Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

rapids eddy before Fox River makes its final sweep towards Green Bay. It was a level plateau, a prairie Father Allouez calls it, with a sandy beach skirting its borders some five feet below. To the eastward the place was sheltered by high banks covered from base to crown by a heavy growth of forest.

The river narrows where its rapids rush and hurry, and at this point the Indians had constructed an ingenious though primitive fish weir, that zigzagged its irregular line across the stream. From this picturesque though somewhat unsteady structure the Indians could skilfully spear the fish that were stopped in their rush down the rapids by the closely set stakes. The chapel and dwelling house occupying this accessible and pleasant spot were solidly framed of logs, stout enough to resist savage attack or inclement weather. Associated with Allouez were Fathers Louis André and Gabriel Drouillette, men well fitted for the work assigned them, and to the mission there constantly drifted, as guests, those wandering traders who made life difficult for the deputies of Louis XIV. in this western world.

The story of the coureurs de bois, those Robin Hoods of New France, forms a separate chapter in wilderness chronicles, but men prominent in this wood ranging fraternity are so identified with the daily life of St. Francis Xavier's Mission, that it is impossible, in sketching its history, to ignore them. The influence of the Church was the only check on forest lawlessness and wild dissipation, and that the missionary could correct with authority the misdeeds of these banditti, gave him high place in savage esteem. Not all coureurs de bois were renegades, but the name became a synonym for everything loose and undisciplined. In many cases these unlicensed traders reaped the large profits that the King and his Fur Company wished to control, and paddled inland waterways with the spirit of adventure strong within them. With swagger and determined air of command they intimidated double their number of savages, and gave the missionaries no little trouble by debauching the Indians with brandy and stirring up strife among them.

Life at St. Francis Xavier's Mission House was varied and busy enough, to judge from the journal of Father Allouez, and the record of contemporary writers. Service in the chapel,

attendance at Indian councils, visits to separate cabins, and instruction given to their inmates; careful noting of astronomical data, as when Father Allouez makes minute mention of an eclipse of the sun which occurred on the 16th of April, 1670, and lasted for over two hours. Father André, in his cabin on the bay shore, kept accurate record of the curious tides that for many years puzzled students of inland water phenomena; and all this exploration and investigation of an unknown land must be put in convenient shape and sent to the Superior of the Jesuit Order in Paris, to be stored in the Society's archives for future reference, and to prove in these later years a mine for historical research.

Many visitors came to St. Francis Xavier whose names are familiar now through history and romantic tale. Greysolon Duluth, coureur de bois and gallant soldier of fortune, a typical outgrowth of that reckless life and age; Baron Lahontan, courtier and dillettanti, whose blithe chronicle of his travels. and adventures in these strange parts savors of Baron Munchausen; and brave Nicholas Perrot, who, when all other resource failed, and a general massacre threatened the French throughout the northwest, stood a bulwark of defence against English stratagem and Indian treachery.

In the spring of 1673, Father Jacques Marquette and his sturdy companion, Louis Joliet, stopped at the mission on their way to that great and unexplored stream "that flows toward the south, and empties into the Sea of Florida, or Sea of California as we believe." In the fall the same travelers returned, Marquette broken in health, and content to take a much needed respite from labor among his brethren at the Rapides des Peres. Sending Joliet to Canada with news of their great discovery, the priest settled down for the winter in the little mission station; a haven of rest for the delicate, overworked apostle. Here during the short winter days, in the log cabin banked high with great snowdrifts, Marquette inscribed a careful record of summer wanderings along the mighty Mississippi, living over again the discovery and exploration of that hitherto unknown stream.

Rumors of disaster to the French by field and flood grew rife throughout New France. The Indians became insolent, and threatened to enter into a league with the English of Manhat

tan.

Up and down the length and breadth of the St. Lawrence

valley went Nicholas Perrot, preventing by sheer force of individual courage and diplomacy a general revolt of the western tribes. What Perrot's successful efforts meant to the harrassed missionaries of St. Francis Xaxier we can well imagine, and his fidelity to them and to his Mother Church is shown by a beautiful silver ostensorium presented by him to the mission in 1686. The monstrance is beautifully wrought, probably by foreign workmanship, and bears upon the base these. words: "Ce soleil a esté donné par M. Nicholas Perrot à la mission de St. François Xavier en la Baye des Puants, 1686."

