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Bands of Iroquois continued to wage war with relentless fury on all the Algonquin tribes from the Chaudière Falls of the Ottawa to the upper waters of the Saguenay. Bressani, a highly cultured Italian priest, was taken prisoner on the St. Lawrence, while on his way to the Huron missions, and carried to the Mohawk villages, where he went through the customary ordeal of torture.
These proved, however, to be the tracks, not of enemies, but of friends. In the preceding autumn Bressani had gone down to the French settlements with about twenty Hurons, and was now returning with them, and twice their number of armed Frenchmen, for the defence of the mission.
On Bressani, besides the authorities cited, see Du Creux, Historia Canadensis, 399-403; Juchereau, Histoire de l'Hotel-Dieu, 53; and Martin, Biographie du P. Francois-Joseph Bressani, prefixed to the Relation Abregee. He made no converts while a prisoner, but he baptized a Huron catechumen at the stake, to the great fury of the surrounding Iroquois.
Before setting out they all confessed and prepared for death. They left Three Rivers on the twenty-seventh of April, and found ice still floating in the river, and patches of snow lying in the naked forests. On the first day, one of the canoes overset, nearly drowning Bressani, who could not swim. On the third day, a snow-storm began, and greatly retarded their progress.
In the spring of 1644, Joseph Bressani, an Italian Jesuit, born in Rome, and now for two years past a missionary in Canada, was ordered by his Superior to go up to the Hurons.
Here was Bressani, scarred with firebrand and knife; Chabanel, once a professor of rhetoric in France, now a missionary, bound by a self-imposed vow to a life from which his nature recoiled; the fanatical Chaumonot, whose character savored of his peasant birth, for the grossest fungus of superstition that ever grew under the shadow of Rome was not too much for his omnivorous credulity, and miracles and mysteries were his daily food; yet, such as his faith was, he was ready to die for it.
In the Mackenzie valley, in the far Yukon, and among the tumbled hills of British Columbia they planted the Cross, establishing missions and schools. But the great age of the Church in Canada was the heroic age of Lalemant and Brebeuf, of Jogues and Bressani, of Allouez and Marquette. Their memories are living lights illuminating the paths of all workers among those who sit in spiritual darkness.
Her teacher was Father Bressani, who had almost miraculously escaped from the hands of the Iroquois, after having undergone the ordinary course of torture prescribed by savage cruelty. She and the Mother St. Joseph divided the charge of teaching these new pupils, who besides ample instruction, received also generous alms.
At length they left this encampment, and, after a march of several days, during which Bressani, in wading a rocky stream, fell from exhaustion and was nearly drowned, they reached an Iroquois town. It is needless to follow the revolting details of the new torments that succeeded.
On their way down the Ottawa they met Father Bressani, who had gone to Quebec in the previous autumn for supplies, and who now joined the retreating party. And on the 28th of July, after a journey of fifty days, all arrived safely at the capital of New France. In the spring of 1651 they moved to the island of Orleans.
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