The sachem Membertou was gloried over by Father Biard as his first and most eminent convert, with more confidence than the Apostle Eliot expressed over his own disciple, the chief Waban. A son of Membertou's had been miraculously raised from mortal sickness through the help, says the Jesuit, “of a bone of the precious relics of the glorious St. Lawrence, Archbishop of Dublin, which M. de la Place, the worthy Abbot of Eu, and the Priors and Chapter, had graciously given to us to convoy our voyage.” This bone, laid on with a vow, restored the sufferer. “Membertou,” says the Father, “was the greatest, most renowned, and redoubtable savage in the memory of man; of noble frame, tall and muscular, and bearded like a Frenchman. He bade us hasten to learn his language, in order that, as soon as we had mastered it and had thus been able to teach him the faith, he might become a preacher like ourselves. He was the first of all the savages in these regions who had received the first and the last sacrament, — baptism and extreme unction; the first who of his own will and direction received Christian burial.” Membertou proposed an improvement in the Lord's Prayer. He did not like the limitation in the petition to “daily bread," and wished to include “moose-meat and fish.”[1]
In 1615 the noble Champlain made another resolute attempt to plant a colony at Quebec. Profoundly religious, though not an implicit instrument of the Jesuits, he brought with him four Franciscan Friars, of the Order of the Récollets, and two more soon followed. They were faithful and devoted men, heroic and all-enduring in their zeal and sacrifices, and they nobly began the missions among the distant Hurons, though soon surrendering the stern service to the Jesuits, whose fervid toil and more than apostolic warfare with Nature and heathendom promised for a brief season a
- ↑ I am indebted to the studies and the references of Mr. Parkman, in his “Pioneers,” etc., for my principal information and guidance to authorities, in this brief notice of the first Roman Catholic missions in Acadia.