Father Claude Allouez passed on to other fields, leaving a competent helper to carry on the work so well begun. Like St. Paul he was ever the one who sowed the seed, and, after making certain that it had taken root, left to others the fruit of his labors. Those who followed him found how strong an impression was made by the good priest's teachings, as when Father Marquette went to the mission of St. Esprit on Lake Superior, founded also by Père Allouez. "The Indians were very glad to see me at first," he writes, "but when they learned that I did not know the language perfectly, and that Father Allouez, who understood them thoroughly, had been unwilling to return to them because they did not take enough interest in prayer, they acknowledged that they were well deserving this punishment, and resolved to do better."

In the summer of 1687 Nicholas Perrot, in his stockaded fort, in the Trempeleau valley, received word that the mission buildings of St. Francis Xavier had been burned to the ground by treacherous savages, Outagamies, Kickapoos, and Miamis. This included a trading house in which had been stored all of a season's harvest of furs, in preparation for shipment to Canada. By hasty marches Perrot returned to La Baye, only to find smoking ruins where for so many years had stood a religious home for wanderers in these western forests. Financial ruin stared the coureur de bois in the face, but there was no time to remain inactive, for a general uprising of Indians was feared, and a massacre of the French throughout the northwest.

The Fathers in charge of the mission had been forced to flee for their lives to Mackinac, but warning of the impending disaster must have reached them in time to permit them

to bury below the foundations of the Chapel Perrot's pious gift, the silver ostensorium. Doubtless the missionaries hoped to return and recover their treasure when less troublous times should ensue, but for more than a hundred years the ostensorium remained concealed where its original owners had buried it. La Baye successively passed through the ownership of France and England to that of the United States; wars and treaties changed the map of our country, exploration opened up wide new stretches of territory, yet the traditions of Father Allouez and his confrères were still vividly in mind with a later generation when, in 1803, a French habitant, digging a foundation for a cabin near the Rapides des Peres, unearthed this beautifully wrought relic of early faith in Wisconsin.

Thus ends the story of St. Francis Xavier's Mission; one of the most interesting and important episodes in western history. Three separate places received the name, for Father Allouez made careful exploration and investigation before establishing a permanent retreat. It was first given to the Oconto Mission, in the winter of 1669 and 1670. In that same season a cross was planted on the heights of Red Banks, among the Pottawottomies and Winnebagoes, which Allouez afterward speaks of as St. Francis Xavier. Finally the wellbuilt house and adjoining buildings on the shore of Fox River were erected; the place that always comes to mind when Father Allouez' work and St. Francis Xavier's Mission are mentioned.

Others took up the burden of evangelization among the Indians of the west, but in a different spirit from Father Allouez. War unremitting, harrassing, marks the page of seventeenth century history in Wisconsin. The French, early in that period, established a fort at the mouth of Fox River, and military rule rather than religious teaching sought to hold the now thoroughly rebellious Indians in subjection. Here the historian of New France, Charlevoix, found Father Chardon in charge, in 1721, occupying a house within the stockade and adjoining that of the commandant, but the days when missionaries passed fearlessly to and fro along western waterways were at an end.

Still engaged in mission labors, death overtook Father Allouez on August 6, 1689, two years after the religious house

established by him at La Baye was reduced to ashes. To-day the town of Depere holds in its name the anglicized fragment of the French "Rapides des Peres." Railroad tracks and manufactories crowd the river front, where two hundred and thirty years ago only a solitary Jesuit mission house reared its log walls. In place of a primitive fish weir, zigzagging across the rapids, where dusky, painted savages speared sturgeon and muskelonge, a solid bridge spans the stream, and a great paper mill shows, when evening falls, its hundred electric eyes of light.

Yet on the grassy banks of the government lock, and looking up the river, it is comparatively easy to bring again to mind the setting for that far-off picture of an early century, and close to the steel tracks, and where traffic is busiest a rough boulder stands, and on a bronze tablet we read:

"Near this spot stood the Chapel of St. Francis Xavier, built in the winter of 1671-72 by Father Claude Allouez, S.J., as the centre of his work in christianizing the Indians of Wisconsin. This memorial tablet was erected by the citizens of Depere, and unveiled by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, September 6, 1899."

VOL. LXXXI.-14

« НазадПродовжити »