The Jesuits, 1534-1921

The expatriation of the Jesuits and other religious from Portugal which was decreed by the Republican government, on October 10, 1910, six days after the bombardment of the royal palace and the flight of King Manuel, is typical of the manner in which such demonstrations are made in Europe. We have an account of it from the Father provincial Cabral which we quote in part.

"After the press had been working up the populace for three years to the proper state of mind by stories of subterranean arsenals in the Jesuit colleges; the boundless wealth of the Fathers; their affiliated secret organizations; their political plots, etc., the colleges of Campolide and San Fiel were invaded. The occupants were driven out and led between lines of soldiers through a howling mob to the common jail. Those who had fled before the arrival of the soldiers were pursued across the fields with rifles, and when caught were insulted, beaten and spat upon, and led like the others to prison. They had to eat out of the dishes with their hands, and at night sentinels stood over them with loaded rifles and warned the victims that if they got up they would be shot. Abandoned women were sent in among them, but those poor creatures soon withdrew. The prisoners were then transferred to Caixas where they slept on the floor. Twenty-three were confined in a space that could scarcely accommodate three. They were kept there for four days, and were not allowed to leave the room for any reason whatever, and were told that they would be kept in that condition until they began to rot, and that then some of their rich friends would buy them off. They were photographed, subjected to anthropometric examinations, and their finger prints taken, etc. They were then expelled from the country and forbidden ever to return. They had only the clothes on their backs, and had no money except what was given them by some friends; their colleges with their splendid museums and libraries were confiscated, and in this condition they set out, old and young, the sick and the strong, to ask shelter from their brethren in other lands. It was almost a return to the days of Pombal."

In Germany the Kulturkampf began in 1870, and in 1872 a decree was signed by the Kaiser, on June 14, 1872, expelling all members of the Society, and with them the Redemptorists, Lazarists, Fathers of the Holy Ghost, and the Society of the Sacred Heart. Some of the Jesuits went to Holland; others to England and America. Contrary to expectations, this act of tyranny did not harm the German province, for, whereas it then numbered only 775, it now (1920) has 1210 on its roll, of whom 664 are priests.

France had its horror in 1871, when on May 24 and 26, Fathers Olivaint, Ducoudray, Caubert, Clerc and de Bengy were shot to death by the Communists, who were then in possession of Paris. It was not, however, a rising against the Jesuits. There were fifty-seven victims in all: priests, religious and seculars, were immolated. At their head, was the venerable Archbishop of Paris, Mgr. Darboy. Again, on March 29, 1880, a decree issued by Jules Ferry brought about a new dispersion and the substitution of staffs of non-religious teachers in the Jesuit colleges. The law was not enforced, however, and little by little the Fathers returned to their posts. Then followed the law of Waldeck-Rousseau in 1901 against unauthorized congregations, which closed all their houses, for these religious declined to apply for authorization which they knew would be refused, or if not, would be used to oppress them. The communities were, therefore, scattered in various houses of Europe. The last blow was the summons sent to all parts of the world for every Frenchman not exempt from military service to take part in the great World War, as chaplains, hospital aids or common soldiers.

The simultaneity as well as the similarity in the methods of executing these multiplied expulsions show clearly enough that they were not accidental but part of a universal war against the Church. Thus, at the other ends of the earth, similar outrages were being committed. When, for instance, the Conservatives fell from power in Colombia, South America, in 1850, the Jesuits were expelled. They went from there to Ecuador and Guayaquil, but were left unmolested only for a year. In 1861 they were re-admitted, and soon had fifty mission stations and had succeeded in converting 10,000 natives to the faith. But Garcia Moreno who had invited them was assassinated, and forthwith they were expelled. A second time they were recalled, but remained only from 1883 to 1894, and from there they returned to Colombia where they are at present. In Argentina, whither they were summoned in 1836, their houses were closed in 1841. They entered Paraguay in 1848, where the old Society had achieved such triumphs, but were allowed to remain there only three years. They asked the Chilian government to let them evangelize the fierce Araucanian savages, but this was refused. At the death of the dictator Rosas in 1873, they again went to Argentina and have not since been disturbed. They have had the same good fortune in Chile.

A different condition of things, however, obtained in Brazil. In the very year that Rosas died in Argentina, 1873, the Jesuit College of Olinda in Brazil was looted and the Fathers expelled. The reason was not that the Jesuits were objectionable but that the bishop had suspended a young ecclesiastic who was a Freemason. The College of Pernambuco was wrecked by a mob, and one of the priests was dangerously wounded. Worse treatment was meted out to them when the Emperor, Don Pedro, was deposed in 1889. Since then, however, there has been comparatively no trouble.

