William S. Gilbert - "Fifty Bab Ballads"

Various - "Up To Date Business"

Various - "R. Caldecott's First Collection of Pictures and Songs"

Ferdinand Raimund - "Der Diamant des Geisterkoenigs"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Canada: the Empire of the North

A >> Agnes C. Laut >> Canada: the Empire of the North




Maisonneuve was warned there would be no earthly reward--no pay--for
his arduous task; but he answered, "I devote my life and future; and I
expect no recompense."

Mademoiselle Jeanne Mance, thirty-four years old, who had given herself
to good works from childhood, though she had not yet joined the
cloister, now felt the call to labor in the wilderness. Later, in
1653, came Marguerite Bourgeoys to the little colony beneath the
mountain. She too, like Jeanne Mance, distrusted dreams and visions
and mystic communings, cherishing a religion of good works rather than
introspection of the soul. Dauversiere and Olier remained in France.
Fortunately for Montreal, practical Christians, fighting soldiers of
the cross, carried the heavenly standard to the wilderness.

It was too late to ascend the St. Lawrence when the ship brought the
crusaders to Quebec in August, 1641; and difficulties harried them from
the outset. Was Montmagny, the Governor, jealous of Maisonneuve; or
did he simply realize the fearful dangers Maisonneuve's people would
run going beyond the protection of Quebec? At all events, he
disapproved this building of a second colony at Montreal, when the
first colony at Quebec could barely gain subsistence. He offered them
the Island of Orleans in exchange for the Island of Montreal, and
warned them of Iroquois raid.

"I have not come to argue," answered Maisonneuve, "but to act. It is
my duty to found a colony at Montreal, and thither I go though every
tree be an Iroquois."

{77} Maisonneuve passed the winter building boats to ascend the St.
Lawrence next spring; and Madame de la Peltrie, having established the
Ursulines at Quebec, now cast in her lot with the Montrealers for two
years.

May 8, 1642, the little flotilla set out from Quebec--a pinnace with
the passengers, a barge with provisions, two long boats propelled by
oars and a sweep. Montmagny and Father Vimont accompanied the
crusaders; and as the boats came within sight of the wooded mountain on
May 17, hymns of praise rose from the pilgrims that must have mingled
strangely on Indian ears with the roar of the angry rapids. One can
easily call up the scene--the mountain, misty with the gathering
shadows of sunset, misty as a veiled bride with the color and bloom of
spring; the boats, moored for the night below St. Helen's Island, where
the sun, blazing behind the half-foliaged trees, paints a path of fire
on the river; the white bark wigwams along shore with the red gleam of
camp fire here and there through the forest; the wilderness world
bathed in a peace as of heaven, as the vesper hymn floats over the
evening air! It is a scene that will never again be enacted in the
history of the world--dreamers dreaming greatly, building a castle of
dreams, a fortress of holiness in the very center of wilderness
barbarity and cruelty unspeakable. The multitudinous voices of traffic
shriek where the crusaders' hymn rose that May night. A great city has
risen on the foundations which these dreamers laid. Let us not scoff
too loudly at their mystic visions and religious rhapsodies! Another
generation may scoff at our too-much-worldliness, with our dreamless
grind and visionless toil and harder creeds that reject everything
which cannot be computed in the terms of traffic's dollar! Well for us
if the fruit of our creeds remain to attest as much worth as the deeds
of these crusaders!


Early next morning the boats pulled in ashore where Cartier had landed
one hundred years before and Champlain had built his factory thirty
years ago. Maisonneuve was first to spring on land. He dropped to his
knees in prayer. The others as {78} they landed did likewise. Their
hymns floated out on the forest. Madame de la Peltrie, Jeanne Mance,
and the servant, Charlotte Barre, quickly decorated a wildwood altar
with evergreens. Then, with Montmagny the Governor, and Maisonneuve
the soldier, standing on either side, Madame de la Peltrie and Jeanne
Mance and Charlotte Barre, bowed in reverence, with soldiers and
sailors standing at rest unhooded, Father Vimont held the first
religious services at Mont Royal. "You are a grain of mustard seed,"
he said, "and you shall grow till your branches overshadow the earth."

Maisonneuve cut the first tree for the fort; and a hundred legends
might be told of the little colony's pioneer trials. Once a flood
threatened the existence of the fort. A cross was erected to stay the
waters and a vow made if Heaven would save the fort a cross should be
carried and placed on the summit of the mountain. The river abated,
and Maisonneuve climbed the steep mountain, staggering under the weight
of an enormous cross, and planted it at the highest point. Here, in
the presence of all, mass was held, and it became a regular pilgrimage
from the fort up the mountain to the cross.

