On approaching the first village, where we were [Page 123] treated so cruelly, he showed a most uncommon patience and gentleness. Having fallen under the shower of blows from clubs and iron rods with which they attacked us, and being unable to rise again, he was brought — as it were, half dead — upon the scaffold where we already were, in the middle of the village; but he was in so pitiful a condition that he would have inspired compassion in cruelty itself. He was all bruised with blows, and in his face one distinguished nothing but the whites of his eyes; but he was so much the more beautiful in the sight of the Angels as he was disfigured, and similar to him of whom it is said: Vidimus cum quasi Ieposzm, etc.; non erat ei species neque decor.
Hardly had he taken a little breath, as well as we, when they came to give him 3 blows on his shoulders with a heavy club, as they had done to us before. When they had cut off my thumb, — as I was the most conspicuous, — they turned to him and cut his right thumb at the 1st joint, — while he continually uttered, during this torment: "JESUS, MARY, JOSEPH." During six days, in which we were exposed to all those who wished to do us some harm, he showed an admirable gentleness; he had his whole breast burned by the coals and hot cinders which the young lads threw upon our bodies at night, when we were bound flat on the earth. Nature furnished more skill to me than to him for avoiding a part of these pains.
After they had given us life, — at the very time when, a little before, they had warned us to prepare for being burned, — he fell sick, suffering great inconveniences in every respect, and especially in regard to the food, to which he was not accustomed. [Page 125] In that, one might say most truly, Nun cibus utilis ægro. I could not relieve him, — for I was also very sick, and had none of my fingers sound or entire.
But this urges me to come to his death, at which nothing was wanting to make him a Martyr.
After we had been in the country six weeks, — as confusion arose in the councils of the Iroquois, some of whom were quite willing that we should be taken back, — we lost the hope, which I did not consider very great, of again seeing 3 Rivers that year. We accordingly consoled each other in the divine arrangement of things; and we were preparing for everything that it might ordain for us. He did not quite realize the danger in which we were, — I saw it better than he; and this often led me to tell him that we should hold ourselves in readiness. One day, then, as in the grief of our souls we had gone forth from the Village, in order to pray more suitably and with less disturbance, two young men came after us to tell us that we must return home. I had some presentiment of what was to happen, and said to him: "My dearest brother, let us commend ourselves to Our Lord and to our good mother the blessed Virgin; these people have some evil design, as I think." We had offered ourselves to Our Lord, shortly before, with much devotion, — beseeching him to receive our lives and our blood, and to unite them with his life and his blood for the salvation of these poor peoples. We accordingly return toward the Village, reciting our rosary, of which we had already said 4 decades. Having stopped near the gate of the Village, to see what they might say to us, one of those two Iroquois draws a hatchet, which he held concealed under his blanket, and deals a blow [Page 127] with it on the head of René, who was before him. He falls motionless, his face to the ground, pronouncing the holy name of JESUS (often we admonished each other that this holy name should end both our voices and our lives). At the blow, I turn round and see a hatchet all bloody; I kneel down, to receive the blow which was to unite me with my dear companion; but, as they hesitate, I rise again, and run to the dying man, who was quite near. They dealt him two other blows with the hatchet, on the head, and despatched him, — but not until I had first given him absolution, which I had been wont to give him every two days, since our captivity; and this was a day on which he had already confessed.
