delays ensued, and he finally visited Europe.
There failing health and increasing difficulties induced him
to offer to resign his See. To succeed him as Bishop of
Quebec, the .Abbe John Baptist de la Croix Chevrieres de
Saint Yallier, a native of Grenoble, a man of piety and worth,
and at the time one of the king's chaplains, was selected.
With the authority of Yicar-General conferred upon him by
Bishop Laval, the Abbe de St. Yallier visited Canada and ex
amined the condition of the Church on the Atlantic shore of
Acadia and throughout the valley of the St. Lawrence, con
signing the result of his observations to writing, and in time
giving them to the press.
Eesolved, then, to undertake the direction of the diocese,
he accepted the bulls of appointment, and Bishop Laval hav
ing ratified his virtual resignation by a formal act on the
24th of January, 1688, the Abbe Saint Yallier was duly con
secrated bishop on the following day.
Bishop Laval's desire, ardently entertained, was to return
to Canada and end his days there. After some delay this
was permitted. Though no longer the bishop of the diocese,
his personal influence was great, and during the absence of
Bishop St. Yallier, 1691-2, 1700-1711, the presence of its
former bishop was a source of blessing to Canada, in his co
operation with those entrusted with the administration, the
exercise of episcopal functions, and the influence which his
BISHOP LAVAL. 343
zeal evoked for the good of religion. Surrounded by the
loving children of his clergy, religious, and flock, Bishop
Laval died on the 6th of May, 1708. He died as a saint and
was venerated as one ; many sought his intercession with
God, and for nearly two centuries frequent miracles have
been ascribed to him.
The Church of Canada in our day has petitioned for the
FAC-SIMILE OF THE SIGNATURE OF BISHOP LAVAL.
canonization of Bishop Laval. As by his authority the
Church was established in New York, Michigan, Illinois,
and Wisconsin, and the cross borne down the current of the
Mississippi, the Catholic Church in the United States cannot
be indifferent to the cause which may exalt to the honor of
public suffrages at our altars one who exercised episcopal
jurisdiction over so vast a part of our territory.1
1 La Tour, " Memoires sur la Vie de M. de Laval, Premier Evgque de
Quebec," Cologne, 1761. Langevin, " Notice Biographique sur Francois
de Laval de Montmorency, ler Evgque de Quebec," Montreal, 1874;
"Esquisse dela vie .... de Mgr. Fr. Xavier de Laval Montmorency,
Premier EvSque de Quebec," Quebec, 1845.
BOOK IV.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE ENGLISH
COLONIES.
CHAPTEK I.
CATHOLICITY IN MARYLAND, 1690-1708.
IT has been the custom with historians to speak contempt
uously of the two Stuart brothers, Charles II. and James II.,
as rulers. Yet James seems to have been the first to appre
hend the future greatness of America, and the necessity of
uniting the colonies in one organized system. Charles, act
ing by the advice of James in dispossessing the Dutch, and
taking steps for the speedy settlement of New Jersey and
Pennsylvania, as well as by the charters which he granted
for the Carolinas, made England sole occupant of the whole
coast from the rugged shores of Maine to the borders of
Florida. A compact series of communities, blended together,
ready to afford mutual aid, confronted on the north the ter
ritories claimed by France, and on the south those occupied
for more than a century by Spain. James II. as Duke of
York, and as king, had been the first to check the increasing
power of France on the north and west, and make the St.
Lawrence and the Mississippi the boundaries of England's
future empire.
The fall of the Stuarts changed the whole political and
religious character of events. England became heartily
and intensely opposed to Catholicity in her internal relations,
and in her intercourse with other nations. She was precipi
tated into wars with France and Spain, and these involved
her American colonies in hostilities with Canada and Florida.
The struggle on the part of the colonies was not national
(344)
COODE'S FALSE CHARGES. 345
merely. It heightened the old antagonism to the Church
of God, and made her an object of unceasing hatred and
dread, and caused her to be regarded as a menacing enemy
at the very doors of the colonists. Within the provinces
every Catholic was regarded as a Jacobite, ready at all times
to join any enemy whatever against his fellow-countrymen.
In Maryland a revolt against the authority of Lord Balti
more was headed by one John Coode, whose character may
be judged by the fact that having subsequently been or
dained a minister of the Church of England, he was indicted
and convicted in 1G99 of " atheism and blasphemy." ' This
man gathered a convention " for the defense of the Protest
ant religion," which sent to William III. an exposition of
their motives. Among the grievances which they alleged
was the following :
" In the next place Churches and Chappells, which by the
said Charter, should be built and consecrated according to
the Ecclesiasticall lawes of the kingdome of England, to our
greate regrett and discouragement of our religion, are erected,
and converted to the use of popish Idolatry and superstition,
Jesuits and seminarie priests are the onely incumbents (for
which their is a supply provided by sending over popish
youth to be educated at St. Ormes." '
It further charged that, " severall children of protestants
have been committed to the tutelage of papists, and brought
up in the Romish superstition." And again, " The seizure
and apprehending of protestants in their houses with armed
forces, consisting of papists, and that in time of peace, thence
1 Hawks, " Contributions to the Ecclesiastical History of the U. S.,"
ii., p. 64.
- Maryland historians admit that these charges were groundless and
malicious, McMahon, p. 240; Hawks, "Contributions," ii., p. 66;
Chalmers, p. 383.
346 THE CHURCH IN MARYLAND.
hurrying them away to prisons, etc. We still find all the
ineanes used by these very persons and their agents, Jesuits,
priests, and lay papists, that art of malice cann suggest, to
divert the obedience and loyalty of the Inhabitants from
their most sacred Majtys to that height of impudence that
solemn Masses and prayers are used (as wee have very good
information) in their Chappells and Oratoryes for the pros
perous success of the popish forces in Ireland, and the
French designes against England." *
William seized the opportunity to make Maryland a royal
province. He recognized the convention, and sent out Sir
Lionel Copley as royal governor in 1691. This official at
once summoned a legislature, from which all Catholics,
though they represented very great landed interests, were
excluded. The first act recognized William and Mary ; the
second was, " An Act for the service of Almighty God, and
the establishment of the Protestant religion, in this Prov
ince." The knell of religious liberty had sounded. " Under
the gentle auspices of that government of the Lords Balti
more," says the Maryland historian, McMahon, " that gov
ernment, whose tyrannical and popish inclinations were now
the favorite theme, the profession and exercise of the Chris
tian religion in all its modes, was open to all, — no church
was established : all were protected, none were taxed to sus
tain a -church to whose tenets they were opposed, and the
people gave freely as a benevolence, what they would have
loathed as a tax."
The Puritans, ungrateful to the Catholics who offered them
a home, had, on seizing the government, sought to crush the
adherents of the ancient faith ; now they beheld their own
1 Scharf, i., pp. 311-3. The charges were utterly preposterous, as
Protestants far outnumbered the Catholics, but the document gave the
authorities in England a pretext they desired.
ANGLICAN CHURCH ESTABLISHED. 347
weapons turned against themselves, and saw a party, placed
in power by their aid, establish the Church of England in
Maryland. Nor was this merely in name. The whole prov
ince was divided into parishes, vestrymen were appointed,
and every taxable inhabitant of Maryland, whether Cath
olic, Puritan, or Friend, was taxed annually forty pounds of
tobacco to form a fund for building Episcopal churches and
maintaining Episcopal ministers. To annoy the Catholics,
Saint Mary's County, in which the population was mainly of
that faith, was divided into two parishes, one named William
and Mary, the other King and Queen. Here as in other
Catholic parishes, the people were compelled to contribute
their means to erect Episcopal churches, some still existing,
and for nearly a century to pay for the support of a hostile
ministry which never had but a petty flock of its own.
Being ere long disfranchised, the Catholics had no voice
in making the laws or electing delegates, but they naturally
united with the Friends and others, who felt the hardship of
this unjust and oppressive system.
The church thus established had not ministers enough to
supply the parishes created in the province, for, according to
some, " there were scarcely any ministers in it." Governor
Nicholson found but three, so indifferent had members of
the Church of England been in regard to their religion.
" These three," says a representation of the Anglican clergy
to the Bishop of London, " had to contend with double their
number of priests belonging to the Church of Rome." *
Another Protestant represents " his religion as in a manner
turned out of doors " by the very loose morals and " scandal
ous lives " of the Anglican clergy, and " by the Roman
priests' cunning." The province then contained a popula-
1 Hawks, " Contributions," ii., pp. 71, 76, 77.
348 THE CHURCH IN MARYLAND.
tion of twenty-five thousand, a majority being Protestant ;
yet this was the state to which religion had fallen among
them.1
But while the clergy of the Protestant faith were few, and
by no means a credit, not a breath of suspicion is raised
against the Catholic priests of Maryland. The only Jesuit
Fathers then in the province, so far as we can gather, were
the Rev. Nicholas Gulick, Rev. Francis Pennington, and
Rev. William Hunter, with probably the Franciscan Father,
Basil Hobart. Yet few as they were, these zealous priests
not only kept alive the faith of Catholics, but won Protest
ants to the Church.2
In the Assembly convened by Nicholson on his arrival, an
act was passed transferring the seat of government from
Saint Mary's to Anne Arundell. " The reasons alleged for
the change," says Scharf, " were not without weight ; but it
is probable that the true motives were to be found in the
fact that Saint Mary's was especially a Catholic settlement,
was beyond other towns devoted to the proprietary govern
ment, and was closely connected with all those ties which it
1 McMahon, " History of Maryland," p. 244 ; Hawks, i., p. 73.
9 The Letter from the Maryland (Protestant Episcopal) Clergy to the
Bishop of London, May 18, 1696 ("Hist. Mag.," March, 1868, p. 151)',
says : " When his Excellency Governor Nicholson came into the Coun
try in the year 1694 there were but 3 Clergymen in Episcopal Orders,
besides 5 or 6 popish priests who had perverted divers idle people from
the Protestant Religion." .... "This expectation of the Lord Balti
more being restored to the Government of Maryland animates the Priests
and Jesuits to begin already to inveigle several ignorant people to turn
to their religion. To which end they do (contrary to the Act of Parlia
ment to deter them from perverting any of his Majesty's Protestant sub
jects to popery) introduce themselves into the company of the sick when
they have no Ministers that his Excellency hath been lately forced to
issue out his proclamation against their so doing to restrain them." Ib.,
p. 153
ZEAL OF THE CATHOLIC CLERGY. 349
was the policy of the new government to break up." The
Mayor, Common Council, and Freemen of Saint Mary's in
vain appealed ; their remonstrance was treated with the ut
most contempt ; the change was carried into effect, and
though as late as 1705 government lingered at the old cap
ital, Saint Mary's gradually declined, till nothing remains to
mark the spot but a few bricks and the Protestant church
erected with money wrung from the Catholics, and with the
materials of the old Catholic church and governor's house.
The veteran missioner, Thomas Harvey, died in Maryland
in 1696. The next year Fathers John Hall and Nicholas
Gulick attended the brick chapel at St. Mary's, and two frame
chapels, apparently at St. Inigoes and Newtown ; the Super
ior, Father "William Hunter, with Father Robert Brook,
residing at Port Tobacco, attended the chapel just erected
near the house, and a little chapel 40 feet by 20 at Newport
in Charles Co., and another only 30 feet long on the Boar-
man estate near Zekiah Swamp Creek, the Recollect Father
Basil Hobart also maintaining a chapel at his residence a
mile and a half from Newport ; ' while the chapel at Don-
caster in Talbot Co., " a clapboard house," was unattended
and had perhaps been under a Rev. Mr. Smith.2
The next year Maryland was visited by a pestilence, and
the Catholic priests showed their wonted zeal and devoted-
ness. In many parts there were no Protestant clergy, or
none who would face the danger, and the priest was fre
quently summoned to the bedside of a sufferer. Their care
and attention won so many to the faith, that an Episcopal
minister addressed a letter to Nicholson which he sent to the
Legislature. That body took alarm, and in an address to the
1 Perry, " Historical Collections," iv. (Maryland), pp. 20-23 ; Scliarf,
i., pp. 345, 364. The Mortuary List.
2 A priest of this name is alluded to as now or late of Taibot County.
350 THE CHURCH IN MARYLAND.
governor said : " Upon reading a certain letter from a rev
erend minister of the Church of England which your Excel
lency was pleased to communicate to us, complaining to your
Excellency that the Popish priests in Charles County do, of
their own accord, in this raging and violent mortality in that
county, make it their business to go up and down the county,
to persons' houses when dying and frantic, and endeavour to
seduce and make proselytes of them, and in such condition
boldly presume to administer the sacrament to them ; we
have put it to the vote in the House, if a law should be made
to restrain such their presumption or not ; and have con
cluded to make no such law at present, but humbly entreat
your Excellency that you would be pleased to issue your
proclamation to restrain and prohibit such their extravagance
and presumptuous behaviour." '
Such a proclamation probably issued. Ministers of the
Gospel were forbidden in time of pestilence to visit the sick
who were abandoned by their own pastors or destitute of
them ! One would think that steps to increase the numbers
or efficiency of the established clergy would have been more
reasonable.
Yet the matter did not drop there. Some time after, the
Upper House paid this tribute to the zeal of Father William
Hunter." Addressing the governor, they say : " It being
represented to this board that William Hunter, a Popish
priest, in Charles county, committed divers enormities in
disswadiug several persons, especially poor, ignorant people
1 " Maryland Manuscripts at Fulham," cited by Hawks, ii., p. 79.
2 Father William Hunter, a native of Yorkshire, entered the Society of
Jesus in 1679, and after a year on the English mission came to Maryland
in 1692. He was Superior of the Mission from 1696 to 1708, and died at
Port Tobacco August 15, 1723, at the age of 64. Foley, "Records,"
vii., p. 385 ; " Woodstock Letters," xv., p. 93.
PENAL LAWS. 351
of the Church of England, from their faith and endeavour
ing to draw them to the Popish faith, consulted and debated
whether it may not be advisable that the said Hunter be
wholly silenced, and not suffered to preach or say mass in
any part of this province, and thereupon it is thought advis
able that the same be wholly left to his Excellency's judg
ment to silence him or not, as his demerits require."
The Legislature resolved to annoy, if they could not crush,
the Catholics. A law had been passed in 1696. under which
it was evidently intended to make attendance on the Church
of England service compulsory, but it was annulled by the
King's Council in 1699 on the express ground that it con
tained " a clause declaring all the laws of England to be in
force in Maryland ; which clause is of another nature than
that which is set forth by the title in the said law." : The
Legislature did not venture to act under the vague terms of
this law by ordering any prosecution of the Catholic clergy.
The Franciscan Father Basil Hobart 3 and the Jesuit lay
brother Nicholas Willart, whose deaths are reported in
1698, were perhaps victims to their zeal, early pioneers in
the long catalogue of priests and religious who have been
martyrs of charity in the land of Mary.
The Catholics had now entered on a period of great trial.
The proprietary deprived of his government of the colony
could exert no influence, and even his personal rights in the
province he had secured only in part, the Assembly defying
a royal decision.
Year by year new laws were enacted bearing more and
more heavily on Catholics. Thus in 1700 an act was placed
on the statute-book which required the use of the Book of
1 Scharf, " History of Maryland," i., p. 364.
2 " Acts of Chapter held in England," July 10, 1698. This Father
had been laboring on the Maryland mission from 1674.
352 THE CHURCH IN MARYLAND.
Common Prayer " in every cliurcli or other place of public
worship," but the remonstrances against a statute which
affected the Presbyterian and the Friend no less than the
Catholic, prevented its receiving the royal assent.1
The Church of England took a step toward organizing in
America by sending out the Rev. Dr. Bray as Commissary.
Yet in his first visitation this high official addressing a min
ister arraigned for his scandalous life, bore testimony to the
high character of the Catholic clergy. " It so happens, that
you are seated in the midst of papists, nay, within two miles
of Mr. Hunter, the chief amongst the numerous priests at
this time in this province ; and who, I am credibly informed
by the most considerable gentlemen in these parts, has made
that advantage of your scandalous living that there have
been more perversions made to popery in that part of Mary-
Land since your polygamy has been the talk of the country,
than in all the time it has been an English colony." a
The English Government indeed began to feel that its
neglect of all care for the religious condition of its subjects
in America was not creditable to the realm or to the richly
endowed church established by law. The Charter granted
by William III. on the 16th day of June, in the thirteenth
year of his reign, to " The Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts," admits the delinquency in a coarse
and vulgar fling at the Catholic clergy whose zeal and disin
terested labors were such a striking contrast to their revilers.
" Many of our loving subjects," it says, " do wrant the admin
istration of God's word and sacraments, and seem to be
abandoned to atheism and infidelity ; and also for want of
learned and orthodox ministers to instruct our said loving sub-
1 Hawks, ii., p. 973 ; Scharf, i., pp. 365-6.
'2 " The Acts of Dr. Bray's Visitation, held at Annapolis, in Maryland."
London, 1700, p. 12. Hawks, " Contributions," ii., pp. 497, etc.
STERILITY OF PROTESTANTISM. 353
jects in the principles of true religion, divers Romish priests
and Jesuits are the more encouraged to pervert and draw
over our said loving subjects to Popish superstition and idol
atry."
Humphreys, the Historian of the Society, recording the
work of the Society to the year 1718, is very cautious and
gives no account of the extent of the Catholic Church in
Maryland. There is not the slightest claim by him that the
missionaries of this Protestant Society had gained any con
verts from the ranks of the Catholics, but writing after a law
had been passed to prevent the introduction of Catholic ser
vants, he contents himself with saying : " the number of
Papists who went over there hath decreased." l
Thus from hostile testimony we draw some idea of the
labors of a prominent Catholic clergyman in Maryland at
this time.
By a law passed in 1702 which received the royal sanc
tion, the English acts of toleration were extended to Protest
ant dissenters in Maryland, wrho were permitted to have
service in their meeting-houses when registered. The Cath
olic was thus left the only victim of intolerance and op
pression in a province founded by Catholics.2
John Seymour, the royal governor sent over in February,
1703, was a fit instrument for the enforcement of an un
christian policy.
Soon after his arrival a complaint was lodged before him
'Humphreys, "An Historical Account of the Incorporated Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts." London, 1730, p.
xvi., p. 21.
2 And Maryland "presented the picture of a province, founded for
the sake of religious opinion by the toil and treasure of Roman Catholics,
in which of all who called themselves Christian, none, save Roman Cath
olics, were denied toleration." Rev. Dr. Hawks in " Contributions,"
ii., p. 117.
23
354 THE CHURCH IN MARYLAND.
that Father William Hunter had consecrated a chapel, and
that Father Robert Brooke had said mass in court time in
the old Catholic chapel at Saint Mary's, as the Catholic
clergy had done since the founding of the colony. The
governor summoned the priests before him and his council,
September 11, 1704, and though the accused asked to be at
tended by their counsel, Charles Carroll, this was refused. To
the charge of consecrating a chapel Father Hunter replied
that " he did not consecrate it, for that is an Episcopal func
tion, and that nobody was present but himself in his common
priest's vestments, and that neither under his Excellency's
eye, nor in his presence, but if any such thing was done, it
was above fourteen months ago, and long before his Excel
lency's arrival." Father Brooke pleaded justly that he had
only done what others had formerly done without cavil.
The action and language of the wretched bigot who then
governed Maryland are thus recorded, and are a picture of
unexampled arrogance, insolence, and intolerance :
" Advised that this being the first complaint the said Mr.
Hunter and Mr. Brooke be severely reprimanded, and told
that they must not expect any favor, but the utmost severity
of the law upon any misdemeanor by them committed ; and
being called in5 his Excellency was pleased to give them the
following reprimand :
" It is the unhappy temper of you and all your tribe to
grow insolent upon civility, and never know how to use it,
and yet of all people you have the least reason for consider
ing that if the necessary laws that are made were let loose,
they are sufficient to crush you, and which (if your arrogant
principles have not blinded you) you must need to dread.
" You might, methinks, be content to live quietly as you
may, and let the exercise of your superstitious vanities be
confined to yourselves, without proclaiming them at public
FATHERS HUNTER AND BROOKE. 355
times and in public places, unless you expect by your gaudy
shows and serpentine policy, to amuse the multitude, and
beguile the unthinking weakest part of them, an act of de
ceit well known to be amongst you.
" But, gentlemen, be not deceived, for though the clem
ency of her Majesty's government, and of her gracious in
clinations leads her to make all her subjects easy, that know
how to be so, yet her Majesty is not without means to curb
insolence, but more especially in your fraternity, who are
more eminently than others abounding with it ; and I assure
you the next occasion you give me you shall find the truth
of what I say, wrhich you should now do, but that I am will
ing upon the earnest solicitations of some gentlemen to make
one trial (and it shall be but this one) of your temper.
"In plain and few words, gentlemen, if you intend to live
here, let me hear no more of these things, for if I do and
they are made good against you, be assured I'll chastise you ;
and least you should flatter yourselves that the severities of
the laws will be the means to move the pity of your judges,
I assure you I do not intend to deal with you so. I'll remove
the evil by sending you where you will be dealt with as you
deserve.
" Therefore, as I told you, I'll make but this one trial, and
advise you to be civil and modest, for there is no other way
for you to live quietly here.
" You are the first that have given any disturbance to my
government, and if it were not for the hopes of your better
demeanour you should now be the first that should feel the
effects of so doing. Pray take notice that I am an English
Protestant gentleman, and can never equivocate."
The two priests, who had really violated no law of the
1 " Proceedings of the Council," cited by Scharf, i., p. 368.
356 THE CHURCH IN MARYLAND.
province, who had not been indicted or tried, were then dis
charged, but the matter did not end there. The House of
Delegates, always in Maryland more violently anti-Catholic
than the Upper House, sent an address to Governor Seymour
on the 19th of September, 1704, to express their satisfaction
with his course and thank him for it.
The Council also " taking under their consideration, that
such use of the Popish chapel of the City of Saint Mary's,
in St. Mary's County, where there is a Protestant church,
and the said County Court is kept, is both scandalous and
offensive to the government, do advise and desire his Excel
lency the Governor, to give immediate orders for the shut
ting up of the said Popish chapel, and that no person pre
sume to make use thereof under any pretence whatever.
" Whereupon it was ordered by his Excellency the Gover
nor, that present the Sheriff of St. Mary's County, lock up
the said chapel and keep the key thereof." '
Thus was the first Christian place of worship in Maryland,
founded by the Catholics in 1634, wrested from them for
ever. Of its subsequent fate, there is nothing to tell us.J
Anti-Catholic legislation and action were not confined to
Maryland, though elsewhere, where Catholics were few and
there were no priests or chapels, the enactments were com
paratively harmless.
In 1700 the Earl of Bellomont, Governor of New York, a
fierce anti-Catholic zealot, son of a Colonel Coote, whose
butcheries of Catholics in Ireland stand out horribly even on
the records of that unhappy island, contrived to carry through
1 Scharf, i., p. 369; "Woodstock Letters," xiii., p. 276. The early
records of St. Mary's County down to 1827 have perished. Letter of
J. Frank Ford, County Clerk.
'2 According to the tradition of the Catholics of St. Mary's County, a
barn occupies the site of the first chapel reared for the worship of Al
mighty God in Maryland.
NEW YORK PENAL LAW. 357
the New York Legislature the first penal act against ther
Catholic clergy, and Massachusetts, of which he was also
Governor, almost simultaneously passed a similar act.
Common as misrepresentation in regard to Catholics then
was and later too, the preamble of the New York act is a
remarkable instance of disregard of truth as the context was
of humanity. " Whereas divers Jesuits, Priests and Popish
missionaries have of late come and for some time have had
their residence in the remote parts of this Province, and
others of his Majesty's adjacent colonies, who, by their
wicked and subtle insinuations, industriously labour to de
bauch, seduce and withdraw the Indians from their due obe
dience to His most sacred Majesty, and to excite and stir
them up to sedition, rebellion, and open hostility against his
Majesty's government," says this preamble, although the ex
istence of the missionaries and their residence in New York
would be very difficult to prove, and the acts charged are
without a particle of testimony in fact or probability. Yet
the law enacted that every priest remaining in the province
after the passage of the law, or coming in after November 1,
1700, should be " deemed and accounted an incendiary and
disturber of the public peace and safety, and an enemy to the
true Christian religion, and shall be adjudged to suffer per
petual imprisonment." Any priest imprisoned under the
act who escaped from his dungeon was liable to the penalty
of death if he was retaken. Any one who harbored a Cath
olic priest was subject to a fine of two hundred and fifty
pounds, and was to stand on the pillory for three days.1
The next year a law passed by which " Papists and Popish
recusants were prohibited from voting for members of as-
1 "An Act against Jesuits and Popish Priests," "Acts passed. . . .
July, Aug., Oct., 1700," in "The Laws of Her Majesties Colony of New
York." New York, 1710, p. 37.
358 THE CHURCH IN MARYLAND.
sembly, or any office whatever from thenceforth and for
ever."
The Massachusetts law passed by Bellomont's influence
was almost identical in language.1
Kot to be behind in zeal for the Protestant supremacy, the
Maryland Legislature, stimulated by Governor Seymour, who
was incensed against the Catholics because they refused to
make up a purse for him, passed an act, on the 3d of Octo
ber, 1704, " to prevent the growth of popery within this
province." ' Its provisions contrast strangely with the char
ity and liberality of the laws passed while Catholic influence
prevailed. This law enacted that " whatsoever popish bishop,
priest, or Jesuit, should baptize any child or children, other
than such who have popish parents, or shall say mass, or ex
ercise the function of a popish bishop or priest within this
Province, or should endeavor to persuade any of his majes
ty's liege people to embrace and be reconciled to the Church
of Rome," should, upon conviction, pay the sum of £50 and
be imprisoned for six months. And if, after such conviction,
any popish bishop, priest, or Jesuit, should say mass or exer
cise any function of a priest within the province, or if any
persons professing to be of the Church of Rome should keep
school, or take upon themselves the education, government,
or boarding of youth, at any place in the province, upon con
viction such offenders should be transported to England to
undergo the penalties provided there by Statutes 11 and 12,
William III., " for the further preventing the growth of
Popery." And the fourth section provided that if any
1 "An Act against Jesuits and Popish Priests." "Acts and Laws
passed by the Great and General Court or Assembly, begun 29th of
May, 1700." London, 1724, p. 169.
- "A Compleat Collection of the Laws of Maryland," Annapolis, 1727,
p. 201. Acts of 1704, ch. 59.
SEYMOUR'S PENAL LAW. 359
Popish youth shall not, within six months after he attains
his majority, take the oaths prescribed, he shall be incapable
of taking lands by descent, and his next of kin being a Prot
estant shall succeed to them ; that any person professing the
Catholic faith shall be incompetent to purchase lands. An
other -section provided that any person sending his child
abroad to be educated in the Catholic faith should forfeit
£100.
Another clause providing that " Protestant children of Pop
ish parents might not, for want of a suitable maintenance, be
compelled to embrace the Popish religion contrary to their
inclinations," enacted, " if any such person refused a proper
support to his Protestant child that the governor or keeper
of the great seal should have power to make euch order
therein as suited the intent of the act." '
Of this fearful law of persecution the Rev. Dr. Hawks,
an Episcopal clergyman, says : " The enactment enforced a
gross violation of the best feelings of human nature ; it for
bade a parent to fulfil the first duty which he owed to his
offspring, that of instruction ; and dissolving filial obliga
tion, offered to a wayward child a premium for youthful
hypocrisy. He who can speak of such a law in any terms
but those of indignant reprobation, deserves himself to en
dure all its penalties." "
The act made the performance of any duty by a priest or
bishop a crime : he could not baptize, offer the holy sac
rifice, hear confessions, preach, or attend the dying. No
Catholic could teach, no Catholic could send his child out of
the province to receive instructions from those of his faith.
1 "Acts of Assembly," passed in the province of Maryland, from
1692 to 1715. London, 1723, p. 24.
2 Hawks, "Contributions to the Ecclesiastical History of the United
States," iii., pp. 125-127. Scharf, "History of Maryland," i., pp. 369-
370.
360 THE CHURCH IN MARYLAND.
When this act was promulgated Maryland was in a fer
ment. The Catholics complained of the hardship, ingrati
tude, and injustice of such a penal law, for which they had
not given the slightest pretext by any action on their part.
Numbers of their Protestant neighbors sympathized with
them so that the Assemblymen declared that it was neither
their intention nor desire to forbid Catholics the free exer
cise of their religion, and they addressed the governor asking
that the Assembly should be reconvened. As soon as it
met, the Legislature on the 9th of December suspended the
operation of this law for eighteen months, as against priests
exercising their functions only in the house of a Catholic
family.'
The law did not emanate from the delegates, it would
seem, but was probably sprung upon them by some tactics
of the governor, whose hatred of the Catholics was intense.
Another act of this year imposed a fine of twenty pounds
on any one who brought in the sturdy arms of an Irish pa
pist to till the soil of Maryland."
It may seem somewhat strange to find the English sov
ereign and government intervene to protect any part of the
people from the intolerance and sectarian tyranny of a colo
nial assembly, but such was now actually the case. The
Commissioners of Trade and Plantations were shocked at the
injustice of Governor Seymour and his pliant Assembly.
After consulting with the Bishop of London, who was re
garded as the Diocesan of the Anglican Church in the colo
nies, they petitioned Queen Anne to extend her royal pro
tection to her menaced Catholic subjects in America. Anne
1 Bacon's " Laws," 1704, ch. 9.
•J " Liberty and Property ; or, the Beauty of Maryland displayed,'
etc. " By a Lover of his Country."
QUEEN ANNE SAVES CATHOLICITY. 361
favored the Church of England, and personally did more
for it in America than any other English sovereign, her
name being gratefully remembered to this day ; but in Mary
land and Nova Scotia she won as enduring a claim to the
gratitude of Catholics, and in both provinces for many a
year the faithful appealed to her kindly interposition as their
protecting segis. The Acts of the Maryland Assembly
" being taken into her Majesty's Koyal Consideration, out of
her Gracious Tenderness to all her Subjects, behaving them
selves peaceably and quietly under Her Majesty's Govern
ment she has been Graciously pleased by Her Order to His
Excellency the Governour of this Province, bearing date at
the Council Board at Whitehall, the Third Day of January,
1T05, to direct that a New Law or Clause of a Law should
be Enacted in this Province, whereby the said Act of Assem
bly, suspending the Execution of that Part of the said First
mentioned Law for preventing the Growth of Popery, viz.,
as to the Prosecution of any Priests of the Communion of
the Church of Rome, incurring the Penalties of the said
Act, by exercising their Function in a private Family of the
Roman Communion, but in no other Case whatsoever, may
be continued, without any other Limitation of Time than
until Her Majesty's further Pleasure be declared and signi
fied therein." And in obedience to this order of Queen
Anne, the Maryland Assembly, March 26— April 15, 1707,
passed the required law.1
The new act stands as a proof that the Catholics of Mary
land had behaved themselves peaceably and quietly under
Her Majesty's Government, for had it been possible for Sey
mour and his followers to allege the contrary, as a pretext
1 "A Compleat Collection of the Laws of Maryland," Annapolis, 1727,
p. 50.
362 THE CHURCH IN MARYLAND.
for their tyrannical intolerance, they would not have failed
to present charges to that effect.
They had, however, already sought to elude the effect of
the temporary suspension of the Act by passing a law, for
extending to Maryland a certain act in regard to marriages,
to which was added, in a way to escape notice, a clause that
all the Penal acts mentioned in a law of I William III.
" shall be and are in full force to all Intents and Purposes
within this Province." ' But the royal sanction to this law
was withheld on the ground that it embraced matters not
clearly expressed in the title.2
An indication of the feeling prevailing in Maryland at this
epoch is seen in a little work printed at Boston, in 1707, prob
ably because there was no press in Maryland to issue it. It
was entitled, " A Catechism against Popery for Christians in
Maryland." 8
The next year the Sheriffs of the several counties were re
quired to report the number of Catholics within their several
counties, and in a population exceeding forty thousand only
2,974 were returned by the officers, nearly one-half, 1,238,
being in Saint Mary's County, with 709 in Charles, and 248
in Prince George's Counties. In the rest of the province
the number was small, 161 in Anne Arundell, 53 in Balti
more, 48 in Calvert Counties ; while on the eastern shore it
was even less, 49 in Cecil, 40 in Kent, 179 in Queen Anne,
89 in Talbot, 79 in Dorchester, and 81 in Somerset. This
1 Laws, p. 48 The Act of 1704 was formally repealed in 1717. Ibid.,
p. 201.
2 Rev. George Hunter, S. J. " A short Account of y° State and Con
dition of ye Roman Catholicksin ye Province of Maryland, collected from
authentick copys of ye Provincial Records and other undoubted test!
monys."
3 Thomas, "History of Printing," Second Edition, ad ann. 1707.
PRIEST CHAPEL-HOUSES. 363
little flock the vanguard of the phalanx of the faith in the
English-speaking part of America, were guided by the great
Father "William Hunter, still Superior ; Father Kobert Brooke,
of the family from which Charles Carroll of Carrollton was a
scion ; George Thorold, who was in time Superior ; Thomas
Mansell, and William Wood, who came to the mission in
1700, Father Mansell in 1704, founding the mission at Bohe
mia, in Cecil County, near the more Christian and less intol
erant province of Pennsylvania.1
The exemption granted temporarily, and confirmed per
petually by Queen Anne's directions, allowed the offices of
the Church to be performed only in a private family.
Henceforward to the end of British rule, no separate Cath
olic church or chapel was allowed. The step taken by the
early missionaries in securing lands was now to show its prov
idential character. The houses of the missionaries were
adapted or new ones erected in such a form that while to all
intents and purposes each was a dwelling-house, a large room
within was a chapel for the Catholics of the district. The
house of some Catholic planter at a convenient distance would,
by the zeal and piety of the owner, have under the general
roof a chapel-room where his family and neighbors could
gather to join in the awful sacrifice so pleasing in the eyes of
God, so terrible to hell. The ancient Carroll mansion at
Doughoregan manor is a type of one of these private chapels
which alone for generations enabled the Catholics in that dis-
1 Rev. W. P. Treacy, "Catalogue of our Missionary Fathers," 1634-
1805. " Woodstock Letters," x., p. 15 ; xv., pp. 90-1. Scharf, " History
of Maryland," i., p. 370, and authority cited.
Father Robert Brooke, of a pious Maryland family, one of the earliest
American members of the Society, was sent back to his native province
about 1696, and was Superior of the Mission from 1710 to his death at
Newtown, July 18, 1714. Foley, " Records," vii., p. 91 ; "Woodstock
Letters," xv., p. 93.
364 THE CHURCH IN MARYLAND.
trict to enjoy the privilege of worshipping God. Of the priest
chapel-houses the most perfect example now remaining is
the Kock Creek or Hickory Mission in Harford County, of
which a sketch will be given in this work, as well as the
ground-plan and elevation of a similar structure reared in the
last century on the eastern shore.1
" "When divine service was performed at a distance from
their residence, private and inconvenient houses were used
for churches." " Catholics contributed nothing to the sup
port of religion or its ministers ; the whole charge of their
maintenance, of furnishing the altars, of all travelling ex
penses, fell on the priests themselves, and no compensation
was ever offered for any services performed by them, nor did
they require any so long as the produce of their lands was
sufficient to answer their demand." *
1 See " "Woodstock Letters," vi., p. 13.
8 " Bishop Carroll's Account."
CHAPTER II.
CATHOLICITY IN PENNSYLVANIA AND MARYLAND, 1708-1741.
WHILE religion was thus oppressed in Maryland, Penn,
who had recovered his Province of Pennsylvania, practiced,
as far as he dared, the principles of religious liberty which
he shared with the Calverts and James II.1 But with the
prudent caution which marked his career, he avoided coming
to any issue with the home government, fully aware that any
collision on that point would imperil his power to do good
and endanger the religious freedom of his own community.
In the first clause of the Charter of Liberties and Privi
leges, October 28, 1701, which reaffirmed the toleration al
ready established, it was provided : " And that all persons
who also profess to believe in Jesus Christ, the Saviour of
the world, shall be capable (notwithstanding their other per
suasions and practices in point of conscience and religion) to
serve the government in any capacity, both legislatively and
executively, he or they solemnly promising when lawfully
1 In New Jersey the Liberty of Conscience proclaimed in 1702 ex-
cepted Papists and Quakers. In Carolina, members of Assembly had to
receive communion in the Anglican church by Act of 1704. " Through
out the Colonies at the beginning of the eighteenth century the man who
did not conform to the established religion of the colony .... if he
were a Roman Catholic was everywhere wholly disfranchised. For him
there was not even the legal right of public worship." C. J. Stille,
"Penn. Mag. of Hist.," ix., p. 375. All colonial officers were, by a
declaration of Queen Anne in 1702, required to take the test oath, and
thus all Catholics were excluded. Ibid., p. 390. See " Woodstock Let
ters," vi., p. 13.
(365)
366 THE CHURCH IN PENNSYLVANIA.
required, allegiance to the king as sovereign, and fidelity to
the Proprietor and Governor."
Encouraged by the liberality of Penn's government, many
Catholics, unable to settle in Maryland, began to make their
homes in Pennsylvania. Who the pioneer Catholics were,
and who was the first priest, is a point now involved in ob
scurity. Evidence from several sources shows that mass was
openly offered in Philadelphia at the close of 1707, or early
in the ensuing year, and Lionel Brittain, a man of means and
position, -became a convert to the Catholic faith. The Kev.
John Talbot, an Anglican clergyman at Burlington, New
Jersey, and a nonjuring bishop, learned these facts in New
York, and reported them January 10, 1708, to the Secretary
of the Society for Propagating the Gospel, and the next
month, in a letter to Keith, mentions the conversion of sev
eral persons.1
During those days of general persecution, Catholics in
most parts of the British Empire acted with great caution so
as not to excite hostility, but in Philadelphia they showed
less prudence. The fact that mass was openly said, became
known in England, and was made the basis of accusation
against Penn, who wrote to Logan : " Here is a complaint
against your government that you suffer publick mass in a
scandalous manner."
There is, however, no Catholic record or tradition as to the
1 " Since Mr. Brooke, Mr. Moore, and Mr. Evans went away there's
an ludependancy set up again at Elizabeth Town, Anabaptism at Bur
lington, and the Popish Mass at Philadelphia."— Letter of Rev. John
Talbot to the Secretary of the Soc. Prop. Gosp., New York, January 10,
1707-8. Hill's "Hist. Burlington," p. 78. "I saw Mr. Bradford at
New York ; he tells me mass is set up and read publicly in Philadelphia,
and several people are turned to it, amongst which Lionel Brittain, the
church warden, is one, and his son another." — Letter of Rev. John Tal
bot to Rev. Mr. Keith, 14th February, 1707-8. "Doc. Hist. P. E.
Church, Connecticut," ii., p. 37, New York, 1862.
FIRST MASS IN PHILADELPHIA. 367
Catholic clergyman whose zeal attracted this general notice,
nor do we know anything of his flock.
The place where the first mass was offered is not clearly
settled. Watson, the annalist of Philadelphia, on the author
ity of Samuel Coates, stated that it was the house at the
northwest corner of Front and Walnut Streets. A later and
careful historian, Thompson Westcott, raised a doubt by
showing that this property belonged to Griffith Jones, a
member of the Society of Friends, and one of the early
Mayors of Philadelphia. But Jones or his grantee was the
neighbor of the Catholics, Meade and Brown, near Nicetown,
where a Catholic chapel is traditionally reported to have ex
isted on ground once possessed by him. It is certainly a
curious fact that his name is thus connected with two spots
where Catholics are reported to have gathered to worship
'God.1 Moreover, as early as 1698, Jones was suspected of
disaffection, and was arrested as the writer of a petition fa
voring the Anglican Church.5
We are up to this time equally in the dark as to the priest
who officiated for the Catholics of Philadelphia in 1708 ;
no evidence has yet been found. None of those who have
written on the Jesuit missions in Maryland mention any
Father of the Society as laboring in Pennsylvania prior to
Father Greaton, whose name does not appear on the Mary
land mission before 1721.3 It may have been Father Man-
sell from Bohemia, or the English Franciscan Father, James
1 " Pennsylvania Magazine of History," ii., p. 447 ; iv., p. 423.
2 Perry, " Papers relating to the History of the Protestant Episcopal
Church in Pennsylvania," p. 10. A stepdaughter of Jones seems to
have married into the Catholic family of Willcox. " Penn. Mag. of
Hist," x., p. 124.
3 F. Treacy, " Catalogue of our Missionary Fathers," 1634-1805 ;
" Woodstock Letters," xv., p. 93.
368 THE CHURCH IN MARYLAND.
Haddock, or one of the Scotch Fathers of that order, Peter
Gordon, or Clement Hyslop, or indeed some secular priest.1
Induced probably by the hostility of the Maryland au
thorities, the Catholics in the province seem to have moved
towards the friendly borders of the territories of William
Penn, taking up grounds and settling in the northern parts
of both shores. The clergy took steps to extend their minis
try to this new flock. As already stated, Father Thomas
Mansell, a native of Oxfordshire, who had entered the Soci
ety of Jesus in 1686, and after his ordination had been sent
to Maryland in 1700,* is said to have taken up his residence
about 1704 in Cecil County, near the manor of Augustine
Herman. Two sisters of the name of O'Daniel had obtained
a warrant for lands, which they bequeathed to Father Man-
sell and William Douglass. On the 10th July, 1706, Father
Mansell obtained a patent for 458 acres, under the name of
Saint Xaverius. It lay a few miles southeast of the junction
of the Great and Little Bohemia Eivers. The estate was sub
sequently enlarged by the purchase of the St. Inigo tract
from a neighboring Catholic proprietor, James Heath.3
Here the manor-house became at once a residence for the
1 Oliver, " Collections illustrating the History of the Catholic Relig
ion," etc., London, 1857, p. 541. " Cong. Int.," Lond., January 30, 1699-
1700, p. 167.
Watson's traditional account was accepted by Catholics generally, and
no one seems to have questioned it. Col. Bernard U. Campbell, Bishop
O'Connor, Archbishop Kenrick, all adopted it, and Henry de Courcy
de La Roche Heron, finding it accepted by men of such standing
in the Church, gave it on their authority in his Sketch of the Church
which I translated. Dishonest writers attack this last gentleman as though
he had invented the story. They even cite Mr. de Courcy's words
as mine ; I had written nothing on the history of the Church in Penn
sylvania except in private letters, having called Mr. "Westcott's attention
to Brittain's conversion and the presence of Recollect Fathers.
* Foley, " Records of the English Province," vii., p. 487.
3 Geo. Johnston, " History of Cecil County, Maryland," pp. 195-199.
THE BOHEMIA MISSION. 369
missionaries and a chapel for the Catholics in the vicinity,
while those residing at other points on the peninsula were
visited at stated periods by the priests stationed at Bohemia,
which was known as " St. Xavier's Residence on the Eastern
Shore." ' The stations attended from Bohemia were not as
numerous as those in the older Catholic parts and the duty
more laborious. The priests of St. Xavier's mission laid the
foundation of Catholicity in Delaware by establishing a mis
sion at Apoquinimink, where mass was said at stated times,
perhaps at the residence of the Holohan family, who had
settled on Mount Cuba.2
We get an idea of the labors of the priests at Bohemia
from a description by Father Mosley several years later,
when things must have improved somewhat.
" Ye congr . . . . ns are fewer but ye rides much longer.
On ye 1st Sunday 50 mile where I pass ye whole week in that
Neighbourhood in close Business with ye Ignorant. On JK
2nJ I go down ye Chesapike Bay 40 mile farther, which
makes me 90 mile from Home ; yn other 2 Sundays are
easier."
"When Father Mansell began his establishment at Bohemia,
" it is highly probable that he brought with him the ancient
cross, which has been at Bohemia ever since.3 This cross is
about five feet high, and is said to have been brought to St.
1 Father Mosley speaks of Bohemia as a fine plantation " nigh Phila
delphia, which is a vast advantage." The lands at Bohemia were be
queathed by Father Mansell to Thomas Hodgson, February 20, 1723.
The founder of the Bohemia mission died March 18, 1724, aged 55,
having been Superior of the Mission in 1714 and for several years
thereafter. Foley, " Records," vii., p. 487 ; " Woodstock Letters," xv.,
p. 93.
2 Perry, "Papers relating to the Church in Pennsylvania," p. 313;
" Woodstock Letters," xv., p. 223.
3 Geo. Johnston, " History of Cecil County," p. 199.
24
370 THE CHURCH IN MAR YLA ND.
Mary's by the first settlers who came there from England.
It is made of wrought-iron and certainly looks ancient
enough to have been brought over by the Pilgrims who
came over in the ' Ark ' and ' Dove.' ':
There seems to have been some ground for hope of better
times for the Church in 1711,
as four Fathers of the Soci-
-p , A,4
ety 01 J esus, 1 eter Att wood,
FAC-SIMILE OP THE SIGNATURE OF ,-,.•,•, r\\ \
Francis Beaumont, Charles
FATHER PETER ATTWOOD.
Brockholes, and Thomas
Hodgson, were sent out in that year. The zealous Fathers
Hunter and Brooke, the latter Superior of the Mission, with
Mansell, Wood, and Thorold,
seem to have composed the
Jesuit body.
Father George Thorold was
i j • \H i\ J FAC-SIMILE OF THE SIGNATURE OF
sent to Maryland m 1700, and PATHER GEORGE THOROLD.
labored there for more than
forty years, after having done service in England. He was,
with slight interruption, Superior of the Mission from 1725
to 1734. He was of a Berkshire family, born February 11,
1670, and died at St. Thomas Manor, November 15, 1742.3
1 The kitchen at Bohemia is believed to be Father Mansell's house and
chapel. A larger chapel-house was soon erected.
"In 1705 the present house of St. Inigoes was erected, under Father
Ashbey, with the bricks of the old Church of St. Mary's, which had
been brought from England. About the same time a small church was
erected in the chapel field and a graveyard attached to it." Bishop Fen-
wick, " Brief Account of the Settlement of Maryland."
2 Henry Foley, "Records of the English Province of the Society of
Jesus," vii., pp. 23, 43, 87, 91, 364, 385, 487, 774. The young Father
Henry Poulton died September 27, 1712, at the age of 33. Ibid., p. 623 ;
Treacy, " Catalogue of our Missionary Fathers "; " Woodstock Letters,"
xv., p. 93; xiv., p. 378.
3 Foley, " Records," vii., p. 774 ; " Woodstock Letters," xv., p. 95.
A CALVERT 'S APOSTASY. 371
Father Peter Attwood, an active and zealous missionary of
this period, was the son of George Attwood, Esq., of Beverie,
and Winifred Petre. He entered the Society of Jesus when
about twenty-one, and coming to Maryland in 1711 was on
active duty, showing ability in the management of affairs.
He was on two occasions Superior of the Mission, and died
while still in office on Christmas day, 1734.'
Lord Baltimore at this time, and perhaps on other occa
sions, contributed to the support of the missionaries who
were exposed to the persecution of governors in whose ap
pointment he had no voice. In his " Instructions, power
and authority to Charles Carroll, dated September 12, 1712,"
he directs that gentleman as his agent to pay yearly eight
thousand pounds of tobacco to " Mr. Robert Brooke and the
rest of his brethren, being in all eight persons," and he or
ders the payment of another thousand pounds to " Mr. James
Haddock," the Franciscan missionary already mentioned.2
In 1713 the cause of Catholicity in Maryland received a
sad blow. Benedict Leonard Calvert, heir to the Barony, in
the hope of recovering in time the control of the Province
of Maryland, for which the English Government required
apostasy from the true faith, weakly yielded, and on the
third day of January renounced his religion. His father de
plored the step and deprived his son of his income, till the
Government compelled him to make an allowance. The
young man's apostasy did not secure the boon that he cov
eted ; he survived his father only a short time, and died
without recovering his rights in Maryland. His infant son,
Charles Calvert, Lord Baltimore, was brought up a Protest
ant. "When he came of age he was acknowledged as Lord
1 Foley, " Records," vii., p. 23 ; " Woodstock Letters," xv. , p. 94.
8 Kilty, " Land-Holder's Assistant," p. 129. The eight seems to include
only those in the lower counties, omitting Mansell, who was at Bohemia.
372 THE CHURCH IN MARYLAND.
Proprietor, and the house of Calvert till it ended in dishonor
was one of the Protestant powers of the province.
The influence of this desertion was naturally great. There
were in Maryland weak Catholics who had been borne up
and strengthened hitherto by the courageous fidelity of the
Lords Baltimore and their families. Some of these began to
waver ; some even thought it no shame to follow the sad ex
ample of the late Lord Proprietary, and sacrifice their faith
in order to secure immunity from dangers which seemed to
threaten the whole Catholic body, or obtain civil rights and
offices.1
The alarm among the adherents of true religion was in
creased by the course of the Assembly in exacting new
oaths from all who held any office in the province. A law
of April 26, 1715, required every official to take oaths ab
juring all allegiance to the son of the exiled king, James II.,
and swearing allegiance to George I. This did not affect
Catholics, as such, but the Act of July 17, 1716, effectually
excluded Catholics from any even the humblest office in the
province which they had built up by their industry and en
nobled by their liberality. To hold an office every man was
required to take an oath of allegiance to King George ; an
oath of abhorrence of the Pope's right to depose sovereigns ;
an oath abjuring James III., and an oath that he did not be
lieve in Transubstantiation.
Even after taking this string of oaths an officer in Mary
land was not yet sure of his position. For if he should at
any time thereafter " be present at any Popish Assembly,
Conventicle, or Meeting, and joyn with them in their Ser
vice at Mass, or receive the Sacrament in that Communion," *
1 Scharf, " History of Maryland," i., p. 379.
'2 " A Compleat Collection of the Laws of Maryland," Annapolis, 1727,
pp. 74, 161-4.
CATHOLICS DISFRANCHISED. 373
he forfeited his office, and became disqualified for any
other.
To prevent an increase of the Catholic body by immigra
tion, a tax of twenty shillings was imposed in 1716, on every
" Irish papist " servant introduced into the province, and
this tax was doubled the next year.1
This was followed by the complete disfranchisement of
the Catholics. An act regulating the election of delegates
begins, " And whereas notwithstanding all the measures that
have been hitherto taken for preventing the Growth of
Popery within this Province, It is very obvious, that not
only profest Papists still multiply and increase in Number,
but that there are also too great numbers of others that ad
here to and espouse their Interest in opposition to the Prot
estant Establishment," and after reciting the dangers to be
feared from Catholics electing a candidate the statute enacted,
" That all profest Papists whatsoever, be (and are hereby de
clared) uncapable of giving their vote in any Election of a
Delegate or Delegates," unless they took the oaths required
of office-holders.8
Yec the Catholic clergy only nerved themselves to greater
zeal, and that their labors were not without fruit is evident
from a letter addressed by Governor Hart to Bishop Robin
son, of London, where speaking of the Anglican clergy he
wrote : " I am sorry to represent to your lordship, that there
are some whose education and morals are a scandal to their
profession, and I am amazed how such illiterate men came
to be in holy orders. The advantage which the Jesuits have
from their negligence is but too evident in the many prose-
1 "A Compleat Collection of the Laws of Maryland," Annapolis, 1727,
p. 192.
2 Ibid., p. 197.
374 THE CHURCH IN MARYLAND.
lytes they make." ' And the same governor addressing the
Anglican clergy in 1718, expressed his regret that " Jesuits
and other Popish emissaries " were gaining proselytes, and
the assembled ministers admitted the fact as they had done
two years before.2
The transportation to the plantations in America of many
Scotchmen who had taken part in the rising in favor of the
son of James II., must have thrown some Catholics into
Maryland, and the two Scotch Recollects were apparently
still in the country and may have ministered to them.3
The observance of the holidays of the Church by Cath
olics in the midst of a Protestant population has always
raised difficulties. The Jesuit Fathers in Maryland in 1722,
through their provincial Father Hill, sought the decision of
Bishop Gi-ffard. Finding that many Catholics took the lib
erty of working on holidays of obligation in a most disedify-
ing manner, because such labor was, under certain contin
gencies, a matter of necessity, the missionaries submitted to
the Yicar-Apostolic regulations which they had adopted,
aiming to carry out the spirit of the church by enforcing the
proper observance of all the festivals she prescribed, but
authorizing servile labor by farm-hands employed in getting
in the crops, on any holidays that occurred between the be
ginning of May and the end of September, excepting, how
ever, Ascension, Whitmonday, Corpus Christi, and Assump
tion, on which no work was allowed. On all holidays with
out exception Catholics were required to hear mass, if said
at a chapel within their reach, and when there was no mass
said at any place which they could conveniently attend,
1 Maryland MSS. in Records at the Episcopal Palace, Fulham, cited
by Dr. Hawks, "Contributions," ii., p. 139.
'2 Hawks, "Contributions," ii., pp. 149, 161.
3 Scharf, "History of Maryland," i., p. 385.
BONAVENTURE GIEEARD.
BISHOP GIFFAR&S REGULATION*.
parents and masters were to have public prayers, catechism,
and spiritual reading.
Bishop Gitiurd approved the regulation*, -is equally pru
dent ami pi«ms, "because," he writes, "there Ua due regard
to religious duties and corporal necessities. Wherefore I
approve of the said regulations and order then; to be ob
serve* i. London, December 21, 1722."
These regulations remained in force apparently till the
number of holidays for the Catholics of England w.-.s re
duced by Pope Pius VI. (March. 9, 1777).
Dr. Bonaventufa Giffard, D.D., Bishop of Mad.uira and
Vicar-Apostolic of the London District, who thus showed
his zeal and interest in the welfare of his transatlantic flock,
was a prelate of piety and learning long connected with the
church in England. He was born at Wolverhampton of an
ancient family in 1642, and at an early age loath father,
who was killed fighting for the king. After a course at
Douay College he pursued h -t^u" -r Paris,
and took his degree from the SorWiu* He was
appointed chaplain to James II., and on th> 12ti. of -iamiary,
1688, was elected by the Propaganda Vicar- Ap^f- •He of the
Midland District, and was consecrated Aprii 22d, apparently
by the Pope's Nuncio. James made him also President of
Magdalen College, Oxford. He was ejected on the accession
of William III., and was confined for nearly two" years in
Newgate Prison, and then in Hertford jail. In 17<>3 lie was
transferred to the London District, over which he presided
to his death, on the 12th of March, 1734, governing also
from 1708 to 1713 the Western District,
He was such an object of persecution that he was com
pelled to change his dwelling-place fourteen times in a HJJ
gle year, large rewards tempting the priest- hunters to procim-
his arrest.
376 THE CHURCH IN MARYLAND
In 1720 Henry Howard, brother of the Duke of Norfolk,
was appointed Bishop of Utica, and coadjutor to Bishop Gif-
fard, but he did not live to receive episcopal consecration,
dying of a fever contracted in visiting the sick poor of his
flock, in March, 1721. The Rt. Rev. Benjamin Petre appoint
ed coadjutor, succeeded Bishop Giffard, in the London Yica-
riate and the charge of the American mission. Bishop Gif-
fard was interred at St. Pancras' Church, London, but his
heart was taken to Douay.1
About this time Catholics and Catholicity seemed to have
invaded the very capital of the Province of Maryland, as the
Carrolls not only had a residence at Annapolis, but actually
had a Catholic chaplain, Father John Bennet. The Calverts,
though they had conformed to the State Church, showed a
kindly interest in those who had suffered for their fidelity to
the house of Baltimore. Though an intolerant legislature
could disfranchise Catholics and deprive them of office, it
could not prevent the Lord Proprietor from employing Cath
olics in his private business. Charles Carroll as agent of
Lord Baltimore enjoyed a kind of immunity which greatly
incensed the foes of the Catholics.
In 1723 there were twelve Jesuit Fathers on the Mary
land mission, and as a Catalogue notes, " scattered through
this immense tract of country, they strenuously labor in pro
tecting and propagating the Catholic faith. Four temporal
coadjutors attended to the care of their domestic affairs, and
the cultivation of the land, the produce of which is sufficient
to support all the members. Besides the land, there is no
other source of support belonging to the mission."
In 1725 we obtain another gleam of the zeal of the Cath-
1 Brady, " Annals of the Catholic Hierarchy," Rome, 1883, pp. 203,
149. Besides the rare portrait here copied there is said to be one by
Du Bosc.
CLOSE OF THE FEANCISCAN MISSION. 37?
olic clergy in Maryland. " The Jesuits were not idle,"
writes Dr. Hawks. " Their number had increased, and they
not unfrequently challenged the Protestant clergy to public
doctrinal disputations, such as have often occurred in the
history of the Church ; and of no one of which can it be
truly recorded (as we believe) that it has accomplished any
good purpose." . . . . " The clergy of the establishment,
however, did not decline the challenge."
That Father Atwood maintained the truth against the Rev.
Giles Rainford, we glean from a letter of that Protestant
clergyman.1 The little body of missionaries lost FatherWilliam
Hunter in 1Y23, and Father Mansell, the founder of Bohemia,
in the year following, but their number was increased in 1T24 by
the arrival of Fath
ers John Ben net,
James Whitgrave,
(^-r' i Francis Floyd,
/SiC. OO UO Henry Whetenhall,
^>*- Peter Davis, and
, I James Case.
^""T" 7* *) rt rJ.Sl^J^ ^ the deatl1 °f
/*((""} Cy^L Father Haddock,
• ^—^ ^ — ' who apparently
F AC-SIMILE OF SIGNATURE OF FATHER HADDOCK, exT)jrec[ jn 1*7<>0
ON THE FLY-LEAF OF A BOOK AT WOOD
STOCK, among the Jesuit
Fathers to one of
whose houses he had retired, closed the Franciscan Mission
in Maryland,2 and the whole care of the Catholics in the Brit-
1 Hawks, "Contributions," ii., p. 180, citing Maryland Manuscripts,
Fullmm ; Perry, "Historical Collections," iv. (Maryland), pp. 251-252.
2 Father Haddock signs himself in one place, "Jacobus Haddock, O.
Min. Strict. Ob. Prov. Angliae in terra Mariana et coateris partibus occi-
dentalibus missionarius," which seems to indicate that some of his work
378 THE CHURCH IN MARYLAND.
ish provinces devolved on the Jesuit Fathers, who had from the
outset alone constantly and persistently adhered to this field of
mission labor.1 In England the missions confided to the Soci
ety were at times in charge of secular priests under their ap
pointment. It is not impossible that secular priests may
have been similarly employed by them on the Maryland mis
sion, but no evidence exists to justify a probable suspicion of
any actual case.
Upon the accession of George II. to the throne of England
in 1727, the Catholics of Maryland sent over a congratulatory
address to the king, in testimony of their fidelity and duty.
This document is worth inserting, as one of the few docu.-
ments in which the Catholics of the province, as a body, ad
dressed the throne.
There is no reason to doubt their sincerity, as the Lords
Baltimore and the Maryland Catholics had not been especially
favored by James II., and had never taken any active part
or shown any open sympathy in the attempts made by his
son to regain the throne.
" To THE KING'S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY.
" The humble address of the Koman Catholics of the
Province of Maryland.
" MOST GRACIOUS SOVEREIGN :
" We your Majesty's most dutiful subjects the Roman
Catholic inhabitants of the Province of Maryland, under the
government of the Lord Baltimore, Lord and Proprietary
thereof, out of our true and unfeigned sense of Gratitude for
the great clemency and goodness of your late Royal Father
in the ministry was outside of Maryland. He was in that province in
1G99-1700. "Archives Prov. Neo-Eb. Maryland S.J."
1 Treacy, " Catalogue of our Missionary Fathers," Woodstock Letters,
xv., p. 91 ; " Regist. F F. Min. Prov. Anglic," p. 210.
THE FIRST CENTENNIAL. 379
toward us, humbly beg leave to express to your Majesty the
share we bear with the rest of your Majesty's subjects in the
general grief of the British Empire on the death of our late
most gracious sovereign, and as we have the same happiness
with them to see your Majesty peaceably succeed to the
crown of your great Father, we humbly beseech your Maj
esty to give us leave to join with them in our hearty con
gratulations and in all humility we beg your Majesty's gra
cious acceptance of our constant allegiance and duty according
to our utmost capacity in this remote part of your Majesty's
Dominions and we humbly hope by our Loyalty and a steady
and constant adherence to our duty to deserve some share
in that tender concern your Majesty has been so graciously
pleased to express for all your subjects. We are
" May it Please your Majesty, your Majesty's most dutiful
Subjects and Servants."
This address was presented by Lord Baltimore, who at the
time held a position at Court.
The centenary of the settlement of Maryland did not pass
unnoticed. A " Carmen Seculare " was addressed to Lord
Baltimore by a Mr. Lewis, of which, however, only an extract
was printed. The poet thus speaks of Cecilius, the second
Lord:
" Maturest wisdom did his act inspire,
Which ages must with gratitude admire,
By which the Planters of his land were freed
From feuds that made their native country bleed 1
Religious feuds which in an evil hour,
"Were sent from hell poor mortals to devour !
Oh ! be that rage eternally abhor'd
"Which prompts the worshippers of one mild Lord,
For whose salvation one Redeemer died,
By wars their orthodoxy to decide !
Falsely religious human blood to spill
And for God's sake their fellow-creatures kill !
Horrid pretence !
380 THE CHURCH IN MARYLAND.
Long had this impious zeal with boundless sway,
Most direful urged o'er half the earth its sway,
Tyrannic on the souls of men to prey !
'Til great Cecilius, glorious Hero, broke
Her bonds, and cast away her yoke !
What praise, oh ! Patriot, shall be paid to thee !
Within thy province, Conscience first was free
And gained in Maryland its native Liberty." 1
This laudation of the spirit of religious liberty which ani
mated Cecilius, Lord Baltimore, would not have been ad
dressed to his successor had he been in sympathy with the
spirit of persecution then dominant in Maryland.
When, in 1733, Charles L, Lord Baltimore, came over in
person to assume the government of the province and adjust
the border disputes which had long existed with the neigh
boring colony of Pennsylvania, the Catholics addressed him
and again renewed the expression of their loyalty and fidelity
to the ruling dynasty.
Though he had abandoned their communion, Lord Balti
more could not but bear testimony to their loyalty. " I
thank you," he says in his reply, " for your kind address and
cannot but be in a particular manner pleased with that duti
ful regard which you express for his Majesty and the royal
family, the continuance of which, will always secure to you
my favour and protection." 2
All this helped the Catholics in darker days to show that
when men's minds were not heated by prejudice and passion,
none thought of ascribing to them any conduct incompatible
with their duties as subjects and colonists.
The forty pounds of tobacco per poll granted to each
1 "Gentleman's Magazine," December, 1737. A note refers to the
famous Act allowing Liberty of Conscience and punishing the use of op
probrious names.
* Rev. George Hunter, "A Short Account," etc.
THE MINISTERS' TOBACCO TAX. 381
clergyman of the Established Church from every one in
his parish proved most disastrous. They became tobacco
dealers, and incurred the hatred of all classes, while all the
efforts of their superiors failed to make the Maryland clergy
of the Establishment worthy of the respect of their own
flock. A historian of that body says, under date of 1734 :
" The papists did not fail to take advantage of the trouble in
the church of which we have spoken. The number of their
priests, most of whom were Jesuits, greatly multiplied, and
they liad several places of worship in different parts of the
province ; indeed, in some parts, they were more numerous
than the protestants. They flattered themselves that they
were about to acquire the ascendancy, as under the adminis
tration of Governor Calvert, many of them had been put
into offices of honor and profit which they still retained.
Most diligent were the priests also in distributing pamphlets
among the people, the object of which was to maintain the
Church of Rome ; and in all cases when a female of the.
Romish communion intermarried with a protestant, it was
customary to make a previous contract that all the daughters
of the marriage should be educated as papists. By thus se
curing the future mothers of the country, the priests felt
that they had very quietly accomplished, what has ever been
with them the great end, of directing the early education of
the country. Their prospects were certainly never more
promising than at this time, for in some counties they were
compared with the protestants, in the proportion of three to
one : throughout the province, however, the latter were the
more numerous body." '
In Pennsylvania there is no notice of any priestly service
for the Catholics from 1708 to 1729, at which time, accord
1 Hawks, " Contributions," ii., p. 221.
382 THE CHURCH IN PENNSYLVANIA.
ing to a tradition recorded by Watson, there was a Catholic
chapel near the city of Philadelphia. " At that time Eliza
beth McGawley, an Irish lady and single, brought over a
number of tenantry and with them settled on the land (now
Miss Dickinson's) on the road leading from Nicetown to
Frankford. Connected with her house (now standing oppo
site Gaul's place) she had the said chapel." '
Bernard U. Campbell records in the following words a
tradition ascribed to Archbishop Neale, who, while serving
in Philadelphia, had opportunities of hearing accounts from
aged Catholics :
" The Superior of the Jesuits in Maryland having been
informed that there were many Catholics in the capital of
Pennsylvania, resolved to endeavor to establish a mission
there. The priest designed for this duty had an acquaint
ance in Lancaster of the name of Doyle, whom he visited
and requested to furnish him the name of some respectable
Catholic in Philadelphia. Being referred to a wealthy old
lady remarkable for her attachment to the ancient faith, he
waited on her in the garb of a Quaker, and after making in
quiries about the various denominations of Christians in the
city, asked first if there were any Catholics, and finally, if
she was one ; to which she answered in the affirmative. He
informed her that he also was of the same communion.
Being informed that the Catholics had no place of worship,
he desired to know, if they would wish to have a church.
To which the lady replied, they would most certainly, but
the great difficulty would be to find a clergyman ; for al
though there were priests in Maryland, it was impossible to
procure one from thence. He then informed the lady that
he was a priest and of the intention of his visit. Overjoyed
1 Watson, "Annals of Philadelphia," i., p. 453.
THE NICETOWN CHAPEL. 383
at the sight of a priest after many years' privation of that
consolation, she communicated the intelligence to her Cath
olic acquaintance and invited them to meet him at her house.
A considerable number assembled, the most of whom were
Germans. The priest explained to them the object of his
visit, and a subscription was immediately commenced to pro
cure the means to purchase ground and build a church.
With the money raised they purchased the house and lot be
longing to the lady, who also acted very generously in pro
moting the pious undertaking." :
These two traditions seem to refer to the same chapel ; a
lady has mass at her house, and a chapel is raised by sub
scription. Archbishop Neale's statement cannot apply to St.
Joseph's, which was begun some years later, on another plan,
by a Jesuit Father purchasing land and rearing a house.
Mr. Thompson Westcott could find no documentary evi
dence to substantiate Watson's statement, no Miss McGawley
appearing as a holder of land in that vicinity, and finding
that a Catholic gentleman living near the place conveyed
lands to Father Greaton in 1747, he says: "If there ever
was any Roman Catholic Chapel near Kicetown, it must have
been built on this ground bought by Father Greaton and
after 1747." : But this is very illogical ; a purchase of land
in 1747 is perfectly compatible with the existence of a chapel
on other ground in 1729.
1 Campbell, "Life and Times of Archbishop Carroll," U. S. C. M.,
iv., pp. 252-3. He does not tell how or where this was first recorded.
