year—this time accompanied by a young Frenchman—he once more visited the Iroquois, intending to settle among them and teach them Christianity.
All went well at first, but at the beginning of 1647 Jogues received instructions from his superiors to go to the Mohawk country, with a view to insuring peace with its savage warriors, who were showing signs of breaking the solemn treaty made at Three Rivers. The Jesuit obeyed, though he is reported to have said, "I shall go, but I shall never return." He was right. He had scarcely set foot among the Mohawks, before he and his fellow-countryman were taken prisoners, charged with having blighted the corn and caused a famine. Stripped half naked, they were dragged into a neighboring village and there put to death. Not until long afterward did any details of the tragedy reach Quebec. A Mohawk prisoner, taken in a struggle with the French on the St. Lawrence, and condemned to death for his share in an ambush into which the white men and some of their Algonquin allies had fallen, confessed before his torture began that he had himself killed Jogues, and another member of his tribe the missionary's companion.
No more vivid picture of the struggle between savagery and civilization in the early days of Canada could be conceived, than the account sent home by a Jesuit of the young Mohawk's death. This Mohawk had told how he and another had invited Jogues to supper, and when he arrived in the half-naked state to which he had been reduced, a savage, who had hidden behind the door of the tent where supper was prepared, started out and struck off the head of the unsuspecting guest. The head was stuck on the palisades of the village, as a warning to all other Europeans, and on the following day that of the young French layman was placed beside it.
One would have thought that, after this frank acknowledgment of his own share in the murder, no mercy would have been shown to the Mohawk. But here the true character of the Jesuits came out. Die he still must, and that at the hands of the Algonquins, with all the subtle cruelties in which they were adepts; but there was no reason for him to die in his sins. The short time before the execution was to take place was devoted to converting him to Christianity; and just before he was given up to the native chief who was to preside at his death, he was baptized Isaac, in memory of the man he had helped to martyr. Poor Isaac is said to have cried again and again on our Saviour in his agony, and to have said, when dying, "I have to thank Antaiok" (so he called the Frenchman who had taken him prisoner) "that I am going to heaven; I am very glad."
