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Updated: June 23, 2025
Huronia could wait until the tribes of the St Lawrence and the Ottawa, allies of the Hurons, should be destroyed. Then the Five Nations could concentrate their forces on the Hurons. And so six years passed over the Jesuits in the mission-fields. Scalping parties occasionally haunted the outskirts of the villages where they were stationed.
Brebeuf had made up his mind to go to far Huronia; Noue and the Recollet Daillon had the same ambition; and all three besought the Hurons to carry them on the return journey.
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.
The captains of the vessels appeared friendly and supplied the priests with coloured beads, knives, kettles, and other articles. All was going well for the journey, when, on the eve of departure, a runner arrived from Montreal bringing evil news. For a year the Recollet Nicolas Viel had remained in Huronia.
The Indians Hurons, Algonquins, and Ottawas had gathered at Cape Victory, a promontory in Lake St Peter near the point where the lake narrows again into the St Lawrence. There, too, stood French vessels laden with goods for barter; and thither went the two missionaries to make friends with the Indians and to lay in a store of goods for the voyage to Huronia and for use at the mission.
It was decided that Lalemant and Masse should remain at Quebec; but Brebeuf, believing, like the Recollets, that little of permanent value could be done among the ever-shifting Algonquins, desired to start at once for the populous towns of Huronia. In July, in company with the Recollet La Roche de Daillon, Brebeuf set out for Three Rivers.
Another of the fathers, Rene Menard, while following a party of Algonquins to the wilds of Wisconsin, lost his way in the forest and perished from exposure or starvation; and Anne de Noue, Brebeuf's earliest comrade in Huronia, in an effort to bring assistance to a party of French soldiers storm-bound on Lake St Peter, was frozen to death. But misfortune did not cool the zeal of the Jesuits.
For those who are not specialists in the topography of Huronia it may suffice that Champlain left Matchedash Bay not far from Penetanguishene, and thence went to Carmaron at the very north of the peninsula.
Huronia was in a fair way of being completely won; and the missionaries were already looking to the unexplored regions round and beyond Lake Superior, and even to the land of the Iroquois. Then, with the suddenness of a volcanic eruption, their flocks were scattered and their dearest hopes crushed. In 1647 there was no communication between Ste Marie and Quebec.
There a cabin was quickly erected, the men of the town of Oenrio vying with the men of Teandeouiata in the task. This residence, called by Brebeuf St Joseph, was thirty-five feet long and twenty wide and contained a storehouse, a living-room and school, and a chapel. For three years this humble abode was to be the headquarters of the missionaries in Huronia.
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