CCHA, Report, 23 (1956), 41-52
The Visit of
Father Allouez to Lake Nipigon
in 1667
by
Rev. Francis J.
NELLIGAN, S.J.,
Jesuit
Seminary, Toronto, Ontario
The Diocese of Fort William
was erected on April 29, 1952. It comprises that part of Ontario which is
bounded on the west by the Manitoba border; on the north by the height of land
dividing the watershed of the Albany River from the waters that flow into Lake
Superior; on the east by the 86th degree of longitude; and on the south by the
international boundary. The Catholics of this new diocese are desirous of
learning something of the beginning of the Church in this vast territory. Who
was the first priest to visit the area? When and where was the first Mass
celebrated? What is known of early missionary efforts in the region? It is the
purpose of this paper to answer those questions as best we can from the
records that have come down to us.
The first priest who visited the north
shore of Lake Superior was Father Claude Allouez, S.J. During the early summer
of 1667 he was at Lake Nipigon where he went to meet the Nipissings, an
Algonkian tribe. Allouez had established in 1665 the Mission of the Holy Spirit
on Chequamegon Bay in the present State of Wisconsin. From there he set out
early in May, 1667, accompanied by two Indians, to visit the Christians among
the Nipissings. While there he said the first Mass ever to be celebrated in
what is now Fort William Diocese. This is his story.
I
Claude Allouez was born at St. Didier,
France, probably in 1622. He made his studies at the Jesuit College at Puy.
While there he had St. John Francis Regis for spiritual guide and instructor in
Christian Doctrine. The Saint had begged the Jesuit General to be allowed to go
on the Canadian Mission, but had been refused. But it was through his influence
that young Claude Allouez first conceived the idea of becoming a Jesuit
missionary himself. On September 25, 1639, accompanied by his brother Ignace,
Claude entered the novitiate at Toulouse. During the course of his training for
the priesthood, and for ten years after his ordination, he kept asking to be sent
to the missions of New France. He had finally persuaded himself that God wanted
him to remain in France when, on March 3, 1657, he received a letter from his
Superior stating that his oft-repeated request was to be granted at last. He
was to sail for Canada shortly. Filled with joy at the news he exclaimed:
“Lord, here I am. My heart is ready. Take me.”1
Father Allouez was a man of middle height,
rather stocky in build, hardy, and quite strong enough to endure the hardships
that were ahead of him. He possessed a strong will, and was not easily turned
aside from any course he had set himself. He was prudent, energetic, well-informed,
of good practical judgment, calm in outward appearance, but burning with a zeal
within. He was the very type of man needed on the Canadian missions.2
The new recruit sailed for Canada with Mr.
d’Argenson who was coming out to take over the duties of governor of New
France. They arrived at Quebec on July 11, 1658. During the next six years
Allouez was stationed at Quebec, and also at Three Rivers where he was Superior
for a time. He studied the Huron and Algonkian languages, and was initiated
into the work of the Indian missions in the Three Rivers neighbourhood. In
1664 he was ready to go to the Ottawa country on Lake Superior. Bishop Laval
appointed him Vicar General of the whole Northwest country, and he went to
Montreal late in the summer to join the usual Indian flotilla on its way back
to Lake Superior. But he arrived there too late: the Indians had left already.
So he returned to Three Rivers to wait another year.3
Finally on August 8, 1665, Allouez began
the long trip to Lake Superior accompanied by six Frenchmen and more than four
hundred Indians. The journey up the Ottawa, by the Mattawa, across Lake
Nipissing, down the French River, and along the north shore of Georgian Bay was
an extremely arduous experience even under the most favourable conditions. But
on this occasion the Indians treated the missionary very badly indeed: they
showed him plainly that he was a most unwelcome fellow-traveller; they stole
some of his possessions; they vented their fury upon him because of his
unskilled paddling. At one point the Ottawa chief ordered him left behind.
