lived among them as
a despised slave, and now had come back laden with gifts as the
ambassador of a great power! They received {163} him graciously, and
when his errand was done, he returned safe to Quebec.

It would have been well for him if his superiors had contented themselves
with what he had already done and suffered. But they had a grand scheme
of founding a mission among the Iroquois. They knew its perils and
called it "The Mission of Martyrs." To this post of danger Jogues was
sent. The devoted man went without a murmur. On the way he met Indians
who warned him of danger, and his Huron companions turned back, but he
went on. Arrived among the Mohawks, he found a strong tide of feeling
running against him. The accident that aroused it illustrates Indian
superstitiousness. On his former visit, expecting to return, he had left
a small box. From the first the Indians suspected it of being, like
Pandora's box in the old mythology, full of all kinds of ills. But
Jogues opened it and showed them that it contained only some harmless
personal effects. After he was gone, however, some Huron prisoners
wrought on their terror and at the same time reviled the French,
declaring that the latter had almost ruined the Huron nation by their
witchcraft and had brought on it drought, plague, pestilence, and famine.

{164}

The Iroquois were well-nigh wild with rage and fright. At any moment the
small-pox or some other horror might step out of the little box and stalk
abroad among them. The three clans that made up the tribe were divided.
The clans of the Wolf and the Tortoise were for keeping the peace; but
the clan of the Bear was for making war on the French. Just then, by ill
fortune, Jogues, approaching the Mohawk villages, encountered a band of
Bear warriors. They seized and dragged him to their town. Here he was
savagely attacked and beaten with fists and clubs. In vain he reminded
them that he had come on an errand of peace. They tortured him cruelly.
The Wolf and Tortoise clans protested against this violation of the
peace, but the others carried everything before them.

The next day Jogues was bidden to a feast. He did not dare refuse to go.
As he entered the lodge of the Bear chief, in spite of the efforts of an
Indian who exposed his own life in trying to save him, a hatchet was
buried in his brain. Thus died a singularly pure and unselfish man, a
Pathfinder, too, for he was one of the three whit