It is presumed to refer to Father Greaton and St. Joseph's, but seems
more properly to refer to the earlier chapel near Xicetown, which a lady
is said to have had on her own ground. In those days there are fre
quent allusions to Catholics passing as Quakers, with how much founda
tion it is not easy to say. Perry, p. 202.
3 ' History of Philadelphia."
384 THE CHURCH IN PENNSYLVANIA.
According to Townsend "Ward,1 the Priests' Chapel was on
Crump's land, north of the property owned by Dr. Brown.
Watson cites the authority of Deborah Logan and Thomas
Bradford, who remembered to have seen the ruins of such a
chapel, and there is not the slightest documentary evidence
or tradition to sustain the theory of a Catholic chapel on the
ground conveyed to Father Greaton in 1747.2
As early as 1744 Father Schneider visited the Catholics
near Frankford and Germantown, and was at the house of
Doctor Brown, performing a baptism there, recording it in
terms that show that his host was regarded as a person of
some consequence.3 There is evidence, therefore, that there
were Catholic services in that vicinity before the deed of
1747.
A mystery hangs over another matter connected with the
early mission in Pennsylvania. Sir John James, apparently
of Crishall, ESPCX, who was knighted May 14, 1665,
established a fund of £4,000, which was held by the Vicar-
Apostolic of London, and by his direction forty pounds a
1 " Pennsylvania Magazine of History," iv., p. 423.
8 The statement of the tradition as to the chapel given by Watson was
accepted by Bishop Kenrick, who wrote to B. U. Campbell in 1845 that
it was " conformable to local tradition, although the inscription on the
tombstone does not determine the priestly character of Brown. The
Natives were so convinced of the fact that they mutilated the stone in
the late riots." Campbell on this guarantee, and Bishop O'Connor in his
Seminary Report, accepted it. Henry de Courcy accepted it and so gave
it ; and I cannot see that Mr. Westcott has disproved it, though he
showed, what Father Schneider's Register shows, that Dr. Brown was a
married man. Yet Mr. de Courcy has been assailed in his honored grave
with brutal insult because he stated what Bishops Kenrick and O'Connor
and Colonel Campbell had endorsed.
3 " i744i 30 Apr. — in domo Dni Dris Brown Bapt. est Christiana nigra
adulta, scrva ejusdem Dris Brown, Patr. eraiit idem Dr. Brown et uxor
ejus." Register of F. Schneider.
THE "SIR JOHN JAMES FUND." 385
year were to be applied for the benefit of the poor Catholics
of London, and the residue to support the Catholic mission-
ers in Pennsylvania. Tt was regarded as annexed to the
church in Lancaster, and for many years gave twenty pounds
annually to four missions in Pennsylvania.1
The founder of the fund was a convert won to the faith
by the Rt. Rev. Dr. Challoner, and Archbishop Carroll im
plies that the German Fathers were introduced into Penn
sylvania to attend their countrymen by means of it. " I
know nothing more of the generous founder," wrote Bishop
Kenrick in 1845, " but this is certainly an evidence of
zeal." 2
That there were Catholics in the province in 1729 is evi
dent from the fact that a boy, born in Pennsylvania Septem
ber 22 in that year, John Royall, entered the Society of
Jesus abroad, and died in England in 1770. He is probably
the first native of Pennsylvania ordained to the priesthood.3
It is claimed, too, that mass was said about 1730 at the
residence of Thomas Willcox, at Ivy Mills, Delaware County,
the ancestor of a well-known Catholic family, and strangely
enough the Willcoxes seem to have been related to Griffith
Jones.
After this period of obscure beginnings of Catholicity in
Pennsylvania, on which, it is to be hoped, some patient and
thorough local investigator may in time throw light, we come
to the more definite fact of the establishment of a congrega
tion in Philadelphia which persists to this day.
From the station established at Bohemia, the Fathers of
1 " U. S. Oath. Hist. Mag ," ii., p. 86.
5 Smyth, " Present State of the Catholic Mission," gives an absurd ac
count of the origin of the fund, which he did not know to have been
created in England and held by the Vicar- Apostolic.
3 Foley, " Records of the English Province," vii., p. 674.
5
386 THE CHURCH IN PENNSYLVANIA.
the Society of Jesus in Maryland in time extended their
missions into the Province of Pennsylvania. Unfortunately
no contemporaneous documents are known which record the
name of the first missionary or the time and place where his
services began.
"When the Rev. John Carroll was appointed Prefect-Apos
tolic, he was directed by the Propaganda to send an account
of the Church in the United States. He drew up a paper,
as he himself states, " from very imperfect memoirs," and it,
of course, contained many inaccuracies, for as most of his life
had been spent in Europe, he had not enjoyed the opportu
nity of conversing with the older missionaries who had passed
away during the quarter of a century of his absence. His
statement, diffidently put forward by the illustrious author,
is, however, the basis of nearly all that has since been written
in regard to the Church in Philadelphia :
" About the year 1730 or rather later, Fr. Greaton, a Jesuit,
(for none but Jesuits had yet ventured into the English colo
nies) went from Maryland to Philadelphia, and laid the foun
dations of that congregation, now so flourishing : he lived
there till about the year 1750, long before which he had suc
ceeded in building the old chapel, which is still contiguous
to the presbytery of that town, & in assembling a numerous
congregation, which at his first going thither, did not consist
of more than ten or twelve persons. I remember to have
seen this venerable man at the head of his flock in the year
1748. He was succeeded by the Rev. Fr. Harding, whose
memory remains in great veneration ; under whose patronage
and through his exertions the present church of St. Mary's
was built.
" In the year 1741 two German Jesuits were sent to Penn
sylvania for the instruction and conversion of German Emi
grants who from many parts of Germany had come into that
FATHER THEODORE SCHNEIDER. 387
province. Under great hardships and poverty they began
their laborious undertaking, which has since been followed
by great benedictions. Their names were Fr. Schneider from
Bavaria and P" Wapeler, from the lower Rhine. They were
both men of much learning & unbounded zeal. Mr. Schnei
der, moreover, was a person of great dexterity in business,
consummate prudence and undaunted magnanimity. Mr.
Wapeler having remained about eight years in America &
converted or reclaimed many to the faith of Christ, was
forced by bad health to return to Europe. He was the per
son who made the first settlement at the place now called
Conewago. Mr. Schneider formed many congregations in
Pennsylvania, built by his activity and exertions a noble
church at Coshenhopen & spread the faith of Christ far and
near. He was used to visit Philadelphia once a month for
the sake of the Germans residing there, till it was at length
found proper to establish there permanently a German priest
as the companion of Fr. Harding. The person appointed
was the venerable Fr. Farmer who had come from Germany
some years before & had lived an apostolical life at Lancas
ter, in the same province of Pennsylvania. This event took
place, I believe, about the year 1760 or rather later." l
No register, record, or report of Father Greaton exists to
throw light on his ministry or fix the period when it began.
Some papers are said to have existed down to recent times,
but their character, antiquity, and contents are known only
by recollection too vague to serve the historian.
That some priest acquired property near Walnut Street
about 1734 is attested by a public act.
When the Provincial Council met on the 25th of July,
1734, Patrick Gordon, the Lieutenant-Governor, who pre-
1 Account in the handwriting of Archbishop Carroll still preserved.
388 THE CHURCH IN PENNSYLVANIA.
sided, informed the Board that " he was under no small con
cern to hear that a house, lately built on Walnut Street, in
this city, had been set apart for the exercise of the Roman
Catholic religion, and is commonly called the Romish Chap-
pel, where several persons, he understands, resort on Sundays
to hear mass openly celebrated by a Popish priest ; that he
conceives the tolerating of the publick exercise of that relig
ion to be contrary to the laws of England, some of which
(particularly the eleventh and twelfth of King William the
Third) are extended to all his Majesty's dominions. But
those of that persuasion here, imagining they have a right to
it from some general expressions in the charter of privileges,
granted to the inhabitants of thik Government by our late
honorable Proprietor, he was desirous to know the sentiments
of the Board on the subject."
It was observed, hereupon, that if any part of the said
charter was inconsistent with the laws of England, it could
be of no force, it being contrary to the express terms of the
royal charter to the Proprietary. But the council having sat
long, the consideration thereof was adjourned to the next
meeting, and the said laws and charters were then ordered to
be laid before the Board.
At the next meeting on the 31st of July, " it was ques
tioned whether the said statute (11 & 12 William III., ch. 4),
notwithstanding the general words in it, ' all others his Maj
esty's dominions,' did extend to the plantations in America,
and admitting it did, whether any prosecution could be car
ried on here by virtue thereof, while the aforesaid law of
this province, passed so long since as the fourth year of her
late Majesty Queen Anne, which is five years posterior to
the said statute, stands unrepealed. And under this difficulty
of concluding upon anything certain in the present case, it is
left to the Governor, if he thinks fit, to represent the matter
ST. JOSEPH'S CHURCH. 389
to our superiors at home, for their advice and directions
in it."
The Catholics, however, do not seem to have been mo
lested, as no law or proclamation issued against them.
Apparently on the statement of Archbishop Carroll, it is
generally assumed that this house was erected by Father
Joseph Greaton, and is said to have been on land purchased
by him of John Dixon, south of Walnut Street and east of
Fourth, May 15, 1733, but no deed is known to be in exist
ence.
It is certain that prior to 17-iO the Jesuit missionaries in
Maryland had learned the condition, numbers, and residence
of scattered Catholics in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Finding that many were Germans, application was evidently
made through the Provincial in England to the Provincials
of the Order in Germany for some zealous priests able to
minister to their countrymen in the colony founded by "Will
iam Penn. Several zealous and worthy priests responded to
the call, and came over evidently with faculties from the
Vicar- Apostolic of London. The first of these pioneers of the
German priests in the United States was Father Theodore
Schneider, who arrived in 1741. He was followed the next
year by Father William Wapeler. In 174:0-1 Pennsylvania
appears in the records of the Society of Jesus as a distinct
mission, under the title of Saint Francis Borgia, the saint
who sent the first members of the Society of Jesus to Florida
and Virginia. Father Joseph Greaton appears as the Supe
rior of the new mission. The plan adopted in Maryland was
pursued also in Pennsylvania. Lands were acquired by the
missionaries with their own means, and held almost always
in the name of Father Greaton, as his associates, generally
Germans, being aliens, could not take title to land, and as
390 THE CHURCH IN PENNSYLVANIA
Catholics were excluded from naturalization as British sub
jects.1
Father Joseph Greaton, according to the most probable
accounts, was born in London, February 12, 1679, and en
tered the Society of Jesus on the 5th of July, 1708. After
making his solemn profession eleven years later, he was as
signed to the Maryland mission2 in 1721.3 He was certainly
for many years pastor of Saint Joseph's Church. Philadel
phia, and Superior of the Pennsylvania missions. It is to
be lamented that we have so little that is authentic in regard
to the long labors of this one of the founders of the Penn
sylvania mission.
Of the two German Jesuits who were his first auxiliaries,
Father William Wapeler was a native of ^Neuen Sigmariu-
gen, Westphalia, and was born January 22, 1711. He eii-
1 Deeds to Father Greaton, therefore, do not show his presence. I
have met a receipt dated May 4, 1752, acknowledging payment in full by
Father Greaton on lands at Colebrookdale, Goshenhopen, and Hanover.
If the letters appealing to the German provinces can be found they will
undoubtedly contain a statement of the condition of the Catholics in
Pennsylvania.
An Act of Parliament passed in 1740 (13th George II.), for naturaliz
ing foreign Protestants and others therein mentioned, as are settled or
shall settle in any of his Majesty's colonies in America, excluded from
naturalization all, except Quakers and Jews, who did not receive com
munion in some Protestant or Reformed Church within three months
before taking the oath and making the declaration.
'2 Foley, " Records of the English Province," vii., p. 318.
J Treacy, " Woodstock Letters," xv., pp. 93-4. In Mr. Foley's Tables,
vii., p. cxxiii. , there is no mention of Pennsylvania till "1740-1. Mission
of Saint Francis Borgia, F. Joseph Greatou, Superior FF. 4," and iii.,
p. 396, he says : " We had opened a mission here about this year (1741),
called Missio S. Fran. Borgise, Pennsylvania?." As a sign of Catholic
progress we may note that complaint was made in 1741 that " a native
Irish bigotted Papist was set up as schoolmaster at Chester" by the
Quakers. Perry, pp. 216, 220.
CONE W AGO AND LANCASTER. 391
tered the Society of Jesus at the age of seventeen.1 Arriv
ing in Pennsylvania in 17-il, he founded the mission of the
Sacred Heart at Conewago, by erecting a log-house. Early
in 1742 he purchased some lots in Lancaster,2 and began to
terect a chapel there, for this building seems to have been rec
ognized as a church from the very outset, and was dedica
ted to Saint John Xepomucene.3 Of Father Wapelers
labors we have scanty notices. After a few years the severe
work of the mission, the constant journeys, extending appar
ently beyond the Maryland frontier told on his health. His
church, at Lancaster perished by sacrilegious hands, Dec. 15,
1760, but the Catholics at once began to rebuild.3 The au
thorities to their credit offered a reward for the incendiaries.4
As to Conewago we have less precise information. Ac
cording to a statement in the history of a neighboring Prot
estant church, a party of German emigrants in 1734-5
passed a log mass-house near Conewago, but the statement
seems vague. This district was settled under a Maryland
grant of ten thousand acres by John Digges, in 1727, and
1 Foley, "Records," vii., p. 813.
'2 The beginning of the Church in Lancaster is fixed by a letter of the
Anglican minister, Rev. Richard Backhouse, June 14, 1742. " In Lan
caster Town there is a Priest settled where they have bought some Lotts
and are building a Mass-House, and another Itinerant Priest that goes
back in ye country. This is a just and faithful account, which I re
ceived last February in Lancaster Town from ye Prothonotary and some
of the principal Justices of the Peace for that county."
3 The church is said to have been completed in 1762. "Popery has
gained considerable ground in Pennsylvania of late years. The profes
sors of that religion here are chiefly Germans, who are constantly sup
plied with missionarys from the Society of Jesus as they are pleased to
style themselves. One of that order resides in this place, and had influ
ence enough last summer to get a very elegant chapel of hewn stone
erected in this Town." Thomas Barton to the Secretary, Lancaster,
Nov. 8, 1762. Perry, p. 343.
4 S. M. Sener, "An Ancient Parish," in "New Era."
392 THE CHURCH IN PENNSYLVANIA.
some Catholics may have come in with the earliest colonists.
The first mass is said to have been offered in the house of
Robert Owings, on a slight elevation, about a quarter of a
nrile north of the present church of the Sacred Heart which
occupies the site of Father Wapeler's humble chapel. Here
by his zeal he converted and reclaimed many from sin and
error.1 Father Wapeler returned to Europe in 1748, and
was apparently succeeded by Father Neale, who did not sur
vive long, and by Father Sittensperger (Manners). Many
of the English and Irish settlers above Pipe Creek, and
most of the Germans, were Catholics at this time.3
Of the third of the early missioners in Pennsylvania,
who is referred to (in an ancient obituary list of the Province,
and in a manuscript of Father Farmer) as the founder of the
missions in that colony, Father Theodore Schneider, we have
more satisfactory knowledge. He was a native of the Uni
versity city, Heidelberg, Germany, where he was born, April
7, 1703. He is said to have been Eector of the University,
and professor of' philosophy and polemics at Liege. His
labors in Pennsylvania began in 1741, so that he renounced
a brilliant future in the learned circles of his native land to
devote the best years of his life to toilsome work among
obscure emigrants in America.3 His precious Register pre
served at Goshenhopen is entitled, "Book of those Baptized,
Married, and Buried, at Philadelphia, in Cushenhopen, Max-
etani, Magunschi, Tulpehaken, etc. Begun Anno Domini
1741."
He was pastor of the German Catholics in Philadelphia
1 Reily, " Conewago, A Collection of Catholic Local History," Mar-
tinsburg, 1885, pp. 44, 45. The oldest Register in Conewago begins half
a century after the foundation of the mission.
* " Affidavit of Henry Cassells of Frederic County," May 30, 1751.
3 Foley, " Records," vii., p. 691.
393
for many years, and his flock formed the majority of the
faithful in that city ; but besides this he visited the scattered
Catholics through many parts of Pennsylvania and Kew Jer
sey, extending apparently into Delaware. The first entry
records a baptism at the house of John Utzman in Falkner's
Cb
*
, /rt&a#^fa&
/v
o
111/-
FAC-SIMILE OF THE TITLE OF FATHER SCHNEIDER'S REGISTER.
Swamp, now called Pottsgrove, near the famous Ringing
Hill, in Berks County.1 Then follows a marriage at Phila
delphia " in sacello nostro," being undoubtedly the oldest
official record of any ecclesiastical act in Saint Joseph's
'See Schoepf's "Travels through Berks County, 1783." Penn.
Mag. of Hist., v. p. 81.
394 THE CHURCH IN PENNSYLVANIA.
Church. Then we trace him to the Swedish settlements,
to Bethlehem County, Germantown, and in the spring of
174:2 to Cedar Creek, and a cheerless district, where some
Catholics had settled, so utterly unproductive as to obtain the
title of " Allemangel " or " Lackall." ' Toward the close
of the year he returned by way of Lebanon and North
Wales to Philadelphia and Germantown. He soon, however,
was in the Oley Hills, at Cedar Creek, New Furnace, and
Maxetani, and in February, 1743, notes his coming to Cush-
enhopen, where he in time reared an humble house, rather a
chapel for the Catholics of that district than a home for him
self, though he never gives it the name of church or chapel.
The land he purchased of Beidler, a Mennonist, who had
fallen out with the Brotherhood, and to mortify them sold
his property to a Catholic priest. At the last moment he
demanded security, but Father Schneider at once handed
over the full amount and took the deed.2 Here he soon had
a school. In May he founded the mission at Haycock, cele
brating the feast of the Holy Trinity in the house of Thomas
Garden. Then we find him at Frankfort and his regular
stations. Possessing medical skill, he travelled about as a
physician, being thus enabled to avoid suspicion and danger.
Laboring constantly to extend the benefit of his ministry to
the poor miners and iron-workers, he crossed into New Jersey,
and was at the house of Maurice Lorentz in August, 1743, and
in October, at the Glass House s near Salem. The next year
1 Rupp, " History of the Counties of Berks and Lebanon," Lancas
ter, 1844, p. 122.
- Tradition recorded in a letter of Father Lekeu, February 11, 1824.
Deeds of Ulrick Beidler to Francis Neale, 1747, for 122 acres ; Thomas
and Richard Penn to Joseph Greaton, 1752, for 373 acres 100 perches.
3 Carkesse to Hill, July 31, 1740. "New Jersey Archives/' vi.,
p. 98. Acton, " A short History of the Glass Manufacture in Salem
GEIGER'S HOUSE, NEW JERSEY.
395
he repeated his visits to that colony, was at Branson's Iron
Works, at the Glass House, and in June records a baptism
in the house of Matthew Geiger, which in his time and his
son Adam's, was periodically visited by Father Schneider,
and later by Father Farmer.1 Before the close of the sum
mer Father Schneider began a mission at Bound Brook.
The
for in
OF MATTHEW AND ADAM GEIGER, SALEM CO., N. J., WHEKE
MASS WAS CELEBRATED FROM 1744.
Church was, however, under the ban in 'New Jersey,
the Instructions to Lewis Morris, Governor of that
Co., X. J." Perm. Mag. of Hist., ix., p. 343. It was about a mile from
Alloway. Shourds, " History of Fenwick's Colony," p. 360.
1 This house, one of the earliest associated with Catholicity in New
Jersey, is still standing, and I give an engraving from a photograph
made for me. The old Registers of Father Schneider and Father Far
mer enabled .me to determine its proximity to Salem and Wister's Glass
House. Investigation led to the house itself, still known in the neigh
borhood as one where Catholics held service in the olden time. A Mr.
Adam Ki jar, a descendant of the early Geigers, still resides in Salem.
Father Farmer's first visit to it noted in his register is June 27, 1759.
396 THE CHURCH IN NEW YORK.
colony in 1738, we read : " You are to permit a Liberty of
Conscience to all Persons (except Papists)." '
In the next colony, New York, Catholicity was virtually
extinct. The little body gathered there while. James was in
authority as Duke of York and King, had been scattered,
and no indications are found of any Catholic residents.
No priest visited the colony except some one brought in as a
prisoner on a prize captured by a privateer. In the earliest
New York newspapers, an examination of the files for several
years gave only the following :
u Ean away the 18th August, 1733, from Jacobus Van
Cortlandt of the city of New York, a negro man slave, named
Andrew Saxton — the shirts he had with him and on his
back are marked with a cross on the left breast. He pro-
fesseth himself to be a Eoman Catholic, speaks very good
English." 2
Some years after Backhouse, an Episcopal clergyman,
speaking of the colony, wrote : " There is not in New York
the least face of Popery." 3
Somewhat later Leary, who kept a livery stable in Court-
land Street and imported fine horses for ofiicers and others,
was one of the few avowed Catholics.
In the Caroliuas and Georgia Catholicity was practically
unknown, for though a statement is printed of a Catholic
settlement in North Carolina, it seems evidently fictitious,
nothing being found to support it.4
New England was, of course, closed to the Church. In
1 " New Jersey Archives," i., pp. vi, 38. Papists and Quakers had
already been excluded from Liberty of Conscience in 1702. Stille, " Re-
ligious Tests," Penn. Mag. of Hist., ix., pp. 374-7.
'2 "New York Gazette," 1733.
3 " Letter from Chester," June 26, 1748.
4 In Bricknell, "History of North Carolina."
THE CHURCH IN NEW ENGLAND. 39?
1631 Sir Christopher Gardner on suspicion of being a
Papist was seized and sent out of Massachusetts ; and when
a minister in that year expressed the opinion that the Church
of Rome was a true Church of Christ, the General Court
denounced the opinion in a formal act. In 1647 a positive
law enacted that all Jesuits should be forbidden to enter
their jurisdiction. They were to be banished if they did,
and put to death if they returned.1
Even in the days of James II. , when the city of Boston
gave the Catholic governor of New York and a Jesuit Fa
ther an escort of honor, few Catholics entered New England.
A French Protestant Refugee, who was in Boston in 1687,
wrote : " As for Papists, I have discovered since being here
eight or ten, three of whom are French, and came to our
church, and the others are Irish ; with the exception of the
Surgeon who has a family, the others are here only in
Pa&age." 2
During the border wars with Canada, New England pris
oners taken to Canada in some cases became Catholics, and
not unfrequently remained there. Those who returned to
New England, however, almost always relapsed.
Such was the case of Christine Otis, who was brought up
as a Catholic in Canada by her convert mother and married
there. Left a widow she was won by Captain Thomas
Baker, of Massachusetts, a commissioner sent to obtain a release
of prisoners in that colony. Returning with him she be
came his wife, leaving her mother and a daughter in Canada.
The Rev. Francis Segueuot, one of the Sulpitian priests at
1 "General Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts Colony," p. 67. It
expressly, however, exempted from imprisonment any Jesuit shipwecked
on the coast.
4 Fisher, " Report of a French Protestant Refugee," Brooklyn, 1868,
p. 30. The Surgeon was apparently Dr. Le Baron.
398 THE CHURCH IN NEW ENGLAND.
Montreal, hearing that she had renounced the faith, addressed
a long letter to her in June, 1727, urging her to repent and
return. This letter seems to have attracted no little atten
tion, as a translation was printed at Boston in 1729, with a
reply which is ascribed to Governor Burnett. Se^uenot's
letter was undoubtedly the first argument on the Catholic
side which had ever issued from the press of New England.1
The Church in the English colonies was then confined
mainly to Maryland and Pennsylvania, with a few Catholics
in Virginia and New Jersey.
"While Catholicity was then struggling to secure a perma
nent foothold in Pennsylvania, the foreign relations and in
ternal troubles of England had their effect on the position of
Catholics in all the colonies. War broke out with Spain in
1739, and Spanish privateers menaced all the exposed places
on the coast, and levies were made for expeditions against
the colonies of the Catholic King in America. At the
South, Oglethorpe aided by Carolina was actively engaged
with the Spaniards in Florida.
A revival of anti-Catholic feeling was soon apparent. In
1740 or thereabouts the upper House in Maryland took
ground against the Catholics, but in this instance the lower
House showed a friendly disposition, and returned for an
swer, " that they were well assured that the few of those
people here amongst us had it neither in their power or in
clination to disturb the peace or safety of the Province."
Yet the Catholics had done nothing to give offence either
to the Government or their Protestant neighbors. In an
"Letter from a Romish Priest in Canada, to one who was taken cap
tive in her infancy, and instructed in the Romish faith, but some time
ago returned to this her native country ; with an answer thereto. By a
person to whom it was communicated," Boston, 1729. See American
Catholic Quarterly Review, vi., pp. 216-228.
THE NEW YORK NEGRO PLOT. 399
address some years later they said : " From the year 1.717 or
1718, to the year 1751, we were undisturbed, and though
deprived of our rights and privileges, we enjoyed peace and
quiet."
In New York the mad feeling against Catholics in 1741
caused the death of an unfortunate nonjuror Protestant cler
gyman. The misconduct of a few slaves had filled the minds
of the people with the idea that a fire which destroyed in
part the chapel in the fort of that city, was the result of a
negro plot for the massacre of the whites and the destruc
tion of the city. In the height of this excitement a letter
arrived from General Oglethorpe, then hotly engaged with
the Spaniards. He wrote warning the northern governments
against Spanish spies, chiefly priests, who were to burn the
principal towns and magazines. Although a white man
named Hughson, with his wife, and one Peggy Carey, with
many negroes, had already been convicted and executed for
a supposed plot of which Hughson had been sworn to be the
originator, Oglethorpe' s letter set the authorities to find a
priest. The unfortunate nonjuring Episcopal clergyman, Rev.
John Ury, a mild, inoffensive man, who lived by teaching,
was arrested and brought to trial as the chief conspirator,
and also for being a Roman Catholic priest remaining in the
province in violation of Bellomont's law. The second charge
was, of course, only to increase odium against him. The
witnesses who on the previous trials had made Hughson the
arch conspirator and never alluded to Ury at all, now con
cocted an entirely new tale. Ury, like the rest of the ac
cused, was not permitted to have any counsel. In spite of
the glaring inconsistency of the witnesses and the weakness
of the evidence against him, the jury, after hearing the in
vectives of the prosecutor and the violent charge of Judge
Horsmanden, deliberated only fifteen minutes, and then
400 THE CHURCH IN NEW YORK.
brought in a verdict of guilty. Ury was hanged on the
15th of August, 1741. Among those executed were several
Spanish negroes, taken prisoners of war, who claimed to be
free, but were sold as slaves. While the negroes brought up
in the colony died without any sign of Christianity, the his
torian of the Negro Plot, Horsmanden himself, tells us that
Juan, the Spanish negro, was " neatly dressed," " behaved
decently, prayed in Spanish, kissed a crucifix, and died in
sisting on his innocence to the last."
Of his Catholicity there is no doubt : but Ury was evi
dently what he claimed to be, a nonjuror.1
Pennsylvania had receded somewhat from the broad ground
of religious freedom assumed by William Penn. From 1693
to 1775 no one could hold even the most petty office in the
province without taking an oath denying the Real Presence
and declaring mass idolatrous. None but Protestants were
allowed by the Act of 1730 to hold land for the erection of
churches, schools, or hospitals, and as we have seen, none but
Protestants could be naturalized. The efforts of the Penn
sylvania governors and assemblies to enlarge -the religious
freedom were constantly thwarted by the home government.
The Pennsylvania authorities, though they submitted, seem
to have made the laws virtually inoperative in many cases.
German Catholics certainly held lands and had churches,
without any attempt to dispossess them. In 1746 Daniel
Horsmanden complained that many of Zinzendorf's German
" countrymen have for several years successively been im
ported into and settled in Pennsilvania, Roman Catholics as
' Horsmanden, " The New York Conspiracy, or a History of the Ne
gro Plot," New York, 1744 ; "The New York Negro Plot of 1741,"
N. Y. Common Council Manual, 1870, p. 764; Chandler, ''American
Criminal Trials," Boston, 1844, i., p. 222. Ury's language is uumistak
ably Protestant in tone.
FATHER MOLYNEUX. 401
well as Protestants, without Distinction, where it seems by
the Indulgence of the Crown, their Constitution granted by
Charter, all Perswasions, Eoman Catholicks as well as others,
are tollerated the free Exercise of their Religion."
o
The Pennsylvania authorities went further. On their
western frontier were Indians, more or less under French
influence, who menaced the exposed settlements. They knew
that the French influence was acquired at first by the zealous
labors of Catholic priests, and they prudently resolved to
avail themselves of the Jesuit Fathers in the province to win
the favor of the native tribes.
The Senecas and other Western Indians were always well
received at Philadelphia and encouraged to visit the Catholic
missionaries. " When any of them come to Philadelphia,"
wrote Count Zinzendorf in 1743, " they go to the Popish
chapel to Mass." The famous Madame Montour, wife of an
Oneida chief, and on many occasions interpreter for the
English, came to Philadelphia in her own carriage, and on
one of the visits had her granddaughter baptized at Saint
Joseph's.1
Jesuit Fathers, evidently by the wish and in the interest
of the Pennsylvania government, attended conferences with
the Indians. The Superior of the Maryland mission, Father
Kichard Molyneux, was with the Indians at Lancaster, just
before the treaty made there in June and July, 1744. As
the Pennsylvanians did not venture to avow their policy, this
visit subjected Father Molyneux to suspicion in Maryland.2
1 Reichel, " Memorials of the Moravian Church," i., pp. 120, 99.
"It is certain that about a fortnight before our treaty with ye Six
Nations of Indians at Lancaster, Father Molyneux ye principal of our
Jesuits was with them and there is good reason to suspect that he went
as an agent for ye French, and that his business was no other than to
dissuade ye Indians from making peace w'h us." " Maryland Memorial
to the Earl of Halifax."
26
402 THE CHURCH IN MARYLAND.
In that province, notwithstanding the general hostility of
the legislature and the dominant church, Catholicity held its
own, and succeeded in establishing a seat of learning, the
fame of which is still preserved. Apparently, in conse
quence of the alarm excited by Oglethorpe, a committee
was appointed by the Town Meeting, Boston, Sept. 22, 1746,
u to take care and prevent any Danger the Town may be in
from Roman Catholicks residing here."
Father Richard Molyneux was born in London March 26, 1696, and
after mission services in England was sent to Maryland in 1733. Having
been Superior of the Mission in 1736 and again in 1743, he returned to
England in 1749. He enjoys the honor of having been arraigned for his
faith before a civil tribunal. He died at Bonham, England, May 18,
1766. "Woodstock Letters," xv., 94-97 ; Foley, "Records," vii., p. 514.
^^^^/^^^Wi/
a2^fa^ *£ ~ ,- <f
FAC-8IMILE OP FIKST ENTRY IN FATHER SCHNEIDER'S REGISTER.
CHAPTEK III.
THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES, 1745-1755.
THE war between England and France, which began in
17-44, however, greatly inflamed the minds of the Protestant
colonists against the Catholics. The French in Canada men
aced the English colonies, and Indians in their interest lay
on their frontiers from Lake Ontario to the Tombigbee.
Catholics were believed by the prejudiced colonists to be
ready to join the French against their countrymen, although
there were no facts or examples to sustain the prevalent
opinion.
When Charles Edward in 1745 raised his standard in
Scotland and endeavored to regain for his father the throne
of England, every Catholic in the colonies was believed to be
a Jacobite and ready to commit any atrocity on his neighbors.
The Catholics could only show by their conduct that the sus
picions of their merciless persecutors were groundless.
The mission at Bohemia prospered, and offered such ad
vantages of seclusion, and such a ready means of removing
beyond the reach of Maryland's persecuting laws, should any
necessity arise, that it was decided to remove to it the acad
emy which the Jesuit Fathers had maintained whenever it
was possible.1
1 Young people were sent from Maryland to. Catholic schools in Eng
land, as well as to those on the continent. " Present State of Popery in
England," London, 1733, p. 19.
(403)
404 THE CHURCH IN MARYLAND.
The classical school at Bohemia was opened in 1745 or the
following year, under the supervision of Father Thomas
Poulton, who joined the Maryland mission in 1738, and
from 1742 to the commencement of 1749 was in charge at
Bohemia. The terms for education at this early academy
were £40 per annum for those who studied the classics and
£30 for those who did not. Peter Lopez, Daniel Carroll,
Edward Xeale, and others sent their sons to this Catholic
seat of learning. Among the earliest known pupils were
Benedict and Edward Neale, James Heath, Robert Brent,
Archibald "Richard, and " Jacky Carroll," a future arch
bishop of Baltimore. The highest number of pupils did not
apparently exceed forty. " Bohemia seems to have been
for a long period in the early history of the American
Church the Tusculum of the Society of Jesus."
Father John Kingdon and Father Joseph Greaton were
subsequently at Bohemia, and we can see from hostile sources
that the academy was accomplishing a good work. It would
be consoling to state that this early seat of learning had sur
vived to our day ; but every vestige of it has disappeared,
although it is well known that it stood on the lawn, a few
feet south of the manse, and that the bricks that composed
its walls were used in 1825 in erecting the dwelling-house.1
In 1760 a Protestant clergyman in Delaware wrote that
" there was a very considerable Popish Seminary in the
neighboring Province of Maryland," and that " this Semi
nary is under the direction of the Jesuits." 2
The Protestant rector of St. Stephen's parish, near the
Jesuit Academy, was a Rev. Hugh Jonee, who regarded his
neighbors with no favorable eye. In 1739 he wrote to the
1 " Bohemia" in " Woodstock Letters," vi., pp. 4-5, xiv., p. 354; B.
U. Campbell in " U. S. Cath. Mag.," 1844, p. 34.
2 Perry, p. 313.
REV. HUGH JONES. 405
Secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
for books : " Since the Jesuits in my parish with them they
favored and settled in Philadelphia seem to combine our ruin
by propagation of schism, popery and apostacy in this neigh
borhood, to prevent the danger of which impending tempest,
'tis hoped you will be so good as to contribute your extensive
charitable benevolence, by a set of such books of practical
and polemical divinity arid church history as you shall judge
most suitable for the purpose." '
The apparent prosperity of the Jesuits at Bohemia did not
render him more charitable. In 1745 he preached a sermon,
which he published in the " Maryland Gazette " at Annapolis,
as " A Protest against Popery."
The Jesuit Fathers really had circulating libraries at their
missions and encouraged the reading of good books. Mem
oranda exist as to loans of volumes, and Father Attwood, in a
letter to England, ordered a list of standard books for one of
his flock.2
Yet bravely as the clergy were struggling to meet the
wants of their flock, Catholics were liable at any moment to
arrest. Thus in the "Annapolis Gazette " of March 25, 1746,
we read :
"Last week some persons of the Romish Communion,
were apprehended, and upon examination, were obliged to
give security for their appearance at the Provincial Court."
The temper of the times may be seen in the following
proclamation of the Governor of Maryland :
1 Letter July 30, 1739.
2 " Woodstock Letters," xiii., p. 72. The order of Father Attwood
included the "Rheims Testament," Parson's "Three Conversions,"
"Catholic Scripturist," "Touchstone of the ^ Reformed Gospell," the
Whole " Manual," with Mass in Latin and English.
406 THE CHURCH IN MARYLAND.
" A PROCLAMATION.
" Whereas I have received certain information, that sev
eral Jesuits and other Popish priests and their emissaries
have presumed of late, especially since the unnatural rebel
lion broke oat in Scotland, to seduce and pervert several of
his Majesty's Protestant subjects from their religion, and to
alienate their affections from his Majesty's royal person
and government, altho' such practises are high treason, not
only in the priests or their emissaries who shall seduce and
pervert, but also in those who shall be seduced or perverted.
I have therefore thought fit, with the advice of his Lord
ship's Council of State to issue this my Proclamation, to
charge all Jesuits and other Popish priests and their emis
saries to forbear such traitorous practises, and to assure such
of them as shall dare hereafter to offend, that they shall be
prosecuted according to law. And all magistrates within
this province are hereby strictly required and charged, when
and as often as they shall be informed, or have reason to sus
pect, of any Jesuit or other Popish priests, or any of their
emissaries, offending in the premises, to issue a warrant or
warrants against such offender or offenders to take his or
their examinations, and the examinations or depositions of
the witnesses against them ; and if need be, commit such
offender or offenders to prison, until he or they shall be de
livered by due course of law. And I do hereby strictly
charge and require the several Sheriffs of this province to
make this my Proclamation public in their respective coun
ties, in the usual manner, and as they shall answer the con
trary at their peril.
" Given at the City of Annapolis, this 3d day of July,
Annoque Domini, 1746. T. BLADEN." '
1 '^Maryland Gazette," July 22, 1746.
REV. HUGH JONES. 407
It is interesting to know who were the terrible Jesuits
against whom Maryland Protestantism and Maryland brains
were so ineffectual. They were Fathers Kichard Molyneux,
Thomas Poulton in his Bohemia school, Vincent Phillips,
Robert Harding, James Farrar, Arnold Livers, Thomas
Digges, Benedict Neale, James Ashbey, and James Le Motte.
Jones' " Protest against Popery," and Bladen's Proclamation
do not seem to have alarmed these good Fathers. Some one
of them prepared an answer to Jones' "Protest against
Popery " ; of course no printer would have dared to issue it
from his press, and accordingly it was circulated in manu
script. It leaked out that there was such a paper, and Jones
was unhappy. He relieved his mind by inserting the fol
lowing advertisement in a newspaper :
" To the Jesuits established in Maryland and Pennsylvania.
" LEARNED SIRS :
" Imagining myself principally concerned in the applauded
answer to my Protest against Popery, that has been handed
about by some of you in these parts, I have used all means
in my power to procure one ; in order for which I applied
to the gentleman on whom it is fathered, but he having in a
very handsome manner disowned it, I presume I may be ex
cused from making this my public request, that some one of
you would vouchsafe to transmit me one of the books, that
I may rejoin to any sophistical fallacies or sarcastical false
hoods (those usual tropes of St. Omer) that I hear this smart
performance (as your friends call it) abounds with ; assuring
you that any assertions of mine that it truly demonstrates to
-be erroneous, shall readily be recanted. Your compliance
with my request will confer a great favor on,
" Learned Gentlemen, Your humble servant,
" Bohemia, Sept, 15, 1746." ' " H. JoNES.
1 " Maryland Gazette," Dec. 2, 1746.
408 CATHOLICITY IN VIRGINIA.
Among those arrested about this time, was the Superior of
the Maryland mission, Father Richard Molyneux, a native of
London, who had been in America from 1733, and been
twice placed at the head of the Fathers laboring in this coun
try. He had shown his zeal for the public good by using
his influence with the Indians at Lancaster. The proceed
ings against him cannot be found in the Maryland archives,
and there is no Catholic record known. In a document of
the time strongly opposing the Catholics the affair is referred
to in these terms :
" In ye time of ye Rebellion this same Fr Molyneux was
taken up for treasonable practises, being carried before
ye Provincial Court. He was so conscious of his guilt that
he begged for liberty to leave the Province : the Judge,
however, resolving to make an example of him, in order to
get the fittest and clearest evidence of ye facts, postponed
the affair for a few days, but Mr. Carroll, a Popish Gent", hav
ing bailed him out, the Council called Mr. Molyneux before
themselves, and having examined him privately, discharged
him without any public mark of resentment." '
The panic spread to Virginia, which trembled., as its colo
nists read on walls and fences such proclamations as this :
" VIRGINIA, ss. :
" By the lion. William, Gooch, Esqr., His Majesty's Lieu
tenant Governor, and Commander-in-Chief of this Do
minion.
" A PEOCLAMATION.
"Whereas it has been represented to me in Council, that
several Roman Catholic priests are lately come from Mary-.
1 " Memorial to the Earl of Halifax." He undoubtedly convinced the
Maryland Council that he was really carrying out the wishes of the Penn
sylvania authorities.
PENAL LAWS. 409
land to Fairfax county in this Colony, and are endeavouring
by crafty Insinuations, to seduce his Majesty's good subjects
from their Fidelity and Loyalty to his Majesty, King George,
and his Royal House ; I have therefore thought fit, with the
advice of His Majesty's Council, to issue this Proclamation,
requiring all Magistrates, Sheriffs, Constables, and other His
Majesty's Liege People, within this colony, to be diligent
in apprehending and bringing to Justice the said Romish
Priests, or any of them, so that they may be prosecuted ac
cording to law.
" Given under my hand in the Council Chamber in Will-
iamsburg, this 24th day of April in the Nineteenth Tear of
his Majesty's Reign.
" WILLIAM GOOCH.
" God Save the King."
Some Catholic families had settled on the southern shore
of the Potomac at Aquia Creek and above it, and priests
ministering to this remote portion of their flock entered Vir
ginia from time to time.
Virginia seemed loth to be outdone by her sister colony,
and had also placed on her statute-books a series of penal
laws against the Catholics which are unparalleled in history.
They began in January, 1641, when a Popish recusant was
forbidden to hold office under a penalty of a thousand pounds
of tobacco. The next year an act required every priest to
leave Virginia on five days notice. Another statute of 1661
required all persons to attend the service of the Established
Church under a penalty of £20. In 1699 Popish recusants
were deprived of the right to vote, and when the act was
subsequently re-enacted, the fine for voting in defiance of
law was five hundred pounds of tobacco. An act of 1705
made Catholics incompetent as witnesses, and when this fear-
410 THE CHURCH IN MARYLAND.
ful act was renewed in 1753, it was extended to all cases what
ever.1 Not even England herself sought to crush, humble,
and degrade the Catholic as Virginia did ; he was degraded
below the negro slave, for though the negro, mulatto, or
Indian, could not be a witness against a white person, a
Catholic could not be put on the stand as a witness against
white man or black, the most atrocious crime could with im
punity be committed in the presence of a Catholic on his
wife or child, whom he was made powerless to defend, and
his testimony could not be taken against the murderer.2
In the year 1750 a quarrel between two private gentlemen
set all Maryland aflame, and enkindled the most bitter anti-
Catholic movement known in the annals of the country.
Charles Carroll, barrister and father of the future signer,
and Dr. Charles Carroll, who had abandoned the Catholic
faith, were co-trustees of an estate, the legatees of wrhich
were priests. The Catholic trustee wished to close up the
estate, and was ready to account. He called upon his co-trus
tee to hand in his accounts and pay the amount in his hands.
Dr. Carroll offered a small sum to compromise the matter,
but the Catholic said that it was a matter of accounting, not of
compromise. On this the dishonest trustee intimated that he
would resort to the penal laws, and he actually endeavored
to have the Act of 11-12 William III. enforced in Maryland,
so as to prevent the legatees from compelling him to account.
How honorable Protestants could have lent their aid to so
disgraceful a plot is inexplicable, but they took the matter
1 Hening's " Statutes at Large," i., p. 268 ; ii., p. 48 ; iii., p. 172, 238,
299 ; vi., p. 338. In 1652 the Commissaries of the Commonwealth ordered
" Irish women to be sold to merchants and shipped to Virginia," but I
can find no traces of them in that colony.
• "Acts of Assembly now in Force in the Colony of Virginia," Will-
iamsburg, 1769, pp. 300-333.
ATTEMPTED LEGISLATION. 411
up warmly, and an act passed the lower House. By its
provisions every priest convicted of exercising his functions
was to suffer perpetual imprisonment ; and all persons edu
cated in or professing the Popish religion, who did not within
six months after attaining the age of eighteen take the oath
of supremacy and make the declaration prescribed, were dis
abled from taking any property by inheritance.1
Though this bill failed to pass the upper House and reach
the governor for his sanction, the House of Delegates, ad
dressing Governor Ogle, said : " We see Popery too assidu
ously nurtured and propagated within this Province as well
by the professors thereof as their teachers, preventing and
withdrawing many of his Majesty's Protestant subjects both
from our holy religion and their faith and allegiance to his
Majesty's royal person, crown and family.
" That ye number of Jesuits or popish priests now within
this province and yearly coming in together with the estab
lished settlements they have here and several youths sent
from hence to St. Omers and other popish foreign seminaries
out of his Majesty's obedience to be trained up in ways de
structive to the Establishment of Church and State in his
Majesty's dominions, some of whom return here as Popish
priests or Jesuits together with others of like kind who live
in societies where they have Publick Mass Houses and with
great industry propagate their Doctrines, will if not timely
prevented endanger ye Fundamental Constitution of our
Church as well as the peace of this government."
The fanatics, who wished to keep Catholics in ignorance,
accordingly introduced a bill, which, in the legal verbiage of
1 Father George Hunter, "A Short Account of ye State and Condition
of ye Rom. Cath, in y" Prove. of Maryland " That Dr. Charles was
brought up a Catholic and became a Protestant is stated in the ' ' Mary
land Gazette," October 2, 1755.
412 THE CHURCH IN MARYLAND.
the day, was entitled, " An Explanatory Act to ye act enti
tled an Act to repeal a certain Act of Assembly entitled an
Act to prevent the Growth of Popery." It passed the lower
House, but was laid on the table in the upper House. The
lower House remonstrated, but the upper House declined to
act upon the bill on account of the " great penalties and in
capacities " it contained.
The Catholics then addressed the upper House to thank
them, and in their petition they say : " That several malicious
Lies and Groundless Clamours continuing still to be spread
against us, among others, that persons of the Eoman Cath-
olick persuasion had misbehaved in such a manner in some
counties as to give his Majesty's loyal subjects just cause to
fear an insurrection, and further it was intimated that some
Roman Catholick priests of this Province had been lately
absent from their usual Place of Residence a considerable
time," and they proceed to state that " orders had been sent
out to bind over such turbulent Catholicks and to arrest any
such priests, but that not a single definite charge had been
made against any Catholic priest or layman."
Most of the Catholics in Maryland at that time resided in
St. Mary's and Charles Counties, and the magistrates of the
former, replying to the governor a few years later, not only
declared the charges against the Catholics unfounded, but
added : " We are not yet informed who have been the Au
thors of those reports mentioned in your Excellency's letter
which have been in some places so industriously spread, if
we should discover them, we would take proper measures for
their being brought to justice, as enemies to their country's
peace and friends to a faction who labour to foment animosi
ties among us to the endangering our common security." '
1 Petition of sundry Roman Catholics.
DEER CREEK MISSION.
And the governor expressly said : " The Magistrates assure
me that after a careful inquiry and scrutiny into the conduct
of the people of the Eomish faith, who reside among us, they
have not found that any of them have misbehaved or given
just cause of offence."
The attack on the Catholic body was all the more ungen
erous because they responded generously when the legislature
failed to provide for the protection of the frontiers against
the French, and a subscription for that purpose was set on
foot. The petition says boldly : " The Eoman Catholics were
not the men who opposed this subscription, on the contrary
they countenanced it, they promoted it, they subscribed gen
erously and paid their subscriptions."
It was apparently while the future of Catholicity looked
so dark that Thomas Shea left to the missioners in Maryland
in 176-i a tract of 115 acres on Deer Creek, near a spot still
called Priest's Ford, in Harford County. Here they estab
lished the mission of Saint Joseph, and erected a house such
as the laws then permitted, embracing a chapel under the
roof of the priest's house. The first missionary stationed
here of whom we have any note was the Rev. Benedict
Neale in 1747, and he was probably the one who erected
the building which is still standing, and which was referred to
about the time we mention as " Priest Keale's Mass House." ;
The building has passed out of Catholic hands, but remains
unaltered, and the graveyard where the faithful were interred
has been respected by the present owners.
The building stands on an eminence and is a long one of
stone, giving room for a chapel, which is now the kitchen.
The walls are of great strength and solidity, nearly three feet
thick, and the roof and woodwork seem to have been made
1 Examination of William Johnson, 1756. "Woodstock Letters,"
xv.. p. 55.
THE CHURCH IN MARYLAND.
of most durable and well-seasoned wood. A room below at
one end was the reception-room, above it the priest slept,
most of the interior being devoted to the chapel.1
But the enemies of the Maryland Catholics had not aban
doned their hostile measures. They passed through the lower
House an act laying a double tax on the unfortunate class.
So alarmed were the Catholics at the passage by the lower
ST. JOSEPH'S CHAPEL HOUSE, DEER CREEK, HARFORD co., MD.
FROM A SKETCH BY GEO. A. TOWNSEND.
House of this act, that they resolved to appeal to the king
himself, and the following petition was drawn up :
" To the King's most excellent Majesty :
" The humble petition of the merchants trading in Mary
land, in the name and behalf of their correspondents who
are Koman Catholics.
" Humbly sheweth :
" That the province of Maryland was granted to Csecilius
Calvert, Lord Baltimore, a Eoman Catholick :
u That the propagation of the Christian religion was one
1 In the early part of this century the place was sold, and St. Ignatius'
Church at Hickory erected for the benefit of the Catholics in those parts.
PROPOSED EMIGRATION. 415
of the motives for granting the said province to the said
Lord Baltimore.
" That all persons professing to believe in Jesus Christ
were invited into the said province.
" That in order to encourage all persons believing in Jesus
Christ to settle in the said Province an Act of Assembly was
passed in the said Province in the year 1640, entitled an Act
concerning Religion, by which Act amongst other things it
was enacted that no person in the said province should be
disturbed for or on account of religion.
" That an Act of Assembly hath lately passed in the said
Province entitled an Act for granting a supply of £40,000 to
your Majesty, etc., by which the lands of all Roman Cath-
olicks are double taxed.
" We therefore humbly beg leave to represent to your
Majesty our fears that this and other hardships laid on the
Roman Catholicks in the said Province may oblige them to
remove into the dominions of the French or Spaniards in
America, where they will cultivate Tobacco and rival our
Tobacco Colonys in that valuable branch of Trade to the
great detriment of the Trade of your Majesty's Kingdoms.
" Wherefore your Petitioners humbly pray that taking the
Premisses into consideration, your Majesty will be graciously
pleased to afford such Relief as to your Majesty shall seem
fit."
What a strange fact ! that a quarter of a century before
the Revolution, the Catholics of Maryland were compelled
to appeal to the English throne for protection against the in
tolerance and tyranny of their Protestant fellow-subjects in
that Province.
The war on the Catholics in Maryland had become by this
time so unrelenting, that a general desire prevailed to aban
don the province which they had planted. Many of those
416 THE CHURCH IN MARYLAND.
who owned property, seeing it daily wrung from them by
double taxes, by the money extorted for the support of the
state clergy and under other pretexts, determined to emigrate.
Charles Carroll, the father of the future signer of the Dec
laration of Independence, actually proceeded to Europe in
1752, as the representative of the oppressed Catholics of
Maryland to lay their sad case before the King of France.
It was not a time when a sense of faith or chivalry prevailed
in that court. Carroll asked the French minister of state to
assign to the Maryland Catholics a large tract of land on the
Arkansas River, as unwise a selection as he could well have
made. But when he pointed it out upon the map, the min
ister, startled at the extent of the proposed cession, threw
difficulties in the way, and Mr. Carroll left France without
being able to effect anything in his project for securing a
new home for the victims of Protestant intolerance and op
pression.1
The excitement against the followers of the true faith and
their devoted clergy did not die out in Maryland. The
House of Delegates in 1754 addressed Governor Sharpe,
asking him in view of " the impending dangers from the
growth of Popery, and the valuable and extensive possessions
of Popish priests and Jesuits," to " put into all places of
trust and profit none but tried Protestant subjects." To this
the governor replied, " that his concurrence should not be
wanting to any measures looking to the safety of his Maj
esty's good Protestant subjects." "
It was even discussed in the papers whether all the prop
erty in the hands of the Jesuits ought not to be seized and
applied to the establishment of a college, and laws enacted
to prevent Catholics from sending their children abroad to
1 B. U. Campbell, " U. S. Cath. Magazine," 1844, p. 40.
2 "Maryland Gazette," March 14, 1754.
ANTI-CATHOLIC EXCITEMENT. 417
obtain an education.1 A bill introduced by the Committee
on Grievances passed the lower House. Its object was to
create a commission to inquire into the affairs of the Jesuits
in the Colony, and also to ascertain by what tenure they held
their laud. They were also enjoined to tender the oaths
of allegiance, abhorrence, and abjuration to members of the
Society. The bill was, however, rejected by the upper
House.
Catholics were next charged with obstructing the raising of
his Majesty's levies, and Governor Sharpe issued a proclama
tion on the 30th of May, offering a reward for the arrest of
two persons named. The Legislature in the same spirit
passed a law to check the too great immigration of Irish ser
vants, being Papists.2
W ith all the offices, all the legislative, executive, and judic
ial power in their hands, with a State church supported by
taxes levied on Catholics and plate bought with money aris
ing from the sale of mulatto infants and their mothers,3 with
a virulent newspaper press, and vehement pulpit orators, the
Protestants in Maryland could not hold their own. One
newspaper writer asks :
" Does Popery increase in this Province ? The great num
ber of popish chapels, and the crowds that resort to them, as
well as the great number of their youth sent this year to
foreign popish seminaries for education, prove to a demon
stration that it does. Moreover, many popish priests and
Jesuits hold sundry large tracts of land, manors, and other
1 Richard Brooke in "Maryland Gazette." May 16, 1754.
» "Maryland Gazette," May 30, Aug. 5, 1754; "New York Gazette,"
June 24, 1754.
3 Gambrall, " Church Life in Colonial Maryland," Baltimore, 1885,
pp. 72, 125.
27
418 THE CHURCH IN MARYLAND.
tenements, and in several of them have dwelling-houses
where they live in a collegiate manner, having public Mass-
Houses, where they exercise their religious functions, etc.,
with the greatest industry, and without controul." '
One of the last efforts against the Catholic body was the in
troduction of an act in the lower House at the session of
1755, intended to prevent the " importation of Germans and
French papists and Popish priests and Jesuits, and Irish
papists via Pennsylvania, or the Government of Newcastle,
Kent, and Sussex on the Delaware." But it failed to find a
place among the statutes of Maryland.
Of the feeling toward Catholics on the Potomac at this
time, and especially toward their clergy, we have an instance
in a paper by the famous Daniel Dulany, written at Annap
olis, December 9, 1755. " One of our (Maryland) priests
had like to have fallen into the hands of the army, when the
troops were at Alexandria, and if he had, I believe he would
have been hanged as a spy. The man had been sauntering
about in the camp, and some one from Maryland whispered
that he was a priest. This was soon noised about, and the
priest thinking himself not very safe on the south side of the
Potomack, made all the haste he could to a boat which was
waiting for him, and had but just put off when he discovered
a party of soldiers running to the place where the boat had
waited for him. The officer who commanded the party
called to the boatsmen to return, but the priest prevailed
upon them to make all the expedition they could to the
opposite shore. Something ought to be done in regard to
these priests, but the present heat and ferment of the times
are such that nothing short of a total extermination of them,
and an absolute confiscation of all their estates will be heard
1 " Maryland Gazette," Oct. 17, 1754.
CATHOLICITY IN PHILADELPHIA. 419
of with temper, and that the Romish laity might be laid
under some restraints in the education of their children is
greatly to be wished, but all moderate and reasonable propo
sitions for this end would now be at once rejected." '
In Pennsylvania the decade from 1745 to 1755 was
marked by progress. Beside the lot on Walnut Street on
which St. Joseph's church had been erected, a lot adjoining
it, and facing on Willing's alley, was obtained by Father
Robert Harding by deed of June 5, 1752, being forty-eight
on the alley by forty feet in depth. Kalm, in his Travels,
mentions that the Catholics had a great house, well adorned
with an organ, so that the original structure had evidently
been enlarged.
Father Greaton had closed his laborious pastorship at Saint
Joseph's, with which his name had been so long identified.
His associate, Father Henry Neale, who had been at Cone-
wago and Philadelphia for several years, died in the latter
city in 1748, and he himself retired two years afterward to
Bohemia, where he died piously August 19, 1753, Father
John Lewis officiating at his requiem.
Rev. Robert Harding, S. J., was born in Nottinghamshire,
England, October 6, 1701, and entering the Society of Jesus
at the age of 21, was sent to Maryland in 1732. Selected
about 1750 to succeed Father Greaton in Philadelphia, he
was for more than twenty years rector of St. Joseph's. He
identified himself with the people, devoted himself to his
own flock, and in his large heart found sympathy for every
good work. He was one of the earliest to encourage the
American painter, Benjamin West ; by his love of the poor
acquired the highest reputation as a philanthropist ; seconded
' Dulany, " Military and Political Affairs in the Middle Colonies in
1755," Penn. Mag. of Hist., iii., p. 27.
420 THE CHURCH IN PENNSYLVANIA.
the claims of the colonists for their rights under Magna
Charta, and gave Philadelphia a second Catholic Church.
Father Schneider from-Goshenhopen attended the German
Catholics in Philadelphia, and continued his apostolical jour
neys, visited the scattered Catholics, saying mass, hearing
confessions, baptizing, instructing, and encouraging. His
Register shows such constant activity as to excite wonder.
Father Manners was in charge of Conewago from about
1753, and Father Steynmeyer, known on the mission as
Father Ferdinand Farmer, soon began his six years' pastor
ship at Lancaster.1
'Foley, "Records," vii., pp. 333, 701; "Woodstock Letters," xv.,
pp. 95-6; v., pp. 202-213; "Register of Goslienhopen "; Molyneux,
"Funeral Sermon on the Death of the Rev. Ferdinand Farmer," Phila
delphia, 1786, p. 4 ; Kalm, "Travels into North America," Warrington,
1770.
CHAPTER IY.
THE ACADIAN CATHOLICS IN THE COLONIES, 1755-1763.
WHILE the dominant party in Maryland was thus paving
the way for modern communists by advocating a seizure of
property in disregard of vested rights, and was seeking to
prevent the entrance of Catholics, and expel those already in
the province, a large body of persons of that faith, ruthlessly
torn from their happy homes, deprived of all their property,
of liberty, and home, without any warrant of law, or form
of trial, were flung as paupers upon the shores of Maryland,
and the other colonies from New Hampshire to Georgia.
Acadia, our modern Nova Scotia, was ceded to England
by France at the treaty of Utrecht, May 22, 1713, and its
population, industrious, thrifty, and peaceable, passed under
a foreign flag ; a Catholic population passed to the rule of a
government actuated by the most envenomed hatred of their
religion. By the terms of the treaty the settlers were per
mitted to remove from the province within a year, or if they
chose to remain and submit to British rule, England guaran
teed them their property, and the free exercise of their relig
ion according to the usage of the Church of Rome, " as far
as the laws of England do allow the same." If this clause
referred to Great Britain it was a fraud and a treachery, as
there the laws did not permit it at all. If England acted in
good faith, it must mean as far as England permitted it in
the plantations and in Catholic districts falling into her
power by force of arms. The capitulation of Port Royal
(421)
422 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
confirmed by Queen Anne was even more general in its
character.
During the year granted France sent no vessels, and Eng
land refused to permit the Acadians to leave the province on
English vessels. By no fault of their own they were forced
to stay. Nor could they sell their lands or stock, for as they
were the sole inhabitants there were none to purchase from
them.1 In vain did they ask to be removed ; the English
authorities, loth to leave so fine a province a desert before
they could plant other settlers there, deemed it bad policy to
let them depart, and to the very end, as their advocates do
now, made it a crime in French officers and priests who
urged them to leave all they possessed so as to preserve their
nationality and religion.2
Indeed, Queen Anne by a letter in which she referred as a
motive for her action to the release of Protestants by the
French king, allowed the Acadians to retain their lands,
without fixing any limit as to time, or to sell them if they
chose to remove.3
Lulled thus into a fatal security the Acadians made no
further effort to depart, but lived contentedly till about 1720,
when they were called upon to take an absolute oath of
allegiance to the British crown. As is evident from the
sequel it was one of those embodying the oath of supremacy
and abjuration which no Catholic could take. The Aca-
diaus, simple peasants as they were, saw the difficulty, and
upon their remonstrance the oath was modified by Governor
Mascarene and taken by the people.
1 Akins, "Nova Scotia Archives," p. 15 ; Murdoch, "History of Nova
Scotia," ii., p. 341.
8 Akins, "Nova Scotia Archives," pp. 4, 265; 6-13; 33-41. Mur
doch, ii., pp. 340-2.
3 Akins, " Nova Scotia Archives," p. 15.
THE ACADIAN SUFFERERS. 423
Time ran on, another generation grew up, born on Eng
lish soil, and undoubtedly entitled to all the rights of Brit
ish subjects ; but they were held in a kind of vassalage, gov
erned by military law, disfranchised as Catholics, and with
no legislative assembly where they were represented. Each
settlement sent delegates from time to time to the governor
to receive his commands.
In their religion they were constantly hampered. Their
province was part of the diocese of Quebec, and they were
attended by priests receiving faculties from the Bishop of
that see. But these priests were arbitrarily imprisoned or
expelled by the Nova Scotia governors, and treated with the
utmost contumely.1 The governors drew up a most extraor
dinary " Collection of Orders, Eules and Regulations in
relation to the Missionary Komish Priests in His Britannick
Majesty's Province of Nova Scotia." Under these regula
tions no priest could say mass at the chapels of one who had
been expelled, and as in some cases a priest would be kept
a prisoner in or out of Nova Scotia, the people were for
months and years without priest or sacrament, before a priest
could reach them who proved acceptable to the ruling gover
nor. No wonder Acadians feared that they would be treated
1 Of the twenty priests allowed to attend the Catholics at Annapolis,
Minas, Chignecto, Pigiguit, from 1713 to 1755, eight were at one time or
another banished from the province, and three carried off as prisoners at
the general seizure. Father Justinian Durand was nearly two years a
prisoner in Boston, 1711-3, and expelled from Nova Scotia in 1720.
Father Charlemagne was arrested and expelled for not warning the
authorities of an Indian attack, of which there is nothing to show
knowledge by the priests. He was expelled and a chapel destroyed.
Though no other charge was then made, eight years after they were ac
cused of having planned a massacre. The series of priests and their
fortunes, and the treatment they underwent, can be traced in Murdoch,
ii., pp. 409-484; Akins, "Nova Scotia Archives." It is lamentable to
find any one in the face of these facts write : "Priests and sacraments
had never been denied them." " Montcalm and Wolfe," i., p. 244.
424 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
like the Irish, and denied their priests altogether as Governor
Phillips wrote in 1720.
When war broke out with France, the Acadians refused
to furnish French officers on the frontiers with supplies :
but in 1749, Governor Cornwallis announced that his Maj
esty " is graciously pleased to allow that the said inhabitants
shall continue in the free exercise of their religion, as far as
the laws of Great Britain doe allow the same, as also the
peaceable possession of such lands as are under cultivation,
Provided that the said inhabitants do within three months
take the oaths of allegiance appointed to be taken by the
laws of Great Britain, and likewise submit to such rules and
orders as may hereafter be thought proper to be made."
In the face of such vague statements they asked to be
guaranteed the presence of priests, inasmuch as they were
frequently deprived of their clergy in a most arbitrary man
ner, and they begged not to be required to bear arms against
the French. They were answered harshly : " From the
year 1714-, you became subject to the laws of Great Britain,
and were placed precisely upon the same footing as the other
Catholic subjects of his Majesty." They earnestly sought
permission and means to emigrate. Then Cornwallis ren
dered this testimony to their worth : " We frankly confess
that your determination to leave gives us pain. "We are well
aware of your industry and your temperance, and that you
are not addicted to any vice or debauchery. This province
is your country, you and your fathers have cultivated it :
naturally you yourselves ought to enjoy the fruits of your
labor," and again he endeavored to beguile them with vague
promises.2
1 "Nova Scotia Archives," p. 174.
» Cornwallis, May 25, 1750. Ibid., p. 189, "N. T. Col. Doc.," x., pp
155, 164.
CONFISCATION PLANNED. 425
Yet almost at that time the English authorities were dis
cussing plans for a wholesale spoliation of the entire Aca
dian population, determined to strip them of everything, and
deport them without process of law.
The fact that these Acadians of French origin occupied the
best lands, was considered as keeping other settlers out. The
question of confiscating their land was discussed. " But the
mischief of dispossessing them," writes one, " is that it would
be an unpopular Transaction and against the Faith of Trea
ties." 1
The English did not wish any of the Acadians under their
authority to escape.2 They complained that French officers
and clergymen were persuading the inhabitants to leave the
province : the English authorities in every way allured those
who went to return, and to this day the Bishop of Quebec
and his clergy are censured for having advised those Aca
dians who had emigrated, not to return without a specific
pledge of religious liberty.3
There were three classes of Acadians, the distinction be
tween whom should be borne in mind, although recent writ
ers endeavor to confuse the minds of readers by stating of
one class what referred to another. There were Acadians
who had all along remained under the French flag, who had
no obligations whatever to the English ; then there was a
body comparatively small, who having been under the Eng
lish flag in Nova Scotia, had gone over to French territory,
1 "A Genuine Account of Nova Scotia," Dublin, 1750, p. 12.
* Lords of Trade to Lawrence, Akins, p. 207.
3 Albemarle to Puysieulx, "N. Y. Col. Doc.," x., p. 216. In "Mont-
calm and Wolfe," i., p. 256, the Bishop's letter is not fairly cited. Aca
dians were fined in 1750 for attempting to leave the province with their
effects. " New York Post Boy," Oct. 15, 1750.
426 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
and lastly, those who remained peaceably under the English
flag, giving no just cause of complaint.
During the war which terminated at the peace of Aix-la-
Chapelle (1748) the British Acadians had given no cause of
complaint as a body. Some young men undoubtedly went
across the line and fought on the French side, but no arrests
were made at the peace, none were tried for having given
information or aid to the enemy. During a period of six
years no charge of the kind was made, although the British
had the power to try summarily and punish any offenders,
or make examples of some to terrify the rest. That no steps
were taken during that period shows that modern writers
who make the charge against a whole community are merely
framing a special plea, not acting as the impartial judges
whom history requires.1
England by attacking French vessels at sea, and Fort Beau-
sejour on land opened the way for a new war. Then she
resolved to carry out a plan already formed for the seizure
and deportation of the Acadians who had remained constantly
or been born on English soil.2 When all was ready for the
blow, Lawrence, Governor of Nova Scotia, issued a peremp
tory order requiring the Acadians to take certain oaths. Some
writers without citing any authority declare that it was a
simple pledge of fidelity and allegiance to George II.3 Such
an oath had been frequently taken by the Acadians, and
1 The oath required after the war, in 1749, was simply one of allegiance,
that a Catholic might take. " New York Post Boy," Oct. 9, 1749.
2 A letter from Halifax, dated August 9, 1755, which appeared in the
"New York Gazette," Aug. 25, and in the "Pennsylvania Gazette,"
Sept. 4, 1755, announced the intended removal. The Lords of Trade,
however, notified Lawrence that if in the opinion of the Chief Justice
they had forfeited their lands, he was to take measures to carry it into exe
cution by legal process. Letter, Oct. 29, 1754.
