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Hence the Voyage of 1615 not only describes the physical aspects of Huronia, but contains intimate details regarding the life of its people their wigwams, their food, their manner of cooking, their dress, their decorations, their marriage customs, their medicine-men, their burials, their assemblies, their agriculture, their amusements, and their mode of fishing.
In 1634 the Hurons visited the colony in small numbers, for Iroquois scalping parties haunted the trails, and a pestilence had played havoc in the Huron villages. Those who came to trade this year gathered at Three Rivers; and thither went Brebeuf, Daniel, and Davost to seek once more a passage to Huronia.
In spite of the exhortations of the Jesuits, they lay idle in their wigwams or hunted in the forest, dejectedly awaiting their doom. An Iroquois war-party twelve hundred strong spent the winter of 1648-49 on the upper Ottawa; and as the snows began to melt under the thaws of spring these insatiable slayers of men directed their steps towards Huronia.
Champlain, his expedition ended, returned to Huronia and remained there until the middle of January, when he and Le Caron set out on a visit to the Petun or Tobacco Nation, then dwelling on the southern shore of Nottawasaga Bay, a two-days' journey south-west of Carhagouha. There had been as yet no direct communication between the French and the Petuns, and the visitors were not kindly received.
Now, however, on hearing that Champlain had returned, the Indian dwellers along the Ottawa river and in Huronia flocked to the post. Hardly more than two months after his arrival, a fleet of a hundred and forty canoes, with about seven hundred Indians, swept with the ebb tide to the base of the rock that frowned above the habitation and the dilapidated warehouses.
In consequence the priests, who had now been reinforced by the arrival of Fathers Francois Le Mercier, Pierre Pijart, Pierre Chastelain, Isaac Jogues, and Charles Garnier, had to seek a more populous centre as headquarters for their mission in Huronia. The chiefs of Oenrio invited the Jesuits to their village. But Brebeuf's demands were heavy.
Noue lacked the physical strength and the mental alertness essential to a missionary in these wilds. Finding himself totally unable to learn even the rudiments of the Huron language, he returned to Quebec, since he did not wish to be a burden to Brebeuf. For a year longer Brebeuf and the Recollet Daillon remained together at Toanche. But in the autumn of 1628 Daillon left Huronia.
Here he entered the country of the Hurons, which pleased him greatly in comparison with the tract before traversed. 'It was very fine, the largest part being cleared, and many hills and several rivers rendering the region agreeable. Champlain's route through the district between Carmaron and Cahaigué can best be followed in Father Jones's map of Huronia.
And, after being entertained to their satisfaction by the cries of agony which arose from their victims in the blazing cabins, they made their way southward through the forests of Huronia and disappeared. Panic reigned throughout Huronia. After burning fifteen villages, lest they should serve as a shelter for the Iroquois, the Hurons scattered far and wide.
No sooner had this expedition begun its descent of the Ottawa than an Iroquois war-party, which had wintered near Lake Nipissing, stole southward through the forests towards Huronia. Contarea had been destroyed. The dangerous position of St Jean-Baptiste, situated near the site of Cahiague on Lake Simcoe, whence Champlain had set out against the Iroquois in 1615, had led the Jesuits to abandon it.
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