Abandoned in the deep forest, what could the poor man do but fall on his knees
and pray? Fortunately, one of the Indians took pity on him, and returned to
bring him in his canoe. But his sufferings were by no means ended. Long hours
at the paddle utterly exhausted him, and there was no food but the nauseous
mess of boiled lichen, tripe de roche, and some badly spoiled venison. Then
there was the very difficult problem of transporting his personal effects, some
books, his altar equipment, and a two-years’ supply of wine over the thirty-six
portages. In spite of everything he managed to reach Sault Ste. Marie by the
beginning of September. From there he and the six Frenchmen took a more
leisurely trip along the south shore of Lake Superior. It was when they arrived
at the portage across the Keweenaw peninsula that Father Allouez stopped to say
Mass, the first he was able to celebrate since leaving the St. Lawrence on
August 8.4 It was the spot where
the first priest to come to Lake Superior, Father René Ménard, had wintered in
1660-61.5
On October 1st the travellers reached
Chequamegon Bay where the new mission, called La Pointe de Saint-Esprit, was to
be established. There were two large Indian villages on the shore of this bay,
one occupied by Hurons, the other by Ottawas and representatives of other
Algonkian tribes. These Hurons belonged to the Tionnontate or Petun tribe, part
of which had been converted to Christianity by St. Charles Garnier6 while they still
lived on their home-lands southeast and east of Nottawasaga Bay in southern Ontario.
They had fled northwards when the fierce Iroquois attack of 1649 had destroyed
a large part of their nation.7 A fair number of those whom
Allouez met at Chequamegon Bay were therefore Christians at least in name. The
Ottawas at the bay were also fugitives before the Iroquois onslaught towards
the Northwest. They had formerly dwelt on Manitoulin and on other Islands in
Georgian Bay. Besides the Indians, there were probably about a dozen Frenchmen
at Chequamegon Bay in 1665.8 The first coureurs de bois, Radisson and Des
Groseilliers, had established a trading post there, probably in 1660.9 The rich cargo of
furs these two had brought down to Montreal during the summer of 1660, had
lured to the west the pioneers of that movement which was to effect such great
changes in the whole Northwest during the next two hundred years or so. But
Chequamegon Bay was the only centre of the fur trade in the upper country as
yet.
Allouez built a small chapel of bark midway
between the two Indian villages.10 This rude sanctuary in the wilderness was the
first church erected west of Georgian Bay. As there was nothing left of the old
Huronia missions in 1665, it was at the time the only chapel west of the
Montreal area. Here the devoted missionary gathered his Christians together,
and undid, as best he could, the ravages to faith and morality fifteen years of
separation from priest and Sacraments had wrought in their half-pagan souls.
Here also he instructed the pagans of some ten different nations who flocked in
from many directions to see the new Black Robe. He suffered much from hunger,
loneliness, and the horrors of pagan life around him. But he had the great
consolation of knowing that a hundred or more children whom he had baptized
before death, had gone straight to Heaven. And little by little his flock was
growing.
But the missionary’s eyes were cast
longingly on the great fields that lay ripe for the harvest all around him. He
was all alone at La Pointe de Saint-Esprit as yet, and could not leave his
neophytes for long. He did pay a visit to the Sioux in the west, but he knew
nothing of their language, and work among them would have to be deferred to a
later date. He spent a month, probably during the summer of 1666, among the
Saulteurs or Ojibways in the Sault Ste. Marie region. A mission was begun among
them in 1668 by Father James Marquette. Then one day Allouez heard of some poor
abandoned Christians among the Nipissings, and he resolved to visit them during
the summer of 1667.
II
But who were these Nipissings? Whence had
they come? And who had evangelized them? We are deeply interested, for they
were the first Christians to inhabit the territory of what is now Fort William
Diocese.
The first mention of the Nipissings in
Canadian history occurs when Champlain was told of them by other Algonkian
tribes on the occasion of his trip up the Ottawa to Allumette Island in 1613.
They were said to inhabit a region around a lake in the west, and were called
Nebicerini.11 They were a rather nomadic people who roamed around hunting and
fishing in the great forest area north, west, and south of the lake which bears
their name. Jean Nicolet, the explorer, went to live among them in 1620, and he
was adopted as a member of the tribe. He set down in his journal copious notes
about their customs and way of life.12 When Quebec was
captured by the English in 1629 Nicolet sought refuge among the Nipissings, and
remained with them till Canada was restored to the French Crown in 1632. All
our information about the Nipissings is derived from Nicolet and the Jesuits
who began mission work among them in 1640.