3 Parkman, " Montcalm and Wolfe," i., p. 265.
PUNISHED AS CATHOLICS. 427
there is no reason for supposing that it would have been re
fused at this time.1 Moreover, the refusal to take a pledge
of fidelity and allegiance would not have constituted them
Popish recusants. When the delegates from the Acadian
settlements came, oaths were tendered to them, but no record
thereof is preserved in the minutes of the council. From Law
rence's subsequent language it is evident, however, that they
were some or all oaths then prescribed by the penal laws
against Roman Catholics, and which no Catholic could consci
entiously take. The delegates of the Acadians remonstrated,
and asked assurances on their side, but were dismissed, and
when they agreed the next day that the oaths should be
taken, the reply was that the offer came too late. The oaths,
whatever they were, were never tendered to the Acadians in
dividually nor refused by them. The delegates were told,
" that as there was no reason to hope that their proposed
Compliance proceeded from an honest mind, and could be
esteemed only the Eflect of Compulsion and Force, and is
contrary to a clause in an Act of Parliament of 1 George II.,
c. 13, whereby Persons who have once refused to take the
Oaths cannot be afterwards permitted to take them, but are
considered Popish Recusants ; 3 Therefore they would not be
indulged with such Permission." '
It was thus distinctly avowed that the action taken against
them was as Catholics, and under the English penal laws.
This is corroborated by the fact that instructions were sent
to take special care to seize the priests.
1 Akins, "Nova Scotia Archives," i., pp. 84, 21, 69, 91, 121, 167, 188,
263-7, 309, 353-4.
2 These words, which give a clue to the nature of the oath tendered,
and to the penalty incurred, if any, are suppressed in Murdoch, " His
tory of Nova Scotia," ii., p. 282; Parkman, "Montcalm and Wolfe,"
i., p. 264.
3 " Nova Scotia Archives," pp. 256, 260, 261.
428 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Ilaliburton, more honest than later writers, admits that the
Acadians were tried by their accusers as judges, without any
opportunity to put in a defence. Seven thousand British
subjects were thus tried in their absence by a governor and
four councillors, without any indictment framed, on a charge
of refusing to take oaths never tendered to them individually,
never refused except by deputy, and of the seven thousand
cases not a single record was drawn up from which they
could frame an appeal. Every principle of English law was
disregarded, but this is not all. Every step of Lawrence was
illegal and a crime. No such law as that of " 1 Geo. II., c.
13," exists on the Statute Book of Great Britain which can
apply to the case of the Acadians. No severe laws against
the Catholics in England were enacted at that time, and in
Ireland the existing penal statutes were actually mitigated.
The law was a pure invention of Governor Lawrence.
Moreover, the penal laws against the Catholics in England
did not extend to the colonies, unless specially enacted
there. "We have seen how an attempt was made in Maryland
to enact them by surprise in a bill which did not betray the
design, and how sanction to that law was refused in England.
"We have seen how at this very time the lower House in
Maryland, at successive sessions, made repeated efforts to ex
tend the penal laws of "William III. against the Roman Catho
lics to that province.
It can be irrefragably asserted that no law against the Cath
olics, 1 Geo. II., c. 13,' existed ; that no law existed making
1 It may be said that the act referred to was really 1 Geo. I., c. 18 ; but
this does not help the matter. That act refers to Catholics holding
office ; the only penalty for refusing the oaths is the loss of the office,
and so far from its preventing one who had once refused the oath from
subsequently taking it, this statute of George I. expressly exempts a
Catholic who had once refused from all the consequences of recusancy
on his subsequently taking the oath.
THE CRIME ACCOMPLISHED. 429
forfeiture of real estate and personal property absolute on re
fusal of any oath ; that no law made a community guilty of
refusing oaths tendered merely to a committee ; that no law
made married women and infants guilty of refusing ; that
under no law was real property confiscated without legal pro
ceedings in each case. And that cruel, heartless, and inhu
man as the English laws against the Catholics were, it was a
recognized principle that they had no force in America until
they were formally adopted there.
The means to execute the long-meditated sentence were
ready before the farce of tendering the oaths under a pre
tended English law, which, if real, would have had no force
in Nova Scotia. The troops to carry out the sentence were
at hand, with a fleet, and provisioned transports. The whole
number of these doomed Catholics was seven thousand.
From Minas, Piziquid and Cobequid, and Riviere du Canard,
five hundred were to be sent to North Carolina ; one thou
sand to Virginia ; two thousand to Maryland. From Annap
olis River three hundred were to be sent to Philadelphia,
two hundred to New York, three hundred to Connecticut,
and two hundred to Boston.
The nefarious scheme was carried out promptly and se
cretly. The Acadian men at the different points were sum
moned to meet the English officials, and were at once sur
rounded and disarmed, only five hundred escaping to the
woods. Their cattle were slaughtered or divided among
English settlers ; then the women and children were forced
to leave their homes and march to the shore, seeing behind
them their houses, barns, and churches blazing in one general
conflagration.1 The unfortunate people were then marched
1 After burning 181 houses and barns they proceeded to the Mass
House, which, with what was therein contained, " was burnt to ashes."
At Petcoudiack, the Acadians who had escaped and a party of Indians
430 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
on board the ships, no regard being paid to ties of kindred
and affection. The priests in Acadia, though French sub
jects, and there under the faith of a treaty, were seized, ex
cept the Abbe Miniac, who for a time eluded capture ; but
the Rev. Messrs. Chauvreulx, Daudin, and Le Maire were
conveyed to Admiral Boscawen's fleet as prisoners of war.
Then after being detained some months at Halifax, they
were taken to Portsmouth, and finally sent to Saint Malo.1
A large body of Catholics, nearly one-third as many as
there were in the English colonies, were thus suddenly landed
from Massachusetts to Georgia, All the vessels reached their
destinations except one, on which the Acadians overpowered
the crew and escaped. Two thousand apparently of these
Catholics were landed in Massachusetts, and that colony, un
able at once to provide comfortably for so large a number,
appealed on grounds of humanity to New Hampshire to re
lieve her of a portion, but that province declined on the pre
text that she was on the frontier of Canada.2
Though the brutal falsifier, Lawrence, wrote to Boston to
urge the people to proselytize the children of the exiles, the
unhappy Acadians found sympathy in Massachusetts. Lieu-
saw their houses fired, but when the English advanced to the church to
include it in the conflagration, they opened fire, killing or wounding 23.
" New York Gazette," October 6-13, 1755.
1 " Historical Magazine," iv., p. 42 ; " Nova Scotia Archives," p. 282 ;
Letter of Abbe de 1'Isle Dieu, October 23, 1755 ; Ferland, " Cours d'His-
toire," ii., p. 521. A writer, on the authority of Pichon, who, though a
French officer, carried on a treacherous correspondence with the English,
Boishebert and other officers, who had constantly urged priests in French
territory to attract Acadians from English territory, accuses the priests
seized, who were on English territory, with being the cause of the woes
of the Acadians. This is confounding two sets of people, and is far less
candid than Murdoch, who acknowledges that Pichon, Boishebert, etc.,
were freethinkers, constantly attacking the clergy.
2 " New Hampshire Provincial Papers," vi., pp. 445, 452.
GOVERNOR HUTCHINSON. 431
tenant-Governor Hutchinson was so affected by their suffer
ings that he prepared a representation proper for them to
make to the British Government, to be signed by the chief
men in the name of the rest, praying that they either might
have leave to return to their estates or might receive a com
pensation, and he offered to forward it to England to a per
son who would take up their case. The unhappy Acadians
had lost all faith in English honor, and trusting that the
French monarch would exert himself for them declined
Hutchinson's offer, little dreaming that the war would last
seven years and end in the disappearance of French authority
in America.
Hut chin son says distinctly : " In several instances the hus
bands who happened to be at a distance," when the Acadians
were seized, " were put on board vessels bound to one of the
English colonies, and their wives and children on board other
vessels bound to other colonies remote from the first."
" Five or six families were brought to Boston, the wife and
children only, without the husbands and fathers, who by ad
vertisements in the newspapers, came from Philadelphia to
Boston, being, till then, utterly uncertain what had become of
their families." ' The father of Monseigneur Prince, Bishop
of Saint Hyacinthe in Canada, was landed alone at Boston,
where a kind family took him, and he did not discover his
parents till after several years' search.2
Private persons at Boston provided houses where the aged
and infirm who were in danger of perishing were received.
Hutchinson himself in vain endeavored to save the life of
one poor woman ; but his care came too late. Then a law
was passed authorizing justices of the peace and other offi-
1 Hutchinson, " History of Massachusetts Bay," iii., p. 40.
2 Ferland, " Cours d'Histoire," ii., p. 520.
432 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
cers to employ the Acadians at labor, and bind them, in fact
treat them as paupers. Those advanced in years, and some
who had evidently enjoyed a higher position in Acadia, were
allowed support without labor. Yet if an Acadian attempted
to visit his countrymen in another town without leave of the
selectmen, he was fined or whipped.
Lands were offered to them to settle, but as they would
be deprived of the consolations of religion, these sincere
Catholics declined. Hutchinson says : " No exception was
taken to their prayers in their families, in their own way,
which I believe they practiced in general, and sometimes
they assembled several families together; but the people
would upon no terms have consented to the public exercise
of religious worship by Roman Catholic priests." " It was
suspected that some such were among them in disguise, but
it is not probable that any ventured."
When at last they despaired of being restored to their own
estates, they endeavored to reach parts where they could
find priests of their own faith, and if possible of their own
language. Many went from New England to Saint Do
mingo and Canada.1 Yet in 1760 there were still more than
a thousand in Massachusetts and the District of Maine. The
prejudiced Williamson insults them as " ignorant Catholics," a
conscious that their religion was their only crime. Even in
1702 French Neutrals were shipped from Nova Scotia,
" their Wives and Children were not permitted with them,
but were ship'd on board other vessels." : When the French
1 Hutchinson, " History of Massachusetts Bay," iii., pp. 41-2. "X. E.
Gen. Register," xxx., p. 17. P. H. Smith, ibid., 1886.
2 "History of Maine," ii., p. 311. "Collections, Maine Hist. Soc'y,"
vi., p. 379.
3 "N. Y. Mercury," Aug. 30, 1762. Seven hundred arrived at Boston,
Aug. 25th. Ib., Sept. 6, 1762, but were subsequently sent back. Ib.,
Oct. 11, 25.
ACADIANS IN NEW YORK. 433
came as our allies some years later no mention is made of
these Acadians. They had perished or emigrated, leaving
their sufferings as a part of the history of the future Church
of Massachusetts.
The Acadians landed at New York were treated no better
than those in New England ; the adults were put to labor,
and the children bound out " in order to make the young
people useful, good subjects," that is, Protestants. One
hundred and nine children were thus scattered through
Orange and Westchester Counties. In 1757 a party who had
been in "Westcheater County made their escape, and attempted
to reach Crown Point, but were captured near Fort Edward.1
A considerable number of Acadians were at one time quar
tered in a house at Brooklyn near the ferry ; but no distinc
tion was made in New York in favor of those who had occu
pied a higher position in their own country. On the slightest
pretext they were arrested, and at one time by a general order
all throughout the colony were committed to the county
jails.2 Even as late as 1764, when Fenelon, Governor of
Martinique, sent an agent to bring 150 Acadians to the "West
Indies, Lieutenant-Governor Golden refused to permit them
to go.3
On the 18th of November, 1755, three vessels ascended
the Delaware bearing 454 of these persecuted Catholics,
most of them with insufficient clothing, many of them sickly
and feeble, some actually at the point of death. The crime
of Lawrence had in the eternal counsels been punished by the
overthrow of a British army on the Monongahela, and Phila
delphia saw in these wretched Acadians, men who with the
1 " New York Mercury," July 11, 1757.
8 "K Y. Col. Doc.," vii., p. 125; "Calendar K Y. Hist. MSB.,"
pp. 658-678.
3 " Golden Papers," ii., pp. 333, etc.
28
434 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Irish and Germans were to slaughter the Protestants.1 But
Benezet dispelled the fears and aroused the benevolence of
the people of Pennsylvania. Best of all they saw a priest,
the Jesuit Father Harding, come to minister to them. More
than half died within a short time after their arrival, but
they died consoled and fortified by the sacraments of the
Church.2 Many thus charitably received remained and made
new homes, and soon lost their identity in the general popu
lation. Others made their way to Canada and the West
Indies, but the Catholic body in Pennsylvania certainly re
ceived some additions from this body of Acadian Confessors
of the Faith.
Of the nine hundred who reached Maryland many were
suffering from sickness and insufficient clothing, and their
wants were to some extent relieved. The President of the
Council acting as Governor retained one vessel at Annapo
lis, sent one to Baltimore and to the Patuxent River, one
to Oxford, and one to "Wicomico. The Council, however,
commanded all the justices to prohibit the Roman Cath
olic inhabitants to lodge these poor Acadians, and any who
were of necessity placed in the houses of Catholics were
promptly removed.
One gentleman, Mr. H. Callister, relying on the honor of
government to reimburse him, incurred considerable expense
in relieving their wants, but he was never reimbursed. He
1 "Pennsylvania Archives," ii., p. 506. "W. B. Read in "Memoirs
Penn. Hist. Soc.," vi., p. 292.
5 Walsh, " Appeal from the Judgments of Great Britain," pp. 87-92,
437. Westcott, " History of Philadelphia," ch. 193 ; Smith in " N. E.
Hist. Gen. Reg.," 1886. Walsh gives the Petition of the Acadians in
Pennsylvania to the King of England ; but the pathetic appeal produced
no effect. Yet the facts show that intelligent public men in Massachu
setts and Pennsylvania then believed that the Acadiacs had a just claim
on the English Government for compensation.
FIRST MASS IN BALTIMORE.
435
also drew up a petition for them to the King of England,
but nothing was ever heard of it.
A law was passed in 1756 empowering the justices in each
county to make provision for these Acadians, but the peo
ple were not dis
posed to hear the
burthen. Talbot
County addressed
the Assembly, in
a most bigoted
document, urp;-
o
ing some action
for their removal
from the province.
Those in Balti
more seem to have FOTTERAL'S HOUSE> WHERE MASS WAS FIRST SAID
IN BALTIMORE. PROM MOALE'S DRAWING.
found more be
nevolent people. Some were lodged in private houses, and a
number were sheltered in a large unfinished structure, the
first brick house in Baltimore, begun by Mr. Edward Fotteral,
FAC-SDHLE OF THE SIGNATURE OF FATHER JOHN ASHTON.
an Irish gentleman, who subsequently returned to his native
country. The Acadians occupied all that was habitable, and
hearing that there was a priest at Doughoregan, the seat of
436 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Charles Carroll, the Barrister, they sent imploring the priest
to extend his care to them.1
The Jesuit Father Ashton responded to their appeal, and
mass was said for the first time, and was maintained for a
considerable period in Baltimore in this house, where a room
was prepared for use as a chapel, and a rude altar reared
each time the priest arrived, bringing his vestments and
sacred vessels. The first congregation in the city which be
fore the lapse of two score years was to be the see of a bishop,
and in little more than a century to be presided over by a
Cardinal of Holy Roman Church, was a little body not more
than forty in all, chiefly Acadians, with a few Irish Catholics,
among the latter Messrs. Patrick Bennet, Robert "Walsh, and
William Stenson.*
The Acadians who reached Maryland, finding that they
could practice their religion, and obtain the services of priests,
remained, and "being accustomed to the sea, found employ
ment as coasters, fishermen, etc. ; but their faith which stood
the persecutions of Protestantism was much weakened by
the horde of freethinking Frenchmen who came during and
after our war of Independence. Many then were corrupted
' Scharf, "History of Maryland," i., pp. 474-9.
-' A rough pen and ink sketch of Baltimore in 1752, by Moale, preserv
ed by the Maryland Historical Society, shows this house. Our sketch is
made carefully from it, without alteration. The house where 7nnss was
said for the Acadians by Father Ashton, is the large house at the left.
It was near the northwest corner of Fayette and Calvert streets. See
Campbell, "Desultory Sketches of the Catholic Church in Maryland,"
in Religious Cabinet, 184?, p. 310.
Robin, "Xouveau Voyage dans 1'Amerique Septentrionale," Phila
delphia, 1782, p. 99, speaks of the Acadians' attachment to their faith, and
the loving remembrance of their former priests, mentioning especially
a Rev. Mr. le Clerc (? Le Maire), who when they came away gave them
a chalice and vestments. This seems doubtful, as no priest of that uam»
was in Acadiu at the time.
ACADIANS IN VIRGINIA, ETC. 437
and lost the faith they had so nobly witnessed unto.' Yet
there was some emigration. Captain Ford, of Leonardtown,
Maryland, sailed with a number for Louisiana, and was
driven on the coast of Texas, where they were seized by the
Spaniards and carried to New Mexico, suffering greatly till
a priest learned their history and obtained their release.'
Many, however, remained at Baltimore, where their de
scendants are to be found to this day.
Virginia, considering that the Governor of IS^ova Scotia
had no right to throw the great mass of the inhabitants of
his colony on other colonies to be supported as paupers, and
knowing that it would be useless to look to England or Xova
Scotia for compensation, refused to receive the deported Aca-
dians. She remonstrated so firmly with the English Gov
ernment, that 336 were transported to Liverpool, where they
were detained for seven years as prisoners of war, and sub
jected to many temptations to abandon their faith. At the
peace they were claimed by France, and obtained lands in
Poitou and Berry, still occupied by their descendants.3
The 1,500 sent to South Carolina were at first scattered
through the parishes, but the compassion for their misfor
tune was such that vessels were obtained at the public charge
in which many went to France. A few remained in the
colony ; others sought to reach Louisiana, or endeavored to
return to their former homes.4
Georgia by its charter positively excluded Catholics, not
1 Letter of Archbishop Carroll.
2 Smyth, "Tour in the United States," ii., p. 377.
3Brymner, "Report on Canadian Archives, 1883," p. 145 ; "Memoire
sur les Acadiens," Niort, 1867.
4 Cooper, "Statutes," iv. , p. 31. Two parties attempted to escape
early in 1756, but were retaken. " N. Y. Mercury," Mar. 1, 1756. Yet
in 1760. 300 Acadians are reported as having had the small-pox, 115
dying of it in South Carolina. " Maryland Gazette," April 17.
438 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
one of whom was allowed to settle within its limits. When
Governor Reynolds, who was attending an Indian Council,
heard that the Governor of Nova Scotia had thus thrown
four hundred Catholics upon his colony he decided that they
could not remain. As winter had set in he gave them shel
ter till spring. Then they were permitted to build rude
boats, and numbers set out to coast along to Nova Scotia,
encouraged by the help and approval of the Christian men
of the South.1 Toiling patiently along, a party of seventy-
eight reached Long Island in August, 1756. but though they
bore passports from the Governors of South Carolina and
Georgia, they were seized by the brutal Sir Charles Hardy,
who distributed them in the most remote parts of the colony,
putting adults to labor, and binding out children, so that
they should be brought up Protestants.2 Ninety who reached
the southern part of Massachusetts in July, were similarly
treated by Lieut.-Gov. Phips.
Though the fear was expressed that, exasperated at the
cruel and inhuman treatment to which they had been sub
jected, these people might take some terrible revenge, no case
of crime is charged to these noble confessors of the faith in
any of the colonies. They suffered, but not as evil-doers.3
Gradually during the war, and after its close in 1763,
Acadians made their way from Pennsylvania, Carolina, and
Georgia, as well as from Halifax to the French West Indies,
where many sank under the climate. Most of the survivors
removed thence about 1765 to the colony of Louisiana, where
they settled in Attakapas, and Opelousas. Here land was
allotted to them ; six hundred and fifty-six being thus pro-
1 Stevens, "History of Georgia," i., pp. 413-417.
2 "New York Colonial Documents," vii., p 125.
3 "Nova Scotia Archives," pp. 301-304.
FEW ACADIANS REMAINED. 439
vided in the early months of 1765. This body with others
who joined them from time to time constitute the source of
the great Acadian body in Louisiana, which retains to this
day the peculiarities of speech and manners that character
ized their ancestors.1
Of those who in time reached Nova Scotia or its neighbor
hood, or who escaped from the hands of Lawrence, some
fearing fresh cruelties struck into the woods on the upper
Saint John, and formed the Madawaska settlement. Strangely
enough, in 1842 England claimed this part of the State of
Maine, on the ground that it had been settled by the Neutral
French, who were British subjects.2
The largest body of Catholics that in one year reached our
shores did not materially alter the position of the adherents
of the true faith in the existing British colonies. A small
body remaining at Baltimore, a few in Philadelphia, the
Acadian settlement in Louisiana, which did not come into
the United States for some years after the recognition of in
dependence, and the little Madawaska colony, overlooked by
the authorities for years, and ministered to as their fathers
had been by priests from Canada, alone were permanent.
The fact that such an act could have been perpetrated by
Governor Lawrence under the pretence that it was in accord
ance with the penal laws against the Catholics, shows how
bitter the feeling of the time was.
1 "Nova Scotia Archives," pp. 347-350; Gayarre, "Histoire de la
Louisiane," ii., pp. 127-128.
2 See " The Acadian Confessors of the Faith, 1755," by me in "Am.
Cath. Quarterly," ix. , p. 592. ' ' Acadia, a Lost Chapter in American His
tory," by Philip H. Smith, Pawling, 1884; and a paper by the same
author, " K E. Hist. Gen. Register," 1886. H. R. Casgrain, "Un
Pelerinage au Pays d'Evangeline."
CHAPTER Y.
CATHOLICITY IN THE BRITISH COLONIES, 1755-1Y63.
THE war against the French was one against Catholicity,
and as after a few years hostilities also began against Spain,
England was arrayed against the two Catholic powers in
America, and every hostile movement tended to inflame the
minds of the people of the colonies against all who professed
the faith. The conquest of Canada was especially sought in
order to extirpate Catholicity utterly. The position of the
faithful in the English colonies was one of constant peril and
annoyance.
The newspapers teemed with diatribes against the Cath
olics, and ministers like the Rev. Mr. Brogden preached
series of sermons against Popery, and any reply or protest
only made their tirades more virulent.1
Stimulated in this way a strong public feeling grew up
against the Catholic body, and it would seem that the Prot
estants of Sassafrax, Middle Neck, and Bohemia Manor, to
whom the proximity of the Jesuits was very galling, peti
tioned the legislature at the session of 1756, praying that
stringent measures might be taken against the Jesuits. At
all events the lower House at this session was about to pass a
very stringent bill prohibiting the importation of Irish Papists
via Delaware under a penalty of £20 each, and denouncing
any Jesuit or Popish priest as a traitor who tampered with
1 " Maryland Gazette," Annapolis, Feb. 26, 1755, May 16, 1754, Marcli
14, 1754.
(440)
MARYLAND HOSTILE. 441
any of his Majesty's subjects in the colony ; but the bill did
not pass, the governor having prorogued the legislature
shortly after it was introduced.1
Yet for all this hostile legislation there was no pretext
whatever. A writer of that period in England could say
boldly : " In Maryland they have always shown a fidelity
and remarkable submission to the English Government, and
have particularly avoided a correspondence with the enemies
of Great Britain." 3
The Catholics in Maryland were accused of sympathizing
with the French, but in proof of their innocence, and as a
testimony of their zeal for the welfare of the country, they
appealed to their conduct in behalf of the people of the fron
tier, who had been driven from their homes after that disaster.
Addressing the upper House of Assembly in 1756 the Cath
olics said : " The Roman Catholics were not the men who
opposed the subscription : on the contrary they countenanced
it, they promoted it, they subscribed generously, and paid their
subscriptions honourably : and if our numbers are compared
with the numbers of our Protestant fellow-subjects, and the
sum paid on this occasion by the Roman Catholicks be com
pared with the sum total collected, it may be said the Roman
Catholicks contributed prodigiously beyond their proportion
to an aid so seasonable and necessary."
Yet the lower House in 1755 had presented Governor
Sharpe a furious address against the Roman Catholics, and
passed a resolution that all the Penal laws mentioned in the
Toleration Act were in force in Maryland, although some had
actually been repealed. The Governor writing to Charles
1 Johnston, "History of Cecil County, Md.," p. 202.
- " Considerations on the Penal Laws against Roman Catholics in Eng
land, and the new acquired Colonies hi America." London, 1764, p. 51.
442 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Calvert bore testimony to the good conduct of the Catholica
" For my part I have not heard but the Papists behave them
selves peaceably and as good subjects. They are, I imagine,
about one-twelfth of the people, and many of them are men
of pretty considerable fortunes. I conceive their numbers
do not increase, though I have reason to think the greater
part of the Germans which are imported profess that re
ligion." '
In the session ending May 22, 1756, a law was passed for
raising an amount to defend the frontiers, which the Assem
bly had long neglected to do. They seized the opportunity
to insert a clause imposing a double tax on all Catholic
property owners in Maryland. The Governor and upper
House made no effort to save the Catholics, and this iniqui
tous system once inaugurated was continued during the colo
nial period.*
A law was even introduced to make it high treason in any
priest who converted a Protestant to the true faith, and to
deprive of all right of inheriting any Catholic educated at
a foreign popish seminary ; but these violent measures failed
to pass, the upper House in 1758 even attempting, though in
vain, to relieve Catholics from the double tax as " not to be
defended upon a principle of justice or policy." The lower
House stimulated by the Protestant clergy, whom Catholics
were heavily taxed to support, adhered to the spirit of per
secution,8 and Governor Sharpe, himself a Protestant, writ
ing to the Lord Proprietor indignantly details the oppres
sions suffered by the Maryland Catholics from their enemies,
1 Scharf, "History of Maryland," i., p. 461.
* The Catholics in vain appealed to the Governor to withhold his sanc
tion to this bill.
3 "Votes and Proceedings of the lower House of Assembly, Apl..
May, 1758."
FATHER BE ADN ALL'S ARREST. 443
" and states that many were made such by envy or the hope
of reaping some advantage from a persecution of the Papists,"
and he bore his testimony that since he had administered the
colony the conduct of the Catholics had been most unexcep
tionable.1
Besides these cruel laws a new method of persecution had
been undertaken. Complaint was made before a magistrate
against Father James Beadnall, and two writs were issued on
which he was arrested by the Sheriff of Queen Anne's County,
on the 22d of September, 1756. He was obliged to give bail
in £1,500 for his appearance before the Provincial Court to
be held at Annapolis on the 19th of October. Two indict
ments were laid before the Grand Jury against him, the first
for celebrating mass in a private family, and the second for
endeavoring to bring over a dissenter, Quaker, or non juror to
" the Romish persuasion." The Grand Jury did not act on
the matter, and he was brought before the Grand Jury of
Talbot County, but that body on the 16th of April, 1757,
refused to indict him ; they held that as to the first charge
he was justified by the order issued by Queen Anne, at
Whitehall, January 3. 170£ ; and as to the second charge they
found the evidence insufficient.8
This good priest who enjoys the privilege of having been
arrested for discharging his duty was a native of Northum
berland, born April 8, 1718, and entered the Society of Jesus
at "Watten, September 7. 1739. His name appears first at
1 Gov. Sharpe's Letter, Dec. 16. 1758, in "Ridgeley's Annals of An
napolis," p. 95.
'2 Father George Hunter, " A Short Account of ye State and Condi
tion." "A Short Account of ye Proceedings of ye Assembly of Mary
land." The Maryland Archives have no record of this prosecution of
P. Beadnall.
444 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
St. Thomas' Manor in 1749, and after many years' service on
the mission, he died at JSTewtown, September 1, 1772.'
There were at this
• ^LL rf ^"^ time fourteen Fa-
I, <*7-o tf *»•,«£*>? thers on tlie Mary
" land and Pennsylva-
FAC-SIMILE OP THE SIGNATURE OF FATHER
GEORGE HUNTER, s.j. ma mission, Father
George Hunter be
ing the Superior, and returning to England for a time this
year.
Father Beadnall was not the only one of the Jesuit Fa
thers molested at this time. A man was arrested at Fort
Cumberland as a spy,
and admitted that he ^ J£ . /# C\ ^
. Jar*-* </jeaj<^^e<£e, />^*
had been in the /
French service at FAC-SIMILE OF THE SIGNATURE OF FATHER
Fort Dn Quesne, hav- JAMES BEADNALL.
ing been carried oft' by a party of Indians. The man swore
that a certain priest had maintained correspondence by let
ter with the French ; that he had been up in the country
among them, and that several Catholic laymen whom he
named had with the priest notified the French that they
would give them all aid in their attempts against the prov
ince. The accused priest was taken into custody to be tried
at the Annapolis Assizes in February, 1757. The case broke
down, however. When the man was put on the stand, he
was asked whether he knew a Catholic layman pointed out
to him. He replied that he did, that he was the priest, and
that he had seen him say mass in Baltimore County, and had
often carried letters from him to the French. He made
1 Foley, "Records of the English Province," vii., p. 42. Treacy,
" Catalogue," p. 98, thinks he died in 1775.
PENNSYLVANIA FEARS. 445
similar answers in regard to other laymen introduced into
the room. When the priest actually came, he swore that he
did not know him, and had never seen him in his life. The
Governor and Council before whom the examination took place
knew the priest personally, and saw the knavery of the wit
ness. The priest and the Catholic laymen were acquitted,
and the informer was sent to Lord London as a deserter.1
The alarm caused by the French operations on the Ohio
had already excited suspicion and odium against the Cath
olics of Pennsylvania. The Justices of Berks County, Con
rad Weiser being one of them, unfolded their foolish fears
in an address to Governor Morris, July 23, 1755. " We
know," say these sapient magistrates, " that the people of
the Roman Catholic Church are bound by their principles to
be the worst subjects and worst of neighbours, and we have
reason to fear, just at this time, that the Roman Catholics in
Cussahopen— where they have a very magnificent chapel, and
lately have had long processions— have bad designs."--'4 The
priest at Reading as well as at Cussahopen last Sunday gave
notice to the people that they could not come to them again
in less than nine weeks, whereas they constantly preach once
in four weeks to their congregations : whereupon some im
agine they have gone to consult with our enemies at Du
Quesne." * And a publication of the time says : " There are
near one-fourth of the Germans supposed to be Roman Cath
olics who cannot be supposed Friends to any Design for de
fending the Country against the French." :
1 F. George Hunter, "A Short Account of the State and Condition."
The name of the Father is not given ; and the State Archives have no
papers in the case. It was probably Father Hunter himself.
* " Provincial Records, 1755," p. 125 ; Rupp, " History of the Counties
of Berks and Lebanon," Lancaster, 1844, p. 151.
3 " Brief State of the Province of Pennsylvania," London, 1755, p. 35.
446 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
An inquiry instituted by Lord Loudon gives us the Cath
olic population of Pennsylvania in 1757. In and near
Philadelphia there were 72 men, 78 women, Irish or Eng
lish ; and in Chester County 18 men, 22 women under the
care of Father Eobert Harding. His associate Father Theo
dore Schneider residing at Goshenhopen, had under his care
107 men and 121 women, all
Germans, in and about Phila-
delpliia, and 198 men and 166
FAC-SIMILE OP THE SIGNATURE women iii Philadelphia, Berks,
OF FATHER THEODORE SCHNEI- AT ,-, TI T
DER> .Northampton, Bucks, and Ches
ter Counties ; while Father Fer
dinand Farmer, then at Lancaster, had 208 Irish and Ger
man men and 186 women in Lancaster, Berks, Chester, and
Cumberland Counties, and Father Matthias Manners, the
missionary at Conewago, had 99 men and 100 women, in
cluding both Irish and Germans, in York County.1
When precisely the church was built at Goshenhopen is
not determined. The
house mentioned by Fa-
C1 -j . ,.
ther Schneider in his
register, had evidently FA(>SIMILE OF THE SIGNATURE OF FA-
•f THER FERDINAND FARMER.
been replaced by a
church, which must have been of some size s and beauty to be
styled even in prejudiced exaggeration, " a very magnificent
chapel." With a respect for antiquity worthy of praise, the
walls of the old chapel of the last century were retained as
part of the present church.
The congregation at St. Joseph's Church, Philadelphia,
1 F. Harding to Peters, "National Gazette," Philadelphia, June 14,
1820. " Woodstock Letters," xv., p. 58.
2 Father Enoch Fenwick, in his notes on Goshenhopen says it was
55 by 32.
GOSHENHOPEN.
447
had increased so that the original chapel is said to have been
enlarged or rebuilt in 1T57.1 Moreover as ground was re
quired for a cemetery, and also to make provision in time
for the erection of a second church, a lot extending from
Fourth to Fifth Street, sixty-three feet in front, and three
hundred and ninety-six feet deep, was conveyed May 10,
CHTTRCII OF THE MOST BLESSED SACRAMENT, GOSHENHOPEN, NOW
BALLY, PA., BEING IN PART ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ERECTED BY
FATHER THEODORE SCHNEIDER, S.J.
1759. to two Roman Catholics, James Reynolds and Bryan
O'Hara, evidently in trust for the desired object. It was re-
conveyed the next year to Daniel Swan and others, and a
declaration of trust was made by the direction and appoint-
1 This seems very doubtful. The enlargement more probably preced
cd Kalm's visit.
448 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
ment of the members or congregation professing the Eoman
Catholic religion, and belonging to the Roman Catholic
chapel on the south side of Walnut Street, in the city of
Philadelphia, designated as St. Joseph's.
The purchase money, £328. 16. G, was contributed by
Rev. Robert Harding and eighty-one other subscribers;
and the ground was stated to be for the benefit of the chapel,
especial reference being made to its use as a burial place, as
by law Catholics could hold land for that object. A second
subscription was begun in 1762, and was so successful that in
the following year the erection of a church was begun on
this property, the future St. Mary's.1
Father Ferdinand Farmer after six years' service at Lan
caster and its dependent missions, doing his part in complet
ing the church in that town, was transferred to Philadelphia.
The first entry in his register there is on the 17th of Septem
ber, 1758, and he seems to have entered at once on part of
the labors previously borne by Father Schneider, as the next
year we find him at Concord, and at Geiger's in Salem
County, New Jersey. His labors at Philadelphia as assistant
to Father Harding were evidently onerous, but down to the
close of the period we are considering, his visits to Geiger's
and the Glass House in Salem County were constant."1
Small as this scattered body was, the militia act of 1757
required that in enrolling the people, their religion should be
1 So stated in "A Letter to the Roman Catholics of Philadelphia,"
Philadelphia, 1822, pp. 24-6, a Hoganite pamphlet aiming to show that
the Society of Jesus had not contributed largely to the erection of St.
Mary's.
'* Father Farmer's Register. He visited Geiger's June 27, Aug. 22,
Oct. 3, 1759 ; Jan. 1-2, Mar. 12, June 11, Oct. 1, 1760 ; Mar. 11 ; Gei
ger's and Glass House, May 14 ; Geiger's, June 17, Aug. 12, Oct. 14,
1761 ; June 24, New Jersey, Aug. 24, Geiger's Nov. 23, 1762. His other
visits were to Concord and Chester Co.
CATHOLIC POPULATION. 449
taken down to ascertain the Papists, who were to be excluded
from the militia ; by a special clause every Catholic was re
quired within a month to surrender all arms, accoutrements,
gunpowder, or ammunition, under the penalty of three
months' imprisonment ; and every Catholic who would have
been liable to military duty was compelled to pay a militia
tax of twenty shillings — a heavy amount for the times — to the
captain of the company in which, no matter how willing, he
was not allowed to serve.1
About this same time Father George Hunter, the Supe
rior of the Maryland mission, estimated the total adult Cath
olic population of Maryland and Pennsylvania at 10,000.
"We count about 10,000 adult customers sive comnits, &
near as many under age or non comni" . Each master of a
residence keeps about 2 Sundays in ye month a home, ye rest
abroad at ye distance of more or fewer miles, as far some
times as 20 or 30 & y" other Gentlemen all abroad every
such day." * " Pennsilvany has about 3,000 adult customers
sive comrn'3 near as many under age or no11 comm'" . The
extent of their excursions is about 130 miles long by 35
broad."
" Our journeys are very long, our rides constant and ex
tensive. We have many to attend and few to attend 'em.
I often ride about 300 miles a week, and ne'er a week but I
ride 150 or 200, and in our way of living we ride almost as
much by night as by day in all weathers, in heats, colds, rain,
frost, and snow," writes Father Joseph Mosley from K^ew-
town, September 1, 1759.
" I find here business enough upon my hands in my way
of trade," wrote this same Jesuit priest from Newtown,
1 Westcott, "History of Philadelphia," ch. 193.
2 F. George Hunter, " Report," July 23, 1765. " Customers " meant
communicants.
29
450 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
September 8, 1758. "I've care of above fifteen hundred
souls." .... "I am daily on horseback, visiting ye sick,
comforting the infirm, strengthening ye pusillanimous, etc."
This same Father attending Sakia and Newport in 1763, re
ported 873 Easter communions.
The mission-stations from which the priests attended the
faithful in their districts were, the Assumption at St. Inigoes,
where one missionary resided ; St. Xavier's at Newtown,
three missionaries ; St. Ignatius at Port Tobacco, three ; St.
Francis Borgia at Whitemarsh, two ; St. Joseph's at Deer
Creek, one; St. Stanislaus at Fredericktown, one; St. Mary's
at Queenstown, or Tuckaho, one ; St. Xavier's at Bohemia,
one ; St. Joseph's, Philadelphia, two ; St. Paul at Cushenho-
pen, one ; St. John Nepomucene at Lancaster, one ; St.
Francis Regis at Conewago, one.
Of most of these missions we have spoken at some length.
The mission of St. Francis Borgia at Whitemarsh is said to
have been founded, but was probably revived, in 1760.
Whitemarsh mission was fourteen miles from Annapolis,
on the top of a hill about one hundred feet high, nearly half
a mile from the Patuxent River, a cultivated field extending
from the foot of the hill to the stream which was crossed by
" The Priest's Bridge." The circular plateau on top of the
hill was nearly five hundred feet in diameter and well shaded.
Here rose the mission of Saint Francis Borgia, with extensive
plantations in the plain below.
In 1751 five or six Catholic families in Dover, Delaware,
were attended once a month by a Maryland priest.'
Soon after 1750 Charles Carroll, Esq., purchased 12,000
acres watered by the Potomac and Monocacy, and let it out
in small farms. Many of those who became tenants came
1 Perry, "Historical Collections," v. (Delaware), p. 97.
CHURCH AT FREDERICK. 451
from St. Mary's, Charles, and Prince George Counties, as the
names of Darnall, Boone, Abell, Payne, Brooks, Jameson, and
Jarboe, show. These Catholics were at first attended from
St. Thomas' Manor, near Port Tobacco, but in 1703 Father
John Williams, a native of Flintshire, in "Wales, purchased
a lot and in the following year erected a house, still standing,
and forming part of the novitiate. This was the mission of
St. Stanislaus. " It was a two-story building ; it included on
the first floor three rooms and a passage, thus giving a front
of about fifty feet." "The second floor was used as a
chapel."
This small chapel was for nearly forty years the only place
of worship for Catholics in Frederick County.1
The Jesuit estates not only supported the missionaries,
and paid all the expense of maintaining divine worship in
the chapels at their residence and the stations, but also ena
bled them to send over to England £200 to repay previous
advances, and the passage of Fathers coming to or returning
from Maryland.*
The project of seizing the property held by the mission
aries which was constantly urged at this time, aimed there
fore at suppressing at a single blow all Catholic worship in
Maryland, depriving the faithful of their principal chapels
and the clergy of their only sure source of income. Some
advised that this property when confiscated should be applied
to found a college.
Such was the condition of the Catholics in the colonies as
the Seven Years' War drew to a close. The faithful op
pressed, ground down with taxes and disabilities, liable at
1 St. John's Church and Residences, Frederick, Md. " Woodstock
Letters," vol. v., pp. 29-36. The deed to Rev. George Hunter was not
executed till Oct. 2, 1765.
5 V. Rev. Henry Corbie, " Ordinations and Regulations for M — y — d."
452 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
any moment to have all their property wrested from them,
had lost all energy and hope.
A writer of the time says : " The yearly repeated Bills of
late for putting Penal Laws in execution, have already pro
duced this Effect in some measure, one Gentleman of an af
fluent Fortune having already sold part of his lands with
intention to quit the country, and many others judging they
shall be necessitated to follow his Example unless assured of
enjoying their possessions in greater peace and quiet than for
these eight years past." '
There is no trace of any mission work about this time in
Virginia and New York.2 The Catholics in Pennsylvania
were comparatively free. They had churches openly at
Philadelphia, Conewago, Lancaster, and Goshenhopen, and
proposed to erect one in Easton. They were, however, com
paratively poor, few of their communion being possessed of
any large means, but they contributed money to erect and
maintain churches and support the priests who attended
them. _N"ew Jersey was a mission field without a church,
and the perquisites of the priests who penetrated into it
must have been scanty indeed.
In Maryland the Catholic population was more rural, com
prising the owners of plantations with their slaves, and the
1 " The Case of the Roman Catholics in Maryland, 1759."
2 Accounts of visits of priests to New York at this period, are, so far
as I can discover, absolutely unfounded. The Virginia penal act of 1756
was very comprehensive. The usual oaths were to be rendered to all
Papists ; no Catholic could have arms under penalty of three months'
imprisonment, forfeiture of the arms, and a fine of three times their
value. Any Protestant who did not report a Catholic neighbor for keep
ing arms was subject to the same penalties. A Catholic owning a horse
worth more than £5 was liable to three months' imprisonment and a fine
of three times the value of the horse. Henings' " Statutes at Large," vii.,
p. 37. The few Virginia Catholics of that day were, it is said, visited at
times by the holy Father George Hunter.
GENERAL CONDITION. 453
tradesfolk near them. The wealthy Mr. Carroll had a house
in Annapolis with a private chapel, but in no town except
Frederick was there even a priest's house for a congregation.
Private chapels on plantations of Catholic proprietors or
owned by the missionaries, were the stations attended from
each central point. Beyond the few cases of private chapels,
the Catholics did nothing to erect or maintain churches or
support the clergy, and under the pressure of persecution
were becoming inert, and losing the energy of faith that
shows itself in self-sacrifice.
In both provinces the services of the Church were con
ducted apparently in the plainest manner, without pomp,
and in most cases without music. Sermons were read from
manuscript in the English style. Cemeteries existed on the
priests' farms, but many interments were made in private
burial plots in the grounds of Catholics. A funeral sermon
was generally delivered.
It was not possible for all to hear mass every Sunday and
holiday, and the list of holidays then far exceeded those now
kept. It included the Circumcision, Epiphany, Purification,
the Finding of the Holy Cross, the Assumption, Nativity
of the Blessed Yirgin, All Saints and Christmas, St. Mathias,
St. Joseph, St. Philip and St. James, St. John the Baptist, St.
Peter and St. Paul, St. James, St. Anne, St. Lawrence, St.
Bartholomew, St. Matthew, St. Michael, St. Simon and St.
Jude, St. Andrew, St. Thomas, St. Stephen, St. John the
Evangelist, Holy Innocents, St. Sylvester, and St. George.
The missionaries were certainly zealous and devoted, and
so far as we can glean, communions were frequent, many
who had strayed away from their duties were reclaimed,
conversions were constantly made ; but when the struggle of
England and her colonies against France closed, the little
band of missionaries in Maryland and Pennsylvania and their
flocks, saw not a ray of cheering hope in the future.
BOOK IV.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE SPANISH
COLONIES.
CHAPTER I.
THE CHURCH IN FLORIDA, 1690-1763.
FLORIDA, after a struggle for existence of a century and a
quarter, was menaced with ruin. The English colony of
Carolina was already an enemy at its very door; the little
settlement at St. Augustine was menaced by the sea, which
threatened to wash away its fortifications, and by the Span
ish government, which seeing its slow progress, proposed to
abandon it, and transfer the inhabitants to Pensacola, so as to
prevent any encroachments by the French on the west.1
In its parish church the Kev. Alonzo de Leturiondo, who
had been in temporary charge for some years, was made par
ish priest and proprietary rector in July, 1694, and he dis
charged the duties in person or by deputy till early in 1707.2
A famous native of Florida, baptized in all probability in
the parish church of Saint Augustine, died in Mexico about
1695. This was the Jesuit Father Francis de Florencia, born
in Florida in 1620, who took the habit of the Society of Je
sus at the age of twenty-three, and who, after being professor
of philosophy and theology in the College of Saint Peter and
Saint Paul, and having rendered great services to the Bishops
1 Barcia, " Ensayo Cronologico," pp. 299, 301.
2 " Noticias relativas a la Iglesia Parroquial de San Agustin."
(454)
FLORIDA IN EARLY SPANISH DAYS.
CHURCH AT PENSACOLA. 455
whose confidence he enjoyed, was sent as procurator of the
Mexican province to Madrid and then to Rome. He was
subsequently appointed procurator at Seville of all the prov
inces of his order in the Indies, but finally returned to Mexi
co, where he died at the age of 75.
He acquired a high reputation as an author, having pub
lished a Menology of the illustrious members of the Society
in New Spain, a work on the Shrine of Our Lady de los
Remedies, a still more important work on the Apparition
and Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a History of the So
ciety of Jesus in New Spain, and other works.1
In 1693 Don Andres de Pes proceeded to Pensacola in a
frigate, accompanied by a famous priest, Don Carlos de Si-
guenza y Gongora, professor of mathematics in the University
of Mexico. The frigate and a smaller vessel entered the bay
on the 8th of April, and the Spanish commander retaining
its ancient title, given in honor of Our Lady, named the har
bor Santa Maria de Galve, after the chaplain had chanted a
Te Deum before a statue of Our Lady. Father Siguenza
made a careful survey of the bay, and a site having been de
termined upon for a settlement, he said the first mass on St.
Mark's day, April 25th, and the Spaniards marched in pro
cession, chanting the Litany of Loretto, to the spot selected,
where a cross was set up. This was the beginning of Pensa
cola, the second Spanish town in Florida. The settlement
was actually made in 1696 by Don Andres de Arriola, who
erected Fort San Carlos on the Barrancas of Santo Tome.
Quarters for the men and a frame church were immediately
erected.2
At the instance of the Bishop of Santiago de Cuba, Don
1 " Diccionario Universal de Historia y Geografia." Mexico, 1853,
vol. iii.
2 Barcia, " Ensayo Cronologico," pp. 308-311, 316.
456 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Diego Eveliuo de Compostela, a band of twenty Franciscan
missionaries, under Father Felician Lopez, were sent over to
found new Christian communities in tribes which professed
a desire of embracing the Christian faith. Eight wrere sent
to the new conversions of Mayaca, Tororo, Afiacapi, San An
tonio, and St. Joseph ; six were selected for the province of
Carlos, a son of the Cacique having visited Saint Augustine
to solicit missionaries for his people : the rest were sent to
other parts
The Fathers entered on their work with zeal, and at first
success seemed to encourage them, but in October, 1696, the
heathen Indians of Tororo and the four other towns of that
district rose" against the Spaniards, killed one of the religious,
with a soldier and five Indian converts, burned the churches
and mission settlements, and retired to the woods. The sur
viving missionaries, left without shelter or a flock, returned
to Saint Augustine. The field was not abandoned, however.
Five religious, with an experienced Superior versed in the
language, were sent to reclaim the Indians, and apparently
succeeded.1
The conversion of the Carlos Indians was undertaken by
Father Felician Lopez himself. He sailed from Havana on
the llth of September, 1697, with five other religious and
supplies of all kinds for the projected missions, and after
touching at Key West, proceeded to the town of Cayucos.
The old Cacique, who was very ill, earnestly solicited bap
tism, and after instruction the sacrament of regeneration was
conferred upon him, as death seemed imminent. Meanwhile
a house was erected for the residence and chapel of the Fran
ciscan Fathers. But no attention was paid to their instruc-
1 Letter of F. Martin de Alcano, Provincial, and others to the king,
July 18, 1697. Report, August 15, 1698.
FLORIDA MISSIONS. 457
tions ; a hut used for idolatrous ceremonies was thronged, and
the Indians even called upon the missionaries to give food
and clothing for their gods. "When the Franciscans refused,
and urged the Indians to abandon their idolatry, the young
Cacique told them that his gods were offended at them, and
required them to leave the country. The missionaries en
deavored to hold their ground, but they were seized and
robbed of their provisions; vestments, and chapel service, and
taken from Key to Key, till at last they were left naked at
Matacumbe. There the vessel which had brought these en
voys of Christianity over, found them on a return voyage,
and rescued them. Processions of the religious at night are
said to have alarmed the Indians at first, and were then made
a pretext for their expulsion. The missionaries who left
Havana in September, 1697, reached that port again on the
21st of February.1
"We get some glimpses of the Church and her missions in
Florida in 1699, from an unexpected source. The barken-
tine " Reformation " was wrecked on the coast of Florida in
September, 1696, and Jonathan Dickenson drew up a jour
nal of their adventures till they were rescued on the coast by
a Spanish party, conveyed to Saint Augustine, and then sent
northward along the coast, from one Indian mission to an
other.
Near where they were wrecked a zealous Franciscan Father
had converted a chief, but his tribe demanded that he should
renounce it and put the Friars to death. On his refusal they
1 A despondent letter of F. Felician from Florida, Sept. 21, 1697. Let
ters of F. Francis de Contreras, Oct. 16, 1697; Mar. 5, 1698. Report,
August 15, 1698. " Extractos de Varias Relaciones. " The companions
of F. Felician were FF. Ferdinand Samos, Michael Carrillo, Francis of
Jesus, and Francis of San Diego, lay brother.
458 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
killed him and (me of the Franciscans, two others who were
.there escaping.
The shipwrecked men received very kind treatment at
Saint Augustine, and in September set out with an escort.
At Santa Cruz mission, two or three leagues from Saint
Augustine, they found a large chapel with three bells, and a
Franciscan in charge. The Indians went as constantly to
their devotions at all times and seasons as any of the Span
iards. The party were lodged in a large house, kept as a
warehouse and general place of meeting. San Juan, on an
island thirteen leagues further, had its chapel and priests.
St. Mary's was next reached, where they found a Franciscan
with his church, and his school of Indian boys. Near it was
another mission, St. Philip's, which was soon reached, and so
they made their way to St. Catharine's Island — "a place
called St. Catalina, where hath been a great settlement of
Indians, for the land hath been cleared for planting for some
miles distant." It was in fact the old mission station where
church and convent had been destroyed by the Carolina In
dians.1 Yet Dickenson's narrative shows that these mission
stations along the coast not only civilized the Indians and
reformed their savage character, but were a life-saving organ
ization on the coast where the shipwrecked found Christian
welcome and aid ; yet the neighboring English colonies
destroyed them.
The Apalache Indians had been forced to come and labor
on the fortifications and sea wall at Saint Augustine, and a
letter signed by Patricio, chief of Ybitacucho, implores Don
Juan de Ayala to represent their case to the king. But the
fortifications saved Florida, for though the English from
1 Dickenson, "God's Protecting Providence, Man's Surest Help and
Defence," Philadelphia, 1699. It ran through many editions in England
and America.
FLORIDA MISSIONS DESTROYED. 459
Carolina in 1702 took and fired the city, the fort resisted
their efforts.1
The war of the Spanish succession gave South Carolina a
pretext for hostility against its Catholic neighbor, Florida,
and Governor Moore was eager for the plunder of a Spanish
town, and for Indian converts to enslave. He instigated the
Apalachicolas. to invade the Apalache country, where, after
professing friendship, they attacked Santa Fe, one of the
chief towns of the province of Timuqua, on the 20th of May,
1702, just before dawn. The Apalachicolas burned the
church, but the Indian Catholics succeeded in saving the vest
ments and pictures. A Spanish force pursuing the enemy
was defeated and the commander slain. Governor Moore
then induced his colony to fit out an expedition. A land
force of militia and Indians under Colonel Daniel attacked
St. Augustine in the rear by way of Pilatka, while Governor
Moore operated against it with vessels. Daniel occupied the
town, the inhabitants retiring to the fort. Governor Moore
coming in his vessels by sea, spread devastation along the
coast. The Christian Indians on the islands, from Saint
Catharine's to Amelia, had in consequence of previous hos
tilities, withdrawn to St. Mark's Island, where they formed
three towns. These were now committed to the flames with
their churches and convents, three devoted Franciscan Fa
thers falling as prisoners into the hands of the enemy, while
the Indian converts fled from their savage foe to St. Augus
tine." Moore having reached the Spanish city with fourteen
or fifteen vessels, and effected a junction with Colonel
Daniel, endeavored on the 22d of October, 1702, to capture
the fort. But the brave Governor, Joseph de Zufiiga, who had
'Barcia, "Ensayo Cronologico," p. 320.
2 Letter of Governor Zuniga, Sept. 30, 1702.
460 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
received a few soldiers to reinforce his little garrison, held
out bravely, the fort resisting all the efforts of the English.
Moore sent to the West Indies for heavier artillery ; but be
fore it arrived Spanish ships appeared in the harbor with re
inforcements under Captain Stephen de Berroa. Moore
raised the siege, which had lasted more than fifty days, and
finding escape by sea impossible, set fire to his vessels and re
treated overland.' " Before withdrawing," says a modern
writer, " he committed the barbarity of burning the town."
The parish church, the church and convent of the Franciscan
Fathers, and other shrines perished in the general conflagra
tion ; 2 but the plate to the value of a thousand dollars was
carried off. A Protestant clergyman writing at the time records
one act of vandalism which we cannot omit to state. " To
show what friends some of them are to learning and books,
when they were at Saint Augustine, they burned a library of
books worth about £600, wherein were a collection of the
Greek and Latin Fathers, and the Holy Bible itself did not
escape, because it was in Latin. This outrage was done as
soon as they arrived, by the order of Colonel Daniel."
This was evidently the fine library in the Franciscan con
vent at Saint Augustine, and it is most creditable that a little
place like the capital of Florida, then possessed a library of
ecclesiastical works that could win for its extent and value
such encomium from an enemy ; Father Martin de Aleano,
guardian of the convent, proceeded to Spain to portray to
the king the ruin of the ancient place.4
1 Letter of Don Joseph de Zuniga, San Marcos, Jan. 6, 1703.
2 Fairbanks, "History of Florida," p. 174.
8 Rev. Edward Marston to Rev. Dr. Bray, Charlestown, Feb. 2, 170$.
"Documentary History P. E. Church, i., pp. 11, 12.
4 Barcia, " Ensayo Cronologico, " p. 324. Royal Decrees of April 21,
1714, and Nov. 7, 1720.
APALACHE MISSIONS DESTROYED. 461
That the wanton destruction of a defenceless town was re
garded by the Spanish monarch as a mark of English pro
vincial hatred against the Church of God is evidenced by a
public act. The antipathy to the true faith with which
unprincipled rulers in England had imbued the ignorant
settlers of Carolina prompted them to the work of devasta
tion. The Spanish monarch at once ordered the income of
vacant bishoprics, the revenues that the episcopate of Spain
would have enjoyed had every see been filled, to be applied
to rebuild the church and convent, the hallowed shrine and
the domestic hearth that Carolinian bigotry had laid in ashes.
The greed of Governor Moore prompted another expedi
tion. If he could not take a Spanish fort he could carry
off the Indian converts of Spanish priests to sell as slaves.
He raised a force of English and Indians, and made a sudden
inroad into the territory of the Apalaches. Lieutenant John
Ruiz Mexia, who commanded the little Spanish garrison, pre
pared with the Apalaches to meet the enemy. Father John
de Parga, the missionary at Patali, addressed the Indians,
urging them to light bravely, for God's holy law, as no death
could be more glorious than to perish for the faith and truth.
When he had given all absolution, Mexia advanced on the
enemy with thirty Spanish soldiers and four hundred Apa
laches. They wished Father Parga to remain behind, but
he would not desert his flock. Mexia twice repulsed the as
sailants near Ayubale, January 25, 1704, but his ammunition
failing, most of his force were killed or taken. He himself
was wounded and taken with Father John de Parga and Fa
ther Angel Miranda. Many of the prisoners were at once
tied to stakes, tortured and burned to death. Father Miranda
appealed in vain to Governor Moore to prevent such horri
ble cruelties on prisoners before his very eyes ; but to no
purpose. Father Parga was burned at the stake, beheaded,
4o2 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
and his leg hacked off. Another religious, Marcos Delgado,
endeavoring to save Father Parga, was slain.
A party of the enemy then approached Patali, and an
apostate Indian called to Father Manuel de Mendoza, who
opened a window in the palisade, but was at once shot
through the head. The town was then fired.
Consternation prevailed throughout the Apalacbe towns ;
those which had not been taken, to escape the cruelties they
saw perpetrated on their countrymen, submitted to the Eng
lish and their allies, and of the eleven towns, Ybitacucho
alone escaped. Moore sent to Perez, who still held the
block-house at San Luis,1 offering to give up Mexia, Father
Miranda, and four soldiers ; but as the Spanish officer could
not furnish the ransom demanded, they were all burned at
the stake. Several of the Indians while undergoing the tor
ture showed in prayer and exhortation the heroism of Chris
tian martyrs, especially Anthony Enixa, of the town of San
Luis, and Amador Cuipa Feliciano, of the same town.
Moore retired at last, carrying off nearly a thousand Apa-
laches to sell as slaves, besides the numbers he had put to
death in and after the battle near Ayubale.
When he had retired, Father John de Villalba went with
others to the ruined towns. A scene of unparalleled horror
met them on every side, bodies half burned hanging from the
stakes or pierced by them, men and women scalped, mutila
ted, and burned. Father Parga's mangled body was found
and carried to Ybitacucho ; that of Father Mendoza was found
amid the ruins of Patali, half burned away, his beads and
partly-melted crucifix sunk into the very flesh. Of Father
Miranda and Marcos Delgado no trace seems to have been
found.2
1 Two miles west of the Tallahassee (Fairbanks).
s Letter of Governor Zuniga, March 30, 1704. " Extractos de una
A VISITATION. 463
The martyrdom of Ayubale has no parallel in our annals
except in the deaths of Fathers Brebeuf, Lalemant, Daniel,
and Gamier, in the Huron country, which has been so often
and so pathetically described ; but the butcheries perpetrated
there were not enacted before the eyes and by the order of
the Governor of a Christian colony.
The mission of Ybitacucho was maintained for a while,
but the Indians feeling that Spain could not protect them,
fled westward, and sought refuge under the cannon of the
new French fort at Mobile.
The missions on the Atlantic coast, from St. John's to the
Savannah, had been already broken up, the Apalache country
was a desert, and others nearer to Saint Augustine had been
already invaded.1
In the Apalache country alone there had been thirteen
considerable towns, each with a very good church and a con
vent for the missionary ; but all were now destroyed,2 and it
is asserted, and is probable, that the churches were plundered
by the invaders of all their plate and vestments, of every
thing indeed that could tempt cupidity.3
In January, 1704,4 Bishop Compostela sent the Licentiate
Antonio Ponce de Leon to make a visitation of the afflicted
Florida portion of his diocese, and the report of that dele
gate seems to have led to what had long been desired, the
inforrnacion fecha en San Augustin de la Florida en 9 dias de Junio del
afio 1705, por orden de fr. Lucas Alvarez de Toledo," including testi
mony of several eye-witnesses.
1 San Joseph de Ocuia, Pilitiriba, and San Francisco.
5 Don Juan de la Valle, 1729.
8 Fairbanks, "History of Florida," says, that "the remains of these
mission stations may be traced at several localities in Florida," and the
outlines of the earthworks around them can be distinctly seen at Lake
City and elsewhere.
4 Auto de 14 de Enero de 1704.
464 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
appointment of a bishop to reside in Florida. The first one
selected for tins position was Don Dionisio Rezino, a native
of Havana, who was preconized Bishop of Adramitnm, and
auxiliar to the Bishop of Santiago de Cuba. He was conse
crated at Merida in Yucatan, in 1709.1 Bishop Rezino pro
ceeded at once to Florida, and conferred confirmation in the
parish church at Saint Augustine, on the 26th of June,
1709, to a multitude of persons of every rank. On the 10th
of the following month he made his formal visitation of that
church, of which Rev. Peter Lawrence de Acevedo was the
proprietary parish priest.2 Of the length of the Bishop's
stay in Florida at this time documents have not yet been
found to give any definite account.
In 1720, Bishop Valdez, of Santiago de Cuba, sent one of
his priests, John Stephen Romero y Montafiez, to make a
visitation, which he did strictly, Nov. 7, 1720, censuring
somewhat severely the manner in which the Registers had
been kept by the Proprietary parish priest, Acevedo. The
chaplain of the fort had occasionally acted for the pastor,
and now by the visitor's permission the Sacristan Mayor,
Francisco Gabriel del Pueyo, who was also notary of the vis
itor, acted temporarily, and at a later period Rev. John de
Paredes, and John Joseph Solana. The long pastorship of
Rev. Mr. Acevedo ended August 13, 1735.
The venerable shrine of Nuestra Senora de la Leche erected
in the Indian town at Xombre de Dios, where the first mass
was celebrated on the 8th of September, 1565, was now to
feel the results of the proximity of a nation of hostile faith.
1 D. Rosain, "Necropolis de la Habana," 1875, p. 133. Bp. Rezino
died in Havana, Sept. 12, 1711, and was interred under the sanctuary
of the Clmrch of St. Catharine.
2 Barcia, " Ensayo Cronologico," p. 363, places the visitation of Bishop
Ilezino in 1721, but the entry of visitation and confirmations in the Reg
ister of Saint Augustine show that it was in 1709.
&fo&2S,
FRANCIS DE SAN BUENAVENTURA TEJADA, O.S.F.
BISHOP OF TRICALI , YUCATAN , GUADALAJARA.
' NUESTRA SE$ORA. DE LA LECttE
According to a statement of a modern historian, ( « >« .•<•
Palmer with a party of Georgians made a mid into F'-n i •
and approached St. Augustine. His men plundered tin
chapel, carrying off the church plate, votive offerings,
everything of • value. One of the soldiers took the figure of
the Infant Saviour from the arms of the statue of Our Lady,
and carried it to Colonel Palmer, then at Fort Mosa, who re
buked his men for their sacrilegious act, telling them that
they would in time atone it, but he took the figure and threw
it from him on the ground.
The next year as the city was again menaced, the Governor
of Florida, to prevent Xombre de Dios from bring again oc
cupied by the Georgians, commanded the town and chapel to
be demolished on the 20th of March, 1728, and a new chapel
was erected in a safer spot.
The account proceeds to state that in 1735 Colonel Palmer
was slain on the very S[>ot where he threw the Holy Child.'
In the war with Carolina the Christian Indians were nearly
exterminated, only three hundred survivor,- inhered under
the guns of the fort at Saint Augustine, remaining to repre
sent the once numerous happy towns of native converts.
The missionaries turned their attention to tribes which had
hitherto shown little disposition for the faith.1 In 1726 they
had made such progress that there were three Yamassee mis
sions, two dedicated to St. Anthony, and one to St. Diego,
each with a convent and church of palmetto ; three towns of
1 This account is given by Williams, "Territory of Florida," New
York. 1837, pp. 182-4, citing " Spanish Historians, " but to whom he
refers I do not know. He gives the date of the profanation of the
as 1725, but see Stevens' " History of Georgia," New York, 1847, pp. 14'».
173. where it is given as 1727 ; the site of the first chapel, place
first mass, and of the second chapel of Our Lady of the Milk are g
on page 137 of this work.
' Letter of F. Anthony Florencia to the King, 1724.
30
460 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
the Yguasa nation, Santa Catalina, Our Lady of Guadalupe,
and St. Joseph, chiefly of old converts, Guadalupe having a
church of boards. Kornbre de Dios, a Chiluca town of old
Christians, had its church of stone ; Santa Fe, a Tiniuquan
town ; San Luis, an Apalache town ; and San Antonio, a
Casapulla town ; another San Antonio among the Costas,
and a third in the Apalache country. Besides, there were
a mission among the Macapiras, and one in the Praya nation,
and San Juan mission in the province of Apalache, estab
lished for all who joined it from the Apalache nation, and
the Yamassees. The church in Florida could stiil report
more than a thousand Christians.1 These Indians had no
arms to defend themselves, and the heathen Indians all sided
with the English. Each of six new towns had its missionary.
A complaint was made at this time that natives of Florida,
who were ordained under the title of missions, went to other
places to receive holy orders, and did not return to the penin
sula.3
St. Mark was fortified in March, 1718, to protect the In
dian converts in that district, and steps taken to restore Pen-
sacola, where church, houses, and fort were all insecure.
The Confraternity of Our Lady of Soledad maintained the
services of the church and funeral expenses.8
Steps were taken to found a new Apalache mission of La
Soledad, near St. Mark, and two Franciscan Fathers were
placed in charge of it. On Santa Rosa Island a fortification
was thrown up, and a chapel erected, which Father Manuel
de Hoaliso attended. When in 1719 Pensacola was invested
by the French under Bienville, and captured, Father Joseph
1 Visita, Dec., 1726.
2 Letter, May 15, 1729, of Don Juan de la Balle.
3 Barcia, " Ensayo Cronologico," pp. 336-7, 340,
468
THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Usache, and Father Joseph del Castillo, of the order of St.
Francis, the chaplains, were taken to Havana.1 The Span
iards recovered the place soon after, only to lose it a second
time, Sept. 18, 1719, when Pensacola was taken by the Count
de Charapmeslin with a powerful squadron. Finding, how
ever, that he could not easily hold the place, he set fire to the
fort and town, laying Pensacola completely in ashes, not even
sparing the church, and
carrying off the sacred vest
ments and plate. When
the site was restored to
Spain, Pensacola was re
built in a new position near
the western extremity of
Santa Rosa Island. A sub
stantial fort with palisades
stood near, and the church
and government house
were suitable buildings.
A view of the city taken
by Dom. Serres in 1743,
shows that the second Pen
sacola church was a pecul
iarly shaped, octagon struc-
ANCIENT SILVER CRUCIFIX IN THE ,
ture.
CHURCH AT PEXSACOLA.
Some years later the
city was transferred to its present position, and Santa Rosa
Island was abandoned, no trace now remaining of the town
or church.
1 Barcia, " Ensayo Cronologico," p. 361 ; Morn, "Memorias para la
Historia de Texas," p. 84.
2 Barcia, "Ensayo Cronologico," p. 361; Roberts, "An Account of
the first Discovery and Natural History of Florida," London, 1763, pp.
11, 91.
BISHOP TEJADA. 469
Of the earlier churches of Pensacola, dedicated it would
seem to Saint Michael, a relic was preserved to our times.
It was an elegant silver crucifix of ancient work, probably
the gift of some benefactor of the Church in the last
century.
A most important event for Florida was the appointment
as Bishop of Tricali, and auxiliar to the Bishop of Santiago
de Cuba, of Father Francis of Saint Bonaventure Martinez
de Texada Diez de Yelasco, a native of Seville, a member of
the Recollect reform of the Franciscan order. He had been
professor of philosophy and theology, and guardian of the
convent at Seville. After his consecration he crossed over
to Florida in 1735, making a visitation of the whole prov
ince, as there are evidences of his having done in 1 742 and
1745. He resided for ten years at Saint Augustine, in a
house occupying the site which the United States Govern
ment, in disregard of its being property of the Catholic
Church, bestowed on the Protestant Episcopal body.
On his arrival he found the population of Saint Augus
tine to be 1,509 souls, attended by the parish priest, Peter
Lawrence de Acevedo, then more than eighty years of age
— too old to officiate ; the Sacristan Mayor, Francis Gabriel
del Pueyo ; John Joseph Solana as assistant, and a chap
lain in the fort. Before the close of April, 1736, the
Bishop had confirmed 630 Spaniards and 143 slaves and free
negroes.