It was the [29th] of September, the feast of st. Michael, when this Angel in innocence, and this Martyr of Jesus Christ, gave his life for him who had given him his. They ordered me to return to my cabin, where I awaited, the rest of the day and the next day, the same treatment; and it was indeed the purpose of all that I should not long delay, since that one had begun. Indeed, I passed several days on which they came to kill me; but Our Lord did not permit this, in ways which it would be tedious to explain. The next morning, I nevertheless went out to inquire where they had thrown that Blessed body, for I wished to bury it, at whatever cost. Certain Iroquois, who had some desire to preserve me, said to me: "Thou hast no sense! Thou seest that they seek thee everywhere to kill thee, and thou still goest out. Thou wishest to go and seek a body already half destroyed, which they have dragged far from here. Dost thou not see those young men [Page 129] going out, who will kill thee when thou shalt be outside the stockade?" That did not stop me, and Our Lord gave me courage enough to wish to die in this act of charity. I go, I seek; and, with the aid of an Algonquin, — formerly captured, and now a true Iroquois, — I find him. The children, after he had been killed, had stripped him, and had dragged him, with a rope about his neck, into a torrent which passes at the foot of their Village. The dogs had already eaten a part of his loins. I could not keep back my tears at this sight; I took the body, and, by the aid of that Algonquin, I put it beneath the water, weighted with large stones, to the end that it might not be seen. It was my intention to come the next day with a mattock, when no one should be there, in order to make a grave and place the body therein. I thought that the corpse was well concealed; but perhaps some who saw us, — especially of the youths, — withdrew it.
The next day, as they were seeking me to kill me, my aunt sent me to her field, — to escape, as I think; this caused me to delay until the morrow, a day on which it rained all night, so that the torrent swelled uncommonly. I borrowed a mattock from another cabin, the better to conceal my design; but, when I draw near the place, I no longer find that Blessed deposit. I go into the water, which was already very cold; I go and come, — I sound with my foot, to see whether the water has not raised and carried away the body; I find nothing. How many tears did I shed, which fell into the torrent, while I sang, as well as I could, the psalms which the church is accustomed to recite for the dead. After all, I find nothing; and a woman of my acquaintance, who passed [Page 131] there and saw me in pain, told me, when I asked her whether she knew what they had done with him, that they had dragged him to the river, which was a quarter of a league from there, and which I was not acquainted with. That was false: the young men had taken away the body, and dragged it into a little wood near by, — where, during the autumn and winter, the Dogs, Ravens, and Foxes fed upon it. In the Spring, when they told me that it was there that they had dragged him, I went thither several times without finding anything. At last, the 4th time, I found the head and some half-gnawed bones, which I buried with the design of carrying them away, if I should be taken back to 3 Rivers, as they spoke of doing. I kissed them very devoutly, several times, as the bones of a martyr of Jesus Christ.
I give him this title not only because he was killed by the enemies of God and of his Church, and in the exercise of an ardent charity toward his neighbor, — placing himself in evident peril for the love of God, — but especially because he was killed on account of prayer, and notably for the sake of the holy Cross. He was in a Cabin where he nearly always said the prayers, — which little pleased a superstitious old man who was there. One day, seeing a little child of 3 or 4 years in the cabin, — with an excess of devotion and of love for the Cross, and with a simplicity which we who are more prudent than he, according to the flesh, would not have shown, — he took off his cap, put it on this child's head, and made a great sign of the cross upon its body. The old man, seeing that, commanded a young man of his cabin, who was about to leave for the war, to kill him, — which order he executed, as we have said. [Page 133]
Even the child's mother, on a journey in which I happened to be with her, told me that it was because of this sign of the Cross that he had been killed; and the old man who had given the command that he should be slain, — one day when they called me to his cabin to eat, when I previously made the sign of the Cross, — said to me: "That is what we hate; that is why they have killed thy companion, and why they will kill thee. Our neighbors the Europeans do not do so." Sometimes, also, when I was praying on my knees during the hunt, they told me that they hated this way of doing, and on account of it they had killed the other Frenchman; and that, for this reason, they would kill me when I came back to the Village.
I ask Your Reverence's pardon for the haste with which I write this, and for the want of respect of which I am thus guilty. You will excuse me, if you please; I feared lest I should fail at this opportunity, to discharge a duty which I ought to have performed long ago. [Page 135]
FROM: http://puffin.creighton.edu/jesuit/relations/relations_28.html P. 115.
St. Jean de Brebeuf and Joseph Chiwatenhwa
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