We are told that the Nipissings lived in
scattered villages composed of bark huts of the most primitive type of
construction. These were hastily erected, and as hastily abandoned when the
tribe decided to move to a new location. There was hardly any social
organization among them. Once in a while the older men would assemble in
council, but their decisions imposed no obligations on anyone. The women were
the drudges, for the men were hunters and warriors who never stooped to menial
tasks. Unlike the Hurons, with whom they were friendly, the Nipissings do not
seem to have practiced any form of agriculture. In religion they were worshippers
of the sun and moon. Sorcerers and shamans were very numerous and influential
in the tribe. The Jesuits thought these were devil-worshippers. Innumerable
superstitious ceremonies and sacrificial offerings to the spirits of the dead,
and to animal spirits, were their most characteristic practices. Morality was
practically unknown among the Nipissings, and the greatest obstacle the missionaries
met with was a deep-seated addiction to polygamy, and other forms of
shamelessness in sex behaviour.13
Father Claude Pijart was the apostle of the
Nipissings. The tribe had come down for the winter of 1640-41 to what is now
the Parry Sound district. There Pijart and Father Charles Raymbault began
instructing them in November, 1640, and they continued the work all the
following winter. In the spring of 1641 Pijart, accompanied now by Father René
Ménard,14 followed them north to their summer camps. Across rivers, lakes and
mountains the two Jesuits travelled after them, suffering incredible
indignities and hardships to win this degraded people for Christ. Father Pijart
worked nine years altogether among the Nipissings. There were almost
insurmountable obstacles in the way of their conversion, but he had succeeded at
last in forming a small Christian community when the great blow of 1649-50
fell. For the Iroquois invasions of those years not only destroyed all the
missions in Huronia, and the Jesuits were forced out of the whole Georgian Bay
area, but the war drove tribe after tribe north and west from their usual
habitats in north-eastern Ontario. The Nipissings fled with their neighbours,
the Amikoues, or Amikouets,15 to the Lake Nipigon region.16 It was there that
Father Allouez found the relics of Pijart’s Christians in 1667.
III
Allouez tells the story of his trip to Lake
Nipigon in his journal, extracts from which were published in the Relation for
1666-67.17
“On the sixth of
May of this year, 1667, I embarked in a Canoe with two Savages to serve me as
guides, throughout this Journey. Meeting on the way two-score Savages from the
North Bay,18 I conveyed to them the first tidings of the Faith, for
which they thanked me with some politeness.
“Continuing our
journey, on the seventeenth we crossed a portion of our great Lake,19
paddling for twelve hours without dropping the paddle from the hand. God
rendered me very sensible aid; for, as there were but three of us in our Canoe,
I was obliged to paddle with all my strength, together with the Savages, in
order to make the most of the calm, without which we would have been in great
danger, utterly spent as we were with toil and lack of food. Nevertheless we
lay down supper-less at nightfall, and on the morrow contented ourselves with a
frugal meal of Indian corn and water; for the wind and the rain prevented our
Savages from casting their nets.
“On the nineteenth,
invited by the beautiful weather, we covered eighteen leagues, paddling from
daybreak till Sunset, without respite and without landing.
“On the twentieth,
finding nothing in our nets, we continued on our journey, munching some grains
of dry corn. On the following day, God refreshed us with two small fishes,
which gave us new life. Heaven’s blessings increased on the next day, our
Savages catching so many sturgeon that they were obliged to leave part of them
at the water’s edge.
“Coasting along the
Northern shore of this great Lake on the twenty-third, we passed from Island
to Island, these being very frequent. There is one, at least twenty leagues
long, where are found pieces of copper, which is held by Frenchmen who have
examined it here to be true red copper.20
“After
accomplishing a good part of our journey on the Lake, we left it on the
twenty-fifth of this month of May, and consigned ourselves to a River, so full
of rapids and falls that even our Savages could go no farther;21
and learning that Lake Alimibegong was still frozen over,22
they gladly took the two days’ rest imposed upon them by necessity.
“As we drew near
our journey’s end, we occasionally met Nipissirinien Savages, wandering from
their homes to seek a livelihood in the woods. Gathering together a
considerable number of them for the celebration of Whitsuntide,23
I prepared them by a long instruction for the hearing of the holy sacrifice of
the Mass, which I celebrated in a Chapel of Foliage. They listened with as much
piety and decorum as do our Savages of Quebec in our Chapel at Sillery; and to
me it was the sweetest refreshment I had during the Journey, entirely removing
all past fatigue.”