Of course, when the Piedmontese broke down the Porta Pia the Jesuits had to leave Rome, where until then they had been undisturbed. The novitiate of S. Andrea was the first to be seized; then St. Eusebio, the house of the third probation, and after that, St. Vitalis, the Gesù, and finally the Roman College. The occupants had three months to vacate the premises. The other religious orders whose general or procurator resided at Rome could retain one house for the transaction of business but that indulgence was not granted to the Jesuits. Their General was not to remain, and hence Father Peter Beckx, though then seventy-eight years old, had to depart with his brethren for Fiesole, where he was received in the family of the Counts of Ricasole on November 9, 1873. From that place he governed the Society until the year 1884, when he was succeeded by Father Anthony Anderledy, who remained in the same city until he died. Father Luis Martín, the next General, returned to Rome in 1893, so that Fiesole was the centre of the Society for twenty years.

As the chief representative of Christ on Earth is the most prominent victim of these spoliations, and as he has been frequently driven into exile and is at present only tolerated in his own territory, the Society of Jesus with the other religious orders cannot consider it a reproach but rather a glory to be treated like him. How does the Society survive all these disasters? It continues as if nothing had happened, and one reads with amazement the statement of Father General Wernz at the meeting of the procurators held in September and October 1910, when in a tone that is almost jubilant he congratulates the Society on its "flourishing condition." He said in brief:

"There are five new provinces; a revival of the professed houses; new novitiates, scholasticates, tertianships and courses in the best colleges for students of special subjects; and a superior course for Jesuit students of canon law in the Gregorian University. Next year there are to be accommodations for 300 theologians (boarders) at Innsbruck, which institution will be a Collegium Maximum for philosophy, theology and special studies. The novitiate is to be moved to the suburbs of Vienna. In the province of Galicia sufficient ground has been bought to make the College of Cracow similar to Innsbruck, and a beautiful church is being built there. The province of Germany though dispersed has built in Holland an immense novitiate and house of retreats and the Luxemburg house of writers is to be united to the Collegium Maximum of Valkenburg. The Holland province has more diplomated professors than any other in the Society, and is about to build a new scholasticate. Louvain is becoming more and more a house of special studies. In England, the Campion house at Oxford is continuing its success and there is question of moving St. Beuno's. The Irish province is looking for another site for the novitiate and juniorate, and is using the University to form better teachers. Canada is looking for another place for its novitiate and so are Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, while Maryland is trying to put its scholasticate near New York.

"Not much remains to be done in Spain. However, Toledo has established a scholasticate in Murcia, and Aragon is planning one for Tarragona. France is dispersed, but it has furnished excellent professors for the Biblical Institute and the Gregorian University. In the mission of Calcutta, 130,000 pagans have been brought to the Faith and in one Chinese mission, 12,000. The numbers could be doubled if there were more workers." This was in 1910, and within a week of this pronouncement, the expulsion in Portugal took place; in 1914 the war broke out which shattered Belgium and made France more wretched than ever. What the future will be no one knows.

CHAPTER XXVI

MODERN MISSIONS

During the Suppression – Roothaan's appeal – South America – The Philippines – United States Indians – De Smet – Canadian Reservations – Alaska – British Honduras – China – India – Syria – Algeria – Guinea – Egypt – Madagascar – Mashonaland – Congo – Missions depleted by World War – Actual number of missionaries.

Besides its educational work, the Society of Jesus has always been eager for desperate and daring work among savages. At the time of the Suppression, namely in 1773 three thousand of its members were so employed; and the ruthless and cruel separation from those abandoned human beings was one of the darkest and gloomiest features of the tragedy. To all human appearances millions of heathens were thus hopelessly lost. Happily the disaster was not as great as was anticipated. In his "Christian Missions" Marshall says: – It would almost seem as if God had resolved to justify his servants by a special and marvellous Providence before the face of the whole world, and had left their work to what seemed inevitable ruin and decay only to show that neither the world nor the devil, neither persecution, nor fraud nor neglect could extinguish the life that was in it. And so when they came to look upon it, after sixty years of silence and desolation they found a living multitude where they expected to count only the corpses of the dead. Some indeed had failed, and paganism or heresy had sung its song of triumph over the victims; others had retained only the great truths of the Trinity and the Incarnation while ignorance and its twin sister, superstition, had spread a veil over their eyes, but still the prodigious fact was revealed that in India alone that there were more than one million natives who, after half a century of abandonment, still clung with constancy to the faith which had been preached to their fathers, and still bowed the head with loving awe when the names of their departed apostles were uttered amongst them. Such is the astonishing conclusion of a trial without parallel in the history of Christianity, and which if it had befallen the Christians of other lands, boasting their science and civilization, might perhaps have produced other results than among the despised Asiatics. The natural inference would be that besides this special Providence in their regard these neophytes had been well trained by their old masters (I, 246).

