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A Visit to Ste-Marie among the Hurons
Ontario’s first European Community, Sainte-Marie was the headquarters for the French Jesuit Mission to the Huron-Wendat people. In 1639, the Jesuits, along with French lay workers, began construction of a palisaded community that included barracks, a church, workshops, residences, and a sheltered area for Indigenous visitors. By 1648, Sainte-Marie was home to 66 French men — one-fifth of the entire population of New France. Sainte-Marie’s history ended in 1649, when members of the mission community were forced to abandon and burn their home of ten years.
The report written by Father Paul Ragueneau tells us the story of heartbreak and despair that led to the abandonment of Sainte-Marie among the Hurons.
In the spring of 1649, attacks by members of the Haudenosaunee Nation (known to the French as Iroquois) increased and the Huron-Wendat people, greatly impacted by disease, were unable to defend Wendake.
The grave of martyred priests, Brébeuf and Lalemant, located at Sainte-Marie among the Hurons, is a sacred place for many Christian pilgrims.
Located along the shores of Georgian Bay – Samuel de Champlain’s “mer douce” – and surrounded by wooded hillsides, this was the ancestral homeland of the Huron-Wendat nation, a branch of the Haudenosaunee. The Wendat were a matrilineal society of good traders and skillful farmers who called their land Wendake.
French Jesuits came to Wendake in the 17th century. As an international order, the Society of Jesus operated like an army dedicated to spreading Catholicism throughout the world. They believed, with their founder Ignatius Loyola, that the first step in saving one’s neighbour was to educate him.
Laymen travelled from France to build a mission on the banks of the Isaraqui (Wye) River in 1639. It was named Sainte-Marie among the Hurons. Huron is the the name the French gave the Wendat. Hard work soon brought Sainte-Marie to virtual self-sufficiency, an impressive achievement for a community 1,200 kilometres from Quebec. It was to last only 10 years.
1 March 1649 -- I have received, very Reverend Paternity, your letter dated, 20 January 1647. If you wrote to us last year, 1648, we have not yet received that letter.
Father Ragueneau SJ, Resident at Ste-Marie-aux-pays-des-Hurons, 1649
Under growing pressure from the Iroquois, Jesuit missionaries, French laymen, and Christian Wendat followers burned the mission and abandoned it in the Spring of 1649.
They fled to St. Joseph Island (now Christian Island), where they endeavoured to establish a new Sainte-Marie among the Hurons. After a terrible winter of starvation and constant attack, the Frenchmen and the Christian Wendat returned to Quebec.
In the 17th century, much of the land we call Canada was known as New France. The European population numbered in the low hundreds, and most of these people lived along the Saint Lawrence River, their livelihood based on fish, furs and fledgling agriculture.
In addition to archeological information and oral history, we know the story of Sainte-Marie among the Hurons from the annual reports written by the Superior at Sainte-Marie. The reports, known as the Jesuit Relations, were sent to France via Quebec.
With the exception of one Italian priest, the people who lived at Sainte-Marie were French men. No women accompanied them. Members of the Huron-Wendat Nation were frequent visitors to the mission.
-- source: Ste-Marie among the Hurons website
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