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The tragedy of Huronia is one of those isolated episodes of history which historians have shown a disposition to neglect. Its rapidity of enactment, religious background and remote setting from the main stream of events combined to obscure its bearing upon the trend of colonial development in North America. My interest in Huronia was aroused, more years back than I care to remember, when a master dragged my unwilling feet to his room, and placing a finger upon a map of Ontario, Canada, said: “There is where the destiny of the continent was decided. Once and for all it was determined that the New World would not follow the pattern of European nationalism but would develop into two great Anglo-Saxon nations, the United States of America and the Dominion of Canada.”

The point which he indicated was the site of Fort Ste. Marie I, near Midland, one-time administrative centre of the Jesuit Mission to the Hurons and today chiefly identified with the martyrdom of those courageous missionaries Jean de Brébeuf, Antoine Daniel, Gabriel Lalemant, Charles Garnier and Noël Chabanel, who with Isaac Jogues. Lay Brother René Goupil, both identified with the Huron Mission, and Layman John de la Lande, martyred in the Iroquois country, near Auriesville, N.Y., provide the Roman Catholic Church in the United States and Canada with the only canonizations in the Calendar of Saints.

That the source material for the decline and fall of Huronia is largely confined to the Jesuit Relations has been responsible to a degree for considering the Huronian episode in the light of a Church incident rather than in its true phase as a great historical experiment which, if successful, might have changed the entire course of history. In brief, it was a dream of a vast Indian empire in the heart of a savage continent. It was conceived by Samuel de Champlain, founder and a governor of New France, when the existence of the struggling French colony was threatened by Iroquois aggression. He foresaw that a strong French protectorate in the Huron country, 700 miles inland from Quebec, would be an effective brake to the ambitions of the Five Nations Confederacy and, at the same time, afford the benefits of civilization to the Hurons. To this end he invoked the aid of the Society of Jesus and its members responded, to their greater glory.

Their tenure of Huronia was a comparatively short one but the mission activities which they initiated were historic in character. They created the first experimental farm in agricultural records, established the initial social service effort, instructing the natives in the fundamentals of moral conduct, sanitation and political science. They developed a form of State medicine and education. It is also possible to discern the germ of the military protectorate, which subsequently was to become an established fact of empire expansion. The astute Iroquois foresaw the peril of a militarized Huronia and they exerted their united strength to destroy its menace.

The conquest of Huronia provided many interesting sidelights. The civilized man was permitted, possibly to his misfortune, to witness one of those hitherto unrecorded clashes between two strong races, barely advanced beyond the first stages of social thought and having only a rudimentary development in which tattoo and totem played a predominant part. That the entire Huron race virtually ceased to exist at the close of the contest makes the episode unique in that all phases were chronicled by competent observers.

I have selected the closing years of this struggle as the background for my romance; for here is to be found all the ferocity and instability of the primitive man. It was the latter basic defect which ruined the Hurons. But for this they might have snatched victory from disaster. In my reconstruction of the period I am not insensible to certain anomalies and even what the competent historian might term major defects. I am well aware that the term Huronia has only been coined for a few years, that Nottawasaga Bay was not so named until the Iroquois over-ran the Tobacco Nation, and that Hodenosaunee is the true Iroquois name for their nation, the Hurons using the unpronounceable word Hotinnonchiendi. There is also the famous letter written by Father Jean de Brébeuf: it was inscribed by him, in 1636, at the Huron village of Ihonatiria, when he was the first Superior of the Mission, and not a dozen years later, as I indicate in my romance.

I have taken many liberties, such as some of those recounted; but in my reconstruction of the period I have attempted to preserve the spirit that was of old Huronia. I realize that my characterization of those courageous black-robed missionaries is not as Francis Parkman would have them depicted, and I believe that my interpretation is the more correct. They were men of high culture who came to a savage world in a noble cause and with no hope of earthly reward. That the unbridled ferocity and misunderstanding which everywhere met them should turn their thoughts to compensatory channels was natural. Hence their tragic world of the present and their spiritual world of the future drew close together in Huronia, and in a normal way which in no wise merited the strictures that Parkman saw fit to indulge his pen.

In this foreword, I would be remiss did I not express my appreciation of the great assistance given me by Rev. Ronald MacKinnon, S.J., Rector, St. Stanislas Novitiate, and Rev. John Penfold, S.J., Historian, Province of Upper Canada, for so kindly reading and checking the manuscript; to Rev. T. J. Lally, S.J., Director, the Martyrs’ Shrine, for his unfailing interest and suggestion. I must here acknowledge my indebtedness to the late Rev. Arthur Edward Jones, S.J., one-time Archivist, St. Mary’s College, Montreal, from whose work, Ouendake Ehen (Huronia That Was), I have drawn heavily, as I did from the work of the late Rev. Julien Paquin, S.J., The Tragedy of Old Huronia. Indebtedness must also be acknowledged to the Jesuit Relations and to Parkman’s The Jesuits in North America from which certain material has been taken.

The Martyrs’ Shrine has fallen heir to the spiritual heritage of Fort Ste. Marie. After a lapse of almost three centuries the Order returned to the land sanctified by the martyrs’ blood and deeds. In the intervening decades other hands had written new pages of history. White settlers moved into Huronia. Farms were hewed out of the forests, villages and towns were built. The railways came and a line was constructed within a few yards of the ruins of old Fort Ste. Marie. Huronia, in turn, passed through the progressive phases of a great Indian empire, a wilderness solitude, a pioneer settlement, and, lastly, that of a tourist centre, as a part of the Georgian Bay District, whose lakes and 30,000 islands, where the ancient Hurons once sought refuge from the victorious Iroquois, now make the country a noted Canadian summer resort.

In 1926, the Order acquired by purchase from the Canadian National Railways much of the farmlands of the old fort, including the “Lookout” height of land, from which the Jesuit fathers once kept watch and ward over Huronia; and the Church of the Martyrs’ Shrine now stands as a living memorial to their courage and sacrifice. It is to be regretted from a national standpoint that the ruins of the old fort were not owned by the Canadian National System and so were not included in the parcel of 300 acres acquired for the Martyrs’ Shrine.

A generation ago the walls and bastions of Fort Ste. Marie stood four feet above the ground. An era of industrial development opened and a road to parallel the railway line was contemplated. This involved the construction of a bridge over the Wye River and contractors ruthlessly destroyed the ruins to erect two massive stone piers. A whilom pastor of the Jesuit parish of Waubaushene saw this work of desecration under way and exclaimed, “This bridge never will be used!”

His words were prophetic. The projected road was abandoned in its entirety. What were once the walls and bastions of Fort Ste. Marie now stand in inglorious uselessness—a monument to man’s materialistic vandalism.

Something intangible, something that is not of this world, lingers as a fragrant memory of the past in the ruins of Fort Ste. Marie. It gives expression to that spirit which animated all pioneers and gave them their wide vision and will to achieve. This vision and will to achieve is as important in our national life today as it was in the past. Here is where Fort Ste. Marie is timeless in its importance as a great national memorial. To reconstruct it would be comparatively inexpensive and it would give to the Dominion a priceless, historic monument. The Martyrs’ Shrine, which sprung from its foundations, could be made custodian of the fort for the people, and no national memorial would receive a more devoted attention.

In the meantime, the spirit that was of Fort Ste. Marie lives on.

Franklin Davey McDowell.