For a time, of course, there were some Jesuits who lingered on the missions in spite of the government's orders to the contrary. Thus we find a very distinguished man, a Tyrolese from Bolzano, who died at Lucknow on July 5, 1785. His name was Joseph Tiffenthaller and he had lived forty years in Hindostan. His tombstone, we are told, may be still seen in the cemetery of Agra where they laid his precious remains. He was a man of unusual ability and besides speaking his native tongue was familiar with Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Hindustanee, Arabic, Persian and Sanscrit. He was the first European who wrote a description of Hindostan. It is a detailed account of the twenty-two Provinces of India, with their cities, towns, fortresses, whose geographical situations were all calculated by means of a simple quadrant. The work contains a large number of maps, plans and sketches drawn by himself and the list of places fills twenty-one quarto pages. He also made a large atlas of the basin of the Ganges, and is the author of a treatise on the regions in which the rivers of India rise; a map of the Gagra which Bernoulli calls "a work of enormous labor" is another part of Tiffenthaller's relics.

In the field of religion he wrote books on "Brahmanism," "Indian Idolatry," "Indian Asceticism," "The religion of the Parsees and Mohammedanism with their relations to each other." He also published his astronomical observations on the sun-spots, on the zodiacal light, besides discussions on the astrology and cosmology of the Hindus, with descriptions of the flora and the fauna of the country. He was besides all that an historian, and has left us an account in Latin of the origin and religion of the Hindus, another in German of the expedition of Nadir Shah to India; a third in Persian about the deeds of the Great Mogul, Alam, and a fourth in French which tells of the incursions of the Afghans and the capture of Delhi, together with a contemporary history of India for the years 1757-64. In linguistics, he wrote a Parsee-Sanscrit lexicon and treatises in Latin on the Parsee language, the pronunciation of Latin, etc., He was held in the highest esteem by the scientific societies of Europe with which he was in communication. During the greater part of his life in India, the struggle was going on between the French and English for the possession of the Peninsula.

Of course he was not alone in India, at that time, for Bertrand tells us in his "Notions sur l' Inde et les missions" (p. 30) that "the Jesuits had a residence at Delhi as late as 1790", but, unfortunately, he could say nothing more about them. It is very likely, however, that when Pombal's agents attempted to crowd the 127 Jesuits who were at work in the various districts of Hindostan into a ship which had accommodations – and such accommodations – for only forty or fifty, many of them had perforce to be left behind, or perhaps failed to report at the place of embarcation. By keeping out of Goa, they could easily elude the pursuivants. The jungle, for instance, was a convenient hiding place. However, as they received no recruits the work went to pieces when the old heroes died, so that there were, most likely, no Jesuits there at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was just at this time, that England took possession of the greater part of Hindostan and, as a consequence, the country was soon swarming with Protestant parsons of every sect, eager to fill their depleted ranks with new converts from the East.

Marshall had been employed to report on their success, but as every one knows, the investigation brought him to the Church. His researches furnish very reliable and interesting information about the conditions prevailing in those parts among the old proselytes of the Jesuits. Quoting from the "Madras Directory" of 1857, he shows that in the Missions of Madura, founded by de Nobili, there were still 150,00 °Catholics, and in Verapoli as many as 300,000, with an accession of 1000 converts from Mohammedanism every year. Nor were these Hindus merely nominal Christians. Bertrand who knew India thoroughly, writing in 1838, says of the Sanars: "One might almost say that they have not eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil with Adam, and that they were created in the days of original innocence. Among these Hindus there are numbers who when asked whether they commit this or that sin, answer: 'Formerly I did, but that is many years ago. I told it to the Father, and he forbade me to do it. Since then I have not committed it.' We reckon more than 700 °Christians of this caste." Father Garnier, S. J. wrote in the same year as follows: "The Christians of this country are, in general, well disposed and strongly attached to the Faith. The usages introduced among them by the Jesuits still subsist; morning prayer in common, an hour before sunrise; evening prayer with spiritual reading; catechism for the children every day given by a catechist; Mass on Sunday in the chapel. But in spite of these excellent practices there still remains much ignorance and superstition, and we shall have a good deal to do to form them into a people of true Christians before we turn our attention to the pagans. We shall do that when we are more numerous."

