a year later.

{139}

In 1645 the Mohawks made peace with the French, but the other members
of the Five Nations refused to be bound by the treaty. Father Isaac
Jogues ventured into their country in 1646, and after a successful
negotiation returned to consult the governor at Quebec; but unhappily
for him he left behind a small box, filled with some necessaries of his
simple life, with which he did not wish to encumber himself on this
flying visit. The medicine-men or sorcerers, who always hated the
missionaries as the enemies of their vile superstitious practices, made
the Indians believe that this box contained an evil spirit which was
the origin of disease, misfortune, and death. When Father Jogues came
back, he found the village divided into two parties--one wishing his
death, the other inclined to show him mercy, and after infinite
wrangling between the factions, he was suddenly killed by a blow from a
tomahawk as he was entering a long-house, to attend a feast to which he
had been invited. His body was treated with contumely, and his head
affixed to a post of the palisades of the village. He was the first
martyr who suffered death at the hands of the Iroquois.

The "black robe" was now to be seen in every Indian community of
Canada; among the Hurons and Algonquins as far as Lake Huron, among the
White Fish tribe at the head-waters of the Saguenay, and even among the
Abenakis of the Kennebec. Father Gabriel Druilletes, who had served an
apprenticeship among the Montagnais, was in charge of this Abenaki
mission, and in the course of years {140} visited Boston, Plymouth, and
Salem, in the interests of the Canadian French, who wished to enter
into commercial relations with New England, and also induce its
governments to enter into an alliance against the Iroquois. The
authorities of the New England confederacy eventually refused to evoke
the hostility of the dangerous Five Nations. Father Druilletes,
however, won for Canada the enduring friendship of the Abenakis, as
Acadian history shows.

It is impossible within the limited space of this chapter to give any
accurate idea of the spirit of patience, zeal, and self-sacrifice which
the Jesuit Fathers exhibited in their missions among the hapless
Hurons. For years they found these Indians very suspicious of their
efforts to teach the lessons of their faith. It was only with
difficulty the missionaries could baptise little children. They would
give sugared w