owned by the Jesuits of Canada. The original is said to be extant; but the present writer found only a copy, which however may be safely relied on, as it has several corrections made in the handwriting of Father Paul Ragueneau, Superior of the Jesuits in Canada about 1651, whose care in causing copies of valuable papers to be made in season has enabled many to reach us.

The French having been communicated by me to a gentleman who has already reproduced several of the Jesuit manuscripts of that time, in imitation of the printed Relations, was also privately printed by him. A translation is now presented.

A letter, apparently part of that referred to in this Journal, has been published by the accurate and laborious Abbé Ferland, in his Notes on the Registers of Quebec. We append a translation of this also, as it contains some curious details. (II.)

According to this journal, Father Druilletes found Plymouth well disposed to enter the league, and most of the others by no means unfavorable; but the decision was referred to the General Court. He returned to Canada in June, 1651. On his report the French governor convened a meeting of the informal Council of the Colony,* and this body appointed Father Druilletes and John Paul Godefroy, their ambassadors to the authorities in New England. The appointment, as found in the register of the Council, with the letter of the governor, and that of the Council to the Commissioners of the United Colonies, have been preserved by Charlevoix, and are annexed by us to Druilletes' journal. (III.-IV.)

The deputies, on their arrival at Boston, however, found the New England Colonies less disposed to join them. "To these letters," say the Commissioners, in a letter to their agent Winslow, "such answare was returned by all the Collonies as might have stopped all further proceedings; but it seems by theire commissions or instructions they were enjoyned to treat with the Commissioners, and from them joyntly to receive theire answare, soe that they came along with the Massachusetts Commissioners to Newhaven." Here they presented their credentials, and the affair was discussed at length in the General Court; the New England magistrates being anxious indeed to open a trade, but equally unwilling to purchase commer*There was properly no permanent Council till 1663. CHARLEVOIX. Histoire de la Nouvelle France. I. 371.

John Paul Godefroy was a captain of a vessel, and son of R. Godefroy, Esq., of St. Nicholas des Champs, at Paris. He married in Canada, his wife being a daughter of Le Gardeur de Repentigny. FERLAND. Notes sur les Registres de Notre Dame de Quebec, 50. Letter to Edward Winslow, dated 12th September, 1651, in HAZARD. Historical Collec

tions. II. 182.

cial advantages by an Indian war. They finally presented to the French deputies a letter to the Governor of Canada (V.) and an answer to their propositions (VI.), both of which are here given. These declining the proposal, virtually closed the negotiation.

The ground on which this aid was asked gives new light on a point which has not been sufficiently examined, the connection of the French with the Abnakis in Maine. Champlain had indeed had friendly relations with them, but not long before the present epoch some who came to trade on the St. Lawrence were ordered to retire, and threatened with hostilities if they returned. They were considered as English Indians purchasing furs for the Boston market. Yet almost at the same time a missionary was sent to them in the following way. A party of heathen Algonquins took some Abnakis prisoners by mistake, for they were not at war; they were proceeding, however, to torture them when the news reached the Christian Algonquins of Sillery; these hastened to their countrymen, arrested their cruelty, and even obtained one of the Abnakis already covered with wounds. As soon as, by the care and attention of the Hospital nuns, he was restored to health, he set out for his tribe, accompanied by Charles Meiaskoat, a fervent Christian, who, as a missionary, traversed the villages of the Abnakis, exciting all to embrace the saving faith of Christ. One chief followed him back to Sillery, and many others subsequently embraced Christianity. Four years later, in 1646, a Christian chief came to implore the black gowns to come and reside among them to convert them all. The proposal was accepted, and the same entry in the journal of the Superior of the mission announces that Father Jogues was to proceed to the Mohawk, and Father Druillettes to the Kennebec. He wintered with them; and by his patience and assiduity converted many; returning to Quebec in 1647, he was about to revisit the Kennebec again, when the French in Acadia wrote to ask that he should not again enter the Abnaki villages. After the French had been driven from their posts in Maine, he returned in 1650, and continued his labors, with some interruption, till 1657. As the journal shows, the Abnakis were considered English Indians, under the protection of Plymouth, and it was to defend them against the Iroquois that the New England colonies were asked to take up arms. As they refused, and soon after became, in a manner, allies of the Five Nations, the Abnakis threw themselves into the arms of the French, who, from about 1685, endeavored by their means to secure to France the territory east of the Kennebec