Of course these testimonies of Jesuits may be rejected by some people, but the Protestant missionaries in Hindostan, at that time, leave no room for doubt about the actual conditions. Buchanan, for instance, who was particularly conspicuous among his fellows and was greatly extolled in England says: "There are in India members of the Church of Rome who deserve the affection and respect of all good men. From Cape Commorin to Cochin, there are about one hundred churches on the seashore alone. Before each is a lofty cross which like the church itself is seen from a great distance. At Jaffna, on Sundays, about a thousand or twelve hundred people attend church and on feast days three thousand and upward. At Manaar they are all Romish Christians. At Tutycorin, the whole of the tribe, without exception, are Christians in the Romish Communion. Before they hoist sail to go out to sea, a number of boatmen all join in prayer to God for protection. Every man at his post, with the rope in his hands, pronounces the prayer."

One of these parsons who bore the very inappropriate name of Joseph Mullens and whose writing is usually a shriek against the Church says that "in 1854, the Jesuit and Roman Catholic missions are spread very widely through the Madras Presidency. At Pubna there is a population of 13,000 souls. It is all due to the Catholic missionaries. I allow that they dress simply, eat plainly and have no luxuries at home; they travel much; are greatly exposed; live poorly, and toil hard, and I have heard of a bishop living in a cave on fifty rupees a month, and devoutly attending the sick when friends and relatives had fled from fear. But all that is much easier on the principles of a Jesuit who is supported by motives of self-righteousness than it is to be a faithful minister on the principles of the New Testament."

The bloody persecution of 1805 in China showed how fervent and strong those Christians were in their faith. Very few apostatized, though new and terrible punishments were inflicted on them. Dr. Wells Williams, a Protestant agent in China, says that "many of them exhibited the greatest constancy in their profession, suffering persecution, torture, banishment and death, rather than deny their faith, though every inducement of prevarication and mental reservation was held out to them by the magistrates, in order to avoid the necessity of proceeding to extreme measures." It came to an end only when it was discovered that Christianity had even entered the royal family, and that the judges were sometimes trying their own immediate relatives. In 1815, however, the very year that the Protestant missionaries arrived in China the persecution broke out again. Bishop Dufresse was one of the victims, and when the day of execution arrived he with thirty-two other martyrs ascended the scaffold. In 1818 many were sent to the wastes of Tatary, and 1823 when pardon was offered to all who would renounce their faith, after suffering in the desert for five years only five proved recreant. In the midst of all this storm one of the missionaries reported that he had baptized one hundred and six adults.

That a great many Chinese had remained faithful Catholics during the long period which had elapsed after the Suppression was manifested by a notable event recorded by Brou in "Les Jésuites Missionaires."

"On November 1, 1903," he writes, "a funeral ceremony took place in Zikawei, a town situated about six miles from Shanghai. It was more like the triumph of a great hero than an occasion of mourning. The people were in a state of great enthusiasm about it, and assembled in immense throngs around the tomb of the illustrious personage whose glories were being celebrated. The object of these honors was Paul Zi or Sin, a literary celebrity in his day, the prime minister of an emperor in the long past, and one of the first converts of the famous Father Ricci, whom he had aided with lavish generosity in building churches and in establishing the Faith in the neighborhood of Shanghai.

"The celebration of 1903 was the third centenary of his baptism, and all his relations or descendants who were very numerous, had gathered at Zikawei for the occasion. Among them, the Fathers discovered a great number of Christians who had remained true to the teachings of the Church during those 300 years; and there were many others throughout the country who resembled the Zi family in this particular. In Paul's district, that is in the neighborhood of Shanghai, there were, 60 years after the baptism of the great man, as many as 40,00 °Christians, and in 1683 the number had risen to 800,000, but a century later the persecutions had cut them down to 30,000 though doubtless there were many who had succeeded in concealing themselves."

With Cochin the Jesuits never had anything to do, except that their great hero, de Rhodes, was its first successful missionary in former days. It was at his suggestion that the Society of the Missions Etrangères was founded and took up the work which the Jesuits were unable to carry on alone.

About Corea, Marshall furnishes us with two very interesting facts. The first is that England had the honor of giving a martyr to Corea, the English Jesuit, Thomas King, who died there in 1788, that is fifteen years after the Suppression. Unfortunately the name "King" does not appear in Foley's "Records."

