Being the Last True Testament and Relation of Father Alphonse Nyon
Given at Montreal, Quebec in a the form of a Letter to the Very Reverend Father Vincenzo Caraffa, Superior General of the Society of Jesus, at Rome
Very Reverend Father in Christ,
I send this last Relation in the hopes that it will reach Your Reverence by the ship returning to France before the ice in this bitter region renders entirely compromised the passage of our vessels across the ocean.
I fear that my time here in this land is short, as the pox that has plagued hundreds of the Savages, thankfully a goodly number of them baptized and brought to our Christian Faith and now resting in the arms of Our Lord Jesus Christ in Heaven, has taken me into its embrace as well.
I write with difficulty and have entrusted the care and delivery of this Relation to Your Reverence into the hands of my friend Father Charles Vimont. He has sworn to seal this document and not to cast his eyes upon its contents, which are for the eyes of Your Reverence alone, on the peril of his Immortal Soul.
For my part, my vain prayers that I should again see the shores of my homeland or the beautiful cathedral of Notre-Dame de Chartres where I first heard Our Lord’s call as a young man, or indeed once again touch the face of my beloved mother, have been denied by Our Lord, and I submit myself joyfully to His will.
My one true regret during these many years of service to the Savages of New France is that I should have been spared the great honour of martyrdom, the great blessing enjoined upon so many of our fallen Fathers at the bloody hands of the Hiroquois-most lately Father de Brebeuf, Father Chabanel, and Father de Lalande, who died so horribly at Sainte-Marie among the Hurons last year, praising the name of Christ and giving absolution to their Barbarian tormentors with their last breath, even after their tongues were cut out, for they kept preaching till death released them.
I pray for Your Reverence’s understanding, prayers, and meditation upon the reading of this, my last Relation and Testament, for it is with a heavy heart that I set down the strange and terrible events I witnessed at St. Barthelemy among the Ojibwa in the northern Lac Superieur region of the country in the winter of the Year of Our Lord 1632.
These secrets I have kept to myself for nearly twenty years, confiding them not even in the Sacrament of Confession, though I regularly opened my heart to God and begged His forgiveness, not only for the blasphemies I have seen, but also for those I have wrought myself in my sad and pitiable effort to do His will as best as could be done by one so unworthy.
In the autumn of that dark year of which I write, word was received by Monsieur de Champlain at Trois-Rivieres of the destruction of two of our settlements near Sault de Gaston, in Huronia, and the martyrdom of three of our Jesuit Fathers in what could only have been an attack by the Hiroquois, for their fiendish handiwork leaves a spoor as unmistakable as the handiwork of Satan himself.
In the first, the Mission of Sainte-Berthe, the martyrs were, by name, Father Renaud d’Olivier, Father Mathieu Glazier, and Father Nausson d’Uongue. The Fathers had travelled from France together and, it was reported, had been as close as brothers. I pray they found comfort in their brotherhood at the end. The Indian trappers reported the hideous sight of the maimed and tortured bodies of d’Olivier, Glazier, and d’Uongue. Their scorched bodies still hung from the stakes to which they were tied and left for carrion. The Savages, it was reported, had poured boiling water over their heads in mockery of Baptism and cut out their eyes and tongues, placing live coals in the sockets.
Likewise, they reported the smoke still heavy and foul over the burned village, and many dead, including a number of baptized Savages. We wept at this news, even though we knew that our fallen Brothers had attained the heights of Heaven, having died in the greatest possible service to Our Lord Jesus Christ. Never have the words of our Jesuit motto,
In the second instance, the strange news was of the mission of St. Barthelemy deep in the Ojibwa region of that country, a region noted for the cruelty of the terrain itself and of the strangeness of its customs, superstitions and legends. So tight, it is said, is the Devil’s hold upon these poor people that establishing a mission in this particular region had long been an ambition of the Crown in its support of our work here in New France.
In the case of the mission of St. Barthelemy, the trappers related that the mission seemed entirely abandoned.
Unlike the mission of Sainte-Berthe, which had clearly fallen to an attack by the Hiroquois, the mission at St. Barthelemy appeared deserted, as though the inhabitants, both Christian and Savage, had all departed freely and of their own volition.
The trappers observed this and more and related it to Monsieur de Champlain, who in turn related it to Father de Varennes, who was then the representative responsible for dispatching our Fathers on their missions upriver in the company of their Huron guides.
It was at this point that I was summoned to meet with Father de Varennes at Trois-Rivieres. I was then still a very young man, all of twentyone, a year in New France since my departure from Chartres, and foolish in the fearless way of all young men, but determined to serve the will of God with all of my body and soul. I knew even then that martyrdom for the greater glory of God would be the highest attainment, and yet my poor flesh dreaded it, dreaded the agony of the flames of the stake as it dreaded the butchery of blade and spear. I confess that fear with shame, but with the openhearted humility that my own unworthiness demands.
Father de Varennes wasted no time in asking me what I knew of the settlement of St. Barthelemy. Sadly, I told him, I had only heard of it in passing through the stories of the other young priests. I knew little of the region or of the mission itself.
“Do you, for instance,” de Varennes asked me, “know anything of the Ojibwa people, Father Nyon? Do you know their language and customs?”
“I have studied their language, Father,” I replied. “I am not fluent, but I have tried to prepare myself as best I could in the event that my service in New France led me there.”
“You know by now, Father Nyon, of the recent destruction of our mission at Sainte-Berthe and the slaughter of our priests at the hands of the Hiroquois?”
I nodded, bowing my head. “Yes, Father. A great tragedy.”
“Have you then also heard,” he asked, “of the mystery of our settlement of St. Barthelemy near the shore of Lac Superieur which has been reported as entirely deserted?”
“Yes, Father. But again, only in passing. Only in the form of rumour and conjecture. Stories from around the campfire in these last weeks. The gossip of trappers.”
The old priest smiled at that. But again he grew serious. “Father Nyon,” he said. “We have dispatched one of our priests, Father Luberon, in the company of a party of Algonquians, to recover the bodies of our fallen Fathers at Sainte-Berthe and to give them a Christian burial. It is a gruesome assignation, but Father Luberon has volunteered. We can only pray for his safe return, and that he does not meet the same fate that befell d’Olivier, Glazier, and d’Uongue.”
“I too will pray for that, Father,” I told him. “I would also have volunteered if I had known of the assignation.”
Father de Varennes looked hard at me and said, “Is that what is truly in your heart, Father Nyon?”
I replied that it was, indeed.
“Father Nyon. I would like you to travel north to the region of Sault de Gaston and visit the site of the St. Barthelemy settlement and see if what the trappers reported is true. I would like you to find the priest, Father de Celigny. If the Savages murdered him, I would like you to bury him and perform the Last Rites. If he is alive, I would like you to bring him back with you to Trois-Rivieres so he may give his own account of what transpired at the Mission.”