From the time of the Carolinian invasion the Hermitage —
the Shrine of La Soledad, which had too been used as an hos
pital — had served as a parish church. This seemed unbecom
ing to the good bishop, and knowing that the English colonists
mocked at the Spaniards on account of the poverty to which
Governor Moore had reduced them, he restored this chapel,
strengthening the walls, and adding a stone sacristy so as to
470 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
serve more worthily till the real parish church was erected.
He also obtained suitable vestments. The classical school
which he opened soon gave him young clerics whom he
trained to assist in the sanctuary, and to whom he gave the
habit.1
The occupation of Georgia by Oglethorpe completed the
ruin of the Indian missions, the natives abandoning their vil
lages from fear or interest.
The bishop in his letters makes no allusion to the Indian
missions of which the Governor, Manuel Joseph de Justiz,
draws a deplorable picture. The scanty remnant of the once
flourishing missions was in the hands of young, inexperi
enced, and indifferent religious, so that the Indians showed
little piety or knowledge of their faith. The governor bears
testimony to the zeal and exertions of Bishop Tejada, who
had aroused piety among the Spanish settlers, having proces
sions of the Rosary on holidays, reviving the frequentation
of the sacraments, and omitting no means to draw all to the
fear of God. His school was the only one in Florida, all the
rest having been closed since the English invasion.2
Although the king had appropriated forty thousand dol
lars to rebuild the parish church, there was nothing to show
for it but four bare walls,3 and though Bishop Tejada and
others exerted themselves to have the church completed, it
was never done, and remained in an unfinished condition till
Florida passed out of the hands of the Catholic king.
1 Letters of Bishop Tejada to the king, April 29, Aug. 31, 1736. The
salary of the parish priest was $389 ; the sacristan mayor, $200 ; the
chaplain of the troops, who was vicar of the parish priest, $320 ; an or
ganist, $275. Letter of Gov. Monteano. The little chapel was about
fifty feet by thirty-six. Most of the congregation remained in the street.
• Letter of Gov. Justiz, Nov. 14, 1737.
3 Letter of Gov. Monteano, Nov. 31, 1738.
THE RIGHT OF SANCTUARY. 471
A question of the right of sanctuary occurred at Saint
Augustine soon after the coming of the Bishop. Francis del
Moral had been superseded as governor by Manuel Joseph
de Justiz in 1737, yet he not only refused to recognize his
successor, but even to allow him to land. As not unfrequently
happens, Moral contrived to form a party who regarded him
as an injured man, the victim of a conspiracy, and he gath
ered his adherents in the fort. The temperate course of the
new governor, however, caused the band of malcontents to
decrease rapidly, and Moral finding himself deserted, fled to
the convent of the Franciscan Fathers, where he claimed the
right of sanctuary. Kot to violate the prerogatives of holy
Mother Church, Governor Justiz appealed to the Bishop to
suspend the right of sanctuary so as to enable him to arrest
the offender and send him to Spain for such trial as the king
might appoint. Having obtained it he proceeded to the con
vent, when Moral surrendered himself a prisoner.1
As we have seen, money had been sent from Spain to re
build the Franciscan convent; but official dishonesty pre
vailed, the money was misapplied. Indeed, up to this time
nothing had been done except to run up a wretched chapel
with four stone walls and a palmetto roof, -while near by stood
huts like those of the Indians, to serve for a convent. The
eight Indian towns near the city2 .were as badly off, each mis
sionary living in a hut like his flock, with a chapel but little
better.
At St. Mark's on the Apalache River, there was a small
garrison in charge of a Franciscan Father, who attended also
1 Letter of Governor Justiz, Mar. 22, 1737.
2 Nombre de Dios at Macariz, 43 souls ; San Antonio de la Costa, 23 ;
N".S'. de Guadalupe at Tolomato, 29 ; N;l.Sa. de la Asuncion at Palicia,
48 ; N".Sa. de la Concepcion at Pocotalaca, 44; Na.Sa del Rosario at la
Punta, 51 ; Santo Domingo de Chiquito, 55 ; San Nicolas de Casapullas,
71. Letter of Gov. Monteano, Mar. 3, 1738.
472 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
eight Indian families at Tamasle. The Fathers here had a
well-built convent.1
St. Joseph's, near Point Escondido, had also a handsome
church.
The province of the Franciscans, known as " Santa Elena
de la Florida," was disturbed from about this time by na
tional rivalries, the religious born in Spain and those born in
America forming two parties. The elections held at the
chapters brought out these rivalries. That held in 17-15 was
declared by the higher authorities to be null, and a Provincial
was named by the Commissary General of the Indies.2
In 1743 the Jesuit Fathers, Joseph Mary Monaco and
Joseph Xavier de Alana, sailed from Havana to attempt a
mission in Southern Florida, and landed at the mouth of the
Kio de Ratones, near Cape Florida, on the 13th of July.
The Indians there, at the Keys and of Carlos, and Santa
Lucia and Mayaca at the north were to be the field for their
zeal. "With the help of the sailors the mission priests reared
a hut for a dwelling and chapel, and began their ministry.
A fish painted on a board was worshipped in a hut by these
Indians, the chief medicine-man calling himself bishop. Sac
rifices of children on important occasions were common, and
the Indians were cruel, lewd, and rapacious. They showed
no inclination to listen to the missionaries, whom they toler
ated only from fear of the Governor of Havana. His favor
they wished to conciliate in order to be able to sell fish at
that port. Discouraging as the first attempts were, the Jesuit
1 The statement that there was a Jesuit house here, made by Capt.
Robinson (Roberts' "Florida," p. 97), is certainly wrong. But where
sober historians can talk of an adventurer like Priber as being a Jesuit
(Stevens' "Georgia"), we may expect any absurdity. There may have
been at St. Mark's, the house of a secular parish priest.
-' Fogueras, " Satisfaccion que se da sobre cl derecho fuudado a la
devolucion que declaro de las elecciones del capitulo," etc. Mexico, 1747.
OGLETHORPE'S SIEGE. 473
missionaries persevered, and a community of Catholic Indians
was formed there in time, and retained the faith till the
period of the Seminole War, when they were transported to
Indian Territory, although these Spanish Indians had taken
no part in the hostilities against the whites.1
Fugitive slaves from Georgia and Carolina reached Florida,
and Bishop Tejada extended his care to them at Fort Mose,
where they were placed, assigning a young ecclesiastic to in
struct and prepare them for baptism.
In 1740 General Oglethorpe with 2,000 regulars, provin
cials, and Indians, and a fleet of five ships and two sloops,
laid siege to Saint Augustine, but the stout Governor Mon-
teano, who refused to surrender, held out bravely till pro
visions came to save the garrison and citizens from starvation,
when the founder of Georgia raised the siege.2 During these
days of trial Bishop Tejada roused the zeal and piety of the
people, and offered constant prayers for the deliverance of
the city. When the enemy retired, and the citizens could
replace their prayers for Divine aid by a joyous " Te Deum,"
he wrote a Relation of the Siege which was printed at Seville.
It opens with the words, " Ave Maria ! "
After his visitation in 1745, Bishop Tejada, who had done
so much for religion in Florida, was presented for the see of
Yucatan, and departed from the scene of his first episcopal
labors.4
1 Letter of FF. Joseph Mary Monaco, S.J., etc., to Governor-Gen, of
Cuba.
IJ Stevens, " Hfcto^y of Georgia," New York, 1847, i., pp. 170-179.
3 "Ave Maria ! Relacion que hace el Ilus. Senor D. Fray Francisco de
San Buenaventura, Recollecto de la orden de X. P. S. Francisco,
Obispo, etc." Seville, 1740. M. de Civezza, p. 534.
4 He took possession of the see of Yucatan, June 15, 1746, and made
two visitations of the diocese, not omitting the smallest ranches. He
erected a diocesan seminary, rebuilt several parish churches from his
474 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Saint Augustine was saved, but the country had been rav
aged on all sides ; the little Indian missions had been again
and again decimated, till in 1753 there were only four, Tolo-
inato, Pocatalapa, Palica, and La Punta, the whole contain
ing only 136 souls.1
The parochial charge of the ancient church had devolved
in February, 1743, on Kev. Francis Xavier Arturo, a parish
priest who administered for eight years assisted by the Kev.
John Joseph Solana, and the Deputy John C. Paredes, after
whose services in December, 1752, Fathers belonging to the
Franciscan mission, Uriza, Ortiz, and the Commissary Visitor
Francis Eabelo and Father John Anthony Hernandez, alone
ministered to the Catholic body till June, 1754, when Kev.
Mr. Solana resumed his duties and discharged them with oc
casional aid for the next nine years.
Reduced as Saint Augustine was, and almost stripped of
the great circle of Indian missions, which had been the dia
dem of the Florida church, it had not been deprived of epis-
own income ; adorned others. His charity extended to Spain, where he
erected and endowed a refuge for female penitents. In 1752 he was
translated to the see of Guadalajara, and on taking possession hung his
jeweled cross on the statue of the Blessed Virgin, wearing a wooden one
instead. There, as in Florida and Yucatan, he was diligent in visitations,
zealous for the worship of God, building and adorning churches, and to
facilitate pilgrimages to the Shrine of Our Lady of Tzapopan, erected
three fine bridges on roads leading to it. He also spent large sums
to enlarge and beautify the church. Always deeply pious, mortified,
content with the poorest food and raiment, this most apostolic bishop
died Dec. 20, 1760, after the second visitation of his diocese, from disease
contracted in riding on horseback to all the missions of Texas, then em
braced in the diocese of Guadalajara. He is to this day regarded as one of
the holiest men who have adorned the Mexican hierarchy. He began and
closed his episcopal career in parts now in the United States. I owe the
portrait here engraved to the extreme kindness of Father Macias, who
had the photograph taken from the original painting still preserved. " Con-
cilios Provinciales de Mexico," II., pp. 348-9, 364.
1 From Manuel de San Antonio, 1753.
BISHOP MORELL IN FLORIDA. 475
copal care and vigilance. As successor to the venerated Bishop
Tejada of Tricali, came the Rt. Rev. Peter Ponce y Car-
rasco, Bishop of Adramitum, and auxiliar of Cuba, who re
sided in the province from 1751 to 1755, and with his Secre
tary Justo Lorenzo Lopez Barroso began a formal visita
tion of that part of the diocese, June 8, 1754.
But the grasp of Catholic Spain on her ancient province
became daily more precarious, and seemed paralyzed when
the city of Havana fell into the hands of England in 1762.
That event led indirectly to an episcopal visitation of Florida,
the last it was to enjoy for many years. When Havana was
captured by the English, the Rt. Rev. Peter Augustine
Morell de Santa Cruz, a learned and zealous prelate, occupied
the see of Santiago de Cuba, and as he resided at the time in
Havana, he fell into the hands of the enemy. The dignitary
of the Catholic Church was treated with the usual insolence
by the Earl of Albemarle, the British commander. When
he declined to aid that nobleman in extorting forced levies
from the clergy of his diocese. Bishop Morell was accused of
conspiracy, and summoned to appear before the representa
tive of the British crown. Declining to acknowledge such
arbitrary measures, he was seized by a file of soldiers, Nov.
4, 1762, and carried in his chair amid the tears of his flock
to a man-of-war which sailed off with him as a prisoner to
Charleston, South Carolina. He was thus the first Catholic
bishop to enter the limits of the British colonies.1
After being kept on the vessel in that port for two weeks,
Bishop Morell was sent to Saint Augustine, which was
1 The arrest of Bishop Morell was the subject of an oil painting in the
Cathedral at Havana: he was represented as seated in his chair in his epis
copal robes and carried by four British soldiers. This painting with the
portraits of the previous bishops of Santiago de Cuba was destroyed by
order of Bishop Espada. The arrest is the subject of a very curious
476 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
still under the flag of Spain.1 Feeling that this stay might
be but a brief one, the zealous prelate made the term
of his unexpected residence in Florida a season of revived
devotion and discipline in that part of his diocese. He be
gan a formal visitation at Saint Augustine, January 30, 1763,
recording his approval of the regularity of the parochial
service and records. Between the 29th of December, 1762,
and the llth of April, of the following year, he conferred
the sacrament of confirmation on 639 persons.2 In fact, his
zeal and eloquence rendered his sojourn a mission for the
faithful.
In order to recover the city of Havana, Spain ceded Flor
ida to England, on the 10th of February, 1763. After a
time the clergy in Cuba obtained a vessel which was sent to
convey the Bishop back to his see.3
poem by Don Diego de Campos, printed at the press of the Compute
Eclesiastico, Havana, 8vo, 23 pp., with an illustration by Baez. This
poem in the dialect of the Cuban peasantry has been reprinted in the
" Parnaso Cubano," by the elegant scholar Don Antonio Lopez Prieto.
I am indebted for a copy and information to Senor Bachiller y Morales,
and Senor Guiteras of Philadelphia. As an illustration of an event con
nected with the church in this country the poem is extremely curious.
1 He arrived in Florida the 7th or 8th of December.
"Noticias relativas a la Iglesia Parroquial de San Agustin de la
Florida."
3 Rt. Rev. Peter Morell de Santa Cruz was born in 1694 in Santiago de
los Caballeros, in the island of Santo Domingo, of which his ancestors
were early colonists. He was ordained April 24, 1718, was Canon of the
Cathedral of Santo Domingo, Dean of the Chapter of Santiago de Cuba,
was nominated in 1745 to the See of Nicaragua, and became Bishop of
Santiago de Cuba in 1753, receiving episcopal consecration, Sept. 8, 1755.
He founded an hospital at Guanabacoa, and began a similar institution
at Guines. He distributed $800 a month to the poor, and $60 every
Saturday. For the negroes he showed great charity, taking measures to
secure their religious instruction. He died at Havana, Dec. 30. 1768,
his last hours being disturbed by a fearful hurricane in which he thought
only of his poor. Rosain, " Necropolis de la Habana," Habana, 1875, pp.
153-7.
ENGLISH IN FLORIDA. 477
At the time of the cession most of the Spanish inhabitants
remained, but the arbitrary and rapacious conduct of the first
English commander led to a general emigration. The un
finished walls of the parish church, the church at Tolemato,
sole remnant of the Indian towns near the city, the Francis
can convent and the temporary parish church, both in a
ruinous state, and a steeple of a church west of the town
alone remained to betoken the long Catholic occupation. It
was at this time probably that the ornamentation around the
entrance to the chapel in the fort, as too Catholic to suit the
temper of the new occupants, was defaced and mutilated ;
reduced to the condition in which it has long been.1
The accompanying plan of the city of St. Augustine in
1763, will enable the reader to see the position of the spots
connected with the ecclesiastical history of that ancient place.2
1 Romans, "Florida," p. 268.
2 (M.) The unfinished Parish Church, 6 varas high, 35x40, to replace
that destroyed by Gov. Moore. (G.) Temporary stone Parish Church
fitted up and enlarged by Bishop Tejada ; 47 x 66 varas. (2.) Church of
Tolemato, Indian town. (C.) Franciscan Convent and Chapel, wrested
from the Catholic Church by the United States Government, and still re
tained. (H.) Hospital, 44x51 varas. (Q.) Gate leading to chapel of
Nuestra Senora de la Leche. (I.) House of the Auxiliary Bishop, 35 x 51
varas, wrested from the Catholic Church by the United States Govern
ment and given to the Episcopalians. House of the Confraternity
of the Blessed Sacrament, 37 x 31 varas, third block from hospital on op
posite side of street.
— — — X^=£b== AS Fn r
_?•- K*i/ a-fHRfc^l*^VAT
CHAPTEE II.
THE CHURCH IN TEXAS, 1690-1763.
THOUGH the first religious ministrations in Texas, of which
we have any definite historical information, were those of
the French secular and regular priests, who accompanied the
wild and unfortunate expedition of La Salle to conquer the
Spanish mining country, the church which grew up in that
province, and has left the names drawn from the calendar
to town, and headland, and river, was connected with that of
Mexico.
The pioneer Spanish priest was the Franciscan Father
Damian Mazanet, who accompanied the expedition of Alonso
de Leon in 1689. So promising a field for the Gospel labor
ers opened there before this son of Saint Francis, that he
bent all his energies to effect the establishment of permanent
missions beyond the Rio Grande.1
He depicted the success of missions among the Asinais in
such sanguine colors, that he obtained the needed civil and
ecclesiastical authority for his undertaking. The Apostolic
College of Queretaro, founded by Father Anthony Linaz,
had at this time formed a new corps of missionaries replete
with energy, and inspired by all the fervor of the earliest
period of the Franciscan order. It was from these exem
plary religious that the little body was selected to evangelize
1 Arricivita, " Cronica Seraficay Apostolica del Colegio de Santa Cruz
de Queretaro," p. 213.
(479)
480 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
the province of Texas. Father Damian Mazanet's auxilia
ries were Fathers Michael Fontcubierta, Francis Casanas of
Jesus Mary, regarded in life and death as eminent in sanc
tity, Anthony Bordoy and Anthony Perera. The mission
aries left Monclova on the 27th of March, 1690, and crossing
' o
the Rio Grande, proceeded to the country of the Asinais,
which they reached about the middle of May. The friendly
Indians received them with joy, and the mission of San
Francisco de los Texas was established. A temporary chapel
was reared on the 24th, and the next day, the feast of Cor
pus Christi was celebrated with great solemnity. A site was
selected for a church and convent, which were erected within
a month. Father Damian then returned to Mexico, leaving
Father Fontcubierta as Superior of the Texas mission. The
docility of the Indians in receiving instruction in the truths
of Christianity encouraged the missionaries so much, that
Father Casafias founded a second station under the invoca
tion of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, building his house and
chapel with his own hands, and studying the language with
such zeal that he was soon able to preach to his flock in their
native tongue. Affliction soon came. Small-pox broke out
and ravaged the villages. The sick became the especial care
of the Franciscans, who were unremitting in their devotion
to the afflicted, most of whom received baptism before death.
Father Fontcubierta, the Superior, sparing himself in noth
ing, was stricken down by the disease, and expired in the
arms of his weeping companions, February 5, 1691.'
Meanwhile Domingo Teran de los Rios was appointed
Governor of Coahuila and Texas, and as preparations were
1 Life of Father Fontcubierta in Espinosa, " Chronica Apostolica y
Seraphica," p. 258 ; Life of Father Casanas, p. 278 ; Life of Father
Perera, p. 309; Morfl, "Memorias para la Historia de la provincia de
Texas," pp. 54-83.
THE TEXAN MISSIONS. 481
made to found eight new missions, Father Mazanet set out
with Father Hidalgo, two other Fathers from the college at
Queretaro, two Observantine, and two Discalced Franciscans.
These Fathers reached the mission of San Francisco on the
2d of August, and chanted a Te Deum in thanksgiving.1
The next Superior, Father Francis Hidalgo, set to work to
establish new missions, but Teran acted with little judgment.
He took no proper steps
to maintain communication
with Spanish posts, so as
to secure supplies for the
missionaries. Worse still
he left a party of dissolute FAC.SIMILE op THE SIGXATURE op
soldiers, who, instead of be- FATHER FRANCIS HIDALGO.
ing a protection to the mis
sionaries, excited the Indians against them. Several of the
Fathers retired, but the more zealous remained, and encour
aged by their success, deputed Father Casaiias to proceed
to Mexico, in order to obtain a regular establishment of the
mission "by royal order, which was in fact done, though too
late, Dec. 30, 1692.'
The second winter proved especially severe, and in the
spring of 1693 the soldiers abandoned their posts. Father
Francis Hidalgo and his associates had visited the Caddoda-
chos and the Chomas, the tribe called Jumanas in New Mex
ico. But as winter approached, the Franciscans finding
themselves isolated, exposed to attack from the French and
their allies, and hearing no tidings of Father Casaiias, re-
1 Letter of Father Damian Mazanet, Mision de 8. Fco. de los Tejas,
Aug. 20, 1691 in " Documentos para la Historia Eclesiastica y Civil de la
Provincia de Tejas," vol. I. " Parecer del P''Comisario, F. Damian Mag
net," ibid., p. 173 ; " Diario del Viaje," p. 177.
* Altamiro, " Testimonio " in Yoakum, " History of Texas," i., p. 390.
31
482 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
solved to retire to the missions south of the Rio Grande till
the authorities in church and state placed the Texas mission
on a solid basis. To this the Indians made every opposition,
asking whether they had not done all that the Fathers re
quired, and shown docility to their instructions. The Fran
ciscans consoled them by promises that they should not be
forsaken, and burying the bells and heavier objects of their
chapels and houses, the Fathers set out in October, 1693, for
the nearest post or mission amid their own tears and those of
their neophytes.1
Father Hidalgo did not abandon the project of converting
the Texas Indians. He drew up a statement of the import
ance of the work, and forwarded it to the King of Spain.
War delayed a reply, but a royal decree, August 18, 1708,
authorized him to proceed in its establishment.5
Meanwhile the Franciscans of the Apostolic College of
Zacatecas were at work. They founded a mission of San
Juan Bautista on
^ie Sabinas, and
pushing on open-
a new mission
on the first day of
January, 1700, on
the banks of the
F AC-SMILE OF THE SIGNATURE OF FATHER -,-,.
OLIVARES. Rl° Grande, to
which that on the
Sabinas was transferred, retaining its name. The Franciscan
Father who effected this was anxious to carry the mission
1 Espinosa, " Chronica Apostolica y Seraphica," pp. 255-59, 279,
309, 407; Arricivita, " Cronica Serafica y Apostolica," pp. 214, 219.
The Fathers who went to Texas in 1691 with Father Hidalgo were Nico
las Revo, Michael Estrelles, Peter Fortuni, Peter Garcia, Ildephonsua
Monge, Joseph Saldana, Anthony Miranda, and John de Garayooechea.
2 Arricivita, p. 221.
THE EIO GRANDE MISSIONS. 483
work still further, and leaving bis two companions at San
Juan Bautista, Father Anthony de San Buenaventura y
Olivares, with Father Isidro Felis de Espinosa, crossed the
Rio Grande, and with a small escort, advanced to the Rio
Frio, where he found the Indians docile and ready to listen
to instructions. He remained some time among them, teach
ing them the prayers which they recited with him. Re
turning to the Rio Grande he informed his associates of the
favorable aspect of the country, and proceeded to Coahuila,
where Philip Charles Galindo, Bishop of Guadalajara, was then
on a visitation, to propose a mission beyond the Rio Grande.
The Bishop extended the visitation of his diocese at this
time to the mission of Dolores, where he held a meeting of
the missionaries and civil officers. By general consent steps
were taken to establish four missions on the Rio Grande.
These were maintained till 1718, when the chief mission was
transferred to the San Antonio.1
The royal officers and soldiers, however, in the time of the
former mission had not only under one pretext and another
misappropriated the funds and stores intended for the work
of Christianizing the Indians, but had continued to make so
many claims against the Fathers, that the missionaries, who
had suffered every privation, were reluctant to expose them
selves to a similar experience. For some years Father Hi
dalgo found his efforts to re-establish the mission fruitless.
Still with Father Salazar in 1698 he was instrumental in
establishing churches for converting the Indians at La Punta
and on the Sabinas, which bore the names of Dolores and
San Juan Bautista. These missions, though south of the Rio
Grande, were finally transferred to San Antonio, in Texas.2
! Espinosa, " Chronica Apostolica y Seraphica," i., pp. 416, 461-6.
2 Arricivita, pp. 215, 216.
484 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
In 1715 it was at last determined to revive the mission
among the Texas or Asinais Indians. The Venerable An
thony Margil had founded the Apostolic College of Our
Lady of Guadalupe at Zacatecas, and that institution with the
college at Queretaro undertook the spiritual conquest.1
The missionaries from Our Lady of Guadalupe had as
Superior the Venerable and holy Father Anthony Margil,
" President of the Conversions of Zacatecas," while those
FAC-8IMTLE OF THE SIGNATURE OF THE V. FATHER ANTHOXY MARGIL.
from the College of the Holy Cross were directed by Father
Isidro Felis de Espinosa, his future biographer.
The two bodies met at the Mission of San Juan Bautista
which had been already transferred to the banks of the Rio
Grande,2 and after mass on the 25th of April all assembled
to give the viaticum to the Venerable Anthony Margil, who
lay at the point of death with fever. His fellow missiona
ries deeming it impossible for him to recover or take part in
the new effort to win the Texas Indians to the faith, sorrow
fully bade him farewell and proceeded on their way. It was
not till the 28th of June that they reached the Texas Indians,
who chanted the calumet of welcome to them. The mission
of San Francisco was restored, and a wooden church erected
1 The latter institution sent five religious, Fathers Francis Hidalgo, Ga
briel de Vergara, Benedict Sanchez, Manuel Castellafios, Peter Perez de
Mesquia ; the new college at Zacatecas, Fathers Mathias Sanz de San
Antonio, Peter de Mendoza, and Augustine Patron. Morfi, "Memorias
para la Ilistoria de Texas," p. 101.
2 Margil, "Informe," Presidio Real, Feb. 26, 1716. " Documentor
para la Ilistoria Eclesiastica y Civil," i., pp. 278, 333.
THE ASINAIS. 485
with a thatched roof. Then Father Espinosa selected a site
some twenty miles distant among the friendly Ainai, where
he planted the ..mission cross of " La Purisima Concepcion."
Each mission had its banner with its name emblazoned on it,
and each had all requisites for divine service in the chapel.
The next step was to erect a temporary structure for that
purpose. The missionary and a single companion at once
set to work to erect a temporary structure of puncheons, with
a thatched roof for church and house. The rainy season
compelled the Fathers ere long to select more suitable sites
and put up more solid structures.
The Asinais worshipped Caddi or Ayi, the great Captain,
and had a kind of temple in which a sacred fire was kept.
The medicine-men exercised great influence, and were soon
arrayed against the missionaries, accusing them of killing
children by baptism. The Franciscan Fathers, though aban
doned by most of the soldiers, sent especially to succor them
in danger, and deprived of most of the provisions intended
for their maintenance, began their labors zealously. They
made lists of the inmates of every ranch and house, and gave
instructions not only in the chapel, but at each dwelling.
The women showed more docility than the men, who were
more influenced by the chenesi or medicine-men. Disease
was frequent, and after mass the missionary would ascertain
the name of the sick in order to visit them. The first year
the great chief of the Texas Indians fell sick, and listened to
the instructions of Father Espinosa, from whom he finally
solicited baptism. "I gave it," says the missionary, " in
creasing with my tears, the water in the vessel I used."
The converted chief Francis survived several days, exhort
ing his kindred and tribe to listen to the missionaries. Fa
ther Vergara converted Sata Yaexa, a great medicine-man,
the keeper of the sacred fire, who becoming a Christian
486 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
made open acknowledgment of the impostures he had prac
tised. Here, as elsewhere, the dying infants constituted the
greater part of those baptized, and then the mothers, won by
the interest the missionaries showed in their little ones, lis
tened to the words of the Gospel.1
Father Margil had been left by his dejected companions
apparently in his agony on the banks of the Eio Grande,
but it was not in the designs of God that Texas was to be
deprived of the labors, the example, and the merits of that
illustrious and holy disciple of the seraphic Saint Francis of
Assisium.
The illustrious servant of God, the Venerable Father
Anthony Margil of Jesus, is one of the most remarkable men
in the history of the Church in America, whether we regard
his personal sanctity, the gifts with which he was endowed,
or the extent and importance of his labors for the salvation
of souls. His life in all its details has been subjected to the
rigid scrutiny and discussion of a process of canonization at
Koine, so that no national or local exaggeration can be sus
pected.
He was born at Valencia, August 18, 1655, of pious pa
rents, John Margil and Esperanza Eos, receiving in baptism
the name Agapitus Louis Paulinus Anthony. His home
was a school of virtue, where he learned piety, devotion,
mortification, and a love for the poor. As a child he de
prived himself of food to give to the needy : his recreations
evinced his piety. From the age of reason he placed him
self in the arms of his Crucified Lord, and showed such a
comprehension of religious truths, that at the age of nine he
was allowed to make his first communion: From that mo-
1 Espinosa, " Chronica Apostolica y Seraphica," Mexico, 1746, pp. 410-
413, 440-2.
YEN. ANTHONY MARGIL. 487
ment the Church became a home. He served all the masses
he could, and the hours not spent in school or study, or in
services required by his parents were passed before the altar.
At the age of sixteen, with the approval of his parents, he
sought admission into the strict Franciscan convent, known
O
as the " Crown of Christ." As a novice he wished to do the
humblest and most laborious duties in the house, was obe
dient, mortified, full of prayer, strict in fulfilling all points
of the rule, but always cheerful and affable. When sent to
Denia to study, he pursued the same course, giving his lei
sure to the service of others, his nights ,to prayer. Though
he appeared to give to study only occasional moments, when
he might be seen reading by the sanctuary lamp, he never
showed any want of knowledge of the studies pursued in his
class. While pursuing his theological course his life was the
same, his gentle piety winning him the nickname of the
" Nun " among his fellow-students. When the time for his
ordination approached, he prepared for it with extreme rec
ollection and the deepest reverence. So high was the esti
mate of his learning, piety, and prudence, that at the next
provincial chapter, the young priest was empowered to
preach and hear confessions. On receiving his faculties he
began his missionary career at Onda and Denia, where his
eloquence in the pulpit, and his wisdom in the confessional
produced great fruit.
When Father Anthony Linaz appealed for twenty-four
Fathers for the American mission, Father Anthony Margil
offered Ids services, and with the consent of his superiors,
prepared to embark. His mother felt his going deeply, but
he comforted her, promising to assist her at death. He
joined Father Linaz in Cadiz, and after a long voyage, which
he made a constant mission, he reached Yera Cruz, to find it
a mass of smoking ruins, the city having been fired by
488 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
French pirates. He proceeded on foot, trusting to charity,
and reached the Convent of the Holy Cross in Queretaro, in
August, 1G83. Though young he was at once associated
with older and experienced Fathers in giving missions at
Queretaro and Mexico, edifying all by his zeal and mortifi
cation. Having been selected to labor in Yucatan, he jour
neyed on foot to Yera Cruz, where he embarked, and reach
ing his destination, began with Father Melchior of Jesus, his
mission life among the Indians, till the two apostles sank un
der their labors and mortifications near Chiapa, and received
extreme unction. Kecovering by what seemed a miracle,
they traversed Central America, giving constant missions in
what are now the Kepublics of that part of the Continent,
He converted the Talamancas, Terrabas, and other tribes,
and was preparing to confirm his labors by establishing solid
missions, when he and his associate were summoned back to
the college. The two Franciscans, full of obedience at once
set out, resigning the Indian missions into the hands of the
Bishop of Nicaragua. Their superior, learning the import
ant work on which they were engaged, revoked his order,
and the Bishop of Nicaragua assigned to them the district of
Yera Paz, where they labored among the Choles and Lacan-
dones, though their lives were in constant danger. Such
was the ability of Father Margil in acquiring languages,
in comprehending the pagan ideas and refuting them, in
giving solid instruction, and in guiding neophytes in the
path of Christian life, that bishops placed bodies of mission
aries even of other orders under his direction, though the
humble religious in vain endeavored to avoid such a position.
He crowned his labors by establishing a Missionary College
de Propaganda Fide in the city of Guatemala, of which he
was elected Guardian. His labors and his knowledge seemed
supernatural : in many cases he appeared to be laboring in
YEN. ANTHONY MARGI L OF J ESUS, 0. S.F
FOUNDER OF THE TEXAS MISSIONS.
YEN. ANTHONY M ARGIL.
two places at once, and the secret idoiatrir-'
escaped the knowledge of others he exp—
From Guatemala he was summoned to /Cat H
ize an Apostolic College in that city, and in n ol»
labor lie seemed again to multiply himself* din-'-;
Btitution under his care, preaching, giving missi
and reclaiming neglected hamlets, as well as dir*
many special duties assigned to him by the Cominisjwrj
eral of the Indies, for with all his prodigious activin
minis-try, Father Margil's accuracy in all theological p- i
was as great as though his days were spent in constant sth.j
He next by order of the king established missions in !Nrt\;>
rit, which had long defied all efforts to convert thr tribe. !
had been the labors of this great man who?) lit- went w:t
his little band of Fathers to found n;K-:< u- in Tex,
Though left in a dying state he recover
other missionaries, founded the m ••*•*»»
Guadalupe arn«tn^ th»; N«oilg|MlH||| N|IP •''-VUt>v
cepcion, from which
wretched hut was the convent of the four Za^atecas
but as happy as in a palace, they recited tire onic-e in com
mon, had their hours of meditation, hours for the study <
the Indian language, and time for cultivating the ground for
their own support, and time for working on their church
and convent.2
1 Espinosa, " El Pf-re^rmo Septentrional Atlante," Mexieo, 1737 ; \»
lencia, 1742; " Xuev H ." Mexico, 1747; Viilaplana,
Portentosa del American" Septentrional ApostoL El. V. P. F. Ant. •
gil," Madrid, 1775 ; Velasco, " Tiernn Reeuerdo." Mexico, 172fi ;
"Segunda Nube," Mexico, 1?2«; A s^uado, "Voc-.es que hki- -r.. •
Mexico, 1726 ; Guzman. " Notizie della Vita del Ven. $*t'<
Fr. Antonio Margil de Jesus." Rome, 1836 ; Arricivita, '
tica y Apostolica," Mexico, 1792, ii , ppvl-98.
- Carta del Mui Rev. y Ven. Padre Antonio Mar#ii
de Guadalupe de los Texas. " Documentos," i., p. 337
490 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Soon after the mission of San Jose, seven leagues northeast
of Concepcion, was founded among the JS^assonis.1
In January, 1717, the Venerable Father Anthony Margii ;
suffering from cold and hardship, founded the Mission of
Nuestra Seiiora de los Dolores — Our Lady of Dolors — among
the Ays Indians west of the Sabine ; but the floods of spring
prevented his reaching the Yatasees, where he had projected
another mission. In March, however, he reached the Adayes
Indians on the Arroyo Honda, fifty leagues from Dolores.
Here within the limits of the present State of Louisiana,' and
near the sheet of water still called Spanish Lake, this vener
able servant of God founded the mission of San Miguel de
Linares, stationing as missionary at that most advanced post
of his Christian conquest Father Augustine Patron de Guz
man with a lay brother. Returning to Dolores he was
deprived by death of the services of his humble com
panion, Brother Francis of San Diego. A mission among
the Caddodachos was concerted by him and Father Fran
cis Hidalgo, but the guides on whom they depended failed
them.2
Laboring among his Indians at Adayes, good Father
Margii heard that the French at Natchitoches had never
had a priest there. His charitable zeal impelled him to
journey fifty miles on foot in order to say mass for the
French, preach to them, and hear their confessions so as
to enable them to receive holy communion. So fruitful
were the labors of the Spanish priest at the neglected
post, that the Vicar-General at Mobile wrote to thank him
1 "Representacion," July 22, 1716, in Documentos, i., p. 278.
2 Representacion hecha por el muy Rev. Padre Antonio Margii,
Dolores, Feb. 13, 1718. " Documentos," p. 360. Carta del Padre Hi
dalgo. Ib., Espinosa, " Chronica Apostolica y Serapkica," p. 413.
MISSIONS ON THE SAN ANTONIO. 491
warmly for his Christian charity to the French at Xatchi-
toches.1
The missionaries endured great privations. As the corn
crop in Texas had failed, they lived on herbs and nuts which
they gathered, eked out by an occasional largess of a bit of
meat from their Indians. Supplies had indeed been sent by
the Viceroy of Mexico, and the caravan set out accompanied
by a new band of missionaries ; but when the slow moving
expedition reached Trinity River in December, 1717, they
found it so swollen that they were unable to cross it. TLe
carriers of the supplies made a cache at Rio de las Cargas,
and the missionaries before returning dispatched letters by
Indian hunters to inform the Fathers among the Asinais of
what had befallen them, with information as to the place of
the cache. It was not, however, till the following July that
tidings of the proximity of the needed provisions reached the
famishing missionaries.8
Soon after the Viceroy of New Spain ordered the forma
tion of two Spanish settlements in Texas. One of these was
to be on the Rio San Antonio : but as usually happened,
there were interminable delays. The missionaries at last
took the initiative. Father Anthony de San Buenaventura
y Olivares transferred his Xarame Indian Mission of San
Francisco Solano from the banks of the Rio Grande to the
San Antonio on the 1st of May, 1718, by order of the Marquis
of Yalero, then Viceroy. He at once attracted the Payayas,
who spoke the same language as the Xarames. Here this mis
sionary remained for a year laboring to gain the neighboring
Indians, and preparing the foundation of the future town.
Unfortunately, while one day crossing a rude bridge, his horse
1 Arricivita, " Cronica Serafica y Apostolica," p. 98; La Harpe, p.
139. The Vicar-General must have been the Abbe de la Vente.
2Morfi, "Memorias," p. 108.
492 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
broke through and threw the missionary, causing a fracture
of his leg. Father Peter Murioz hearing of his mishap, has
tened from the Rio Grande to support his place and give him
the necessary attention. When Father Olivares recovered he
transferred his mission from its original site to one on the op
posite side of the river which it maintained for years.1
The multiplicity of small tribes in Texas almost surpasses
belief, and to this day ethnologists have made no attempt to
classify them. At the San Antonio mission alone there were
Indians of nearly thirty tribes. One of these tribes, the Hy-
erbipiamos, was so numerous that the mission of San Fran
cisco Xavier was undertaken for them about 1720.
Though no formal settlement was begun, Spaniards began
to gather around the presidios. Nacogdoches, even at this
early day began its existence. Father Margil had been elected
Guardian of the College of Zacatecas in 1716, but when he
was notified of the appointment two years afterwards, he re
nounced the office,2 and spent four years in his Indian work.
To this day the people of Nacogdoches of Spanish origin
point to a spring of pure water which their ancestors named the
" Fountain of Father Margil," asserting that it was due to the
prayers of that holy man in a season when all springs had
failed.3
1 Espinosa, " Chronica Apostolica y Seraphica," pp. 449-450, 466. The
mission of San Francisco Solano was founded in 1703 ; was transferred
to San Ildephonso, then back to the Rio Grande at San Joseph, then to
the San Antonio, taking that name, with the addition de Valero. The
Register still preserved, begins Oct. 6, 1703, with a baptism by Father
Estevez ; the first baptism at San Antonio being by Father Michael
Nunez. On the 4th of Feb., 1720, there is a baptismal entry signed by
the Ven. F. Anthony Margil.
5Arricivita, p. 99.
3 Letters of Bishop of San Antonio, formerly parish priest of Nacog-
doches, and of the present rector.
MISSION AT AD AYES BROKEN UP. 493
When a Governor was appointed for Texas, be did not ad
vance beyond San Antonio, so tbat tbe way was not opened to
tbe remote missions. Tbe six Fathers seeing this, assembled
and deputed Fathers Espinosa and Sanz to lay the whole
matter before the Viceroy. They set out, but Espinosa meet
ing at San Antonio Don Martin de Alarcon on his way to
Espiritu Santo Bay, let Father Sanz proceed, and returned
to his mission with Alarcon ; but that officer's visit gave lit
tle relief to the missionaries. Then again in 1T18 Father
Mathias was sent to Mexico to urge the necessity of active
steps by the government, as the Indians were constantly ob
taining arms from the French, who would soon be masters of
the whole territory. Nothing was done, and war having been
declared between France and Spain, the mission at Adayes
was invaded by St. Denis from Natchitoches, who captured a
soldier and a lay brother there, the Venerable Father Anthony
Margil being absent at the time. The French officer plundered
the mission, carrying off even the vestments and altar service.
The lay brother managed to escape, and, reaching Father
Margil, announced that the French intended to break up all
the other missions. Father Margil accordingly with his re
ligious retired from the stations they conducted, carrying all
they could and burying what was too heavy to transport. The
missionaries 'of the College of Queretaro, 011 learning from
Father Mara^l the dangerous condition of the frontier, adopted
the same course. A statement of their reasons for abandon
ing their stations was drawn up and transmitted to the Vice
roy.
The Indians were very reluctant to allow the Franciscans
to depart from the mission of San Francisco, and to meet
their wishes Fathers Margil and Espinosa returned to the
mission of the Conception, allowing the rest of the party to
proceed. After a time they followed, and with Fathers Jo-
494 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
seph Rodriguez, Joseph Albadesa, and Joseph Pita took up
their abode in temporary huts near San Antonio.
It was not till March, 1721, that in consequence of further
representations to the Court, the Marquis San Miguel de
Adayo arrived to settle the country and restore the missions.
Fathers Margil and Espinosa set out with him to renew their
apostolic work. The mission of San Francisco was re-estab
lished on the 5th of August, with great solemnity, and Fa
ther Joseph Guerra was placed in charge. Three days after,
that of La Purisima Conception was restored.
The Yen. Father Margil proceeded in person to rebuild
the church of Guadalupe which had been destroyed. He
erected the new shrine of Our Lady in a beautiful plain
surrounded by tree-clad mountains, near the point where the
.Bailita flows into the Nana. Placing Father Joseph Rodri
guez here as missionary, and Father Benedict Sanchez at
San Jose de los Nazonis, he went on the 19th to rebuild the
mission of Nuestra Senora de los Dolores. As no vestige of
the former structure remained, he erected a new chapel on
an eminence by the bank of a stream, and after dedicating it
confided the mission to Father Joseph Abadejo.
On the 26th the expedition crossed the Sabine, and cut
ting their way with axes through the woods reached San
Miguel de los Adayes. The Indians who had retired to a
dense forest to escape the French and their Indian allies
were recalled, and a fort or presidio was laid out. About
a mile from it the mission of San Miguel de Cuellar was
restored. The church in the fort at Adayes was dedicated
to Our Lady del Pilar, the patroness of the expedition, on
September 12th by the Rev. Dr. Joseph Cadallos, the chap
lain, who offered the holy sacrifice, the Yen. Father Anthony
Margil preaching. To enable the Indians to revive the mis
sion, they were supplied with provisions till they could gather
DEATH OF FRIAR JOSEPH PITA. 495
in the next year's crop, and many cattle and sheep were left
with them.
This was not done at the other missions, and no effectual
means were adopted to keep open communication between
the old Spanish settlements and the missions, so as to ensure
them supplies from time to time, or necessary aid in case of
invasion.
The missionaries, however, began their labors hopefully,
many soon to sink under the hardships of their life, victims
to the climate or to the savage Indians of the plains, espe
cially the Apaches, who made constant raids. Brother Joseph
Pita thinking that the presence of troops in the country had
made travel safe, in the ardor of his zeal overlooked the dan
ger, and undertook without an escort to reach the missions
for which he had volunteered. At a place which has since
borne the name of Carniceria, about sixty miles from San
Xavier River, and on a site where a mission was subsequently
erected, he fell into an ambuscade of Lipan Apaches. He
might have escaped, but to deliver a soldier, he begged the
Indians to turn on him, as they did, killing him and all his
companions. He was the first Spanish religious who died
by the hands of Indians in that province.1
As the Indians of Texas lived in scattered ranches or ham
lets, often changing their place of abode, their agriculture,
being without irrigation, was precarious. The great object of
the missionaries was to form reductions where large bodies
of Indians could be drawn together, and formed to persistent
1 Morfi, " Memorias para la Historia de la provincia de Texas," iii.,
pp. 132-7. Espinosa, " Chronica Apostolica y Serapliica," pp 414-
478. Among the earliest to die were Brother Dominic de Urioste, the
lay brother Francis de San Diego, and in 1718, Fathers Peter de Men-
doza, Manuel Castellanos, John Suarez, Lorenzo Garcia Botello, Father
Joseph Gonzales, of San Antonio, and Brother Louis de Montesdoca,
who perished in a prairie fire.
496 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
agriculture and mechanical arts as well as be educated in
Christian doctrine, morals, and life. This required a cer
tain degree of restraint, for which a military force was essen
tial in order to keep them on the reservation, a system now
maintained by our government.
The Spanish authorities in Mexico gave each mission a few
soldiers, to protect the Fathers from sudden raids of hostile
Indians, but would not establish the reduction or reservation
system. To this the missionaries ascribed the comparatively
slow progress of Christianity among the Indians. The mis
sionaries of the College of Holy Cross at Queretaro finding
their efforts not only not sustained but actually hampered by
the military authorities, at last asked that three missions
which they had for fourteen years maintained among the
Asinais or Texas Indians should be transferred to the neigh
borhood of the San Antonio River, where there were num
bers of unconverted Indians who could easily be reached,
especially the Pacaos, Paalat, and Pitalaque. The Viceroy,
Marquis of Casa Fuerte, approved the plan, and sites of the
three missions were selected by Father Gabriel de Yergara
on the banks of the San Antonio.1
When the College of Our Lady of Guadalupe at Quei^taro
removed its missions to the San Antonio, those which had
been founded by the Venerable Father Anthony Margil
were maintained. These were the mission of Our Lady of
Guadalupe near the present city of Nacogdoches, the mis
sion among the Ays, not far from the present town of San
Augustin, and the mission of San Miguel de los Adayes.
Xear this was the Spanish frontier presidio or military post,
which the missionaries attended as chaplains,2 as they did
also Xacogdoches when it was made a parish.
1 Espinosa, " Chronica Apostolica y Seraphica," pp. 458-9.
"2 Ibid., pp. 459-460.
NEW MISSIONS. 497
The venerable founder was not content with these mis
sions ; he selected Father Michael Nunez to found another
in honor of St. Joseph, and that priest proceeding to
the San Antonio selected a populous rancheria, and estab
lished the mission of San Jose with great care and judgment.
He erected a church and house, and began to instruct the
Indians, inducing them to dig acequias or trenches to irri
gate their fields. The site was subsequently transferred to
the other side of the river, but the mission prospered so that
it became the finest one belonging to the Zacatecas College.
When the Marquis of Valero in 1722 established a post at
Bahia del Espiritu Santo, on the site of La Salle's fort, this
same missionary college, by direction of the Venerable Father
Margil, who had become Prefect of the missions de Propa
ganda Fide, sent Father Augustine Patron to rear a chapel
and convent there for the service of the Spaniards and In
dians. This mission of Guadalupe remained there till 1727,
when it was transferred to the Rio Guadalupe,1 but not be
fore two Fathers, Diego Zapata and Ignatius Bahena, had
died in their apostolical labors victims to the malarious dis
trict.
1 Espinosa, " Chronica Apostolica y Seraphica," p. 467; Arricivita,
" Cronica Serafica y Apostolica," ii., p. 102; Morfi, "Memorias." The
Venerable Father Margil re-elected Guardian of the College of Guadalupe
at Zacatecas completed his term, and then resumed his missions in the
Spanish cities and towns of Mexico. There he continued till he was
stricken down by illness. He was conveyed to Mexico, and reaching
the great Convent, insisted on entering the church to adore our Lord in
the Sacrament of his Love. Then he entered his cell, and making a
general confession of his innocent life with great compunction, he re
ceived Holy Communion and Extreme Unction, and expired, August
6, 1726. The fame of his virtues and miracles led the City of Mexico
to petition for his canonization. The cause was introduced, and in 1778
his remains were enshrined by the Archbishop of Mexico (Arricivita, ii.,
p. 157). His virtues were declared heroic by Pope Gregory XVI., in
1836 ; and on proof of two miracles he may be solemnly beatified.
32
498 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Balria became second only to San Antonio in importance,
having a secular parish priest ; Nacogdoches, though a parish,
remaining under the care of the Franciscan Fathers.1
While the Franciscans were endeavoring to convert the
Indian tribes of Texas, thwarted too often by the Spanish
officials, who were a greater obstacle than the heathenism and
inconstancy of the Indians or the raids of enemies like the
Apaches, little was done to colonize the territory, important
as it was to the Spanish frontier. On the 14th of February,
1729, the King of Spain ordered four hundred families to be
transferred from the Canary Islands to San Antonio. Four
teen families arrived the next year, and the city of San Fer
nando was founded.3 Near it was the presidio or garrison of
San Antonio, which in time gave its name to the city also.
Its ecclesiastical records date almost to its origin, though un
fortunately some pages are lacking in the venerable parish
register. A chapel was at once raised as a place of worship
till a proper parish church could be built. The records of
the church now date back to August 31, 1731, when Bach-
FAC-SIMILE OF THE SIGNATURE OF REV. JOSEPH DE LA GARZA.
elor Joseph de la Garza was parish priest, and by his leave
Father Ignatius Augustine Cyprian baptized a child of Span
ish parentage.
The next year the church itself must have been opened, for
for the first time a baptism is recorded as performed within its
walls on the 17th of July, 1732.
1 Arispe, " Memoria," Cadiz, 1812, pp. 12-3.
sAltamiro, " Parecer " in Yoakum, app. Morfi, " Memoria," p. 178.
PARISH CHURCH OF SAN FERNANDO. 499
But the life of the city of San Fernando was feeble. The
population fell away instead of gaining. There were twenty-
two baptisms in 1733 ; fifteen the next year ; then twelve ;
and for 1736 only eleven are recorded. Evidently some of
the original settlers moved away, harassed, it is said, by the
Apaches, and none came to replace them. The last entry
of the first known parish priest of the first city of Texas is
dated June 7, 1736 ; and then there is a gap of more than
seven years. The few Spaniards who remained were proba
bly attended from the neighboring missions.
The new town was strengthened in 1731 by the removal
to its vicinity by order of the Viceroy of the Asinais mis
sions of San Francisco, Purisima Concepcion, and San Jose,
the last often called San Juan Capistrano. Yet so little care
had been taken for the subsistence of the Indians that the
missionaries maintained the transferred Indians only by pro
visions they solicited in Coalmila.
The mission of San Antonio was founded on the San Pe
dro, but was subsequently transferred to the Alamo, and its
name has prevailed over that of the city subsequently founded.
Under the violent and oppressive rule of Governor Fran-
qui the missions suffered. Yet in 1734 the three missions
on the Rio Grande and four on the San Antonio reported
2,170 baptisms. They took new life again about 1740, when
many of the Tacanes were gained to the missions at San An
tonio.1
In 1744 another effort was made to revive the city of the
holy king Saint Ferdinand. By this time fifty families of
Islanders, as the emigrants from the Canaries were called,
1 Espinosa, " Chronica Apostolica," p. 466. The king allowed the par
ish priest $400 a year ; the tithes were applied to the church.
The mission of La Purisima Concepcion was founded March 5, 1731.
Father Vergara's first marriage entry is July 9, 1733.
500 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
and some Tlascalan Indians had arrived, and we find Bachelor
John Francis de Esproiizeda beginning the year as parish
priest (cura vicario) and ecclesiastical judge of the city of San
Fernando and the garrison of San Antonio. His baptisms in
that year were twenty-two.
On the 3d of December, 1746, Bachelor Francis Manuel
Polanco makes an entry that he began on that day " to ad
minister the holy sacraments in this Royal Garrison," and
with occasional aid from neighboring Franciscan friars, Bar
tholomew and Diego Martin Garcia, he continued till August
5, 1753. Then Rev. Ignatius Martinez seems to have come
in as acting parish priest.
On the 13th of November, 1754, Bachelor John Ignatius
de Cardenas, Pinilla y Ramos, became parish priest " in com-
mendam," and replaced for a time by the Licentiate Manuel
de Caro y Seixas, continued till the visitation of Bishop Te-
jada.
An Edict of Rt. Rev. John Gomez de Parada, Bishop of
Guadalajara, issued on the 24th of March, 1746, fixed the
holidays of obligation as follows : All the Sundays of the
year, Easter Sunday and Monday, "Whitsunday, Ascension,
Corpus Christi ; Circumcision, Epiphany, Purification, An
nunciation, Nativity of St. John the Baptist, St. Peter and
St. Paul, St. James, Assumption, Nativity of the Blessed
Virgin, All Saints, Conception, Christmas, and St. Stephen.1
.Meanwhile Father Maria Ano Francis de los Dolores had
penetrated to a valley between the San Xavier and Animas,
where he found a large town made up of Bidays and other
tribes, to whom he announced the Gospel. They heard it
willingly, and sent subsequently to San Antonio to solicit
missionaries. The authorities spent a year in discussing the
1 Register of the Church of St. Fernando, San Antonio.
DEATH OF FATHER GANZABAL.
501
question of the new foundation ; but meanwhile Father
Maria Ano began his labors. At last, on the 1st of February,
174:7, the Viceroy Revillagigedo ordered the establishment of
the missions of San Francisco Xavier de Orcasitas, ISuestra
Sefiora de Candelaria, and San Ildefonso. "When the legal
authorization came, the President of the Mission, Father Ben
edict Fernandez de Santa Ana, went up and founded the
mission of San Ildefonso, and laid plans for that of Cande
laria, which was soon begun. These missions prospered for a
FAC-SIMILE OP THE SIGNATURE OF FATHER GANZABAL.
time and gave great hopes ; but the arbitrary and cruel con
duct of the officer stationed at the neighboring presidio or
military post drove the Indians from the missions. That of
San Ildefonso was completely deserted by the Cocos in 1749.
Father Benedict Fernandez de Santa Ana followed the tribe
and induced them to settle at Candelaria. Father Mariano
An da and Joseph Pinella continued their labors at San Xavier
amid constant oppression, but they with Father Manuel
Mariano were at last compelled to leave, Father Parrilla re
maining alone at that mission. In 1752 Father Joseph
502 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Francis Ganzabal, missionary of San Ildefonso, went on As
cension Day, May 11, to pass the festival with his fellow re
ligious at Candelaria. At nightfall three Fathers were in
the little room at the mission and a Spaniard standing at the
door, when some Cocos fired and killed the Spaniard, who
fell at the feet of one of the Fathers. The missionary has
tened to aid him, but when Father Ganzabal called out to
learn who they were, he received an arrow through his heart.
The third religious being unseen, escaped.
From that time the missions in the valley of the San Xav-
ier declined, the Indians scattered, and finally the government
ordered the military post and the missions to be transferred
to San Saba.1
The Franciscans, besides gaining some of the coast Indians
among whom the Eosario mission was established, had made
strenuous efforts to gain Apaches. Among the earnest la
borers in this field was Father Cajetan Aponte y Lis.2 At
last some prospect of the conversion of the tribe appeared.
The Viceroy agreed to maintain a mission at San Saba for
three years. It was to be established by Father Alonso Gi-
raldo de Terreros of the College of Queretaro with missiona
ries from that college and that of San Fernando of Mexico.
In December, 1756, Father Terreros with Fathers Joseph
Santiesteban and Michael Molina were joined by Fathers
Joachim Baiios and Diego Ximenez from Queretaro and
reached San Antonio.
The mission of San Saba was founded in March, and on
the 17th of April, 1757, that of San Luis de Amarillas was
established ; but the Apaches would not settle at the mission,
1 Arricivita, " Cronica Serafica," ii., p. 334; Morfi, "Memorias."
* Arricivita, "Cronica Serafica," p. 368 ; Morfi, "Memorias." Fa
ther Cajetan Aponte y Lis, a native of Pontevedra, came to America in
1730, was ten years in the Texan mission, and died May 25, 1791.
DEATH OF FATHER TERREROS.
md in July Father Terreros wrote very despondingly, Fa
ther Benedict Yarela, sent to the Apaches, having failed in
his mission, and subsequent negotiations proving ineffectual.
The friendly intercourse with the Apaches seems to have
aroused hostile feelings in the Texan tribes, who regarded
them as their natural enemies. Father Silva was killed near
the Rio Grande by a party of Indians who were recognized
as belonging to tribes under the care of missionaries.1
On the 16th of March, 1758, Father Alonso Terreros had of
fered the holy sacrifice at daybreak, and Father Santiesteban
had just put on his vestments, when their ears were saluted by
the yells of a large Indian force, with occasional gunshots.
FAC-SIMILE OF THE SIGNATURE OF FATHER TERREROS.
When the Indians reached the mission many were recognized
as Texas and Bidais. They professed friendship, and asked
1 In 1759 there was received in Texas and promulgated through the
parishes and missions the edict of Rt. Rev. Friar Francis De San Buena
ventura Martinez de Tejada Diez de Velasco, Bishop of Guadalajara,
the new Kingdom of Galicia, and Leon, the Provinces of Nayarit, Cali
fornia, Coahuila, and Texas, making a holiday of obligation of De
cember 12th, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Pope Benedict XIV.
at the petition of the Archbishop of Mexico and Bishop of Michoacan
had made the Blessed Virgin under that title Patroness of all the prov
inces of Mexico. Register of Church of San Fernando, San Antonio,
Dec. 12, 1759.
504 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
a letter to the commandant of the garrison a few miles off.
This Father Terreros gave, but they insisted on his accom
panying them. He mounted a horse, but had ridden only a
few feet from the gate when he was shot, and with a groan
fell dead from his horse. Then the Indians made a general
attack, killing the soldiers stationed at the mission. The
other Fathers at once sought refuge. Father Santiesteban
fled to the store-room, but that was the first place the assail
ants visited. He perished, undoubtedly, under the blows of
their weapons, as they carried off his habit, and his dying
cries were heard. Father Michael Molina with the mission
attendants took refuge in the room which Father Terreros
had occupied, and here the Spaniards held out, escaping with
their lives, although Father Molina and some others were se
verely wounded. At night with the room on fire they escaped
through the blazing church, and each for himself made their
way to the presidio.1
This was a great blow to the projected Apache mission,
but it did not defeat it. The Commissary-General, lest the
Indians at San Saba should disperse, sent Father Francis
Aparicio and Father Peter Parras, with Fathers Juniper Ser-
ra and Francis Palou to continue the work. But as the tribe
objected to San Saba, a new site was selected in the valley of
San Jose, and there on the 9th of January, 1761, Father Jo
achim Bafios and Diego Ximenes founded the mission of
San Lorenzo, and soon after that of Candelaria ; but they
were planned and arranged by the civil authorities with little
regard to the views or system of the missionaries. The mis-
'Arricivita, " Cronica Serafica," ii., pp. 375-8 ; Morfi, "Memorias."
Father Morfi says that F. Santiesteban's headless body was found by F.
Molina in the church, and that the bodies of the two missionaries were
interred together in the cemetery. Father Arricivita writing a few years
later says the body of Santiesteban was never found, so that some thought
he was carried off alive.
VISITATION BY BISHOP TEJADA. 505
sions were maintained, however, for eight years till the in
vasion of the Cornaiiches broke them up.1
In these Texan missions the Franciscans and the Spanish
authorities had always entertained different views. The
Franciscans wished the Indians placed on reservations, and
kept by military force from wandering oil. The officials
wished the missionaries to instruct the Indians when and
where they could. The latter plan kept the missionaries
completely in the hands of the officials for their maintenance
and the supplies needed by the mission, and from official
corruption missionaries often suffered greatly.
All these missions enjoyed in 1759 the presence of a
Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Francis de San Buenaventura Tejada
FAC-SIMILE OF THE SIGNATUKE OF BISHOP TEJADA.
of Guadalajara in his visitation of his diocese, having trav
ersed the whole of Texas. The report of his official examin
ation would give a most authentic picture of the state of
religion at that time, but unfortunately it is not accessible.
On the 19th of November, 1759, Bishop Francis de San
Buenaventura Tejada made his visitation of the Church of San
Fernando in the city now known as San Antonio. He wras
1 " Informe of F. Ximenez," Arricivita, p. 386. " Relacion que hizo
el R. P. Predicador Fr. Manuel Molina sobre las muertes de los PP. Fray
Alonso Giraldo de Terreros y Fr. Jose de Santiesteban en San Saba.
Mexico, Abril de 1758."
506 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
duly received according to the prescribed forms by the parish
priest, Bachelor Cardenas. All was done in due form. His
secretary, Dr. Mathias Joseph de Arteaga, while he sat in
the sanctuary, read the edict for the general visitation of the
diocese, and against public sins. Then the good bishop, in a
sermon explained the object of the visitation, and the nature
and graces of the sacrament of confirmation, and the neces
sity of proper preparation for it.
The visitation of the church showed a condition of oreat
O
neglect. There was no tabernacle for the preservation of the
Blessed Sacrament ; the baptistery lacked door and window,
as well a proper vessel for pouring the holy water, and he
ordered one to be obtained of silver ; it also lacked an ambrv
with lock and key for the holy oils. He directed also that
a painting of Saint John Baptizing our Lord in the Jordan
to be placed there. Then the Bishop in a black cope made a
commemoration of the faithful departed.
The church had but one altar, with a picture of Saint
Ferdinand, but no other adornment. The sacristy showed
a lack of vestments, of proper church plate, procession
cross, candlesticks, missal, censer and boat, in fact of every
thing. There was not even a ritual or a repository for Holy
Thursday.
This destitution in a church with five hundred and eighty-
two -parishioners pained the good Bishop deeply.
The faculties of the incumbent were regular, but the Bishop
continued them merely till the next conference of the clergy,
when he was to appear personally, evidently regarding him
as one ignorant or careless of his duties. The Kev. Mr. Car
denas thereupon resigned the parish, and the Bishop ap
pointed Bachelor Casimir Lopez de Lara, who produced
his faculties, including power to preach in Spanish and
Mexican.
STATE OF THE CHURCH. 507
Don Toribio de Urrutia then solicited and obtained the
privilege of erecting an altar of the Immaculate Conception
in one of the transepts with the privilege of making it a bur
ial-place for his family on payment of four dollars at each in
terment, and making an offering of wax, bread, and wine on
Ail Souls' Day.
The Bishop also forbade the people of the city to receive
the sacraments at the churches of the Indian missions, gave
orders for the maintenance of a proper school and school
master, and of catechetical instructions to the young on Sun -
days and holidays by the parish priest.
Such was the visitation of a Catholic Bishop in Texas in
1759. He then examined the candidates for confirmation,
and conferred that sacrament on 644, devoting the 19th of
November and the ensuing days to the 25th to this duty.
The long list of names preserved includes several Indians,
some of them Apaches.1
The Bishop made the visitation of the missions of San An
tonio de Yalero and La Purisima Concepcion on the 21st of
November, and entered on the Register of each his approval
of the management by the Franciscan Fathers in charge,
Joseph Lopez and Francis Aparicio.3
The Spanish population of Texas at this time consisted of
about 3,000 souls, at San Antonio, the presidios and ranches.
Besides the parish at San Antonio with its priest, there were
secular priests also at Sacramento and Nacogdoches, and gen
erally a chaplain for the troops. There was also a priest at
1 " Auto General de Visita," signed by Bp. Tejada in the Register. On
March 13, 1763, the Rev. Mr. Casimir Lopez de Lara transferred the
Registers, etc., to Bach. Joseph Ildephonsus de la Pena.
2 The Indian missions were visited not only by the Bishop, 'but by Vis
itors of the Franciscan order. There were such in Texas in June, 1745,
June, 1756, April, 1759. Registers of the missions of San Antonio Va
lero and La Purisima Concepcion.
508 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Bahia. Adayes was a place of some importance with forty
houses, and a church attended by the Franciscan Father at
tached to the Indian mission. It was maintained as a frontier
post and town, but declined after Spain acquired Louisiana,
and was suppressed in 1772.1
In January, 1761, Fathers Diego Ximenez and Joachim
Baiios renewed the almost hopeless attempt to convert the
Apaches. On the banks of the Rio San Jose they founded
the mission of San Lorenzo, which they maintained for
eight years, baptizing in danger of death eighty persons as
the result of all their toil. It was found almost impossible
to induce these Lipan Apaches to remain at the mission,
and settle down to cultivate the soil or learn trades. The
missionaries indeed gained their good-will, so that San Lo
renzo was regarded as their reserve by about three thousand,
four hundred re-
maining actually at
the mission with
, .
some degree of
FAG-SIMILE OF THE SIGNATUBE OF FATHEK permanence. But
DIEGO XIMENEZ.
from time to time
they would insist on going to the bison plains, or forming war
parties against the Comanches. In 1763 Father Diego
Ximenez, President of the Texas missions, writing from San
Lorenzo, reported that they were beginning to listen to the
instructions, brought their children to be baptized, notified
1 Morfl, "Memoria para la Historia de Texas" : Onys,,"Memoria so-
brelas Negociaciones," Mexico, 1826, p. 52. The presidio of Orquisaco
near Dolores was also suppressed. As some guide to the work of the
Texas missions, the numbers of baptisms to 1761 are given. San An
tonio, 1,772; Purisima Concepcion, 792; San Jose, 1,054 ; San Juan Capi-
strano, 847 ; San Francisco de la Espada, 815 ; Rosario, 200 ; Espiritu
Santo, 623.
FATHER GARCIA AND HIS WORK. 509
the missionary when any adults were sick, and on setting
off to hunt, brought their wives and children to the mis
sionaries for
protection.1
Father Bar-
tholomew Gar-
cia and Joseph
Guadalupe
Prado were FAC.SIMILE OP THE SIGNATURE OP FATHER GARCIA.
veteran mis
sionaries in Texas about this time. The former published
a manual to aid his fellow-missionaries of the college of
Queretaro in administering the sacraments to the Indians on
the San Antonio and Rio Grande. It gives some idea of the
number of tribes which even then were attended by the
missionaries.8
The mission of San Jose was the centre of the Texas mis
sions and residence of the President or Superior, and in time
a fine church was erected here, and nearly as elegant struc
tures at San Francisco de la Espada and La Purisima Con-
cepcion.
Soon after the year 1T63 the college of Queretaro with
drew from Texas, leaving that field to the colleges of Zaca-
tecas and Guadalajara.3
1 Letter of F. Ximenez, San Lorenzo, January 24, 1763, in Arricivita,
" Cronica Serafica y Apostolica," pp. 386-9 ; also 390-3. The mission
and presidio were suppressed in 1767.
2 He names the Pajalates, Orejones, Pacaos, Pacoas, Telijayas, Alasa-
pas, Pausanes, Pacuaches, Pampopas, Tacarnes, Chayopines, Venados,
Pamaques, Pihuiques, Borrados, Sanipoas, and Manos de Perro. Gar
cia, "Manual para administrar los Santos Sacramentos," etc., 1760.
There is a copy in Harvard College. See Pilling, p. 281.
3 Arricivita, p. 437.
CHAPTER III.
THE CHTJKCH IN NEW MEXICO, 1692-1763.
FOE a period in the latter part of the seventeenth century
all evidence of Catholicity had been swept from the soil of
New Mexico, and the expeditions undertaken by Spain to
recover that province, had been merely incursions. To such
an extent, however, had the revolted tribes by civil war, and
the hostility of the Apaches, been reduced in numbers and
spirit that every one of the pueblo nations submitted at last
without striking a blow to Yargas and a handful of Spaniards.