We have here the first record
of a Mass having been said in the present-day Diocese of Fort William. That it
was not only the first one recorded, but actually the first Mass said north of
Lake Superior must be reckoned as very probable. For under the rude and
primitive conditions of canoe travel in the wilderness of those days it was not
usual, nor indeed always possible, for a priest to celebrate at every stopover
on their journeys. Though the missionary carried some sort of portable altar,
it was not easy to erect a table for Mass. None could be carried of course in
their light canoes. Sometimes rough makeshift underpinnings were driven into
the ground, and paddles were used for the surface of the altar-table.24 They had no boards,
for there were no saw-mills. But even such flimsy altars set up by lake or
stream took time to erect, and from his account we see that Allouez and his
companions made stopovers only at sunset, and they were on their way again at
sunrise. They had no time or energy to erect altars. Quite apart from that,
wine for Mass had very probably to be spared for the important occasions when a
sufficient number of Christians were gathered together. Allouez could hardly
have had much wine left in the summer of 1667, for his only supply was what was
left of that brought up from Three Rivers in 1665. We read in the annals of
early missionary travels of there being no wine left for Mass, and of attempts
being made to ferment some from the juice of wild grapes. It is unlikely,
moreover, that Allouez would omit mentioning so important an event as the
celebration of Mass at a stopover, since he notes in his journal matters of so
much less significance. We have seen that the Mass he said at the Keweenaw
portage in mid-September, 1665, is prominently featured in his description of
the trip from the St. Lawrence to Chequamegon Bay. And that was the first Mass
he had said since leaving Montreal a month and a half before. Unfortunately,
the exact site of this historic event, the first Mass said anywhere in Canada
west of Sault Ste. Marie, cannot be located with any degree of certainty. It
may be asserted, however, that this Whitsunday Mass of May 29, 1667, was very
probably said in the near vicinity of Virgin Falls where the Nipigon River
begins to flow southwards. This is shown by a careful consideration of a cross
on a map and a few words in Allouez’ journal.
The map to which we refer is an early one
of Lakes Huron, Superior, Michigan, and the upper Mississippi valley. On this
map crosses mark the sites of early Jesuit missions as well as places the
missionaries visited for apostolic purposes. The original of this map is in the
Bibliothèque de la Marine, Paris, but it has been reproduced in various
publications.25 The map is undated and its author unknown, but cartographers agree that
it was drawn not later than 1680.26 Now one of the crosses on this map is placed
near the south-eastern shore of Lake Nipigon. The general shape and contours of
the lake are, unfortunately, too badly drawn to identify the exact spot which
the cross indicates. All we can say is that it points to a place somewhere in
Kilkenny, Kitto, or Eva townships. But there can be no doubt about its
indicating the site of the Nipissing village Allouez visited in 1667. For it is
quite certain that no other missionary ever went to Lake Nipigon before 1726, and
it is most improbable that any priest was ever there again till 1852. There is
no record of Allouez’ or any other Jesuit’s ever going back, and there was no
need of their doing so. For not long after the visit of 1667 the Nipissings,
and their neighbours the Amikouets, returned to their old homes north and east
of Georgian Bay. They were there attended by the Jesuits stationed at Sault
Ste.. Marie.27 We may take it then that the cross on the 1680 map indicates the site
of the Nipissing village which Allouez reached on June 3, 1667, and is in
commemoration of that visit. But how does that help us to locate his
celebration of Mass on May 29th? It was certainly not said in the Nipissing
village.
The following lines from Allouez’ journal,
where he tells us what happened between May 29th and June 3rd, next comes to
our assistance: “We spent six days in paddling from Island to Island seeking
some outlet; and finally, after many detours we reached the Nipissiriniens on
the third of June.”28 The point under consideration is the place
from which the party set out on this six days’ journey. For that was the place
where they were on May 29th, the day on which the first Mass was celebrated.
Now this could only have been somewhere on or near that half-mile southern
shore of the narrow inlet where the waters of Lake Nipigon enter the river. The
bay just north of this inlet is studded with islands, and there are several
others just north and east of it in the lake. These are certainly the islands
to which Father Allouez refers. It is important to consider that the six days
were not consumed wandering indefinitely around Lake Nipigon looking for the
Nipissing village. For the Indians who had attended Mass on Pentecost were
Nipissings, and Allouez would most surely have found out from them, if his own
guides did not know it, that it was in a general north-easterly direction that
he must go to find the village. It was not therefore ignorance of where to find
their destination on the lake, nor its great distance from where they were,
which caused the six days’ delay in reaching the Nipissings. The difficulty
was rather that of finding a passage for their frail canoe through the floating
and half-melted ice which choked the bay and the lower part of the lake between
the various islands. This can be the only meaning of the “outlet” they were
seeking, and the “many detours” they were obliged to make. We must remember
that when the party was at the mouth of the Nipigon River on May 25th, news
reached them that Lake Nipigon was still frozen over. No doubt the ice was breaking
up a few days later. On the basis of this argument we may conclude with some
semblance of probability that the Mass of May 29th was celebrated at or near
the opening of the Nipigon River on the inlet near what is now called Virgin
Falls.
