Preface
The person who has composed these annals has spent more than three years in collecting what he has been able to learn from the mouths of the Natives who built the first cabins at La Prairie, besides what he has found printed in the last Relation of 1670 to 1671 and in the manuscript Relation from 1671 to 1679. He has heard the accounts of the French inhabitants at La Prairie, who told him most edifying things about some Native men and women who died very Christian deaths. The writer has depended upon all these testimonies as far as the year 1677, but from that time down he has had the knowledge and experience of the wonders that God has at various times operated in this Mission of the Sault. One of the most great reasons that have impelled him to write is the direction which God has had over the mission since its establishment, for it has grown like the palm beneath the weight of persecutions. If there are several things forgotten, which through merit to be written, if there are mistakes or obscurity in the style, or if finally he has kept waiting too long, it is the fault of those whom he chose to allow to precede him. They know the circumstances better than he should at some time have given a bit to the public the consolation, which they had received from God. But, finally having me waited, after having written the account of the good Catherine Tegakouita’s life, through an impulse derived from this good girl herself, I set myself to tell the story of the deeds of the illustrious men whom God has taken from us and with whom he has very well populated Heaven. The writer has known four of them, like their predecessors worthy children of the Fathers who gave them the Faith who watered their mission with their sweat and blood. This is his last work in which he notes year by year everything remarkable that has occurred in this mission with a detailed account of the combats, which the Natives have waged and the victories that they have won against drunkenness. The drawings that are traced therein are to acquaint the Natives with the rest of their history and the grace that they have received from God since they became Christians.
Narrative for each year from the foundation of the Mission of the Sault until 1685
After five years of delay spent in various difficulties in spirit that I had like those that happen to the persons of whom Saint Paul says, “Qui veritatem in injustitia detinent,” I am at last obliged to yield and to put on paper, as best as I can, what has occurred within five years and what the Faith has produced in this country. If it were forgotten, which most of the things would probably fall might perhaps be imputed to me some day and approached by God and I might by my own fault deprive myself of the prayers of the first apostles of Canada, wherein I greatly trust for not having been wanted to contribute toward rendering their memory more illustrious and to follow the impulses that I have often felt for putting my hand to the pen and collecting the treasures, which they themselves found and whereof they have made us the guardians. These thoughts, which seem to me so just, gave me more difficulties that is for five years, after I received certain letters from France in which I was informed that one of my letters had been publicly read. Although I had begged the one to whom I wrote it, who is one of my Brothers, to read it in secret and send it to its address. They made me find good these occurrences, adding that I did not do well to conceal things of edification like those that I had written, which being compared with what were then reading about the missions in China, had more attractiveness and profoundly touched those who read them. I had threatened those to whom I was then writing that I would never write to them again unless they kept my secret. Finally, the secret has been revealed. I have also been approached in Canada as being too indolent to compose Relations. Obedience had obliged me to do so. All this has carried away my spirit, which was first resolved to say nothing but what I had seen or heard. Secondly, having written something I resolved to end and to live in the place where God has put me in this world and to profit in my own particular by the examples of virtue, which I see every day in our new Christians. Finally, the fear that I have of being obstinate, as some one has reproached me with being, constrains me to give some form to a sort of annals that I have compiled and of other remarks, which were made only for my particular consolation, awaiting for that to come.
I limit myself to the Iroquois Missions to which God has appointed me, and especially to the Mission of the Sault, which is my purpose. Thus we will here see the birth and progress of this new Church. My attachment for this Mission is as old as the Mission itself. As it was nineteen years ago this winter that the Iroquois Missions began, it is also nineteen years since God, who had already made known His will, prepared me to the foreign Missions. At that time he more particularly touched me to draw me toward Him by an abundance of His mercy, which he poured upon me on a Christmas night, which is also a particular attraction by which he has drawn the Natives. This was in the year 1667. Five years after, God prepared me more particular while I was still in France, about the feast of Saint Francis Xavier, and attached me to the Iroquois missions by giving me much taste for the Huron language, which is the one that the Iroquois use for prayer. The Reverend Father Mercier, whom I saw in France at the end of December, gave me lessons in that language. I quickly learned it and rendered myself capable to recite the Rosary in Huron, which I said in that language rather than in Latin, because of the spiritual consolation that this manner of praying to God caused for me. As soon as I arrived in Canada, I was actually placed in the Mission of the Hurons, and after a year I was sent to the Sault, where I have remained until the present year. And in the year 1680 that God confirmed in me through the prayers of Catherine (Tegakouita), which is sufficiently well known, all that had come to pass in the preceding years.
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