Diego de Vargas Zapata Luxan Ponce de Leon was ap
pointed Governor of New Mexico in 1692, and prepared
to take possession of the province. The whole force he had
been able to gather amounted to fifty-four Spaniards and one
hundred friendly Indians. On the 16th of August the van
left El Paso, and Vargas after awaiting in vain for a de
tachment of fifty men promised from Parral joined his van
and entered New Mexico, his little force being attended as
chaplains by Father Francis Corvera, President of the Mis
sion, Fathers Michael Muniz and Christopher Alphonsus
Barroso. Establishing a camp for his supplies, at a ruined
estate, where he left fourteen Spaniards and fifty Indians,
he pushed on through an utterly deserted country by way of
the ruined towns of Cochiti and Santo Domingo to Santa
Fe. Camping at night by a ruined chapel, the little force
the next morning (Sept. 13th) heard mass, and received abso
lution before moving upon the city. There the Tanos of
(510)
NEW MEXICO MISSIONS RESTORED. 511
Galisteo had planted a new town. Yargas cut off the water
supply, and prepared to besiege Santa Fe. Troops of In
dians appeared on the hills to relieve the town, but Vargas
drove these off, and before night the city surrendered.
On the 14th, the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross,
Vargas with Father Corvera and six soldiers entered. The
O
Indians, who had been told that the main object of the expe
dition was to restore them to the Catholic faith, had already
erected a large cross in the plaza. There Vargas announced
that King Charles II. had sent him to pardon the New
Mexico Indians for their apostasy, the sacrilegious murder
of the missionaries, the profanation of the churches and sa
cred things, and the massacre of the Spaniards, if they would
return to the bosom of holy Mother Church, which like a
fond mother implored them to return, and then renew their
allegiance to the Spanish crown.
To this the Tanos agreed, the standard of Spain was flung
to the breeze, amid the vivas of the assembly, and while all
knelt around the cross Father Corvera intoned the Te
Deum. The next day mass was solemnly offered in the
plaza, the President of the mission made the Indians a touch
ing exhortation, and absolved them from their apostasy.
Then the children born during the revolt were brought to
the missionaries and baptized, to the number of 969. Soon
after this the detachment from Parral arrived, and Luis
Tupatu, who upon the death of Pope and Catiti had been
recognized as chief by one portion of the insurgents, came in
and submitted. He was ready to aid in reducing to the
Spanish authority the Pecos, Queres, Taos, and Jemes, who
had refused to acknowledge him. Before setting out to the
other towns Vargas forwarded to Mexico an account of his
success. The tidings, utterly unexpected, filled that capital
with the utmost joy. The Count of Galve, Viceroy of New
512 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Spain, proceeded with all the high officials to the Cathedral
to return thanks to God and to the Blessed Virgin for this
peaceful recovery of the province,
Meanwhile Yargas with Fathers Corvera and Barroso ad
vanced to Pecos, where some reluctance was shown by that
tribe, but they finally submitted. They were then absolved,
and 248 children baptized. In the tribes which acknowl
edged Tupatu the reception of Yargas was more cordial.
Near the Canada of Cochiti were the people of San Marco,
Cochiti, and San Felipe gathered in one town; here 103
children were baptized ; the remnant of the people of the
pueblos of Cia and Santa Ana also lived together in one
town; there and at Santo Domingo, the people after being
received again into the Church brought 123 children to be
baptized.
On a high mesa a band of Queres, Jemes, and Apaches
at first defied the Spaniards, but they too finally yielded,
were absolved, and brought to the sacred font 117 children.
In this tour through the province, completed by the close
of October, Yargas without firing a shot had restored the
Spanish authority and Christianity. Forty-three Spaniards,
chiefly ^omen and their children born in captivity, were res
cued, with some half-breeds.
Early in November he reached Acoma, a town never
friendly to the Spaniards. In spite of a defiant attitude, it
soon yielded, when the Governor with two Friars and only
fifteen men fearlessly clambered to the pueblo. The new
Zuni pueblo on the Galisteo cliff was next gained, the peo
ple absolved and 29± children christened as 87 had been at
Acoma. At Zuni the first and only sign of respect for re
ligion was found. Here Yargas was taken to a room with
a very dimimitive door. "Within on a table two tallow can
dles were burning on a kind of altar covered with pieces of
THE NEW MISSIONARIES. 513
vestments. Beneath them were two crucifixes, an oil paint
ing of the Crucifixion, and one of Saint John the Baptist, a
monstrance with its luna, four silver chalices, and three
patens, a missal and other books with two bells. Some of
the Zunis who had clung to the faith amid the general apos
tasy had secured these hallowed objects, and kept them with
all due honor in absolute secrecy, waiting till religion reas
serted her authority. With deep emotion the missionaries
received these relics of their martyred brethren. Yargas
then proceeded to the Moqui towns, which all submitted ex
cept Oraybi, a town he was induced no,t to visit on account
of its pretended distance. The baptisms were 273.
Before the close of December, Yargas re-entered El Paso,
having restored the Spanish influence in the province, by a
singular display of prudence, judgment, and courage.1
With all this apparent success the Governor of New
Mexico felt that the moral influence acquired would soon be
lost unless the province was actually reoccupied. The Yice-
roy professed great earnestness in the matter, but the year
1693 was rapidly passing, and no effectual steps were taken.
Yargas then collected all the old inhabitants of Xew Mexico,
and other settlers whom he could influence, and set out from
El Paso on the 13th of October, with seventy families, and
many single persons, in all 800 souls. They were accom
panied by Father Salvador of San Antonio as Gustos, who
went to restore the missions with Fathers John de Zavaleta,
Francis Casanas de Jesus Maria, John de Alpuente, John
Mufioz de Castro, John Daza, Joseph Diez, Anthony Car-
1 Letters of Vargas to the Viceroy, Oct. 16, 1692. Narrative of Ex
pedition, " Documentos para la Historia de Mexico," III., i., pp. 129-137 ;
Sigueuza y Gongora, "Mercuric Volante con las Noticias de la Recu-
peracion de las provincias del Nuevo Mexico," 1693-4. Letter of F. Sil-
vestre Velez de Escalante to F. Morfi, Santa Fe, Apl. 2, 1778.
33
514 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
bone!, Francis Corvera, Jerome Prieto, John Anthony del
Corral, Anthony Vahomonde, Anthony de Obregon, Dom
inic of Jesus Mary, Bonaventure de Contreras, Joseph Nar-
vaez JBalverde, and Diego Zeinos. Escorted by soldiers from
El Paso and other posts, Yargas advanced to the vicinity of
Socorro, where leaving his heavier baggage and slower-mov
ing settlers he pushed on. The Queres at San Felipe, Santa
Ana, and Cia, renewed their submission to him, but other
tribes at once began to plot against the Spaniards, though
they professed submission and a desire for missionaries. On
the 10th of December, Yargas entered Santa Fe, and bear
ing the banner which Ofiate bore when he made the first
conquest, he followed the religious, who in procession moved
to the cross chanting psalms. There the Te Deum and the
Litany of Loreto were sung with the thrice repeated '' Praised
forever be the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar." Yargas
then officially reinstated the Gustos in possession of the mis
sions of New Mexico.
As the city and government buildings were still occupied
by the Tanos, Yargas encamped on the side of Mount Te-
zuque. He had been warned of a conspiracy of tribes to
attack him on the way, or in Santa Fe. His movements
hitherto had disconcerted their plans. The parish church in
Santa Fe had disappeared, the walls of that of San Miguel de
los Tlascaltecas were still standing, and the church was capa
ble of restoration. After examining it with Anthony Bolsas,
chief of the Tanos in Santa Fe, Yargas ordered the Indians
to proceed to repair and restore it, to serve as the church for
white and Indian till spring, promising that his people should
join in the work. Bolsas evaded the order under the pretext
that the snows were too heavy in the mountains to cut tim
bers for roofing the church, but he offered for use as a chapel
one of the Indian estufas erected and used for their idola-
DANGERS DISREGARDED. 515
trous rites. This the missionaries declined, believing, and
not without some ground, that the Indians made the offer
only in hope of secretly carrying on their heathen worship
in the estufa while pretending to take part in the Catholic
service.1
Several of the pueblos began to ask for resident mis
sionaries, and Yargas seeing that the towns readily fur
nished Indian corn for his use, was inclined to accede to
their request, and Fathers were actually named for Santa
Fe, Tezuque, Nambe, San Ildefonso, San Juan, San Lazaro,
Picuries, Taos, Jemes, Cia, Pecos, and ' Cochiti. The mis
sionaries, however, who had all been mingling with the In
dians, and endeavoring to win their confidence, had learned
that the object of the Indians was to get the missionaries into
their power so as to massacre them when they rose on the
Spaniards. Ye, governor of Pecos, whose timely warning
had saved many in 1680, had now given them distinct infor
mation of the plot. Yargas had promised Bishop Montene
gro not to expose the lives of the missionaries rashly, and on
the 18th of December, the Franciscan Fathers in a formal act
laid the matter before him representing the danger of attempt
ing missions at once.2 Yargas replied, accusing them of
"feigned obedience and envy," and tauntingly offered to
1 This secret idolatry, called by Spanish writers Nagualism, was con
ducted with the utmost cunning. The idols or fetishes of the medicine
men were concealed under the altars, in the altar-lamps, behind pictures
and in ornamental work of the churches, and the Indians were really
worshipping these, while apparently hearing mass. The adherents of the
old idolatry formed a secret society, and some by great professions of
piety managed to gain the confidence of missionaries, and so aid in main
taining the old heathen ideas. The Ven. Anthony Margil apparently by
supernatural light often detected the presence of these idols, and un
masked the hypocrites.
'2 Representation of the missionaries.
f>16 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
escort them in safety to the central mission stations assigned
to each.1
Meanwhile the Tauos showed no disposition to return to
their old pueblo at Galisteo, and the settlers in the Spanish
camp were suffering severely, many children dying. On the
28th the Tanos openly declared war, closed the gate of the
town, defying the Spaniards from the walls, shouting out
that the Devil was more powerful than God and Mary. " All
our friends are coming, and we will kill all the Spaniards
and not let one escape. The Fathers shall be our servants
for a time. We will make them carry wood, and bring it
down from the mountain ; and when they have served us we
will kill them all, as we did when we drove the Spaniards out
before."
Yargas saw that his confidence had been overweening and
that prompt action was required. He prepared to storm the
town. Father Zeinos said mass and exhorted the troops.
Then bearing aloft the banner of Our Lady of Refuge, and
chanting the Praise of the Blessed Sacrament, the Spanish
soldiers rushed to the assault. Under a shower of stones and
arrows they carried a tower by scaling it, and set fire to the
great door of the town. An entrance to some houses was
gained, loopholes were made in the walls, and a fire kept up
on the Indians. Auxiliaries of the besieged approaching the
town were twice driven off. By this time the Tanos were
completely hemmed in, so that at daybreak they gave up the
struggle, and began to excuse their conduct ; but they had
shown their hatred of religion when they demolished the
cross and beat to a shapeless mass a statue of Our Lady. Yar
gas felt at last that he must strike terror into the Indians or
prepare for constant outbreaks. Bolsa and the men taken in
1 " Documentos para la Historia de Mexico," III., i., pp. 142-3.
FATHER JOHN OF JESUS. 517
arms were condemned to be shot, and after Father Alpuente
had prepared them for death, the sentence was executed.
The rest of the Tanos were distributed as slaves among the
settlers, each captive being allowed to select his own master.
Regulation's required that none should be sold or taken out of
the city, or be ill-treated, and all were to be sent daily to the
missionaries for instruction. Santa Fe was once more in full
possession of the Spaniards, and then apparently the Church
of San Miguel was restored, to be rebuilt in the last century
and remain to our day.
The severity of Vargas did not crush the spirit of insur
rection. The early part of 1694 was taken up in operations
against the Indians, in which he was not always successful.
But he was cheered by the intelligence that Father Francis
Farfan was at El Paso with seventy-six families of settlers.
As he durst not detach any portion of his force, he was un
able to furnish them an escort, but he sent them provisions
and they reached Santa Fe in June. The military operations
continued during the summer, but amid them he captured
two Jemes, who were pardoned on their offer to show where
Father John of Jesus was buried and the church plate hid
den. With the banner of Our Lady of Refuge, and his
principal officers, Yargas proceeded to the spot to which
they guided him. Then, after chanting the Salva Regina,
he ordered the ground to be opened. The bones of a person
of small stature were found, an arrow fixed in the spine, the
skull recognized by some present as resembling the mission
ary. Deeming them sufficiently identified, Fathers Alpu
ente, Obregou, and Carbonel collected the precious remains
of their mortified and apostolical predecessor, and carried
them reverently to Santa Fe, where they were placed in a
box of cedar, covered with damask and fine linen, and on
the llth of August, after a solemn service in presence of all
518 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
the people, they were deposited on the gospel side of the
chapel which served temporarily as the parish church.1
The Jemes at this time asked peace, and Vargas agreed
on condition that they returned to their old pueblo, where
they were to erect a chapel and house for the missionary as
signed to them, Father Francis Casanas. That holy mission
ary, whom we have seen already laboring in the unfruitful
soil of Texas, appealed to Yargas for the release of the
Jemes held by him as prisoners, and these, after the tribe
had shown its good-will by co-operation in the field, were re
leased by the Governor.
Then the Tehuas and Tanos who had restored their old
pueblos, solicited missionaries. On the 5th of October, 1694:,
Father John Munoz de Castro, the vice-custos, set out to in-
stal the missionaries in their towns. Father Francis Cor-
vera remained at San Ildefonso, from which he was to attend
Jacona, Father Jerome Prieto in charge of Santa Clara, Fa
ther Anthony Obregon to reside in San Cristobal and take
charge of San Lorenzo. Xo chapel or house had been as vet
erected in any of the towns, and the missionaries took up
their abode in hastily constructed huts. In each pueblo Yar
gas explained to the people the veneration and obedience due
the missionaries, and urged the Indians to erect churches and
houses for them at once. He undoubtedly believed the
presence of the Franciscan Fathers the best means of making
the submission of the Indians sincere and lasting. The mis
sionaries were less sanguine; yet they remained cheerfully
to exercise the ministry, though conscious that the Indians
had not laid aside their hostile feelings, and regarded them
with no friendly eye.
Shortly after Father Diego Zeinos was installed in the
1 " Documentos para la Historia de Mexico," III., i., pp. 143-161.
PROGRESS OF MISSIONS. 519
mission of Our Lady of Portiuncula at Pecos, where the peo
ple had already built him a house, and were roofing a tem
porary chapel. Father Anthony Carbonel was placed at San
Felipe and Father John Alpuente at Cia. The Queres of
Santo Domingo submitted, and were absolved by their mis
sionary, Father Francis of Jesus, for whom they had pre
pared a convenient residence.
Having thus restored the missionaries to the most import
ant points in the territory, Father Salvador proceeded to El
Paso, where he resigned his office and was succeeded as cus-
tos of the mission by Father Francis Vargas, who had arrived
with four other priests. The work of re-establishing the
missions went on; the Indians returning with apparent readi
ness to the old Catholic practices. Fathers John Mimoz de
Castro and Anthony Moreno remained in Santa Fe ; Father
Joseph Diaz, who had completely gained the good-will of the
people of Tezuque by his devoted affection, remained with
the Indians of that pueblo ; Father Joseph Garcia Marin be
gan his labors at Santa Clara ; Father Carbonel, at the voice
of his superior, left San Felipe for Cochiti, where the Indians
had reared a chapel and house, more fortunate than Father
Michael Tirso, who found at Santo Domingo no chapel or
house, and a miserable hut as his only refuge.
In 1695 a new city styled Villa Kueva de Santa Cruz was
founded at La Canada with sixty families from Mexico, and
Father Anthony Moreno became the first rector. During
the same year Father Anthony Azevedo was stationed at
Nambe, and missionaries at last restored Catholic service at
Picuries and Taos.
All seemed so quiet that Spaniards scattered unsuspect
ingly through the country : but the missionaries being in
the very heart of the pueblos, discerned and reported that a
new revolt was brewing. Vargas charged them with pusil-
520 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
lanimity, and the Franciscans silently submitted. Yet in
March, 1696, Father Yargas, the custos, represented to the
Governor the evident danger of the missionaries, who were
alone and unprotected, and who would certainly be the first
victims, as the Governor could not in case of outbreak send
a force to rescue them all. He asked a small body of soldiers
at each mission, but the Governor professed his inability to
send them. When further representations of danger were
made to him, Yargas said that any missionary who felt he
was in danger might come to Santa Fe, if he chose. A few
did so, but as Yargas in writing to the Governor and Bishop
accused them of cowardice, and said that their withdrawal
and removal of vestments and church plate would excite sus
picion and cause the very danger they feared, the missionaries
returned to their posts, offering their lives a sacrifice to God.
The result was not long delayed. On the 4th of June,
1696, the Picuries, Taos, Tehuas, Tanos, Queres, and Jemes
rose in rebellion. Their first act was to profane the churches
and sacred vessels and objects, their next to butcher the mis
sionaries. At San Cristobal the Tanos killed Father Joseph
de Arbizu and Father Anthony Carbonel, missionaries of
Taos. Father Francis Corvera and Father Anthony Moreno,
missionaries at Xambe, were shut up in a cell in San Ilde-
fonso by the Tehuas, who closed every window and opening,
then set fire to the convent and church, leaving the religious
to die, suffocated by the heat and smoke. The holy Father
Casafias was lured out of Jemes, under the pretext that a
dying man wished a priest to hear his confession. Then the
war-chief of the pueblo and the interpreter killed him with
their macanas or clubs, the holy missionary repeating the
names of Jesus and Mary till he expired.
Besides the missionaries, isolated Spaniards were every
where cut down.
MISSIONARIES PUT TO DEATH. 521
Vargas at last saw that the conspiracy had long been
formed, and embraced all but four or five pueblos. Once
more he took the field, and a long war was maintained by
him and his successor Cubero. During this period all the
peaceful efforts of the missionaries were paralyzed.1
After the reduction of the revolted pueblos, the missions
were restored, and for some years the Franciscans continued
their labors undisturbed, the increasing number of Spanish
settlers giving them an overpowering strength which held
the Indians in check.
In 1700 Father John de Garaicoechea won the Zunis,
and induced them to leave the rocky fortress and return to
their old pueblo in the fertile plain, and the same year Fa
ther Anthony Miranda, a religious of singular virtue and
zeal, obtained similar success at Acoma, and established a
chapel at Laguna, which he visited regularly. To protect
these apostolic men the Governor sent a small detachment
of soldiers, but as frequently happened these men were more
a detriment than a benefit to the missions, creating ill-will
and setting an example of vice. Father John in vain solic
ited their removal, but on Sunday, March 4, 1T03, while he
was chanting the versicle in praise of the Blessed Sacrament
after mass, the Indians killed one Spaniard in the choir, and
two more at the door of the church in Zuili. The interpre
ter and some others saved the missionary, and an Indian
woman hurried him to her house, where she concealed him
for three days in a chest. When all had become quiet in the
pueblo he reappeared, and was received with joy by his flock,
the great part of which were ignorant of the plot which was
the work of seven men. Governor Cubero sent troops to
Zuni, who conveyed Father Garaicoechea most unwillingly
1 " Document os para la Historia de Mexico," III., i., pp. 161-177.
522 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
to Santa Fe, for lie deemed his presence more essential than
ever at Zuui to maintain the faithful in their religion. He
c1*
was not able to return till 1705, when he was well received,
and resumed his missionary duties ; but Zufii was soon added
to the already onerous duties of Father Miranda.1
In 1706 the city of San Francisco de Alburquerque was
founded, the name being subsequently changed to San
Felipe. It began with thirty-five Spanish families, and
steps were taken at the outset to meet their religious wants,
a church being erected, which the king supplied with the
requisite vestments, plate, and other articles required in the
services of the altar.
. The temporary chapel erected by Governor Vargas on re
capturing Santa Fe, had served as a parish church till this
time, but was in a wretched condition, and far too small for
the increasing number of the people and the garrison. The
Marquis de la Penuela y Ahnirante, who was Governor of
New Mexico in 1708, proposed to the Viceroy of Xew Spain
to erect a suitable parish church at his own expense, if he
was permitted to employ the Indians of the neighboring
towns. This was permitted, but the Viceroy made it a con
dition that the workmen were to be paid, and that they
should not be required to work on the church at the time
their services were required to gather in their crops. The
Marquis then began the new church.
In 1 709 the pueblo of Jemes was sacked by the Xavajos,
who carried off all the vestments and church plate. The
same year the energetic Gustos, Father John de la Pena, col-
" Documentos para la Historia de Mexico," III., i., pp. 177-186, 190,
194. Letter of Father Garaicoechea, Zuni, March 7, 1703 ; of Father
Miranda, Laguna, March 12, 1703. In 1707 Father Francis de Irazabal
appears as missionary at Alona or Zuni ; and in 1713 Father Carlos Del-
gado, a young and zealous missionary, at Acoma and Laguna
EPISCOPAL VISITATIONS. 523
lected the Teliuas, who were scattered in different pueblos,
and even among the Apaches, and revived their old mission
at Isleta, obtaining all needed vestments and plate for the
chapel. He also made a careful visitation of all the missions,
accompanied by a secular priest. He suppressed many abuses,
superstitions, and heathen observances among the converted
Indians, especially scalp-dances and the estufas.1
The civil authorities took up the matter, and rigorous
means were taken to suppress the estufas, which were origin
ally vapor baths, but became the secret scene of heathen
rites, and plots against the Christian religion and the whites,
fomented by the medicine-men. From time to time active
governors aided by the missionaries would make the attempt
to eradicate this secret idolatry, but after a while vigilance
would relax, and the old heathenism would revive.
[New Mexico upon its settlement was for a brief term in
cluded in the diocese of Guadalajara, but when the see of
Durango, or Guadiana, was erected by Pope Paul V., on the
llth of October, 1620, it was included in the limits of the
new diocese. The Kt. Rev. Benedict Crespo took posses
sion of the see on the 22d of March, 1723. A bishop of
energy and devotion to duty, he made three visitations of his
extensive diocese during the eleven years that he filled the
see, and during the second visitation he penetrated to ISTew
Mexico, and was the first bishop who had strength and
courage to overcome all the difficulties in his way. His
presence encouraged the missionaries and strengthened the
faith of all.
His successor, Et. Rev. Martin de Elizacochea, who be
came Bishop of Durango in 1Y36, followed the example of
Bishop Crespo. He made a visitation of New Mexico, and
1 "Documentos para la Historia de Mexico," III., i., pp. 192, 196-7.
524 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
a record of his visit is graven on Inscription Rock near the
Rio Ziiili. " On the 28th day of September, 1737, the most
Illustrious Dr. Don Martin de Elizacochea, Bishop of Du-
rango, arrived here, and the 29th he proceeded to Zufii." '
In 1733 missions were begun among the Jicarilla Apaches
near Taos, by the Father Gustos John Ortes de Yelasco, but
the Governor broke them up, as the mission diminished the
fur trade. In 1742 Father John Menchero attempted to re
store religion among the Moquis and Navajos. The next
year Fathers Delgado and Pino settled four hundred and
forty-one souls from Moqui, in the mission of San Agus-
tin de la Isleta, although the Governor refused to encourage
the Franciscans. Attempts were also made to win the
Navajos.8
Then the notices of the state of religion in New Mexico
became few and vague. In 1748 the churches are reported
as in good condition, and comparing favorably with those of
Europe. Missionaries officiated in suitable churches at Santa
Cruz, Pecos, Galisteo, El Paso, San Lorenzo, Socorro, Zia, Can-
deleras, Taos, Santa Ana, San Agustin de Isleta, Tezuque,
Nambe, San Ildefonso, Santa Clara, San Juan de los Cabal-
leros, Picuries, Cochiti, Jemes, Laguna, Acoma, and Guada-
lupe.3
1 " Concilios Provinciates Primero y Segundo celebrados en la ...
ciudad de Mexico," Mexico, 1769, pp. 373-4. Gams, " Series Episcopo-
rum," p. 149. Rt. Rev. Peter Tamarou, Bishop of Durango, 1757-1768,
who addressed to the king a full description of his diocese, and who died
in Sinaloa, during a visitation, also apparently reached New Mexico, but
the acts of these visitations are not in the archives of the Diocese, which
were examined for me by the present Rt. Rev. Bishop ; and Bishop
Tamaron's report, though recently seen, could not now be found for me
in Spain.
2 Morn, "Descripcion Geografica del Nuevo Mexico," 1782.
3 Villasenor, " Teatro Americano," pp. 411-422.
NEW MEXICO TOWNS.
525
The Spanish settlements were Santa Fe, San Miguel del
Bado, Alameda, Alburquerque, Tome, Belen, Sabinal, So-
corro, Abiquiu, with several smaller places. Santa Fe had
its secular parish priest, as El Paso also had ; all other
churches whether of Spanish or Indians were attended by
the Franciscan Fathers, numbering about twenty-two.
RECORD OP BISHOP ELIZACOCHEA'S VISITATION ON INSCRIPTION ROCK,
CHAPTEE IY.
THE CHUKCH IN ARIZONA, 1690-1763.
THE Franciscan missions in New Mexico had never ex
tended successfully to the tribes beyond the limits of that
province, although efforts were made at times from Texas and
New Mexico to win the fierce Apaches. The Society of Je
sus, after relinquishing Florida, founded a province in Mexi
co which has a glorious history. At an early day the Church
began to evangelize Sinaloa,1 then pushed northward and es
tablished her great Sonora mission in 1590, winning many
tribes to the Church.
The remarkable missionary, Father Eusebius Francis
Kiihn, called in Spanish Kino, was the apostle of Pimeria
Alta, the Upper Pirn a country, embracing much of our
present territory of Arizona. He was a native of Trent, and
entered the Society of Jesus in Bavaria. After being Su
perior of the Fathers who served as chaplains in the fleet of
Admiral Obando, he was appointed to found the Pima mis
sions.
He entered Upper Pimeria March 13,1687, and established
his first mission at Nuestra Senora de los Dolores, having
gained a chief named Coxi as his first convert. From this
point he extended his influence in all directions, evincing
wonderful ability in gaining the Indians, and in presenting
the truths of Christianity in a way to meet their comprehen
sion and reach their hearts.
1t was founded in 1590 by Saint Francis Borgia, a saint identified also
the introduction of Christianity into Florida.
(526)
FATHER KUHN'S LABORS. 527
Xo life has been written of this Father, who stands with
the Venerable Anthony Margil as the greatest missionaries
who labored in this country, extraordinary as were the ser
vices of Fathers White, Fremin, Bruyas, Allouez, and Druil-
lettes. Of Father Kiilm, the historian of California says :
u He labored with apostolic zeal in converting and civiliz-
ino- the heathen Indians. He made constant excursions into
o
their territory with intrepid valor and unattended. He as
sembled many in towns, forming them to agriculture and the
keeping of herds ; because this was a step towards maintain
ing missionaries for their conversion an(J. spiritual good, and
for their civilization. Overcoming the tedious difficulties,
he learned their different languages, translated the catechism
and prayers, which he then taught them orally, undeterred
by their boorishness and indocility. He formed vocabularies
and instructions for his fellow-laborers and successors ; at
tracted the Indians by his wonderful gentleness and affability,
till they all confided in him, as though he were the father of
each one individually. He built houses and chapels ; formed
missions and towns; conciliated hostile nations; and if he
could have obtained the auxiliary missioners whom he repeated
ly solicited, and not been hampered by constant impediments,,
calumnies, and false reports," " he would then easily have con.
verted all the tribes lying between Sonora and the rivers Gila
and Colorado." l Clavigero affirms all this, and states, more
over, that he travelled more than twenty thousand miles, and
baptized more than 48,000 infants and adults. " On his long
and toilsome journeys he carried no provision but some
parched corn ; he never omitted to say mass, and nevei
slept in a bed. He journeyed on, communing with God in
prayer, or chanting psalms and hymns." '
1 Venegas, " Noticia de la California," Madrid, 1757, ii., p. 88.
4 Clavigero, "Storia della California," Venice, 1789, i., pp. 263-4.
528 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
He was a man of constant prayer, visiting our Lord in the
Blessed Sacrament a hundred times in the day, gifted with
tears, and spending his nights in contemplation or austere
exercises, yet finding time for mission work, such as few
would have attempted and no other man could have sustained.
An Indian outbreak, in which Father Saeta was cruelly
put to death, convulsed all Sonora, and for a time checked
the progress of the missions in Upper Pimeria, but when
quiet was restored at the close of 1696, Father Kiilm obtained
fellow-laborers, founding missions at Guevavi, Cocospera, San
Cayetano, and San Xavier del Bac. The last was the largest
rancheria in Upper Pimeria, with 176 houses and 803 souls.
Hearing of the Casas Grandes near the Gila, Father Kiihn
visited those remarkable ruins, and in 1698 descended the
Gila to the mouth of the Colorado, announcing the Gospel
to Pima, Papago, Cocomaricopa, and Yuma. Yet the lives
of missionaries were in constant peril, for in January of that
year Cocospera, where Father Peter Ruiz de Contreras was
stationed, was sacked and burned by the Apaches and Yu-
mas.
His appeals for aid were traversed ; the converts he col
lected were driven away to the mines by Spanish officials,,
till by his complaints to the king a check was put to the un
christian course. Four Fathers are said to have come in
1701, two of whom were sent to Guevavi and San Xavier
del Bac, but it was probably only an intention never carried out.
His only permanent fellow-laborer was Father Augustine de
Campos, who joined him in 1693. Though something was
done in 1704, and some churches were rebuilt in Sonora, the
movement does not appear to have reached Arizona.
Undeterred by his reverses, Father Kiihn founded the
mission of Santa Maria Soamca, or St. Mary Immaculate,
and restored those at Guevavi and San Xavier del Bac He
DEATH OF FATHER KUHN. 529
induced the Indians to settle around missions and stations
where he erected adobe churches and houses. He encouraged
them to build regular houses, dig irrigating trenches, and
cultivate the soil.1
Early in 1711 his devoted fellow-laborer, Father Campos,
who had completed the church of Saint Francis Xavier at
Magdalena, invited Father Kiihn to its dedication. Praying
before the altar over which hung the picture of his patron
and model, the Apostle of the Indies, Father Kiihn felt that
his lifework was ended, and prepared for a death which was
the holy crown of his devoted life.
After his death in 1711 his work was maintained by Father
de Campos, but when he, too, was called away, none came to
continue their labors till 1720. ]^ine missionaries sent in
that year found much to be done. Churches had fallen to
decay ; little trace of former teaching could be discerned in
the Indians, who had relapsed into their old pagan ways.
In 1727 the Rt. Rev. Benedict Crespo, Bishop of Durango,
visited this portion of his diocese. He was pained to see that
the missions had not been sustained, and that so many In
dians were left without instruction. He resolved to make an
appeal to the King of Spain. Philip V. ordered three cen
tral missions to be established at the royal expense. In 1731,
to the joy of the Bishop, three Jesuit Fathers were sent — Fa
ther Ignatius Xavier Keler, Father John Baptist Grashoffer,
who took up his residence at Guevavi, and Father Philip
Segesser, who revived the mission at San Xavier del Bac. Of
the last two, one soon died, and another was prostrated by
sickness, but Father Ignatius Keler became the leader of the
new missions in that district, taking possession of Santa Maria
Soamca April 20, 1732. The pious Marquis of Yillapuente,
1 Letter of FF. Bcrnal, Kiiio, etc., Dec. 4, 1697. " Documentos para la
Historia de Mexico," III., i., pp. 804-7.
34
530 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
who died in February, 1739, left funds to found two other
missions.1
San Xavier del Bac was the largest mission, surrounded by
Sobaipuris, Papagos, and Pimas, with the presidio of Tucson
not far off, which the Jesuits also attended, no secular priest
accepting the dangerous ministry.
Guevavi had as stations Sonoitac, Calabazas, Tumacacori,
and Aribaca, with a presidio or military station at Tubac.
These central missions and many of the stations visited
from them had neat adobe churches, supplied with becoming
vestments and altar service of silver; several of them had
organs, obtained by the missionaries to gratify the Indian
love of music. At each of these churches and chapels the
children recited an abridgment of the Christian Doctrine
every day in their own language and also in Spanish, while
old and young did so on Sundays and holidays after mass, at
which an instruction had been given. During Lent there
were regular courses of sermons.
Yet so dull were the minds of these Indians, that an old
Sonora missionary once declared that there were no Christians
in the world who recited the Christian Doctrine more con
stantly, or who really knew it less than these Indians.
On Saturday the Rosary and Litany of the Blessed Virgin
were recited.
In 1744 Father Keler reported that he had baptized more
than two thousand, and had a Christian flock of one thousand
brave, industrious Pimas, who had well-tilled fields with
herds and flocks. Father Keler extended his mission labors
at the peril of his life to the Gila and beyond it.
In 1742 the moving camp of San Felipe de Jesus, estab-
1 " Apostolicos Afanes," pp. 340-3. Pfefferkorn, " Beschreibung der
Landschaft Sonora," p. 327.
DEATH OF FF. TELLO AND RUHEN. 531
lished to protect the missions, was fixed permanently at Te-
renate, to be a bulwark against the Apaches, and that presidio
or garrison fell under the care of the Jesuit missionaries ;
but of so little avail was it, that on the 16th of February, 1746,
the Apaches attacked Cocospera, one of the dependent mis
sions, and burned the church. Father Keler was succeeded
in time by Father Diego Joseph Barrera.
In 1750 Father Keler was still at Soamca, Father Joseph
Garrucho at Guevavi, and Father Francisco Paver at San
Xavier del Bac. The next year the Pimas rose and destroyed
several missions, killing two missionaries, Fathers Tello and
Ruhen, in Sonora. They also destroyed Aribaca, killing
many of the Catholic Indians there.
Father Keler opposing the injustice of an official was mis
represented, and for a time was compelled to leave his mis
sion, but his services were too much needed, and he was soon
permitted to return.
Soon after this tragedy we find Father Barrera at Santa
Maria Soamca, Father Ildefonso Espinosa at San Xavier,
and Father Ignatius Pfefferkorn at Guevavi.1 But they be
held the Indians of their missions decreasing, many, from
fear of the Apaches or other enemies, leaving their towns to
seek refuge in the woods.3
About this time Father Sedelmayr, at the instance of
the Spanish Government, was evangelizing the tribes on the
Gila, erecting seven or eight churches in the villages of the
Papagos, among whom the German Father Bernard Midden-
dorf also labored, and Father Keler was endeavoring to reach
the Moquis, who were willing to receive missionaries of any
kind but Franciscans.3
1 "Rudo Ensayo," pp. 148-152.
2 " Doc. para la Hist, de Mexico," III., i., pp. 686-7.
3 " Noticias de la Pimeria del ano de 1740." Letter of Sedelmayr.
532 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
While the Fathers were thus employed, the terrible order
came from the King of Spain, tinder which every member of
the Society of Jesus was seized at his mission as a criminal,
and hurried off to a prison-ship. Father Barrera was the
last at Santa Maria Soamca; Custodius Ximeno, an Arra-
gonese, at Guevavi ; Father Anthony Castro, an Andalusian,
at San Xavier del Bac. Father Pfefferkorn, a native of
Manheim in Germany, who has left us a most interesting
account of the Sonora mission, had been transferred to Cu-
curpe in 1757.1
Up to 1763 no considerable Spanish town had grown up
in Arizona, and though the fertility of the soil and the rich
mineral wealth attracted settlers, the fierce and constant in
roads of the Apaches made life insecure, and caused many
places to be abandoned.
By the summary act of the Spanish monarch every church
in Arizona was closed, and the Christian Indians were de
prived of priests to direct them.
In the vast portion of our territory which had been subject
to the Catholic kings, the state of religion about 1763 was
not one to inspire any sanguine hopes. Florida had been
ceded to Protestant England, and religion was menaced there
with utter extinction — the Indian missions had been almost
annihilated ; in Texas progress was slow, the Indian missions
grouped around a few Spanish settlements ; Kew Mexico
seemed to need a local bishop to reanimate the faith of the
people ; Arizona was deprived of its clergy.
'Pfefferkorn, i., p. 335.
BOOK VI.
THE CHURCH IN FRENCH TERRITORY.
CHAPTER I.
THE CHURCH IN THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY, 1690-1763.
BISHOP ST. YALLIEB, of Quebec, was of a family that had
seen several members honored with the mitre in France, and
was full of the spirit of the episcopate of that country. With
none of that charm of personal sanctity which enabled Bishop
Laval to accomplish so much good, Bishop St. Vallier sought
to bring everything in his vast diocese into strict regularity
by precise rules and regulations, and suffered no infringement
FAC-SIMILE OP THE SIGNATURE OF BISHOP SAINT VALLIER.
on what he regarded as the rights of his see. His administra
tion was a succession of personal trials and troubles, arising
from the protests made by him or against him. The difficul
ties became such that the king insisted on his resignation of
the See of Quebec, and the Bishop's attempted return to
Canada was prevented by his capture at sea and a long cap
tivity in England, where he was detained as a hostage for the
surrender of the Provost of Liege.
Many of his general and particular acts affected the Church
(533)
534 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
in the Mississippi Valley and elsewhere within the present
limits of the Kepublic.
He prepared and published a catechism and ritual for his
diocese, and in 1690 he held a diocesan synod, in which seven
statutes were adopted, the most important prohibiting the
celebration of mass or the conferring of baptism in private
houses in any place where there was a church, and in places
where there was yet no church mass was not to be said in
any house but one selected for the purpose and approved by
the Bishop. The attendance of the faithful at mass on Sun
days and holidays was to be rigorously maintained. In a
second synod held at Montreal, March 3, 1694, seven other
statutes were adopted, chiefly instructions to confessors.
The statutes adopted in the third synod held at Quebec, Feb
ruary 23, 1698, were twenty-nine in number.1 Among other
points they directed exclusion from communion of those who
refused to pay tithes ; insisted on regular catechetical instruc
tions, the proper registration of baptisms, marriages, and in
terments, and the suitable adornment of churches. They
also regulated " Blessed Bread," censured the abuse of many
in leaving the church during sermon, urged the establishment
of the Sisters of the Congregation in all parishes to direct the
schools, and exhorted the faithful to liberality in almsgiving.2
We have seen that he protested against the dismember
ment of his diocese by the erection of Vicariates- Apostolic in
the Mississippi Valley, and this was apparently prior to his
" Statuts publics dans le premier Synode term le 9e Novembre, 1G90."
Archives de Quebec, A., p. 285.
2 " Statuts II. Synod." Ib., A., p. 522 ; " III. Synod," A., p. 683. He
issued pastorals in 1692, 1694, and 1695, announcing Jubilees proclaimed
by the Sovereign Pontiff. Bishop St. Vallier's Statutes remained in
force in all parts of our territory east of the Mississippi, embraced in the
diocese of Quebec down to the erection of the see of Baltimore, and the
recognition of the authority of the Bishop of Santiago in the West.
FATHER GRAVIER, VICAR-GENERAL. 535
consecration as Bishop in 1688. Over the missions in the
remote parts of the diocese he seems to have watched with
great care.
In the Illinois Father James Gravier succeeded the veteran
Allouez about 1689, and in December of the following year
Bishop St. Vallier appointed him his Vicar-General. The
preamble of this document says : " Having recognized since
we took possession of this see, that the Fathers of the Society
of Jesus, who are engaged in the conversion of the Indians
of this country, devote themselves thereto with all care, and
take all pains that we can desire, without sparing their labors
or even their life, and in particular as we know that for the
last twenty years they have labored on the mission of the
Illinois whom they first discovered, to whom Father Mar-
quette of the same Society published the faith in the year
1672, and subsequently died in this glorious task which had
been confided to him by our predecessor, and that after the
death of Father Marquette, we committed it to Father Al
louez, also a Jesuit, who after laboring there for several years
ended his life, exhausted by the great hardships which he
underwent in the instruction and conversion of the Islinois,
Miamis, and other nations, and finally as we have given
the care of this mission of the Islinois and other surrounding
nations to Father Gravier of the same Society, who has em
ployed himself therein with great benediction bestowed by
God on his labors, for this cause we confirm and ratify what
we have done, and anew confide the missions of the Islinois
and surrounding nations, as well as those of the Miamis,
Sious, and others in the Ottawa country, and towards the
AVest to the Fathers of the Society of Jesus, and give the
Superiors of the said missions all the authority of our Vicars-
General," etc.1
1 " Archives de 1'Archevgche de Quebec." Kegistre, A., p. 502.
536 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
The Miami mission on St. Joseph's River, also prospered.
Governor Denonville had granted to the missionaries of
the Society of Jesus a concession of twenty arpents along the
river, by twenty arpents in depth, at such spot as they should
deem most suitable to erect a chapel and house.1 Father de
Carheil was at the church at Michilimackinac, and the aged
Father Henry Nouvel at Green Bay. Around these posts
French were gathering slowly, and in Illinois several had set
tled down, taking wives among the converted Indians.
During Gravier's absence an old convert summoned the
Catholic Indians morning and evening to prayers. Toward
the end of April the missionary blessed a new chapel which
he had erected outside of the French fort 2 for the greater
convenience of the Indians, and erected a tall cross. The
Peoria tribe, which he also visited, were less fervent, for the
chief, Assapita, who was a medicine-man, used all his influ
ence to thwart the missionary. Gravier planned missions to
the Cahokia and Tamarois bands of Illinois, which he subse
quently carried out,3 as well as to the Osages and Missouris,
tribes who kept up a friendly intercourse with the Illinois,
and sent ambassadors, whom Father Gravier welcomed. The
French at the post,. whose lives drew down the reproof of
the missionary, prejudiced the Indians against him ; Michael
Ako, the old comrade of Father Hennepin, who sought to
marry Aramipinchicwe, the daughter of the Kaskaskia chief,
Rouensac, her parents compelling her most unwillingly to
become his wife, especially labored to diminish the influence
1 Gravier, "Lettre en forme de Journal de la Mission de 1'Immaculee
Conception de N. D. aux Illinois, 15 Fevrier, 1694 "; Margry, " Etablisse-
ments et Decouvertes," v., p. 35.
2 This was evidently Fort Peoria; see St. Cosme in "Relation de la
Mission du Mississippi," p. 26.
3 " Relation de la Mission du Mississippi," p. 35.
ILLINOIS MISSIONS. 537
of Father Gravier, till, touched by conscience, lie recanted all,
and urged the chief to become a Christian, promising to
amend his own life.1 Rouensac and his family embraced
the faith, and the Quebec missionaries a few years afterward
attested his progress in civilization and Christianity. Father
Gravier adapting himself to Indian usage went regularly
through the town, giving his cry to invite the converts and
the well-disposed heathen to prayer ; he also gave banquets,
that he might without offense censure anything which he
found amiss.
Besides the Kaskaskia town, there was a Peoria town near,
and several smaller villages, all of which Father Gravier visit
ed regularly. Sickness prevailed, and he was ever on the
watch to instruct adults and baptize dying children. His
baptisms between March 30, 1693, and November 29, num
bered two hundred and six.
In 1696 he was joined by Father Julian Binneteau, who
apparently remained at Kaskackia, while Father Gravier
descended to Montreal, and subsequently devoted himself to
the more distant missions, and Father Peter Pinet founded
the Miami mission of the Angel Guardian at Chicago,
where there were two villages containing in all some 300
cabins, and where he converted the Peoria chief who had
resisted Father Gravier's exhortations. Yet the Count de
Frontenac, Governor of Canada, compelled Father Pinet to
abandon his mission, until the influence of Bishop Laval en
abled him to resume his Gospel labors. The next year Fa
ther Gravier was confirmed in his powers as Vicar-General
by Bishop St. Vallier, and was soon after joined by Father
1 The records of the baptisms, etc., in his family, beginning Mar. 20,
1695, are the first extracts in the ancient Register of Father Gravier's
mission preserved at Alton. They show that the descendants of the
young convert of Father Gravier were long prominent in Illinois.
538
THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Gabriel Marest, who learned the Illinois language, and
adapted himself to his new duties with remarkable facility.
The venerable Bishop Laval was so interested in this mission
that he gave the last pieces of silver which he had retained
for his table, in order to make a chalice for it, and he pre
sented a ciborium to the Church of the Immaculate Concep
tion at Kaskaskia.1 Prior to 1TOO the famous Father Rale
arrived in the Illinois missions, where he spent two vears.2
The priests of the Seminary of Quebec, which was an out
growth of that of the Foreign Missions at Paris, felt it incum
bent on them to do something for the conversion of those
tribes in the West, among whom no permanent establish
ment had yet been made. Bishop St. Vallier entered into
their plans, and on the 1st of May, 1698, officially authorized
them to establish missions in the West, investing the Supe
rior sent out by the Seminary with the powers of Yicar-
General. The field they solicited was that inhabited by na
tions on both banks of the Mississippi and its tributaries.3
They purposed to plant their first mission among the
Tamarois, but when this was known the Fathers of the
Society of Jesus claimed that tribe as one already under their
care. The Seminary regarded the Tamarois territory as
" the key and necessary passage to reach the more distant
nations," and therefore highly important to them. Bishop
St. Vallier accordingly by letters of July 14, 1698, confirmed
"Lettre du p. Jacques Gravier A, Mgr. de Laval, Sept. 17, 1697."
" Lettre du p. Julien Binneteau, 1699." " Relation des Affaires du Can
ada,'' pp. 24, 34, 57. " Extrait des Registres de Baptesme de la Mission des
Illinois," show Gravier officiating in 1695, 1712 ; Binneteau, 1697 ; Ga
briel Marest, 1699, 1703, 1709 ; Mermet, 1707, 1712. Letter of F. Ga
briel Marest (Kip, pp. 206-7).
2 Letter of Oct. 12, 1723, in " Lettres Edifiantes " (Kip, p. 42).
" Mandement de Mgr. de St. Vallier " in "Relation de la Mission du
Mississippi," New York, 1861, pp. 9-12.
THE SEMINARY OF QUEBEC. 539
those previously granted, and specially empowered the
Seminary to send missionaries to the Tamarois and establish
a residence there.1
To found the new missions on the Mississippi, the Semi
nary selected V. Rev. Francis Jolliet de Montigny, Rev.
Anthony Davion, and Rev. John Francis Buisson de Saint
Cosine. The outfit for this Christian enterprise amounted to
more than ten thousand livres, nearly one-half being furnished
by Messrs. Montigny and Davion. The party set out, and
reaching Mackinac in September, passed by Father Pinet's
Chicago mission, and by Father Marest's near Fort Peoria,
where they obtained an Illinois catechism and prayer-book.
On the 5th of December they entered the Mississippi River,
and guided by Tonty, they visited the Tamarois, on the
feast of the Immaculate Conception, and then sailed down
the great river to the villages of the Arkansas, Tonicas, and
Taensas, planting crosses at several points.
The Yery Rev. Mr. Montigny took up his residence among
the Taensas, a tribe allied to the Natchez. These Indians
had a temple in which they worshipped nine gods. In
March, 1700, Iberville, who had sailed from France to the
mouth of the Mississippi, while ascending it found the mis
sionary erecting a chapel, encouraged by his having been
able to baptize eighty -five children in his first year. He sub
sequently went to the Natchez, retaining his care of the
Taensas. The Rev. Mr. Davion established his residence
and chapel on a hill near the Tonica village, at the foot of a
cross planted on a rock which for a long time bore his
1 " Lettres Patentes de Mgr. de St. Vallier " ; Archives de Quebec. Fron-
tenac, by his Letters Patent, July 17, 1698, authorized Rev. Messrs.
Montigny, Davion, and St. Cosme, to go to the Mississippi. Archives
of the Propaganda. America Septentrionale, i., 1669-1791.
540 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
name.' He extended his labors also to the Ounspik and
Yazoo Indians, who numbered together about a hundred
cabins; and nearly lost his life by destroying the idols in
the Yazoo temple." The Eev. Mr. Saint Cosme went up the
river again to begin a mission at Tamarois.
All these priests were at first prostrated by fevers, but
none thought of abandoning the work which they had un
dertaken. Hearing of the arrival of a French expedition at
the mouth of the river, the Very Eev. Mr. Montigny and
Rev. Mr. Davion embarked in bark canoes, and reached
Biloxi on the 1st of July, but finding the little post ill-pro
visioned, they returned to their missions.3
While acquiring a knowledge of the Taensa language, the
Very Rev. Mr. Montigny visited the Natchez, and was there
when the Great Sun or head chief of the nation died. When
the good priest saw these savages prepare to put several per
sons to death, that they might attend the Sun in the next
world, he made the tribe presents to induce them to abandon
so cruel and foolish a custom. The Natchez promised to
consult his wishes, but Ouachil Tamail, the Female Sun,
persuaded the priest to leave the village for a time, pretend
ing that the noise would be very annoying to him. When
he had departed the cruel ceremony was carried out in the
usual manner.4
The next year the Seminary, to give the Mississippi mis-
1 Roche a Davion, afterward called Loftus Heights, and now Fort
Adams. Claiborne, " Mississippi," Jackson, 1880, p. 21.
2 Penicaut in Margry, v. , p. 438.
8 Benard de la Harpe, "Journal Historique," p. 1C. Cardinal Tas-
chereau, "Mission du Seminaire de Quebec chez les Tamarois ou Illi
nois sur le bord du Mississippi," written in 1849. De la Potherie, "His-
toire de 1'Amerique Septentrionale," Paris, 1722, i., p. 238. Margry,
" Decouvertes et Etablissements," v., pp. 401-8.
4 Gravier, " Relation on Journal du Voyage," New York, 1859, p. 39.
A QUESTION RAISED. 541
sion an effective force, sent out the Rev. Messrs. Bergier
Bouteville and Saint Cosme, the last named a younger broth
er of the missionary already at Tamarois, but not yet in
priest's orders. These clergymen were accompanied by three
pious men who had devoted themselves to the work, and
went to attend to the menial work. On their arrival the
elder St. Cosme descended to Natchez.1
The Fathers of the Society of Jesus received the Quebec
missionaries with personal cordiality, but notwithstanding
the official action of Bishop Saint Vallier, they showed much
feeling in regard to what they regarded as an intrusion into
a district occupied by tribes among which their religious had
already begun to labor. The proximity to the Jesuit mis
sions in the other bands of the Illinois nation, certainly made
the choice injudicious. Ere long the Very Eev. Mr. Mon-
tigny found his position so embarrassing and unpleasant that
he began to foresee only loss and failure in the mission on
which he had embarked so zealously and given his means so
freely. In the hope of being able to adjust all matters in re
gard to it satisfactorily in France, he embarked with Iber-
ville, in May, 1700, and returned to France by way of New
York.2
On his departure, the Rev. Mr. Bergier became Superior
of the secular missionaries in the Mississippi Valley, and made
Tamarois his residence, Rev. Mr. St. Cosme remaining at
Natchez. After reaching the mouth cf the Mississippi in
1699, d'Iberville built a little fort at Biloxi, and left Mr.
1 Benard de la Harpe, " Journal Historique," p. 28. Margry, v., p. 404.
5 Penicaut, " Relation Veritable," in Margry, v., p. 444. He was in
Paris in September, 1700, when Rev. Mr. St. Cosme wrote complaining
that Fathers Gravier and Binneteau wished to prevent his officiating in
the chapel at the fort, and Gravier wrote complaining of the Quebec
priests.
542 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Sauvolle in command. At tins little post, the first French
settlement in Louisiana, the Rev. Mr. Bordenave was chap
lain, and he begins the line of zealous priests in that terri
tory. Sauvolle bears testimony to his exemplary life, and
records that he said mass daily for the French, and gathered
them morning and evening to prayers, as on board ship.
Thus began the regular services of the church in Louisiana,
in May, 1699.1
D'Iberville, on his second voyage in 1700, was accom
panied by the Jesuit Father Du Ru, who on the 14th of Feb
ruary, erected a cross, offered the holy sacrifice, and blessed
a cemetery at Fort Mississippi, seventeen leagues from the
mouth of the great river. When a post at Biloxi was decided
upon, Father Du Ru took up his residence there, and began
to visit the neighboring tribes of Indians, but he removed
to Mobile when that post arose. Hearing of the arrival,
Father Gravier set out from Chicago on the 8th of Septem
ber, 1700, and visiting the various posts and missions on the
way, reached Fort Mississippi on the 17th of December.
At the Tonica village he found the Rev. Mr. Davion danger
ously ill, and remained with him till Rev. Mr. Saint Cosme
arrived from Natchez to minister to his associate.
The Jesuit Father de Limoges, appointed to found a mis
sion among the Oumas, was descending the Mississippi when
his canoe drifted at night from the shore to which it had
been made fast, and borne along by the current struck a
floating tree. He saved nothing but his chalice, and clinging
to a floating branch was finally driven ashore near a village
of the Arkansas Indians. Having obtained relief he pursued
his journey, and planting a cross at the Oumas village, be-
1 Sauvolle in Margry, iv., p. 447 ; French's " Historical Collections,"
iii., p. 237.
ITS SETTLEMENT. 543
gan in March, 1700, to erect a chapel forty feet long, an
nouncing the Gospel to that tribe and the Bayagoulas.1
With missions among the Illinois, and at the month of
the Mississippi the Jesuit Fathers solicited from Bishop
Saint Yallier the exclusive direction of the French posts in
Louisiana, and asked that the Superior of the mission should
always be appointed Yicar-General of the Bishop of Quebec.3
At the same time they complained to the king of France of
the intrusion into their mission district of missionaries who
belonged to another body.
Bishop Saint Yallier consulted several members of the
French hierarchy on the point, among others the Bishop of
Chartres, and by their advice declined to give any religious
order the complete and exclusive direction of Louisiana,
deeming it better to assign districts to religious or collegiate
bodies, or secular priests, all to be subject to a Yicar-General,
named from time to time by the Bishop of Quebec, till such
time as the state of the church would warrant the establish
ment of a see at New Orleans.3 He also withdrew the pow
ers of Yicar-General from Father Gravier, and conferred
them on Rev. Messrs. Colombiere, Montigny, and Bergier,
requiring all priests, regular and secular, to apply to them.
Meanwhile the appeal of the Jesuits with a memoir of
Bishop Saint Yallier had been referred by the king to the
Archbishop of Auch, but as he declined to decide the ques
tion alone, the Bishops of Marseilles and Chartres, with the
king's confesssor, were associated with him. On the 4th of
1 Gravier, " Eelation on Journal du Voyage," New York, 1859 ; Mar-
gry, iv., pp. 418, 422.
2 " Ministre de la Marine S Mr. 1'Evgque de Quebec," 17 Juin, 1703.
Margry, iv., pp. 634-5.
3 " Memoire de Mgr. I'Eve'que de Quebec sur les missions de Missis
sippi." Archives de 1'Archeveche de Quebec. Margry, iv., p. 431.
544 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
June, 1701, this commission decided that the Seminary of
Quebec was entitled to the Tamarois mission, and their de
cision was accepted and signed by all parties interested.
The Y. Rev. Mr. Montigny had, however, become com
pletely discouraged, his management of the mission not being
fully approved. He never returned to America, but went
to the East, where he rendered signal services to religion.
The Mississippi question having been satisfactorily ad
justed, the Bishop of Quebec reappointed the Superior of
the Jesuits in Illinois Yicar-Greneral in his district.
In 1700 Rev. Nicholas Foucault, sent by the Seminary,
took up his residence among the Arkansas Indians, and be
gan to announce the faith to them.
The news that the French had settled at the mouth of the
Mississippi produced a commotion among the tribes in Illi
nois. The Kaskaskias resolved to go and settle near them.
The Peorias remained around the church, but Father Ma'rest
accompanied the Kaskaskias, who finally on the advice of
Father Gravier, who assembled them in council, abandoned
their project, and took up their abode at the place which now
bears their name.1 Some of the Tamarois also left their old
village ground, and Father Pinet became their missionary,
succeeded ere long by Father Binneteau, who attended them
and others on their long buffalo hunts beyond the Mississippi.
The Rev. Mr. Bergier remained at^he Tamarois post, with
Thaumur de la Source devoting himself more especially to
the French, who had by this time become numerous. The
expenses of the missions had been so great that V. Rev. Mr.
Bergier, the new Superior, was urged to exercise judgment
and economy. The Rev. Mr. Saint Cosme had projected
1 In the Extracts from old Registers prefixed to the Kaskaskia register
is the entry, " 1703 Apr. 25. Ad ripam Metchigamea dictam venimus,"
apparently giving the date of the removal of the Kaskaskias.
REV. N. FOUCAULT KILLED 545
a mission to the Pawnees or Missouris, but he was instructed
to prevent him, as it would be almost impossible to send sup
plies to so remote a station.1
The Rev. Nicholas Foucault was an aged priest, in poor
health, but he devoted himself to the Mississippi mission in
place of Rev. Mr. de la Colombiere, whom the people of
Quebec would not allow to go. He had already accomplished
much good among the Arkansas, when, in 1702, he set out
for Mobile with his servant and two Frenchmen who had
just established peace between the Chickasaws and Illinois.
They took as guides two Indians of the Coroa tribe, akin to
the Arkansas. They killed all the Frenchmen to rob them,
and, as they pretended, to punish the priest for leaving the
Arkansas. Rev. Mr. Davion at the time was ascending
the Mississippi and discovered on the banks of the river the
bodies of these victims of Indian ferocity. He interred them
with the rites of the Church, but the memoirs of the time do
not fix the last resting-place of this first martyr of the Sem
inary of Quebec in the valley of the Mississippi.2
The first attempt by the French to establish any industrial
work on the Mississippi was that of the Sieur Juchereau,
who undertook to conduct a tannery at the mouth of the
Ohio. Here Father John Mermet erected his altar for the
little Catholic settlement, but it did not prosper, and by 1T04:
1 The king of France gave 3,000 livres toward the Seminary missions,
but Bishop St. Vallier now ceased to give the annual donation of 2,000
livres, on the ground that so few missionaries were maintained there.
Cardinal Taschereau, " Memoire."
2 Cardinal Taschereau, "Memoire"; Benard de la Harpe, "Journal
Historique," pp. 38, 73, 87. Nicholas Foucault was born in the diocese
of Paris, ordained at Quebec Dec. 3, 1689, and was Cure of Batiscan in
1690. Tainguay, "Repertoire," p. 65. Penicant (Margry, v., p. 458)
puts his death in 1705, evidently erroneously. It was announced by
Daviou in October, 1702. B6nard de la Harpe, p. 73.
35
546 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
the founder was dead, and the project abandoned. While
Juchereau's establishment lasted Father Mermet ministered
to the French, and made earnest efforts to convert the Mas-
coutin Indians, who had planted their cabins around the
post ; but his mission work, though carried out at the risk of
his life, resulted only in the conversion of a few dying adults
and the baptism of some infants.1
Bishop Saint Vallier in 1703 proposed to the Seminary at
Quebec to erect Mobile into a parish, and to annex it in per
petuity to that institution. The Seminary agreed to supply
clergy for the new parish, which the Bishop formally erected
on the 20th of July, 1703, uniting it to the Seminary of the
Foreign Missions at Paris and Quebec, The Rev. Henry
Roulleaux de la Yente, a priest of the diocese of Bayeux>
•?•
%,
SIGNATURE OP REV. HENRY ROULLEAUX DE LA VENTE.
was then appointed parish priest, and Rev. Alexander Huve>
curate. While awaiting their appearance, the Rev. Mr.
Davion discharged the parochial functions till they arrived
with other priests on the " Pelican," July 24, 1704. In the
same vessel came two Gray Nuns (Sieurs Grises), but not to
remain in the colony ; a number of marriageable girls had
been placed in their care, and after seeing them properly
placed, the Sisters returned.2
'"Relation des Affaires du Canada, 1696," p. 31. Margry, " Etab-
lissements et Decouvertes," v., p. 215. F. Gabriel Marest. Letter from
Cascaskia (Kip's "Jesuit Missions," p. 202).
2Benard de la'IIarpe, pp 84-5. Penicaut, "Relation" in Margry, v.s
pp. 456, 470. Rev. Mr. La Vente's first entry in the Register is Sept. 18,
1704, and Huve's, the 19th.
MOBILE, A PARISH. 547
The first entry in the ancient Register of Mobile, a volume
of great historical interest and value, records the baptism of
an Apalache girl by Rev. Mr. Davion, on the 6th of Septem
ber.
PAC-8IMILE OP THE FIRST ENTRY IN THE PARISH REGISTER OF MOBILE.
The maintenance of the clergy was expected from the
king, who was to pay the parish priest one thousand livres a
year, and the curate six hundred livres a year. They found that
Rev. Mr. Davion had already taken steps to erect a church
and parochial residence at Mobile. The parish priest on his
arrival found Rev. Mr. Davion and the Jesuit Father Peter
Donge lodged in a new house, built on credit, and still with
out door or window. They borrowed seven hundred livres
of Father Donge to enable them to complete it.1
On the 28th of September the Rev. Mr. de la Yente was
formally inducted into his parish, as appears by the follow
ing entry in the ancient parochial register of the Church of
the Immaculate Conception at Mobile :
"I, undersigned, Priest and Missionary Apostolic, attest
to all whom it may concern that in the year of our salvation
1704, on the 28th of the month of September, by virtue of
letters of provision and collation granted and sealed on the
20th of July of last year, by which Monseigneur the most Illus
trious and most Reverend Bishop of Quebec erects a par-
1 Fathers Donge and Limoge embarked for France in the " Pelican,"
in 1704. Penicaut, " Relation " in Margry, v., p. 456 ; but Father Donge
died at Havana in September. Benard de la Harpe, p. 85.
fi48 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
ish church in the place called Fort Louis de la Louisi-
ane, and the cure and care of which he gives to Mr. Henry
Koulleaux de la Yente, Missionary Apostolic of the diocese
of Bayenx, I have placed the said priest in actual and cor
poral possession of the said parish church and of all the
rights thereto belonging, after observing the accustomed and
requisite ceremonies, namely, the entry into the church, the
sprinkling of holy water, the kissing of the high altar, the
touching of the missal, the visit to the Blessed Sacrament of
the altar, the ringing of the bells, which taking of possession
I attest that no one opposed.
"Given in the parish church of Fort Louis, the day
of the month and year aforesaid, in presence of John
Baptiste de Bieville, Lieutenant of the King, and Com
mander of the ' said fort ; of Peter du Quay de Boisbriant,
major; Nicolas de la Salle, scribe and acting commissary of
the Marine.
" D AVION, BIENVILLE, BOISBRIANT, DE LA SALLE."
Late in the year 1705 Father Gravier was attacked by the
Illinois, among whom he had labored so long and so devot
edly. Instigated by the medicine-men, whose knavery the
priest had denounced, they discharged a shower of arrows at
him. One flint-headed weapon pierced his ear, but another
struck him in the elbow, and the stone head was so embedded
in the muscle that it could not be extracted. He also received
a hatchet wound in the arm. The arm swelled fearfully, and
the suffering of the missionary was intense : but his misery
did not touch the hearts of the obdurate Illinois. They
came at night to the number of two hundred to complete
their fell design. Tearing down the palisades around the
house they hoped to find him alone and kill him. Provi
dentially two Frenchmen were there, who after preparing
REV. MR. GERVAISE 'S PROJECT. 549
for death, resolved to let one remain, while the other hastened
to the neighboring camp of the Pottawatomies. A chief
of that tribe hastened up and overawed the murderers.
For three months his brother missioners, Mermet, and John
Mary de Yille, endeavored "to extract the arrow-head, but
finding their eiforts vain, he was sent to Mobile, whence he
proceeded to Paris, and even there the surgeon gave him no
hope of its extraction, though the treatment diminished the
pain.'
He then returned to Louisiana in the " Renommee," which
reached the roadstead at Isle Massacre, February 12, 1708.2
At this time the Rev. Mr. Gervaise, a wealthy young
priest in France, wished to devote some of his patrimony to
found a mission in Louisiana in concert with the Seminary
SIGNATURE OF REV. F. LE 5IAIRE.
of the Foreign Missions. He drew into his project the Rev.
Mr. Le Maire, a virtuous priest, who resigned a good position
at Paris, that of Vicar of St. Jacques de la Boucherie, in or
der to come to America and announce the gospel to the In
dians. The Rev. Mr. Gervaise sent out provisions for three
years, and three workmen to erect a house and chapel, and
set apart sufficient of his estate to form a fund for the sup-
1 Letter of F. Mermet ; Letter of F. Gravier, Paris, March 6, 1707, for
which I am indebted to the venerable Father Felix Martin;. Benard de la
Harpe, " Journal Historique," p. 95.
2 " Lettre du Pere Jacques Gravier, le 23 Fevrier, 1708." NCTV York,
1865.
550 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
port of the mission. At the last moment when Rev. Mr. Le
Maire and all the rest were on board the vessel bound to
Louisiana, an uncle of the Rev. Mr. Gervaise obtained an
order to prevent his departure. He was compelled to remain
in France, but Rev. Mr. Le Maire came over, and was for
several years on the mission in Louisiana. The zealous young
priest was never able to follow out his original intention or
take part in the good work he founded.
Meanwhile the priests of the Seminary were thinned by
death. The Rev. J. B. cle St. Cosrae started late in 1706
from his Natchez mission for Mobile, but while asleep at
night on the banks of the river, his party was attacked and
murdered by the Sitimachas about fifty miles from the mouth
of the Mississippi. He was a native of Canada, born at
Quebec, February 6, 1667, and was the first American priest
who fell by the hands of savages in this country. He en
tered the preparatory seminary at Quebec, July 22, 1675,
and was ordained on the feast of the Purification. After
being missionary at Minas in Nova Scotia, he was sent with
the Rev. Mr. Montigny to the Mississippi. Rev. Mr. St.
Cosine, accustomed to Indian corn and other native fare,
stood the hardships of the mission better than priests from
France, but his health at last gave way, and he was suffering
from a cruel infirmity when he set out for Mobile.1
On New- Year's day, 1707, the Very Rev. Mr. Bergier,
V.G., who had set out from his Tamarois mission, reached
Mobile with tidings of the death of the Canadian priest of
Natchez ; * but on his return to his mission he fell ill. Father
'Cardinal Taschereau, "Memoire"; Bienville to the Minister, 1707.
Le Page du Pratz " Histoire de la Louisiane," i., p. 106. Penicaut,
' Relation " in Margry, v.( p. 433. Claiborne, " Mississippi," Jackson'
1880, p. 23, thinks he was killed near the present Donaldsonville.
2Benard de la Harpe, p. 101.
THE ABBE DE LA VENTE. 551
Gabriel Marest hearing of his condition, hastened from Kas-
kaskia, and remained a week, till seeing his brother priest ap
parently regaining his health and out of danger, he set out for
his own mission, but was almost at once summoned back to
celebrate the requiem mass for Eev. Mr. Bergier, who sud
denly grew worse and expired. This zealous and austere priest
died, according to a memorandum in an ancient breviary in
the Seminary of Quebec, on the 9th of November, 1TOT.
The medicine-men exulted over his death as a triumph, each
one ascribing it to his own incantations, and they broke down
his cross to make the people believe that the mission was
closed forever.1
Louisiana was increasing in population, but the settlers
were not of the sturdy, industrious character found in those
who built up Canada. Times had changed, too ; less respect
was paid to religion, and officials instead of upholding the
Church and its ministers, or setting an example of respect for
morality and religion, frequently afforded a pretext for those
viciously inclined to plunge into every kind of excess. In
the documents of the time instances constantly occur where
the ministers of religion were openly treated with contempt.
