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II
Coureurs des Bois
1638
The French had, since the year 1524, often visited the coast of AmericaâŚ. Finally, at the beginning of the last century [the 17th], Samuel Champlain ⌠entered the region of the interior. Already was the undertaking progressing very favorably, when Henry IV, more solicitous for religion than for commerce, resolved, in the year 1608, to introduce Christian rites into this part of the New World, and asked the members of the Society to undertake this Apostolic enterprise.
âFr. Joseph Jouvency, Jesuit Relations
The land which we have gone round is very good. If the Lord be favorable, he will bring us into itâŚ. Fear ye not the people of this land ⌠the Lord is with us.
âNumbers 14:7
Noel Chabanel
Dieppe, 1638
I.
I saw her first
at sixteen dipping
long black braids
in the horsesâ tank,
the other girls skipping
around her in a dance.
I kissed her later, and
she kissed me. When she
was seventeen, we married.
At nineteen, she
coughed up little spots
of blood, then torrents.
Fevers and night sweats
began, and a strange
flushing of her cheeks.
At twenty she was gone,
slipping through my hands
and out of nature.
In my griefâs rage
I rushed into
the hogsâ closed pen
with a sharpened sickle,
hacking furiously at
dumb huddled animals
who had no part
in my grief until
I finally slipped
in the bloody gore while
the hogs knocked against
the rails with an awful squealing.
II.
Louys put his
big butcherâs hands
hard upon me,
and I lay subdued
on the barnâs dirt floor
for a day or more,
bound against my
madness and for my
neighborsâ fear and anger.
Father Jerome came
and spoke quietly, then
slowly untied me.
He gave me wine and
bread and watched me
eat and drink. He
saw my torn clothes,
my bruised and beaten body
where Louys restrained me,
saw my slowly fading
frenzy. He watched for
a long while, then said,
Noel, come with me
to help as I rescue
souls in the Huron Missions.
I looked around and
everywhere I saw
the awful shape of her
absence in the gloomy
air and printed on my
eyes. I saw too the
dark patina of sorrow
that would be a lasting
mark of my madness.
So, I went with him
and sailed from Honfleur
across a wide and empty sea.
Father Jerome Clermont
1638
Though we sailed in May,
it was winter on the northern sea,
and our cabin so low we could not
sit or stand. Rain seeped
through and wet my frozen feet.
We ate salt food and suffered
terrible thirst. Always
our ship was tossed in a
gray and angry sea. I
remembered the luxury of
thinking of death in my cell
at Dieppe, the crucifix before me
on my wall, the sea roaring
safely outside, but on the boat
we floated in a presence
that seemed the absence of God.
One morning the ocean calmed
and we passed two ice islands
larger than our ship, shining
in the sun like crystal cathedrals.
The weather softened and we sailed
into the great St. Lawrence, wider than a sea,
and entere...