The treaty of Utrecht, however, in 1713, gave up to England all that France claimed on the Atlantic, and the Abnakis thus became again English Indians. Converts to the Church of Rome, they could in vain expect such spiritual guides as they chose from those who now claimed their allegiance; their missionaries were accordingly French, and their former intercourse was thus kept up with Quebec, to which they naturally turned in the collisions now daily arising between them and the encroaching settlers. Treated with cruelty and perfidy by the English, they at last broke out in open war, and desolated the frontiers till, broken by repeated losses, they submitted about the year 1726. Shortly before, in 1724, their chief town, Norridgewock, had been a second time taken, and their missionary, the celebrated Father Rale, killed by the New England troops. The colonists of New England, shutting their eyes to the wrongs which the Abnakis had really suffered, threw all the odium of the war on Father Rale, for it was the period of religious hostility; but, in the absence of proof that he actually excited them to hostilities, there appear no grounds for the imputations cast upon him. After his death, many of the tribe joined the other villages in Maine or Canada; and in a few years Norridgewock was completely deserted. The Penobscots and Passammaquoddies, however, remained in their old seats, attended by missionaries, down to the fall of Canada; and, when our Revolution broke out, they joined the colonies, asking for French priests.

These, and the St. Francis Indians in Canada, now comprise the Abnaki nation, which, though recognized as subject to New England as late as 1651, and from 1713 to the present time, still bears deeply imprinted the religion and manners imparted by the French during the half century of their influence.

The journal, which portrays a Jesuit, following up Winthrop's advance, and urging New England to throw her protecting ægis over the Abnakis against the Iroquois, shows how easily the Puritans might have avoided their fiercest border war.

High as were the hopes of Father Druilletes of the success of his embassy, it ultimately failed; the Abnakis became the enemies, the Iroquois the friends of the English; yet in the end the former sided with the Colonists, the latter against them; and the Catholic Orono fought under the fir tree banner of the revolted colonies, while the Mohawk Brant ravaged our frontier towns.

NEGOTIATIONS

BETWEEN

NEW ENGLAND AND CANADA,

1648-5 1.

I.

NARRATIVE OF A VOYAGE, MADE FOR THE ABNAQUIOIS MISSION, AND INFORMATION ACQUIRED OF NEW ENGLAND AND THE DISPOSITIONS OF THE MAGISTRATES OF THAT REPUBLIC, FOR ASSISTANCE AGAINST THE IROQUOIS. THE WHOLE BY ME, GABRIEL DRUILLETES, OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS.*

I left Quebec for that mission, the first of September, by order of my Superior, and with a passport. and permit of Monsieur d'Ailleboust, Lieutenant-General for the King and Governor in the whole River St. Lawrence, accompanied by

*Gabriel Druilletes was born in France in the year 1593. Having entered the Society of Jesus, he solicited a Foreign Mission, and was, after many years, sent in 1643 to Canada. He embarked at Rochelle, on the 8th of May, with Garreau and Chabanel, both of whom lost their lives amid their Apostolic labors. Druilletes was immediately destined to the Algonquins, and applied to the study of that wide-spread language. His labors began as soon as he was able to make himself understood, and in 1644 he wintered with a party of wandering Indians.