In 1743 came Louis d'Ailleboust and his wife, both zealously bound by
the same vows as devotees, bringing word of more funds for Ville Marie,
as Montreal was called. Montmagny's warning of Iroquois proved all too
true. Within a year, in June, 1743, six workmen were beset in the
fields, only one escaping. Because his mission was to convert the
Indians, Maisonneuve had been ever reluctant to meet the Iroquois in
open war, preferring to retreat within the fort when the dog Pilot and
her litter barked loud warning that Indians were hiding in the woods.
Any one who knows the Indian character will realize how clemency would
be mistaken for cowardice. Even Maisonneuve's soldiers began to doubt
him.

"My lord, my lord," they urged, "are the enemy never to get a sight of
you? Are we never to face the foe?"

Maisonneuve's answer was in March, 1644, when ambushed hostiles were
detected stealing on the fort.

{79} "Follow me," he ordered thirty men, leaving D'Ailleboust in
command of the fort.

Near the place now known as Place d'Armes the little band was greeted
by the eldritch scream of eighty painted Iroquois. Shots fell thick
and fast. The Iroquois dashed to rescue their wounded, and a young
chief, recognizing Maisonneuve as the leader of the white men, made a
rush for the honor of capturing the French commander alive.
Maisonneuve had put himself between his retreating men and the
advancing warriors. Firing, he would retreat a pace, then fire again,
keeping his face to the foe. His men succeeded in rushing up the
hillock, then made for the gates in a wild stampede. Maisonneuve was
backing away, a pistol in each hand. The Iroquois circled from tree to
tree, near and nearer, and like a wildwood creature of prey was
watching his chance to spring, when the Frenchman fired. The pistol
missed. Dodging, the Indian leaped. Maisonneuve discharged the other
pistol. The Iroquois fell dead, and while warriors rescued the body,
Maisonneuve gained the fort gates. This was only one of countless
frays when the dog Pilot with her puppies sounded the alarm of prowlers
in the woods.


What were the letters, what the adventures described by the Jesuits,
that aroused such zeal and inspired such heroism? It would require
many volumes to record the adventures of the Jesuits in Canada, and a
long list to include all their heroes martyred for the faith. Only a
few of the most prominent episodes in the Jesuits' adventures can be
given here.

When Pierre le Jeune reached Quebec after the victory of the Kirke
brothers, he found only the charred remains of a mission on the old
site of Cartier's winter quarters down on the St. Charles. Of houses,
only the gray-stone cottage of Madame Hebert had been left standing.
Here Le Jeune was welcomed and housed till the little mission could be
rebuilt. At first it consisted of only mud-plastered log cabins,
thatch-roofed, divided into four rooms, with garret and cellar. One
room decorated with saints' images and pictures served as chapel;
another, as {80} kitchen; a third, as lodgings; the fourth, as
refectory. In this humble abode six Jesuit priests and two lay
brothers passed the winter after the war. The roof leaked like a
sieve. The snow piled high almost as the top of the door. Le Jeune's
first care was to obtain pupils. These consisted of an Indian boy and
a negro lad left by the English. Meals of porridge given free
attracted more Indian pupils; but Le Jeune's greatest difficulty was to
learn the Indian language. Hearing that a renegade Indian named
Pierre, who had served the French as interpreter, lodged with some
Algonquins camped below Cape Diamond, Le Jeune tramped up the river
bank, along what is now the Lower Road, where he found the Indians
wigwamming, and by the bribe of free food obtained Pierre. Pierre was
at best a tricky scoundrel, who considered it a joke to give Le Jeune
the wrong word for some religious precept, gorged himself on the
missionaries' food, stole their communion wine, and ran off at Lent to
escape fasting.

[Illustration: PIERRE LE JEUNE]

When Champlain returned to receive Quebec back from the English, more
priests joined the Jesuits' mission. Among them was the lion-hearted
giant, Brebeuf.

If Champlain's bush lopers could join bands of wandering Indians for
the extension of French dominion, surely the Jesuits could dare as
perilous a life "for the greater glory of God,"--as their vows declared.