The Rev. Mr. de la Vente was a man of eloquence, and
entered on his duties earnestly ; but his censure of the open
profligacy in the colony made him many enemies, not the
least being Governor Bienville, who withheld the salaries due
the clergy. Those who sold liquor without limit to the In
dians, encouraging them in drunkenness and violence, and
all the loose livers, were arrayed against the first pastor of
Mobile. In 1707, however, something was done for religion at
that post. A larger residence was erected for the priests at the
1 Cardinal Taschereau, "Histoire des Missions du Serninaire de Que
bec": F. Gabriel Marest, Letter (Kip, pp. 211-4).
>?
Ctre
552 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
left of the fort on an eminence overlooking all the surround
ing country.1
It is said that after the arrival of Father Gravier from
France in 1708, Bienville wished to instal him in the parish
church, and maintained him there till orders came from France
to restore the church to the priests of the Seminary of the
Foreign Missions to which it was canonically united ; but the
Kegister of Mobile has no entry by Father Gravier. The
Eev. Mr. de la Vente was suffering from a painful disease
and soon after returned to France, where he arrived in Oc
tober, 1T10, in a dy-
ing condition."
The Kev. Mr.
SIGNATUKE OP KEV. ALEXANDER HTTVE. IIuVC, wllO Came OUt
as Yicar, besides as
sisting in the parish church, had taken charge of a band of
fugitive Apalaches. These flying from English persecution,
had settled about ten miles from Mobile.3
They were Catholics, and had erected a chapel and house
for a missionary, but Kev. Mr.' Huve having no ability for
acquiring Indian languages, was never able to instruct them
in their own tongue.
In 1709, La Yigne Yoisin began a fort on Isle Dauphine,
1 Penicaut (Margry , v. , p. 471).
'2 Not only Bienville and Father Gravier, but also de Boisbriant censure
the course pursued by Rev. Mr. de la Vente ; but that clergyman in a
memoir to Pontchartrain (Gayarre, i., pp. 116-121), draws a terrible pic
ture of the prevalent profligacy, neglect of religious observances, and
contempt for the ministers of religion. He solicited permission to marry
settlers to converted Indian women so as to prevent illicit connections,
but this was refused. (Ib., p. 148.)
3 Penicaut (Margry, v., p. 460) says they arrived near Mobile toward
the end of 1705. After Rev. Mr. Huve, the Carmelite Father Charles,
and the Recollect F. Victorin Dupui were missionaries of the Apalaches,
and the latter also of the Mobilians. Register of Mobile.
THE APALACHES. 553
and more attentive to religion than most colonizers of Louisi
ana, lie erected a fine church near the redoubt. It faced the
port where the vessels anchored, so that all on board could in
a moment land to hear mass. This church drew many set
tlers to the island.1 Here the Rev. Mr. Huve became chap
lain, but was nearly killed in Xovember, 1710, by the Eng
lish who made a descent on the island, and lost all his effects.
He then retired to the Mississippi with the French, but
wearying of their little respect for religion, solicited ' permis
sion to undertake an Indian mission.2
The Rev. Mr. Davion maintained his Tonica mission till
1708, when parties of English Indians menaced it, and he
withdrew to Mobile, preparing to return to France ; but the
destitute condition of the colony induced him to remain for
several years.3
Rev. Mr. Le Maire acted also as chaplain in the fort.
The little village of the Apalaches showed that the mis
sions of the Spanish Fathers had not been fruitless. Their
old enemies, the Alibamons, pursued them and destroyed their
new village, but Mr. de Bienville assigned them another re
serve and grain to plant their fields. When the French left
their first Mobile fort 4 these Indians followed, and Bienville
'Penicaut, "Relation" (Margry, v., p. 482).
2 He struggled on for some years, till having become almost blind, he
returned to France in 1727.
3 He left Louisiana in 1725, and died of gout among his kindred in
France, April 8, 1726. Le Page du Pratz asked Mr. Davion whether his
zeal for the salvation of the Indians was regarded by progress. " He re
plied almost in tears, that notwithstanding the profound respect which
these people bore him, he could with great difficulty succeed in baptizing
some children at the point of death ; that those who had attained the age
of reason excused themselves from embracing our holy religion by say
ing that they were too old to subject themselves to rules so difficult to ob
serve." " Histoire de la Louisiane," i., p. 123.
4 The original fort at Mobile was above the present city, with store-
f)54 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
assigned them ground on Saint Martin's River, a league above
the post. Penicaut, a worthy chronicler of the early French
days of Louisiana, says they were the only Christian nation who
came to them from the Spanish territory. He gives inter
esting details: "The Apalaches have public service like
Catholics in France. Their great feast is Saint Louis's day.
On the eve they come to invite the officers of the fort to the
festivities in their village, and they offer good cheer that day
to all who come, especially the French.
" The priests of our fort go there to say the high mass,
which they hear with much devotion, chanting the psalms in
Latin as they do in France, and after dinner Vespers and
Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. The men and women
are very properly dressed that day. The men wear a kind
of cloth coat and the women mantles, petticoats of silk in
French style, except that they wear no head-dresses, going
bareheaded. Their long, jet-black hair is plaited, and hangs
down the back in one or two plaits, such as Spanish girls
wear. Those whose hair is too long, turn it up to the mid
dle of the back, and tie it with ribbon.
" They have a church where one of our French priests
goes on Sundays and holidays to say mass. They have a
baptismal font to baptize their children, and a cemetery be
side their church, with a cross erected, and there they bury
their dead." '
The efforts of the Seminary of the Foreign Missions in the
Mississippi had produced little result ; the station at Tama-
rois, or Cahokia, as it was generally called, alone showing any
indication of permanent good, a French population having
gathered there, numbering forty-seven families in 1715.
houses and docks below it. The removal was made of both to the
present site.
1 Penicaut, " Relation " in Margry, v., pp. 486-7.
V. REV. DOMINIC M. VARLET, V.G.
555
The Directors of the Seminary at Paris, in hope of giving
new life to a mission which had cost life, and toil, and out
lay, selected as Superior of their priests in the Valley of the
Mississippi, the Rev. Dominic Mary Varlet, a man of energy
and ability, who had been ordained for six years, and was in
YERT REV. DOMINIC MARY VARLET, VICAR-GENERAL,
AFTERWARDS BISHOP OF BABYLON.
Mgh repute as a priest of virtue and piety. He went to the
Tamarois mission by way of Canada. On the 6th of Octo
ber, 1717, Bishop Saint Vallier, reciting his learning, energy,
probity, and other virtues, appointed him Vicar-General,
especially for Fort La Mobile or Fort Louis, and the places
5o6 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
and missions near and along the river Mississippi, with juris
diction over all priests secular or regular, except priests of
the Society of Jesus, who were subject to their own Superior.
He gave him power to make a visitation, to grant and with
draw faculties, to absolve in reserved eases, and generally
exercise in full all powers of Vicar-General.1 As the V. Rev.
Mr. Varlet represented to the Bishop that a considerable
time might elapse before he could reach the Tamarois mis
sion, and that meantime the Seminary might be unable to
send a successor to the Rev. Mr. Bergier at that place, he
therefore solicited a confirmation of the original Letters
Patent granted to the Seminary for the Mississippi missions,
and especially for that of the Tamarois, for fear that the
original might be treated as obsolete, and possession of the
mission disputed by clergymen of some other organization.
The bishop accordingly renewed his Letters of May 10 and
July 14, 1698.2
The Yery Rev. Mr. Varlet proceeded to his mission, but
of his labors in the Mississippi Yalley we find no details,
though his name appears in a few entries in the Register of
Mobile,3 showing that he visited the country from Cahokia
to the gulf. He is said to have spent six years on the mis
sion, and returning to Europe, was appointed in 1718 Bishop
of Ascalon, and Coadjutor to the Bishop of Babylon, and
after receiving episcopal consecration, set out for the East,
Meanwhile evidence had reached Rome, that Mgr. Varlet
was an active adherent of the doctrines of Jansenius. The
Sovereign Pontiff recalled Mgr. Varlet, now by succession
1 " Archives of the Archbishopric of Quebec," Registre C, p. 112.
* Ibid., Registre C, p. 113.
3 The entries extend from March 2, 1713, to Jan. 13, 1715, his signa
tures in 1715 being as Vicar-General, which supposes an appointment
prior to that of 1717.
ILLINOIS MISSIONS. 557
Bishop of Babylon, but he withdrew to Utrecht in Holland,
where he took an active part in establishing the schismatical
Jansenist Church, consecrating four successive pretended
archbishops, and died near that city in 1742, at the age of
sixty-four, after having been excommunicated by several
Popes.
AVhen the Company of the West established Fort Char-
tres in 1718, a little French settlement soon grew up around
it, and near the Indian villages. The missionary of the Kac-
kaskias was Father John Le Boullenger, who, studying pro
foundly the language of the Illinois Indians, drew up a Gram
mar and Dictionary, with a very full Catechism and prayers.
The manuscript of what I believe to be his work is still ex
tant in a large folio volume, formerly in the possession of
Hon. Henry C. Murphy, now in the Carter Brown Library
at Providence. This eminent missionary opens the Kegister
k
<~* ft
' 7 ^*''< '/ ^
TITLE OF THE PARISH REGISTER OF KASKASKIA.
of " the Church of the Mission and Parish of the Concep
tion of Our Lady," on the 17th of June, 1719, styling him
self " chaplain of the troops," of which Pierre de Boisbriant,
the king's lieutenant, was commander. The next year Fa
ther Xicholas Ignatius de Beaubois, S.J., signs as parish
priest, as though the parish had been then canonically erected
and he installed. Thenceforward the banns of marriage
558 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
were regularly published, and all the regulations of Canadian
parishes observed.1
In 1721 Father P. Francis X. de Cliarlevoix, S.J., the His
torian of New France, made a tour to the Lakes and down
the Mississippi. At Cahokia and Tamarois he found Kev.
Dominic Anthony Thaumur de la Source and Kev. Mr.
Mercier. There were two Kaskaskia missions, one-half
a league above Fort Chartres, under the care of Father
John Le Eoullenger and Father Joseph Francis de Kereben ;
the other two leagues distant under Father John Charles
Guymonneau, who was about this time Superior of the
mission.
There was a priest at the Yazoo, in 1723, the Abbe Juif,
but at Natchez mass had not been said for five years, and
people were joined together merely by a civil marriage.
Father Cliarlevoix heard the confessions of all who chose to
avail themselves of his presence.2 In fact children born at
New Orleans and Natchez were baptized at Kaskaskia.3 But
the Jesuit Father de Ville seems to have been sent soon
after to Natchez.4
The French in the Illinois country were so profligate at
this time, and made so light of the reproofs of the mission
aries, that Father Gabriel Marest appealed in 1711 to Gov-
"Registre des BaptSmes faits dans 1'Eglise de la Mission et dans la
Paroisse de la Conception de N. Dame." I was about to publish Le
Boullenger's Dictionary in my Library of American Linguistics, and had
begun the printing when the volume was recalled. Another Dictionary,
supposed to be the work of Father Gravier, is in the possession of Hon.
J. Hammond Trumbull, of Hartford, Conn.
* Charlevoix, " Histoire de la Nouvelle France," iii., pp. 392-4.
3 "Registre de la Conception de X. Dame," Mar. 15, Nov. 19, 1720,
May 18, 1721.
4 Le Page du Pratz, " Histoire de la Louisiane," i., p. 130.
ILLINOIS MISSIONS. 559
ernor Bienville, who sent up a sergeant and twelve men to
maintain order. Those who wished to marry Indian wives
were encouraged, and many did so, as several had done be
fore at the old town. The Kaskaskias were industrious ; the
Jesuit Fathers had taught them to use the plough in their
fields near Lake Pimiteouy, and when they began to obtain
horses from the Caddoes, they raised large fields of grain,
which they ground at the three mills in their district. The
women made a cloth of bison wool, and wore a waist and
petticoat, with a long robe above, the work of their own
hands.
The majority of the Illinois were at this time Christians.
They had a very large church in their village, with a high
altar and two lateral ones, a baptismal font and a bell. They
attended mass and vespers regularly, singing the psalms and
hymns in their own language; the French when they at
tended, singing alternate verses in Latin.1
The influence of religion can be seen in some pious
children brought up in the Illinois country. Mary Turpin,
daughter of a Canadian father and an Illinois mother, re-
O
markable for her modesty, piety, and industry, became a
nun in the Ursuline Convent, New Orleans, where she died
in 1761, at the age of fifty-two. She was certainly the first
American-born nun in this country.2
Fort Chartres, a log structure near the river, begun by de
Boisbriant in 1718 was long the chief French post on the
northern Mississippi, though not rebuilt in stone till 1757. It
became, too, the centre and seat of government of the Illinois
country. The chapel was dedicated to Saint Anne, and as
1 Penicaut, " Relation " in Margry, v., pp. 490-1.
2 "Lettre Circulaire de sa mort."
560 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
settlers selected grounds near the fort, the little village that
grew up formed in time the parish of St. Anne.1
Another village was formed at Prairie du Rocher five
miles from the fort on land granted to Boisbriant. Here a
church was dedicated to Saint Joseph, and village and church
remain to this day with the old title, although the church
and village of Saint Anne de Fort Chartres were in time so
invaded by the Mississippi in its floods that they were aban
doned, and the inhabitants removed chiefly, it would seem,
to Prairie du Rocher.
Two of the chaplains of the Fort, the Abbe Joseph Ga-
gnon, parish priest of Cahokia, and Father Luke Collet, a Rec
ollect, died there, and were buried in the church of Saint
Anne, but when that edifice threatened to fall with the
crumbling earth into the river, their bodies were piously
transferred to the church of Saint Joseph.2
The spiritual condition of the Mississippi Valley called
forth this year the following pastoral from Bishop Saint Yal-
lier :
" ^Vre, John, by the grace of God and of the Holy Apos
tolic See, Bishop of Quebec, to our most beloved brethren in
Jesus Christ, the missionaries of the Society of Jesus, scat
tered throughout the extent of Micicipi, and to the faithful
who are under their guidance, Health and Benediction in Our
Lord.
" The reports which reach us from all sides, from France
1 The Register beginning Sept. 13, 1721, is still preserved at Prairie
du Rocher.
2 The Abb 3 Gannon, ordained April 23, 1730, died in July, 1759.
Leonard Philibert Collet, who took in religion the name of Luke, was
chaplain at the French posts in Pennsylvania, Presquile, and Riviere aux
Boeufs. He was born Nov. 3, 1715, and ordained in 1753. Tanguay, " Re
pertoire General." Their bodies were removed by Father S. L. Meuriii,
S.J., in 1768.
BP. SAINT VALUER' H PASTORAL. 5t>i
as well as from the upper country, of the disregard of religion
and purity, in which the French recently come fn>m Franc-*.-,
of every kind of condition, live in the vast count is vliu. »f
they liave come to inhabit along that great river, making- -^
fear that they will draw down upon us the maledk-ri-.u* <rf
God. fulminated against those who will not live ( Ln T,;I,
lives, and according to their state, instead of the bh-
promised in many places of the sacred books to .men of g< * •«'
who seek to serve God well, We have resolved to wi'tl^UM-:
with all our .strength the public vices and dii*or»lti!>, wlm
might be calculated to draw down misfortunes upon u.-.
Wherefore to apply most efficacious remedies, we or<.U-rn »••*--.
who under our authority have the conduct of souk, to d«-<-iaif
to them, that it is our intention to regard *» giving f.v -.••
scandal all who in contempt <-t diviw and hmi>ai; L-.w- ^-.-
far as to commit wai >i-i >i- ir«j>i«t;
their action?, or by pu!0:* v'^.. h\ ilUrt-
ganl of all probii»iti«m- iii!jni6twti t. ik -01 ,****& in fne>-
quenting and even dw-.-ilit^ i^xi-t'h*.! \\ > ilo ••» ^*in^ chat
the?*1 classes. of jwrsoiii? be admitted in t!ii. *••.?,' :. «r ti« the
sacraments, but that they should be subjtruxi t«.« j>u»ti.«- pc:
ance, which shall be imposed upon them by our Vicw-lTeu
eral, conformably to the desire of the Holy Council of ln:nt,
which wished public penance imposed on public sinners
Given at Quebec under our hand and that of our Sec-retarv..
sealed with the seal of our arms this 19th day of Jah one
thousand seven hundred and twenty-one.
" JOHN, BISHOP OF QIKM« . .'
This was apparently the last official act of Bishop 8*<:.
ValJier referring directly to the church in the Miv^
•' Archives <:•. . <.'•< '
86
562 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Valley in which he had taken such interest in his long and
eventful administration.1
The country of the Illinois having been attached by the
French government to Louisiana, negro and Indian slavery
was introduced, not without detriment to the moral tone of
the community. This connection involved that part of the
country in the Indian wars, and the Register of Kaskaskia
chronicles requiem masses offered for families and individuals
who fell victims to savage fury while descending the Missis
sippi."
In August, 1717, the Regent Duke of Orleans in the name
of Louis XV., issued Letters Patent establishing a joint stock
company called the " Company of the West," to which
Louisiana was transferred. The fifty-third clause reads as
follows : " As in the settlement of the countries granted to
the said Company by these Presents, We regard especially
the glory of God by procuring the salvation of the inhabit
ants, Indians, savages and negroes, whom we desire to be in
structed in the true religion, the said Company shall be
obliged to build at its expense churches at the places where it
forms settlements ; as also to maintain there the necessary
number of approved ecclesiastics; either with the rank of
parish priests or such others as shall be suitable, in order to
preach the Holy Gospel there, perform Divine service, and
1 As we shall see, Bishop Saint Vallier relinquished the care of Louisiana
to the coadjutor assigned to him a few years after this date. He died on the
26th of December, 1727, at the age of 64, at the General Hospital of
Quebec, which he had founded. Bishop Saint Vallier's charity and love
of the poor were extreme, and he is said to have expended on his diocese
200,000 crowns. " Monseigneur de Saint Vallier et 1'Hopital General de
Quebec," Quebec, 1882, pp. 1-291. The name is frequently written
Saint Valier, but Saint Vallier is evidently the proper form. Ib. . p. 709.
- Register of Kaskaskia, April 29, 1723, Dec. 18, 1719, June 22, 1722,
etc.
THE COMPANY OF THE WEST. 563
administer the sacraments ; all under the authority of the
Bishop of Quebec, the said colony remaining in his diocese,
as heretofore ; and the parish priests and other ecclesiastics
which the said Company shall maintain there, shall be at his
nomination and patronage."
Meanwhile the Report of Father de Charlevoix as to the
spiritual destitution of the colony had induced efforts to re
lieve it. The Commissaries of the Council of the "Western
Company by an ordinance of May 16, 1722, professed to
have been issued by the consent of the Bishop of Quebec,
divided Louisiana into three ecclesiastical sections. The part
north of the Ohio and corresponding to it on the west of the
Mississippi was left in the care of the Society of Jesus and
the Seminaries of the Foreign Missions of Quebec and Paris,
who had already permanent establishments there.
For the new French settlements on and near the mouth of
the Mississippi a different arrangement was made. A coad
jutor had been appointed to Bishop Saint Vallier in the per
son of a Capuchin Father of Meudon, Louis Francis Duples-
sis de Mornay, who was consecrated Bishop of Eumenia in
Phrygia and coadjutor of Quebec, in the church of the Ca
puchins at Paris on the 22d of April. 1714. This prelate never
came to America, although he in time succeeded to the see of
Quebec. He remained in France, and as Bishop Saint Yal-
lier appointed him Yicar-General for Louisiana, he assumed
the direction of the Church in that province.
When the Company of the West applied to him for priests
1 Le Page du Pratz, " Histoire de la Louisiane," i., pp. 77-8. By the
"Black Code" (1724), all worship but the Catholic was forbidden.
Slaves were to receive religious instruction, but they were not to be married
by any clergyman without the permission of the masters ; marriage be
tween whites and blacks was severely prohibited, and clergymen sec
ular or regular forbidden to officiate at such unions.
564 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
to minister to the settlers in the province, and continue the
work among the French and Indians begun by the Jesuit
Fathers and the Priests of the Foreign Missions, Bishop
de Mornay offered the more populous field to the order of
which he was a member, and in 1717 the Capuchin Fathers
of the province of Champagne undertook the charge, Royal
SIGNATURE OF FATHER JOHN MATTHEW.
letters having been obtained in April of that year to authorize
their acceptance of the mission.
No immediate steps were taken, however ; years passed,
and it was not till the commencement of 1721 that any Fa
thers of the Capuchin order appeared in Louisiana.
The last entry of the secular clergy at Mobile was that of
Rev. Alexander Huve, on the 13th of January, 1721, and
SIGNATURE OF FATHER MATTHEW AS VICAR-APOSTOLIC.
with him ceased the work of the priests of the Seminary.
On the 18th the Capuchin Father, John Matthew, signs as
Parish Priest of Mobile.1 As these Fathers came directly
from France, and had no personal relations with the Bishop of
Quebec, they found applications to him long and tedious.
1 Register of Mobile, Jan. 18, 1721.
COMMENCEMENT OF NEW ORLEANS. 565
Father John Matthew was evidently the Norman Capuchin
who applied to Rome for special powers for fifteen missions
under his charge, representing that the great distance at
which he was from the Bishop of Quebec made it impracti
cable to apply when necessary.1 A brief was really issued, and
Father John Matthew construed the powers it conferred so
liberally as to assume that it exempted him from episcopal
jurisdiction, and made him a Vicar-Apostolic, for he signs
himself from January 9, 1722, to March 14, 1723, F. Mat
thew, Vicar- Apostolic and Parish Priest of Mobile.
New Orleans was commenced by Bienville in 1718, and a
plan for the new city was laid out by La Tour, the engineer.
It was a rectangle, eleven squares along the river, and five
in depth. In the centre on the river a square was reserved
as the " Place d'Armes," and the square behind it on the Rue
de Chartres was reserved for the parish church. But when
Father Charlevoix arrived there in January, 1722, the city
consisted of about a hundred temporary sheds ; there were
only two or three fairly built houses. No chapel had yet
been erected ; half of a wretched warehouse had at first been
assigned for the chapel, but he says though " they had kindly
consented to lend it to the Lord, he had scarcely taken pos
session, when he was requested to withdraw, and seek shelter
under a tent." Yet some rude structure was soon put up,
for the hurricane of September 12, 1722, which prostrated
thirty log-huts or houses, demolished also the church.2 This
first church is said to have been dedicated to Saint Ignatius,
and to have been attended by a Capuchin Father Anthony.
'Michael a Tugio, "Bullarium Ord. FF. Minor. S.P. Francisci Ca-
pucinorum." Fol. 1740-52 ; vii., pp. 322-3.
' Charlevoix, " Histoire de la Nouvelle France," ii., pp. 434, 458 ; iii.,
p. 430. Shea's Translation, vi., pp. 40, 69.
563 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Iu 1724 or '5 a brick church was at last erected, which stood
for about sixty years.1
The Company by its ordinance of 1722 assigned the dis
trict between the Mississippi and the Rio Perdido, with the
country northward to the Ohio, to the Discalced Carmelite
Fathers, who were to have their chief station at Mobile
This order never seems to have entered on the field heartily,
although one member, Father Charles, acted for a time as
missionary to the Apalaches.2 It is asserted that the Bishop
of Quebec, dissatisfied with their inaction, assigned their dis-
SIGNATURE OF THE CARMELITE FATHER CHARLES.
trict also to the Capuchins by an ordinance of December 19,
1722.
The Capuchin Father Bruno de Langres set out from
France as Superior with several religious in 1722 ; but
the next year Father Raphael de Luxembourg, Superior of
the Mission, who arrived in the spring, could obtain only a
single room for a chapel and another for the four Capuchins
who were in Louisiana. So indifferent were the people that
only thirty or forty attended the parochial mass on Sunday.8
A memoir favorable to the Capuchins says : " The Com
pany accordingly seeing that they did not furnish as many
priests as were necessary," " resolved to place Capuchins in
all the French posts, and to entrust the spiritual direction of
1 Loewenstein, "History of the St. Louis Cathedral of New Orleans,"
p. 16.
' Register of Mobile, Apl. 18-25, 1721.
'" U. S. Cath. Hist. Mag.," ii., pp. 295-300.
THE CAPUCHINS. 567
the Indians to the Jesuits, during the pleasure of the Bishop
of Quebec, who in his letters highly approved this arrange
ment." l
Meanwhile the exclusive district of the Jesuits and Semi
nary priests had been extended down to Natchez. The Fa
thers of the Society of Jesus were thus left to establish
Indian missions in all parts of Louisiana, with a residence at
New Orleans, but were not to exercise any ecclesiastical func
tions there without the consent of the Capuchins, and to min
ister to the French in their Illinois district with the Priests
of the Foreign Missions, where the Superior of each body
was Yicar-General, as the Capuchin Superior was at New
Orleans.
The Company on the 27th of June, 1725, issued a formal
diploma to the Capuchins, which was approved by the king
at Chantilly, July 15, in the same year."
As the colony increased, churches were erected at Mobile,
New Orleans, and other settlements. A few years later
the Capuchins in Louisiana had charge of New Orleans,
which had now become the most important place, and con
tained a flock of six hundred Catholic families ; Mobile had
declined to merely sixty families; the Apalache Indians
numbering thirty families ; six at Balize, two hundred at Les
Allemands, one hundred at Pointe Coupee, six at Natchez,
1 "Memoire concernant 1'Eglise de la Louisiane (1722-1728) du 21
Novembre, 1728," in Gravier, "Relation du Voyage des Dames Relig-
ieuses Ursulines," Paris, 1872, p. 113. This "Memoire" is unsigned,
and contains evident errors, so that its authority cannot be considered
great. No ordinance of Bp. Saint Vallier on the matter exists at Quebec,
and the whole affair seems to have been managed by Bp. de Mornay.
The first Capuchins certainly took possession at Mobile in 1721, one as
Cure or parish priest, and no Carmelite appears as parish priest.
°- Michael a Tujrio, " Bullarium Ord. FF. Minor. S.P. Francisci Ca-
puciuorum," 1740-52, vii., pp. 328-9.
568 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
and fifty at Natchitoches, besides three other missions which
are not named, comprised the whole.1
The founder of the Jesnit mission in Louisiana was Father
Nicholas Ignatius de Beaubois, born at Orleans, October 15,
1689, who entered the Society just after completing his sev
enteenth year. He was, as we have seen, on the Illinois mis
sion in 1720, when he was selected to establish the new and
difficult work assigned to his order,2 and was appointed
Vicar-General. After visiting Louisiana he returned to
France to obtain Fathers of the Society for the missions to
be established, and also to obtain Sisters of some order who
jfr'/
SIGNATURE OF FATHER DE BEATTBOIS.
would be brave enough to cross the ocean to assume the
charge of an hospital and open an academy. He applied
with the consent of Bishop Saint Yallier to the Ursulines of
Eouen. Those devout ladies accepted the call to the distant
field of labor, but at the end of a year little progress was
made, so many difficulties were raised by one and another.
In one case it was even necessary to obtain the authority of
Cardinal Fleury. The Koyal Patent authorizing the Ursu
lines to found a convent in Louisiana was issued September
18, 1726.8
The Company of the West agreed to maintain six nuns,
to pay their passage and that of four servants. Two sisters
"Bullarium Capuciuorum," vii., p. 330. Two Capuchin Fathers
arrived on the " Venus '' in 1722. Dumont, " Memoires," ii., p. 82.
'-' F. Felix Martin, Liste in Carayon, " Bannissement," pp. 120, 126.
" Brevet en favour des Religieuses Ursulines de la Louisiane "; Tran-
chepain, " Relation du Voyage," p. 61.
MOTHER MARY TRANCHEPAIN. 569
were to have the care of the sick, one to be ready to replace
either of them in case of necessity ; a fourth was to manage
the domestic affairs of the hospital, and one was to conduct
a free school for the poor.
At last on the 12th of January, 1727, Mother Mary Tran-
chepain of Saint Augustine, with seven professed nuns from
Kouen, Havres, Van-
nes, Ploermel, Hen-
nebon, and Elbceuf, c ^7
with a novice and SIGNATUKE OF MOTHEB DE TKANCHEPAIN.
two seculars, met at
the infirmary of the Ursulines at Hennebon, ready to embark
for Louisiana. They set sail on the 22d of the ensuing
month, accompanied by Fathers Tartarin and Doutreleau.
After a long and tedious voyage, stopping at Madeira for
provisions, they reached Louisiana, and in boats slowly made
their way to New Orleans, and on the 6th of August, Mother
Tranchepain reached that city to begin the first convent of
religious women within the present limits of the Republic.
Father de Beaubois received the Sisters, and escorted them to
their temporary home, where the Ursuline Convent of Xew
Orleans was founded August 7, 1727, to begin the work of
education and cliarity, which has been continued under live
different national flags in its existence of more than a cen
tury and a half.
The building hired for them was to be occupied till their
convent and hospital were completed. It was small and in
convenient, and stood in the square now bounded by Ursu
line, Hospital, Decatur, and Chartres Streets, in the south
west of the city. The six months in which the new build
ings were promised, and as many years, passed before the
convent was ready to receive them, one of the professed nuns
570 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
dying before the wished-for day.1 It is even stated that the
nuns occupied for a time a second convent on a short street
opening on the levee, and still called " Nun Street," as a
neighboring one is " Keligious Street." 2
At last on the 17th of July, 1734, a procession issued from
the temporary convent, twenty young girls, attired as angels,
one to represent Saint Ursula, eleven to portray her host of
martyred disciples. The scholars and orphans followed,
then came the Jesuit Fathers, de Beaubois and Petit, and
the Capuchin Father Philip bearing the Blessed Sacrament
under a canopy. Behind it came the nineteen Ursuline nuns
in their choir-mantles, veiled, each carrying a lighted taper.
Governor Bienville, with the Intendant and officers, followed,
and then the citizens, the procession being flanked on either
side by the military force of the colony, the drums and in
struments blending their sounds with the religious chants as
they moved along. At the parish church Father Petit de
livered a sermon on the importance of Christian education.
Then after receiving the benediction of the Blessed Sacra
ment the procession moved to the convent, the bells of
which rang out a welcome as it approached.
The cloister was then established, and the Ursuline Com
munity began its labors. The buildings, in spite of the time
taken to erect them, and the money ostensibly expended,
were by no means adequate to the wants of the community,
1 Tranchepain, " Relation du Voyage des premieres Ursulines," New
York, 1859. Gravier, " Relation du Voyage des Dames Religieuses Ur
sulines de Rouen & la Nouvelle Orleans." This work gives letters of
Marie Hacherd, a novice, to her father, and embodies the account of
Mother Tranchepain.
' " Ursulines of New Orleans/' New Orleans, 1886. One of the nuns,
Marianne Boullenger de Ste. Angelique, was a sister of the Jesuit Father
of the same name in Illinois.
THE URSULINE CONVENT.
571
who were compelled at once to begin another structure for
their day-school. By prudence and patience the Ursuliues
at last had hospital and schools on a solid basis, but they
were grieved to see the people so indifferent to the educa
tional advantages their academy afforded. The hospital un
der their management gave such general satisfaction that it
was resorted to by all. The daughters of the better class were
educated in their academy, many in time marrying French
TTRSUI-INE CONVENT, NEW ORLEANS, BEGUN IN 1727, NOW RESI
DENCE OF THE ARCHBISHOP.
and Spanish officials of rank, and doing honor in other lands
to their training by the exhibition of Christian graces.
The Ursuline Convent thus erected still stands, and is the
oldest building in the city of New Orleans, as it is the oldest
conventual structure in the United States. Occupied for some
years past as the residence of the Archbishop, it has not lost
its religious character. It stands on Ursuline Street, near
Coiide.
572 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
As we have seen by the arrangement of the trading Com
pany, the highly educated Jesuits were confined to the In
dian field, and were not allowed to exercise the ministry
among the settlers of Louisiana, who were assigned to a less
cultured body.
The first Father who arrived to take part in the Louisiana
missions was the Canadian Michael Baudouin, followed in 1726
by Fathers Mathurin le Petit, Paul du Poisson, John Souel,
Alexis de Guyenne, and John Dumas. The next year, as
we have seen, Fathers Tartarin and Doutreleau arrived on
the " Gironde " with the Ursulines.
Father Dumas went up to the Illinois missions ; Father
du Poisson was sent to the Arkansas, who had received no
instruction since Eev. Nicholas Foucault's death ; Father de
Guyenne undertook to plant a mission among the Aliba-
mons, and Father le Petit among the Choctaws.
A chaplain had been sent out by Law to attend the set
tlers whom he planted on his grant upon the Arkansas, but
this clergyman died just as the vessel reached the mouth of
the Mississippi, and Father du Poisson found not only In
dians but French settlers who required his services. He be
gan to study the language of the Arkansas Indians in order
to instruct them, and Father Souel, though often prostrated
by disease, was equally diligent among the Yazoos,1 the neigh
boring French post having been in 1723 attended by the
Abbe Juif, who had served as chaplain in the French army,
and who in a terrible drought induced his people at the
Yazoo to make a general fast and attend the Forty Hours
Devotion to obtain rain from heaven."
In 1728 the Capuchins were thus distributed : Y. Rev.
1 Letter of Father Du Poisson, " Lettres Edifiantes " (Kip, pp. 231-257).
2 Dumont, "Memoires Historiques sur la Louisiane," i., pp. 164, 174.
THE NATCHEZ MASSACRE. 573
Father Eaphael, Vicar-General of the Bishop of Quebec,
and parish priest of New Orleans, with Father Hyacinth
vicar, and Father Cecilius, schoolmaster, were at the capital ;
Father Theodore at Chapitoulas ; Father Philip at Les Alle-
mands ; Father Gaspar at Balize ; Father Mathias at Mobile ;
with Father Victorin Dupui, a Recollect, as parish priest of
the Apalaches ; Father Maximin at Natch itoches, and Father
Philibert at Natchez, described by Father le Petit as a worthy,
zealous priest. While the Jesuits, whose Superior, Father
de Beaubois, had been recalled, awaited the arrival at New
Orleans of the
newly appointed
Superior, Father
Mathurin le Pe
tit, from his mis- _j£ £/<:*<: A
3 SIGNATURES OF THE JESUIT FATHER MATHURIN LE
Choctaws, Fa- PETIT, AND THE RECOLLECT FATHER VICTORIN.
ther da Poisson
was among the Arkansas Indians; Fathers Tartarin and
le Boullenger at Kaskaskia ; Father Guymonneau among
the Metchigameas ; Father Doutreleau on the Ouabache ;
Father Souel among the Yazoos ; and Father Baudouin at
tempting the dangerous task of establishing a mission among
the treacherous Chickasaws.
These Indian missions were, however, nearly broken up in
1729 by the Natchez. Provoked by the tyranny and ra
pacity of Chopart, the French commandant, that tribe rose
against the French and massacred all they met. Father du
Poisson, on his way to New Orleans to explain to Governor
Perrier the wants of his mission, reached Natchez on the
26th of November, and finding the Capuchin Father absent,
remained at the request of the people to officiate for them
on the following day, the first Sunday of Advent. He also
574 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
attended the sick, and on Monday, after offering the Holy
Sacrifice, was carrying the Blessed Sacrament to some sick
persons, when the signal for the massacre was given. A
gigantic chief sprang upon the unsuspecting priest, hurled
him to the ground, and by repeated blows of his tomahawk
severed his head from his body. The only words the mis
sionary could utter were : " Ah ! my God ! ah ! my God ! "
An officer who tried to save him was shot down. In a few
moments every Frenchman but two was slain, arid most of
the women ; the rest were reduced to a wretched slavery.
The Yazoos, drawn into a general conspiracy against the
French by the Natchez, lay in wait for Father Souel on the
llth of December, as he returned from a visit to the chief.
As the Jesuit Father entered a ravine, he fell dead, riddled
by a volley of musket-balls. One of the murderers arrayed
himself in the missionary's clothes, and hastened to the
Natchez, to show that the Yazoos had fulfilled their pledge.
The rest plundered the house of Father Souel, and the next
day surprised and murdered the garrison of the French post.
Father Doutreleau had set out from Illinois for Father
Souel's station, but landed on the river-side on New- Year's
Day, 1T30, to say mass. He had set up his altar, and was
about to begin the mass, when some Yazoos landed near the
party. The French boatmen of the missionary were igno
rant of the Indian outbreak, and allowed the Yazoos to kneel
down behind them. The mass began, and as the priest ut
tered the u Kyrie Eleison," the Indians fired a volley, wound
ing Father Doutreleau, and killing one of his boatmen. The
others fled, and Father Doutreleau knelt to receive the final
blow ; but when the Indians firing wildly missed him again
and again, he followed his boatmen, vested as he was. He
reached the boat by wading, and though as he climbed in he
received a discharge of shot in the mouth, he took the rud-
JES UIT MISSION A RIES. 575
der, and the boatmen plying their paddles with superhuman
energy, soon left their murderous assailants far behind. Fa
ther Doutreleau reached New Orleans safely, and there his
wounds were treated.1
A naval officer of this period, who must be regarded as
impartial, draws this picture of these missionaries of the
Mississippi Valley : " I cannot help doing the justice due
the Jesuit Fathers in regard to their missions. [Nothing is
more edifying for religion than their conduct, and the un
wearied zeal with which they labor for the conversion of
these nations. Picture to yourself a, Jesuit four hundred
leagues away in the woods, with no conveniences, no provis
ions, and most frequently with no resource but the liberality
of people who know not God, compelled to live like them,
to pass whole years without receiving any tidings, with sav
ages who have only the countenance of human beings, among
whom, instead of finding society or relief in sickness, he is
daily exposed to perish and be massacred. This is done daily
by these Fathers in Louisiana and Canada." '
The French authorities immediately prepared to punish
the Natchez, and arrayed all the tribes under their influence
against that tribe and the Chickasaws, who espoused their
cause. The Indian nations on the Mississippi were all in
volved in the war, and mission work for the time was neces
sarily suspended.
"When the Natchez were finally overthrown, Father de
Guyenne, and subsequently Father Carette, continued Father
1 Father le Petit in " Lettres Edifiantes " (in Kip, pp. 267, etc.). Du
mont, "Memoires Historiques," ii., pp. 144, 163. Le Page du Pratz,
" Histoire de.la Louisiane," iii., pp. 257, 263.
- " Relation de la Louisiane ou Mississippi," Amsterdam, 1734, p. 25 :
"Memoire sur la Louisiane, ou le Mississippi," in Recueil B., Luxem
bourg, 1752, p. 144.
576 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
du Poisson's labors among the Arkansas. The missionary,
Carette, learned the language of his flock, and underwent
great hardships in his efforts to instruct them ; but his efforts
were neutralized by the corrupt French at the post. At the
fort there was no chapel, and no place where he could offer
the holy sacrifice but a room open to all, even to the poultry,
so that a hen once flew on the altar just as he concluded the
mass. Even this did not induce those in authority to erect a
suitable chapel. His remonstrance only led really to further
derision arid mockery of religion.1
Hopeless of effecting any good, Father Carette withdrew
till such time as a suitable chapel was prepared.2
Bishop de Mornay succeeded to the see of Quebec on the
death of Bishop Saint Yallier in 1727, but though he held
the see till his own resignation five years later, there is no
trace of any action on his part in regard to the province
which was his especial care.
On the recall of the Abbe Varlet, the Seminary of the
Foreign Missions sent to the Tamarois mission two young
priests, Eev. Thaumur de la Source and Eev. Mr. Mercier, the
expenses of the voyage and outfit amounting to 6,641 livres.
To give permanence to their religious work, these two clergy
men obtained from Dugue de Boisbriant, the Command
ant, and Mark Anthony de la Loere des Ursins, Commis-
1 A curious relic of the Jesuit missions at the South is preserved in
Timber-lake's " Memoirs," London, 1765, p. 96. It is described on the
title-page as " A Curious Secret Journal taken by the Indians out of the
pocket of a Frenchman they had killed "; but was really taken from a
French Indian. It is simply one of the sheet almanacs commonly given
in missions with the Sundays, Holidays, Fast and Abstinence days
marked by signs, so that Indians when off hunting can keep up with the
calendar !
" Bannissement des Jesuites de la Louisiane," p. 19 ; Father Watrin
to the Propaganda.
REV. MR. GASTON KILLED. 577
saire, a tract four leagues square, a quarter of a league above
the little river Caliokia, which was conceded in legal form to
the Seminary of Quebec.1
This land was nearly all granted out to settlers, and a pros
perous little community grew up, mills and other works of
general use being established by the Seminary priests.
After ten years' service, the Rev. Thaumur de la Source
returned to Canada in 1728, and the Rev. Joseph Courrier
and the Rev. Mr. Gaston, ordained in 1730, were sent from
Quebec. The Rev. Mr. Gaston was killed by Indians soon
after reaching Tamarois ; Rev. Mr. Courrier labored at his
post for several years, regarded as a man of extraordinary
SIGNATURE OP REV. MR. FORGET DUVERGER.
sanctity. Broken by disease, he went to New Orleans to ob
tain medical treatment, and died among the Capuchins in
the autumn of 1735.*
The Abbe Mercier was again left almost alone, and saw
most of his buildings destroyed by fire. His associate, the
Rev. Mr. Gagnon, sinking under age and infirmities, wished
to return to Canada, but was too devoted to depart before
1 " Extrait des Registres du Conscil Provincial des Illinois"; La Tour,
" Memoire sur la Vie de M. de Laval," p. 101.
2 Laval, " Memoires sur la Vie de M. Laval," Cologne, 1761, p. 101.
Cardinal Taschereau, "Memoire."
37
578 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
other priests came. In 1739 the Abbe Laurens, a priest of
Chartres, in France, was sent out, the Seminary expending
on his outfit and improvements of the parish no less than
25,000 livres. Like his predecessors he attended not only
the parish of the Holy Family at Tamarois or Cahokia, but
that of Saint Anne at Fort Chartres.1 In 1754 the last priest
was sent by the Seminary. He was the Rev. Francis Forget
Duverger, and attended only the parish of the Holy Family.
The French post at Ouiatenon on the Wabash was followed
up about 1735 by the establishment, under the authority
of Louisiana, of another post destined to enjoy a perma
nent existence. This was soon afterward known as Poste
Yincennes. A few settlers clustered around these posts, and
priests ere long set up a temporary altar for these early back
woodsmen. The earliest whose name is recorded is the Rec
ollect Father, Pacome Legrand, who, after a term of service
at Yincennes, died while returning to Niagara on the 6th of
October, 1742." It is by no means improbable that it was he
who baptized at Fort Ouiatenon, on the 22d of July in the
preceding year, Anthony, son of John Baptist Foucher, who
became in time the first priest ordained from the West.3
Yincennes grew slowly on, and its regular parish records
began. On the 21st of April, 1749, a marriage entry of
Julian Trottier des Rivieres and Josette Marie begins the
records of the church. The Jesuit Father, Sebastian Louis
Meurin, destined to be the last survivor of his order in the
West, discharged the duties of parish priest at the post, and
1 The Abbe Laurens died in 1758 or the following year. The food of
the country never agreed with him, and he was a great sufferer.
'* Tanguay, " Repertoire General," p. 78.
3 He was ordained October 30, 1774, and died in 1812 at Lachenaie,
Canada, of which he was parish priest, as he had been at St. Henri de
Mascouche, and Sainte Anne de La Pocatiere. Ib., p. 126.
VINCENNES' REGISTER. 579
proclaimed the banns in the usual form. The settlers came
from the Canadian parishes, and not a few from Ouiatenon
and Detroit, which were under the Canadian government.
In 1752 Father Peter du Jaunay records a baptism at
FIRST ENTRY IN THE PARISH REC TSTER OF VINCENNES.
Ouiatenon. The next year Father Louis Vivier, who in
1750 contributed a letter from Illinois to the " Lettres Edifi-
antes et Curieuses," began a three years' pastoral charge at
Vincennes, succeeded in November, 1756, by Father Julian
Devernai.1
Of the state of religion in the French settlements of Louis
iana for some years, there
are in fact no documents C^ ^~
to guide the historian. . — ^? - •& PIS te/y* s S* /
The Capuchin Fathers //
seem to have discharged SIGNATURE OF FATHER VIVIER.
their functions quietly,
as we rarely find any allusion to them in the official dispatches
or in the writings of men like Le Page du Pratz, Dumont,
Penicaut, Benard de la Harpe, writers who took an active part
1 " Registre de la Paroisse de St. Francois Xavier au Poste Vincennes."
580
THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
in the affairs of the colony. Religion certainly did not gain ;
vice increased unchecked ; no public institutions, religious or
charitable, were established, that show a community imbued
with faith. One of the Capuchin Fathers who labored long
est on the mission was Father John Francis, who was at
Pointe Coupee in 1737" and was parish priest of Mobile, with
little interruption from 1736 to 1755. Father Mathias de
Sedan was parish priest from 1726 to 1736, and was Superior
and Vicar-General from 1734 ; Father Anselm de Langres
/
^o^^z,
/ G*
SIGNATURE OF FATHER JOHN FRANCIS.
in 1738 erected the oratory of St. Francis at Pointe Coupee,
dedicated it on the 16th of March, and blessed the bells on
Holy Saturday.
The Recollect Father, Yictorin, was for some years in
Louisiana, and his name appears at Mobile from 1728 to 1735 ;
and a secular priest, Rev. Mr. Didier, was at Pointe Coupee
in 1756, but they are solitary cases, the parishes generally
being directed by the Capuchin Fathers, who numbered from
ten to fifteen.
The Jesuit Fathers at New Orleans had no parochial du
ties,1 but directed the Ursulines from the foundation of the
'A "Memoire" in Gravier, "Relation du Voyage," says that Father
de Beaubois, after becoming Vicar-General, " made himself superior of
the Ursuline community and seized all authority there," p. 116. Sister
Hachard's Letters and Mother Tranchepain's " Narrative," as well as the
account of her death, show on the contrary that he brought the commu
nity out, and was their Superior and Director exclusively. " If we had
the misfortune to lose him either by illness or otherwise," wrote Sister
Hachard, " we should be deeply afflicted and greatly to be pitied."
MOTHER DE TRANCHEPAIN. 581
convent, and beyond that, had charge merely of their pri
vate chapel and a plantation where they introduced the
orange-tree and the sugar-cane. Father de Beaubois re
mained at New Orleans, assisted from time to time by Fa
ther Peter Yitry and others. From some cause Father de
Beaubois was interdicted, and that year the foundress of the
Ursulines was prostrated by a fatal illness on St. Ursula's
day, 1733. After suffering for eighteen days, she asked to
receive Extreme Unction, which the Capuchin Father Ra
phael, Vicar-General of the Bishop, permitted Father Beau
bois to administer, to the great consolation of the dying relig
ious. Fortified by all the sacraments, she expired on the llth
of November, 1733, " after having given evidence of all the
virtues that could be desired in a worthy and perfect Superior."
She was born of a Protestant family at Rouen, and was
strongly attached to her family and home, where she was a
favorite. The truth of the Catholic faith became so clear to
her, however, that she presented herself at the Ursuline Con
vent to receive instruction, and there made her abjuration.
Editied by all she saw in the religious, she soon after solicited
admission and became a novice in 1699. From the first she
was filled with the idea of founding a convent in America,
and according to the circular on her death, was enlightened
superuaturally as to the plan of Father Beaubois. That relig
ious, learning of her desire to aid the missions by her services,
wrote to her, and it was through the energy, address, and
tact of Mother Mary Tranchepain of Saint Augustine that
the difficulties raised against the project were finally over
come. The long voyage and the trials attending the establish
ment of the convent at New Orleans, brought out all her ad
mirable qualities, and added to her merit. The injustice
done to her director, Father de Beaubois, was not the least
of the crosses she was called upon to bear.
582 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
She established her convent, her community directing the
hospital for the sick, an academy for young ladies, a poor-
school, an orphan asylum, and catechism for negroes, old and
young. She found the greatest ignorance among the white
girls born in the country, and the instruction of the future
mothers in the colony in their religion was one of the duties
of the Ursulines.
When the Natchez massacre filled the province with or
phan girls, these nuns opened their doors to them.1
In time the Bishop of Quebec appointed Father de Beau-
bois his Vicar-General in Louisiana, but the Capuchin Fa
thers refused to recognize his authority. They claimed that
under the agreement with the Company the Bishop of Que
bec had in perpetuity made the Superior of the Capuchins
his Vicar-General, and could appoint no other. The colony
was divided into two parties, and a disedifying struggle en
sued. The Capuchins succeeded in inducing Bishop Mornay
to suspend Father de Beaubois, and to ask the Provincial of
the Jesuits to recall him to France.
But subsequent Bishops of Quebec, finding it impossible to
exercise any control over the Capuchins in Louisiana through
their Superior, to maintain discipline or to carry out the rules
of the diocese, constantly insisted on confiding the office of
Vicar-General to some member of the Society of Jesus, there
being no other regulars, and no secular priests at New Orleans.
They could not as bishops admit that the assent of Bishop de
Mornay, a coadjutor, and Vicar-General, to an agreement be
tween a trading company and a religious order, deprived
every Bishop of Quebec of the right to act as freely in Louis
iana as in any other part of his diocese.2
1 " Lettre Circulaire "in " Relation du Voyage," pp. 54-60. Gravier,
" Relation du Voyage," pp. 85, 97, 122.
2 Letters of Bp. Briand, June, 1767, April 26, 1769.
THE VICAR-GENERALSHIP. 583
In the year 1739 the Eight Eev. Henry Mary Du Breuil
de Pontbriand, Bishop of Quebec, deemed it proper for the
interest of religion to appoint Father Peter Vitry of the
Society of Jesus his Vicar-General for Louisiana, and suc
cessor to Father Mathias, the Capuchin, who had held that
office, and his Letters to that effect were duly registered by
the Superior Council of the Province. Even then Father
Hilary posted up a document in which he assailed the Coun
cil so violently that they insisted on his returning to France.
When all became quiet Father Vitry acted as Vicar-Gen
eral till his death in 1750. When the Bishop of Quebec,
SIGNATURES OF FATHERS BAUDOUIN AND VITRT.
April 29, 1757, appointed the Jesuit Father, Michael Bau
douin, his Vicar-General, the Capuchin Fathers protested, and
again maintained that their Superior by the treaty with the
Company of the West was entitled to the appointment.1 The
Fathers of the Society wished to yield the point, but Mgr.
Pontbriand insisted. The matter was argued before the Su
perior Council of Louisiana, which finally registered the
1 Bishop de Pontbriand's powers to Father Baudouin were most explicit.
They recite that he had, from the commencement of his administration,
made the Superior General of the Jesuits his Vicar-General in all parts
of Louisiana, and specifically gives Father Baudouin full powers over all
priests, whether of the Society of Jesus or Order of St. Francis, to give
or withhold faculties at his discretion. The Letter of Appointment is in
the archives of the Archbishop of Quebec, C. 224.
584
THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
appointment, and recognized Father Baudouin as Vicar-
General.1
Father Baudouin had been for eighteen years on the Choc-
taw mission, aided for a time by Father Lefevre. If his
labors did not convert the tribe, he, at least, retained their
friendship for the French, whom they could annihilate in a
day if they had turned against them. Father William Francis
Morand, who arrived in 1735, took charge of the Alibamon
mission for several years, but was recalled to New Orleans to
SIGNATURES OP FATHERS LE BOULLENGER, GUYMONNEAU, AND
TARTARIN.
succeed Father Doutreleau as chaplain of the Ursulines and
their hospital.2 Father Le Roy, another missionary among
the Alibamons, when he denounced the sale of liquor to the
Indians, which led to drunkenness and crime of every kind,
was forced to leave by the French officer at Fort Toulouse,
Montberaut, whom Bossu describes as " an avowed enemy of
1 Father Baudouin laid the matter before the Propaganda in 1759, but
no decision was reached.
" Bannisaement des Jesuites de la Louisiane," pp. 30-1 ; Vivier in
"Lettres Ediflantes," Kip, p. 316; Bossu, " Nouveaux Voyages" ii
p. 99.
FATHER SEN AT KILLED. 585
those missionaries." ' This mission was probably near the
present town of Cahaba, where old French works were visi
ble a few years ago."
The missions in Illinois went quietly on, seldom marked
by any event requiring special notice. The older mission-
•aries had dropped away, Father Gabriel Marest dying in
September, 1715, and Father John Mermet in 1718. Their
bodies were transferred by Father Le Boullenger to the
church at Kaskaskia, on the 18th of December, 1727.3 The
Jesuit Fathers, Dumas and Tartarin, were laboring there in
the following years. When the massacre at Natchez in
volved the Valley of the Mississippi in Indian wars an expe
dition of French and Illinois was sent against the Chicka-
saws in 1736, and Father Antoninus Senat, S.J., accompanied
the force as chaplain. After some success, the French corps,
which was to co-operate with another from the South, was
attacked by the whole Chickasaw army. Yincennes the
commander, d'Artaguiette, Father Senat, and others were
taken, though the missionary might readily have escaped.
He would not, however, abandon those who needed his min
istry, and was burned at the stake on Palm Sunday, 1736,4
most probably in Lee County, Mississippi.5
In 1750 Fathers Guyenne, Yivier, Watrin, and Meurin
were on the mission in Illinois,6 where all but the second re-
1 Bossu, ii. , p 16 ; Father Watrin to the Propaganda.
2 Brewer, "Alabama," Montgomery, 1872, p. 209. I find nothing to
fix the exact position of the Choctaw mission, but it was apparently near
the French fort Tombecbe, at Jones' Bluff, in Sumter County, Ala.
Ib., p. 526.
3 Register of Kaskaskia.
4 " Bannissement des Jesuites," p. 24; Dumont, "MSmoires Histo-
riques," ii., p. 229.
' Claiborne, " Mississippi," Jackson, 1880, p. 62.
6 F. Vivier in " Lettres Edifiantes" (Kip, p. 316).
583 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
m amed for several years. Two years later the Weas and
Piankeshaws, two Miami tribes, won by the English, plotted
the destruction of the five French settlements in Illinois.
The conspiracy was discovered before Christmas day, the time
lixed for its execution. The French officers of Fort Chartres
had their men ready and suddenly attacked the Miamis.'
Some took refuge in the house of the Jesuit Fathers, and
held out, but were finally taken. The French in Illinois
were thus exposed to the dangers of Indian war, and a gen
eral order was given that settlers coining to mass should
bring their firearms, and as these were stacked outside, a
sentinel was appointed to keep guard.'
Meanwhile some of the French in Illinois, allured by the
fertile lands west of the Mississippi, began about 1735 the
settlement of Sainte Genevieve, and to them also the Jesuit
Fathers ministered.
The little settlement there in time had its church, and
its register begins on the 24th of February, 1T60, with
a baptism performed by Father P. F. Watrin, S.J. Fathers
Salleneuve and La Morinie, driven by war from their own
missions, subsequently officiated at this church.2
In 1763 there were seven little French villages in Illinois,
three under the spiritual care of the Jesuits, and four directed
by the Seminary priests. The Jesuit Fathers still attended
the five villages of the Kaskaskias, Metchigameas, Cahokias,
and Peorias ; the last tribe had obstinately rejected their
teaching ; the Cahokias reluctantly yielded for a time, but
abandoned the faith, as did the Metchigameas. The Kaskas
kias persevered, and Father Watrin ascribes their persever-
1 Bossu, "Nouveaux Voyages," i., pp. 132, 133.
2 Rozier, " Address at the 150th Celebration of the Founding of Saint
Genevieve," St. Louis, 1885, pp. 10, 11.
THE SUPERIOR COUNCIL OF LOUISIANA. 587
ance to the zeal and courage of Father Guyenne, who died
in 1762.1
Meanwhile the Parlements in several provinces of France,
beginning with that of Paris in 1761, had condemned the
Jesuits, and measures were taken for their suppression
throughout the kingdom. Imitating their example the
Superior Council of Louisiana, in 1763, resolved to act, and
on the 9th of June, this insignificant body of provincial offi
cers, assuming to decide in matters ecclesiastical of which
they were profoundly ignorant, issued a decree. In this ex
traordinary document, these men pretending to be Catholics
condemned the Institute of the Society of Jesus, which had
been approved by several Popes, and by the General Coun
cil of Trent. They declared the Institute to be dangerous
to the royal authority, to the rights of bishops, to the public
peace and safety, and they consequently declared the vows
taken in the order to be null and void. Members of the
Society were forbidden to use its name or habit. It then
ordered all their property except the personal books and
clothing of each one to be seized and sold at auction. The
vestments and plate of the chapel at Kew Orleans were to be
given to the Capuchin Fathers. Although the Illinois coun
try had been ceded to the King of England, and was no
longer subject to France or Louisiana, they ordered the vest
ments and plate there to be delivered to the king's attorney.
The most monstrous part of the order was, that the chapels
attended by Fathers of the Society in Louisiana and Illinois,
many being the only places where Catholics, white and In
dian, could worship God, were ordered by these men to be
levelled to the ground, leaving the faithful destitute of priest
and altar.
1 Father Watrin to the Propaganda.
588 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Every Jesuit Father and Brother was then to be sent to
France on the first vessels ready to sail, a sum of about 8^20
being allowed to each one for his passage and six months'
subsistence. Each one was ordered to present himself to the
Duke de Choiseul in France.1
As though convinced that more definite grounds should be
stated for their action, the council added three motives for their
action, charging the Jesuits with having neglected their mis
sions, developed their plantation, and usurped the office of Vic
ar-General. To the first charge the record of their labors was a
sufficient answer : to the last the decision of the Superior Coun
cil itself in the matter of the office refuted the charge made ;
and at all events only one Father was Yicar-General, and oth
ers could not be punished for his act. That the Jesuits had
made their plantation so productive as to maintain their mis
sionaries was creditable, and could* not be punished by any law.
But the unjust decree was carried out. The Jesuits were
arrested, their property sold, their chapel at New Orleans
demolished, leaving the vaults of the dead exposed. It was
one of the most horrible profanations committed on this soil
by men pretending to be Catholics. Of these enemies of
religion, the name of de la Freniere alone has come down to
us : and to the eye of faith his tragic fate in less than six
years seems a divine retribution.2
Father Carette was sent to Saint Domingo: Father le
O "
Roy reached Mexico by way of Pensacola ; the aged Father
Baudouin, broken by labors and illness, a man of seventy-two,
was about to be dragged to a ship, when men of position in-
1 I have sought in vain the Records of this Superior Council to obtain
the exact text of this anti-Catholic and anti-Christian decree ; but the
proceedings have apparently perished.
2 He was executed at New Orleans, charged with conspiracy against
the very royal power he pretended to uphold.
WAR ON RELIGION. 589
terfered and arrested the brutality of sending an American
to France, where he had no kindred or friends. A wealthy
planter named Bore claimed the right to give the aged priest
a home. Father John James le Predour, who had been labor
ing since 1754 in his distant Alibamon mission, did not hear
the cruel order for a long time, and then it was months be
fore he could reach New Orleans to be sent off as a criminal.
On the night of September 22cl, the courier reached Fort
Chartres in English territory, but as the fort had not yet
been transferred, the king's attorney proceeded the next day
to carry out an order which he knew it was illegal on his
part to enforce. He read the decree to Father Watrin, a
man of sixty-seven, and expelled him and his fellow-mission
aries, Aubert and Meurin, from the house at Kaskaskia. They
sought refuge with the missionary of the Indians. The Kas-
kaskias wished to demand that the missionaries should be
left among them, but Father Watrin dissuaded them. The
menacing attitude of the Indians, when it was proposed to
demolish the chapel in their village, had its effect. The
French at Kaskaskia asked in vain that Father Aubert, their
pastor, should be left to them, but the king's attorney seized
not only the plate and vestments of the Illinois churches, but
those brought during the war by Father Salleneuve from
Detroit, and Father de la Morinie from St. Joseph's River.
In a few days the vestments used in the august sacrifice were
cut up and seen in the hands of negresses. and the altar cruci
fix and candlesticks in a house that decent people had always
shunned. He sold the property, pretending to give a French
title for land in an English province, and requiring the pur
chaser to do what he apparently feared to do, demolish the
chapel. He even sent to Yincennes, where the property of
the Jesuits was seized and sold, and Father Devernai, though
an invalid for six months, carried off.
590 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
The Jesuits, torn from their missions, were then taken down
to New Orleans, meeting sympathy at every French post,
the Capuchin Father Irenaeus, at Pointe Coupee, doing for
them all that he could have done for the most esteemed of
his own brethren. The Capuchins at New Orleans came to
receive them with every mark of sympathy, and obtained a
house adjoining their own to shelter them, and in gratitude
the books which had been spared to the Jesuits, and which
formed a little library, were given by them to the Capuchin
Fathers.
The Illinois Jesuit Fathers were put on the first ship, the
" Minerve," which sailed February 6th. All were sent away
except Father de la Morinie, who was allowed to remain till
spring, and Father Meurin, whose request to be permitted to
return to Illinois was sustained so strongly, that the council
yielded.1 But he was not suffered to ascend the Mississippi
to minister to the Catholics from Yincennes to St. Genevieve,
destitute of priests and of every requisite for divine service,
till he signed a document that he would recognize no other
ecclesiastical superior than the Superior of the Capuchins
at New Orleans, and would hold no communication with
Quebec or Rome.2
The Illinois territory had lost also the Priests of the For
eign Missions. When the Eev. Francis Forget Duverger
saw the country ceded to England, and beheld the French
officials from New Orleans make open war on religion, seize
church vestments and plate, and order the Catholic chapels
to be razed to the ground, he seems to have thought that all
was lost, and that religion in Illinois was extinct. Without
" Bannissement des Jesuites de la Louisiane," pp. 1-50.
2 Letter of F. Meurin to Rt. Rev. Oliver Briand, Bishop of Quebec,
March 23, 1767. Archives of Archbishop of Quebec. " Bannisseuient
des Jesuites," p. 62.
LOUISIANA IN 1763. 591
any authority he sold all the property of the Seminary, in
cluding a good stone house erected by him, and a lot of
about seven acres, with mills, slaves, and all implements,
though of course his deed conveyed no title. His parishion
ers remonstrated, but he persisted, and abandoning his parish
descended the Mississippi with the Jesuit prisoners, whom
he accompanied to France.
After the Jesuit Fathers were carried off from Louisiana
the population of New Orleans, estimated at about four
thousand, including slaves, and all the Catholics, French and
Indians in the Illinois country, depended on the Recollect, F.
Luke Collet, and nine or ten Capuchin Fathers, on whom all the
parochial work and the Indian missions devolved, as well as the
care of two hospitals and the Ursuline Convent, with its acad
emy and free schools. Five were employed in New Orleans.
It was, of course, utterly impossible for them to meet all
the wants of so large a district. They had already withdrawn
from the chapel at the fort below the city of New Orleans
and from Chapitoulas. Father Barnabas was stationed at
the fine church at the Cote aux Allemands ; Father Irenseus
still directed that at Poiiite Coupee. Another Father was
stationed at Natchitoches, near which the remnant of the
Apalaches had settled. Mobile had been ceded to England,
and Father Ferdinand was preparing to withdraw as soon as
the French flag was lowered.1
1 Father Philibert Francis Watrin, "Memoire Abregee sur les Missions
de la Colonie nommee Louisiane," transmitted to the Propaganda in 1765.
On the 14th of April, 1766, Father Simon ex Parey, Provincial of the
Capuchin province of Champagne, wrote from Sedan to the Propaganda
soliciting special powers, the Bishop of Quebec being dead and Canada
in the hands of the English. Archives of the Propaganda.
The only priest of Louisiana birth I trace in this period, is Father
Stephen Bernard Alexander Viel, S.J., a poet and scholar, born at New
Orleans, Oct. 31, 1736, died in France in 1821.
CHAPTER II.
THE CHURCH IN MAINE, 1690-1T63.
THE earlier mission work within our limits performed by
the regular and secular clergy connected with the Church in
Canada was purely an outgrowth of Catholic zeal for the
conversion of the heathen, a desire to save some of the
almost countless tribes of Indians scattered over the country.
At the period we have now reached, however, the menac
ing character of the English colonies led to a change. The
government both in France and Canada had for a time
shown itself less disposed to favor the missionaries, and if
from 1690 an interest is evinced in their work, it was rather
to use them as instruments of the government to further its
political, military, or commercial views than for any real in
terest in the spread of the gospel.
As the English colonies were constantly hounded on by
their magistrates and ministers against everything Catholic,
laws, proclamations, newspapers, sermons, and religious tracts,
all breathing the most unchristian hatred of the Church, its
clergy and faithful, the position of missionaries in tribes
along the frontier of the French and English possessions be
came one of constant danger, and they could continue their
labors only by conforming to the wishes of the Canadian au
thorities, if they looked to them for protection and support.1
1 A Massachusetts statute in 1692 forbade any French Catholic to reside
or be in any of the seaports or frontier towns in the province without
license from the governor and council. Williamson, ii. , p. 25.
(592)
A FALSE POSITION. 593
" If the interest of the gospel did not induce us to keep
missionaries in all the Indian villages, Iroquois, Abnaki, and
others," wrote the Marquis de Denonville in 1690, " the in
terest of the civil government for the benefit of trade ought
to lead us to contrive always to have some there, for these In
dian tribes can be controlled only by missionaries, who alone
are able to keep them in our interest, and prevent them any
day turning against us. I am convinced by experience that
the Jesuits are the only ones capable of controlling the mind
of all these Indian nations, being alone masters of the differ
ent languages, to say nothing of their ability acquired by
long experience among them successively by the mission
aries, whom they have had and continue to have in consider
able numbers among them."
This placed the missionaries in a deplorable position.
From the neighboring English they could expect only hatred
and hostility ; from the French, support only on conditions
repugnant to them as priests, and made endurable only by
national feeling. France had retained a foothold in Maine
at Pentagoet, the present Castine, but her statesmen neglected
to fortify the position or form a strong colony there, as they
might easily have done by sending over impoverished farmers
from the overcrowded districts of France. Pentagoet had
but a feeble life, and though the parish of the Holy Family
was erected there, population declined rather than increased,
especially after the death of the Baron de Saint Castin.
At last, however, the French Government saw the danger
that was born of its neglect. The English by possessing the
Kennebec and other rivers had an open path to attack Quebec
and wrest Canada from France.
The Abnakis in Maine, from the days of the Capuchin
missions and the labors of Father Druillettes, had been
friendly to the French. If in the wars that were now inev-
38
594 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
itable England could gain this tribe and use it against Can
ada, that province would soon be lost. Acting on this belief,
the government in Canada encouraged the establishment of
missions from the Kennebec to the Saint Johns, to which
they had previously been indifferent.1
The Fathers of the Society of Jesus who had gathered
Abnakis at Sillery, and subsequently founded for them the
mission of Saint Francis on the Chaudiere, revived their mis
sion in Maine in 1688, when Father Bigot erected a chapel at
Karaiitsouac, now Norridgewock on the Kennebec, and about
the same time the Recollect Father Simon established a mis
sion at Medoctec on the River St. John, near the present
Maine border.2
The Jesuit Father, Peter Joseph de la Chasse, was for
twenty years connected with the Indian missions in Maine, on
which also Fathers Julian Binneteau and Joseph Aubery also
labored earnestly. By their exertions the Canibas, Etechemins,
and Penobscots were all gained, and became Catholic tribes.3
The parish at Pentagoet had remained in the hands of the
Seminary of Quebec, but the white population was so trifling
that the Rev. Mr. Thury found most of his flock to be In
dians. He devoted himself to their service, preparing prayers
and hymns in their language, and exercising a most beneficial
1 Where clergy are paid by the State, the Government and its officials
always regard them as a sort of underlings whom they can on all occa
sions require to act as they see fit. Every commandant of a post like
Cadillac, Villebon, etc. , considered missionaries bound to leave or change
missions, go or come at his option. "Coll. de Manuscrits," ii., pp.