The torment caused by the smoke of an Indian Cabin, was such as to surpass endurance, and the vivid description of Father Lejeune in the Relation of 1634, shows how much the heroic Missionaries suffered to win their neophytes to Christ. Father Druilletes was more severely tried than any of his predecessors; his eyesight gradually failed, and he became at last entirely blind. Hundreds of leagues of snow and ice, of mountain and forest, cut him off from the French posts, and the well-meant but clumsy attempts of the Indians to restore his sight, made his blindness incurable. He was now led about by a child, and they even proposed tying him on a sledge and dragging him to Quebec. He laughed at this, and advised a recourse to God by prayer. All in the vicinity were invited to assemble for the purpose; by their help he arranged his chapel furniture, and began a votive Mass in honor of the Blessed Virgin, which frequent repetition had so indelibly imprinted on his mind, that he needed no missal. As he proceeded with the Holy Sacrifice, his neophytes prayed with fervor, and when after the Consecration he elevated the Sacred Host, his eyes were opened and he saw what he had adored in darkness. From that moment his eyesight never dimmed amid the smoke of the lodges, where he passed many a dreary winter.

Noel Negabamat, Chief of Sillery, bearing moreover a letter of credit to speak on behalf of said Sieur d'Ailleboust to the Governors and Magistrates of said Country.

I arrived at Narantsouat (Norridgewock), which is the highest town of the Abnaquiois Indians, on the River Kenebec, fifteen or sixteen leagues from the highest English settlement on that river, which is sixteen leagues from the mouth.

I arrived on St. Michael's eve, at this highest English

This wonderful cure, which he ascribed to the faith of his neophytes, filled him with new courage and confidence in the protection of the Almighty.

After spending the next year at Sillery, he was, as we have seen, sent to winter with the Abnakis. He set out on the 29th of August, 1616, and after suffering much privation and hardship, recompensed by an abundant spiritual harvest, returned on the 16th of June, 1647, and a few days after, a stranger to repose, set out as chaplain to a party marching against the Iroquois. Indeed, till his return to the Abnakis in 1650, as given in the present journal, we find him constantly engaged in his laborious duties at Sillery, with wandering parties on the upper St. Lawrence, or around Tadoussac, in almost daily peril of death by starvation. At the latter place, he, in 1650, first preached to the Oumamioukis, or people of Anticosti, and then proceeded to the country of the Oupapinachiouk, who now, for the first time invited the Missionary to their villages. From September, 1650, to March, 1657, he was constantly with the Abnakis, except for a few days spent at Three Rivers, in June, 1651, and the time of his embassies in New England; for he was on two occasions sent as ambassador of the French, first alone in 1650, and the second time with the Sieur Godefroy, in 1651.

He was Superior at Three Rivers in 1655, but chosen the next year to found the Ottawa Mission on Lake Superior, he set out with his old fellow voyager, Garreau; when that Missionary was killed at Montreal, Druilletes was left behind by the Ottawas, and returned for the last time to his beloved Abnakis, who had adopted him as a Chief.

In 1661, he set out with Father Dablon for the Kristineaux Mission, and leaving Tadoussac in June, ascended the Saguenay to the River Nekouba and Lake St. John. The approach of the Mohawks prevented his further progress, and after renewing the faith of his scattered flock, he returned to Tadoussac, where we find him sent again, year after year, carrying the Cross through all the neighboring country.

In 1666, he was at Three Rivers, instructing the celebrated Marquette in Montagnais, but both were soon to labor ou the Western Lakes.

In 1669, unless the manuscript of Perrot errs, he was at Sault Ste. Marie, on Lake Superior, and the latest relations ten years later, speak of him as still laboring there, though broken with age and toil. He was, however, near the close of his long and useful career. Returning to Quebec, he died there on the 8th of April, 1681, universally regretted and revered as a Saint. Few, indeed, of the Apostles of Canada, were more frequently invoked. "The fact is," says Charlevoix, “no Missionary then labored with more fruit in Canada, because Heaven had made him powerful alike in work and word," and he, like many others, relates wonderful interpositions of Divine Power, ascribed to the interest of Druilletes' prayers.

The sources for his life are the Relations, printed and manuscript, the Journal of the Superior, which fixes the year of this Journal and many important dates, the present narrative, and for his death, a letter in the collection of Paris Documents at Boston and Charlevoix.