{81} Le Jeune joined a band of wandering Montaignais, Pierre, the
rascal, tapping the keg of sacramental wine the first night out, and
turning the whole camp into a drunken bedlam, till his own brother
sobered him with a kettle of hot water flung full in the face. That
night the priest slept apart from the camp in the woods. By the time
the hunters reached the forest borderland between Quebec and New
Brunswick, their number had increased to forty-five. By Christmas time
game is usually dormant, still living on the stores of the fall and not
yet driven afield by spring hunger. In camp was no food. The hunters
halted the march, and came in Christmas Eve of 1633 with not so much as
a pound of flesh for nearly fifty people. From the first the Indian
medicine man had heaped ridicule on the white priest, and Pierre had
refused to interpret as much as a single prayer; but now the whole camp
was starving. Pierre happened to tell the other Indians that Christmas
was the day on which the white man's God had come to earth. In vain
the medicine man had pounded his tom-tom and shouted at the Indian gods
from the top of the wigwams and offered sacrifice of animals to be
slain. No game had come as the result of the medicine man's invocation.

Le Jeune gathered the people about him and through Pierre, the
interpreter, bade them try the white man's God. In the largest of the
wigwams a little altar was fitted up. Then the Indians repeated this
prayer after Le Jeune:

Jesus, Son of the Almighty . . . who died for us . . . who promised
that if we ask anything in Thy name, Thou wilt do it--I pray Thee with
all my heart, give food to these people . . . this people promises Thee
faithfully they will trust Thee entirely and obey Thee with all their
heart! My Lord, hear my prayer! I present Thee my life for this
people, most willing to die that they may live and know Thee.


"Take that back," grunted the chief. "We love you! We don't want you
to die."

"I only want to show that I am your friend," answered the priest.

Le Jeune then commanded them to go forth to the hunt, full of faith
that God would give them food.

{82} But alas for the poor father's hopes and the childlike Indian vow!
True, they found abundance of food,--a beaver dam full of beaver, a
moose, a porcupine taken by the Indian medicine man. Father Le Jeune,
with radiant face, met the hunters returning laden with game.

"We must thank your God for this," said the Indian chief, throwing down
his load.

"Bah," says Pierre, "you 'd have found it anyway."

"This is not the time to talk," sneered the medicine man. "Let the
hungry people eat."

And by the time the Indians had gorged themselves with ample measure
for their long fast, they were torpid with sleep. The sad priest was
fain to wander out under the stars. There, in the snow-padded silences
of the white-limned forest, far from the joyous peal of Christmas
bells, he knelt alone and worshiped God.

For five months he wandered with the Montaignais, and now in April the
hunters turned toward Quebec with their furs. At three in the morning
Le Jeune knocked on the door of the mission house at Quebec, and was
welcomed home by the priests. The pilgrimage had taught him what the
Jesuits have always held--the way to power with a people is through the
education of the children. "Give me a child for the first seven years
of its life," said a famous educator, "and I care not what you do with
him the rest of his years." Missions and schools must be established
among the tribes of Hurons and Iroquois.


Consequently, when Champlain sent his soldiers in 1634 to build a fort
at Three Rivers, they were accompanied by three Jesuits, chief of whom
was Jean de Brebeuf, lion-hearted, bound for the land of the Hurons.
The chapel bells of Quebec rang and rang again in honor of the new
Jesuit mission--morning, noon, and night they chimed in airy music,
calling men's thoughts to God, just as you may hear the chimes to-day;
and the ramparts below Quebec thundered and reechoed with salvos of
cannon when the missionaries set out for Three Rivers.

{83} At Three Rivers waited the Indians of the Up-Country. The Jesuits
embarked with them for the land of the Hurons. The priests traveled
barefoot to avoid injuring the frail bark of the canoes. Barely had
farewell cheers faded on the river, when the canoes spread apart. With
pieces of buckskin hoisted on fishing rods for sail, and a flipping of
paddles as naked, bronzed arms set the pace, the voyage had begun.
Heroism is easy with chapel bells ringing; it is another matter,
barefoot and with sleeves rolled up.

It was the same trail that Champlain had followed up the Ottawa. Only
Champlain was assured of good treatment, for he had promised to fight
in the Indian wars; but the Jesuits were dependent on the caprice of
their conductors. Any one, who, from experience in the wilds, has
learned how the term "tenderfoot" came to be applied, will realize the
hardships endured--and endured without self-pity--by these scholarly
men of immured life. The rocks of the portage cut their naked feet.
The Indians refused to carry their packs overland and flung bundles of
clothing and food into the water. In fair weather the voyageurs slept
on the sand under the overturned canoes; in rain a wigwam was raised,
and into the close confines of this tent crowded men, women, and
children, for the most part naked, and with less idea of decency than a
domestic dog. Each night, as the boats were beached, the priests
wandered off into the woods to hold their prayers in privacy. Soon the
canoes were so far apart the different boats did not camp together, and
the white men were scattered alone among the savages. Robberies
increased till, when Brebeuf reached Georgian Bay, thirty days from
leaving Three Rivers, he had little left but the bundles he had carried
for himself.

