Isaac Jogues Memorial in Lake George |
Isaac Jogues
French Missionary to the Mohawk
By James P. Millard
In
August 1642, a French Missionary by the name of Isaac Jogues, was captured
on the St. Lawrence by an Iroquois war party. En route to the native
village, the natives and their captives stopped first at
Isle la Motte,
and then at a small island near present day Westport, NY.
Here,
the prisoners were forced to submit to the Iroquois sport know as
"running the gantlet." This brutal event consisted of having
the captives run between two rows of Indians, each beating them furiously
with sticks as they passed. Upon reaching their villages on the Mohawk
River, the natives again subjected their "guests" to every
manner of torture. The hapless clergyman ended up with fingers knarled and
useless.
After
some fourteen months in captivity, Jogues was ransomed back to Quebec,
where shortly afterward he sailed to Europe to petition the Pope to allow
him to celebrate Mass with his deformed hands.
Having received this special dispensation from Rome, Jogues then set out
back into the land of his abusers on a special "peace mission"
to the Mohawk.
On his way south to the
Mohawk villages, he again stopped at Isle la Motte, no doubt at the site
of the old French settlement,
Fort Ste. Anne, then detoured to a settlement on
Otter Creek. Upon reaching the lake known to the natives as Andiatrocte
[present-day
Lake George] in
1646, he christened it Lac du Sainte-Sacrement. Incredibly, Jogues was
received hospitably by the Mohawk, with whom he left gifts of religious
articles. He returned to Canada with the good news that he had been favorably
received. Upon receiving permission to establish a mission among the
Mohawk nation, he once again set out on the arduous journey south.
In the meantime, a plague of caterpillars had
devastated the Mohawk grain harvest. The missionary was charged with
bringing "bad spirits" among the Indians and he and his
colleagues were murdered. As a warning to future missionary visitors,
their decapitated heads were mounted on posts facing north
 to Canada.
Reverend Jogues was canonized a saint in
1930. His peaceful countenance
looks out to this day over the beautiful site of Battlefield Park in Lake
George.
Jogues Island,
Lake Champlain |
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