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Updated: June 19, 2025
In later times when I found Father Carheil hard to understand, I used to say to myself that he was not to be held too strictly to account for his contradictions, for though one learns to think great thoughts in the wilderness, it is not done easily when there is sawed lumber to shut away the sky. Cadillac came back to me in a few moments.
It made of every western post, in the words of Father Carheil, a den of "brutality and violence, of injustice and impiety, of lewd and shameless conduct, of contempt and insults." No sinister motives need be sought to explain the bitterness with which the blackrobes cried out against the iniquities of a system which swindled the redskin out of his furs and debauched him into the bargain.
Carheil wrote that they threatened openly to throw themselves into the arms of the Iroquois and the English; that they declared that the protection of Onontio was an illusion and a snare; that they once mistook the French for warriors, but saw now that they were no match for the Iroquois, whom they had tamely allowed to butcher them at Montreal, without even daring to defend themselves; that when the French invaded the Senecas they did nothing but cut down corn and break canoes, and since that time they had done nothing but beg peace for themselves, forgetful of their allies, whom they expected to bear the brunt of the war, and then left to their fate; that they had surrendered through cowardice the prisoners they had caught by treachery, and this, too, at a time when the Iroquois were burning French captives in all their towns; and, finally, that, as the French would not or could not make peace for them, they would make peace for themselves.
La Durantaye, the commander of the post, and Carheil, the Jesuit, had sent a messenger to Montreal in the depth of winter to say that the tribes around them were on the point of revolt.
I may have grown unconsciously rhetorical, and waved my hand in the direction of the canoes. I do not know. I do know that at the word "cargo" Father Carheil turned and looked toward the shore. There, in my canoe, with gaze searching the timber where I had disappeared, stood a figure, a woman's figure in Singing Arrow's dress and blanket. Father Carheil looked at me.
What should I find? We reached the beach where I had tied Father Carheil. We rounded the point. The garrison, the board roofs of the Jesuit houses, the Indian camps, all were as usual. They were peaceful, untouched. I swallowed, for my throat and tongue were dry. It was Father Carheil who first sighted us.
What were you sent to ask?" I waved away the chair, for I thought of the passing moments and of what I had promised Father Carheil. "I must hasten," I said irritably. "What was I to ask? Why, your name, the account of your capture, the story of your being here, in brief." He saw that I glanced at the door, and he walked over to it. "Wait!" he interposed. "I can answer you in a line.
He was a small armful; a weazened body to have sheltered so great a power of lung. "Hush! For the Virgin's sake, hush!" I stormed in noisy whispers. "Father Carheil, is it you? Hush! Hush!" I dropped my hand from his mouth. "Now speak in whispers," I implored. The father shook his cassock free from my fingers.
"Good-day to you, trader," he said, with one of his noiseless laughs. "How well you must sleep who have no thought beyond your beaver skins, even though you do carry brandy and muskets hidden in your cargo. Never mind, never mind. Keep your secrets. Only see that Father Carheil does not smell your brandy, or I may be forced to send you back to Montreal."
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