Brebeuf had been to the Huron country before with Etienne Brule,
Champlain's pathfinder; but of the first mission no record exists.
Brebeuf found that Brule had been murdered near the modern Penetang;
and the Indians had scarcely brought the priest's canoe ashore, when
they bolted through the woods, leaving him to follow as best he could.

{84} Take a map of modern Ontario. Draw a circle round Georgian Bay,
running from Muskoka through Lake Simcoe and up into Manitoulin Island.
Here, on the very stamping ground of the summer tourist, was the scene
of the Jesuits' Huron mission.

[Illustration: GEORGIAN BAY]

When Brebeuf's tall frame emerged from the woods, the whole village of
Ihonateria dashed out to welcome him, shouting, "He has come! He has
come again! Behold, the Black Robe has come again!" Young braves
willingly ran back through the forest for the baggage, which the
voyageurs had thrown aside; and at one o'clock in the morning, as the
messengers came through the moonlit forest, Brebeuf took up his abode
in the house of the leading chief. Later came Fathers Davost and
Daniel. By October the Indians had built the missionaries their
wigwam, a bark-covered house of logs, thirty-six feet long, divided
into three rooms, reception room, living quarters, church. In the
entrance hall assembled the Indians, squatting on the floor, gazing in
astonishment at the religious pictures on the wall, and, above all, at
the clock.

{85} "What does he say?" they would ask, listening solemnly to the
ticking.

"He says 'Hang on the kettle,'" Brebeuf would answer as the clock
struck twelve, and the whole conclave would be given a simple meal of
corn porridge; but at four the clock sang a different song.

"It says 'Get up and go home,'" Brebeuf would explain, and the Indians
would file out, knowing well that the Black Robes were to engage in
prayer.

No holiday in the wildwoods was the Jesuit mission. Chapel bell called
to service at four in the morning. Eight was the breakfast hour. The
morning was passed teaching, preaching, visiting. At two o'clock was
dinner, when a chapter of the Bible was read. After four the Indians
were dismissed, and the missionaries met to compare notes and plan the
next day's campaign.

By 1645, five mission houses had been established, with Ste. Marie on
the Wye, east of Midland, as the central house. Near Lake Simcoe were
two missions,--St. Jean Ba'tiste and St. Joseph; near Penetang, St.
Louis, and St. Ignace. Westward of Ste. Marie on the Wye were half a
dozen irregular missions among the Tobacco Indians. Each of the five
regular missions boasted palisaded inclosures, a chapel of log slabs
with bell and spire, though the latter might be only a high wooden
cross. At Ste. Marie, the central station, were lodgings for sixty
people, a hospital, kitchen garden, with cattle, pigs, and poultry. At
various times soldiers had been sent up by the Quebec governors, till
some thirty or forty were housed at Ste. Marie. In all were eighteen
priests, four lay brothers, seven white servants, and twenty-three
volunteers, unpaid helpers--donnes, they were called, young men
ardently religious, learning woodlore and the Indian language among the
Jesuits, as well as exploring whenever it was possible for them to
accompany the Indians. Among the volunteers was one Chouart
Groseillers, who, if he did not accompany Father Jogues on a preaching
tour to the tribes of Lake Superior, had at least gone as far as the
Sault and learned of the vast unexplored world beyond Lake Superior.
{86} Food, as always, played a large part in winning the soul of the
redskin. On church fete days as many as three thousand people were fed
and lodged at Ste. Marie. That the priests suffered many trials among
the unreasonable savages need not be told. When it rained too heavily
they were accused of ruining the crops by praying for too much rain;
when there was drouth they were blamed for not arranging this matter
with their God; and when the scourge of smallpox raged through the
Huron villages, devastating the wigwams so that the timber wolves
wandered unmolested among the dead, it was easy for the humpback
sorcerer to ascribe the pestilence also to the influence of the Black
Robes. Once their houses were set on fire. Again and again their
lives were threatened. Often after tramping twenty miles through the
sleet-soaked, snow-drifted spring forests, arriving at an Indian
village foredone and exhausted, the Jesuit was met with no better
welcome than a wigwam flap closed against his entrance, or a rabble of
impish children hooting and jeering him as he sought shelter from house
to house.

But an influence was at work on the borders of the St. Lawrence that
yearly rendered the Hurons more tractable. From raiding the
settlements of the St. Lawrence, the Iroquois were sweeping in a
scourge more deadly than smallpox up the Ottawa to the very forests of
Georgian Bay. The Hurons no longer dared to go down to Quebec in
swarming canoes. Only a few picked warriors--perhaps two hundred and
fifty--would venture so near the Iroquois fighting ground.