148, 155.
- " Collection de Manuscrits," Quebec, 1884, ii., p. 2.
" " Collection de Manuscrits," Quebec, 1884, ii., p. 127. The zeal of
Father Aubery so offended the English that a price was offered for his
head. Ib., p 53. "Parollesdes Sauvages de la Mission de Pentago
et," ib., pp. C4, 33. Aubery was near Pentagoet between 1700 and 1709.
Maurault, p. 488.
THE MAINE MISSIONS. 595
influence. He was, however, called upon to gather and in
struct the Nova Scotia Indians, and died at Chebucto, June
3, 1699, mourned by the Indians there as a father and a friend.1
The Kev. James Alexis de Fleury d'Eschambault, who re
placed the great missionary, died in his labors in 1698 ;* but
his place was taken by Kev. Philip Kageot, who continued till
1701, aided for a time by Kev. Mr. Guay, who retired with
him, and by Kev. Anthony Gaulin, a pious and esteemed
priest, who closed his pastorship in 1703.3
The Seminary of Quebec had been urged by Bishop Saint
Vallier in 1693 to assume the charge of all the Indian mis
sions in Maine, but had declined the responsibility. At this
time they felt that the missions should be in the hands of
one body, and relinquished the post at Pentagoet to the Jesuit
Fathers. From this time it ceased to be regarded as a parish,
and an Indian fort further up the river became the seat of
the mission.
The organizing of church work among the Maine Indians
'Diereville, "Voyage," pp. 55, 180.
5 "Collection de Manuscrits," ii., pp. 78, 306, 386. Cardinal Tasche-
reau, "Memoire sur la Mission del Acadie du Seminaire de Quebec."
"Archives de 1'Archeve'che de Quebec." "New England Hist. Gen.
Register," 1880, p. 92. Villebon wrote to the Minister in France, Oct. 27,
1699 : "Of the five priests whom the Bishop of Quebec ought to main
tain here, there is one at Pentagoet, who has with him a young eccle
siastic, who does not yet say mass. I humbly beg you, my Lord, to
see to this and send me a chaplain from France. There are very worthy
Irish priests, and it would be very advantageous to have some of that
nation with reference to the Irish Catholics who are in Boston, and who
not being well treated there, would much more readily decide to come
among us, if they knew we had a priest of their nation." " Collection
de Manuscrits," ii., p. 330. The remains of the old fort are still visible
at Castine, and the position of the Church of the Holy Famity could be
easily fixed. See plan in Wheeler, " History of Castine, Penobscot and
Brooksville," Bangor, 1875, p. 186.
3 Williamson, " History of Maine," i., pp. 648-9.
596 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
had not been unnoticed by the authorities of Massachusetts,
which then claimed jurisdiction over Maine. In 1698 com
missioners from the Bay Colony meeting the Indians in con
ference at Pentagoet, required them to dismiss the mission
aries at that place, Norridgewock, and Aridroscoggin, but the
Indians replied : " The good missionaries must not be driven
away." '
In 1699 Father Vincent Bigot, who had been stationed at
Narantsouac on the Kennebec, was prostrated by sickness,
and compelled to retire to
VinienJJuJ l/)(fo4- /. 4 Quebec ; but his place was
L-X filled by his brother James,
SIGNATURE OP FATHER YIKCENT ^ accompanied ^ Iu_
BIGOT.
dians down the river to
the coast, the Abnakis wishing to obtain some of the tribe
who were held as prisoners by the English in exchange for
prisoners in their hands, and also to make purchases of
necessaries of which they were destitute.
Narantsouac at this time had its chapel, erected in 1698, well
attended by the fervent converts.2 The missionary here was
Father Sebastian Rale, a native of Franche Comte, who
reached Quebec October 13, 1689, and had prepared himself
for his work by spending several years at the St. Francis mis
sion and in Illinois. He was stationed next at Narantsouac, now
Indian Old Point, a sequestered spot on the Kennebec River.
Here he began a pastoral care which closed only when his
body, riddled by New England bullets, sank in death at the
foot of his mission cross. He attended his flock at the village,
to which he soon drew a neighboring tribe of kindred origin,
the Amalingans. His daily mass, catechetical instructions,
1 " Collection de Manuscrits," ii., p. 312 ; " Lcttre clu pore Jacques Bi
got, 1699," in " Relation des Affaires du Canada," New York, 1865, p. 63.
2 Apparently in 1693 or 1694.
FATHER RALE. 597
visits to the cabins to attend the sick or rouse the tepid, these
formed his daily round of care, with his duties in the confes
sional, his sermons, and the more pompous celebration of the
great festivals. Of the language he was an earnest student,
and while at Saint Frangois in 1691, began a dictionary of
the Abnaki, completed as years rolled by, and which is still
preserved in Harvard College.1
While Father Rale was laboring on the Kennebec in 1700,
Father Yincent Bigot was again at his mission near Penta-
goet. A letter of that time tells how he was edified by the
zeal and piety of the converts. An epidemic scourged their
villages, but they showed the depth and solidity of the Chris
tian teaching which they had received, attending mass and the
prayers in the chapel when scarcely able to drag their bodies
from their cabins.2
In 1Y01 the New England authorities treating with the
Abnakis, again ordered them to send away the three French
Jesuit Fathers who were in their villages and receive Protest
ant ministers from New England. The Indians would not
listen to the proposed change, and said to the English envoy:
" You are too late in undertaking to instruct us in the prayer
after all the many years we have been known to you. The
Frenchman was wiser than you. As soon as we knew him,
he taught us how to pray to God properly, and now we pray
better than you." !
The missionaries were not blind to their own danger, and
1 It was published by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in
the volume of Memoirs for 1833, under the editorship of John Pickering.
2 V. Bigot, "Relation de la Mission des Abnaquis," 1701, New York,
1858.
3 Bigot, " Relation de la Mission Abnaquise," 1702. New York, 1865,
pp. 23-4. Father Bigot is said to have been recalled in 1701. " Collec
tion de Manuscrits," ii., p. 386.
598 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
seeing the false position into which the government was
forcing them, urged that lands should be assigned in Canada,
to which the Abnakis could remove and practice their relig
ion in peace. An attempt was made by Vaudreuil to carry
out this idea, but as his course was censured, it was aban
doned.1
Massachusetts claimed all Maine as English territory, and
the Abnakis as subjects ; but in attempting to settle that dis
trict she paid no regard to the Indian title and made no at
tempt to purchase any portion of their lands. The Abnakis
resented the intrusion of settlers by killing cattle and at last
burning the houses of the unwelcome New Englanders.
The French Government encouraged the Indians to prevent
English settlement on their lands, and the missionaries used
their influence under the direction of the Governor-General
of Canada. This could not but lead to disastrous results.
In 1 704—5 Massachusetts expeditions were fitted out to
destroy the mission stations. One under Major Church rav
aged the villages on the Penobscot, and another under Col.
Hilton penetrated to Father Rale's mission, but finding the
Indians absent, burnt all the wigwams, as well as the church
with its vestry and the residence of the missionary, after they
had pillaged and profaned all that Catholics revere.2 Be
sides the Indians at Norridgewock other bands were visited
by Father Eale. One of these at Lake Megantic removed
to Canada and founded the mission at Becancour in 1T08.3
When peace was restored the Indians prepared to rebuild
1 " Collection de Manuscrits," ii., pp. 406, 447.
2 Penhallow, "History of the "Wars of New England" (Cincinnati
ed.), pp. 29, 38 ; Church, " History of the Eastern Expeditions," p. 120 ;
Williamson, " History of Maine," ii., pp. 47, 49.
3 See Concession in Maurault, " Histoire des Abenakis," Sorel, 1866,
p. 285.
THE BURNT CHURCH RESTORED. 599
their church, and as the English were nearer to them the
Abnakis sent a delegation to Boston to solicit carpenters,
promising to pay them well. The Governor of Massachu
setts offered to rebuild the church at his own expense if they
would dismiss Father Rale and accept a Protestant minister.
The Abnakis declined, and again contrasted the indifference
of the English to their salvation with the zeal shown by the
French. A temporary bark chapel was then built, and the
Governor-General of Canada, on hearing of their loss, sent
mechanics who erected a new church. Of this edifice Father
Rale wrote : " It possesses a beauty which would win admi
ration for it even in Europe, and we have spared no pains to
adorn it." l This church in the wilderness was supplied with
sets of vestments, copes, and plate for the altar. The mis
sionary had trained forty Indian boys who served as acolytes
in cassock and surplice. On the altar were candles made by
the missionary from the wax of the bayberry.
The Indians all attended his daily mass and met there in
the evening for prayers.
During the hunting season and the fishing season on the
coast the missionary moved with his flock, and a tent became
the chapel of the tribe.2 On one of his journeys he fell and
broke both his legs. To obtain proper treatment he was
conveyed in his helpless condition to Canada. Recovering
there he returned to the Kennebec, although he knew that a
price had been set on his head.
The church was completed in 1718, at which time the
French king gave also means to complete the church at Me-
doctec, on the St. John's.3 Father Lauverjat had his chapel
1 Rale, Letter of October 12, 1723. * Letter of October 15, 1722.
3 This spot was east of the Maine boundary on the St. John's, where
the Eel River enters ; but the Malecite tribe who attended it were Maine
Indians. Williamson, i., p. 477. " Collection de Manuscrits," iii.. pp.
28, 42, 44, 48, 54.
600 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
above Pentagoet, so that there were two Catholic churches
then in Maine, with one just beyond the present line.
The New England feeling against Father Rale was so in
tense that the General Court of Massachusetts resolved to
have him brought to Boston a prisoner or a corpse. A proc
lamation was issued requiring the Indians to surrender Rale
and every other Jesuit priest.1
Governor Shute had written to Vaudreuil, the Governor-
General of Canada, to recall the missionaries, but he replied :
"As to Father Rale and the other missionaries whom you
wish me to recall, permit me, sir, to tell you that I do not
know that any one of them is on territory under the sway of
Great Britain ; and as the Abnakis among whom the mission
aries are, at whom you take umbrage, have never had any
but Roman Catholic priests to instruct them, since they have
been enlightened with the rays of the gospel, they will have
just ground to complain of me, and I believe that God would
hold me accountable for their souls, and the king would cen
sure me severely, if I deprived these Indians against their
will of the spiritual succor which they receive from their
pastors, and whom they need to persevere in the religion in
which they have been brought up."
Shute in . replying April 3, 1722, says of Father Rale :
" All that I have to say to him, and to say to you in regard
to him, is, that Norridgewock, which is his mission, is de
pendent on the territory of King George, and that by a law
of the Parliament of Great Britain and the laws of this prov
ince all Jesuits or Roman Catholic priests are forbidden to
preach or even to remain in any part of the kingdom."3
Shute endeavored to create a rival mission, and sent a
learned and able Protestant minister, Rev. Mr. Baxter, to
1 Williamson, ii., p. 107.
* " Collection de Manuscrits," ii., pp. 66, 77.
FATHER RALE'S DANGER. 601
found an Abnaki mission in 1717, but the envoy was soon
disheartened and abandoned the field, after a controversy
with Father Rale on doctrinal matters.
Again it was determined to strike a blow at the two
&
churches and their priests. In February, 1722, Colonel
Westbrook, appointed by Governor Dummer to command
in the East, marched to the Penobscot, and ascending to
the Indian fort, from which the Indians retired, set fire
in March to the church and wigwams. The shrine of
Catholicity at that point, a handsome, well-finished chapel,
sixty feet by thirty, probably on Fort Hill, above the
mouth of the Kenduskeag, with the neat house of the
priest, was again laid in ruins.' Father Lauverjat, unde
terred by the danger, still continued his mission among the
Indians there, and Father Loyard, of Medoctec, proceeded
to France in 1723 to plead the cause of these Indian Cath
olics. In the autumn of 1722, Colonel Westbrook led a
force of 230 men against Norridgewock. Fortunately two
young Indians saw the party and hastened to the village to
give the alarm. Father Kale consumed the consecrated
Hosts in the ciborium of his chapel and escaped into the
woods bearing the sacred vessels. A cripple and burthened,
he was not able to penetrate far into the forest without snow-
shoes. Crouching at last behind a tree, he commended him
self to God. The enemy, finding his church and house
vacant, pushed on in keen pursuit, but though they passed
his lurking-place, failed to detect him. Abandoning the
search, at last they returned to the village and pillaged the
church and house, carrying off everything they were able to
1 Penhallow, "The History of the Wars of New England," p. 94;
Williamson, "History of Maine," ii., pp. 120-1; "Mass. Hist. Coll.,"
II., viii., p. 264 ; Hutchinson, " History of Mass.," ii., p. 273.
602 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
transport — his strong box,1 papers, letters, his Indian diction
ary, and even his writing materials. Father Kale underwent
great sufferings in the woods, and well-nigh perished before
relief reached him from Quebec. His correspondence with
the Governor-General of Canada, which was captured, in
flamed the New England authorities still more, and his life
was in constant danger. His Indians, unable to cultivate
their grounds, lived most precariously, and he bore them
company in their wanderings, often with no food but acorns. '
v-e.
FAC-SIMILE OF OPENING WORDS OF FATHER RALE'S DICTIONARY
AND OF HIS SIGNATURE.
That the Canadian Government did not recall him and
assign lands to the flock which had so manfully adhered to
the French cause seems unpardonable. Father Rale, him
self, in spite of his sixty-seven years and his crippled condi
tion, would not abandon his Indians. When Father de la
Chasse urged him to provide for his own safety, he replied :
" God has committed the flock to my care, and I will share
1 This strong box has long been in the possession of the Waldron fam
ily, and was for some years in tho rooms of the Massachusetts Historical
Society.
FATHER RALE'S DEATH. 603
its lot, only too happy if I am allowed to lay down my life
for it." When the Indians, in the spring of 172-4, wished to
convey him to a safe retreat on the route to Quebec he said :
" Do you take me for a cowardly deserter ? What would
become of your faith if I should forsake you \ Your salva
tion is dearer to me than life."
In the summer, Colonel Moulton at the head of another
force of whites and Mohawks cautiously made his way up
the Kennebec, and under cover of the thick brushwood
reached the Indian hamlet uiiperceived. A volley from their
muskets riddling the cabins, completely surprised the Abna-
kis. There were but few braves in the village ; they hastily
seized their weapons and hastened to meet the enemy and
cover the flight of their women and children. Conscious
that he was the chief object of the invasion, Father Kale
went fearlessly forth ; and as soon as the assailants perceived
the devoted priest they raised a shout, and a host of gleam
ing barrels were levelled at him. The next moment he fell
at the foot of his mission cross pierced by their balls. Seven
Indians who had gathered around him fell by his side, but
with their fall all resistance ceased. While some of the as
sailants pursued the fugitives, others pillaged the church,
profaning the sacred vessels ; others wreaked their vengeance
on the dead missionary, who was scalped, his head cloven
open, his limbs broken. After setting fire to the church and
houses, Colonel Moulton retired.1
The Indians returned the next day, and washing the mu-
1 The scalping is recorded by Penhallow without disguise. Massa
chusetts constantly offered rewards for scalps even of women and chil
dren, and ministers who accompanied expeditions, like Rev. Mr. Fry,
scalped those whom they killed. See "New York Post-Boy," Sept. 2,
1748, and July 23, 1750 ; " New York Mercury," June 23, 1755.
604 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
tilated body, interred it at the spot where he had offered the
holy sacrifice the day before.
The Norridgewock Indians, after burying the slaughtered
missionary and their kindred, retired to the Abnaki villages
in Canada, and for some years no measures were taken to
restore the mission. Church plate and vestments, with fur
niture for a mission-house asked of the King of France the
year before, were granted in 1738, but the Indians had already
begun to occupy once more their old home, and the Jesuit Fa
ther de Syresme, apparently in 1730, erected a chapel on the
Kennebec. When he visited the St. Lawrence the next
year, there was a general movement among the Abnakis to
return to the Kennebec, and the government, to prevent it,
proposed to recall the missionary.1
Soon after Father Lauverjat, who had been endeavoring
to uphold religion on the Penobscot, which the young St.
Castins dishonored by their disregard of all morality, was
transferred to Medoctec ; but he was still in charge of the
Indians at Panawamske in 1727," though the French Gov
ernment was endeavoring to induce the Indians there and at
Medoctec to remove to Canada.
After the retirement of Fathers Syresme and Lauverjat, we
find no evidence of any other resident pastor of the Cath
olic Indians of Maine. Their intercourse with the missions
at Saint Francis and Becancour was constant, and Father
Charles Germain, who was stationed at St. Anne's mission
on the Saint John's Kiver, exercised a beneficent control
over the Indians on the Kennebec and Penobscot, and appar
ently visited them from time to time, saying mass for them
1 "Collection de Manuscrits," iii., pp. 136-7, 141, 147, 153, 155, 160;
Le Beau.
' Ibid., p. 135 ; " N. Y. Colonial Documents," x., p. 128.
CLOSE OF THE MAINE MISSION. 605
by stealth like his fellow-religious in Virginia. He may be
regarded as the last of the old missioners to the Indians of
Maine, who planted the faith so firmly in the hearts of that
Algonquin race that neither privation of priest and altar, nor
the allurements of prosperous and pretentious error could
lure them from it.1
1 Father Charles Germain, born May 1, 1707, entered the Gallo-Belgic
Province, Sept. 4, 1728, and came to America in 1738.
CHAPTEK III.
THE CATHOLI6 CHURCH IN NEW YORK, 1690-1763.— FRENCH
CLERGY.
WHEN William III. was acknowledged as king by the
Colony of New York, the only Catholics in the territory of
the Five Nations were the still few lingering converts made
by the Jesuit Fathers in the period of the missions, and the
French and Indian captives brought in by the war parties of
braves, many of them to die in torments at the stake, after
enduring the most refined torture at the hands of their own
people rather than gainsay the faith that was in them.
The only priest in the Iroquois cantons was the Jesuit
Father Peter Milet, a prisoner himself at Oneida. His very
life was at first in constant peril, but his old converts pro
tected him, and having been adopted as a member of the
tribe by a female Agoyander, he received the hereditary
name of one of the sachemships of the tribe. The Iroquois
woman who thus gave him a place in the councils of the
League was apparently Susan Gouentagrandi. His position
was thus a curious one : he was still a prisoner, but as Otas-
sete he took his seat in the councils of the Oneidas. His in
fluence was so great that the English made every effort to
put an end to his captivity, and the French to prolong it.
Whether he was able to obtain vestments and a chalice in
order to say mass, is not certain ; but as early as 1691 he had
a little grotto or chapel in Susanna's cabin dedicated to Our
Dying Lord— "Christo Morituro," where he assembled the
(606)
IROQUOIS MARTYRS. 607
Christians to celebrate the Sundays and holidays. Toward
the close of the year 1690, the Mohawks invited him to their
canton to hear the confessions of Christians there who desired
his spiritual aid. But Susanna would not allow him to de
part, fearing treachery ; " the Catholic Mohawks," she said,
" could always see Otassete in her cabin." Father Milet had
a mournful duty to discharge in attending the French and
Iroquois prisoners brought in by the braves of the League.
Many of these died at the stake supported and encouraged
by the brave missionary amid their exquisite torments. Rec
ognized by the Canadian authorities as parish priest of
Oneida, he received their verbal wills, which he subsequently
proved in Canada. His captivity and mission lasted till Oc
tober, 1C94, when he reached Montreal, followed by Tarcha
and an Oneida delegation to treat of peace.
It would be wrong not to give some details of the Chris
tians who died in torments, displaying a holy fortitude
worthy of record. Stephen Tegananokoa, captured by a
Cayuga party, was taken to Onondaga ; he was a fervent
Christian, and had long edified the mission at Sault Saint
Louis. When reproached on the scaffold with having left
his canton to join the mission, he replied : " I am a Christian,
and I glory in being one. Do with me what you will : I
fear neither your outrages nor fires. I willingly give my
life for a God who shed all his blood for me." On hearing
this courageous answer his countrymen sprang upon him,
cutting and mutilating his body in every part. One then
cried out tauntingly : " Pray." " Yes," he replied, " I will
pray," and as well as his fettered hands permitted, he made
the sign of the cross, saying : " In the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," Furious at this,
his tormentors hacked off many of his fingers, yelling:
" Kow pray to your God." Again he made the sign of the
608 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
cross, and they cut off all the remaining fingers, and for the
third time with every opprobrious epithet bade him pray.
Once more he endeavored to form on his body the symbol
of redemption with the stump of his hand, but it was in
stantly severed at the wrist, and every spot he had touched
was scored with slashes. This was but the prelude to a long,
terrible torture, which he bore without a murmur, till feel
ing that his end was near, he asked a moment's respite, and
commending his soul to God in fervent prayer, received the
death stroke.
Two years after the pious Frances Gonannhatenha, who
had been baptized at Onondaga, was made a prisoner with
her husband and some others near the mission of the Sault.
She was taken to Onondaga and given to her own sister, but
that pagan, deaf to the cry of nature, gave Frances up to
death. On the scaifold she, too, professed the faith with
holy fortitude, and again that hatred of the Cross, which
caused the death of Rene Goupil fifty years before, was dis
played. One of her kinsmen sprang on the scaffold, and
tearing off the crucifix that hung on her breast, cut a cross
deep in her flesh. « There," he cried, « is the cross you
love so much, and which kept you from leaving the Sault
when I took the trouble to go for you." "Thank you,
brother," replied the holy sufferer, " the cross you wrenched
from me I might lose ; but you give me one I cannot lose
even in death." She urged her clansmen to become Chris
tians, assured them of her forgiveness, and prayed fervently
for them ; but they prolonged her torture for three days, and
after burning her from head to foot with red-hot gun-barrels,
scalped her, and covering the bleeding head with hot coals,
unloosed her, hoping to enjoy her frantic efforts to escape.
But she, witness to the faith, knelt calmly down to pray.
Then a shower of stones ended her heroic life.
IROQUOIS MISSIONS. 609
The Onondagas did not even spare young Margaret Garan-
gouas, daughter of the Tododaho, hereditary chief of the
Iroquois league. Taken prisoner in her field, she was hur
ried away to her native town. There she was slashed from
head to foot with knives and left for a time to endure the
pain of her wounds. When she was a few days after con
demned to die, she endured the fearful torments writh heroic
constancy, the names of " Jesus, Mary, Joseph," alone escap
ing her lips. Once she asked for water, but reflecting a
moment she told them to refuse her : " My Saviour suffered
great thirst when dying for me on the cross ; is it not just
that I should suffer the same torment for him ? " Her tor
ture lasted from noon to sunset ; when scalped and released,
she too knelt to pray. They tried to stab her and to beat
her to death ; but finally threw her still quivering body on a
pile of wood and consumed her.1
Onondaga with Oneida was ravaged by Count Frontenac
at the head of a large force in 1696, and when hostilities
ceased the next year after the proclamation of the peace of
Ryswick, the cantons were more disposed to respect the
French. Negotiations were begun under the Count de Fron-
teuac and concluded by his successor, de Callieres, in 1 TOO.
During the negotiations the veteran Father James Bruyas
was sent with Mr. Maricour to Onondaga. He was received
with great cordiality, and after addressing them as envoy of
the French Governor, and delivering the appropriate belts,
he begged the Onondagas to give especial attention to a third
belt which he gave them in the name of Asendase, that is,
the Superior of the Jesuit missions in Canada. He expatiated
on the love which the Superior had always felt for his Iro-
1 Charlevoix, "History of New France," iv., pp. 296-303 ; " Lettres
Edifiantes," Paris, 1720, xiii. ; Kip, " Jesuit Missions," p. 117 ; " Relation
des Affaires da Canada," New York, 1865, p. 17.
39
610 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
quois children, although the sun had been eclipsed so many
years. " ' lie wished to revive the knowledge which he first
gave you of the Lord God of armies, the Master of the Uni
verse. You are to be pitied/ says Asendase by my lips.
Since the Blackgowns left you, your children die without
medicine, and what is more to be lamented without bap
tism. You sachems, you warriors and women knew how to
pray, but you have entirely forgotten, yet you know the
Master of Heaven. Your Father Asendase exhorts you by
this belt to deliberate whether you desire a Blackgown.
There are some ready to come. Do not refuse the offer
which he makes you." '
The Indians avoided a direct reply to this proposition, as
Governor Bellomont, of New York, had been exerting his
influence to prevent the revival of the missions, and secured
the passage of a law by the New York Legislature punishing
with perpetual imprisonment any Catholic priest who should
attempt to announce Christ to the heathen within limits
claimed by that colony.
The missionary returned to Onondaga again in June, 1701,
but was even less successful ; when he attended the great
council of all the Indian nations held at Montreal in August,
he again delivered the words of Governor-General Callieres
to the Iroquois.
The next year Catholicity in the cantons sustained a loss
in the death of the younger Garakonthie, inferior in ability
to his brother Daniel, but an earnest and unswerving Chris
tian, upholding the missionaries and the cause of morality.
In 1702 the cantons, of their own accord, responded to the
1 De la Potherie, " Histoire de I'Amerique Septentrionale," iv., pp.
152-3, 186, 241 ; Smith, " History of Canada from its First Discovery/'"
Quebec, 1815, i., pp. 187-9.
LAST EFFORTS. 611
appeal of the venerable Father Bruyas. They sent to solicit
the return of missionaries.
To restore the church in the cantons the Superior of the
Society of Jesus in Canada selected as missionary to Onon-
daga the veteran Father James de Lamberville, who set out
with a lay brother. Father Julian Gamier proceeded to the
Senecas with Father Yaillant du Gueslis. Early in October,
with hearty thanks to God, the Jesuit missionaries reached
Onondaga, and the chapels of truth were again opened for
sacrifice and prayer.1
The missions thus restored were maintained during several
years, for though England and France again declared war,
the Iroquois had been won to neutrality, and that fierce na
tion remained at peace with civilized men warring around
them. Father Gamier, broken by years of labor, was after
a time replaced by Father James d'Heu, and Father Peter
de Mareuil went to assist Father de Lamberville at Onondaga.
The English viewed the presence of Catholic priests with
no good-will, and labored to induce the Iroquois to arm against
the French ; the young braves longed to go on the war
path, and the existence of the missions became precarious.
In 1709 Colonel Schuyler waited on Father de Lamber
ville at Onondaga and won his confidence by a show of
friendly interest. Expressing regret that the English Gov
ernor had induced the cantons to join in the war, he advised
the missionary to visit Canada in order to confer with the
Governor of Canada. No sooner had Father de Lamberville
departed, however, than he incited some drunken Indians to
plunder the mission church and house and set them on fire.
Still professing the greatest friendship for the missionaries,
1 "X. Y. Colonial Documents," ix., p. 737; " Eelation des Affaires
du Canada," p. 35 ; Charlevoix, " History of New France," v., p. 155.
612 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
he persuaded Father de Mareuil that his life was no longer
safe, and that his only way of escape was to accompany him
to Albany. He concealed the fact that the Colonial Govern
ment had, on the 29th of June, issued an order for his arrest.
Father de Mareuil accompanied Schuyler to Albany, where
provision was made for his maintenance, but he was detained
as prisoner till 1710. '
The Onondaga mission was thus finally broken up. the
church and residence were in ashes, the missionaries had
been lured aw^ay by deceit, and never returned.
Father d'Heu alone remained on his Seneca mission, but
even the influence of Joncaire could not ensure his safety,
though it effected his being escorted to Montreal before the
close of the year 1709.2
Thus closed the Jesuit missions among the Five Xations
in their own territory.
Roused at last to the vital importance of securing commu
nication with the West and the valley of the Mississippi,
France in 1720 began a fort at Niagara, and in 1731 of an
other at Crown Point, on Lake Champlain. Feeble at first,
these posts became in time formidable fortresses. At each
of these strongholds there was a chapel, and a Recollect
Father was maintained as chaplain. The Register of Xiag-
ara was probably carried off by Sir William Johnson ; that
of Fort Saint Frederic survives like the walls of the old out
post of France, and shows a series of Recollect Fathers minis
tering there, from John Baptist La jus in 1732 to Father
Anthony Deperet in 1759. The holy sacrifice was therefore
1 " New York Colonial Documents," ix., pp. 829, 836, 838, 845 ; Char-
levoix, " History of New France," iv., p. 215 ; " Calendar N. Y. MSS.
Eng.," p. 365 ; " Collection de Manuscrits," i., p. 621.
'2 "New York Colonial Documents," ix., p. 830. He had replaced
Father Vaiilant in 1707.
CHAPLAINS AT THE FORTS. G13
offered at Crown Point, under the protection of the French
flag, for more than a quarter of a century. As no settlement
of any importance formed around either post, the services of
the chaplains were evidently confined to the garrison. Of
the priests at these two posts, one, Father Emmanuel Ores-
pel, was three years at Xiagara, probably from 1730 to
1733, and from November 17, 1735, till the 21st of Septem
ber in the following year at Fort Saint Frederic. He was
then sent back to France, but the vessel was wrecked on
Anticosti, and nearly all perished by drowning or from the
hardships they endured after reaching that desolate island.
The Recollect Father was one of the few survivors, and he
published an account of his shipwreck and of his missionary
career in America.1
In 1749 the Jesuit Father, Joseph Peter de Bonnecamp,
who had been professor of hydrography at Quebec, accom
panied an expedition under de Celoron, who was sent by the
Canadian Government to deposit evidences of French pos
session in the valley of the Ohio. The party descended the
Ohio as far as the great Miami, and then crossed to Lake
Erie. Father Bonnecamp was the first priest apparently
who offered the holy sacrifice in the southern part of Ohio.2
In 1 753 and the following year the French erected Fort
Presquile on the bay opening into Lake Erie that still bears
the name ; the Fort de la Riviere aux Boeufs, near the pres
ent AVaterford ; Fort Machault, and at the confluence of the
1 The other missionaries at Fort St. Frederic were FF. Peter B. Resche,
1733: Bernardine de Gannes, 1734; Peter Verquaillie, 1736; Daniel,
1741 ; Alexis du Buron, 1743 ; Bonaventure Carpentier, 1747 ; Hypolite
Collet, 1747 ; Didacus Cliche, 1754 ; Anthony Deperet, 1758.
- Celoron's Journal in Lambing, " Catholic Historical Researches,'' ii.,
pp. 60, etc., to iii., p. 32 ; O. H. Marshall, " De Celoron's Expedition to
the Ohio," in " Mag. American Hist,," March, 1878.
614 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Alleghany and Honongahela, Fort Duquesne. The Kegister
of the last fort is still preserved, and from it we learn that
Father Luke Collet, a Kecollect, was chaplain at Forts Pres-
quile and Kiviere aux Boeufs, and Father Denis Baron at
Fort Duquesne. A small silver chalice, used in all probabil
ity by Father Luke, was dug up at Waterford, near the ruins
of the old fort, in 1804, and was purchased by Mrs. Yankirk,
a pious Catholic lady, to save it from profanation. Besides
these posts the Jesuit Father, Claude Francis Yirot, who had
labored on the Abnaki missions, was sent to the Ohio to
found a mission among the Delawares, who had settled near
the French. He planted his mission cross at Sakunk, as the
Indians styled the mouth of the Big Beaver. Here he per
severed in his good work till Pakanke, Chief of the Wolf
tribe, drove him off.1
With the fall of the French powrer the service of the
Church, maintained at Crown Point, Niagara, Erie, Water-
ford, and Pittsburgh, ceased.
Another French post was connected with a great Indian
mission and deserves a more extended notice. This was Fort
Presentation, on the site of the present Ogdensburg, with
the mission founded there by the Sulpitian, Abbe Francis
Piquet. This energetic priest, while serving in 1745 as
chaplain to an expedition against Fort Edward, conceived
the project of establishing near Lake Ontario a mission like
those at Sault Saint Louis and the Lake of the Two Moun
tains. From his intercourse with the Iroquois still in their
1 Zeisberger, Journal, April 23, 1770. Maurault, " Histoire des Abe-
nakis," p. 400. Father Claude F. Virot was born February 16, 1721, en
tered the Society of Jesus in the province of Toulouse, October 10, 1738,
was sent to Canada in 1750. After his Delaware mission he acted as
chaplain to Aubry's force, and was killed in the attempt made to relieve
Fort Niagara in July, 1759. Pouchot, " Memoires," i., pp. 109, 110.
THE ABBE PIQUET'S MISSION.
615
old homes, he felt that a desire for Christianity lingered
among them, and that many could be won to join a new
mission station.
His design was encouraged by Governor de la Jonquiere,
who accompanied him in May, 1748, to select a site. The
PORTRAIT OF REV. FRANCIS PIQUET.
harbor at the mouth of the Oswegatchie, with fertile lands
and abundant woodlands, offered every advantage. Here a
palisaded work soon rose, and near it a chapel, named in
honor of the patronal feast of the Sulpitians, La Presenta
tion. He visited the cantons as far as Niagara, inviting the
616
THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
well-disposed to join his mission. In the erection of the
necessary buildings and defences at the spot he had selected,
the Abbe Piquet expended thirty thousand livres, and was
about to reap the reward of his zealous exertion when, in
October, 1749, a Mohawk war party made a sudden raid and
gave the place to the flames. They could not, however,
drive the stout priest from the work he had undertaken.
The Presentation mission rose from the ashes, and began
V 0
'/» — — - •»**fc'<*3"rr~\<-fC " '*t
FOET PRESENTATION (OGDENSBURG), WITH CHAPEL, OP REV. FRANCIS
PIQUET.
with six families ; but in two years there had gathered
around the altar of the Presentation three hundred and
ninety-six families, numbering three thousand souls, drawn
chiefly from Onondaga and Cayuga, the fruit of Piquet's
visits and exhortations. Those who had mocked the efforts
of the zealous priest to revive the early mission spirit were
silenced. The Mission of the Presentation of Our Lady was
a triumph for the Church and a defence to Canada. Bishop
THE PRESENTATION MISSION. 617
Du Breuil de Pontbriand visited the mission in May, 1752,
and took part in instructing the neophytes. Then he bap
tized one hundred and twenty and confirmed many. It was
undoubtedly the first confirmation within the limits of the
State of !New York. The ladies of Montreal wished to en-
courao-e the good work, and sent to the mission a beautiful
banner, still preserved at the Mission of the Lake of the Two
Mountains. It bears the totems of the Iroquois clans— the
Bear, the Wolf, and the Turtle, their council tires, and the
monogram of Christ. The new Iroquois town was governed
by twelve chiefs, and became a model. Every visit of the
Abbe Piquet to the cantons drew new accessions to the mis
sion. With a few zealous coadjutors, all that was not utterly
degraded in the cantons might have been won. Sir William
Johnson called on the Indians to extinguish the fire at Oswe-
gatchie. " We have no nearer place to learn to pray and
have our children baptized," answered the chieftain Eedhead.
The Abbe Piquet went to France to obtain needed coad
jutors, but he had scarcely returned when the war began
which was to close the chapter of French power. During
that struggle the Indians of all the missions were called to
the field, and as the tide of success turned against them, Mr.
Piquet and his Indians in 1759 abandoned Fort Presentation
and made a new home on Grand Isle aux Galops, sometimes
called Isle Piquet, where he erected a chapel for his flock.
When all seemed lost the devoted missionary, after making
a final entry in his Register, May 10, 1760, returned to
France by way of Louisiana. His successor, the Sulpitian,
Rev. John Peter Besson de la Garde, acting as chaplain in
Fort Levis, was taken by the English, but was allowed to
resume his labors as an Indian missionary.
The site of the mission of The Presentation has become in
our day a thriving town, the see of a Catholic Bishop. The
618 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
corner-stone of Abbe Piquet's chapel was found some years
ago, and now occupies an honorable place in the chief build
ing of the city.
It bears the inscription : " In nomine •%• Dei omnipotentis
huic habitation! initia dedit Fran. Picquet 1749." u In the
name of Almighty God, •%. Francis Picquet began this edi
fice in 1749." '
Just as this mission was about to remove from the soil of
New York the Jesuit Father, Mark Anthony Gordon, selected
Aquasasne, "the place where the partridge drums," and
there, with part of the people of the Caughuawaga mission at
CORNER-STONE OP REV. FRANCIS PIQUET'S CHAPEL, STILL PRESERVED
AT OGDENSBURG.
Sault St. Louis, founded that of Saint Francis Regis, erecting
a log-house for a temporary chapel. This perished by fire
just before the close of the war, so that the year 1763 saw no
chapel at the spot.
1 The Abbe Piquet was at Corunna in 1762, and on reaching his native
land received the approval of the French clergy and of the Sovereign
Pontiff. After spending years in the active discharge of the ministry in
France, he died at Verjon, July 15, 1781, in his seventy-third year, hav
ing been born at Bresse, December 6, 1708. " Memoire de la Lande " in
" Lettres Edifiantes." Pouchot, " Memoires," ii., p. 284 ; Bossu, " Xou-
veaux Voyages," ii., pp. 284-5. Notes from Register of La Presenta
tion; Smith, "A History of the Diocese of Ogdensburg, New York,"
1886, p. 53.
CHAPTER IV.
THE CHUECH IN MICHIGAN, INDIANA, WISCONSIN, AND MIN
NESOTA, 1690-1763.
THE intercolonial struggle which is coeval with the acces
sion of William III., seriously affected Catholicity in the
northwest, as the French authorities in Canada, absorbed in
the effort to preserve the province to France, could do little
to extend civilization in the remote Lake region. The early
spirit of faith, too, had waned. If missionaries were main
tained it was less to aid them in the conversion of the heathen,
than to make them agents in keeping tribes friendly from
whom traders might obtain peltries.
There was not in 1690 any French settlement on the Upper
Lakes ; the projected Recollect missions had been abandoned ;
the Jesuit Fathers of whom Father Enjalran was Superior,
had their Huron and Ottawa mission at Michilimackinac,
where that Father and the veteran de Carheil still labored ;
Father Aveneau was at the Miami mission on the Saint Jo
seph's ; the aged Father Nouvel conducted the Christian In
dians on Green Bay ; Father Joseph John Marest was en
deavoring to found a mission among the Dakotas, near the
banks of the St. Croix and St. Peter's. Fathers Albanel
and Bailloquet were the only other missionaries in the West.
Mission labor was daily becoming more difficult, and the
danger of the missionaries increased. Even at Michilimacki
nac the Jesuit Fathers were regarded as exposed to danger,
till Louvigny, in 1691, encompassed their church and resi
dence with a palisade.
(619)
G20 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
The government grant for land on which to erect a chapel
and house near the banks of the Saint Joseph's had been con
firmed, and the chief centre of mission work on the Lakes
was likely to be at that point.
The appointment of La Motte Cadillac as commandant at
Michilimackinac, in 1694, foreboded ill to the cause of West
ern missions. Chimerical, grasping, overbearing, regarding
religion only as an element to be used for purposes of gov
ernment or trade, he displayed qualities that subsequently
made his administration in higher position so stormy and
unprofitable.1 The missionaries had already learned his char
acter, when in 1700 he was selected to found not a mere
trading-post, but a fort and settlement on the Detroit Eiver,
where temporary establishments had already been made, and
where formal possession had been taken in 1687.
When peace had been made, and the West was again open,
Father Enjalran was dispatched to the West to invite the
tribes on the Lakes to send their delegates to a general
council.8
In the summer of 1701 Cadillac, appointed command
ant at Detroit, and in all the western parts, and made Seign
eur of the projected settlement, set out from Three Eivers
with soldiers and settlers. The expedition was accompanied
by Father Nicholas Bernardino Constantine Delhalle, a Rec
ollect, who was to serve as chaplain to the troops and pastor
to the people, and the Jesuit Father Francis Vaillant du
Gueslis to act as missionary to the Indians. Detroit was
founded July 21, 1701 ; Fort Pontchartrain, a solid work
1 Cadillac to the Minister, Aug. 3, 1695, condemning missionaries for
checking sale of liquor; Margry, " Decouvertes et Etablissement," v.,
pp. 31, 33, 35, 50, 54, 63; "New York Colonial Documents," ix., p.
418.
2 De la Potherie, " Histoire de 1'Amerique Septentrionale," iv., p. 102.
FIRST CHURCH AT DETROIT. 621
of timber, was at once begun, and five days later, on the feast
of Saint Anne, a cliapel in her honor was commenced near
it. Here the Kecollect priest began the first permanent ser
vice for his countrymen in a white settlement at the West.1
On learning during the route Cadillac's ideas and proposed
system, Father Yaillant, who seems to have come with some
misgivings, abandoned all intention of undertaking an Indian
mission, and returned to Quebec. The project of Cadillac
was to gather at Detroit, the Hurons and Ottawas from
Michilimackinac ; the Miamis from St. Joseph's Kiver ; and
other western bands, to form the men into military organiza
tions, teach the young Indians French, by means of the mis
sionaries and Ursuline Nuns, whom he was to introduce,
and to cause the settlers to take wives among the educated
Indian girls. He gave out that he was a Moses raised up to
lead these people out of their bondage ; as commandant he
claimed complete control over all within his jurisdiction, and
regarded a missionary as a soldier, whom he could change as
he would a sentry.8 The missionaries appointed to their sev
eral stations by their Superior, in concurrence with the
Bishop of Quebec, and in his name, could not recognize a
new and independent authority. When Cadillac ordered
the missionaries at Michilimackinac and St. Joseph's River
to come to Detroit with the tribes to whom they had minis
tered, they did not feel bound to comply. They left the In
dians to decide for themselves on the question of removal.
The Ottawas were the first to transfer their wigwams to De
troit. A portion of the Hurons also went, till in 1703 only
twenty-five of tire tribe remained near Father de Carheil's
chapel, and Cadillac wrote, " I am convinced that this ob-
1 Margry, v., p. 191.
2 This is clear in Margry, v.( pp. 229, 287, 295.
622 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
stinate parish priest will die in his parish church without
having a parishioner to bury him." ' Father Aveneau, who
had been joined by Father Mermet on the St. Joseph's, was
soon after driven from his mission by Cadillac, Mermet pro
ceeding to the Weas to attempt a mission among them. In
1705 Fathers de Carheil and James J. Marest, and ap
parently Enjalran, finding themselves without a flock at
Michilimackinac, and not wishing the chapel to be profaned
by bushlopers or Indians who passed that way, set fire to
their buildings, and went down to Quebec, but their course
was sharply censured by the government in France. An
order was sent out that they should return and rebuild their
chapel ; but as it seemed useless to maintain a church where
there was no congregation, the matter was dropped.
The Jesuit mission on the Lakes was thus reduced to that
at Green Bay, whither Father John B. Chardon had gone
in 1701, to aid the venerable Henry Nouvel, who had been
for nearly forty years on the mission there, arid who died at
his post in 1702.1
The next year the little town of Detroit suffered from its
first conflagration ; a barn near the fort took fire, and the
flames spreading, destroyed the church with the house of the
Recollect Father, and the residences of Cadillac and Tonti.
1 Cadillac in Margry, p. 304.
2 Margry, v., pp. 215-219 ; Martin, "Catalogue par Ordre Chronolo-
gique." The question of the sale of liquor to the Indians entered largely
into the disagreement between Cadillac and the missionaries. The Jes
uit Fathers, carrying out the rules of the Bishop of Quebec, condemned
it. Cadillac, following the views of Frontenac, favored it, but only as a
monopoly in his own hands. His reverence for the old Governor was
intense : " Raising my eyes to heaven," he writes, " I sometimes cry in
the weakness of my faith : Sancte Frontenac, ora pro me." Margry,
v., p. 316. He was perpetually writing, and some of his imaginary con
versations with Pontchartrain have been ludicrously cited by Sheldon,
Campbell, and others, as though real and genuine.
DEATH OF FATHER DELHALLE. 623
The earliest Register of Detroit perished with this primitive
shrine, October 5, 1T03.
Cadillac, who had in his arbitrary and grasping course
seized the property of two traders, was compelled to go
down to Quebec in 1704, to defend the civil suit brought
by those whom he had wronged, and he used all the arts of
chicanery to prevent their obtaining redress.1
After the fire another church was erected, and Father
Constantine resumed his labors. His Registry, opening
February 2, 1704, with the baptism of Maria Teresa, a child
of Cadillac, but covering only three pages, is still preserved,
and is the oldest of the early French parish Registers of the
West, beginning some months prior to that of Mobile.2
The withdrawal of the Indian missionaries was soon fol
lowed by a dangerous feeling in the various tribes. The
Ottawas were especially inclined to join the English and
Iroquois, and were full of suspicion of the French. While
Father Marest in 1706 was on his way to Michilimackinac,
the crisis came, hastened by the rashness of de Bourgmont,
the commandant at Detroit. Provoked at a trifle, he beat
an Ottawa so violently that the man died. Convinced that
the commander meditated an attack on them, that tribe pre
pared to fight the French and the tribes favorable to them,
especially the Miamis, of whom they were jealous.
Some of the Ottawa braves meeting a party of Miamis
killed five, only one succeeding in escaping to the French
fort. The Miamis hearing this, all fled from their village
to the fort, under a heavy fire from the Ottawas. Father
Constantine was walking in his garden unconscious of dan
ger. He was immediately seized, and bound by some of the
1 The Abbe Verreau has detailed the whole case, which is far from
creditable to Cadillac.
2 I owe access to it to the kindness of R. R. Elliott, Esq.
DEATH OF FATHER CONSTANTINE. 625
Ottawas, but John le Blanc, one of their chiefs who had at
tended the great congress at Montreal, interposed and re
leased him. Le Blanc asked Father Constantine to go and
tell Mr. Bourgmont that the Ottawas had no designs against
the French, and to ask him to suspend the fire from the fort.
As the Recollect Father, anxious to put an end to the hostil
ities, was entering the fort, some Miamis joined him, and the
Ottawas opened fire on them. A ball struck Father Con
stantine, and he fell dead on the spot, and a soldier near him
ATas badly wounded. The fire was then renewed, and was
maintained till the Ottawas withdrew with heavy loss.
The first pastor of the first French town in the West was
thus slain in the noble effort to prevent the further effusion
of blood. Unfortunately little is known of him. He ar
rived in Canada June 1, 1696, and had been engaged in pa
rochial work at Longueuil and St. Frangois de Sales, before
he was appointed chaplain to Fort Pontchartrain. He was
interred in the church where he had ministered.'
Father Dominic de la Marche, a Recollect Father who had
just arrived from France, was sent the same year to Detroit
to replace the one whose life had been sacrificed by the in
capacity of the civil officials. He was missionary at Fort
Pontchartrain from August 16, 1706, to May 1, 1708.
Meanwhile Father Marest had returned to Michilimack-
inac, and Father Aveneau to his mission on the Saint Jo
seph's, for the latter was sent to his old flock when an expe
dition against the Miamis failed. There the missionary
labored to revive the faith among the Indians who, amid all
this turmoil, had sadly retrograded. Charlevoix assures us
that Father Aveneau, who spent eighteen years with the
1 Charlevoix, "History of New France," v., pp. 185-6; " N. Y.
Colonial Documents, " ix. , p. 810 ; Tanguay, " Repertoire General," p. 70.
SIGNATURES OP PRIESTS AT DETROIT.
ST. ANNE'S, DETROIT. 627
Miamis, by unalterable mildness and invincible patience,
succeeded in obtaining great influence over them.1 He did
not live, however, long after being restored to his mission,
having died in Illinois on the 14th of September, 1711.
Father Chardon was then for a time at the old mission sta
tion.
The next year Father Marest erected a church on the south
shore, at what is now known as Old Mackinac, where de
Louvigny in 1712 built a fort.
The French needed, indeed, to strengthen their position
in the West, for the Foxes had drawn the Kickapoos and
Mascoutens into a plot to destroy Detroit and the French
settled there, and hold the place for the English, who had in
cited them. Du Buisson, the commandant, seeing their in
creasing numbers and insolence, sent to summon the allies of
France, and prepared to defend the post with his little gar
rison of fifty men. The church where Father Delhalle re
posed stood outside the fort, with a storehouse and dwell
ing near it. After removing the grain laid up there, the
commandant, to prevent the Indians from using the buildings
to attack the fort, or endangering it by setting them on fire,
ordered the church and adjacent houses to be demolished ;
and in a few hours this second church was destroyed. The
Recollect Father Cherubin Deniau, the missionary of this
little flock of whites from 1707, erected within the palisade
a new chapel dedicated to Saint Anne. When after a series
of desperate engagements the Foxes were nearly extermina
ted by the allies and Detroit was saved, Father Cherubin cele
brated a solemn high mass of thanksgiving, and the Te
Deum was chanted in the palisade fort.2
1 Charlevoix, v., p. 202.
- Du Buisson's Report, June 15, 1712, in Smith, " History of Wiscon
sin," iii., pp. 317, 332.
628 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
During the troublous days when the turbulent Fox tribe
menaced the power of France in the country of the Lakes,
the Rev. Father Leonard Vatier, also a Recollect, is said to
have been cut off by the Foxes and Sioux, but unfortunately
we have no details of his death.1
The Recollect Fathers were generally sent to stations for a
term of three years, and the isolation of the post at Detroit
was such that few apparently sought to prolong their stay.
Thus Father Hyacinth Pelfresne served from 1715 to June
3, 1717. Father Anthony Delino, who soon styled himself
"Recollect priest discharging parochial functions at the
Royal fort of Detroit, Lake Erie, and Lake Huron," began
in Nov., 1719, but was recalled in March, 1722.2 Detroit
meanwhile had declined, and the Hurons and Ottawas who
had settled near it, though many had their children baptized,
were fast losing all trace of Christianity.3
However, the mission among the Miamis had been main
tained under the Jesuit Father John de Saint Pe, who was
stationed there in 1721, but the tribe had begun to move
eastward, and the French had already two years previous
taken steps to establish Fort Ouiatenon on the north bank of
the Wabash, a few miles from the present town of Lafay
ette/ The missionaries of Saint Joseph's River probably
accompanied their band on its migrations.
Father Bonaventure Leonard arrived in Detroit in June,
1722. He is the first to speak of St. Anne's as a parish. He
1 Tanguay, "Repertoire General," p. 71. The date of his death is
given as Feb., 1713.
• Parish Register of Detroit. Calvarin, V.G., Mercier and Thaumur,
of Tamarois, were at Detroit in August, 1718.
3 Charlevoix, " Histoire de la Nouvelle France," iii., p. 257.
4 Vaudreuil to the Council of the Marine, " New York Colonial Doc
uments," ix., p. 892; Beckwith, "Historic Notes of the Northwest,"
Chicago, 1879, p. 104.
SIOUX MISSION. 629
began a new church within the palisades, which occupied, it is
said, a site on the present Jefferson Avenue, between Gris-
wold and Shelby Streets.1 When the church was sufficiently
advanced he took steps to translate to it the remains of the
first pastor, Father Constantine Delhalle. The Sieur Delisle,
who had aided in interring the Recollect Father, guided the
new pastor of Detroit to the spot, and two men set to work.
The coffin was soon found, and his skull-cap, portions of his
Franciscan habit and cord, and his hair cloth were enough
to identify the remains, which were removed to the new
church on the 14th of May, 1723, and placed under the plat
form of the altar.3
Father Chardon seems to have remained at Green Bay till
about 1728, the solitary priest on the old mission ground
west of Lake Michigan for several years ; but he apparently
withdrew when the expedition under de Lignery was sent
against the Foxes. The forces, consisting of four hundred
French and twice as many Indians, were attended by Rev.
Mr. Peset, a secular priest ; Father Emmanuel Crespel, a
Recollect, and Father James Quentin de la Bretonniere, a
Jesuit Father. The expedition entered Green Bay, and
ascended Fox River to the Indian town, which they found
deserted. On the homeward march, de Lignery demolished
the French fort at Green Bay, and the mission there was ap
parently then abandoned.3
On the 17th of May, 1727, the French under Laperriere
began the erection of Fort Beauharnois on Lake Pepin, the
first post in our Minnesota. The government made an ap
propriation for the support of two Jesuit priests there, and
1 Farmer, "History of Detroit and Michigan," Detroit, 1884, p. 529.
2 Entry in Detroit Register.
3 Crespel, " Voiages dans le Canada," Francfort, 1742, pp. 15-29.
THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Father Louis Ignatius Guignas, who accompanied the expe
dition, founded the mission of Saint Michael the Archangel
among the Sioux. He was the first priest after Father Ma-
rest to attempt to gain souls to Christ among the Dakotas.
Father Guignas, after beginning hi^ mission labors, attempted
to reach the Illinois country in 1728, but was captured on
his way down the Mississippi by the Mascoutens and Kicka-
poos, allies of the Foxes. He remained a prisoner in their
hands for five months, and was at one time condemned to
die in torture at the stake, but was saved by an old man who
adopted him. His captors finally took him to . the Illinois,
where they left him on parole till November, 1729, when
they removed him to their own town. On recovering his
liberty, he seems to have returned to his Dakota mission,
where he was still laboring in 1736.1
About 1730 Father Crespel visited Detroit and describes
his fellow-religious, Father Bonaventure, as a zealous priest,
given to study, rendering service as priest and teacher to his
people, and conversant with the language of the Indians with
whom he came most frequently in contact.2
The Indians around Detroit had been without a missionary
from the time of the foundation of the place. Father Char-
levoix represented strongly the necessity of reviving the early
efforts to Christianize them. The Huron mission was revived
in 1728, and soon after Father Armand de la Richardie ap
pears as their spiritual guide.
Father Charles M. Mesaiger had been succeeded at the
Miami mission on the St. Joseph's by Father Peter du
1 Guignas in " Early Voyages up and down the Mississippi," Albany,
1861, pp. 167-175; "New York Colonial Documents," ix., pp. 995,
1016-7, 1051.
2 Crespel, " Voiage," pp. 34-5.
THE HURON S. 631
Jaunay,1 while Fathers John B. La Morinie and Godfrey
Coquart appear at Mackinac.
The Jesuit^ were still in the advance with the French ex
plorers of the West. In 1T31 Father Charles Mesaiger set
out from the mission at MicMlimackinac to accompany Pierre
Gaulthier, Sieur de la Verendrye, on his exploration through
Minnesota to Rainy Lake, Lake Winnipeg, and the country
of the Mandans.
Father Peter Aulneau, accompanying a son of the Sieur
de la Verendrye in a subsequent exploration, was killed by
the Indians at the Lake of the Woods in 1736."
The leading Huron chiefs at Detroit were hostile or indif
ferent to religion, and though Father Potier established a
mission on Bois Blanc Island in 1Y42, he was forced to leave
them five years afterward. Father de la Richardie, thor
oughly discouraged, had returned to Quebec, but was recalled
in 1747. In their winterings the Huron tribe frequently en
camped at Sandusky, allured by the pure water found there.
In 1751 Father de la Richardie induced a portion of the tribe
to go and settle there permanently. They were the Indians
least able to restrain their appetite for spirituous liquors.
''"This mission was maintained here for several years. Chief
Nicholas, an ally of the English, at last drove Father Potier
from his chapel on the Sandusky, and the mission closed,
though the faith was preserved among the Hurons till the
present century.
The rest of the tribe gathered at Sandwich, where a church
1 In 1738. He was at Mackinac in 1742, Detroit in 1754. He died
February 17, 1781. Martin, " Catalogue"; Tanguay, " Repertoire Gene
ral."
-Martin, "Catalogue par ordre Chronologique " ; Mallet, " Origin of
the Oregon Mission," " Proceedings U. S. Cath. Hist. Soc., February 11,
1886," p. 11.
632
THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
had been erected for them in 1748 ; and during the latter
part of the period we are treating, this Canadian band was
under the care of Father J. B. Salleneuve.1
Detroit had taken new life. The population was increas
ing, so that the Kecollect Father, Simplicius Bocquet, who
had entered on his duties as parish priest on the 18th of Sep
tember, 1754, undertook to build a larger church. It stood,
SIGNATURE OF FATHER SIMPLICIUS BOCQUET.
according to the historiographer of the city, west of the
present Griswold Street, on ground now included in Jefferson
Avenue. The new Church of Saint Anne was so far com
pleted in the summer after his arrival, that on the 13th of
July, 1755, he transferred to it the remains of the first pastor
of Detroit, depositing them under the steps of the altar, to
remain, however, only till the completion of the church.
" Which," says the entry in the Eegister, « will permit us to
give him a permanent and becoming sepulture conformable
to his merit, and to the miracles which many trustworthy
persons have reported to us to have been wrought through
his intercession in favor of the whole parish." 2
The little French city of the West was honored, says Far-
" Collection de Manuscrits," iii., p. 348 ; " N. Y. Colonial Docu
ments," x., pp. 114-116 ; "History of the Catholic Missions," p. 203.
There are still extant two copies of a Huron Grammar written by Father
Potier, a work on Huron Radicals, and a Census of the Hurons. Father
Potier died at Sandwich, July 16, 1781.
2 Register of the parish of St. Anne, Detroit.
BISHOP DE PONTBRIAND.
633
mer, by the presence of the Kt. Rev. Henry Mary du Breuil
de Pontbriand, who extended his visitation to Detroit. He
dedicated the new church on the 16th of March, 1755, and
remained for some weeks in this portion of his diocese.
RT. REV. HENRY MARY DU BREUIL DE PONT
BRIAND, SIXTH BISHOP OF QUEBEC.
The Rt. Rev. Henry Mary du Breuil de Pontbriand, sixth
Bishop of Quebec,1 deserves especial mention in a history of
1 Mgr. Peter Herman Dosquet, a native of Lille, was consecrated Bishop
of Samos at Rome on Christmas day, 1725, by Pope Benedict XIII. and
appointed Coadjutor to Bishop Mornay, whom he succeeded in 1734.
He resigned the next year, having spent less than six years in Canada.
634 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
the Church in the United States, as he was the first incum
bent of that see who performed any episcopal function with
in our limits, having conferred confirmation at Ogdensburg
and Detroit, and exerted himself earnestly to place the religious
affairs of Louisiana on a sounder basis by committing author
ity in that province to more zealous and responsible hands.
He was born at Yannes in Brittany, of a family of posi
tion, and was only thirty-two years of age when he was ap
pointed to the see of Quebec. Notwithstanding his youth
he was already Yicar-General and Canon of Saint Malo, and
a Doctor in the Sorbonne. Having obtained his bulls from
the great Pope Benedict XIV. on the 6th of March, 1741,
he was consecrated at Paris on the 9th of April by Mgr.
Gaspar William de Vintimille, archbishop of that city. He
proceeded immediately to Canada and took possession of his
see on the 30th of August, 1741. He was the last Bishop of
Quebec under the French sway. After an active and zealous
administration, in which he visited remote parts of his dio
cese, lie beheld his episcopal city fall into the hands of the
English. He retired to the Sulpitian Seminary at Montreal,
where grief at the misfortunes of the flock confided to him
hastened his end. He expired on the 8th of June, 1760.
Father Simplicius as vicar to Father Bonaventure, and as
pastor and Vicar-General, presided long enough over the
Church of Saint Anne to see the flag of France lowered in
Canada and on the Lakes, and to see England lose the col
onies for whose sake she had so long struggled to deprive
France of her northern colony.
Mgr. Francis Louis Pourroy de 1'Aube Riviere, consecrated December
21, 1739, arrived at Quebec on the 7th of August, 1740, and died on the
20th, at the age of 29, of a fever contracted while attending the sick on
the ship. I trace no act of either of these bishops relating to our part of
the country.
RELICS OF OLD MISSIONS. 635
Far less tranquil was the lot of the Jesuit missionaries
around him. As the tide of war seemed to turn against
France, the Indians were alienated, and at some missions the
Fathers were in want of the merest necessaries. Father de
la Morinie left the mission on St. Joseph's Eiver and minis
tered to the settlers at St. Genevieve, beyond the Mississippi.
Father Salleneuve had retired in 1761 for a similar reason
from the Huron mission near Detroit, bearing the chapel
service. When the irreligious Council of Louisiana, veiling
its hypocrisy under a specious pretext of zeal for the Church,
sent men to Illinois to enforce its shameful decree, both these
Fathers, with the property of the missions in their hands,
were seized, although on British soil. The enemies of relig
ion even sent and kidnapped Father Julian Devernai at Vin-
cennes, and selling his winter provisions dragged him, al
though he had been suffering from disease for six months, to
the banks of the Mississippi.
The men who pretended that the Jesuits had neglected
their missions tore them from their churches, profaned them,
broke up the missions, and, so far as they could, deprived the
Catholics of the West of priest and altar, of all means of
worshipping God or
approaching the sacra
ments of the Church.
Fathers du Jaunay J
and Le Franc alone SIGNATURE OF FATHER DEVERNAI.
were left in the north
west, though Father Meurin, as we have seen, succeeded in
returning to the scene of his labors.
Michilimackinac was the central point of the missionaries
at the close of this period, and the church at Pointe St.
Ignace preserved, to our times, a fine set of heavy velvet
vestments, elaborately worked, in which perhaps mass was
636 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
said in the days of Louis XIV. Equally curious is another
relic of the past there preserved, a bread-iron, wrought per
haps in the West by the lay brother whose forge did good
service for white and Indian. It is a rude piece of work,
and the lettering was evidently first cut into the iron by the
unskilled but earnest artist. The introduction of the figure
BREAD-IKON PRESERVED AT MICHILIMACKINAC.
in one of the large dies presented a difficulty that was
strangely surmounted.
The Church in the northern parts where the French nag
had floated, was in a pitiable condition. The Indian Cath
olics in Maine, New York, and Ohio, and the few French
lingering near them, were without a single priest, or anything
THE WEST IN 1763.
637
worthy the name of a church. The parish of Detroit had,
indeed, its priest ; two Jesuit Fathers attended the Catholics
on the Great Lakes beyond. The parishes of Yincennes,
Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Prairie du Roeher, and Fort Chartres,
as of St. Genevieve, were without a priest to minister at
their altars. The work of six-score years, from the visit of
Fathers Jogues and Raymbaut, was recorded rather in the
graves of the Faithful Departed, than in the living children
of the Church and their pastors.
/r » /tc / &MVI><L<J
SIGNATURES OP FATHER DTT JAUNAY AND REV. MESSRS. THAUMUR,
CALVARIN, AND MERCIER.
CONCLUSION.
THE history of the Catholic Church in our present terri
tory, from the first landing of colonists in Florida, under
Ponce de Leon, to the year 1763, has been traced ; various
as were the national differences, the language, the ideas of
government in those who came to settle, or in those whom
they found, the Church one in her government, her doctrine,
her sacrifice, everywhere established the same Christianity
that she had planted among the Gaul, the Celt, the Saxon,
the Teuton, the Iberian. Many as are the tongues of men,
the Church has but one, that of unerring- truth.
O
The Catholic Church in the United States claims all the
early struggles of the first apostles, their weary marches,
their untiring toil to instruct the rude and the savage, the
constant offering of the Holy Sacrifice, the imparting of the
sacraments to men of all races, as part of her glorious heri
tage, the heroic days of her history. Her priests were the
pioneers, first to thread the great arteries of the continent,
to plod over the Indian trail, to study the grandeur, the veg
etable and mineral wealth of the land, to learn and perpet
uate in scientific form the unwritten languages of our count
less Indian tribes, to discharge unflinchingly the ministry of
the altar and the Word, and to die, as full a hundred did. by
savage hands, while heroically discharging their duty.
Ever counsellors of peace, toleration, and harmony, hold
ing the shield of the crucifix between the oppressed and the
oppressor, we see them with their flocks in the English col
onies pursued for a hundred years by the bloodhounds of in-
(638)
CONCLUSION. 639
satiate fanaticism, victims of penal laws that did not gratify
the whole venom of their inventors, although they left the
unhappy Catholic hardly aught but life itself.
Where the Catholic flags of France and Spain floated
there were trials, too, from the jealousy or greed of officials,
as well as from the barbarism of the tribes among whom
the priests of old labored.
The Church was not planted without tears, and at this day
the homage of respect is freely paid to the early apostles of
the faith. But the old colonial feeling of misrepresentation
still shows itself in two charges frequently made, the utter
mendacity of which it may not be amiss to notice.
The first charge is, that the Catholic missionaries baptized
the Indians, and received them into the Church without in
struction. As one elegant writer expresses it, contrasting
Catholic and Protestant missionaries : " While the former
contented themselves with sprinkling a few drops of water
on the forehead of the warlike proselyte, the latter sought
to wean him from his barbarism, and penetrate his savage
heart with the truths of Christianity."
But this charge is absolutely false. The records of the
missionaries, English, French, and Spanish, show that instruc
tion always preceded baptism in those who had attained the
age of reason, and that when the fundamental truths were
implanted in the minds of the catechumens, baptism was,
except in rare cases, long deferred in order to test the con
stancy of the candidate. Baptismal registers frequently refer
specially to previous instruction. The catechisms prepared for
missionary use in Florida, Texas, Maine, New York, Michigan,
Illinois, are extant to this day, and show how laboriously
the missionaries endeavored to convey to the catechumens
the fundamental doctrines in terms that an Indian mind
could grasp, and with these truths the whole scheme of
640 THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
Christian morality. The Spanish confesonarios, too, show
how the minds were trained to distinguish in detail between
right and wrong.
Those who make and repeat the charge cite no proof ; the
statements of the missionaries in all parts of the country
show its utter falsity.
Another charge is that the French missionaries taught the
Indians that they would assure eternal happiness by killing
the English heretics. Bancroft, Parkman, and others, who
have examined all the printed statements of the early mis
sionaries, and numberless papers from their pens, will attest
that no such doctrine can be found anywhere. There is not
the slightest proof that can be cited, that Catholic priests in
culcated any such ideas. Canada never sought war ; she con
stantly proposed colonial and especially Indian neutrality.
Her clergy did not, as their writings show, make denunci
ations of Protestantism and Protestants a topic for constant
pulpit use. These same writers, from their familiarity with
early New England history, will substantiate the assertion
that books like the " Simple Cobbler of Aggawam," by "Ward,
and sermons by other New England divines, teem with mat
ter intended and calculated to arouse the hatred of the peo
ple of New England against Catholics personally, and that
more specimens of this unchristian spirit can be found in six
New England tracts than in all Canadian literature.
The feeling of hostility to Catholics in the English col
onies was kept up and maintained for political ends, and was
a bond of harmony between the Puritan of New England
and the Episcopalian of Yirginia and Maryland. To what
cruel legislative acts it stimulated the Protestants of Vir
ginia, and to what bloody deeds it incited the men of South
Carolina, we have had the sad necessity of stating.
At the period where our narrative ends this spirit had ap-
CONCLUSION. 641
parently triumphed. Canada was humbled in the dust, her
great missionary organization had been broken up ; the Cath
olics in Florida saw no hope except in emigration. England
had the will and the power to deprive the Catholics through
out the land of churches, clergy, even of real and personal
property, and deport them all as paupers to some distant part
as she had done the Acadians.
