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Sainte-Marie among the Hurons (French: Sainte-Marie-au-pays-des-Hurons) was a 17th century French Jesuit mission in Wendake, the land of the Huron (Wendat) nation, located near modern Midland, Ontario.

The mission was established in 1639 to Christianize the indigenous Huron people in the Georgian Bay area. It was the first non-aboriginal settlement in what is now the province of Ontario.

Eight missionaries from Sainte-Marie were martyred, and have been canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. A nearby church, the Martyrs' Shrine, commemorates the eight saints.

The mission now operates as a living museum.

History

Established in 1639, the mission served the purpose of acting as a centre and base of operations for Jesuit missionaries in the region as they worked amongst the Huron. It also stood to provide to the Huron a typical example of a functioning European community.

The mission was built near the Huron settlement of Quieunonascaranas, led by chief Auoindaon.

The mission was initially founded by 18 men. Arriving in November of 1639, they erected a makeshift shelter out of cypress pillars and a birch bark roof, using clay to build in the interior walls. After the arrivial of carpenter Charles Boivin, further construction resulted in a chapel, a residence for the Jesuits, a cookhouse, a blacksmithery and other buildings.

Missionary life

A small group of religiously devoted men, also known as donnés, worked at the mission in return for food, clothing, and shelter. Also there were engagés, or hired men, and non-clerical Jesuits known as lay brothers.

The Jesuits evangelized the Christian gospel to the Huron, often adapting the story to more familiar local customs. One of the most famous examples of this was the "Huron Carol", a Christmas hymn which remains popular in Canadian churches to this day.

Soldiers had a rather small but important presence at the mission. Twenty-two soldiers wintered at Saint Marie in 1644, and many of the Jesuits resisted the idea of a military presence, as they feared the soldiers would "bring the worst of Europe" with them.

The establishment of the mission led to division amongst the Wendat, with conflict between those who converted to Christianity and those who maintained their traditional beliefs. Disease, an unintended result of first contact between the Jesuits and the Wendat, served to further the gap between the traditional Wendat and the missionaries.

Also during this time, the rivalry between the Wendat and Iroquois began to reignite, and the Wendat were weakened by their internal divisions and their losses from the conflict.

War and martyrdom

With Iroquois aggression on the rise, an additional six soldiers were dispatched from France in 1649.

The weakened Wendat nation was little match for the strengthened Iroquois who had used their trading alliances with the Dutch and English to gain firearms.

Eight of the missionaries -- St. Jean de Brébeuf (1649), St. Noël Chabanel (1649), St. Antoine Daniel (1648), St. Charles Garnier (1649), St. René Goupil (1642), St. Isaac Jogues (1646), St. Jean de Lalande (1646), and St. Gabriel Lallemant (1649) -- were martyred in the Huron-Iroquois wars. Due to the proximity of their deaths to Sainte-Marie, the bodies of Brébeuf and Lalemant were quickly recovered by the French and buried at the mission. None of the other six bodies were ever found.

The Burning of Sainte-Marie

On June 16, 1649 the missionaries chose to burn the mission rather than risk seeing it desecrated or permanently overrun by Iroquois in further attacks. Fr. Paul Ragueneau wrote,

we ourselves set fire to it, and beheld burn before our eyes and in less than one hour, our work of nine or ten years.

Before the burning, the decision had already been made that Brébeuf and Lalemant would be canonized. The duty fell to shoemaker Christophe Regnault to extract the bones of the two men. Regnault exhumed the bodies, placed them into a lye solution and wrapped the bones in linens. The men's flesh remains were reburied together in the same grave.

The missionaries travelled to Gahoendoe (modern day Christian Island) with the Wendat in an effort to construct a second mission designed especially for defence. However a rough winter and the constant threat of Iroquois attack eventually forced the French from the area, and they travelled back to New France. The bones of Brébeuf and Lallemant were taken on both trips, and continue to exist today as holy relics.

Modern reconstruction

The site lay dormant until 1844, when Jesuit Fr. Pierre Chazelle conducted initial site excavations. Father Félix Martin continued this in 1855, and in 1940 the Society of Jesus purchased the property where Sainte-Marie stood. In 1941, Kenneth Kidd of the Royal Ontario Museum undertook the first scientific excacations of the site. Wilfrid and Elsie Jury of the University of Western Ontario undertook additional excavations, and in 1954 the graves of Brébeuf and Lalemant were discovered by Fr. Dennis Hegarty.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Sainte-Marie among the Hurons ]

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