One winter night, as the priests sat round their hearth fire watching
the mournful shadows cast by the blazing logs on the rude walls,
Brebeuf, the soldier, lion-hearted, the fearless, told in a low, dreamy
voice of a vision that had come,--the vision of a huge fiery cross
rising slowly out of the forest and moving across the face of the sky
towards the Huron country. It seemed to come from the land of the
Iroquois. Was the priest's vision a dream, or his own intuition deeper
than reason, assuming dire form, portending a universal fear? Who can
tell? I can but repeat the story as it is told in their annals.

{87} "How large was the cross?" asked the other priests. Brebeuf gazes
long in the fire.

"Large enough to crucify us all," he answers.


And, as he had dreamed, fell the blow.

St. Joseph, of the Lake Simcoe region, was situated a day's travel from
the main fortified mission of Ste. Marie. Round it were some two
thousand Hurons to whom Father Daniel ministered. Father Daniel was
just closing the morning services on July the 4th, 1648. His tawny
people were on their knees repeating the responses of the service, when
from the forest, humming with insect and bird life, arose a sound that
was neither wind nor running water--confused, increasing, nearing!
Then a shriek broke within the fort palisades,--"The enemy! the
Iroquois!" and the courtyard was in an uproar indescribable. Painted
redskins, naked but for the breech clout, were dashing across the
cornfields to scale the palisades or force the hastily slammed gates.
Father Daniel rushed from church to wigwams rallying the Huron
warriors, while the women and children, the aged and the feeble, ran a
terrified rabble to the shelter of the chapel. Before the Hurons could
man the walls, Iroquois hatchets had hacked holes of entrance in the
palisades. The fort was rushed by a bloodthirsty horde making the air
hideous with fiendish screams.

"Fly! Save yourselves!" shouted the priest. "I stay here! We shall
this day meet in Heaven!"

In the volley and counter volley of ball and arrow, Father Daniel
reeled on his face, shot in the heart. In a trice his body was cut to
pieces, and the Iroquois were bathing their hands in his warm
lifeblood. A moment later the village was in roaring flames, and on
the burning pile were flung the fragments of the priest's body. The
victors set out on the homeward tramp with a line of more than six
hundred prisoners, the majority, women and children, to be brained if
their strength failed on the march, to be tortured in the Iroquois
towns if they survived the abuse on the way.

{88} Next westward from the Lake Simcoe missions were St. Ignace with
four hundred people and St. Louis with seven hundred, near the modern
Penetang and within short distance of the Jesuits' strong headquarters
on the River Wye. At these two missions labored Brebeuf, the giant,
and a fragile priest named Lalemant.

Encouraged by the total destruction of St. Joseph, the Iroquois that
very fall took the warpath with more than one thousand braves.
Ascending the Ottawa leisurely, they had passed the winter hunting and
cutting off any stray wanderers found in the forest.

The Hurons knew the doom that was slowly approaching. Yet they
remained passive, stunned, terrified by the blow at St. Joseph. It was
spring of 1649 before the warriors reached Georgian Bay. March winds
had cleared the trail of snowdrifts, but the forests were still
leafless. St. Ignace mission lay between Lake Simcoe and St. Louis.
Approaching it one windy March night, the Iroquois had cut holes
through the palisades before dawn and burst inside the walls with the
yells and gyrations of some hideous hell dance. Here a warrior
simulated the howl of the wolf. There another approached in the
crouching leaps of a panther, all the while uttering the yelps and
screams of a beast of prey lashed to fury. The poor Hurons were easy
victims. Nearly all their braves happened to be absent hunting, and
the four hundred women and children, rushing from the long houses half
dazed with sleep, fell without realizing their fate, or found
themselves herded in the chapel like cattle at the shambles, Iroquois
guards at every window and door.

Luckily three Hurons escaped over the palisades and rushed breathless
through the forest to forewarn Brebeuf and Lalemant cooped up in St.
Louis. The Iroquois came on behind like a wolf pack.

"Escape! Escape! Run to the woods, Black Robes! There is yet time,"
the Indian converts urged Brebeuf; but the lion-hearted stood
steadfast, though Lalemant, new to scenes of carnage, turned white and
trembled in spite of his resolution.

{89} "Who would protect the women if the men fled like deer to the
woods?" demanded Brebeuf, and the tigerish yells of the on-rushing
horde answered the question.

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