A tract printed at Edinburgh in 1763, but voices the gen
eral feeling which had been created against Catholics, when
it advised the government " chiefly, to search out, with re
wards for discovery, and make public examples of those
plagues of society, disturbers of mankind, and constant source
of mischief to us in these parts — whatever Jesuits, Monks,
Priests, etc., can be apprehended anywhere throughout the
whole country eastward from the Mississippi and Iberville." '
The country west and southwest of the Mississippi was
still in Catholic hands, but the suppression of the provinces
of the Society of Jesus in French and Spanish territory, left
many districts without priests, and the faith of the people
was gradually yielding to decay like the crumbling tenant-
less churches.
Darkness as of night was settling on the land, but it was
the darkness that precedes the dawn.
1 " The Expediency of Securing our American Colonies."
41
ADDITION TO PAGES 195, 200.
The band of missionaries who set out in 1628 reached Santa Fe on Whit
sunday, one of the number, Father Martin Gonzales, dying on the way.
Missions were at once begun among the Humanas, Piros, and Tompiros
by Fathers Anthony Artiaga, Francis of the Conception, Thomas of
San Diego, Francis Letrado, Diego de la Fuente, and Francis de Azevedo.
An Apache mission was undertaken by Fathers Bartholomew Romero
and Francis Munoz. Father John Ramirez planted his mission cross at
Acoma. Father Roque de Figueredo, a missionary of great ability and
experience, already versed in several Indian languages, and a good mu
sician, undertook the conversion of the Zufii nation, taking up his resi
dence at the town of Cibola, with Father Augustine de Cuellar. The
Franciscans encountered great opposition here, the people being strong
ly attached to their idolatrous rites ; but they finally triumphed. Some
of the leading chiefs sought instruction, and after being tested were bap
tized on St. Augustine's day, 1629, Father Roque having on that day
erected an altar in the plaza, and offered the holy sacrifice before ad
ministering the sacrament to them and to the infants of some catechu
mens.
Father Porras and his companion, Father Andrew Gulierrez, encounter
ed similar obstacles at Moqui, but at last triumphed by what seemed to
Father Perea, a miraculous change (Perea, " Verdadera Relacion," " Se-
gunda Relacion ").
INDEX,
ABADEJO, Father Joseph 494
ABNAKIS. .238, 337, 594, 596, 603-4
ABIQUITJ 525
ACADIA 421-8
ACADIANS 422-9
ACEVEDO, Father Anthony de,
212 ; Rev. Peter L 464, 469
ACOMA 119, 186, 200, 208, 512,
521, 525
Acuco 119
ADAYES 490-6
ADRIAN VI., Pope 103
AGREDA, Ven. Maria de 197-8
AGRESKOUE 290
AGRETTL, Mgr. Claudius . 68, 79, 80
AHASISTARI, Huron Chief. . . . 229
AINAI 485
AKO, Michael 536
ALABAMA, Church in. 112, 129-131,
545-555, 564-7, 580, 591
ALAMEDA 525
ALAMO, Father Gonzalo del. . . 143
ALAMO 499
ALANA, Joseph Xavier de 472
ALBADESA, Father Joseph 494
ALBANEL, Father Charles . . 284, 328
ALBURQUERQUE, San Francis
co or San Felipe de 522, 525
ALEMAN Y HURTADO, Rev.
J. M 181
ALGONQUINS 316
ALIBAMONS 553, 572, 584, 589
ALLEMANGEL, Pa 394
PAGE
ALLOUEZ, Father Claude, 267 ;
Vicar General, 268, 274, 276,
277, 320 ; Death, 331 ; Bishop
St. Vallier on 535
ALMENDAREZ de Toledo, Rt.
Rev. Alonzo Henriquez 162
ALPUENTE, Father John de . . . 513
ALTHAM, Father John. .40, 42,
53, 54 ; Death 54
AMALINGANS 596
ANACAPI 456
ANACOSTAN Indians. 58
ANALISA, Father Lawrence,
killed 207, 208
ANDA, Father Mariano 501
ANDRE, Father Louis 275, 277
ANDREW of the Assumption,
Father 215
ANNE, Queen of England, pro
tects Maryland Catholics, 360;
Acadians 422
ANNE Arundell Co 69
ANSELM de Langres, Father. . . 580
ANTHONY of the Ascension, F. 215
ANTHONY, Father 566
ANTONICO , . , 157
APACHES 204, 502, 504, 508
APALACHES. .108, 164, 167, 180,
458, 461, 463 ; at Mobile, 552, 554,
568, 573, 591
APARICTO, Father Francis. . 504, 507
APONTE Y Lis, Father Cajetan. 502
APOQTJINIMINK, Mission at .... 369
(643)
644
INDEX.
ARAMIPINCHICWE, Mary 586
ARANA, John de 125
AKBIZU, Father Joseph, killed. 520
ARCHIIIAU . . 42
ARGAL, Samuel 222
ARIBACA 529
ARIZONA, Church in 526
ARK, The, and The Dove, bring
out Pilgrimi to Maryland. . . 39
ARKANSAS, Church in.. 539, 544-5,
572, 576
ARKANSAS Indians. 315, 539, 544-5,
572, 576
ARRIOLA, Don Andre de 455
ARROYO Honda 490
ARTEAGA, Rev. Mathias Joseph 506
ARTUR, Rev. Ricardo 153
ARUNDELL of Wardour, Thom
as, Lord 25, 30, 33
ASAO 155,172, 178, 179
ASAPISTA 325
ASHBEY, Father James 407
ASHTON, Father John 435
ASINAIS Indians (see Cenis,
Texas) 214, 480, 485
ASOPO, Ossibaw Island 154
ASSAPITA 537
ASSENDASE, Peter 297-8
ASTURIANO, a Priest 110
ATTAKAPAS, Louisiana 438
ATT WOOD, Father P. .370, 371, 405
ATJBERT, Father John B 589
ATJBERY, Father Joseph 594
ATJBRY, Rev. Nicholas 218
Aucit, Archbishop of. 543
AULNAY de Charnisay 240
AULNEAU, Father Peter 629
AUNON; Father Michael, 152 ;
killed, 154 ; Father Peter . . . 152
AURIESVTLLE, Ossernenon . . . 230
AVALON, Newfoundland 30-1
AVENEATT, Father Claude. .328, 624
AVILA, Father Francis de. .152, 155
PAGE
AXACAN 132, 147-150
AYALA, Juan de, Governor of
Florida 458
AYETA, F. Francis. .181-2, 206, 211
AYLLON, Lucas Vasquez de,
104-7 ; Rev. Simon de 162
AYS 490, 494
AYUBALE 462-3
AZEVEDO, Father Anthony. . . . 519
BADAJOZ, Brother Anthony,
152 ; killed 154
BAEZ, Brother Dominic Augus
tine '. 143, 144
BAHENA, Father Ignatius 497
BAHIA del Espiritu Santo, Tex
as 497, 498
BAILLOQTJET, Father Peter . . . 328
BALIZE 568, 573
BALTHAZAR, Father 187
BALTIMORE, Benedict Leonard. 371
BALTIMORE, Sir George Cal-
vert, Lord 28, 30, 32, 34
BALTIMORE, Cecil, Lord. 87-51, 379
BALTIMORE, Charles Calvert,
• Lord 371
BALTIMORE, Charles Calvert,
Lord 371-380
BALTIMORE, Third Plenary
Council of, solicits Canoniza
tion of Father Jogues, Rene
Goupil, and Catharine Tega-
kouita 234
BAL VERDE, Father Joseph Nar-
vaez 514
BANGS, F. Joachim. . .502, 504, 508
BARNABAS, Father 591
BARON, Father Denis 614
BARRERA, Father Diego Joseph 531
BARROSO, Father Christopher
Alphonsus 510, 512
BATTDOUIN, Father Michael,
572 ; Vicar-General 583
INDEX.
645
BAXTER, Jervis 88
BAYAGOULAS 543
BEADXALL, Father James, ar
rested 443
BEAUBOIS, Father Nicholas Ig
natius 558, 569
BEAULIEU Rapids 266
BEAUMONT, Father Francis — 370
BELEX, K M 525
BELLOMONT, Earl of . . . 356-8, 610
BELTRAN, Father Bernardine,
185-6 ; Father Manuel, killed 212
BENAYIDES, F. Alonso de. .195, 199
BEXEZET, Anthony, sympathy
for Acadians 434
BEXXET, Father John, 376-7 ;
Puritan Commissioner ....;. 73
BERASCULA, Father 159
BERGIER, Rev. J. .541, 543, 551, 558
BERXABE de los Angeles, F . . 172
BERXARDINE de Crespy, Fa
ther 238, 243
BERXAL, Father John, Gustos
of New Mexico, 205; killed. 207
BERXALDEZ, Rev. Peter 167
BERROA, Captain Stephen de. . 460
BESCHEFER, Father Thierry. . . 283
BESSON de la Garde, Rev.
John Peter 617
BETETA, Father Gregory de . . 122,
125, 132
BIARD, Father Peter 219-222
BIDAIS 500, 503
BIEXCOURT, Sieur de ... 221
BIENVIKLE, John de, Governor
of Louisiana 548, 551-2, 560
BIG Beaver, Mission at 614
BIGOT, Father James, 337 ; Fa
ther Vincent 594, 596-'
BIXXETEAU, Father Julian. . . 537
544, 594
BLACK Code, The 564
BLADEN, T., Governor of Ma
ryland, Proclamation against
Catholics 406
BOCQUET, F. Simplicius. . 630, 632
BOHEMIA, Md. . . .368-9, 403-4, 440
BOISBRIANT, Pierre du Guai
de 548, 558, 561
BOLSAS, Chief 514,517
BOXIFACE, Father 295-8
BOXILLA, Father Francis, 152 ;
Captain Louis 186
BOXXECAMP, de, Father Joseph
Peter..., 613
BORDENAVE, Rev. M 542
BORDOY, Father Anthony.. 214, 480
BOUND Brook 395
BOURDON, John 232
BRAVO, Father Diego 172
BRAY, Rev. Dr., Commissary. 352
BREBEUF, F, John. . .224, 243, 248
BREXT, George 97
BRESSAXI, Father Francis Jo
seph 231-2
BRETTON, William 70, 76, 78
BRITTAIN, Lionel, convert. . . . 366
BROCK, Father John (Poulton
Ferdinand), Superior 53, 55
BROCKHOLES, Anthony, 87 ;
Father Charles 370
BROOKE, F. Robert, first Mary
land Priest. .84, 349, 354, 363, 371
BROWN, Doctor 382-4
BROWNE, Richard 70
BRUYAS, Father James . . . 284, 290,
292, 294^5, 297-8, 304, 609
BUENO, Father Salvador 182
BUIL, Father. . . ". 101
BUISSON, Father Luke 321
CABEZA de Vaca HO
CABEZAS de Altamirano, Rt.
Rev. John, Bishop of Santi
ago de Cuba, 159 ; makes
visitation of Florida 160
646
INDEX.
CABOT 12, 100
CABRERA, John Marquez, Gov
ernor of Florida. . . . 173, 178, 179
CADALLOS, Rev. Dr. Joseph . . 494
CADILLAC, Gov. La Motte .... 620
CADDODACHOS 481
CADINA, Father Francis Gomez
de 206
CAHABA 585
CAHOKIA 536, 559, 561, 578, 586
CALABAZAS 529
CALDERON, Rt. Rev. Gabriel
Diaz Vara, Bishop of Santi
ago de Cuba, makes a visita
tion of Florida 168
CALLISTER, H 434
CALSADA, Father, killed 207-9
CALVERT, Benedict Leonard,
apostasy of 371
CALVERT, Charles 79
CALVERT, Sir George (see Lord
Baltimore) 28
CALVERT, Leonard . .38, 51, 54, 62,
68, 69
CALVO, Rev. Antonio 163-4
CAMARDA, Rev. Pedro de la. . . 162
CAMPANA, Father John B. . . . 172
CAMPOS, Father Augustine de . 527
CANARY Islands 499
CANCER, Father Louis, 123-5 ;
killed 126
CANCO, Governor of Florida. .157-8
CANDELERAS 524
CANIBAS 594
CAPILLAS, Father John, first
Provincial of Santa Elena de
la Florida 161
CAPUCHINS. 236-8, 243, 565, 568, etc.
CARBONEL, Father Anthony,
513, 517,519; killed 520
CARDEXAS, Pinilla y Ramos,
Rev. John Ignatius 500
CARETTE, Father Louis 575
PAUK
CAREW, Father Henry, 82 ;
President of the Mission 96
CARHEIL, Father Stephen de. .286-
294, 297, 303, 328, 332, 536
CARLOS, Province.. . .163, 172, 179,
456, 472
CARNICERIA 495
CARO T SEIXAS, Rev. Manuel . . 500
CARRERA, Father John de la. . 143
CARROLL, Charles. . 371, 376-7, 408,
410, 416, 450, 453
CARROLL, Dr. Charles, apos
tate 410-1
CARROLL, Most Rev. John 386
CASANAS, Father Francis of
Jesus Mary, 214, 480, 481,
513, 518 ; killed 520
CASAS Grandes us
CASE, Father James 377
CASTANON, Capt 186
CASTELLANOS, Father Manuel . 484
CASTILLO, Juan del, Bishop of
Santiago de Cuba 144
CASTRO, Father John Munoz
de, 513; Custos, 518, 519;
Father Anthony 532
CATAROCOUY. 320
CATHOLICS, excluded from
Maryland Assembly in 1652,
73 ; deprived of Chapel at
St. Mary's, 356 ; disfranchised
in all the colonies 365
CATITI, Alonzo. ...... . . 206, 511
CAVELIER, Rev. John 340
3AYUGA Mission. 255, 286, 297, 303,
607, 616
^ECILIUS, Father 573
}EDAR Creek, Pa 394
]ENIS 214
?ERON, George 130-1
CERVANTES, Father Anthony de 106
!HALLONER, Rt. Rev. Richard,
Vicar-Apostolic of London . . 95
INDEX.
647
CHAMPLAIN, Samuel de... .223, 225
CHAPEL-HOUSE, used in Mary
land to comply with Queen
Anue's permission 363-4
CHAPITOULAS. ... 591
CHAKDON, F. John B. 622, 625, 627
CHARLEMAGNE, Father 423
CHARLES, F., Carmelite. . .552, 562
CHARLES V 103, 106
CHARLESFORT, S. C 134
CHARLEVOIX, Father Francis
X. de 559, 564
CHARLOTTE Harbor 143
CHARTRES, Bishop of 543
CHAUCHETIERE, Father Claude 309
CHAUMONOT, Father Peter J.
M 248, 250, 255
CHAUVREULX, Rev. Mr 430
CHEFDEVILLE, Rev. Mr 340-1
CHEGOIMEGON 267, 271, 272
CHERES 190
CHICAGO 537, 539
CHICKASAWS 573, 575, 585
CHILOMACON or Chitomachen,
Chief of Piscataway 53
CHIPPEWA Creek 322
CHIPPEWA Mission 268
CHIPPEWAS 228, 268, 316
CHOCTAWS 572, 584
CHOMAS or Jumanas 481
CHOPART 573
CHOZAS, Father Peter Fernan
dez de 152-3, 159
CHURCH, Major 598
CHURCH of England established
in Maryland 346, 380
CIA 186, 190, 194, 512, 519
CIBOLA 115-7, 118, 119
CICUYE or Old Pecos . . .119, 121-2
CIPIAS 200
CISNEROS, Rev. John de 173
CLAROS, Father 187, 190
CLATBORNE . . .32-3, 44, 48, 62, 73
CLERKE, Robert 50, 70
COCHITI 512, 519, 525
Cocos 512
COLIGNY, Admiral 134
COLLET, Rev. Luke 561, 614
COLOMBIERE, M. de 543
COLUMBUS, Christopher . . 11, 100
COMPANY of the West. 558, 563, 569
COMPOSTELA, Rt. Rev. Diego
Evelino de, Bishop of Santi
ago de Cuba, sends Visitors
to Florida 181, 463
CONCEPCION, La Purisima. . . . 507
CONCHO& . . .186, 212
CONCORD 448
CONEWAGO 391, 420
CONFIRMATION in Florida, 160,
170, 469, 476 ; in New Mex
ico, 213 ; in Texas, 506 ; in
New York, 617; at La Prairie 307
CONNER, Philip 20
CONTRERAS, Father Bonaven-
ture de, 514 ; Father John de 132
COODE, 97 ; Rev. John 345
COOPER, Father John 66
COOSA 128-9
COPLEY, Sir Lionel, Royal
Governor of Maryland 346
COPLEY, F. Thos. (Philip Fish
er).. 38, 46-7, 53, 56, 58, 63, 69, 75
COQUART, Father Godfrey 629
CORCHADO, F. Andrew.. . .187, 190
CORNWALEYS, Thomas.39, 49, 62, 63
CORNWALLIS, Governor 424
COROAS 545
CORONADO, Francis Vasquez
de 114, 118, 120
CORDOBA, Father Peter de. . . . 102
CORPA, Father Peter de, 152 ;
killed 153
CORRAL, Father Anthony de . 514
CORVERA, Father Francis, 510-
13, 518; killed 520
INDEX.
COSA 129-180
COURRIER, Rev. Joseph 577
COUTURE, William 229
Coxi 526
CREES 316
CRESPEL, F. Emmanuel. 613, 627-8
CRESPO, Rt. Rev. Benedict,
Bishop of Duraugo, visits
New Mexico, 523 ; visits So-
nora 528
CROWN Point, Fort at. 612-3
CUBERO, Governor of New
Mexico 521
CULUACAN 122
CUMBERLAND Island 142
CUPAYCA, Apalache town 164
CURIAMES 186
CUSIIENHOPEN, Cussahopen,
(see Goshenhopen) 445
CYPRIAN, Rev. Ignatius Au
gustine 497
DABLON, F. Claude. .. 248, 252, 272
DAKOTAs(see Sioux).. 316, 619, 627-8
DALE, Sir Thomas 222
DANDRADE, Rev. V. F 158
DANIEL, Colonel 459, 460
D'ARGENSON, Viscount, Gov.-
Gen. of Canada 281
D'ARTAGUIETTE 585
DAUDIN, Rev. Mr. 430
DAVION, Rev. Anthony. . .539-542,
545, 553
DAVIS, Father Peter 877
DAZA, Father John 513
DE BEAUBOIS, Father Nicholas
Ignatius 570, 573, 581-2
DE BOURGMONT 623-4
DE BREBEUF, Father John 224
DE CALLIERES, Governor 609
DE CARHEIL, F. Stephen. .619, 621
DE COURCELLES, Governor of
Canada 283
DEER Creek, Md 413
DE GUYENNE, Father Alexis. . . 572,
575, 585, 587
DE LA BARRE, Governor of
Canada 330
DE LA BRETONNIERE, Father
James Q 627
DE LA CHASSE, F. Joseph. . 594, 602
DE LA FRENIERE 588
DE LA LANDE, John 233
DE LA MARCHE, Father Dom
inic.. 624
DE LAMBERVILLE, Father
James, 298-9, 312, 333, 611 ;
Father John 295, 297, 332-4
DE LA MORINIE, Father John B . 586,
589, 590, 629, 633
DE LA RIBOURDE, Father Ga
briel, 321-3; killed 325
DE LA RICHARDIE, Father John 629
DE LA VERENDRYE, Sieur 629
DELAWARE, Early Catholic
ity in 369,450
DEL CAMPO, Andrew 121
DELHALLE, Father Nicholas
Bernardine Constantine, 620 ;
killed 624, 627
DELGADO, Friar Marcos, killed 462
DE LIMOGES, Father Joseph. . . 542
DELINO, Father Anthony. . . . 626
DE MONT'S Island 218
DENIAU, Father Cherubin 625
DENONVILLE, Governor... .536, 593
DE NOUE, Father. 225
DEPERET, Father Anthony 612
D'ESCIIAMBAULT, Rev.JamesA. 595
DE SAINT CASTIN, Baron 336
DE SAINT COSME, Rev. John
Francis, 540-2, 544 ; killed . . 550
DE SAINT VALLIER, John Bap
tist de la Croix de, Second
Bishop of Quebec. 327, 842, 534-5,
538, 543, 546, 557, 561, 563, 595
INDEX.
649
D'ESMANVILLE, Rev. Mr.
PAGE
. 340
DURAND, Father Justinian,
DE SYRESME, Father 604 j prisoner in Boston 423
DETROIT. 620 DURANGO 523-4, 528
DEVERNAI, F. Julian.. 579, 589, 633 Du Ru, Father Paul
D'HEU, Father James 611-12 j Du THET, Brother, killed 222
DIAZ, Father Joseph. 519
EASTON, Pa 452
ECIJA 106
ELIZACOCHEA, Rt. Rev. Mar
tin de, Bishop of Durango,
visits New Mexico 523-4
DICKENSON, John 457
DIDIER, Rev 580
DIEPPE. . 134
DIEZ, Father Joseph 513
DIGGES, Father Thomas 407
D'OLBEAU, Father John 224
DOLLIER de Cassou.Rev.Mr. 284,311
DOMINIC of the Annunciation,
Father 128-131
DOMINIC of Jesus Mary, Father 514
DOMINIC of St. Dominic, F — 128
DOMINIC of St. Mary, Father. . 127
DONGAN, Col. Thomas, Gov
ernor of New York.. .89, 97, 333
DORANTES
Dor AY, Father Anastasius.. . .340-1
DOUGHOREGAN Manor. . . .363, 435
DOUGLAS, William 89, 368
DOUTRELEAU, Father. 570, 572, 574
DRUILLETTES, F. Gabriel — 238-9,
241-2, 258, 275-7, 317
Du Bois, Rev. Mr 283
Du BREUIL de Pontbriand,
Bishop 583,616,631
DUJAUNAI, F. Peter . .579, 629, 633
Du LHUT, Daniel Greysolon. . . 324
DUMAS, Father John 572, 586
Du PLESSIS de Mornay, Rt.
Rev. Louis Francis, Coadju
tor of Quebec, and Vicar-
General for Louisiana 564
Du POISSON, Father Paul, 572 ;
killed 573
EL PASO 211,519,524-5
ELZEARde St. Florentin, Bro. . 243
ENJALRAN, Father John. .326, 328,
334, 619, 621
ERIWOMECK, N. J 86
ESCALONA, Father John de, 191,
193 ; Brother Louis (John of
the Cross), 118, 120 ; killed.. 122
ESCAMBIA River 129
ESCOBAR, Father Francis 193
ESPEJO, Antonio de 185
ESPINOSA, F. Ildefonso, 530 ; F.
Isidro Felis de, 483-5, 493 ;
F. John of Jesus, killed . . 207-8
ESPIRITU Santo, River (Missis
sippi), 108 ; Bay 340
ESPRONZEDA, Rev. John Fran
cis ^OO
ESTRADA, Brother Peter de. . . 106
ETECHEMINS, Mission to. .837, 594
EVELINO de Compostela, Rt.
Rev. Diego, Bishop of San
tiago de Cuba 456
FALKNER'S Swamp (Pottsgrove) 393
FARFAN, Father Francis. . .206, 517
FARMER, Father Ferdinand. . .387,
420, 446, 448
DUPUI, F. Victorin. . .552, 573, 580 | FARRAR, Father James ^
DUPUIS, Zachary 252
DURAN, Father Andrew, 206 ;
Father Roderic
FENWICK, Cuthbert . .49, 62, 70, 72
FERDINAND, Father 591
FERIA, Father Peter de.. . .128, IX)
650
INDEX.
FERNANDEZ de Santa Ana, Fa
ther Benedict 501
FERNANDINA (Pensacola Bay) . 128
FIGUEROA, Father, killed 207-8
FISHER, Father Philip (see
Copley).
FITZIIERBERT, F. Francis.75, 76, 79
FITZWILLIAM, Father John. ... 79
FLORENCIA, F. Francis de . . . 454-5
FLORIDA, Church in 100, 454
FLOYD, Father Francis 377
FONTCUBIERTA, Father Michael,
Superiorof Texas Mission, dies 480
FORGET DTJVERGER, Rev.
Francis 578, 590
FORSTER, F. Michael. 79, 83, 90, 95
FORT Beauharnois 627
FORT Caroline 134, 139
FORT Chartres. . .558, 560, 578, 588
FORT Crgvecceur 323
FORT de la Riviere aux Beeufs. 613
FORT Duquesne 614
FORT Frontenac 320
FORT Hill 601
FORT Louis, La 548
FORT Machault 613
FORT Mose 473
FORT Ouiatenon 626
FORT Peoria 539
FORT Presentation 614
FORT Presquile , 613
FORT St. Anne 283-4
FORT St. Frederic, Chapel in. . 612
FORT St. Louis, 328; (Texas).. 340
FORT Toulouse 584
FOUCAULT, Rev. Nicholas, 544 ;
killed 545
FOUCHER, Rev. John Baptist. . 578
FOXES (Outagamis) 274, 625
Fox River 277
FRANCIS of Jesus, Father. 519
FRANCISCO ALONSO of Jesus,
Father, Provincial of Florida 163
PAGE
FRANKFORT 394
FRASQUILLO, Chief of Moquis. 209
FREDERICK, Md., Mission at. . 451
FREMIN, Father James. . .253, 284,
286, 305, 308, 311, 332
FRONTENAC, Count de 320, 609
FUENTES 125
GABRIEL de Joinville, Father. . 240
GAGE, Father Charles 91-2
GAGNON, Rev. Joseph 561, 577
GALINDO, Rt. Rev. Philip
Charles, Bishop of Guadala
jara 483
GALINEE, Rev. Rene Brehaut de 311
GALISTEO 511, 524
GALLEGOS, Rev. John de Ill
GALVE, Count of 511
GANDAOUAGUE 284, 295, 298
GANNAGARO 295, 334
GANNEAKTENA, Catharine. 805-7
GANZABAL, Father Joseph
Francis, 501 ; killed 502
GARACONTHIE, Daniel, 287-8,
293; death, 302-3; the
younger 610
GARAICOECHEA, F. John de . . . 521
GARANGOUAS, Margaret 609
GARAY, Francis 108
GARCIA, Rev. Bartholomew,
163 ; Father Bartholomew,
500, 509 ; Father Diego Mar
tin, 500 ; Father John 124
GARCIA de Palacios, Rt. Rev.
John, Bishop of Santiago de
Cuba, convenes a Synod .... 174
GARDAR, See of 16
GARDNER, Luke 74
GARNIER, Father Charles, kill
ed, 243, 248 ; Father Julian.. 285,
297, 303, 332, 611
GARONHIAGUE (see Hot Cin
ders).
INDEX.
651
PAGE
GARREAU, Father Leonard,
258; killed 258
GARRUCHO, Father 530
GARZA, Eev. Joseph de la 497
GASPAR, Father 573
GASPESIANS, Mission to 337
GASTON, Rev. Mr., killed 577
GATJLIN, Rev. Anthony 595
GAWEN, Father Thomas, Supe
rior in Maryland 82
GEIGER'S House, Salem Co.,
N. J 395, 448
GEORGIA, Catholicity in. 154-5, 172,
178-9, 437-8, 458
GERARD, Richard 39
GERARD, Sir Thomas 19-20
GERRARD, Thomas 76
GERMAIN, Father Charles 604-5
GERMANTOWN 394
GERVASE, Rev. Mr., 549, 550 ;
Thomas 40, 48
GIFFARD, Rt. Rev. Bonaven-
tura, Vicar- Apostolic of Lon
don, 95, 375 ; death of 376
GILA River 118
GILBERT, Sir Humphrey. .19, 22-3
GLASS House, Salem Co., N. J. 448
GODINO, Rev. Manuel. ....... 158
GOLDING, Father Edward. . . 82
GOMEZ, Francis, 107; Brother
Gabriel, 147 ; killed 149
GOMEZ de Palma, Rev. John . . 163
GOMEZ de Parada, Rt. Rev.
John, Bishop of Guadalajara 500
GONANNHATENHA, Frances — 608
GONZALES, Brother Vincent. . . 150
GOOCH, Gov. of Virginia 408
GORDILLO, Francis 104
GORDON, Father Mark An
thony, 615; Father Peter,
368 ; Lieut. -Gov. Patrick.. . . 387
GosHENHOPEN.387, 392, 420, 445-6
GOIIENTAGRANDI, Susan 606
PAGE
GOUPIL, Rene, 229 ; killed. ... 230
GRANDFONTAINE, Chevalier de 336
GRASHOFFER, F. John Baptist. 529
GRAVIER, Father James, 328 ;
Vicar-General 535, 548-9, 552
GRAY Nuns 546
GREATOX, Father Joseph. 386, 390,
404, 419
GREEN Bay 274, 276, 329, 619,
622, 627
GREEN, Thomas, 49 ; Govern
or of Maryland 69-70
GUADALAJARA, Bishop of 203
GUADALQUINI 172, 178
GUADALUPE, N. M 525
GUALE (Amelia) Island.. . .144, 158,
171, 178
GUANDAPE, San Miguel de 106
GUAY, Rev 595
GUERCHEVTLLE, Antoinette de
Pons, Marchioness de. . . .220-222
GUERRA, Father Antonio, 212 ;
Father Joseph 494
GUEVAVI 526-9
GUIGNAS, F. Louis Ignatius. . . 627
GULICK, Father Nicholas. . .82, 348
GUTIERREZ, Father Andrew . . 200
GUYMONNEAU, F. John Charles 559
HACKETT, Rev. Mr 31
HADDOCK, Father James . 371, 377
HARDING, Father Robert .386, 407,
419, 446, 448
HARDY, Sir Charles, Governor
of New York. 438
HARLAY, Most Rev. Francis,
Archbishop of Rouen 246
HARRISON, F. Henry... .91-2, 97-8
HARTWELL, Father Bernard . . 65-6
HARVEY, Father Thomas, in
New York 90, 97-8, 349
HATTON, Eleanor 74
HAWKINS, Sir John 134
652
INDEX.
PAQE
HAWLEY, Jerome 89
HEBRON, John and Joseph 78
HENNEPIN, F. Louis. . .88, 321-324
HENRY a Sancto Francisco, F. . 82
HERNANDEZ, Rev. John An
thony. 474
HICKORY Mission .... 413
HIDALGO, F. Francis. .481, 484, 490
HITA, Rev. Pablo de 172
HOALISA, Father Manuel de . . . 466
HOBART, Father Basil, 82, 96,
348 ; dies 351
HODGSON, Father Thomas 370
HOLIDAYS of Obligation .175-6, 269,
374, 453, 503
HOLY Cross Island, first Chapel
in New England on 218
HOLY Family, confraternity of
the 302
HOLY Orders, first conferred in
1674 170
HONORATUS, Father 115
HOT CINDERS, Chief. . . . 300, 306
HOTHERSALL, Thomas 83
HOWARD, Henry, Bp. of Utica,
Coadjutor of Bishop Giffard. 376
HUNTER, Father George, 444,
449 ; Father William 348-350,
354, 363, 377
HURONS 243, 264, 268, 619-23,
626, 629
HUTCHINSON, Lt.-Gov., sym
pathy with Acadiaus 431
HUVE, Rev. Alex. . .546, 552-3, 565
HYACINTH, Father 573
HYSLOP, Father Clement 368
ICELAND, Catholicity in 16
ICHTJSE or Santa Rosa Bay 129
IGNATIUS of Paris, Father 239
ILLINOIS Indians 273, 276
ILLINOIS, Church in 316-7, 320,
324, 328, 535-9, 541^, etc.
IMMACULATE Conception, Mis
sion of the (Kaskaskia). .538, 558
INDIAN Reservation (Maryland) 73
INDIANA, Church in 323, 536,
579, 626
INGLE, Captain 62
INSCRIPTION Rock 524
IREN^US, Father 590, 591
IRISH Papists 373, 440
ISLE la Motte 283
ISLETA 199, 206, 524
JACKER, V. Rev. Edward 319
JAMAY, Father Denis 224
JAMES II 97
JAMES, Sir John 384
JEME/.119, 190, 194, 517, 518, 520,
522, 525
JICARILLA Apaches 524
JOGUES, F. Isaac . .57, 128-233, 235
JOHN FRANCIS, Father 580
JONES, Griffith 367
JOHN MATTHEW, Father, 565 ;
styles himself Vicar- Apostolic 565
JOHN of Jesus, F., killed. .208, 517
JOHN of St. Mary, F., killed. . 184
JOLLIET, Louis 312-5
JONES, Rev. Hugh 404-7
JUBILEE, First in Canada 246
JUCHEREAU, Sieur 545
JUIF, Abbe, at Yazoo 559, 572
JUMANAS (Patarabueyes, Cho
mas) 186, 481, 197, 212
KASKASKIA 558-9
KASKASKIAS . .316-7, 320, 544, 557,
560, 586, 589
KELER, Father Ignatius Xavier 529
KENNEBEC 220
KENT Island 44, 78
KEREBEN, Father Joseph Fran
cis de 559
KEWEENAW Bay 263
INDEX.
KEY West 456
KICKAPOOS 625
KIEFT, William 231
KINGDON, Father John 404
KlTTAHAQJJINDI 53
KNOLLES, F. John, 46 ; dies . . 47
KRYN, " The Great Mohawk" 296,
306
KUHN or Kino, Father Euse-
bius Francis, 526 ; death 528
LA BAZARES, Guido 128
LA CANADA (Villa nueva de
Santa Cruz) 519
LA COLOMBIERE, Rev. Joseph
de 545
LA DURANTAYE 330
LAGUNA 525
LAJUS, Father John Baptist. . . 612
LAKE Erie 311
LAKE Ganentaa 249
LAKE George 232
LAKE Megantio 598
LAKE Pimiteouy 560
LALEMANT, Father Charles,
224 ; Father Jerome 246
LA MOTTE, Sieur de. 321
LANCASTER, Pa 391, 420
LA POINTE du St. Esprit 267,
271, 275
LA PRAIRIE 300, 305
LA ROCHE DAILLON, F. Joseph 224
LAS ALAS, Stephen de 140
LA SALINETA 206
LA SALLE, Robert Cavelier,
Sieur de la. 311, 322-3, 326, 340-1
LASTRA, Father Peter de la. . . 172
LA SAUSSAYE, Sieur de 221-2
LAUDONNIERE, Rene de 134
LAURENS, Rev 578
LATJVERJAT, Father Stephen . 599,
601, 604
LAVAL de Montigny, Rt. Rev.
PAGE
Francis, Bishop of Petrsea,
and Vicar- Apostolic of New
France, 259, 262, 268, 270,
307, 309, 312 ; resigns, 342 ;
death 343
LA VENTE, Rev. Henry Roul-
leaux de, first parish priest
of Mobile 546-7, 551-2
LA VIGNE VOISIN 552-3
LE BARON, Dr 94
LE BOULLENGER, F. John . . . 558-9
LE CARON, Father Joseph 224
LE CLERC, Rev. Mr 436
LE CLERCQ, Father Maximus. 340
LEFEVRE, Father Nicholas. . . . 584
LE FRANC, Father Marin Louis 633
LEGRAND, Father Pacome. . . . 578
LEISLER, Jacob 97
LE JEUNE, Father Paul 225
LE MAIRE, Abbe, 430, 436;
Rev. F 549,550,553
LE MERCIER, Father Francis. . 253
LE MOTTE, Father James 407
LE MOYNE, Father Simon, 247,
251, 281; death 282
LEO of Paris, Father 238
LEONARD of Chartres, Father . 237
LEONARD, Father Bonaventure 626
LE PETIT, Father 570, 572
LE PREDEUR, Father John
James 589
LERDO, Rev. John de 162
LE ROY, Father 584
LES ALLEMANDS 568, 573, 591
LETRADO, F. Francis, killed . . 200
LEWGAR, John 50, 54
LEWIS, Father John 419
LEYBURN, Rt. Rev. John, Vic
ar-Apostolic of England, and
then of London 95
LIBERTY, religious, established
in Maryland by Catholics,
49, 70 ; abolished by Puritans 74
654
INDEX.
LINARES, Brother Peter de,
143; killed 149
LIPAN Apaches 495
LIVERS, Father Arnold 407
LOMBARDE, Father, killed ... 20
LONGVILL, Rev. Mr 3]
LOPEZ, Father Balthazar,
152-3, 157 ; Father Felician,
457 ; F. Francis, 183 ; killed,
184, 190, 195; F. Nicholas. . 212
LOPEZ de Lara, Rev. Casimir . 506
LORETTE, Catholic Iroquois at. 305
Louis XIII 221
Louis, Father 118
LOUISIANA. .438, 543, 564, 565, 583
LOTARD, Father 601
LUGO, Father 187, 190
LUNA, Father Peter de 172
LUNA Y ARELLANO, Tristan
de 127-132
MACHADO, Dr. Juan Ferro, vis
itation of Florida 181
MADAWASKA 439
MAGUNSCHI 392
MAINE, Catholicity in . 22-28, 218-9,
221-3, 234-243, 310, 592-605
MALDONADO, Father, killed . . . 207
MAITRE, Rev. Mr., killed 281
MANCIIOT, Oneida Chief 334
MANNERS, George 70
MANNERS, Father 420
MANSELL, Father Thomas, 363,
368 ; dies 377
MANTE, Father Cosmas de . 238, 240
MAQUACOMEN 48
MAREST, Father Gabriel, 538,
539, 551, 560 ; dies, 585 ; Fa
ther James Joseph .328, 619, 621,
623-5
MAREUIL, Father Peter 611-12
MARGIL of Jesus, Ven. Father
Anthony 486-497
MARIA ANO FRANCIS de los
Dolores, Father 500
MARIANO, Manuel 501
MARIN, Father Joseph Garcia. 519
MARK of Nice, Father 115-118
MARQUETTE, Father James 272,
275-6, 312-319, 535
MARQUEZ, Father Diego 187
MARRON, Father Francis . . .152-3
MARSEILLES, Bishop of. . .543, 547
MARTINEZ, Father Alonso,
187-8, 191 ; Father Francis,
341 ; Father Ignatius, 509 ;
Father Peter, killed 142
MARYLAND, Catholicity in, 34-
84, 345-379, 406-442 ; Map of 45
MASCOUTINS 274-5, 278, 313,
546, 625
MASSACHUSETTS, Catholicity in. 397,
430-1.. 438
MASSE, Father Enemond 219-222
MASSEY a Sancta Barbara, Fa
ther Massaeus 81, 96
MATACUMBE 163, 457, 472
MATHEWS, Sir Toby 86
MATHIAS de Sedan, Father 580
MATHIAS, Father, 573 ; Vicar-
General 583
MATIENZO 104, 106
MATTAPANY, Mattapauien, 67 ;
Indians 73
MATTHEWS, Thomas 72
MAUILA ill
MAUNSELL, John 70
MAXETANI 392, 394
MAXIMIN, Father 573
MAYACA 157, 165, 182, 457
MAZANET, Father Damian. .479-81
MAZUELAS, Father John. . .128, 130
MCGAWLEY, Miss Elizabeth. . . 382
MEADE Family 367
MEDOCTEC 594, 599, 601, 604
MEGAPOLENSIS, Dominie 231
INDEX.
655
MEMBRE, Father Zenobius,
321-6, 339-40 ; killed 341
MENCHEKO, Father John 524
MEXARD, Father Rene, 253,
255, 262-3; death 266
MENDEZ, Brother John Bap
tist, 143; killed 149
MENDOZA, Antonio de, Viceroy
of New Spain, 114; Father
Manuel der killed, 462 ; Fa
ther Peter de 484
MENDOZA - GRAJALES, Rev.
Francis de, first parish priest
of St. Augustine. . . . 136, 140-1
MENENDEZ, Peter.. 133, 135-6, 139-
143, 145, 150-1
MENOMONEES 274-5, 278
MERCIER, Rev John 559, 576
MERMET, F. John, 545-6 ; dies 585
MESAIGER, F. Charles M 628-9
MESO'RCOQTJES.. . 53
METCHIGAMEAS 315, 586
MEURIN, Father Louis Sebas
tian 578, 585, 589, 590
MEXIA, Lt. John Ruiz 461
MEXICO, See of 11
MIAMIS 276, 313, 325, 334, 536,
586, 623-4, 626, 628
MICHIGAN, Church in 228, 262,
271, 276, 620, etc.
MICHILIMACKIN AC.. 276-7, 313, 318,
536, 619, 620, 633
MILET, Father Peter 286, 288,
302, 332, 334
MINIAC, Abbe 430
MINNESOTA, Church in. . .324, 619,
627
MIRANDA, Father Angel, burn
ed alive, 462 : F. Anthony. . 521-2
MISSISSIPPI River. . . 311-2, 314-5
MISSISSIPPI, Catholicity in 129,
541-2, 550, 558, 572-4
MISSOURI, Catholicity in . . 589, 633
PAGE
MISSOURI River 120
MISSOURIS 530, 545
MOBILE. 463, 490, 546, 568, 573, 591
MOBILIANS 552
MOCANA. 171
MOHAWK Mission. 232, 284-6, 295-9
MOHAWKS 603, 616
MOINGONAS 314
MOLIN, Father Lawrence 336
MOLINA, Father Michael 502
MOLYNEUX, Richard. .401, 407, 408
MONACO, Father Joseph Mary. 472
MONTE, Father Bias Rodriguez
de, 143 ; killed 144
MONTEREY, first Mass at 215
MONTESINOS, Father Anthony
de 101, 106-7
MONTIGNY, Very Rev. Francis
Jolliet de 539-550
MONTOUR, Madame 401
MONTS, Pierre du Guast, Sieur
de, 218 ; first settlement on
Neutral Island 218
MOORE, Governor 459
MOQUI 186, 193, 200, 513, 524
MORA, Father, killed 207
MORADOR, Father John of
Jesus, killed 207
MORAL, Father Alonso del. 170, 172
MORAIN, Father 337
MORAND, Father William F. . . 584
MORELL de Santa Cruz, Rt.
Rev. Peter Augustine, Bishop
of Santiago de Cuba 475-6
MORENO, Father Anthony, 519;
killed 520
MORNAY, Bishop Du Plessis. . . 576
MOSLEY, Father Joseph 449
MOULTON, Col 603
MOUNTAIN, Mission of the. . . . 305
MUNIZ, Father Michael 510
MUNOZ, Father Francis, 642 ;
Father Peter.. 492
656
INDEX.
NACOGDOCHES. . .492, 495, 496, 507
NAMBE 519
NANIPACNA 129
NAPOCHIES 129
NARVAEZ, Pamfilo de 108
NASSONIS 490
NATCHEZ 559, 569, 573
NATCHITOCHES. . .490, 569, 573, 591
NAVAJOS 201, 524
NEALE, Archbishop 382
NEALE, Father Benedict, 392,
407, 413 ; Father Henry 419
NEGRO Plot, New York 399
NEUTRAL Island, Chapel on,
218 ; Map of 217
NEW Albion, Plowden's Colony 86
NEW Amsterdam 231
NEW Jersey, Catholicity in. .89, 448
NEW Mexico, Catholicity in 189
etc., 510 etc.
NEW ORLEANS 566-7, 573, 591
NEWTOWN, Md 76, 78, 444
NEW YORK, Catholicity in . 90-1, 97,
247-302, 322, 334, 433, 438, 607-16
NIAGARA, Chapels at. 322, 334, 612-3
NICOLAS, Father Louis. . 270
NICETOWN, Pa 382
NICHOLSON, Lieut. -Gov 97, 347
NOMBRE de Dios, at St. Au
gustine. . .137, 151, 165, 464, 466
NORKIDGEWALK, Norridge-
wock 241-2, 594, 596, 603
NORTHMEN, Catholic 11
NORUMBEGA 22
NOUVEL, Father Henry 276-7,
317-8, 328, 536, 622
NUESTRA Sehora de la Leche,
Chapel of 137-8, 464-5
NUNEZ, Father Michael 497
OBREGON, F. Anthony de..514, 517
OCUTE 159
OGLETHORPE, General .... 399, 473
O'HARA, Bryan 449
OLD Village Point 263
OLEY Hills 394
OLIER, Ven. John 226
OLIVA, Rev. John de la 167
OLIVARES, Father Anthony de
San Buenaventura y 483, 491
ONATE, John de, 186 ; prayer
of 188
ONEIDA 285, 302, 606, 609
ONONDAGA 247-254, 256-7, 281,
285, 297, 607-11, 616
OPELOTJSAS 433
ORAYBI 513
ORE, F. Louis Jerome de. . 155, 162
ORISTA 144
ORTEGA, Father Diego de 198
ORTIZ, Rev. Alonzo, 162; F. . 474
OSAGES 536
OSPO 155
OSSERNENON 229, 232-3, 285
OTERMIN, Governor of New
Mexico, 205 ; Cuts his way
out of Santa Fe 206
OTTAWA River. 333
OTTAWAS. . . 262, 267, 269, 272, 318,
619-624, 626
OUACHIL TAMAIL 540
OUIATENON 578, 586
OUMAOTJHA, Illinois Chief 324
OUMAS 542
OUNSPIK 540
PADILLA, Father John de, 118-
120 ; death 121
PALMER, Colonel 465
PALOS, Brother John de 108
PALOU, Father Francis 504
PAPAGOS 530
PAREDES, Rev. John de. . .464, 474
PAREJA, F. Francis. 142, 156-7, 159
PARGA, Father John de, 461 ;
burned 461
INDEX.
657
PARKAS, Father Peter 504
PARILLA, Father 501
PATRICK), Chief of Ybitacucho 458
PATALI 461
PATRON de Gusman, Father
Augustine.. 484, 490, 497
PATUXENTS 48, 51, 58, 76
PAVER, Father Francis 530
PAWNEES 545
PAYAYAS 491
PEAKE, Walter 70
PEASLEY, Mrs 60
PECKHAM, Sir George. ... 19, 20, 24
PECOS..189, 190, 199, 205, 513, 515,
519, 524
PEINADO, Father Alonso 194
PELCON, F. Peter (Manners). . . 79
PELFRESNE, Father Hyacinth. 626
PELHAM, Father William, 79 ;
Father Henry 79
PEN A, Father John de la 522
PENAL Laws against Catholics
in England, 18 ; in New
York, 356-7 ; Massachusetts,
358 ; Maryland, 351, 359 ; in
Virginia 409, 452
PENALOSA, Diego de, Govern
or of New Mexico. .204, 338, 340
PENARANDA, Alonso de 159
PENICAUT 554
PENUELA Y ALMIRANTE, Mar
quis de la 522
PEORIAS 314, 536
PENN, William 92-4, 365
PENNINGTON, Father Francis,
82 ; Superior. 95-6, 348-9
PENNSYLVANIA, Catholicity
in 365-6. 433, 445
PENOBSCOTS 594, 601, 604
PENSACOLA 128, 130, 466-7
PENSACOLA Bay 128, 1 30
PENTAGOET.. .is87-8, 310, 335, 337,
593, 595, 597
42
PAGE
PEORIAS 586
PEREA, Father Stephen de,
195; Custos 196
PERDOMO, Father 215
PERERA, Father Anthony .... 480
PERETE, Father Francis 170
PEREZ, Father Francis 165
PEREZ de la Cerda, Rev. Sebas
tian 170, 172
PEREZ de Mesquia, F. Peter. . 484
PERROT, Nicholas 328, 329
PERSONS, Father Robert 27
PERTH, James, Earl of 87
PESET, Rev. Mr C37
PETATLAN 110, 115
PFEFPERKORN, F. Ignatius. . . 531
PHILADELPHIA 366, 447-8
PHILIBERT, Father 573
PHILIP II 133, 142
PHILIP III 159
PHILIP, Father 570, 573
PHILLIPS, Father Vincent 407
PlANKESHAWS 586
PICURIES 190, 199, 205-6, 519,
520, 525
PIERRON, Father John. 81-2, 285-6,
303-4, 332
PIERSON, Father 318, 326
PILABO 200
PIMAS 530
PINEDA, Father Joseph 501
PINELLA, Father Joseph 501
PINET, Father Peter, 537, 539 ;
Rev. Mr 544
PIQUET, Rev. Francis 614-18
PIROS 200, 205, 211, 642
PISCATAWAY, Md . . 42, 53, 55, 57
PITA, Friar Joseph, 494 ; killed 495
PIZARRO, F. John Moreno. . . 168
| PLOWDEN, Sir Edmund 86
POALA, Puaray 185, 189
I POINTS Coupee. . , 568, 580, 590-1
j POINTE Saiut Ignace 323, 633
6o8
INDEX.
POLANCO, Rev. Francis Manuel 500
POLE, Father George . '. . ' 79
PONCE Y CARASCO, Rt. Rev. .
Peter . 475
PONCE de Leon, Antonio, 463 ;
John 100-3
PONCET, Father Joseph . . . 244, 247
POPE, El. 205-6, 511
PORRA? Father Francis. . 200, 642
PORT Royal, S. C., 134, 140,
144 ; (Acadia) .219-221
PORT Tobacco 57, 58, 63, 75
POSADAS, Father Alonso 204
POTAXO 158, 165
POTTER, Father Nicholas, 328 ;
Father 629
POTOMAC 56
POTOPACO. 63
POTTAWATOMIES, Mission to . . 268,
274, 278
POTTS, John 32
POULTON, Father Ferdinand,
alias Brock, 55 ; F. Thomas. 407
POUTRINCOURT, Sieur de.. . . . . 219
POZADA, Rev. Toribio de 163
PRADO, Father Joseph Guada-
lupe 509
PRAIRIE du Rocher, Parish at. 561
PRIESTS' Ford, Md 413
PRIETO, Father Jerome. . .514, 518
PRICE, John 70
PRINCE, Mgr 431
PROPAGANDA Fide, Congrega
tion de 52, 59
PUEYO, Rev. Francis Gabriel
del 464,469
QUAPPAS 315, 326
QUEBEC 223, 225
QUENTIN, F., 221 ; in Virginia 223
QUERETARO, College of Holy
Cross at 496, 509
QUERECIIOS, 110
PAGE
QUERES..194, 199, 200, 211, 519, 520
QUEXOS, Peter de .. 104, 106
QUIS-ONES, F. Bartholomew. . . 183
QUINTE Bay. . . 226
QUIROGA Y LOZADA, Diego de,
Governor of Florida 179
QTJIROS, Father Louis de, 147 ;
killed 149
QUIVIRA 119-121
READING, Pa 445
RABELO, Rev. Francis. 474
RAFFEIX, F..284, 294, 295, 297, 303
RAGUENEAU, Father Paul 256
RAGEOT, Rev. Philip.. 595
RALE, Father Sebastian, 538,
598, 598, 600, 602 ; killed.. . 603
RAMIREZ, Father John 642
RAPHAEL, Father 573, 581
RAPIDE des Peres 277
RAYMBAUT, Father Charles . . . 2S3
REBOLLEDO, Diego de, Govern
or of Florida 165
RECOLLECTS 234, 321, etc.
REDONDO, Brother Christopher,
143; killed 149
REYNOLDS, James 447
REYNOSO, Father Alonzo 151
REZINO, Rt. Rev. Dionisio,
Auxiliar Bishop of Cuba 464
RICHELIEU, Cardinal 236-7
RIDDELL, Father Peter, 79 ;
Father William 349
RIGBIE, Father Roger, 57 ; dies 66
Rio DE PALMAS 108
Rio DE RATONES 472
Rio GRANDE Missions 483
RIVERA, Rev. Christopher B. . 167
RIVIERE DU LOUP 337
RODRIGUEZ, Brother Augus
tine, 183, 189; killed, 185;
Father Bias, 152 ; killed, 154 ;
Father Joseph 494-5
INDEX.
659
ROGEL, Father John 142-4
ROMERO Y MONTANEZ, Rev.
John Stephen 464
ROQUE, Father 200
ROSAS, Father 187, 190
ROSETTI, Mgr. Dom 59
ROSIER, James 25
ROUEN, Archbishop of.. ..226, 234,
246, 259, 338
ROUENSAC 536
ROYALL, Rev. John 385
RUHEN, F. , killed in Sonora . . 530
Ruiz, Brother Peter, 143 ; kill
ed, 149; Father Peter, 152,
158 ; Father Francis 101
SABINAL 525
SACRAMENTO 507
SACS 274, 278
SAINT AMAND 334
SAINT ANNE de Fort Chartres. 561
SAINT ANTHONY 465
SAINT AUGUSTINE, Florida. .136-7,
151, 156, 164-5, 169,458
SAINT AUGUSTIN, Texas 496
SAINT CLEMENT'S Island, first
Mass in Maryland at 41
SAINT FRANCIS, Mission 594
SAINT FRANCIS BORGIA 142,
147, 150
SAINT FRANCIS REGIS, Mis
sion of 618
SAINT FRANQOIS de Sales, Ab-
naqui Mission 337
SAINT GENEVIEVE 586, 633
SAINT HELENA 128, 132
SAINT INIGOES 43, 63
SAINT JOHN the Baptist, River
and Land of 104, 106
SAINT JOHN'S River 134
SAINT JOSEPH'S Church, Phila..386,
388, 393, 401, 419, 447
SAINT JOSEPH, Fla. . .456, 466, 472
SAINT JOSEPH'S River 323, 619,
626, 628
SAINT LAWRENCE River 223
SAINT MARK 466
SAINT MARTIN'S River 554
SAINT MARY'S, City of. .43, 51, 53,
348, 356
SAINT MARY'S, Florida 458
SAINT MARY'S Church, Phila
delphia 447
SAINT MARY of Ganentaa . .253, 257
SAINT MICHAEL'S (Seneca),
Church at, burned 293
SAINT PETER'S (Cumberland)
Island 155
SAINT Pius V 143-5
SAINT THOMAS' Manor 444
SAKUNK 614
SALAS, Father John de 197-8
SALAZAR, Father Christopher,
187-8 ; dies, 191 ; Father ,
483 ; Father Dominic 128-9
SALCEDO, Brother John. 143
SALEM 394
SALLENEUVE, Father John B . . 586,
589, 630, 633
SALMERON, Father Jerome de
Zarate 194
SALVADOR de San Antonio,
Father 513, 519
SAN ANTONIO, Florida, 456,
466 ; Texas 483, 497, 507
SAN BUENAVENTURA de Goa-
dalquibi 165, 172, 178
SAN ANTONIO, presidio of .... 497
SAN CRISTOBAL 205
SANDIA 195, 199
SAN DIEGO 465
SANDUSKY 629
SANDWICH • 629
SAN FELIPE de Jesus 531
SAN FELIPE.. 140, 197, 206, 512, 519
SAN FERNANDO 498-9
660
INDEX.
SAN FRANCISCO de los Texas. . 480
SAN GABRIEL, second Settle
ment in New Mexico 191
SAN GREGORIO, F. Peter de. . . 152
SAN ILDEFONSO 194
SAN JOSE de Zapala 165, 172,
178, 179
SAN JUAN BAUTISTA, first Set
tlement in New Mexico. ... 189
SAN JUAN de los Caballeros. . . 525
SAN JUAN Mission, Florida 156,
458, 466
SAN LAZARO 205
SAN LORENZO 206, 504, 524
SAN Luis 462, 466
SAN Luis de Amarillas 502
SAN Luis OBISPO (N. Mexico).. 200
SAN MARCOS 512
SAN MATHEO 139
SAN MIGUEL, Father Francis,
187; atPecos 190, 192
SAN MIGUEL, Church of 516
SAN MIGUEL de Adayo, Mar
quis, Governor of Texas 494
SAN MIGUEL de Guandape, Va. 106
SAN MIGUEL del Bado 525
SAN MIGUEL de Linares 490
SAN PEDRO Mission, Fla...l56, 165
SAN PEDRO del Mocarno 165
SAN SABA 502
SAN SEBASTIAN 151
SANTA ANA 194, 524
SANTA CATALINA de Guale 165,
172, 178, 458
SANTA CLARA, 519, 525 ; de
Capoo 201
SANTA ELENA, (S. C.). . . .128, 130,
132, 144, 147
SANTA CRUZ 129-130, 178, 524
SANTA FE, (N. M.), 194, 199,
206, 211, 510, 511, 514, 522,
525 ; Santa Fe, (Florida) 466
SANTA LUCIA . 472
SANTA MARIA SOAMCA 528
SANTA ROSA, Bay, 129 ; Island 466
SANTIAGO de Cuba, erection of
See of 11
SANTIESTEBAN, Father Joseph,
' 502; killed 503
SANTO DOMINGO, Provincial
Council of , 162
SANTO DOMINGO de Talege,
165 ; in New Mexico 519
SAN XAVIER del Bac 527
SANZ, Father Mathias of San
Antonio 484, 493
SAONCHIOGWA 280, 293
SAPALA 165, 179
SATA YAEXA 485
SATURIOVA 134
SAULT ST. MARY . .271-2, 275, 277,
312, 316, 334
SCHNEIDER, Father Theodore.. 387,
389, 392, 420, 446, 448
SCHUYLER, Colonel 611-2
SCOBAR de Sambrana, Rev.
Diego 153
SEDELMAYR, Father 531
SEDENO, Father Antonio 143-5
SEGESSER, Father Philip 529
SEGUENOT, Rev. Francis 397-8
SEGURA, Father John Baptist,
Vice-Provincial of Florida,
143; killed 149
SEMINARY of Quebec, Missions
of 538
SENAT, F. Antoninus, killed . . 585
SENECA Mission 286, 297, 303,
311, 612
SENECU 200
SEVILLE 11
SEVILLETA 200
SEYMOUR, John, Governor of
Maryland 354, 356, 358
SUARPE, Horatio, Governor of
Maryland 416, 417, 441-2
INDEX.
661
SIGUENZA, Father Charles ... 455
SILLERY 337,594
SILVA, Father John de, 152 ;
Father , killed 503
SILVY, Father Anthony 279
SIMON, Father.. 594
SIMON of Jesus, P., killed.. 207, 209
Sioux. . . .269, 316, 324, 619, 627-8
SlTIMACHAS 550
SITTENSPERGER (Manners), F..392,
420, 446
SKALHOLT, John, Bishop of. . . 11
SMITH, Rev. Peter, 88; Rev. — 349
SMYTH, Anthony 31
SOCORRO 200, 211, 524-5
SOKOKI Mission 337
SOLANA, Rev. John Joseph 464,
469, 474
SOLEDAD Hospital, 164; Chapel,
469 ; Mission 466
SOLIS, Brother Gabriel, 143 ;
killed, 149 ; Rev. Lorenzo. . . 167
SOLIS de Meras, Rev 138
SONOITAC 529
SOTO, Hernando de 111-113
SOTOLONGO, Rev. Francis de . . 168
SOUEL, F. John, 572 ; killed. . 574
SOUTH CAROLINA, Catholicity
in 140, 144
STARKEY, Father Lawrence. . 69, 75
STENSON, William 436
STEPHEN, Negro... .110, 114-5, 117
STEYNMEYER (Farmer), Fa
ther Ferdinand 420, 446, 448
STONE, William, Governor of
Maryland 69
STOURTON, Rev. Mr 31
SUSQUEHANNAS 43, 57
SWAN, Daniel 447
SYNOD of Santiago de Cuba.
1684, 174 ; regulations for
Florida, 176 ; of Quebec 534
TACANES , 499
TACATACURU (Cumberland Isl
and) 142
TAENSAS 539, 540
TALON 341
TAMA 159,172
TAMAROIS. .536, 539-541, 544, 550,
557-559, 578
TAMARON, Rt, Rev. Peter,
Bishop of Durango 524
TAMPA Bay 125, 140
TANOS. . .199, 205-6, 212, 510, 511,
516, 518, 520
TAGS, Mission of San Geroni-
mo. . .200, 205, 211, 519, 520, 524
TARAGICA 166, 171
TARTARIN, Father Rene 570,
572, 586
TEGAKOTTITA, Catharine.. 299, 300,
307-9
TEGANANOKOA, Stephen .... 607
TEHUAS 518
TEJADA, Rt. Rev. Francis de
San Buenaventura, Bishop of
Tricali, 469-471 ; Bishop of
Guadalajara .474, 505
TEJUAS, Tehuas .205, all, 520, 523
TELLO, Father, killed 530
TEOAS, Tejuas, Teguas. . .194, 199,
201, 205, 211
TEOTONHARASON 249
TEQUESTA 144
TERAN de los Rios, Domingo,
Governor of Texas 480
TERREROS, F. Alonso Giraldo
de, 502 ; killed 503
TESUQUE 519, 524
TEXAS, ChurcL in. 339-41, 479-509
TEXAS or Asinais 212, 503
THAUMUR de la Source, Rev.
Dominic Anthony. .544, 559, 576
THEVET, Father Andrew 216
THOMAS of Aquin, Father 215
662
INDEX.
THORNBOROUGH, Thomas 70
THOROLD, Father George. .363, 370
THURY, Rev. Louis Peter. .337, 594
TIDDER, Father Edward 79
TIGUEX 119-121
TIMUQUANS 161, 178, 180
TIOAS, Tiguas, 199, 211; submit
to Otermin 211
TIONONTOGUEN, Mission at . . .285,
296, 304
TIRSO, Father Michael 519
TLASCALANS 500
TOCOBAGA 144
TOCOY 157
TOLEMATO (1) on Amelia Isl
and, 153 ; (2) near St. Augus
tine 477
TOLOSA, Father Diego de, 124 ;
killed 125
TOME 535
TOMPIRAS 198, 211
TONICAS 539, 553
TONTY, Henri de 323-4, 539
TOPOQUI 153
TORORO 456
TORRE, Nicholas de la, Bishop
of Santiago de Cuba 164
TOTONTEAC 116
TRACY, Marquis de 283
TRANCHEPAIN de St. Augustin,
Mother Mary, founds Ursu-
liae Convent, New Orleans,
569-570; death 581
TRUXILLO, Rev. Rodrigo Gar
cia de 152
TUBAC 539
TUCSON, Presidio 530
TULPEHAKEN 392
TUMACACORI 529
TUPATTT, Louis 511
TURPIN, Mary, becomes an Ur-
suline 560
TUSAYAN 191
URANGO, John de, Bishop of
Santiago de Cuba 127
URCHIA, Father Anthony de.. . 170
URIZA, Father 474
URRUTIA, Don Toribio de 507
URBULINE Convent, New Or
leans 570-1
URY, Rev. John 399
USACHE, Father Joseph 467
USEDA, Father John de 172
VACAPA 115
VAHOMONDE, Father Anthony. 514
VAILLANT du Gueslis, Father.. 304,
611, 620
VALLARDE, Father, killed 207
VARELA, Father Benedict 503
VARGAS, Rev. Alonso de, 163 ;
Father Francis 519
VARGAS Zapata Luxan Ponce
de Leon, Diego, reconquers
New Mexico 510-6
VARLET, Very Rev. Dominic
Mary, Vicar-General, 555 ;
Bishop of Ascalon 556-7
VARREDO, Father Joseph 168
VATIER, Father Leonard .... 626
VEGA CASTRO, Damiau de,
Governor of Florida 164
VELASCO, Louis, Viceroy of
Mexico 127
VELASCO, Don Luis, Indian . . . 140,
147, 150
VELASCO, Father Ferdinand,
205 ; Father Francis 192
VELASCOLA, Father Francis,
152 ; killed 155
VERA CRUZ 128
VERDUGO de la Silveyra, Rev.
Peter 164
VERGARA, Father Gabriel de,
484-5, 496 ; Brother 192
VERMONT, Catholicity in ... 283-4
INDEX.
663
VlCARIATE-APOSTOLIC of New
France, 259; Vicariates- Apos
tolic established in Missis
sippi Valley and suppressed. . 327
VlCAR-APOSTOLIC 565
VICTORIA, Father Anthony .. . 118
VILLALBA, Father John de. . . . 462
VILLAFANE, Angel de 132
VILLANCEVA de Santa Cruz. . . 519
VILLAREAL, B. Francis de. . 142, 144
VILLE, Father John Mary de . 559
VINCENNES Register 579
VINIEGRA, Brother 157
VIRGINIA, Catholicity in. ... 32, 57,
97, 106, 408-9, 418, 437
VIROT, F. Claude Fran., killed. 614
VITRY, Father Peter de, 581 ;
made Vicar-General 583
VIVIER, Father Louis 579, 585
VIZCAINO, Sebastian 215
WALSH, Robert -. 436
WAPELER, F. William.387, 389, 390
WARREN, Father William 79
WATRLN, Father P. F..585, 586, 589
WATTEAUX, Father Melithon. .321-2
WEAS 586
WESTBROOK, Colonel 601
WEYMOUTH, Capt., voyage
connected with Catholic Set
tlement 25-6
WHETENHALL, Father Henry. . 377-
WHITE, Father Andrew,
founder of the Maryland
Mission 40-2, 48-9, 53-4, 64
WHITEMARSH, Mission of Saint
Francis Borgia 450
WHITGRAVE, Father James . . . 377
WICKSTED, Father Polycarp . . 82
WILKINSON, Rev. Mr 84
WILLART, Brother Nicholas . . 351
WILLCOX Family 367, 385
WILLIAM III.. . 345
WILLIAMS, Father John 451
WINNEBAGOES 274, 278
WlNSLADE 25
WISCONSIN, Church in 265-6,
274-9, 328-9, 619, 622
WOOD, Father William 363, 370
WOODBRIDGE, N. J 90
WRIOTHESLEY, Henry, Earl of
Southampton 25
XARAME Mission 491
XIMENEZ, F. Diego. . .502, 504, 508
XIMENO, Father Custodius 532
XUAREZ, Father John. 108, 110, 111
XUMANAS (see Jumanas).
YAMASSEES 179, 465, 466
YASCOMOCOS 43, 46
YA.TASES 490
YAZOOS 540, 559, 572, 574
YBARRA, Governor of Florida. 161
YBITACUCHO 458, 462-3
YE, John, Gov. of Pecos. .205, 515
YEO, Rev. Mr 84
YGUASA Nation 466
YONG, Capt. Thomas 86
YUMAS 212
YUQUAYUNQUE (San Gabriel) . . 119
ZABOLETA, Father John de . . . 212
ZACATECAS, Apos.tolic College
of, founded by Ven. Father
Margil 482-4
ZAMORA, Father Francis, 187 ;
atPicuries 190, 192
ZAP ATA, Father Diego 497
ZAPOTECA Indians 121
ZAVALETA, Father John 513
ZEINOS, Father Diego. 514, 516, 518
ZEVALLOS, Brother Sancho,
147; killed 149
ZIA 524
ZUNI .186, 193, 200, 512, 521
Zu5n:GA, Governor Joseph de. . 459
A HISTORY
CATHOLIC CHURCH
WITHIN THE
LIMITS OF THE UNITED STATES,
FROM THE FIRST ATTEMPTED COLONIZATION TO THE
PRESENT TIME.
WITH PORTRAITS, VIEWS, MAPS, AND FAC-SIMTLES.
NEW YORK :
JOHN G. SHEA,
1886.
COPYRIGHT, 1886, BY
JOHN GILMARY SHEA.
The ilhtstrations in this work is copyrighted, and reproduction is forbidden.
EDWARD o. JENKINS' SON,
Printer, Stereotyper, and Electrotyper,
20 North William St., New York.
BX 1402 .S52 1886
SMC
Shea, John Gi Imary ,
1824-1892.
The Catholic church in
colonial days : the
AKE-2969 (mcsk)