The second is vouched for by the "Annales" (p. 190) which relate that a French priest, known as M. de Maistre, had for ten years vainly endeavored to enter the forbidden kingdom and had spent 60,000 francs in roaming around its impenetrable frontier. He assumed all sorts of disguises, faced every kind of danger in his journeys from the ports of China to the deserts of Leao-tong, asking alternately the Chinese junks and the French ships to put him ashore somewhere on the coast. Death was so evidently to be the result of his enterprise that the most courageous seaman refused to help him. It required the zeal of an apostle to comprehend this heroism and to second its endeavors. Father Hélot, being a priest, understood what the Cross required of him, and as a member of a society whose tradition is that they have never been baffled by any difficulties or perils, felt himself at the post where his Company desired him to be. The Jesuit becomes the pilot of a battered ship, safely conducts his intrepid passenger to an unknown land, and having deposited him on the shore, looked after him for a while and returned to his neophytes with the consoling satisfaction of having exposed his life for a mission that was not his own.

From the Catalogues of the Society, we find that Louis Hélot was born on January 29, 1816. He was a novice at St. Acheul, in 1835, and in the same house there happened to be a certain Isidore Daubresse, not a novice, however, but a theologian who was well-known later on in New York. The master of novices was Ambrose Rubillon who was subsequently assistant of the General for France. By 1850 Hélot was in China and spent the rest of his life hunting after souls in the region of Nankin. He died sometime after 1864. De Maistre succeeded in entering the country and we find him waiting one Good Friday night to welcome the first bishop who had three priests with him, one of whom was a Jesuit.

Before the re-establishment the few Jesuits in White Russia had kept up the missionary traditions of the Society. Their missions extended all along the Volga and they were at Odessa in 1800. In 1801, thanks to the Emperor Paul's intercession, they had returned to their ancient posts on the Ægean Islands, which were in the dominions of the Grand Turk; by 1806 they had reached Astrakhan; and in 1810 were in the Caucasus. Before Father Grassi came to America, he was studying in St. Petersburg to prepare himself for the missions of Astrakhan.

In America, in spite of the Suppression, the work of the old Jesuits did not fail to leave its traces. Thus in Brazil where Nobrega and Anchieta once labored, over 800,000 domesticated Indians now represent the fruit of their toil. Deprived during sixty years of their fathers and guides and too often scandalized by men who are Christians only in name, the native races have not only preserved the Faith through all their sorrows and trials, but every where rejected the bribes and promises of heresy. In that vast region, which stretches from the mouth of the San Francisco to the Isthmus of Panama, watered by the mightiest rivers of our globe, and including the district of the Amazon with its 45,000 miles of navigable water communication, "the natives who still find shelter in its forests or guide their barks over its myriad streams," says a Protestant writer, "push their profession of the Catholic religion even to the point of fanaticism."

The Paraguayans of course could be counted upon not to forget their fathers in Christ. Both Sir Woodbine Parish and d'Orbigny testify that the effects of the preponderating influence of the monastic establishments are still visible in the habits of the generality of the people. One thing is certain, they say, and ought to be declared to the praise of the Fathers, that since their expulsion the material prosperity of Paraguay has diminished; many lands formerly cultivated have ceased to be so; many localities formerly inhabited present at this day only ruins. What ought to be confessed is this – that they knew how to engrave with such power, on their hearts, reverence for authority that even to this very hour the tribes of Paraguay beyond all those who inhabit this portion of America are the most gentle and the most submissive to the dictates of duty.

In "La Compañía de Jesús en las Republicas del Sur de America," Father Hernández tells us that there were three former Jesuits in Chile at the beginning of the nineteenth century: Father Caldera, Vildaurre and Carvajal. The first two died respectively in 1818 and 1822, the date of Carvajal's demise is not known, nor is there any information available as to whether or not they ever re-entered the Society. In the old Province of Paraguay, there was a Father Villafañe who was seventy-four years old in 1814. Hearing of the re-establishment, he wrote to the Pope asking to renew his vows when "in danger of death." The request, of course, was granted but he continued to live till the year 1830. Whether he waited till then to renew his vows has not been found out. In that same year there died in Buenos Aires an Irish Jesuit named Patrick Moran. His name is inscribed not only on the headstone over his remains, in the Recolta graveyard, but on a slab inserted in the wall of the church. He was probably a chaplain in some distinguished family or what was more likely exercising his ministry in the Irish colony of that place.

Coming to the northern part of the hemisphere we are told by Mr. Russell Bartlett that the Yaqui Indians of Sonora, the fishermen and pearl divers of California are invariably honest, faithful and industrious. They were among the first to be converted by the Jesuits. Originally extremely warlike, their savage nature was completely subdued on being converted to Christianity, and they became the most docile and tractable of people. They are now very populous in the southern part of Sonora.