We may now return to the narrative in which
Father Allouez writes of his sojourn in the village of the Nipissings:
“It [i.e. the
village] is composed of Savages, mostly idolators, with some Christians of long
standing. Among them I found twenty who made public profession of Christianity.
I did not lack occupation with both classes during the two weeks’ sojourn in
their country, and I worked as diligently as my health, broken by the fatigues
of the journey, allowed. I found more resistance here than anywhere to infant
baptism;29 but the more the devil opposes us, the more must we strive
to confound him. He is hardly pleased, I think, to see me make this latest
journey, which is nearly five hundred leagues in length going and coming,
including the detours we were obliged to make.”30
Father Allouez gives us no account of his
return trip to Chequamegon Bay. He may not have returned there at that time,
but could have followed the north shore of Lake Superior to Sault Ste. Marie.
We do know that he accompanied the usual summer party of Ottawas on their way
to the St. Lawrence, and arrived at Quebec on August the third, 1667.31 He remained there
only two days. He had brought with him some samples of the Lake Superior copper
ore, and Talon, the Intendant, became greatly interested. He despatched Jean
Péré and Adrien Jolliet up to explore and report on the copper deposits in the
Lake Superior area.32
But Allouez had gone to Quebec in search of
fellow-labourers for the great Northwestern harvests. Father Louis Nicolas and
Brother Louis La Boèsme were given him, and four men were hired for the
construction and agricultural work Allouez planned to do at La Pointe de Saint-Esprit.
The Indians refused, however, to take so many back with them, and Allouez had
to be content to take Father Nicolas and one workman along with him.33 But Nicolas did
not prove to be a very useful helper, and early in the spring of 1668 he
returned to Quebec.34
Meanwhile Father Allouez continued his
labours at Chequamegon Bay, without, however, achieving much success. During
the summer of 1668 he had determined to abandon the Ottawas altogether. They
had long listened to his instructions without making the slightest move to give
up their heathen practices and embrace Christianity. But when it was learned
that the Black Robe intended leaving, a Council was called, and one Ottawa
tribe, the Kiskakons, promised to join the Church. So Allouez decided to remain
another winter to instruct them.35 Many of the Kiskakons had
been baptized when Father James Marquette came from the Sault to replace
Allouez during September, 1669. The future discoverer of the Mississippi stayed
at Chequamegon Bay till 1671.36) That year the
Sioux declared war on all the Lake Superior tribes. To escape these “Iroquois
of the West” the Hurons and the Christian Kiskakons migrated with Marquette to
Michillimackinac where the mission of St. Ignace was established. The other
Ottawa tribes returned to their former homes on the Georgian Bay Islands.
Chequamegon Bay was thus abandoned, and not far for a hundred and sixty-four years
would the sound of the sanctuary bell be heard over its waters. It was in 1835
that the great missionary, Father (later Bishop), Frederick Baraga, came there
to open a mission once more, and from there once again would he, and another
Slovenian priest, Father Pierz, cross the great Lake to sow the Gospel seed in
the territory of Fort William Diocese.
It is beside our purpose to follow the
subsequent career of Father Allouez. For twenty more years he laboured among
the Potawatomies, Miamis, and Illinois tribes south and west of Lake Michigan.
During the night of August 27-28, 1689, near what is now the city of Niles,
Michigan, he passed to his well-merited reward. Like Brebeuf he had written a
description of what kind of man the Indian missionary of those days must be. It
was found among his papers after his death, and thus, quite unconsciously, he
portrays for us a sketch of his own life and character.
“The Jesuits who
come from old France to New France must be called by a special and particularly
strong vocation. They must be men dead to the spirit of the world and to
themselves, apostolic men, saintly men, who seek nothing but God and the
salvation of souls. They must be lovers of the cross and of self-abnegation;
they must prefer the conversion of an Indian to conquering an empire. They
have to live in the Canadian forests as. precursors of Christ, and be in a
small way other John the Baptists crying out in the wilderness to the Indians
that happiness comes through Christ alone. They must seek their only support,
and receive their only comfort, and find their only treasure in God alone, for
to Him alone it belongs to call them to Canada ...
“To convert the Indian there is no need of miracles, but there is great need of doing them much good, of suffering much, of never complaining except to God alone, and of regarding oneself as a very useless and unprofitable servant after all.. .”37