Anyone who has visited the Abenakis at Old Town in Maine, or La Jeune Lorette in Quebec, or Caughnawaga on the St. Lawrence, or the Indian settlements at Wekwemikong and Killarney on Lake Huron will testify to the excellent results of the teachings implanted in their hearts by the old Jesuit missionaries who reclaimed them from savagery.

A most remarkable example of this fidelity to their former teachers was afforded by the Indians of Caughnawaga. They were mostly Iroquois from New York who after their conversion to the Faith were sent or went, of their own accord, to the Christian village that was assigned to them above Montreal. Long after the Suppression of the Society, namely in the first third of the nineteenth century, a party of these Indians headed by two chiefs with the significant names of Ignace and François Régis tramped almost completely across the continent, and without the aid of a priest, for none could be got, converted an entire tribe to Christianity and did it in such wonderful fashion that the first white men who visited these converts were amazed at the purity, honesty, self-restraint and piety that reigned in the tribe. Over and over again, Ignace travelled down to St. Louis, thus making a journey of two thousand miles each time to beg for a Black Robe from the poor missionary bishop who had none to give him. The devoted Ignace, at last, lost his life in pursuance of his apostolic purpose. He fell among hostile Indians, and though he might have escaped, for he was dressed as a white man, he confessed himself an Iroquois and died with his people.

Father Fortis, the first General after the re-establishment of the Society, was rather averse to any missionary enterprise for the time being, because he judged that he had not as yet any available men for such perilous work. Father Roothaan, his immediate successor, was of a different opinion, and when in 1833, he appealed for missionaries the response was immediate. Hence Bengal was begun in 1834; Madura, Argentina and Paraguay in 1836, and the Rocky Mountains and China in 1840. In 1852 at the request of Napoleon III the penal colony of French Guinea was accepted as were the offers of Fernando Po in Africa and the Philippines from Queen Isabella of Spain.

The Spanish missions in Latin America were the least successful of any in the Society. The Fathers were debarred from any communication with the native tribes, even those formerly Christianized and civilized by them, or if permission were granted it was soon under some frivolous pretext or other rescinded, as we have mentioned above.

The Belgian Jesuits went to Guatemala in 1843, but only after considerable trouble was their existence assured by a government Act, in 1851. In 1871, however, they were expelled and withdrew to Nicaragua, from which they were driven in 1884. The Brazilian Mission was inaugurated by the Jesuits whom Rosas had exiled from Argentina. They were acceptable because priests were needed in the devastated Province of Rio Grande do Sul, which had been the theatre of an unsuccessful war of independence. Of course, the usual government methods in vogue in that part of the world were resorted to.

The suppression of the Society wrought havoc in the Philippines, and we are told that in 1836 as many as 6000 people were carried off into slavery by Mohammedan pirates, a disaster that would have probably been prevented had the missionaries been left there. They would have made soldiers out of the natives as they did in Paraguay. It was only in 1859 that they returned to that field of work. They resumed their educational labors in Manila and at the same time evangelized Mindanao with wonderful success. In 1881 there were on that island 194,134 Christians and in 1893, 302,107. Inside of thirty-six years, the Fathers had brought 57,000 Filipinos to the Faith and established them in Reductions as in Paraguay. Great success was also had with the Moros, who were grouped together in three distinct villages. The Spanish War brought its disturbances, but little by little the Jesuits recovered what they had lost and there are at present 162 members of the province of Aragon at work in the Islands.

In the United States, the native races have largely disappeared except in the very far West. With the remnants, the Jesuits are, of course, concerned, and perhaps the most reliable official estimate of the success they have achieved was expressed by Senator Vest during the discussion of the Indian Appropriation Bill before the United States Senate in 1900:

"I was raised a Protestant," he said; "I expect to die one. I was never in a Catholic church in my life, and I have not the slightest sympathy with many of its dogmas; but above all I have no respect for the insane fear that the Catholic Church is about to overturn this Government. I should be ashamed to call myself an American if I indulged in any such ignorant belief. I said that I was a Protestant. I was reared in the Scotch Presbyterian Church; my father was an elder in it and my earliest impressions were that the Jesuits had horns and hoofs and tails, and that there was a faint tinge of sulphur in the circumambient air whenever one of them crossed your path. Some years ago I was assigned by the Senate to examine the Indian schools in Wyoming and Montana. I visited every one of them. I wish to say now what I have said before in the Senate and it is not the popular side of the question by any means, that I did not see in all my journey a single school that was doing any educational work worthy of the name educational work, unless it was under the control of the Jesuits. I did not see a single Government school, especially day schools where there was any work done at all. The Jesuits have elevated the Indian wherever they have been allowed to do so without the interference of bigotry and fanaticism and the cowardice of politicians. They have made him a Christian, have made him a workman able to support himself and those dependent on him. Go to the Flathead Reservation in Montana, and look at the work of the Jesuits and what do you find? Comfortable dwellings, herds of cattle and horses, self-respecting Indians. I am not afraid to say this, because I speak from personal observation, and no man ever went among these Indians with more intense prejudice than I had when I left the city of Washington to perform that duty. Every dollar you give to the Government day schools might as well be thrown into the Potomac under a ton of lead." (Congressional Records, Apl. 7, 1900, p. 7. 4120.)

The most conspicuous of the missionaries among the North American Indians is Father Peter de Smet. He was born in Dendermonde on the Scheldt, and was twelve years old when the booming of the cannons of Waterloo startled the little town. He came out to Maryland in 1821 and after remaining for a short time at Whitemarsh in the log cabin which then sheltered the novices of the Province of Maryland, set out on foot with a party of young Jesuits for the then Wild West. They walked from Whitemarsh to Wheeling, a distance of 400 miles, and then went in flat boats down the Ohio to Shawneetown and from there proceeded again on foot to St. Louis. It was a journey of a month and a half.

His first work was among the Pottawotamis, and then he was sent to the wonderful Flatheads, whom the Iroquois from Caughnawaga had converted. From that time forward his life was like a changing panorama. In the story, there are Indians of every kind who come before us. Gros Ventres and Flatheads and Pottawotamis, and Pend d'Oreilles and Sioux; their incantations and cannibalism and dances and massacres and disgusting feasts are described; there are scenes in the Bad Lands and mountains and forests; there are tempests in the mid-Pacific and more alarming calms; there are councils with Indian chiefs, and interviews with Popes and presidents and kings and ambassadors and archbishops and great statesmen and Mormon leaders, always and exclusively in the interests of the Church. The great man's life has been written in four volumes by two admiring Protestants, and another biography has lately come from the pen of a Belgian Jesuit. In them appears an utterance from Archbishop Purcell about the hero, which deserves to be quoted. "Never," he says, "since the days of Xavier, Brébeuf, Marquette and Lalemant has there been a missionary more clearly pointed out and called than Father de Smet." Thurlow Weed, one of the most conspicuous American statesmen of the day, said of him: "No white man knows the Indians as Father de Smet nor has any man their confidence to the same degree." Thomas H. Benton wrote to him in 1852: "You can do more for the welfare of the Indians in keeping them at peace and friendship with the United States than an army with banners."

Again and again he was sent by the government to pacify the Indians. His mission in 1868 was particularly notable. Sitting Bull was on the warpath and was devastating the whole regions of the Upper Missouri and Yellowstone. They were called for a parley, and de Smet went out alone among the painted warriors. He held a banner of the Blessed Virgin in his hand and pleaded so earnestly with them to forget the past, that they went down into the very midst of the United States troops and signed the treaty of peace that brought 50,000 Indians to continue their allegiance to the government. De Smet in his journeys had crossed the ocean nineteen times and had travelled 180,000 miles by sailing vessels, river barges, canoes, dogsleds, snow shoes, wagons, or on horseback or on foot. "We shall never forget," said General Stanley of the United States Army – and this eulogy of the great man will suffice – "nor shall we ever cease to admire the disinterested devotion of Reverend Father de Smet who at the age of sixty-eight years did not hesitate, in the midst of the summer heat, to undertake a long and perilous journey across the burning plains, destitute of trees and even of grass, having none but corrupted and unwholesome water, constantly exposed to scalping by Indians, and this without seeking honor or remuneration of any sort but solely to arrest the shedding of blood, and save, if it might be, some lives and preserve some habitations."

In Canada, the Indian reservation of La Jeune Lorette, which was established in the early days by Father Chaumonot, is now directed by the secular clergy of Quebec. The Caughnawaga settlement near Montreal was, of course, lost to the Society at the time of the Suppression, but of late years has been restored to its founders. The Canadian Jesuits also look after the Indians of Lakes Huron and Superior. Their latest undertaking is in Alaska which began by a tragedy.

The saintly Bishop Charles John Seghers, who was coadjutor to the Bishop of Oregon, had himself transferred to the See of Vancouver in order to devote his life to the savages of Alaska. In 1886 when he asked the Jesuits to come to his assistance, Fathers Tosi and Robaut were assigned to the work. In July, the bishop, the two Jesuits and a hired man started over the Chilcoot Pass for the headwaters of the Yukon. It was decided that the two Jesuits should spend the winter at the mouth of the Stewart River, while the Bishop with his man hastened to a distant post to forestall the members of a sect, who contemplated establishing a post at the same place. During the terrible 1,100 mile journey the servant became insane and in the dead of night killed the bishop. The result was that new arrangements had to be made and Father Tosi was made prefect Apostolic in 1894. His health soon gave way under the terrible privations of the mission and he died in 1898, although only fifty-one years of age. He was succeeded by Father René of the Society who resigned in 1904, and the present incumbent Father Crimont, S. J., took his place.

The condition of Alaska has greatly changed since the advent of the missionaries. The discovery of placer gold deposits with the influx of miners robbed a portion of Alaska of its primitive isolation. The invading whites had to be looked after, and hence there are resident Jesuit priests at Juneau, Douglas, Fairbanks, Nome, Skagway, St. Michael and Seward. A great number of posts are attended to from these centres. The Ten'a Indians and Esquimaux are the only natives whom the missionaries have been able to evangelize thus far. There is a training-school for them at Koserefsky, where the boys are taught gardening, carpentry and smithing of various kinds, and the girls are instructed in cooking, sewing and other household arts. This work is particularly trying not only because of the bodily suffering it entails, but because of the awful monotony and isolation of those desolate arctic regions. Some idea of it may be gathered from a few extracts taken from a letter of one of the missionaries. It is dated May 29, 1916.

"The Skúlarak district of 15,000 square miles, depending on St. Mary's Mission," says the writer, "is as large as a diocese. It has seventy or eighty villages. The whole country along the coast is a vast swamp covered with a net work of rivers, sloughs, lakes and ponds. There is only one inhabitant to every ten or twelve square miles. There is no question of roads except in winter and then as everything is deep in snow, it is impossible to tell whether one is going over land or lake or river. When we started the thermometer registered 28° below zero, Fahrenheit. We had nine dogs; but two were knocked out shortly after starting. Eleven hours travelling brought us to our first cabins. We rose next morning at five, said Mass on an improvised altar and set out southward. At noon we stopped for lunch, which consisted of frozen bread and some tea from our thermo bottle. It was only at seven o'clock that we reached a little 'village' of three houses at the foot of the Kusilwak Mountains, which are two or three thousand feet high. They served as a guide to direct our course." At another stage of the journey he writes: "At sundown as we lost all hope of reaching any village we made for a faraway clump of brushwood intending to pass the night there. It is full moon and its rays light up an immaculate white landscape, there is a bright cloudless sky, and everything is so still that you cannot even breathe without a plainly audible sound."

What kind of people was he pursuing? Not very interesting in any way. "I came upon a new style of native dwelling, a low-roofed miserable hovel about twelve feet square; in the centre, a pit, about two and a half feet deep, was the sink and dumping ground for the refuse of the house. There we had to descend if we wanted the privilege of standing erect. That is where I placed myself to perform a baptism of the latest arrival of the family whom the mother held on her lap squatted on the higher ground which served as a bed. The habits of the natives cannot be described." "Our dogs were so exhausted," he says in the course of his narrative, "that they lay down at once without waiting to have their harness taken off. We fed them their ration of dry fish, they curled up in the snow and went to sleep. As for ourselves we tried to build a fire but could not succeed in boiling enough of melted snow for even a cup of tea; a box of sardines, the contents of which were so frozen that I had to chop them up with the prong of a fork constituted my royal supper. A hole was soon dug in the snow, by using the snow shoes for a shovel and a few sticks thrown in to prevent direct contact with the snow. I opened my bag of blankets, put on my fur parkey and tried to keep the blankets around me to keep from freezing. After a couple of hours I felt my limbs getting numb, and I was compelled to crawl out and look around for a hard mound of snow where I began to execute a dance that would baffle the best orchestra. I jigged and clogged around for fifteen or twenty minutes, and feeling I was alive again sought my blankets once more, but the cold was too intense and I could only say a few prayers and make a peaceful application of the meditation 'de propriis peccatis.'

"Another time, after fruitlessly scanning the horizon for a sign of a village, we found ourselves compelled to pass the night in the open air. This time I constructed a scientific Pullman berth for myself. Selecting the leeward side of an ice block, I dug a trench in the snow, using the fire-pan as a shovel. I hewed out the pillow at the head and made the grave (indeed it looked like one) about two feet wide and two deep and my exact length. Stretching my cassock over it, with the snow shoes as a supporting rack, I crawled into it and passed a tolerably comfortable night, though I awoke dozens of times from the violent coughing that had stuck to me since my stay in Tumna. So it went on till April 8. We had been three weeks on the road. Never had the trip to Tumna lasted so long. This was due to the fact that the dogs were exhausted and we had to walk back for about 250 miles in the snow."